Mayor Muriel Bowser addressed the closure for the first time in a public radio appearance Friday afternoon. She called the closing an “unfortunate error” and said she would “continue to try to lean on” the National Park Service “for a different decision.” At the same time she appeared to defend the decision, saying police had “a lot of events to be responsible for” and that “unfortunately, the public safety issue rose to the top over the public celebration.”
A cyclist draped in a rainbow Equality flag chanted “shame” as she rode loops around the park. Passersby, turned away by police from entering the circle, shouted expletives. A man, driving top-down in a convertible through the snarled traffic around Dupont Circle, shouted, sarcastically: “Oh no! I’m a heterosexual man, and I must be protected from Pride!
The park has been a historic gathering place that has hosted celebrations following the first Pride events in the 1970s, AIDS protests in the ’80s and ’90s and vigils after violent attacks on the LGBTQ community, including a vigil for the victims of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting and a Black Trans Lives Matter rally.
Earlier this week, D.C. Council members Brooke Pinto and Zachary Parker announced that the Metropolitan Police Department had withdrawn its request to close the park following backlash from community members. But federal officials proceeded with the shutdown anyway and have not responded to requests for comment.
“I am extremely disappointed and frustrated that Dupont Circle Park will be closed this weekend despite MPD’s commitment to keep folks safe there,” Pinto said in a statement to The Advocate.
“This closure is disheartening to me and so many in our community who wanted to celebrate World Pride at this iconic symbol of our city’s historic LGBTQ+ community. I wish I had better news to share.”
Underscoring their desire to implement the closure, USPP highlighted criminal incidents that were initially pointed out in Smith’s April 22 letter. Those incidents, which took place during the District’s Pride celebration, included damages to the park’s historic fountain in 2023 that amounted to approximately $175,000.
In 2019, panic erupted at the park after loud popping sounds were perceived as gunshots being fired. However, it was later determined no firearm had been discharged. Seven people were transported to the hospital for non-life-threatening injuries prompted by the chaos that had initially broken out.
Police responded to recent incidents of vandalism to Pride decorations in D.C. The suspects tore down rainbow wraps from poles in the area, according to two incident reports from the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD). One incident is listed as a suspected hate crime. The suspects got away in both cases, according to MPD.
Chris De Anda said he wrapped himself around one of the poles to block the suspect from ripping off the rainbow wrap, thinking that would stop him. It didn’t.
“He starts to rip down the flag, rips my arms off trying to get into them to pull down the paper a little bit more, but the entire time I basically hold on to it,” de Anda described, saying the man scratched his arms a bit to get to the flag.
The lawless, corrupt occupation regime in DC is doing this on purpose as a way to inconvenience, snub and insult the lgbt community. Their long term goal is to silence, cancel and eradicate lgbt Americans, so expect increasing instances of these kinds of things, and worse.
So…a bunch of bigots have been vandalizing things in Dupont Circle, so they close it all off so the people who AREN’T the bigoted vandals can’t go there? Kinda sounds like they’re letting the bigots win here…
Childish petty thin skinned MAGA cultists in the White House just can’t let anyone celebrate anything that isn’t specifically a “Christian” event. I wonder what would happen in Thousands just show up to DuPont Circle enmass, what are they going to do, arrest them all???
I admit my life was different but from the time I was five I knew I was attracted to males. Specifically both sexually and emotionally. One of the hell spawn female siblings even held me down to pound the point that I was “queer” into me. I did not understand why it was wrong, after all they were the ones telling me what to do and farming me out to their teen boyfriends. I craved being held by the boys and not so much the girls. But all the other gay and lesbian people I have talked to knew early also. Preteen time frame. 7 or 8 and up they knew they were gay and either knew they had to hide it or knew they couldn’t so had to live with being attacked for it. These people who think it is a choice, a fad, or a phase need to ask themselves the famous question. When did they know they were cis and straight and was it a choice they made. No they just felt it all their lives, they simply knew it. Same for the LGBTQ+. The only difference is straight cis kids see themselves everywhere from birth. Mommies and daddies, they see themselves in the older kids around them, in the news, movies, TV shows, and the books they read. It feels so natural to them they just don’t question it. They are lucky. Until recently like in the last decade LGBTQ+ kids did not see themselves reflected in society. No movies had kids like them, no books in the library had kids like them. Some kids did not even know the words for how they felt. It was changing in the last ten years. Schools made a push for inclusion and tolerance, movies showed LGBTQ+ kids, books had them as plots or characters. Kids could see themselves and be proud. That is what the haters, the anti-trans / anti-gay bigots want to remove. The ability of kids who are different from the majority to see themselves represented positively in society. It is why they write and pass don’t say gay bills, and why they ban books. It is why they try to ban drag shows and pride events. These people who demand a straight cis world with only them showing in public are terrified of a world where people can be different. To them those who are the other must be destroyed, ideas of acceptance and tolerance must be erradicated and removed. All because they don’t feel different from the majority so the difference must not be real. But it is and we need to realize the scars left on kids who grew up in the times when they never seen themselves represented in society. We must not go backward in time, regressing to a time of hate. Hugs
LGBTQ+ youth advocates gathered outside the Monmouth County Courthouse in Freehold on Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2023, where a school policy that would impact lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer youth was being reviewed in Superior Court. | Amanda Oglesby / Asbury Park Press / USA TODAY NETWORK
A new poll from Pew Research Center sheds some light on just how early LGBTQ+ people are aware of their identities. The study of LGBTQ+ adults in the U.S. found that most respondents understood their identity before the age of 14, with a substantial portion knowing about their identities before the age of 10.
