I don’t want to say goodbye.

To be honest, my first impression of music icon Dolly Parton was similar to the scathing look the demur Jane Fonda gave the boss’s secretary in one of my favorite funny feminist films ever, 9 to 5.

Fonda’s aghast up-and-down scrutiny was pure unspoken tisk-tisk condescension toward this bubbly dumb-blond wigged white trash colleague – until she looked down at her own flat chest. For a moment, Fonda suggested a hint of envy, at which we laughed. I felt a sigh of relief at not having to carry around all the weight Dolly Parton’s boobs implied.

Those boobs, those big blond country-Western wigs, and her seemingly irrepressible humor were as much a part of Dolly Parton’s brand as was her incomparable voice and the songs she wrote that moved generations. In 1974, I longed to love someone as much as Dolly loved the person for whom she wrote her goodbye, “I Will Always Love You.”

Surely, someone with that big a heart was bigger than the tight bodice society forced innovative go-getters like Dolly Parton to squeeze into.

In fact, Parton’s difficult backstory of childhood poverty in Sevierville, Tenn., living in a cabin with no running water and 11 siblings – and an ambition infused with a love-your-neighbor Christian upbringing -created a depth of character that used smarts, ingenuity and humor to thwart her stereotype-blinded detractors.

“Well, I graduated [high school] on a Friday night and headed out on a Saturday morning,” Parton told ABC News’ Robin Roberts in an extensive interview in advance of the 2019 CMA Awards. “As I make jokes about it with my matching luggage, those four paper bags from the same grocery store. I thought, well, I can’t be any poorer than I already am, and I’m a girl. I’ll find some boy that’ll take me to Shoney’s… I thought I’m not going to go hungry.”

Like Billie Jean King and other female professionals, Dolly Parton fought hard to get paid what she was worth.

“It’s not all about money,” she said. “I count my blessings more than I count my money, but I need to count my money, too.”

Tough times taught her how to be tough and funny. “Well, I don’t think people can live in this world without going through times like that,” Parton told Roberts. “People always look at me; they always say, ‘Oh, you just always seem to be so happy.’ I said, ‘That’s the Botox.’ No, but seriously, I’m a very sensitive person. I feel everything to the core.”

That’s what makes her famous 1977 interview with ABC’s Barbara Walters so compelling. Walters had become infamous for making her interview subjects cry after asking tough, prying, sometimes rude questions that she said her audience wanted answered.

“You don’t have to look like this; you’re very beautiful. You don’t have to wear the blonde wigs; you don’t have to wear the extreme clothes, right?” Walters asked the brightly dressed Parton.

Parton delivered a master class in grace and class.

“It’s certainly a choice,” Parton replied. “I don’t like to be like everybody else. I’ve often made the statement that I would never stoop so low as to be fashionable. That’s the easiest thing in the world to do.”

Chuckling yet? Parton wanted attention, then she could dazzle them with talent. “Once they got past the shock of the ridiculous way I looked, then they would see there’s parts of me to be appreciated. I’m very real where it counts…and that’s inside,” Dolly Parton told Barbara Walters. “Show business is a money-making joke, and I just always like telling jokes.”

Walters then asked Parton – the beloved star with 19 studio albums and a slew of awards won over a decade in the male-dominated music business: “Do you ever feel like you’re a joke, that people make fun of you?”

Parton was the personification of composure.

“I know they make fun of me. But actually, all these years people have thought the joke was on me, but it’s actually been on the public. I know exactly what I’m doing, and I can change it at any time. I make more jokes about myself than anybody,” Parton said.

“I am sure of myself as a person. I am sure of my talent. I’m sure of my love for life,” Parton said. “And I’m very content. I like the kind of person that I am. So I can afford to piddle around and do-diddle around with make-up and clothes and stuff. Because I am secure with myself.”

Game, set, match to Parton.

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In another ABC interview in 2012, Parton expanded on that over-the-top signature style which she adopted after seeing the town tramp.

“There was this woman, we won’t call her names, but she was beautiful,” she told ABC News Nightline. “I had never seen anybody, you know, with the yellow hair all piled up and the red lipstick and the rouge and the high-heeled shoes, and I thought, ‘This is what I want to look like.’”

As the image implies, there were constant rumors that she was secretly involved with any male within inches – as well as a secret lesbian life with her oldest childhood pal, Judy Ogle. She denied the rumor – she was married to Carl Dean for 58 years. He died in March 2025.

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Dolly Parton died peacefully on Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2026, at the age of 80 in Nashville after a “brief battle with cancer,” her team wrote in a statement to People.

“Our beloved Dolly Parton spent her life and career bringing joy, laughter, hope, and integrity into everything she touched. Her unmatched generosity reached the lives of countless people whom she would never meet, yet she was always there to offer a helping hand,” they wrote.

“Whether it be the hundreds of millions of books donated through her invaluable Imagination Library or funding research that helped create a lifesaving vaccine used around the world, Dolly’s unconditional love for all people was the guiding force for her lasting impact. After bravely facing a brief battle with cancer, Dolly departed her Earthly life today at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, surrounded by loved ones,” the statement concluded.

The music world is in mourning. And news outlets are overflowing with tributes. Few of them mention us. In fact, one note of criticism for some is a precise example of that “unconditional love for all people” her team talked about.

“The ’80s — a decade she kicked off in grand fashion with the working woman’s anthem ‘9 to 5’ — brought Parton some of her greatest mainstream success, but the climate of the times also conspired to reduce her to a punchline and a caricature: The self-made country-pop queen who had pulled herself up by her bra straps. She played along, as an act of self-preservation, but it is a consolation to know that she lived long enough for her reputation as a songwriter to rise considerably in the 21st century,” Lindsay Zoladz wrote in her “appraisal” of Dolly Parton, who “had the Voice, and Concerns, of an Earth Angel” for the New York Times.

Damn, bitch! Have you never even seen a Dolly Parton drag queen? There’s almost a cottage industry devoted to Dolly. And Dolly knew – and loved it! She even participated in a Dolly Parton drag contest at a gay LA Bar – which she lost!

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“They had a bunch of Chers and Dollys that year, so I just over-exaggerated — made my beauty mark bigger, the eyes bigger, the hair bigger, everything,” Parton laughingly told ABC News Nightline. “All these beautiful drag queens had worked for weeks and months getting their clothes. So I just got in the line, and I just walked across, and they just thought I was some little short gay guy… but I got the least applause.”

Dolly Parton lost the Dolly Parton look-alike contest in an LA gay bar! But she hasn’t lost the ineffable connection to her fans – whom she understood, felt, and fought for – including protecting “Gay Day” at Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tenn.

“When it first started, there were people giving us threats; I still get threats,” Parton told ABC News. “But like I said, I’m in business. I just don’t feel like I have to explain myself. I love everybody.”

That’s what I saw when Dolly Parton arrived and smiled through an onslaught of paparazzi and gay fanboys at an APLA Commitment to Life event.

Oddly though, as a reporter, my fixation was on Parton’s “date,” her gay manager Sandy Gallin, who seemed to rarely show up publicly with his supposed posse, controversially dubbed the “Velvet Gay Mafia.”

The late gay AIDS advocate Dana Miller, who was on the APLA Board, wrote a piece for In Los Angeles Magazine about the Four Warriors of AIDS fundraising: David Geffen, Barry Diller, Sandy Gallin, and Jeffrey Katzenberg.

“It was the early ’90s, and we were in the second decade of AIDS with absolutely no hope in sight,” Miller wrote. “It was then I discovered the warriors, and it was amazing. Gay and straight, they were the ones who for almost a decade came together in living rooms and storefronts to provide what our government didn’t. My list of warriors is long, yet this is the tale of four particular individuals who, for years, I closely watched working behind the scenes to make a difference in the quality of life of men, women, and children they would never know.”

After Gallin died in 2017 at age 76, columnist Billy Masters wrote a tribute in the Los Angeles Blade that expanded on that theme – and included a section on Dolly Parton, with whom he formed Sandollar Productions in 1985. Sandollar Productions, with Howard Rosenman, produced the 1990 Oscar winning documentary Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt that raised global awareness about AIDS.

“While Gallin’s client list was vast and varied, he especially loved his divas. A special place in his heart was reserved solely for Dolly Parton. The two met after Dolly asked singer Mac Davis who should help with her career. Davis said, ‘You should talk to Sandy Gallin — he’s my manager.’ Sandy had one goal — to make Dolly a mainstream star. The first thing he did was set up a recording session for the song ‘Here You Come Again,’”Masters wrote.

