Category: LGBTQ+ / Gay / Trans / Gender

Compton’s Cafeteria Riots of 1966

I think there’s a blurb about this on Peace History, but I could be misrecalling. Anyway, here is far more of the story. Language alert, from the beginning.

Queer History 111: Before the Stonewall Riots, There Was Compton’s Cafeteria by Wendy🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🌈 Read on Substack

You’ve heard about Stonewall—everyone has. It’s become the sanitized, rainbow-washed origin story of the LGBTQ+ rights movement that gets trotted out every Pride month by corporations selling overpriced merchandise. But three years before Stonewall rocked New York City, a group of fierce-as-fuck transgender women and drag queens in San Francisco’s gritty Tenderloin district had already thrown the first punch in the fight for queer liberation. The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot of 1966 wasn’t just a footnote in history—it was a goddamn declaration of war against police brutality and societal oppression that’s been deliberately erased from our collective memory.

Remembering the Compton's Cafeteria Riot | Vogue

Let me tell you something straight up: these women weren’t politely asking for their rights with carefully worded petitions. They were fighting for their very existence in a society that treated them like garbage. And when pushed to their absolute limit one hot August night, they didn’t just push back—they burned the whole system down. Literally throwing coffee in cops’ faces, smashing windows, and lighting a police car on fire. This wasn’t a “disturbance” or an “incident”—it was a motherfucking riot, and it’s time we remember it for what it was.

The Tenderloin: Where Society Dumped Its “Undesirables”

San Francisco’s Tenderloin district in the 1960s wasn’t the gentrified hipster paradise it’s becoming today. It was a last-resort neighborhood—the only place that would accept the people society had discarded. Transgender women, particularly trans women of color, found themselves with precious few options for survival. Denied employment, housing, and basic human dignity, many turned to sex work simply to eat and keep a roof over their heads.

“We couldn’t get jobs, couldn’t get housing, couldn’t even walk down the street without being arrested,” recalled Amanda St. Jaymes, a trans woman who lived in the Tenderloin during this era. “The cops would book us as ‘female impersonators’ and throw us in the men’s jail. Do you have any fucking idea what happened to us in there?”

The brutal reality was that transgender women faced constant police harassment under California’s “masquerade laws,” which made it illegal to dress in clothing of the “opposite sex.” Cops could and did arrest trans women for the crime of simply existing in public. These weren’t occasional incidents—this was systematic persecution backed by the full force of the law.

Gene Compton’s Cafeteria, a 24-hour diner at the corner of Taylor and Turk, was one of the few places trans women could gather safely—or so they thought. Open all night, it became an unofficial community center for transgender women, drag queens, gay hustlers, and other marginalized folks who had nowhere else to go. But the management often called the police when too many “queens” gathered, leading to regular harassment and arrests.

“The Night I Got Tired of Being Bullied”

On a hot night in August 1966 (the exact date has been lost to history), the simmering tension finally boiled over. When police attempted to arrest a transgender woman at Compton’s for the “crime” of being there, she threw her coffee in the officer’s face. What followed was an explosion of rage that had been building for decades.

“It wasn’t planned,” said Felicia Elizondo, a transgender activist who frequented Compton’s. “It was just the night I got tired of being bullied. We all got tired at the same fucking moment.”

The cafeteria erupted. Cups, saucers, and trays became projectiles. The plate glass windows of the restaurant were smashed. A newsstand was set on fire. The women fought back with everything they had—high heels, heavy purses, and righteous fury. When a police car pulled up outside, it was immediately surrounded, its windows broken and, according to some accounts, set ablaze.

Reconstructing the Compton's Cafeteria Riot — GLBT Historical Society

“Those queens fought like hell,” remembered one witness. “You’d think a bunch of ‘girls’ couldn’t do much damage, but honey, when you’ve been beaten and raped by cops, when you’ve been refused medical care, when your own family has thrown you out like trash—you fight like someone with nothing left to lose.”

The riot spilled into the streets and continued through the night. Unlike at Stonewall, there were no photographers present, no reporters to document what happened. The next day, more transgender women and supporters returned to picket the cafeteria, which had banned transgender customers in response to the riot. This marked one of the first known instances of organized transgender direct action in U.S. history.

