How does one even attempt to give an honest review of a new TV show executive-produced by the late Norman Lear – a pioneer in entertainment – also starring Laverne Cox, a trailblazer for trans representation? Given the current political climate towards the queer community, approaching Clean Slate should be done with kid gloves. Still, the show struggles to find its footing and generally misfires.

The show, now streaming on Prime, was originally pitched to Lear by comedian and co-star of Clean Slate, George Wallace as a Sanford & Sons reboot. Lear told him to go back to the drawing board and come back with something new. Ultimately, Wallace, together with Laverne Cox and Dan Ewen, created a show that is a throwback to the family sitcom era and to Lear’s earlier shows like All in the Family and The Jeffersons.

What’s missing here is a live audience and a stage.

The writing doesn’t seem to get that. One-liners fall flat, and preachy character orations clunk away with their heavy-handedness. Some of the actors are able to make something of a dated and unimaginative script, and some do not. Some of the jokes and situations are very stale, we’ve heard and seen them before. Though new to the scene, this show does not seem fresh, which is odd for a Lear project. We wish Clean Slate was as fast-paced and fun as the show’s trailer.

Always one to push the envelope, Lear’s projects have addressed class, racism, abortion, women’s rights and queer issues, many times way before mainstream audiences were prepared to discuss them. In Clean Slate, trans and gay issues are in the spotlight.

Laverne Cox’s Desiree returns to her small hometown in Alabama and surprises her father, Wallace’s Henry Slate, after being gone for 17 years. Not only does she surprise her father by coming back, but she also surprises him by showing uo as his daughter and not the son he knew.

Having lost her money running an art gallery in New York, she moves back in with her father to figure out her next steps. The show centers on the bond she creates with her father and the friendships she builds in small-town living, including the family that works for Henry’s car wash, her best friend Louis who is dealing with being in the closet, Louis’ mother, and the local church community.

Ultimately, she also connects with the local queer contingent. The usual themes and situations you would expect unfold. Henry must also now get used to using different pronouns with his daughter and having to put money into a pronoun jar each time he makes a mistake. He helps Desiree deal with her relationship to church and spirituality, when the local pastor shuns her new identity and she falls in love with the town’s hot guy.

Even with these storylines, the proceedings seem unimaginative and dated. At times, it seems like the show is an after-school special and not a progressive comedy. Henry and almost all of the small town embrace Desiree’s new identity with vigor and understanding which – although optimistic and hopeful – seems improbable in small town living in the South. The whole affair just comes across as saccharin in its sweetness.

Wallace as Henry Slate is charming and a great choice to help lead this story. He handles many of the cheezy lines with sincerity that makes it almost work. He is a gentle giant as a character, and quickly becomes lovable, even with his many missteps of grappling with the queer community. He loves his child unconditionally and would do anything for her, which is very believable from the get-go. D.K. Uzoukwu as the closeted Louis plays his role with sincerity and is a very welcome fresh face to big-time TV.

He plays the balance of presentational comedy and character honesty very well. Jay Wilkison as Mack – the town’s bad boy turned loving single father – really handles the material deftly and adds some much-needed craft to make the script and situations seem plausible. He’s also not hard on the eyes. Stealing practically every scene she is in is TV veteran Telma Hopkins, most known for her role in Family Matters, as Louis’ mom. She understands the nuance of sitcoms, single-camera closeups, and just the right amount of presentational acting to make it work. She is a delight to watch. We just want to hang out with her and gossip on the porch.  

We know Laverne Cox is a talented actor. She made history as the first trans actor to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy for her role in Orange Is the New Black. Oddly and we feel guilty by even writing it, but she misses the mark the most in Clean Slate.

She doesn’t seem to understand the material and comedic moments are overdone. Her emotional moments just don’t ring true. She seems to be overacting which, along with a weak script, doesn’t anchor the show properly. But, she is a consummate actor. What was it? The direction? The writing? Her performance just doesn’t cut it.

Here’s the thing.

All that being said, the show does have a lot of heart. But it seems lost, trying to find its footing, as to what it wants to be. A sitcom? A dra-medy? It does not succeed in any of those genres, but as a queer person watching the show, it is touching just because of its existence.

A comedy show led by trans and queer storylines is so much needed right now and just knowing this show is part of the Lear legacy, makes it that much more important.

Should we blindly support queer content just because it is out there? No.

Should we support the efforts and mission of a show? Yes.

And we also love the fact that this is a show the whole family can watch and discuss, which holds a lot of weight. There is a lot to explore if the show gets a season 2 and we do hope it is renewed so it has a chance to find its footing with stronger direction and writing.

Clean Slate season 1 is now streaming on Amazon Prime.