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“Dolly was hesitant. She said, ‘A monkey could sing this song and have a hit with it.’ She was very nervous that it would turn off the country market, which she was very loyal to.’ Gallin made a deal with her — if the song wasn’t No. 1 on the pop charts AND the country charts, he’d never get involved in her musical decisions again. Dolly took the deal — and lost,” Masters wrote. “From then on, she and Sandy were inseparable. They considered each other beyond best friends and almost soul mates. ‘My husband didn’t love to travel, and Sandy was gay, and he did,’ said Dolly.”

Dolly Parton also talked about Gallin in an interview with Apple Music Country’s Proud Radio: “Sandy and I just clicked like nobody’s business,” Parton told host Hunter Kelly. “He was like my best gay bud. … We [went to] Studio 54. We’d sit on the couch and watch all the craziness. But we were all involved in the fun of it, and it was great.”

“I really owe him so much,” Parton added.

But, contrary to what Dolly Parton sings in “9 to 5,” it’s not all taking and no giving. Dolly Parton told the KKK that she welcomes gay people to Dollywood. And in 1991, when gay men were dying of AIDS by the thousands, and some Southern Christian leaders said AIDS was God’s punishment for homosexuality, Dolly Parton wrote and sang one of the first country songs to include “gay” and Christianity: “Some are preachers, some are gay… But not a one is turned away when it’s family.”

She later got an Oscar nod for “Travelin’ Thru,” a song for the transgender film “Transamerica.”

In 2023, after her home state of Tennessee passed anti-trans and anti-drag laws, Parton said she knew how deeply it hurt LGBTQ+ people, including in her own family and life, to be attacked for who they are.

“I know and love them all, and I do not judge,” she said. “They cannot help that any more than I can help being Dolly Parton.”

By the end of “9 to 5,” I realized that I had been the judgmental one with stereotype-blinders. I enjoyed learning how to get bold things done while expressing yourself with authentic joy. But unfortunately the theme and song are still applicable today.

Thank you, Dolly Parton.

The Human Rights Campaign Foundation, the public education, research, and policy arm of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ+ advocacy group in the United States, has released new data showing that there are more LGBTQ+ identifying people than ever before, just as the Trump administration continues efforts to minimize LGBTQ+ rights and visibility.

The data, released late last week, includes a multitude of updated population estimates for LGBTQ+ identifying people in the United States. It shows that a record-high 12 percent of U.S. adults — roughly 25.6 million people — identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or gender diverse.

The numbers were drawn from more than 2.4 million responses to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey collected between 2021 and 2024. The Household Pulse Survey is one of the last major federal data sources to include a gender identity measure before the Trump-Vance administration removed sexual orientation and gender identity questions from roughly 360 federal data collections.

HRC President Kelley Robinson spoke about the data, emphasizing that it shows not only that the LGBTQ+ community is bigger than the Trump administration would have Americans believe, but that LGBTQ+ Americans continue to be targeted for no reason other than being different.

“LGBTQ+ Americans are everywhere. There are 25 million of us across the country, and we now have critical mass in almost every state in the nation,” Robinson said in a statement. “We’re not a niche constituency, and no campaign, brand, or employer can afford to treat us like one.”

The survey also collected other important information about LGBTQ+ Americans.

40: The number of states with an LGBTQ+ population greater than 10 percent, plus the District of Columbia. This includes electoral battleground states such as Arizona (13.34 percent), Georgia (11.46 percent), Michigan (10.95 percent), New Hampshire (11.88 percent), North Carolina (10.56 percent), Ohio (11.29 percent), Pennsylvania (11.14 percent), and Texas (12.54 percent).

25.6 million: Number of U.S. adults who identify as LGBTQ+.

12 percent: Percentage of the adult population who identify as LGBTQ+.

More than half of all LGBTQ+ adults (53.8 percent) are between 18 and 34 — a signal of sustained, long-term growth in political and economic power as this generation ages into peak spending and voting years.

Other recent studies show that nearly 30 perent of the adult Gen Z population identifies as LGBTQ+.

The data also shows growing diversity across the community. Hispanic adults make up a larger share of the LGBTQ+ population (18 percent) than of non-LGBTQ+ adults (13 percent). Black adults make up a smaller share, about 9 percent, compared to 12 percent, reinforcing that LGBTQ+ identity cuts across every racial and ethnic community.

Bisexual+ people are the largest group, at over 7 percent of all U.S. adults.

Tari Hanneman, HRC Foundation’s senior director of research and education, spoke about how the White House’s recent decision to remove LGBTQ-specific data questions from federal surveys undermines the purpose of federal data collection: to collect data that accurately reflects the U.S. population, regardless of political ideology.

“Reliable data are essential for understanding who lives in this country and what our communities need to thrive,” Hanneman said. “Removing sexual orientation and gender identity questions from surveys like the one used for this analysis introduces significant gaps in this understanding. These findings show that LGBTQ+ people are a substantial and growing segment of the population, underscoring the need for our continued inclusion in data collection efforts.”

The data also included key demographics about the age of LGBTQ+ people, showing that younger Americans are increasingly more likely to identify as LGBTQ+, while overall, all age groups saw an increase in people self-identifying as LGBTQ+ in the data.

More than half of LGBTQ+ adults (approximately 54 percent) are younger than 35, compared with about 22 percent of non-LGBTQ+ adults. Adults ages 25–34 constitute roughly one-third of the LGBTQ+ adult population.

The data also shows a similar generational pattern within age groups. Nearly 32 percent of adults ages 18–24 and 22 percent of adults ages 25–34 identify as LGBTQ+, compared with approximately 12 percent of adults ages 35–44 and less than 8 percent of each older age group.

The data also included statistics on the education levels of LGBTQ+ Americans, indicating that they are more likely to have some college education or an associate degree than their non-LGBTQ+ peers.

LGBTQ+ adults are more likely (34.57 percent) to have an associate degree or some college experience and less likely to have only a high school education or less, or a graduate degree.

According to a report from the Williams Institute, a research organization dedicated to collecting and explaining data on LGBTQ+ people and related policy, during the first year of the second Trump administration, approximately 360 federal data collections removed at least one sexual orientation or gender identity measure, including 338 that removed gender identity measures and at least 60 that removed sexual orientation measures.

The Williams Institute, along with HRC, asserts that these changes diminish the federal government’s capacity to measure LGBTQ+ populations and understand their experiences and needs — something that should be detrimental to federal data collection and assessment, regardless of what political ideology one subscribes to.

In 2024, the Census Bureau conducted a large-scale test of questions on sexual orientation and gender identity for possible inclusion in the American Community Survey, the nation’s primary source of detailed demographic data. The test involved nearly half a million households, but the Bureau has not released the promised reports and datasets showing how those questions performed. In September 2025 Democracy Forward filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking their release, alleging that the Census Bureau had unlawfully withheld the records.

The HRC Foundation also provided information about the methodology used to produce its estimates. The data uses weighted surveys conducted through its Community Insights research program. Community Insights is an opt-in research panel rather than a probability sample of the U.S. population; demographic benchmarks are used to adjust survey data so that respondents more closely reflect the broader LGBTQ+ adult population.

The HRC Foundation selected the Household Pulse Survey due to its large sample size, national probability-based design, detailed demographic data, separate measures for sexual orientation and gender identity, and availability of public-use survey weights.

The analysis includes 37 rounds of the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey conducted between 2021 and 2024, yielding 2,452,769 responses before exclusions for missing or imputed data.

HRC’s estimate of 12.03 percent is based on the Census Bureau’s self-administered Household Pulse Survey, while Gallup’s most recent estimate of 9 percent is based on telephone interviews and a different approach to measuring LGBTQ+ identity.

HRC has suggested that self-administered surveys may offer greater privacy when people answer sensitive questions, which may contribute to differences in disclosure.

The analysis classifies respondents as lesbian or gay, bisexual+, transgender, or gender-expansive. The bisexual+ category includes respondents who selected bisexual as well as those who selected another sexual identity not represented by the available categories. The transgender or gender-expansive classification is determined using respondents’ reported sex assigned at birth and current gender identity.

The move to remove LGBTQ+ people from federal data collection is just one of many things the Trump-Vance administration has taken to minimize — if not hide — LGBTQ+ people in the country.