The Cover-Up and Erasure

Here’s where the story gets even more fucked up: this watershed moment was almost completely erased from history. No major newspapers covered it. Police records of the incident mysteriously disappeared. For decades, Compton’s Cafeteria Riot existed only in the memories of those who were there, many of whom didn’t survive the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and ’90s.

“They didn’t want people to know we fought back,” explained historian Susan Stryker, whose groundbreaking documentary “Screaming Queens” finally brought the riot to public attention in 2005. “Transgender resistance didn’t fit the narrative they wanted to tell about passive victims who needed saving.”

The erasure was so complete that even many LGBTQ+ historians were unaware of the riot until nearly 40 years after it occurred. When Stryker discovered a brief reference to the “uprising of drag queens” in the archives of gay liberation periodicals, she had to piece together what happened through painstaking interviews with survivors and witnesses.

Why was this history buried? Simple: it centered transgender women—particularly trans women of color—as the vanguard of the LGBTQ+ liberation movement. It challenged the comfortable narrative that the movement began with Stonewall and was led primarily by white gay men. The Compton’s story was inconvenient for those who wanted to sanitize queer history for mainstream consumption.

The Aftermath: Real Fucking Change

What makes the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot even more remarkable is that it actually led to concrete changes in San Francisco. In the aftermath, a network of transgender support services emerged. The city established the Tenderloin Health Clinic, which provided hormones and healthcare to transgender people—the first of its kind in the nation. The police department even initiated the first-ever training on interacting with transgender people.

Before Stonewall: The Raucous Trans Riot that History Nearly Forgot

Sergeant Elliott Blackstone, the SFPD’s first liaison to the “homophile community,” became an unlikely ally. After the riot, he worked with transgender activists to stop police harassment and helped establish programs to support transgender residents. “I just treated them like human beings,” Blackstone later said, “which nobody else was doing.”

The riot also galvanized the formation of organizations like Vanguard, one of the first gay youth organizations in the U.S., and the National Transsexual Counseling Unit, the first peer-run support organization for transgender people. These laid the groundwork for the transgender rights movement that continues today.

“We built something from nothing,” said Tamara Ching, a Tenderloin activist who lived through this era. “We created community when the whole damn world wanted us dead or invisible.”

The Women Who Led the Charge

The heroes of Compton’s didn’t get streets named after them or Hollywood biopics made about their lives. Many died in obscurity, their contributions uncelebrated. Women like Alexis Miranda, who later became an influential transgender activist; Tamara Ching, who fought for the rights of transgender sex workers; and Amanda St. Jaymes, who established support services for transgender women in the Tenderloin.

“Some of the fiercest women I ever knew didn’t live to see their impact,” recalls Felicia Elizondo, one of the few surviving veterans of the Tenderloin scene. “They died from violence, from AIDS, from the sheer exhaustion of fighting every day just to exist.”

Unlike Stonewall, where key figures like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera eventually received some recognition (though still not enough), many of the women who fought at Compton’s remain nameless in historical records. Their revolutionary act was nearly lost to history, remembered only by those who were there.

The anonymity of many Compton’s participants speaks to the precarious nature of transgender life in the 1960s—and still today. Many lived under assumed names, without identification documents, invisible to official records. They existed in the margins, which made their uprising all the more remarkable and all the more easily erased.

Why This Matters Now More Than Ever

If you think this is just ancient history, wake the fuck up. In 2023, we’re seeing the most aggressive legislative assault on transgender rights in modern history. Over 500 anti-trans bills have been introduced in state legislatures in recent years. Access to healthcare is being restricted. Transgender people are being banned from public spaces. Sound familiar?

“It’s the same playbook,” says Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, a transgender elder who has been fighting for rights since the 1960s. “Criminalize our existence, push us out of public spaces, make it impossible to live authentically. They’ve just dressed it up in fancier language.”

The courage of the women at Compton’s Cafeteria provides a powerful template for resistance in the face of overwhelming oppression. They didn’t wait for permission to fight back. They didn’t seek respectability. They recognized that when a system is designed to destroy you, sometimes you have to break the whole damn thing and start over.

“We’ve been here before,” warns historian Jules Gill-Peterson. “And the lesson from Compton’s isn’t to write polite letters to politicians. It’s that direct action gets the goods. It’s that sometimes you have to throw the first punch—or the first coffee cup.”