MEXICO CITY — Then-President Donald Trump on July 16, 2018, defended Russian President Vladimir Putin during a press conference that took place in Helsinki after they met. I watched it happen on live television while I was on assignment in Mexico City. This disgusting spectacle prompted me to write an op-ed about how the U.S. no longer stood for human rights around the world.

I am once again on assignment in Mexico City, 15 days after Trump returned to the White House. He is doing everything possible to ensure the U.S. will no longer stand for human rights — around the world and in our own country — and basic decency.

Trump’s executive orders have, among other things, threatened the lives of an untold number of LGBTQ+ people around the world who depend upon U.S. foreign aid to survive. These directives have systematically erased transgender, nonbinary, and intersex Americans. Trump has also antagonized Mexico, Canada, and other U.S. allies with his ridiculous tariff threats.

One may have naively thought that Trump would have shown an ounce of decency with his response to last week’s tragic midair collision near Reagan National Airport. Trump instead suggested, without evidence, that previous administrations’ diversity, equity, and inclusion policies could have caused it.

I thankfully did not watch Trump the comments and defense of them. I did, however, have a very undiplomatic response when I read them while I was at a coffee shop near my hotel in Tijuana.

“Shut the fuck up,” I said out loud.

I wrote after Trump defended Putin in Helsinki that American exceptionalism, however flawed, “teaches us the U.S. is the land of opportunity where people can build a better life for themselves and for their families.”

“Trump has turned his back on these ideals,” I concluded. “He has also proven himself to be a danger, not only to his country but to the world as a whole.”

History is sadly repeating itself.

The U.S. Senate on Monday confirmed Scott Bessent, President Trump’s pick for Treasury Secretary, in a rare bipartisan vote of 68-29.

Bessent, a billionaire hedge fund manager, becomes the first openly gay, Senate-confirmed Republican Cabinet member. He’s also the highest-ranking out gay government official ever, as Treasury Secretary is fifth in the line of presidential succession. 

It’s hard to make sense of the disconnect here: On one hand Trump makes history with a senior gay appointment; on the other, he launches cruel attacks on the transgender community on day one. 

The Republican-led House last week passed a bill that would prohibit schools that receive federal education funding from allowing trans students to play girls’ and womens’ sports. Trump, meanwhile, has already banned Pride flags at U.S. embassies and eliminated the X gender marker on passports and other government documents. Trump’s executive order titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” would prohibit the federal government from recognizing people and populations whose birth sex does not match their gender identity. Additionally, the order directs the attorney general to allow “people to refuse to use a transgender or nonbinary person’s correct pronouns, and to claim a right to use single-sex bathrooms and other spaces based on sex assigned at birth at any workplace covered by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and federally funded spaces.”

Then on Monday, he issued an executive order banning transgender service members, a move that would impact more than 15,000 brave trans people serving in the military.

So far, Bessent is silent on those attacks. Trump likes his queer people gay, white, cis, rich, and obedient. Bessent has defended Trump’s self-serving tax cut plan for the wealthiest Americans as well as his misguided and destructive tariff obsession. 

Kelley J. Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, released a statement about Bessent’s nomination.

“We need pro-equality LGBTQ+ nominees and LGBTQ+ people at all levels of government. The LGBTQ+ community is counting on openly LGBTQ+ nominees like Scott Bessent to step up for the community,” Robinson wrote. “HRC has a long history of working across the aisle to advance equality and this appointment may be an opportunity to continue.”

We have entered a dangerous time that will require many of us to make decisions about how to respond to these attacks, not just on trans people, but immigrants who are already being arrested and deported in cities across the country. Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott is making plans for how the city will operate in the event he is arrested and jailed for refusing to cooperate with these immigrant raids. That’s what courage looks like. 

Will Bessent find his backbone and work to convince his boss that the anti-trans hysteria must end? Does he have a trans person in his life who might inform his views? Trans people are human beings, fellow Americans, and family and friends and they deserve respect from their government. They deserve an advocate in the White House who sees their humanity and can articulate it while standing up to the powerful bigots in Trump’s orbit. I hope HRC’s Robinson is right and Bessent will find the courage to stand up for the full spectrum of the LGBTQ community but we haven’t seen any evidence of that yet. 

It’s not just senior gay officials who need to stand up; many of us will likely face a decision to resist or comply with the unconstitutional actions of this administration. Too many former progressive allies have already folded like cheap tents — including MSNBC hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough. We must look to the example of Mayor Scott and others who are refusing to capitulate to this madness. I hope Scott Bessent finds his voice and advocates for a more compassionate approach to trans humanity. 

Kevin Naff is editor of the Washington Blade. Reach him at [email protected].

What do Snoop Dogg and Caitlyn Jenner have in common? No, this isn’t the setup for a bad joke — it’s a tragic reality. They’ve become poster children for the misguided belief that cozying up to power structures that openly despise them will somehow buy them a permanent seat at the table — or at least a pat on the head from the same people pulling the strings. Spoiler alert: it won’t.