From the anti-transgender military executive order, which attempted to bar new recruits and remove transgender military members already serving, signed in January 2025, to attempts to prohibit gender-affirming medical care in federal health care programs and all but destroy gender-affirming care for minors, the administration has pursued a series of policies affecting LGBTQ+ Americans.

The administration has also attempted to make biological sex the only definition of gender on federal paperwork, rolled back DEI programs across the federal government, and taken other steps affecting how LGBTQ+ people are represented and recognized in federal policy and data collection.

A monument that pays tribute to LGBTQ+ Canadians who suffered government-sanctioned persecution and discrimination officially opened in Ottawa on Aug. 21.

Former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Governor General Louise Arbour, and Women and Gender Equality Minister Rechie Valdez are among those who attended the ceremony.

A Canadian government press release notes Thunderhead, which is located on Parliament Hill, “recognizes the historic discrimination faced by 2SLGBTQI+ (two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, intersex, plus) people in Canada, including during the LGBT (lesbiennes, gaies, bisexuelles, trans) Purge.”

(French and English are Canada’s official languages.)

Trudeau in 2017 formally apologized to Canadians who suffered persecution and discrimination under the country’s anti-LGBTQ+ laws — including those convicted of “gross indecency” before Canada decriminalized consensual same-sex sexual relations — and policies. Trudeau also formally apologized to those who were fired from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the country’s military and civil service from the 1950s to the mid-1990s because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

The Canadian government later settled a class action lawsuit that LGBT Purge victims filed.

The settlement funded the monument.

The Canadian government’s press release notes an “all Canadian team” from Winnipeg, Manitoba, designed it. The monument is also located on the Anishinabe Algonquin Nation’s traditional territory.

“It celebrates the resilience and achievements of those who fought for equality, educates visitors, and inspires the change still needed so that everyone can openly love who they love and express and identify themselves as they choose,” reads the press release.

“Thunderhead stands as a tribute to the lives, stories, and contributions of 2SLGBTQI+ people across Canada,” said Prime Minister Mark Carney on Facebook. “It’s reminder of the discrimination too many endured — and honors those who fought to build a country where everyone can live freely, safely, and with dignity.”

India’s proposed overhaul of its foreign funding law could put LGBTQ+ organizations that depend on overseas donations under new pressure. 

Introduced in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament, on March 25, the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2026, or FCRA, would give a government-designated authority control over foreign funds, and assets when an organization loses or surrenders its registration.

The Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Amendment Bill returned to the spotlight this month as the Indian government prepared to seek its passage during Parliament’s Monsoon Session; drawing fierce opposition from political parties, civil society groups and religious organizations.

The government says the bill is intended to address gaps in the management of foreign funds and assets when an organization’s FCRA registration is cancelled, surrendered, or expires. The Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2026, would create a Designated Authority to oversee the vesting, supervision, management, and disposal of foreign contributions and assets when an organization’s FCRA registration is cancelled, surrendered , or ceases. If a vested asset is a place of worship, the authority would be required to preserve its religious character. The FCRA would also reduce the maximum prison term for violating the law from five years to one year.

The changes could also make it difficult for organizations to leave the FCRA regime without surrendering assets created with foreign funds. Under the bill, an organization would have to keep renewing its FCRA certificate to retain those assets. FCRA rules also impose spending requirements on organizations seeking to maintain their certificates.

The bill may also create a distinction between assets created by organizations with FCRA registration and those created through the separate prior-permission route.

More significantly, neither the existing law nor the bill provides an appeal mechanism when the central government refuses to renew an FCRA certificate. They also do not expressly require the organization to be given an opportunity to be heard before renewal is denied. Under the proposed framework, such a denial could trigger the vesting of the organization’s foreign-funded assets in the Designated Authority.

The bill would also widen the circle of people who could face consequences for an organization’s FCRA violations. 

Its definition of “key functionary” extends beyond directors and office bearers to trustees, governing-body members, managing-committee members and others responsible for an organization’s affairs. Those functionaries could be held liable for offenses committed by the organization, unless they can show that they were unaware of the violation or had exercised due diligence to prevent it. The FCRA bill would also impose restrictions on dealing with foreign-funded assets during a suspension and leave several important operational details — including timelines and procedures for managing and returning assets — to rules that have yet to be prescribed.

Parliament on Aug 12 moved to refer the FCRA bill to a parliamentary committee for further scrutiny and wider consultations. 

Minister of State for Home Nityanand Rai moved the motion in the Lok Sabha, to refer the bill to a committee comprising 21 members of the lower house and 10 members of the Rajya Sabha, Parliament’s upper house. 

The Rajya Sabha subsequently approved the nomination of its 10 members to the committee. The panel is expected to submit its report by the last day of the first week of Parliament’s Winter Session.

The proposed changes could have significant implications for LGBTQ+ organizations that rely on the FCRA framework to receive foreign contributions. (The global LGBTQ+ and intersex rights movement since the Trump-Vance administration took office in 2025 has lost nearly $50 million in U.S. funding because of foreign aid cuts. One source with whom the Los Angeles Blade spoke described the funding loss as a “catastrophe” for the global movement.)

While the government does not appear to have published an easily accessible, consolidated list of LGBTQ+ organizations receiving such funding, FCRA registration records and organizations’ financial disclosures indicate that foreign contributions have supported LGBTQ+ rights, healthcare, and community services in India.

K.C. Venugopal, general secretary of the opposition Indian National Congress, told reporters his party and other opposition parties would strongly protest the legislation if it were introduced in Parliament. He said the bill was aimed at targeting minorities and NGOs and vowed that the opposition would oppose its passage.

Venugopal called the proposed legislation “unconstitutional and anti-people.” 

“If the Central Government thinks they can cook up and introduce the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Amendment Bill within these two or three days, they should keep that wish to themselves,” he told reporters in Alappuzha, Kerala, on Aug. 9.

“Three provisions worry LGBTQ+ organizations like ours most directly,” said Souvik Saha, founder of People for Change and Jamshedpur Queer Circle. “First, the 2026 bill would let a government-appointed ‘Designated Authority’ take control of an organization’s foreign-funded assets— bank balances, equipments, sometimes even property— the moment its FCRA registration is cancelled, surrendered, or simply not renewed, and this happens through an administrative process, without prior judicial adjudication. For a small community organization, that means losing everything we have built — case files, shelter infrastructure, helpline equipment — almost overnight, with no court hearing first.”

Saha told the Blade the revised FCRA Rules announced in June introduced a minimum spending threshold: organizations must spend at least $10,449 in foreign contributions over two financial years or risk cancellation and non-renewal of their registration.

“This specifically penalizes small and grassroots groups that deliberately keep their foreign funding modest — which describes most LGBTQ organizations in India, including ours,” said Saha. “We are not running core-scale budgets; we are running helplines, safe spaces, and district-level outreach on modest grants.”

Saha told the Blade that the ban on sub-granting, carried over from the 2020 amendment, means larger, well-established rights organizations cannot pass foreign funds to smaller, unregistered LGBTQ+ collectives that could not obtain FCRA registration themselves. He said rights groups have long described the restriction as a near “death knell” for hundreds of small nongovernmental organizations that work collaboratively with larger organizations, adding that LGBTQ+ groups outside major metropolitan areas depend heavily on such funding arrangements.

“Domestic funding for LGBTQ work in India is still thin, CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) money avoids us because we are seen as ‘controversial,’ and most Indian foundations would not touch gender-identity programming,” Saha said. “So foreign funding is not a convenience for organizations working with the transgender and LGBTQ community, it is often always funding.”

NationalRadioDay blew up on social media this year. Thursday’s annual event was celebrated on the airwaves across America as well as locally.

Those of us who have been on the air each have a unique story about how the radio bug “bit” us. Reading Facebook posts and comments from my friends who I share this vocation with has been a great trip down memory lane.

Palm Springs was a robust radio market where Eric Ornelas cut his teeth doing a mix show after school. Valerie Kattz, now with Animal Samaritans, showed dozens of photos from her days at various frequencies around the local radio dial – including 103.1 when it was “EZ”. Patrick Evans got his start in radio before the weather bug bit him. John Taylor started on the East Coast.

Chris Shebel, our program director, posted a fun “Flintstones” AI-generated image broadcasting “Live from CAVE 17”. It seems like that long ago since we met.

