Russian president Vladimir Putin has authorised the creation of an institute for the “study of LGBT people” within the country's federal psychiatric unit. At the same time, the State Duma – Russia's lower house of parliament – unanimously approved a bill prohibiting the change of documents and sex-change surgery to be provided for transgender individuals. Human rights activists in Russia have sounded the alarm over this, and they warn that it could lead to individuals resorting to black market surgeries and a spike in deaths, as well as penalties and imprisonment. While Russia has had one of t…

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By Steve Dinneen It was that gloriously sleazy bard of synth-pop Marc Almond who captured it perfectly: “People come from all over the world to see this little place they've seen in movies and read about in history books: Soho.” Soho is London's other Square Mile, filled not with the chatter of high finance, but with the clink of glasses, the whiff of Italian coffee and the thrum of a grand time had and a grander time yet to come. It is the swoop from glamour to grime, it is theatre and art and gossip and whisper; and it is dying on its feet. Yesterday the “night czar” Amy Lamé wrote in the Ga…

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A federal judge in Orlando has delivered yet another legal smackdown to Gov. Ron DeSantis and GOP legislators, this time blocking the state's new anti-drag-queen law. It's hard to keep track of how many times these guys have been caught violating constitutional boundaries. Judges appointed by Republican presidents, Democratic presidents — even by DeSantis himself — have all ruled that legislators and the governor have tried to run roughshod over the state and federal constitutions they vowed to uphold. The politicians have tried to violate your rights and then spent your tax dollars trying to …

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By Rev. Alexander M. Santora For the sixth year, my parish, Our Lady of Grace in Hoboken, celebrated a Pride Mass on the last Sunday in June. We do it on the day Pride celebrations occur all over the world but for a different reason: Ours spiritually affirms the dignity of each person as a child of God. And for the sixth year, about a dozen people protested the Mass across the street from the church in front of the dog run in Church Square Park. For only one day a year, I wished the dogs drowned out the protesters yelling at people coming to and leaving church. This year, I decided to cross th…

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Fox News host Greg Gutfeld, during a Wednesday segment of The Five, insisted conspiracy theorist and 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was right about his “nonbinary” theory. Media Matters for America shared a video of Gutfeld's conversation with his Fox News colleagues, including host Jesse Watters, about testosterone. Gutfeld said, “It's okay to cry, my fellow guys. A survey finds that 71% of modern men confess to being in touch with how they feel and 82% of women are saying the same thing. I can't even see who this survey is. 37% of men say being called sensitive…

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(Reuters) – Russian clinics will soon be staffed with sexologists to help patients “overcome” homosexuality and various sexual “mental disorders”, a health ministry order said, in the latest Kremlin attack on what it calls “non-traditional lifestyles.” The order, which takes effect on July 1, comes amid a clampdown on LGBT rights, which President Vladimir Putin has sought to portray as evidence of moral decay in Western countries and from which Russia must be protected. “The help of such specialists is necessary if a person wants to recover from frigidity, impotence, or such violations of sexu…

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Madonna is determined to bounce back as soon as possible. On Wednesday, June 28, the superstar's manager announced her Celebration Tour was being postponed due to the singer contracting a “bacterial infection.” Though the mom-of-six is “still under medical care” after several days in the ICU, all she can think about is returning to the dance studio. “Madonna doesn't want to cancel her tour,” a source spilled to a news outlet. “She was having a blast in rehearsals and wants to get back to it when she's ready.” Despite the “Like a Virgin” crooner's eager attitude, her “team doesn't want to push …

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Washington (AFP) – The US Supreme Court on Thursday banned the use of race and ethnicity in university admissions, dealing a major blow to a decades-old practice that boosted educational opportunities for African-Americans and other minorities. “The student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. The justices broke six to three along conservative-liberal lines in the decision, which came after years of conservative antipathy to “affirmative action” policies that have sought diversit…