Take Caitlyn Jenner, for example. She’s been an active Trump supporter and continues to actively work to push legislation that threatens her very existence. While she’s off applauding his presidential win, the ink is barely dry on his executive orders mandating she be referred to by her dead name.

Rather than taking a stand against these policies, she’s leaned into her wealth and privilege, banking on it to shield her from the harm those same policies inflict on the trans community. Why? Because she’s rich and insulated from the struggles and discrimination most trans people face. She can retreat to her Malibu mansion and comfortably tune out everyone else’s reality.  Because as long as Trump is coming up with ways to keep her rich — that’s all that really matters.  

Newsflash: privilege isn’t bulletproof and proximity to power doesn’t erase the hate aimed in her direction.

Then there’s Snoop Dogg and his ilk, rappers who once stood as cultural titans now bending over backward to cozy up to the Trump tax bracket.  After years of using the community to build their stacks, they are perfectly content to throw the same people who put them in their comfy tax bracket under the bus for a front-row seat at a table that was never built for them. They’ve swapped authenticity and influence for the illusion of inclusion, all while pretending the check is worth it.  It’s not–they know it, we know it.  It’s the reason at the domino table we say, “All ain’t good money.”

What they don’t seem to realize — or flat-out refuse to — is that their proximity to whiteness (in the case of Snoop and company) or wealth and privilege (in Caitlyn’s case) doesn’t shield them from the systems they claim to have transcended. Those systems will gladly facilitate (and celebrate) their selling out while continuing to dehumanize and disenfranchise the very communities they come from and should be fighting for. It’s not respect they’re earning — it’s betrayal.  

It’s not just disappointing — it’s dangerous when public figures like Snoop Dogg or Caitlyn Jenner trade their influence for proximity to power, they’re not just letting down their communities — they are actively legitimizing the systems that harm them. They are showing the next generation that progress is negotiable, everyone can be bought, and that fighting for equity can take a back seat to personal gain. 

There’s a gut-punch of disappointment we feel after building up people like Snoop, only to watch them back systems that harm their own. And the pity for someone like Caitlyn, who thinks her money outweighs her self-respect. We need to hold folks accountable — mark this date on your calendar. So when these celebs inevitably flip-flop and come crawling back for the community’s support — be it a new album, reality television series, film — whatever — we remember, decline the call, and leave them on read.

Selling out isn’t just a choice for them — it’s become their brand.

Singing the hook to Chris Brown’s Loyal, “Aww, these h*es ain’t loyal.”

A member of hip-hop generation, Jasmyne Cannick is based in Los Angeles and is an award-winning journalist and political commentator who speaks and writes to challenge, critique, and hold the culture accountable.

Thank you, President Biden, for the Israel/Hamas ceasefire agreement and for all you have done for the country.

I know President Felon will want to take all the credit for the Israel/Hamas ceasefire. The fact is, the blueprint for this ceasefire was announced by President Biden on May 31, and hailed by the UN. Clearly Trump’s threat to Hamas moved the needle, and I am sure his envoy, who President Biden invited to join the talks, was helpful. But as the Biden spokesperson told Craig Melvin on the “Today” show, there is more than enough credit to go around, and the hostages surely don’t care as long as they come home. I really think the media need to stop dealing with the minutia, and focus on what’s important. 

The nation needs to thank President Biden, and his team, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, and his deputy, Jon Finer along with all the other negotiators including Brett McGurk, part of the Biden team, and Steve Witkoff for Trump. Clearly strong roles were played by Egypt and Qatar, all working diligently to bring this day about. 

With the support of the United States, Israel remains strong. President Biden helped put together the coalition, which helped Israel defend itself against Iranian attacks. Now will come an even harder part, and it will fall to the Trump administration. We will see Trump’s true colors. Will he simply help his company build new hotels in Israel, which they are trying to do, or will he move to help in the rebuilding of Gaza, and give full support to the Palestinian people. We as a nation must be a big part of rebuilding Gaza. We must move to bring about a free and stable Palestinian state, one that can support itself. That may be a dream, but it is one the United States, and the rest of the world, should be working toward. It is the only way there will ever be a true, lasting, and fair peace, in the region.