Chris and I first crossed paths in a college town with a couple of legendary radio stations: WSPT and WXYQ in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. In radio it was all about upward mobility — you likely started in your hometown, then graduated to larger markets until you (hopefully) hit the jackpot working in a top 10 market like Los Angeles or Chicago. Many times a job lasted only a year. U-Haul was your constant companion.

Chris had catapulted over many of his peers going from Stevens Point to Columbus, Ohio. But then, WLS in Chicago discovered him and Chris was on his way to the big time. His first day on the air, we took a portable AM radio outside our studios. It was winter and snow was falling as we tuned in WLS to hear Chris on the air for the first time. We were so proud, a little envious and hoping that his good fortune would rub off!

Chis came back to Stevens Point for gatherings and that’s where we got to know each other. Except, we didn’t know each other’s secret: We were both closeted gay men in an industry where being out meant losing your career. That’s where I’ll leave this story for today, but there’s much more to share about how Chris singlehandedly helped bring radio “out of the closet.”

Brad Fuhr, your K-Gay Desert Guide

Here’s what’s ahead in sunny Palm Springs!

Tramway Getaway

The Palm Springs Aerial Tramway is an unbeatable way to escape the valley’s intense heat this weekend, with refreshing mountain temperatures hovering around 70 degrees at the Mountain Station. Enjoy the world’s largest rotating tram car as it glides over the cliffs of Chino Canyon, delivering spectacular views on the ten‑minute ascent to 8,516 feet. Once at the top, visitors can explore restaurants, observation decks, a natural history museum, documentary theaters, a gift shop, and miles of hiking trails. It’s also an ideal time to visit before the Tramway’s annual preventative maintenance closure begins on Tuesday, September 8, expected to last about a month. August features First Responders Days, offering free admission and a special gift for qualified first responders, plus 25% off regular fares for up to four guests. More info

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Lulu Celebrates 15 Years

Lulu California Bistro marks a major milestone this August as it celebrates 15 years at the heart of downtown Palm Springs. Since opening on August 22, 2011, Lulu has become a community anchor — welcoming more than 4 million guests, supporting hundreds of local hospitality professionals, and shaping the city’s dining and social scene with its colorful, inclusive spirit. Guests can also enjoy a sweet treat during the “birthday” weekend: free cotton candy with any meal from August 21–23. Founded by Jerry and the late Barbara Keller, Lulu’s legacy is rooted in bold vision, philanthropy, and unwavering love for Palm Springs. More info

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Out On The Mountain 2026

Experience thrilling rides and spectacular drag performances at Out On The Mountain 2026 on Friday, August 21 from 6 pm–12 am at Six Flags Magic Mountain. This private, all-ages party brings together over 5,000 members of the LGBTQ+ community and allies. Enjoy performances by April Carrión and Jessica Wild while supporting Southern California LGBTQ organizations. The park is closed to the general public during event hours, and regular season passes are not accepted. Tickets must be purchased online in advance, with VIP options available. More info

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Silent Disco – Battle of the DJs

Dance to your own beat at the Silent Disco – Battle of the DJs on Friday, August 21 at 9 pm at The Palm Springs Surf Club. This exciting night of dancing allows you to switch between DJ Lady Pink and a Surprise DJ with the flip of a switch on your wireless headphones. Grab your headphones, hit the dance floor, and enjoy a unique evening of music under the stars. More info

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The Desert Modernist: An Art Showcase

Celebrate local artistic talent at The Desert Modernist: An Art Showcase on Friday, August 21 from 4–7 pm at Senior Helpers. This generational exhibition brings together Coachella Valley artists, blending iconic Mid-Century Modern aesthetics with bold contemporary acrylics and sweeping desert landscapes. You can enjoy stunning artwork, light refreshments, and community spirit while supporting local guest artists such as Ray Clearwater, A Todd Jones, Ron Slack, and Juan Jose Espinosa. The exhibition is completely free and open to all. More info

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Pet Star 2027 Photo Contest

Furry, feathered, and scaly companions across the Coachella Valley can shine in the spotlight during the annual Pet Star 2027 Photo Contest running now through September 30. This fundraiser by Greater Palm Springs Animal Allies invites pet owners to submit photos for a $25 fee in five categories to support Palm Springs Animal Shelter, Desert Wildlife Center, and Desert Community Animal Center. Entrants can submit multiple pets and rally votes for $1 each, with a five-vote minimum. The top vote-getter becomes the 2027 Pet Star Champion on the calendar cover, while other top-ranking pets are featured inside. Supporters can preorder calendars or reserve special dates for $20. More info

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The Wizard of Oz

Experience the classic story The Wizard of Oz at Palm Springs Plaza Theatre with a special screening on Friday, August 22 at 7 pm. The Friday screening features an exclusive introduction and audience Q&A with special guest Vanessa O’Neil, granddaughter of Judy Garland and daughter of Lorna Luft and Jake Hooker. More info

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Queer Eyes Cinema Club

The Queer Eyes Cinema Club screens its August pick, Diamantino (2018), on Saturday, August 22 from 4–6:30 pm at Festival Theaters. Hosted by The LGBTQ Community Center of the Desert, this monthly meetup brings LGBTQ+ films to the big screen, offering intersectional stories across race, ethnicity, and culture. After the movie, attendees can hang back for an open discussion and share reflections. The series is led by film analyst and scholar Esther Schwartz. More info

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Pat Benatar & Neil Giraldo

The legendary rock duo Pat Benatar & Neil Giraldo will bring their iconic sound to the stage of The Show at Agua Caliente Casino Resort Spa on Saturday, August 22 at 8 pm. This Rock & Roll Hall of Fame partnership has shaped the landscape of music for decades, producing timeless hits such as “Love Is A Battlefield” and “Heartbreaker.” With four consecutive Grammy Awards and over 36 million records sold worldwide, their staggering vocals and trailblazing guitar artistry continue to captivate audiences. More info

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Coachella Valley Classical Voices

Enjoy an afternoon of inspiring opera and Broadway selections as the Coachella Valley Classical Voices group performs on Sunday, August 23 from 3–4:30 pm at Palm Springs Plaza Theatre. Under the artistic direction of Doug Nagel, this talented lineup of local singers will present beautiful musical selections by renowned composers like Puccini, Verdi, Sondheim, and Schwartz. It is a fantastic opportunity to experience local classical music and vocal talent live on stage. More info

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Nominations Round Open: Best of Coachella Valley

CV Independent’s Best of Coachella Valley 2026–2027 nomination round is officially open, and now’s the moment to spotlight the local voices, stations, and personalities you love most. This early round determines who advances to the final ballot, so every nomination truly counts. Our contenders this year include KGAY 103.1, Sunny 106.5, and MeTV FM 92.1 for Best Radio Station; John Taylor, E.J. Tyler, Patrick Evans, and Chris Shebel for Best Local Radio Personality; and our powerhouse DJ trio — DJ Galaxy, DJ Eric Ornelas, and MODGIRL — for Best Local DJ. Nominations are open through Friday, August 28, so cast your picks and lift your favorites into the spotlight! Nominate Today

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• A Queer Arcana: Art, Magic, and Spirit • Palm Springs Art Museum hosts an intergenerational group of artists exploring how magic, spirituality, and esoteric knowledge shaped queer culture, open Thursday–Sunday and the show runs through October 18.
• George Perez Comedy Show! • Comedian George Perez will deliver a night of real stories, big laughs, and nonstop energy at Agua Caliente Casino Palm Springs on Friday at 7 pm.
• Victor Vasquez Comedy Show • Stand-up favorite Victor Vasquez will deliver nonstop laughs with his quick wit and sharp storytelling at Spotlight 29 Casino on Friday from 8–9:30 pm.
• Lee Hyun Woo • Audiences will experience a spectacular performance as South Korean singer Lee Hyun Woo takes the stage at The Show at Agua Caliente Casino Resort Spa on Friday from 8–11 pm.
• Welcoming Yoga • Participants of all experience levels will experience a safe, slow basic practice led by facilitator Marci Stonehedge at The LGBTQ Community Center of the Desert on Saturday from 4–5:15 pm.
• Night Swim • Partygoers will experience the ultimate after-hours pool party featuring live DJs, cocktails at the Island Bar, and access to the iconic Island Pool and Lazy River under the lights at The Palm Springs Surf Club on Saturday from 6–10 pm.
• Dance Ranch / Country Dance Saturdays • Dancers of all levels are welcome to enjoy country western dancing, including two-step, waltz, and line dances. This week features a “Choosin Texas” line dance lesson with Andrew Jimenez. Located at Step by Step Dance Studio on Saturday from 7–9:30 pm.
• A Tribute to Lynyrd Skynyrd • Southern rock fans will experience the raw energy and triple-guitar attack of classics like “Sweet Home Alabama” and “Free Bird” by tribute band Skynyrd & Frynds at Agua Caliente Casino Cathedral City on Saturday from 8–11 pm.
• The Rack Pack: Weekly Men’s (Chinese) Mahjong Meet-Up • Men of all experience levels enjoy a relaxed afternoon of friendly Chinese Mahjong, good company, and great vibes with The Rack Pack. This weekly group meets at ACE Hotel & Swim Club on Sunday from 4–6 pm.