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Lizzo broke down in tears after fellow pop star Beyonce paid tribute to her at a gig in Poland this week. The ‘Juice' star flew to Warsaw to catch the singer's show in the city on Tuesday (27.06.23) on the European leg of her ‘Renaissance World Tour' – and Lizzo cried on camera after seeing Beyonce read out her name as part of a tribute to iconic Black women in music during the track ‘Break My Soul (The Queens Remix)'. She posted the clip online on her Instagram page and wrote: “In that moment I was thinking about baby me, listening to ‘Happy Face' by Destiny's Child and crying myself to sleep…

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New York (AFP) – Madonna is recovering after falling ill with a “serious bacterial infection” that landed her in an intensive care unit for several days, her manager Guy Oseary said in a statement Wednesday. “Her health is improving, however she is still under medical care,” he said. “A full recovery is expected.” Oseary said the 64-year-old pop icon's “Celebrations” tour, due to start July 15 in Vancouver, Canada, was postponed until further notice. The global, nearly sold-out tour was billed as paying homage to her more than four-decade long career. Stops in the United States were to include…

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Madonna's world tour has been postponed after the Queen of Pop was hospitalized less than one month before The Celebration Tour was set to begin. “On Saturday, June 24, Madonna developed a serious bacterial infection which led to a several-day stay in the ICU,” the 64-year-old's manager Guy Oseary announced in a statement shared to Instagram on Wednesday, June 28. “Her health is improving, however she is still under medical care. A full recovery is expected,” he added. “At this time we will need to pause all commitments, which includes the tour,” which was set to kick off on Saturday, July 18,…

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Jonathan Van Ness says he feels most “beautiful” as his authentic self. The ‘Queer Eye' star – who came out as non-binary in 2019 – has learned to “express myself for me” and not for others. Speaking to ELLE, he said: “Until my mid to late 20s I thought beauty was how people responded to me – I was beautiful if people responded to me in a certain way. Then it transformed into I feel beautiful when I present authentically, when I express myself for me. It was around then that my gender journey started. That was when I first started to buck the masc idea. I started wearing tights and crop tops a…

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In some ways, one of the final decisions of the Supreme Court term, 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, has echoes of another case that was decided a few years ago, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado. Both cases involve a small business owner (in the latter a baker, the former a website designer), who claim that Colorado's anti-discrimination law prohibits them from exercising their faith and conscience and compels them to endorse same-sex marriage in their services, and both are represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a far-right legal organization considered a hate group by the Southern P…

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On the evening of 31 October 1980, a Sicilian shepherd stumbled across two intertwined dead bodies under a lemon grove. The bodies belonged to Giorgio and Toni, two gay youths from the town of Giarre, who had gone missing weeks before. Victims of homophobia before and after their murder, the young men's deaths rocked the parochial heart of their town to its very core and shocked an Italy where anti-LGBTQ+ attitudes were still rife. But much like the tragic fate Giorgio and Toni faced, their murder case lay dormant for decades, without any true justice being served in both the courts of law and…

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Conservative activist James O’Keefe added another weapon to the school culture wars earlier this month when he offered to supply Bergen County parents and students with hidden cameras to expose “corruption, lies, and abuse” in the county’s public schools. “If you’re lying, cheating or stealing, you may become the next internet celebrity,” he said June 15 during the public comment section of a contentious, nearly four-hour Westwood Regional Board of Education meeting that touched on the removal of an LGBTQ Pride sign from the middle school lawn. The Bergen County district serves 2,777 children …

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By Andrew Chung and John Kruzel WASHINGTON (Reuters) – In December, during a heated U.S. Supreme Court oral argument involving a collision between free speech protections for business owners and LGBT rights, liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who had joined the bench only about two months before, raised the most memorable question of the day. Jackson, the first Black woman to serve on the top U.S. juridical body, suggested to a lawyer for Lorie Smith, a Christian web designer from Colorado seeking a right to refuse to design websites for same-sex marriages, that the case could be a slipper…

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Caitlyn Jenner confessed she hasn't been a “perfect” stepfather in an honest birthday tribute to stepdaughter Khloe Kardashian. The Good American co-founder turned 39 on Tuesday (27.06.23) and Caitlyn – who was Bruce Jenner, a former Olympian decathlete, before undergoing gender-affirming surgery in 2017 – posted an emotional message to Khloe on her special day. She began: “Happy birthday @khloekardashian. “Being your stepfather was, and is, one of the best things that I was ever blessed with by your mother.” Khloe's dad is the late attorney Robert Kardashian, who her mom Kris Jenner, 67, was …