The Legacy: From Shadows to Celebration

Today, the corner of Taylor and Turk in the Tenderloin bears a plaque commemorating the riot. In 2017, the city of San Francisco renamed a section of Turk Street as “Compton’s Transgender Cultural District”—the first legally recognized transgender district in the world. It’s a belated recognition of the community that has called this area home for over half a century and the uprising that marked its coming of age.

But the real legacy of Compton’s isn’t in plaques or street names—it’s in the radical tradition of transgender resistance it established. From Compton’s to Stonewall to the modern movements against police brutality, the thread of transgender leadership in liberation struggles remains unbroken, even when unacknowledged.

“Those girls didn’t have Twitter or TikTok or any way to document what they did,” reflects contemporary transgender activist Raquel Willis. “But they changed the world anyway. Imagine what we can do now with all the tools and visibility we have.”

The next time you celebrate Pride, remember that it wasn’t born from corporate sponsorships and rainbow capitalism. It was born from a coffee cup thrown in a cop’s face by a transgender woman who had decided she wasn’t going to take any more shit. It was born from the broken windows of a cafeteria in the Tenderloin and the fiery determination of women who fought back when the world told them they shouldn’t even exist.

That’s the legacy of Compton’s Cafeteria Riot—not just a historical footnote, but a battle cry that still echoes today: We have always been here. We have always fought back. And we’re not going anywhere.

References

  1. Stryker, S. (2008). Transgender History: The Roots of Today’s Revolution.
  2. Stryker, S., & Silverman, V. (Directors). (2005). Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria [Documentary].
  3. Transgender Law Center. (2017). Compton’s Transgender Cultural District Report.
  4. Dzodan, F. (2021). Before Stonewall: The Trans Women Who Sparked a Revolution.
  5. Armstrong, E. A., & Crage, S. M. (2006). Movements and Memory: The Making of the Stonewall Myth.
  6. Williams, C. (2014). Transgender History in the United States: A Special Unabridged Version of a Book Chapter.
  7. GLBT Historical Society. (2016). Compton’s Cafeteria Riot: 50th Anniversary Exhibition.
  8. Elizondo, F. (2015, August 26). Personal interview by Nicole Pasulka for Vice: “Ladies in the Streets: Before Stonewall, Transgender Uprising Changed Lives.”

Record-breaking rainbow flag to take center stage during Philly Pride Weekend

https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/entertainment/the-scene/philadelphia-pride-weekend-march-festival-2025-rainbow-flag/4183934/

Record-breaking rainbow flag to take center stage during Philly Pride Weekend

The massive flag — now stretching to 600 feet — will debut on Friday, May 30

Appeals Court Decides In Favor of First Amendment to US Constitution

Hamburger Mary’s Goes to the 11th Circuit by Joyce Vance

A case you need to know about! Read on Substack

This post is about a case that could be easily overlooked with so much Trump news spewing through the fire hose these days. But Florida’s continued aggression in the culture wars has the potential to affect all of us. So, as here, when a brave plaintiff takes its case to court and wins, it’s news we all need to know about.

On Tuesday, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals decided HM Florida-ORL, LLC v. Sec. of Florida DBPR, a case involving Hamburger Mary’s, a restaurant and bar in Orlando that regularly hosted drag performances, including family-friendly shows. When the Florida legislature passed SB 1438 in 2023, Hamburger Mary’s canceled its family-friendly drag shows and prohibited minors from attending any of its other shows out of fear of losing its business and/or liquor license. As a result, Hamburger Mary’s lost 20% of its bookings.

The new law gave state agencies the power to target LGBTQ+ friendly businesses in two major ways:

  • It gave the Department of Business and Professional Regulation discretionary authority to fine, revoke liquor licenses, and even shut down establishments.
  • It made it a crime to admit young people to any performance, exhibit, play, or show that the state deems inappropriate, even if the child’s parents think it is appropriate for their family.

The bill was an effort by conservative politicians, led by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, to impose their beliefs on the entire state. It was a major salvo in the culture wars. Their too-clever-by-half mechanism was to punish private businesses that included or supported the LGBTQ+ community in order to exclude that community from being a public presence in Florida. The law’s language was so vague that businesses had no realistic way of knowing what it prohibited, meaning they had to take the extreme steps Hamburger Mary’s took to pull back their offerings in order to avoid the risk they’d be put out of business.