Log Cabin Republicans, an organization that formerly represented LGBTQ+ conservatives, has removed advocating for transgender and queer rights from its “renewed” national advocacy focus.

In an opinion piece written by Log Cabin Republicans President Ross Hemminger for the conservative media outlet Town Hall, he announced that trans rights would no longer be part of what the organization advocates for through conservative leadership and candidates.

In his piece, Hemminger wrote that after “significant discussion” with members and Log Cabin Republicans’ board of directors, the organization’s leadership voted to “refine Log Cabin Republicans’ national advocacy focus to concentrate specifically on issues of sexual orientation and conservative values,” a focus that does not include trans people.

“We have fought for the right to legally marry who we love, serve our country and our communities openly and proudly, and to enjoy the same inalienable rights afforded to all law-abiding Americans — and we succeeded,” Hemminger wrote. “However, the new era of gender identity politics is not the movement we supported and fought for. Gay men and women are losing public support across the country, and support for gay marriage and other once-widely accepted rights is eroding. Why? Because many voters today weren’t alive or cognizant of the politics of gay marriage winding its way through the courts and gaining ground in public opinion. Their view of the gay community is based on today’s radical transgender activists with their unnecessary and discomfiting focus on America’s youth.”

Hemminger then went on to argue that trans advocacy has shifted to focusing primarily on minors — a characterization that does not reflect the breadth of issues trans advocates address.

“They push schools to teach radical gender ideology; they want biological men in women’s sports regardless of the consequences; perhaps most offensively, they support gender reassignment treatments for minors, often without the knowledge or consent of the parents, knowing full well these treatments are mostly irreversible,” he wrote.

Hemminger and many right-wing political leaders have continued to assert this false reality as fact.

A Harvard-affiliated study found approximately 2.1 gender-affirming surgeries occur per 100,000 trans and gender-diverse minors diagnosed with gender dysphoria, underscoring how uncommon these procedures are among minors. In addition to the option of surgery for those who think it’s right for them, there is an array of other medically sound options to treat gender dysphoria, which according to KFF, an independent source for health policy research and polling, includes “medical, surgical, mental health, and non-medical services for transgender and nonbinary people.”

Additionally trans advocacy is not as narrow as Hemminger makes it seem in his opinion piece.

There are a slew of issues the trans community faces — and fights for — on a daily basis that have nothing to do with healthcare. Those include obtaining government documents that accurately reflect one’s gender identity, multiple elements of family law that include the right to marry and adopt children as straight couples can, protections from violence, hate crime protections, the right to serve in the military, access to bathrooms corresponding with their gender, and the right to education.

Despite the overwhelming number of issues trans people — regardless of political affiliation — have to struggle with as a result of systemic gaps in protections that are supposed to be afforded to everyone under the law, they remain vulnerable to unequal treatment.

Despite this shift, Log Cabin Republicans has committed to standing with the Republican Party rather than LGBTQ+ people as a whole. The organization was initially founded as a loosely connected network of local California social clubs made up of LGBTQ+ conservatives in the late 1970s before eventually emerging as a national political organization in the early 1990s under its founding executive director, Rich Tafel.

As the organization continued to gain momentum, it endorsed a handful of Republicans who voted against the Respect for Marriage Act, the 2022 law that federally recognized marriage equality for same-sex couples.

The Los Angeles Blade reached out to Log Cabin Republicans for comment but did not hear back by the time of publication.

Uncloseted Media published this article on Aug. 21.

By SPENCER MACNAUGHTON and HOPE PISONI | Since President Donald Trump regained office in January 2025, he and his administration have waged an all-out war against the LGBTQ+ community.

This has led queer Americans to move to other countries at unprecedented rates — Rainbow Railroad, a Canadian nonprofit that supports LGBTQ+ asylum seekers, reported receiving a huge increase in inquiries from the U.S. last year.

The same pattern is playing out within the government. And it’s leading to a brain drain of competent queer employees and allies who are either resigning or being fired, often because of their LGBTQ+ identity or their belief that queer people deserve basic human rights.

Here are six examples of federal workers who had a messy exit from Trump 2.0:

Demetre Daskalakis

1. WHAT HE DID: Dr. Daskalakis is one of the foremost LGBTQ+ health professionals in the U.S. Under Trump’s first term, he was appointed director of the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Under Biden, he also served as the deputy response coordinator for mpox at the White House.
2. WHAT HAPPENED: While he continued a lot of this work under Trump 2.0, he didn’t last long. In August 2025, he resigned from the CDC, writing in his resignation letter that he was “unable to serve in an environment that treats CDC as a tool to generate policies and materials that do not reflect scientific reality and are designed to hurt rather than to improve the public’s health.”
3. BOTTOM LINE: I recently interviewed Daskalakis, where he told me that leadership from RFK Jr.’s Health and Human Services Department justified HIV cuts by saying the virus is “just too woke.”

Julia Curlee

1. WHAT SHE DID: Julia Curlee worked in intelligence for nearly two decades between the CIA and the National Security Council. Earlier this week, she wrote an article in The Atlantic explaining how she had served as Mike Pence’s daily briefer and the NSC’s director for intelligence programs. During Trump 1.0, she briefed the president on Air Force One.
2. WHAT HAPPENED: Curlee told CNN this week that in Trump’s second term, her treatment by the federal government transformed. She was no longer allowed to use the women’s bathroom on federal property and had to leave her workplace to relieve herself. Her passport was also reissued to read “male,” which led to complications when traveling abroad. In March 2025, less than 70 days into Trump’s second term, Curlee says she received a call while at a rib joint in Virginia with her family informing her that her White House tour was over and that they couldn’t tell her why. She continued to work for the CIA for some months, but she later resigned.
3. BOTTOM LINE: Curlee wrote that moments after she learned she was fired from the White House, she saw a post from right-wing political activist Laura Loomer that read “A transgender, Biden holdover who hates President Trump is still working in the NSC intel office. I’m told there are several NSC staffers who have complained that this trans Biden holdover hasn’t been fired yet, but nothing is being done about it.”

Marc Seawright

1. WHAT HE DID: Marc Seawright worked for more than eight years at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Most recently, he served as the EEOC’s director of information governance and strategy, where he oversaw tech policy to help combat workplace harassment and discrimination.
2. WHAT HAPPENED: During Trump 2.0, Seawright was ordered to develop technology that would erase any mention of LGBTQ identities from EEOC outreach materials. “[My expertise] was being leveraged to perpetuate discrimination against people like me,” he told the Associated Press. In that article, Seawright and other transgender and gender nonconforming federal employees described their “fear, grief, frustration, and distress working for the federal government at a time when it rejects them — often with no clear path for recourse or support.”
3. BOTTOM LINE: Seawright quit in June, citing a hostile work environment. “It became overwhelming. It felt insurmountable,” he told the AP. He has now hired lawyers at Katz Banks Kumin and has filed a discrimination complaint.

David Maltinsky

1. WHAT HE DID: Until 2025, Maltinsky worked for more than 16 years at the FBI as an intelligence specialist. In 2025, he was training to become a special agent, but three weeks ahead of graduation, he was fired.
2. WHAT HAPPENED: On Oct. 1, he was delivered a letter from FBI Director Kash Patel informing him that he was being fired for an “inappropriate display of political signage.” The signage in question, according to Maltinsky, was a Pride flag displayed in his work station at a previous post in Los Angeles. The flag had been given to him by the FBI’s LA Field Office, and Maltinsky says he had been told by multiple supervisors that displaying it would not be a violation.
3. BOTTOM LINE: Maltinsky is currently suing the FBI and the Department of Justice, arguing that his firing constituted unlawful discrimination.