Among gay and lesbian adults, 36% said that they felt they were gay or lesbian before the age of 10 and 35 first felt they were gay or lesbian from ages 10 to 13. Only a minority – 29% – had their first feelings about their sexuality after the age of 14.
The numbers were similar for transgender people. Approximately 33% felt they might be transgender before age 10, and 25% felt the same way between ages 10 to 13. Only 19% had their first feelings about being transgender after the age of 18.
Bisexual people tended to know the latest, but even a majority of bisexual people said that they had their first thoughts about being queer before age 18. Half – 50% – had their first feelings of being bisexual before age 14.
The question often comes up in discussions of LGBTQ+ youth, with many on the right insisting that people can’t know their identities before adulthood. Often, these people claim that only LGBTQ+ people can’t know their identities before adulthood, but then support heterosexuality and cisgender identities in young people.
But these statements fly in the face of LGBTQ+ people’s lived experiences, which often include years of hiding their identities before they create a safer space for themselves to live authentically as adults.
While LGBTQ+ respondents generally first thought about their queer identities when they were very young, most waited until they were older to tell others. While 71% of gay and lesbian people said that they first knew about their sexuality before age 14, only 13% said that they told someone before that age. Approximately 58% of trans people first thought they might be trans before age 14, but only 15% told someone before that age.
This also contradicts the rightwing narrative that young people are saying that they are trans or gay to gain social acceptance and not because they actually identify as such. In reality, young people are saying that they’re straight or cisgender when they actually aren’t, likely to try and get social acceptance.
Pew broke down the results even more and showed that gay men generally felt that they were gay at a younger age than lesbian women, with 40% saying they were younger than 10 years old when they first thought they were gay, as opposed to 29% of lesbian women.
| Pew Research Center
Bisexual women, on the other hand, likely knew earlier than bisexual men. 53% of bi women said they felt they might be bi before they were 14 years old, while just 40% of bi men said the same.
| Pew Research Center
The poll was conducted in January of this year and involved a sample of 3,959 adult LGBTQ+ Americans. The survey asked about a wide variety of topics, including support from family and friends, ties to the larger LGBTQ+ community, and social acceptance.
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At the end of the video the Reverend says our only job is to love god by loving others. The only question is … how much will you love. Good thoughts in this video. Had the church been like this when I was a teen, had the church been inclusive like this when I was a little boy being molested by the Pastor I would have stayed in the faith, in the church. I might not have believed in the magic parts of the bible and I might have quibbled over the facts, but I would have stayed for the community. The environment of people who enjoyed each other’s company and loved the comradery of fellowship. Sadly the churches I saw as a child, as a teen, and as an adult lost people because rather than love, they clung to hate. The joy of feeling better than some other group, of being able to look down on them, to revel in negative emotions meant more to them than hugging those different that maybe they did not understand. They set themselves up as god judging others. Not as a loving flock, but as deciders over who was worthy to be in the flock. They were not the sheep, they wanted to be the Sheppard. Hugs
Wow. A group that initially included no Jews hatched a plan to make support for Palestine a crime. The US is following their playbook and supporting the mass killing & removal of Palestinians.Group Behind Project 2025 Has a Plan to Crush the Pro-Palestinian Movement http://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/18/u…
Cooking the books? Fears Trump could target statisticians if data disappointsProposed rule change could pave way for president to fire economists whose figures prove politically inconvenientwww.theguardian.com/us-news/2025…
OK I admit this guy is a scholar so he uses words and phrases that are sometimes hard for me to follow with my limited education. But I do understand enough to follow what he is saying. Charley Kirk is full of shit on what he thinks they bible says because he is letting his own bigotry and prejudices create what the passages mean for him rather than research it with people more knowledgeable. Jesus and the bible were not against homosexuality as we understand it because they did not see sexuality and sex acts the same way we do. The sin of Sodom was lack of hospitality and men wanting to take a higher sexual role than angels. The people of the time of the bible were like young macho men types today, worried about what looked manly enough, and putting your penis in someone regardless of sex was manly. But the person who took another person in them was not, they were lessor. Women were viewed as lessor, inferior, and so were men that took another male’s penis inside them. It was not about pleasure or love, it was all about status. One thing I like about this guy is he freely admits the bible is context driven and doesn’t know what we know and understand today, that in some areas the morals we have today are superior to that of the bibles for example slavery. Hugs.