I listened to President Biden’s last speech to the nation, and was really proud of him, and proud to be an American. History will view Joe Biden as one of our best presidents. He took office when the COVID pandemic was still in full swing, and people were debating how to start getting back to their lives as they knew them. Trump left the nation in a mess. The economy stalling, millions of jobs lost, and people suffering. More than one million people died of COVID. Our troops were still in Afghanistan and inflation was beginning to rise. President Biden signed the American Rescue Act, which among other things sent checks to millions of Americans. His mistake was that contrary to when Trump sent out checks, he didn’t sign his name to them. He followed that with the Inflation Reduction Act, making huge investments in the American economy, in the areas of energy and climate, among others. He followed that with the first gun control measure in decades, and then the infrastructure bill. He next signed the CHIPS Act, and more. While inflation rose to 9%, his administration worked hard, and with their effective economic policies, have brought it down. Trump will inherit the best economy in the world, with inflation at 2.9%. The stock market is booming, and Biden added nearly 16 million jobs during his term, more than any other one-term president in history. Manufacturing in the nation is booming.

President Biden stood strong against China and Russia. His efforts strengthened NATO and so far, seen that Ukraine remains a free and independent country. Our troops are not fighting anywhere on foreign soil. 

President Biden is right, and we must definitely fear the oligarchy that surrounds Trump. We must fear the likes of Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, and the other multi-billionaires who have attached themselves to Trump for their own greed and betterment. They don’t care about truth, and they don’t care about the rest of us. 

The next four years will be a time to join the resistance to prevent us from going backwards. We must resist legally, and without force, but for those of us who want our democracy to survive we need to keep speaking out. We must work to win elections in Virginia and New Jersey in 2025. Then focus on taking back the House of Representatives in 2026. We can do both, and we must, if we are to ensure the experiment that is the United States, survives and thrives, as we celebrate 250 years in existence. 

Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist.

In 1977, Anita Bryant, who recently died, made the career mistake of a lifetime when she began an anti-gay campaign in Miami. Her campaign failed for two important reasons.

First, Bryant mistook the political strength of the gay movement across the U.S. Secondly, her use of religion to promote a campaign of bigotry raised serious questions about her honesty.

After being crowned Miss Oklahoma in 1958, Bryant spent the next two decades performing at state fairs, veterans’ events, religious and charity events, and churches. She performed with Bob Hope’s U.S.O. tours and visited veterans’ hospitals. She promoted Christian living and Florida orange juice. She once said she had abundant energy because “the Lord Jesus is my Vitamin C.” 

In 1977, Bryant and husband Bob Green, a former Miami radio disc jockey, began an anti-gay campaign called “Save Our Children.” The campaign’s goal was to reverse Miami-Dade County’s policy barring discrimination against gays. She raised concerns about gay teachers in public schools.  

Bryant’s anti-gay campaign raised questions about her professed Christian faith. She criticized “cowardly clergy” for their silence on fighting gay rights.

By the late 1970s, Bryant and her husband had published several books about their Christian faith. Bryant’s book tours were a mix of entertainment, self-promotion, with a dose of religion. When reporters asked her who wrote the books, Bryant arrogantly said, “The Lord wrote my books.” When it was later revealed she hired a ghost writer, Bryant’s honesty became an issue.

Celestine Sibley, a veteran columnist for The Atlanta Journal, wrote “The Truth is I Don’t Care for Anita Bryant,” on Sept. 7, 1978. Sibley disliked Bryant’s sanctimonious claim that Jesus wrote her books when the books were ghosted.

In support of gays, Sibley quoted sections of Lord Alfred Douglas’s letters to his mother about his love affair with author Oscar Wilde. His mother urged her son to leave Wilde. Douglas asked her what she could give him in exchange for his lover. Douglas wrote: “Who is going to ‘feed my soul with honey of sweet bitter though?’ Who is going to make me happy when I’m sad, depressed, and ill at ease?” The column was fine journalism for its time. It was an eloquent way of supporting gays.

The newspaper published dozens of reader letters in response to Sibley’s column. One writer said Bryant was “a loudmouth ignoramus.” Writers overwhelmingly supported Sibley. Many writers called Sibley courageous for opposing Bryant’s anti-gay campaign.

In a 1978 Knight-Ridder article, Jean O’Leary, a former nun and an executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, said Anita Bryant was “the best thing that ever happened to us.” Her appreciation for Bryant was shared by other gay activists. The anti-gay rights movement had a face. The face of Anita Bryant.

In San Francisco, gay activist Harvey Milk, as quoted in “The Mayor of Castro Street” by Randy Shilts, said, “Anita Bryant herself pushed the gay movement ahead and the subject can never be pushed back into darkness.” If Bryant had felt the gay rights movement was weak, unorganized, and unable to fight against her campaigns, she soon learned a lesson.

In the May 1978 issue of Playboy magazine, Bryant said that she had survived “numerous close calls with mayhem” and that she “expects to be killed by homosexuals.” She said that “twenty years in jail would rehabilitate homosexuals.” Husband Bob Green said, “let’s face it – when some militant homosexual kills Anita, the guy will be an instant hero.”