Mary Brinkmeyer

1. WHAT SHE DID: Brinkmeyer had been working as a psychologist for the Department of Veterans Affairs since 2008. She held multiple leadership roles, including the LGBTQ+ veteran care coordinator at the Hampton VA Medical Center. She established the first military support group for trans servicemembers and was awarded Navy Psychology Civilian Psychologist of the Year in 2016.
2. WHAT HAPPENED: Following an early Trump executive order directing the federal government to purge any practices promoting “gender ideology,” Brinkmeyer says staff at her workplace were told to remove all LGBTQ+-affirming materials from both public and private areas, as well as to identify “anything in medical records, training materials, or patient resources that could be considered ‘gender ideology.’” When she refused to comply and confronted her supervisor, she says her concerns were dismissed.
3. BOTTOM LINE: Brinkmeyer resigned in February 2025, stating that she “didn’t want to be complicit in something that I knew was wrong.”

Amy Paris

1. WHAT SHE DID: Paris was the second-highest ranking trans woman in the federal government, serving as a deputy digital services lead in the HHS Department, where she oversaw the safety of organ donations. Prior to that, she worked in a number of tech-related roles across the federal government since the Bush administration. She helped create cross-agency spending trackers, streamlined unemployment insurance during the pandemic and implemented trans-inclusive policies like gender-neutral passports.
2. WHAT HAPPENED: Paris was fired as part of a string of mass layoffs across the federal government in February 2025. While the HHS did not publicly comment on why she was fired, Paris says she was told it was because of her performance, despite the fact that she got a 4.75 out of five on her last performance review and was praised for her work by multiple Biden administration officials.
3. BOTTOM LINE: Paris told the 19th she suspected her firing was politically motivated, saying the Trump administration is “trying to sow discord and disrupt confidence in the workings of the federal government.”

Tuesday’s primary races in Florida, Alaska, California, and Wyoming saw a mix of establishment versus insurgent on the Democratic side and right versus far right among Republicans, suggesting that the power of lame duck Donald Trump’s endorsement is apparently waning.

In Republican primaries in Wyoming and two congressional districts in Florida, only 28% of the nearly 300,000 voters followed Trump’s orders, “marking a particularly brutal night for Trump-endorsed candidates,” CNN reported.

That brings to 10 the number of Trump-backed candidate losses for statewide office or Congress this primary season, “equal to the number who lost in 2018, 2020 and 2024 primaries combined, according to a CNN analysis using Trump endorsements compiled by Ballotpedia.”

Ironically, Tuesday night also saw development in a primary of deep interest: Trump-appointed Sen. Darline Graham, sister of the late rumored-to-be-closeted Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, face-planted in a debate against primary runoff opponent, Rep. Ralph Northam, before next Tuesday, Aug. 25’s special runoff election in South Carolina.

Conservative debate moderator Greta Van Susteren asked the candidates about Taiwan, a democratic island of 23 million people that the Chinese Communist Party intends to “unify” with China. “Are Taiwan and the South China Sea national security issues for the United States? If so, why?”

“I’m not … that informed on national security, so — but I do support the military,” Graham said. “National security is not my thing, not my area of expertise, but I do support the military.”

Northam said that “Taiwan’s a definite ally,” but, CNN reported, he applauded Trump for “enabling Taiwan to defend itself against China.”

Trump’s response to Tuesday night’s primaries was to take the press corps on an impromptu tour of the new White House driveway, paved with California-mined white granite described as a “very special stone” that leads effortlessly to the now almost $900 million ballroom – which he describes as “the military complex” – where construction continues despite a court order to stop. The tour also included the newly flat helipad on the South Lawn.

Meanwhile, pundits are filling up cable and internet airtime asking, “Who, exactly, is Natalie Harp to Donald Trump?” The New York Times featured an extensive consideration of Trump’s 35-year-old blonde constant companion dubbed his “human printer.”

But for those focused on gas prices, affordability, the war in Iran, and polls showing Trump’s historic disapproval ratings and the disaffection of MAGA voters, dissecting political trends in the face of fast-approaching midterms is like analyzing code showing a growing tsunami on a funky old laptop.

LGBTQ+ Floridians hoped voters would send a Black gay man to the U.S. House. Three were on the ballot – Shevrin Jones, Kendrick Meek Jr., and Elijah Manley – but the congressional hopefuls were each defeated.

Jones, a Florida state senator, lost narrowly to Oliver Gilbert III, a Miami-Dade County commissioner, in the race for the Democratic nomination in the 24^th Congressional District. Rep. Frederica Wilson, retiring after eight terms, endorsed Gilbert as her successor. Jones secured 32 percent of the vote to Gilbert’s 34 percent in a field of seven candidates that included Meek, son and grandson of former U.S. representatives, who finished with 17 percent.

Te Mayonna Brown, who touts “traditional values” on her campaign website, was unopposed for the Republican nomination. But since the South Florida district is one of the few still safely Democratic after Republican-led redistricting, Gilbert is expected to win in November.

Jones congratulated Gilbert and pledged support. “Looking ahead to November, I’m committed to doing everything I can to help elect Democrats up and down the ticket. The stakes are too high to sit on the sidelines, and I’ll be out there campaigning and organizing for our candidates because our shared values are worth fighting for, in this race and every one that follows,” he said in a statement.

Jones was hit with a homophobic attack during the campaign. A text message, falsely claiming to be from the LGBTQ+ rights group Equality Florida, falsely claimed that Jones is HIV-positive and was turned away from donating blood, despite the lifting of the national ban on blood donations by gay and bisexual men three years ago.

In the Democratic primary for Florida’s 20^th Congressional District, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a longtime congresswoman and LGBTQ+ ally, defeated Manley and three others. Wasserman Schultz currently lives in and represents the 25th District. But Republican redistricting put her in the 22nd District, which is Republican-leaning. So Wasserman Schultz, who is white, decided to run in the heavily Democratic, majority-Black 20th District in South Florida, which has been represented by a Black Democrat for more than three decades.

Though Wasserman Schultz had allies, Politico reported that “the Congressional Black Caucus warned that as many as 19 of its members could be out of a job come November given efforts across the South to weaken Black voting power through redistricting, in part after the Supreme Court dismantled key provisions of the Voting Rights Act.” Wasserman Schultz will face Brent Andersen, a conservative businessman, who won Tuesday’s Republican primary in the district.

After his loss, the inspirational Manley posted on X, “We came up short in our race for Congress, but I’ve never been more fired up for the future. This campaign and this district have been through so much change and turmoil.” He congratulated Wasserman Schultz on her win, adding, “She has the important task of trying to unite a community that is divided.”

In another key Florida race, intensely Trumpian anti-LGBTQ+ U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds won the Republican nomination for governor to succeed the term-out, notoriously anti-LGBTQ+ Gov. Ron DeSantis. Donalds will be up against David Jolly, a former conservative Florida Republican congressman who became an independent, then a Democrat. His campaign website praises diversity, calling for “a Florida for everyone,” which “means ensuring that every person, regardless of where they were born, the color of their skin, who they love, or who they worship, has the chance to live with dignity and feel like they are part of the future of this state.”

Instead of addressing affordability issues in the expensive state, Donalds seems to be centering his campaign on attacking Jolly over his support for trans youth, including an ad that The Poynter Institute’s PolitiFact calls “deceptively edited.”

Instead of avoiding the attack while speaking in The Villages, a renowned Trump-supporting retirement community, Jolly addressed the anti-trans ad directly. He noted that Donalds’ $25 million ad “doesn’t once mention Trump’s economy, doesn’t once mention the cost of housing or healthcare, or the cost of food or gas.”

“You know what he spends it on? To attack the LGBTQ+ community,” Jolly said. “It is shameful. What kind of leader divides people?”

Donalds calls Jolly “a Trojan Horse for the Democrat Socialists of America.” Jolly retorts that he’s “running for governor because life is too expensive. Floridians are worried about the cost of housing, healthcare, food, and gas — not the color of their sidewalks or the governor’s opinion on their personal life.”

In a special primary for the U.S. Senate from Florida, Ashley Moody, who was appointed by DeSantis when Marco Rubio became Secretary of State, easily won the Republican nomination. She’s another Trump ally.