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Inch by inch, day by day, and legal battle after legal battle, trans Montanans are dismantling the unconstitutional laws proposed by Republicans meant to destroy trans lives, and indeed, trans life itself.
Last week, they were able to let out a sigh of relief—for now. A Montana judge issued a preliminary injunction on HB 121, which would ban trans and intersex people from using gender-separated public facilities, such as bathrooms or changing rooms, that differ from their sex assigned at birth.
This decision follows a temporary restraining order (TRO) on the law from earlier this year, instituted after legal rights groups like the ACLU challenged it in court for violating Montanans’ right to privacy under the state constitution. A preliminary injunction is a more steadfast barrier—it means the law won’t take effect until after legal proceedings conclude, if ever.
The Attorney General for the State of Montana, like many anti-trans actors, is defending HB 121 using the thinly-veiled premise of “protecting women” from sexual violence. But the injunction filings indicate that the judiciary isn’t buying it.
“The State has not shown even a rational basis for the Act,” wrote Judge Shane A. Vannatta, who oversees a Montana District Court. “The State does not provide evidence of trans female offenses against [cis] women or evidence of offenses being committed in covered entities to support the necessity of immediate implementation of the Act.”
Instead, the court found that anti-trans bathroom bans do not protect women from harm. It only serves to stoke violence against trans women and cis women alike—everyone’s gender and sex becomes subject to public debate when these laws are put in place.
“Each individual observed walking into a restroom of a covered entity does directly and indirectly disclose that individual’s transgender or intersex identity, anatomy, and genetics,” the filing said. “All Montanans regardless of gender […] will not be subject to the prying eyes of others or to governmental snooping or regulation.”
Vannatta further notes that it is already illegal for people of any gender or sex to commit a sex crime, and that there is “no evidence” to support the notion that trans or intersex people “have a predisposition toward such offenses.”
He added that the state’s purported concerns were “disingenuous” and purely “conjecture.”
In reality, trans women—especially those of color—are more likely than any other demographic to be the victims of violent crime. And by using the law to force trans people to out themselves every time they use a public restroom, or to embolden self-deputized gender police, so-called “trans bathroom bans” create a greater risk of violence for everyone. There are countless stories of cis and trans people alike being accosted in bathrooms precisely because of the anti-trans panic these policies create.
The filing further concluded that trans women have been relentlessly targeted by the state government and are in dire need of protection. “Transgender Montanans have been subjected to such a history of purposeful unequal treatment and have been relegated to such a position of political powerlessness as to command extraordinary protection from the majoritarian political process,” Vannatta noted.
The fight against HB 121 is not over, but State Representative Zooey Zephyr—who would be legally forced into the men’s room under the bill her colleagues passed—says she is hopeful.
“The Montana Supreme Court has been clear: every law that targets the trans community is a clear invasion by the government into the privacy of transgender people,” she told Erin in the Morning. “These laws are driven by animus against the community. I expect this law—like all laws driven by the anti-trans fervor—to be struck down by Montana’s courts.”
(Editor’s Note: For transparency, Erin in the Morning founder Erin Reed is the loving wife to the aforementioned Rep. Zooey Zephyr.)
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Alex Bollinger (He/Him)May 29, 2025, 3:30 pm EDTLGBTQ+ youth advocates gathered outside the Monmouth County Courthouse in Freehold on Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2023, where a school policy that would impact lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer youth was being reviewed in Superior Court. | Amanda Oglesby / Asbury Park Press / USA TODAY NETWORK