So, Hamburger Mary’s filed a lawsuit against Florida, its governor, and Secretary of the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation (FDBPR) Melanie Griffin, seeking a preliminary injunction that would keep the state from enforcing its law while the litigation proceeded. The district court granted the preliminary injunction and the Secretary appealed to the Eleventh Circuit.

The issue in the case involves the First Amendment, as you’ve probably figured out by now. Although the technical legal issue was whether the district court had been correct to grant the injunction, the substantive issue is whether Florida’s Senate Bill 1438 (“The Protection of Children Act”), which prohibits children from attending “adult live performances,” is unconstitutional under the First Amendment, because it is both vaguene and overly broad.

The Eleventh Circuit ruled in Hamburger Mary’s favor, keeping the injunction against enforcement of SB 1438 in place, because the panel believed the law was likely unconstitutional—both too vague for people to understand what they could and couldn’t do to remain in compliance with it and overbroad in its supposed efforts to protect children without regard to their parents’ views.

It’s significant that this decision comes out of the conservative Eleventh Circuit, although admittedly, the composition of this panel, which included both an Obama and a Biden appointee, is unusual. Florida could seek en banc review from the full court, in hopes of getting a more favorable hearing. The decision was 2-1. The third judge on the panel, Senior Judge Gerald Bard Tjoflat, was appointed by President Gerald Ford. His objection to the majority’s decision primarily involved a belief that the injunction came too early, and the courts should have demurred until they saw how the state enforced the law in practice.

Among the most interesting points made in the opinion:

  • The Court found the penalties for violations under SB 1438 “grievous.” The penalties for violations include a $5,000 fine for a first offense or a misdemeanor prison sentence of up to a year.
  • On protecting First Amendment rights, they noted that “The government cannot shroud rules in foggy language and then blame would-be speakers for their fears of what may lurk in the fog.” Laws like this use vagueness as a means to get private individuals and businesses to obey in advance, staying as far back as possible from the line of conduct the law prohibits in order to avoid the consequences of violating it. In this way, the state restricts far more First Amendment-protected conduct than they are legally entitled to. The panel wasn’t having any of it. It noted the importance of securing “breathing room for free expression” in a case like this.
  • We’ve seen injunction cases before, so we know that Hamburger Mary’s had to demonstrate it was likely to succeed on the merits of its claim in order to get the injunction. The court underscored the point above when it found that they met this burden, discussing the “chilling effect” laws like this have, and the way they discourage people from speaking their minds, even if their speech doesn’t fall squarely within what the law prohibits. They noted that “[T]he Act’s vagueness…means it is likely to stifle a substantial amount of protected speech,” explaing that at oral argument, the state had been unable to explain, for instance, how to decide what kind of performances would be acceptable for kids of different ages, which the law requires venues to do to avoid penalties. They concluded, “If the Secretary’s attorney can’t articulate the difference, it’s hard to imagine how we could expect performance proprietors to know what the Act means.”

At least for now, the First Amendment is still alive and kicking in Florida. The majority in this case held that the state was trying to “empower those who would limit speech” but that “the First Amendment empowers speakers instead.” “Requiring clarity in speech regulations,” the court wrote, “shields us from the whims of government censors.” This case is important for Floridians and for the LGBTQ+ community. Beyond that, in a time when our rights are under attack, it’s important for all of us.

We’re in this together,

Joyce

DOJ Says Susman Godfrey Is National Security Threat… For Giving Money To GLAD

https://abovethelaw.com/2025/05/doj-says-susman-godfrey-is-national-security-threat-for-giving-money-to-glad/

Their goal is to copy Russia.  The goal is to wipe the LGBTQ+ community from society, from the public view.  They want to make us illegal like in the most hateful countries or again to be like Russia under Putin.  I used to think these people wanted to return to the 1950s but now I think I was wrong.   They want to return to the early 1930s when the Nazi party was very active and strong in the US.  I kept telling the people who wanted the LGB to let the t go to protect the rest that it was a divide and conquer strategy and that they would come for the rest of us next.  And they are doing that.  Just being gay or fighting the haters trying to deny gay people rights is a security risk to nation according to them.     Hugs

Stupid, but also disturbing.

By Joe Patrice on May 12, 2025 4:55 pm

There’s a new “Axis of Evil” in the Trump administration cosmology and it’s not al Qaeda or North Korea. Instead, the preeminent threat to national security, according to the hapless folks at Donald Trump’s personal law firm, is anyone who ever donated money to LGBTQ civil rights organization GLAD. At least that’s the government’s new working theory as it tries to justify its retaliatory executive order against Susman Godfrey.