On the Democratic side, democratic socialist Angie Nixon, a Florida state lawmaker, scored a shocking win over Alex Vindman, a military veteran and national security expert who was a key witness in Trump’s first impeachment trial.

“It’s hard to overstate how shocking Nixon’s victory was,” Punchbowl News AM reported Aug. 19. “Vindman garnered national attention — and an army of small-dollar donors — after testifying in the Trump impeachment proceedings. He spent $9 million total by the end of July. Nixon spent less than $900,000.”

In Wyoming, State Sen. Eric Barlow, described by The New York Times as “a mainstream conservative,” won the Republican nomination for governor over two farther-right opponents, Megan Degenfelder (endorsed by Trump) and Brent Bien. Barlow had voted for some anti-transgender bills, but an attack ad accused him of not being anti-trans enough. Kenneth Casner was unopposed for the Democratic nomination. This is his third try, but Wyoming is solidly Republican and conservative, even more so than when it was the site of the hate-motivated murder of gay man Matthew Shepard, beaten and hung on a prairie fence in 1998 , and despite the surprising pro-LGBTQ+ conversion of conservative Rep. Liz Cheney in 2021. There are Republican supermajorities in both houses of the legislature, and the number of Democratic lawmakers has been diminishing since the 1990s.

Trump-endorsed Harriet Hageman easily won the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate to succeed fellow GOPer Cynthia Lummis, who’s retiring. James Byrd II, a former state representative, won the Democratic nomination, but he’s a long shot for the general. He’s the son of Wyoming’s first Black woman legislator, Liz Byrd, and Cheyenne’s first Black police chief, James Byrd. (The family is not related to Texas murder victim James Byrd Jr., for whom the federal hate-crimes law is named, along with Matthew Shepard.)

For the state’s one U.S. House seat, Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray won the Republican primary and will face Democrat Lisa Kinney, a former state senator, in November. Another Republican victory is expected.

But things may be changing in another deep-red state, Alaska. It has a unique primary system in which the top four vote recipients advance to the general election, regardless of party, and the general election is decided by ranked-choice voting—voters rank candidates in order of preference.

For U.S. senator from Alaska, Republican incumbent Dan S. Sullivan and Democrat Mary Peltola, a former congresswoman, have clinched top spots in the November election. With 80% of the vote counted as of Aug. 19, Sullivan has 56,717 votes (42.7%) to Peltola’s 63,810 votes (48.1%).

Sullivan has a poor record on LGBTQ+ rights, while Peltola is an ally. The other two spots remain to be decided. One of the candidates, Republican Dan J. Sullivan, has been accused of being a decoy to draw votes away from the incumbent. For the state’s sole U.S. House seat, incumbent Republican Nick Begich and independent Bill Hill have clinched slots in the general election, with the others, again, not yet decided. Democrat Matt Schultz suspended his campaign for the seat and endorsed Hill, but Schultz was still on the ballot.

For governor, two Democrats, former state legislators Tom Begich and Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, clinched spots in the top four Tuesday; the other slots were yet to be called late in the evening. The current governor, Republican Mike Dunleavy, couldn’t run again due to term limits.

Finally, in California, there was a surprisingly close runoff to decide who will serve the remainder of disgraced Democrat Eric Swalwell’s term in the 14^th Congressional District. Swalwell resigned the Bay Area seat in April after he was accused of sexual assault. With all precincts partially reporting late Wednesday, the race remained too close to call between two Democrats – Aisha Wahab, California’s progressive first Muslim woman state senator, who has 33,399 votes (51.0%), and moderate BART board president Melissa Hernandez, who has 32,043 votes (49.0%).

As with other close progressive versus moderate Democratic primary races, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) super PAC caused controversy. In this race, Hernandez has said neither AIPAC nor any other donor drives her agenda.

Politico’s California Playbook PM reported Aug. 19, however, that Wahab believes that the race tightened after AIPAC and other groups targeted her due to “prejudice and racism” after she refused requests from veteran lawmakers “to go along with a plan from leaders of California’s Democratic House delegation to elect a temporary caretaker” to quickly fill the seat in the divided Congress. Wahab refused requests from veteran lawmakers, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic Caucus Chair Peter Aguilar.

That pissed off Rep. Zoe Lofgren, the longtime chair of California’s delegation, who on Monday “made her animus explicit, releasing a video accusing Wahab of saying, ‘What’s in it for me?’ in response to the caretaker plan,” Politico reported.

“Wahab, in a statement attributed the race’s thin margins to that onslaught, saying, ‘Nearly $10 million in outside money and relentless smears made this race close,’” Politico reported. “While Wahab rarely talks about Israel or the war in Gaza, AIPAC’s involvement has turned the race into yet another national proxy fight between AIPAC and progressive forces supporting Wahab, including Our Revolution and the Working Families Party.”

No matter which Democrat wins the runoff, they will face each other again in November to compete for a full term, as both advanced from the top-two California primary.

By Trudy Ring and Karen Ocamb

This is a cross-post from Karen’s LGBTQ+ Freedom Fighters Substack.

New York City lawmakers are pushing to repeal a decades-old prohibition on adult bathhouses, arguing the regulation was created during the height of the AIDS crisis and no longer reflects modern science or public health practices.

Erik Bottcher, the openly gay New York state senator who represents the 47th District that includes the Upper West Side, Chelsea, Hell’s Kitchen and portions of the West Village in Manhattan, is leading the charge to remove the decades-old ban. (Openly gay state Assemblymember Tony Simone has sponsored the repeal bill in the New York State Assembly.) Bottcher sat down with the Los Angeles Blade to discuss why he is advocating for more bathhouses in New York City.

“This is simply about ensuring that our public health policy is in line with today’s science,” he told the Blade. “The prohibition on adult bathhouses was put into place in 1985 at the height of the the AIDS epidemic, when there was very little information, very little treatment options, few treatment options, and great deal of fear. Science has changed. Treatment has changed, and the laws need to change too.”

The proposed legislation would direct the New York State Department of Health to repeal the 1985 regulation and establish a new framework for regulating bathhouses.

“Municipalities around the country and all around the world allow for adult bathhouses. There’s no reason why New York City alone needs to maintain this outdated prohibition. Our bill orders the New York State Department of Health to strike the 1985 regulation and replace it with a regulated public health framework that’s grounded in science.”

Under the proposal, bathhouses would operate as licensed and regulated facilities subject to health and safety standards. Backers of the proposal say that framework could also give public health officials greater access to people who may otherwise be difficult to reach through traditional health care settings.

“What the Department of Health would do is work with public health experts and advocates to develop a regulatory framework that allows licensed regulated facilities to operate under clear health and safety standards — and under this — it would allow public health agencies to have greater opportunities to provide STI and HIV prevention resources, connect people to testing and treatment, conduct instructions, and address legitimate health concerns.”

Supporters of the repeal also argue banning bathhouses does not eliminate the sexual activity that takes place in them or elsewhere. Instead, they say, it pushes those activities into the shadows, where public health officials have fewer opportunities to provide life-saving services that include STI and HIV testing.

“This is also about a safer alternative than pushing activity into unregulated settings where there’s little opportunity for public health engagement because these activities are happening, but they’re happening in the shadows,” Bottcher continued. “We know that the best public health policy is to establish clear public safe public health guidelines that allow for public health intervention.”

Demetre Daskalakis, a physician and longtime HIV prevention advocate who has worked to create sexual healthcare opportunities in bathhouses, also worked with Bottcher on the proposal. 

Daskalakis was a high level Centers for Disease Control and Prevention employee until 2025, when he left federal health landscape after the Trump-Vance administration ousted then-CDC Director Susan Monarez. There he worked as director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases and was director of the Division of HIV Prevention at the National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention.

Daskalakis explained his experience has shown him the potential for these spaces to become points of contact for people who do not regularly access traditional health care.

“I’ve seen what happens when you push sex into the underground,” he said. “From my perspective, this is a great opportunity to be able to reach people who really will not come to normal clinical care and won’t go to normal routine places for testing or screening.”

“As a public health person, I look at it as a great opportunity,” added Daskalakis. “If there’s like regulation of those venues, and if there’s like a prevention plan that sort of sprouts in those places with really solid public health and clinical partners, I think it’s a great opportunity for public health good.”

Daskalakis said a regulated bathhouse could offer more than HIV and STI testing, potentially creating spaces where people could access prevention medications and other health services.