Christian Century magazine, in 1978, published poll results on religious influencers. President Jimmy Carter, a Southern Baptist layman, and Anita Bryant were among the top influencers.

By the time of her 1980 interview in Ladies’ Home Journal, Bryant was a changed woman. She was divorced. She admitted to suicidal thoughts. She admitted to taking tranquilizers, sleeping pills, and wine due to “the pressures of her work and family life.” She declared bankruptcy.  

Bryant made another important admission in Ladies’ Home Journal. She admitted to an attitude of “live and let live” toward gays. One New York journalist called this admission Bryant’s “Coming Out” as a human being.”

James Patterson is a Washington, D.C.-based writer.

Land back. 

The rest of it should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway. 

For too long we have relied on unreliable and unsustainable forms of living that are disconnected from nature and connected to colonization. It is time to not only recognize the importance of indigenous practices and decriminalize them, but to also give the land back to indigenous communities that know how to care for the land and learn from their way of life.

After spending two days in the Altadena neighborhoods ravaged by the Eaton Canyon fire last week, I went home feeling defeated, distraught and overwhelmed by the amount of destruction and loss I witnessed. After I decompressed and changed into fresh clothes, I engaged in conversation with my dad, who was watching the evening news in the living room. The segment was on the updates of the fires ravaging through Los Angeles. The news camera focused on the single aircraft carrying water over the fire and dropping it from above. In comparison to the scale of the fire, the water seemed to do little to tame the flame. 

My dad watched in amazement, not because he was impressed by the aircraft or the size of the out-of-control fire, but because he was genuinely convinced that if it were up to him, the fires would have been extinguished long before it reached the neighborhoods it burned through. 

This scene seemed to send him on a trip to the past – to a time where he was one with the land, manipulating the elements to produce a rich harvest in his family’s riverside ranch. 

My father is one of thirteen children who contributed to the daily chores on the small family ranch. My father and grandfather worked tirelessly side-by-side to produce harvests that were not only enough to feed their family, but also enough to share with their neighbors. 

My father’s side of the family is from Guadalajara – a city in Jalisco, the state known as the birthplace of Mariachi and tequila. Jalisco is also known for its deep revolutionary history that is recorded as far back as the year 1540, with The Mixtón Rebellion which formed after the Indian population of western Mexico rebelled against Spanish rule. 

During this time, the area that encompassed the state of Jalisco, was known as Nueva Galicia and it also stretched over Aguascalientes, Zacatecas, Nayarit and the northwest corner of San Luis Potosí. 

In 1621, Domingo Làzaro de Arregui wrote in his Descripción de la Nueva Galicia, that 72 native languages were spoken in the Spanish colonial province which stretched across 86,733 square miles. Jalisco has an extensive history of indigenous uprisings and rebellions. 

What I learned from my father during our conversation last Thursday was that he and his father practiced a type of pseudoscience that worked for them and the land they farmed on. They practiced the indigenous method of starting controlled fires in an effort to produce soil rich with nutrients and free of impurities that would stump the growth of the crops they grew – rice, corn, cucumbers and more. 

“When we didn’t want the fire to spread past a certain point in the field, we would create a ring of fire by hitting the line of fire with green shrubbery,” said my father in Spanish.

When they were satisfied with the plot of land that was to be burned, they extinguished the fire entirely and without the use of other resources such as water. 

California has a record of several historic fires that have wiped out thousands of square miles worth of land and hurt many communities. Global warming has brought on many challenging years for California such as many record-breaking years of little to no rain, high wind conditions and a landscape that makes it particularly difficult to extinguish larger scale fires. 

In 2018, I was living in Lake Elsinore when the Holy Fire broke out in the Cleveland National Forest, a piece of land stretching from Corona to Irvine in southern California. It was the closest I had ever been to what seemed like the opening of a portal to the underworld – prompting evacuations of the small city of Lake Elsinore and the small population living in the forest area. 

That same year, the Camp Fire grew into one of the state’s deadliest and most destructive fires on record, devastating the towns of Paradise and Concow in northern California. In 2021, the Dixie Fire raged on for months, ravaging through northern California. 

In 2022, The University of California published an article and produced a video about the cultural practice of burning forests. 

According to the article, it isn’t just a cultural practice, it is a way to populate the dense forests we see today in places like Yosemite. It is a vital practice to ensure that more vegetation thrive and impurities in the soil are burned to make way for native plants to flourish. According to the article “…ecological records and oral Indigenous history alike describe how fire, sparked by lightning or planned by tribes, played a vital role in shaping California’s landscape for thousands of years.” 

In the early 1900’s it was suggested that anyone who started a fire would be shot – a remnant of European rule that regarded cultural burning as primitive or the opposite of civilized. 