Had Susman, for example, taken on that GLAD challenge pro bono, the allegation would still be risible, but when the whole argument hinges on the firm generally donating to a prominent non-profit it crosses into professionally embarrassing.

Not quite, “making up fake Supreme Court quotes” embarrassing, but still.

Aside from trying to tag Susman for its charitable contributions, it’s also deeply troubling to suggest that filing a federal lawsuit is a “dangerous effort to undermine the effectiveness of the United States military.” In a rule of law society (I know, I know, but humor me on this idea for the moment), “going to court” isn’t sedition, but the system working as intended. Checks and balances and all that stuff. To call a federal lawsuit an effort to undermine the government, requires adopting the premise that it’s a threat to make sure the government isn’t doing anything illegal. Courts can get the law wrong, but the point is that we encourage people to take grievances to court and not storm federal buildings… you know, the behavior that we traditionally considered a “dangerous effort to undermine” the government. Not so much these days.

There’s no bright line between the GLAD challenge and any other discrimination case brought against the DOD. If the government chooses to contest a suit for any reason, under this standard, it’s an effort to undermine the effectiveness of the military. Frankly, there’s not much keeping the DOJ from expanding this rationale to any other case brought against the government. That would put us a little beyond warnings about a slippery slope and into “that point where Wile E. Coyote hasn’t noticed he’s off the cliff yet.”

Not that GLAD’s challenge would’ve dangerously undermined effectiveness. General Mark Milley, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated unequivocally that there is no problem with transgender troops if they meet standards. But as a career soldier, Milley cared more about merit and the ability to do the job. A civilian talk show host more interested in texting war plans to his buddies might have… different priorities.

Though all of this remains far afield of the instant issue: Susman Godfrey, giving money to an organization that has in the past filed a civil rights challenge, is not even in the same universe as a threat to national security.

But you miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take, I guess.

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

 

Man accused of checking out books on Jewish, Black, LGBTQ history from Cuyahoga County Public Library and burning them on extremist website

https://www.wkyc.com/article/news/local/cuyahoga-county/man-accused-book-burning-jewish-black-lgbtq-topics-beachwood-cuyahoga-county-public-library/95-60a720fd-0e61-498a-8cc6-a4550e9d6aca

I can not understand the kind of hate or anger at different groups to want to cost yourself hundreds of dollars and possible jail time.  To damage the books doesn’t erase the people they were written about and it doesn’t change history.  It only hurts the library and the community which pays for the library.  Hugs

Man accused of checking out books on Jewish, Black, LGBTQ history from Cuyahoga County Public Library and burning them on extremist website

A man checked out 100 books on topics including Jewish history, African American history and LGBTQ education before allegedly burning them in a social media video.
Credit: City of Beachwood, Ohio/Facebook

CLEVELAND — Cuyahoga County Public Library officials, in a police report obtained by 3News, accused a man of checking out 100 books on Jewish history, Black history and LGBTQ education last month before filming a book burning and posting the video on a social media site described by advocates as a hub for white supremacist, neo-Nazi and extremist content. 

According to an investigative report filed last week by the Beachwood Police Department, the man went into the Beachwood library branch on Shaker Boulevard and applied for a library card on April 2. He was approved for the card and checked out 50 books by the library’s proper procedure.

A library official told police that the Princeton University Bridging Divides Initiative, a non-partisan research effort that tracks political violence in the United States and monitors suspected hate crimes on social media, notified the library that the man posted a photo to Gab.com of a car trunk full of books. The post came with a caption that referenced “cleansing” the libraries, the official told police. The books in the photo “appeared to match the topics” of the books the man had checked out and also had Cuyahoga County Public Library stickers on them, the police report states.

According to the Anti-Defamation League‘s Center on Extremism, Gab is a platform known for lax content moderation policies that is widely used by “conspiracy theorists, white nationalists, neo-Nazis, members of militias and influential figures among the alt right.”

On April 10, the man returned to the Beachwood branch and borrowed another 50 books relating to similar topics. The man told a librarian that his son was a member of the LGBTQ community and he was trying to learn more about it. According to the police report, the librarian found the man’s behavior to be “very odd and concerning,” but the man did not make any threats during the encounter.