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Actors David Corenswet and Rachel Brosnahan have been cast to play Superman and Lois Lane in the upcoming film Superman: Legacy. There has been much speculation over who would fill Superman's shoes after Henry Cavill was dropped from the superhero franchise last year. The film, due for release in the summer of 2025, is part of an ambitious 10-year plan to revamp the DC superhero brand. Superman: Legacy, deals with the superhero's journey to make sense of both his Kryptonian alien heritage and his small-town, midwestern upbringing as Clark Kent. Superman through the ages Only three actors have …

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Miss Benny, a former YouTuber gaining ground as an actor on the recently launched Netflix series “Glamorous,” has revealed she is transgender. The 24-year-old Dallas native opened up for the first time about her gender identity, sharing her backstory in an essay published by Time magazine this week. “By 8 years old, I was praying every night to wake up and somehow be like my sisters. In the morning I would wake up in the same body, and cry,” she wrote. “Over time I became highly aware of how unwelcome LGBT topics would be in my hometown. And so I kept my head down and looked for an immediate e…

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By Colette Bennett After a seemingly harmless plug for Bud Light on transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney's Instagram back in April, Anheuser-Busch InBev (BUDFF) suddenly found itself facing a full-blown PR nightmare. Since then, its coped with everything from plummeting sales to criticism from high-profile billionaires such as Mark Cuban and Kevin O' Leary. The brand also lost its spot as the #1 best-selling beer in America for the past 20 years, replaced by Modelo. READ MORE: The Bud Light Transgender Controversy and Its Impacts Explained You'd think the best thing to do in a situation like …

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On Tuesday, Ryan Seacrest announced that he will take over as the new host of Wheel of Fortune. This comes three weeks after the current host, Pat Sajack, announced he will retire.  Seacrest shared the news on his Twitter account stating, “I'm truly humbled to be stepping into the footsteps of the legendary Pat Sajack. I can say, along with the rest of America, that it's been a privilege and pure joy to watch Pat and Vanna on our television screens for an unprecedented 40 years, making us smile every night and feel right at home with them.” He included some praise for Sajack as well, “Pat, I l…

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By Valerie Volcovici WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday launched a $7 billion competitive grant program that aims to give low-income communities access to residential solar panels, the latest effort by the Biden administration to expand renewable energy across the country. The agency will make up to 60 awards to community groups around the country representing specific states, Native Americans and Alaska Natives and multi-state programs. The grants are part of the $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund established by the passage of the Inflation Reductio…

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By Philip Pullella VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Francis on Tuesday accepted the resignation of the bishop of Knoxville, Tennessee following a Vatican investigation triggered by a rebellion by priests and allegations that the bishop mishandled a sexual abuse investigation. The one-line statement from the Vatican gave no reason for the resignation of Bishop Richard Stika, who has denied any wrongdoing. Stika, who at 65 is 10 years short of the usual retirement age for bishops, said in a statement that he had handed in his resignation primarily because of a string of health issues, some of which…

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LONDON (Reuters) – Oscar-winning actor Kevin Spacey is due to appear in a London court on Wednesday for the start of his four-week trial on a dozen sex offence charges. Spacey, 63, denies allegations of historic offences committed against four men which are said to have taken place between 2001 and 2013. The charges against him include indecent and sexual assaults and a more serious offence of causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent, which carries a maximum punishment of life imprisonment. His trial at London's Southwark Crown Court is due to get underway on W…

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By Dawn Chmielewski, Danielle Broadway and Sachin Ravikumar LOS ANGELES/GLASTONBURY, England (Reuters) – Call it Beyflation. Or maybe Swiftflation. The cost of certain goods is retreating in some places, but that doesn't include live music. Concert tickets have surged in price, to the point where economists are noticing. Fans are shelling out a fortune for tickets to see the world's biggest music acts, including names like Taylor Swift and Bruce Springsteen who haven't toured for years. And while few doubt the star power of Beyoncé live, until now people weren't factoring her into national inf…

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