In September, CalMatters published an article written by Russell Attebery, chairman of the Karuk tribe – a federally recognized tribe overseeing more than 1 million acres of land in Humboldt and Siskiyou counties along the Klamath River. 

In the article, he points out that California’s history of out-of-control fires are due in large part, to ignoring the wisdom of indigenous people that have worked for them and the land for thousands of years. 

Attebery makes the argument that not only is fire essential to Karuk culture, but that it is also “…not just a tool — it’s a lifeline, a means of renewal, and a vital part of our culture. For generations, our ceremonies have honored the essential role of fire in maintaining the health of our forests, the regeneration of plants and the sustenance of our communities.” 

Since the article was published, SB 310 was passed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, acknowledging tribal sovereignty over cultural burning for the first time in California’s history. 

This became the first step toward the process of righting historical wrongs and although it is progress, this law only decriminalizes the cultural practice. It does not grant Indigenous people the right to control the land that is rightfully theirs. 

Jimmy Carter is venerated for his many notable accomplishments including support for African-American civil rights, Nobel Prize recipient, energy security, conservation, transportation deregulation, and remarkable post-presidency accomplishments, among others. As to LGBTQ rights, Carter’s less than admirable White House legacy reflects societal prejudices during his 1977 to 1981 presidency.

At the 1972 Democratic National Convention, the Platform Committee rejected by a vote of 54 to 34 a plank to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. At that convention, Jim Foster and Madeline Davis became the first openly gay delegates to address a national political convention’s plenary session. Foster and Davis’s addresses on July 12 were scheduled at 5 a.m. for Minority Report #8, which Walter Cronkite called “the Gay Lib plank.”

As a 1976 presidential candidate, Carter courageously endorsed the Equality Act, which would amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include sexual orientation. Carter appointed Midge Constanza, a closeted lesbian to head his Office of Public Liaison. Constanza, a former Rochester City Council member, had served as Carter’s New York State campaign coordinator. Constanza was the only woman in a senior position on Carter’s White House staff. 

On March 26, 1977, Constanza hosted the first meeting of gay representatives at the White House. The group of 12 included gay pioneer Frank Kameny, Rev. Troy Perry, and Jenn O’Leary and Bruce Voeller, co-chairs of the National Gay Task Force. After being alerted by a National Gay Task Force press release, major news organizations covered the story. The following day, Anita Bryant, who started a Christian crusade against homosexual rights stated that the Office of the President had been duped into blessing an abnormal lifestyle and vowed to “lead such a crusade to stop homosexuals as this country has not seen before.”

By 1978, Constanza was demoted; her office moved from adjoining the Oval Office to the basement; and her staff of more than a dozen cut to one. In August 1978, she resigned.

In November 1977, Harvey Milk became a San Francisco Supervisor. He was one of the first openly gay Americans to be elected to public office. In 1978, Milk was assassinated. That year 70% of Americans opposed discrimination protections based on sexual orientation. In 1979, Carter launched his campaign for reelection. 

At the 1980 Democratic National Convention, 77 of the seated delegates were openly gay and lesbian up from the handful at the 1976 convention. Melvin Boozer, an African-American Ph.D. from Yale and head of the DC Gay Activists Alliance was nominated for vice president of the United States. In Boozer’s remarks, he stated he wouldn’t accept the nomination, but called on delegates to adopt the gay rights plank.

Twelve years later, at the 1992 Democratic National Convention and with the support of party presidential candidate Bill Clinton that Bob Hattoy, a gay man with AIDS and Roberta Achtenberg, cofounder of the National Center for Lesbian Rights became the first openly gay delegates to address the convention in prime time. There were rainbow flags and signs for “Lesbian and Gay Rights Now!” 

Carter did not embrace homophobia. He was one of the nation’s most decent and foresighted leaders. While he disappointingly broke his campaign promise to support the Equality Act, like other historic figures Carter’s record should be assessed within the context of society’s then social constructs and political realities. 

Based on the totality of his legacy, Jimmy Carter left the world a better place. His memory is a blessing.

Malcolm Lazin is executive director of LGBT History Month. Learn more at lgbtHistoryMonth.com.

As we move toward Jan. 20, when Donald Trump and his acolytes complete their takeover of the government, we really have no idea what will happen. Trump and his co-president, Elon Musk, lie with impunity. It’s hard to tell if they believe their own lies. 

For Trump, a decision is often based on who whispered in his ear last. He is easily riled, and when it comes to Musk, it was fun to see him feel he had to respond when Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) called Musk, President Musk. In a Phoenix rally Trump felt obliged to explain Musk couldn’t be president as he wasn’t born here. We know Trump is losing it, often mixing up where he is, names, and dates. Will the media report on that the way they did with Biden?  It is getting more apparent the media is being cowed by Trump. Recently the New York Times reported, “Ann Telnaes, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist for The Washington Post, said on Friday evening that she was resigning after the newspaper’s opinions section rejected a cartoon depicting The Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos, (and other media moguls) genuflecting toward a statue of President-elect Donald J. Trump.” 