The Princeton researchers later reached out to the library again, this time saying that the man posted a video they believed depicted him burning all 100 books. The police report again states that the books in the video, a copy of which was obtained by police, “appeared to match the theme and titles” of the books that were checked out from the library. One of the books shown in the video had a CCPL sticker and was an exact match of one of the books the man withdrew, police said.

At the time the police report was filed on May 2, the man was not facing any charges in connection with the allegations. Police said the library staff were calling only to “document the incident,” and that the borrowed books were not yet overdue. The library told police that the man would be sent a bill once the books became overdue, and that the bill would be sent to collections if it was not paid. 

The books had a combined total value of $1,700, the report stated.

Police told the library staff that “since a contract was entered and payment would eventually be billed,” the incident was likely a civil matter. The investigative report states the Beachwood city prosecutor would be consulted to determine whether criminal charges are warranted.

The library plans to ban the man from its property in the future. Police told the library staff to contact them for help issuing a trespass warning if the man returned.

It’s a spectrum science proves

Some History Posts By Wendy The Druid

Snippets of each. Simply click on the “Read on Substack” links to finish each bit. History is important, and ought to be known. Again, be warned about some language within.

Queer History 104: Martha May Eliot & Ethel Collins Dunham by Wendy🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🌈

Two brilliant women who revolutionized medicine while sharing one bed and one beautiful life Read on Substack

Let me tell you about a love story so powerful it saved millions of children’s lives. Martha May Eliot and Ethel Collins Dunham weren’t just pioneering scientists in a time when women were told to shut up and make babies—they were soulmates who supported each other through nearly six decades of groundbreaking work, homophobia, and institutional sexism. Their love letters tell a story of passion so deep it changed the fucking course of medical history.

Ethel Collins Dunham - Wikipedia

When I think about these two women finding each other in the early 1900s—holding hands under tables at medical conferences, stealing kisses between hospital rounds, and building a home together despite the judgment of their peers—I’m not just impressed. I’m goddamn moved to tears. This is the kind of queer history that reminds us we’ve always been here, always been brilliant, always been changing the world even when the world tried to erase us. (snip-MORE)

Queer History 106: Reed Erickson by Wendy🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🌈

The Trans Guy Millionaire with a Pet Leopard Who Bankrolled a Revolution: How one man’s wealth, vision, and complicated legacy shaped transgender rights in America Read on Substack

Holy shit, you need to hear about Reed Erickson—a transgender millionaire who casually took his pet leopard on private planes while funding the movements that would eventually give trans people like himself basic human rights. This isn’t some fictional character from a Ryan Murphy series; this was a real fucking person who lived hard, loved harder, and threw his considerable fortune behind a revolution most people weren’t ready for.

The Complicated History of Reed Erickson | Autostraddle

Reed’s story hits me in the gut because it’s so goddamn messy and human. He wasn’t a sanitized LGBTQ+ icon with a perfect narrative arc. He was brilliant, visionary, and deeply flawed—a three-time divorcee who became a drug fugitive while still managing to fundamentally reshape how America understood gender. His life reads like a fever dream, but his impact on transgender rights was dead serious. (snip-MORE)

Queer History 107: The Daughters of Bilitis by Wendy🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🌈

From secret social club to revolutionary force – the women who changed queer history forever Read on Substack

In a world where being yourself could get you arrested, institutionalized, or worse, eight women decided to host a goddamn picnic. That picnic club – the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) – became the first recognized lesbian civil rights organization in the United States and sparked a revolution that would change queer history forever. This isn’t just another boring historical footnote; it’s the story of women who risked everything to carve out space for themselves when no one else would.

The Women of Color Behind the Daughters of Bilitis — Malinda Lo

Let’s be real – what started as a way for “Sapphics to dance and talk together” (the most lesbian thing I’ve ever heard) evolved into the first nationally published lesbian magazine in America and eventually led to the first gay wedding in California. These women weren’t just creating community; they were planting the seeds of a movement while the rest of society was trying to pretend they didn’t exist. (snip-MORE)

Unity

Central Park Pride Concert Cancelled Over “Security Concerns” About Singer Accused Of Being Anti-Israel

Central Park Pride Concert Cancelled Over “Security Concerns” About Singer Accused Of Being Anti-Israel

Pride events are very expensive to put on.   Most of the cost is security and insurance.  The more threats from haters, normally fundamentalist religious people, the more security needed and the more costly insurance is.  It is another weapon the haters of the LGBTQ+ community have learned to use to shut down events for people they hate.  So much for freedoms these people keep demanding for themselves but want to deny to others.   Hugs

 

May 7, 2025

New York City’s NBC affiliate reports:

Kehlani ‘s planned concert in Central Park next month has been canceled after New York City’s mayor raised security concerns about the R&B star’s performance during Pride month, organizers announced Monday.