“The bottom line is if there is a good relationship between the government and the venues, we can develop spaces in the venues to actually deliver services,” he said. “It’s not just infectious disease services — I mean yes, you can do HIV testing, STI testing. You can provide doxypep and pre-exposure prophylaxis for people who are HIV negative and at risk for HIV.

“As an example, at Callen-Lorde Community Health Center (in New York City), where I’m the chief medical officer, we developed a prevention pack in a very low threshold way. We gave people enough doxypep and prep to get through Pride. You can also have Narcan and other things to reduce the risk of overdose.”

Daskalakis said that approach reflects what public health should be striving for: meeting the community where they are.

“If you have this sort of relationship with the government that’s not antagonistic, and the government, as New York is one to do, provides some regulatory oversight to these venues, I think what you’re going to have is a place that supports LGBTQ culture — which also which does include sexuality, and also creates a platform to be able to do like very solid prevention work.”

The public health landscape surrounding HIV has changed dramatically since the bathhouse regulation was adopted, Daskalakis said, pointing to advances in treatment and prevention.

“The bottom line is that HIV treatment and prevention have really converged. If you are someone living with HIV and you’re on HIV medicines and your viral load is undetectable, you don’t transmit HIV. That’s called undetectable is equal to untransmittable, or U = U. People who are on prep also have very low risk of acquiring HIV, and so you know the world is very different,” he said.

“Back in the 80s, when there was no way to impact transmission of HIV because we didn’t have effective ways to prevent it — or didn’t know very much about it at that point. It’s a very different world where we know a lot about HIV and have a lot of tools to be able to prevent transmission. Same with STIs,” added Daskalakis. “If you create a holistic strategy for prevention that is sex positive and aligned to these venues, you’re going to prevent HIV and STIs. Period.”

For supporters of the legislation, that public health argument is central to the effort to repeal the ban. Bottcher also sees the proposal as a way to restore LGBTQ+ community spaces at a time when many queer venues have disappeared and social interaction increasingly takes place online.

“In this era of social isolation created by social media and streaming services, people are desperate for third spaces,” Bottcher said. “Places for people to come together in person, to be together in person. That’s what this would help provide.”

Daskalakis echoed Bottcher’s point that bathhouses could transform from underground, tabooed spaces into venues that combine sexual health services with broader LGBTQ+ culture.

“When you make them illegal, they become seedy and dark. When you make them something that is allowed, they actually then become sites that may have sex on premises but also support other sorts of cultural things, and in a universe where people are trying to make LGBT folks seem invisible, creating a safe space for them is exactly what we need right now.”

That community-space argument is also tied to health disparities, Bottcher said, arguing that greater access to health education and prevention services could help people who are less likely to seek care through traditional medical settings.

“Creating opportunities for in-person public health education, prevention, treatment that will help improve health outcomes when you push people into less safe settings without any opportunities for education, prevention tools, or treatment. That’s when we see these disparities, these health disparities grow. So it’s very important that we be laser focused on opportunities to address these disparities and reduce them.”

He continued, explaining the proposed change is ultimately about updating public health policy as medical science evolves, just as other practices are updated when new information comes out.

“This is a matter of an outdated public health regulation and the government has a responsibility to continually revisit its public health regulation and ensure that they’re in line with modern day science,” Bottcher said. “Science and healthcare are continually evolving, and the HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment landscape has changed tremendously in the last few years. Our public health regulations need to keep pace with science.”

For LGBTQ+ New Yorkers who lived through the AIDS crisis, however, changing the policy could carry a different meaning.

Bottcher says the experiences of those who lived through the epidemic — one that killed nearly 300,000 gay men since the 1980s — should inform how any new system is implemented, rather than being dismissed.

“These are in order to help prevent the spread of HIV and AIDS and other STIs,” Bottcher said. “We have to bring people engaging in these activities out of the shadows and into safe settings that provide the opportunity for public health entities to engage with education, treatment, prevention — that’s what this would do.”

Daskalakis said those concerns should be approached through what he described as trauma-informed care.

“My response is that of trauma-informed care,” Daskalakis said. “We have totally been through it, but we need to sort of move past the trauma and realize that the science has changed. I’s not it’s not the ’80s anymore, but we definitely need to look at those folks who have gone through the experience (of the HIV/AIDS crisis) to make sure that what we’re building, from a public health perspective, are effective programs.”

“There’s a great opportunity to learn from folks with experience rather than to alienate them,” he added.

Bottcher also pointed out this policy revision and effort to bring regulations in line with modern science is not only happening in New York. Multiple other cities across the U.S. have moved away from bathhouse prohibitions.

“Minneapolis just passed their ordinance in June,” he said. “San Francisco, despite the fact that they repealed their prohibition some years ago, they are still working to change the policy … However, around the country, even in red states, they have bathhouses … and they haven’t presented a detriment to public health in any way.”

The proposed change could also revive a part of New York’s LGBTQ+ cultural history, Bottcher said.

“Bathhouses were a big part of gay culture for decades. We all know the legendary stories of Bette Midler and Barry Manilow performing at the Continental Baths. I envision a resurgence of bathhouse culture that includes things like live music, arts, and entertainment. So it’s exciting to think about.”

And if that resurgence happens, Bottcher already has a dream performer in mind to be the first to take the stage.

“Oh, that’s such a good question … Cher.”

Daskalakis picked a similarly essential female singer of gay culture that he’d like to see in the bathhouses of today.

“I feel like my list could be so long, but I think that would be a great place for Madonna.”

The debate over New York’s bathhouse regulation ultimately reflects a broader question about how public health policy should respond as science, medicine, and LGBTQ+ communities change.

For Bottcher, regulation, rather than prohibition, would give health officials more opportunities to provide prevention and treatment while allowing LGBTQ+ people to gather openly.

For Daskalakis, the central lesson from his extensive healthcare work in bathhouses is that pushing sexual activity underground will make public health outreach more difficult — the opposite of what the government and healthcare providers should be doing.

“The opportunity to create safe spaces means that we’ll have more opportunities to reach people, not just for public health, but for so many other things … The strategy of banning things that are natural really doesn’t tend to help you very much. It ends up creating misalignment between the community and policymakers.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Monday used an anti-transgender slur while campaigning for U.S. Rep. Zach Nunn (R-Iowa), drawing attention to the Trump-Vance administration’s ongoing efforts to restrict trans people from serving in the military.

“At the Department of War, we do training, not t***nies,” Hegseth said, according to the Iowa Capital Dispatch, which first reported the remarks.

Hegseth made the comment at JR’s SouthPork Ranch at the Iowa State Fair, where he joined Nunn for a rally. The remark came as Hegseth discussed his priorities for the military and argued that the department’s focus should be on military readiness rather than issues of race or gender.

In the same speech, Hegseth claimed that the military operates without regard to race or gender.

“Training, lethality, accountability, discipline, readiness — the bedrock of what it means to be an American warrior — is the only focus of our department,” Hegseth said. “Colorblind, gender-neutral, merit-based. That’s it.”

Hegseth’s remarks come as the Trump-Vance administration continues its efforts to restrict trans people from serving in the military.

Since President Donald Trump returned to the White House, his administration has moved to remove trans service members from the military while also taking steps to prevent trans people from joining.

Trump signed “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness” in January 2025, which attempts to bars trans individuals from serving or enlisting in the U.S. military, citing “military readiness” as the reason, despite there being no factual basis for the ban. The policy has been challenged by LGBTQ+ advocates and military service members, who argue there is no evidence that trans service members undermine military readiness.

Earlier this year, Hegseth made headlines again over the administration’s contradictory approach to hormone therapy, as the military moved to restrict gender-affirming hormone treatment for trans service members while encouraging cisgender military members to receive hormone therapy for “low T,” or testosterone.

The administration’s policy has faced a series of legal challenges from trans service members and advocacy groups.

In June, a federal appeals court panel ruled the administration could not discharge the trans service members who brought one of the lawsuits challenging the ban while their case continues, providing a moment of relief amid the administration’s ongoing efforts to restrict trans military service. The Trump-Vance administration has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review that ruling and, in the meantime, keep it from taking effect.

The Los Angeles Blade reached out to the Pentagon for comment on Hegseth’s use of the slur, but it did not push back on his choice of words.

“We have nothing further to add beyond the secretary’s remarks,” the statement read.