The first test of how the Republican Senate will respond to Trump will begin shortly as they start the hearings on his Cabinet nominees. We will soon know if even the few rational Republican senators left keep their lips firmly glued to Trump’s ass, or will at least four of them find their balls? While most of Trump’s nominees will sail through, no matter how bad they are, there are a few we need to watch closely. Those are Pete Hegseth for Defense Secretary; Kash Patel for FBI Director; RFK Jr. for Secretary of Health and Human Services; and Tulsi Gabbard, for Director of National Intelligence. These nominations are an abomination and dangerous. 

Hegseth’s hearings will be conducted by the Armed Services Committee with Chairman Roger Wicker, (R-Miss), and Jack Reed (D-R.I.), ranking member. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will first need to get through the Senate Finance Committee; Michael Crapo (R-Idaho) chair, and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), ranking member. Patel will go to the Senate Judiciary Committee with Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) as chair, and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), as ranking member. Tulsi Gabbard will go to the Senate Intelligence Committee with Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) as chair, and Mark Warner (D-Va.), as ranking member.

I am not holding my breath that any Republicans will ask the tough questions. But we can hope Democrats will. It will be interesting to see what they focus on. Will they ask RFK Jr. the important questions on children’s vaccines? We know he opposes them but will he take away the mandate for insurance to pay for them? Will he try to get school systems to abandon their requirement that children be vaccinated before coming to school? Will he oppose continuing to have NIH do the research to develop a vaccine to prevent HIV/AIDS? What will he do about the polio vaccine and ensuring it is paid for all children? Will he recommend we withdraw from the World Health Organization? 

Then will they ask Gabbard about her meeting with deposed Syrian dictator Assad, her relations with Vladimir Putin, and the war in Ukraine? How she would handle classified documents and what did she think about how Trump handled them? What are the changes she wants to make in the agencies reporting to the Director of National Intelligence? Does she even know what each of them does? How does her background qualify her for this important and sensitive job? 

Then there is Hegseth. What will they ask him? What does he see as his qualifications for the job? Does he understand what the job is, and his relationship to the Joint Chiefs of Staff? What are Patel’s qualifications to lead the FBI? Will he go after an enemies list based on all his previous statements? 

I would assume Democrats on the committees will be prepped with a long list of questions to ask each nominee, and will work together to try to make the American people understand how each is totally unqualified to head the agency they are being nominated to lead. Then we will have to look at how the media report on all these hearings. 

One of the things the American people need to understand is whether or not they believe in Trump’s version of ‘America First,’ each of these nominees will impact how we deal with the world, and whether we are ever trusted again. 

Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist.

Nov. 20 marked Transgender Day of Remembrance — an international day of mourning where the trans community and its allies come together to honor and mourn those lost to violence, hate crimes, and suicide. Much of this violence is fueled by discriminatory policies and deep-seated hatred against transgender people.

Yet, just two days before TDOR, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) introduced HR1579, a transphobic resolution aimed at prohibiting “members, officers, and employees of the House from using single-sex facilities other than those corresponding to their biological sex.” The resolution’s definition of “single-sex facilities” goes beyond restrooms to include changing rooms and locker rooms within the Capitol or House Office buildings.

This resolution is a blatant attempt to ban Rep.-Elect Sarah McBride (D-Del.), the first openly transgender congresswoman, from using women’s bathrooms and locker rooms in Congress. Far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) claimed that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) expressed support for the resolution behind closed doors, stating, “He committed to me, there in the conference, that Sarah McBride will not be using our restrooms.” In an interview, Rep. Mike Johnson doubled down: “For anyone who doesn’t know my established record on this issue, let me be unequivocally clear: a man is a man, and a woman is a woman, and a man cannot become a woman.”

Both Greene and Mace repeatedly misgendered McBride on social media and in comments to reporters. On Transgender Day of Remembrance itself, Speaker Johnson declared McBride would be treated as a man under House rules, forcing her to use men’s restrooms or gender-neutral facilities. 

Mace claimed her actions were about “safety,” even suggesting McBride could pose a threat of sexual assault. However, during an appearance on Greg Kelly Reports, Mace went full mask off, calling it “offensive” that McBride could consider herself her equal.

This decision and language is more than offensive — it is outright discriminatory. McBride will have no other choice but to walk to her office every time she needs to use the restroom, unable to access the common bathrooms like her colleagues. Additionally, the resolution jeopardizes the safety of hundreds of transgender staffers, all of whom lack McBride’s visibility or privilege. Trans staffers have long used restrooms matching their gender identity without issue, but this policy opens the door to increased harassment and exclusion, with reports of such incidents already surfacing. 