The “After Hours” singer had been set to headline a June 26 concert billed as “Pride with Kehlani” at the Manhattan park as part of SummerStage, an annual slate of free concerts at parks across the city.

But organizers, in their announcement, cited concerns from Mayor Eric Adams’ administration about the “controversy surrounding Cornell University’s decision to cancel Kehlani’s concert at the University, as well as security demands in Central Park and throughout the City for other Pride events during that same period.”

The Cornell Sun reports:

Following the April 10 announcement of Kehlani as the original Slope Day headliner, some students and parents criticized the artist’s anti-Israel rhetoric and social media presence. Cornellians for Israel also launched a petition against the selection of Kehlani as the Slope Day headliner that accumulated over 5,000 signatures.

Cornell revoked Kehlani’s invitation to headline Slope Day over what President Michael Kotlikoff labeled “antisemitic, anti-Israel sentiments.”

But the cancellation sparked criticism from student groups about freedom of speech and institutional neutrality. The Community Slope Day Instagram account urged students to “boycott Slope Day,” writing that Kehlani’s “opposition to the genocide in Palestine isn’t hateful” and that the decision was made “without representative input of the student body.”

It doesn’t appear that Kehlani has any affiliation with NYC Pride itself. The cult is celebrating the cancellation. The recent single below has 32 million views on YouTube.

For What It’s Worth:

Dueling Substacks about the new Pope, one from Charlotte Clymer, one from The Alt Media (language alert); both inoffensively readable by those who frequent here. Well, the language thing maybe. Snippets, not full pieces.

An American for Pope and a Great Choice by Charlotte Clymer

I’m quite happy. Read on Substack

Chicago native Robert Francis Prevost has just been elected the 267th Bishop of Rome, the head of the Catholic Church, taking the name Leo XIV.

He was only made a cardinal in 2023 and was serving as Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, or overseeing the selection of new bishops. Prior to that was a long pastoral career in Peru. He speaks English, Spanish, Italian, French, and Portuguese, and can read Latin and German.

Goodness gracious, y’all, I could not have been more wrong in my prediction for the new pope. I never thought the cardinal electors would select an American. To say I’m stunned would be an understatement.

However, for the record, I did humor his chances in my prediction:

For example, there’s a (very unlikely) scenario in which someone like Cardinal Robert Prevost is elected: a compromise candidate who’s broadly considered safe and palatable between both ends of the ideological spectrum. But there are other cardinals that fit this and Prevost could be in 20+ years.

Okay, so, here are my initial thoughts:

This is a great choice, and I’m quite happy.

Folks need to understand that any choice for the new pope was going to be nominally anti-LGBTQ in a number of ways. What’s important is compassion and openness toward LGBTQ folks, and I’m optimistic that Pope Leo XIV will continue that direction pursued by Pope Francis. (snip-MORE)

The Resistance Pope by Adam Parkhomenko

Thank God the new pope hates JD Vance too Read on Substack

Does everyone hate JD Vance?

Well does the pope shit in the woods?

We might have that second question wrong. But thanks to twitter, we know the answer to the first one. And while we doubt the new pope really hates Vance, it’s nice to know he at least disagrees with the ass-kissing couch-fuck.

Before he became Pope Leo XIV on Thursday, Robert Prevost was on twitter. And it was there that he wrote “JD Vance is wrong,” posting a story that was a rebuke of Vance’s hateful beliefs. It was on twitter that he suggested he wants to battle climate change and believes that Black lives matter and subtweeted about Trump laughing at Kilmar Garcia. Thanks to twitter, we know the new pope is nothing like the new president. https://embed.bsky.app/embed/did:plc:5xeqzwhqcwnczcb62wv3da7o/app.bsky.feed.post/3loohb33sps2i?id=5706215191635626

The new pope is an American. And there’s nothing more American than thinking JD Vance is a douchebag. (snip-MORE, and you can see the bluesky bit on the page)