McBride issued a statement saying that while she “disagrees” with the rules, she will comply. Unsurprisingly, McBride’s compliance was not the end of the conversation. Mace introduced a bill to ban transgender people from using bathrooms matching their gender identity in federally owned spaces, from national parks to major airports. Mace declared on social media, “This fight isn’t over just yet. We want to ban men from women’s spaces in EVERY federal building, school, public bathroom, everywhere.”

Adding to this, Congress’s gendered dress code could also be weaponized to further degrade and bully McBride, targeting her presentation or honorifics. This was never about bathrooms, safety, or fairness—it has always been about control and erasing transgender people from public life. 

Despite these attacks, multiple studies have found no evidence supporting claims that transgender people pose safety threats in bathrooms. Yet transphobic rhetoric dominated the 2024 election, with anti-trans ads like “Kamala is for they/them; President Trump is for you,”, signs targeting McBride at polling places in Delaware, and violent vitriol aimed at dehumanizing transgender Americans.

This tidal wave of hate culminates in the upcoming Supreme Court case, U.S. v. Skrmetti, a case that will determine whether bans on gender-affirming care for youth are unconstitutional. The stakes are high: 27 states already ban gender-affirming care, and 26 have implemented restrictions on trans youth in sports. With Donald Trump’s return to the White House and a Republican-controlled government, the situation doesn’t look great.

In the Delaware State Senate, Sarah McBride championed policies like paid family leave. The idea that she’s a danger to others is laughable. The real danger to others lies in the multiple Republican cabinet nominations with histories of sexual assault and abuse. 

If a respected lawmaker who happens to be transgender is considered a threat, where does that leave the rest of the trans community?

In the wake of Kamala Harris’s election loss, trans people have been used as scapegoats, with moderate Democrats and political pundits alike calling them political liabilities. For the past few weeks, we’ve seen op-eds in the New York Times and Washington Post claiming that trans rights have gone too far and are political bombs. 

How dare they? In the face of violent transphobia in our nation’s Capitol, now is the time to strengthen support for our transgender siblings. The moment the public and political establishment abandon transgender Americans, is the moment we’ve entered the last steps of the waltz into fascism.

The mere presence of a transgender woman in power asking to be treated as an equal has sent the GOP into a media frenzy. Mace has been running to Fox News and Newsmax to attack her future co-worker. She’s been obsessively posting on X (formerly Twitter) about Sarah McBride and “men in women’s spaces.” 

Mike Johnson’s seeming endorsement of a “separate but equal” framework also evokes painful memories of segregationists during the Civil Rights Movement. This behavior is not only unacceptable but shines a light on the long history of white far-right politicians from the South fighting for their “right” to discriminate.

This isn’t a culture war thing; this is a fight for our very right to exist. Transgender Americans are facing a crisis. The incoming administration seeks to define us out of existence: they want us to detransition, to hide, to live in fear. They want us to remain in the closet. 

For many, the closet is deadly. Trans people already die by suicide at higher rates, denying us the right to exist will only skyrocket the mental health crisis in America. Since Nov. 5 alone, the Trevor Project, a crisis organization for LGBTQ youth, reported a heartbreaking 700% increase in calls. People are dying now, and now is the time to protect trans people. 

Defending McBride is the easiest way to signal support for trans people. This is about more than supporting one congresswoman — it’s about standing for the safety, dignity, and respect of every transgender American. We need leaders who will defend us in the face of the fascistic far-right.  

As trans people, we recognize the emergency facing our community and are screaming our lungs out to a party that is considering abandoning us. It’s been said again and again but we need each other now more than ever.

LGBTQ voters pay attention to which representatives support and fight for their right to exist. According to the 2022 U.S. Transgender Survey’s Civic Engagement data, 82% of eligible transgender individuals are registered to vote. In the 2020 presidential election, 75% of eligible respondents reported voting, compared to 67% of the general U.S. population. Furthermore, initial exit polls showed that LGBTQIA+ voters overwhelmingly supported Kamala Harris.

The Democratic Party is at a crossroads: Will they fight for equality or allow the GOP’s attacks to stain their legacy and lose a vital and engaged voting bloc? 

The truth is stark: transgender Americans deserve to exist without fear. This fight is about more than politics — it’s about life and death. In the reality we woke up to on Nov. 6, trans people and LGBTQ rights in general are on the chopping block. 

Democrats have the chance to make history by standing on the right side of it. The fight for trans liberation is far from over, but this moment demands strong, progressive leadership. The future of the party — and our country—depends on it.

Vienna Cavazos (they/them) is the Diversity Lead and LGBTQIA+ Public Policy Specialist at Bulletproof Pride.