I knew we Tucsonans are pretty proud of our fun little city, but there is a whole gay world out there full of amazing people and we should know a little about their lives. With that in mind, I present to you the Gay News section; a few of my favorite news sources talking about Gay News and Events around the world. Check back regularly for constantly updated news and information that truly matters.
Latest news and features from theguardian.com, the world's leading liberal voice
Thailand’s marriage equality laws come into force on Thursday, with hundreds of couples set to tie the knot in mass weddings in Bangkok
Tawach Chaweewong gets goosebumps just thinking about his upcoming wedding to his partner of almost eight years, Thanakorn Srikornthai. It will not only be a joyful celebration on a personal level, but also a historic occasion.
Thailand’s LGBTQ+ community has fought for decades for the right to equal marriage and, finally, on Thursday 878 district offices across the country will open their doors to same-sex couples to register and get married. It will make Thailand the first country in south-east Asia to recognise equal marriage, and only the third in Asia, behind Taiwan and Nepal.
Continue reading...Budde, 65, asked president to ‘have mercy’ on immigrants and LGBTQ+ people in prayer service on Tuesday
The Right Rev Mariann Edgar Budde made headlines this week after she used her sermon on Tuesday at the National Cathedral prayer service for the inauguration to implore Donald Trump to “have mercy upon” immigrants and LGBTQ+ individuals.
Budde, 65, is the first woman to serve as the spiritual leader of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington. She has been leading the diocese since her election to the role in 2011. Before that, she served as the rector of St John’s Episcopal church in Minneapolis for 18 years.
Continue reading...Mariann Edgar Budde’s inaugural prayer service sermon draws fury from conservatives as others praise her ‘courage’
After a bishop at the National Cathedral prayer service for the inauguration on Tuesday implored Donald Trump to “have mercy upon” immigrants and LGBTQ+ people, many have spoken out about the remarks – including Trump himself.
In a lengthy social media post early on Wednesday, Trump called the Right Rev Mariann Edgar Budde a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater” adding that “she brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way” and criticized her tone as “nasty”.
Continue reading...President decrees end of DEI offices, roles and initiatives within 60 days and repeals civil rights-era equity policies
All US federal employees working in diversity offices must be put on paid leave by Wednesday evening, the Trump administration has ordered, after instructing government agencies to shut down the programs.
“Send a notification to all employees of DEIA (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility) offices that they are being placed on paid administrative leave effective immediately as the agency takes steps to close/end all DEIA initiatives, offices and programs,” said a US office of personnel management memo.
Continue reading...Why community-based grassroots politics may be key to surviving the next four years. Plus, comfort foods in the run-up to Ramadan
Hello and welcome to The Long Wave. This week Donald Trump was inaugurated in Washington, and the moment feels familiar but also very different. I spoke to the Guardian US colleagues Marina Dunbar and Adria R Walker about inauguration day and how Black Americans were bracing for a second Trump term. But first, the weekly roundup.
Continue reading...Trans communities expected Trump to deliver on his threat to roll back their rights. That didn’t make it hurt any less
Right after Donald Trump won the election, Max Kuzma set to work. As a trans man living just outside of Cleveland, Ohio, he knew he needed to get his documentation in order. He considers himself lucky that he already legally changed his name, but rushed to make sure his passport and other documents reflected that. Like so many other trans Americans, Kuzma worried Trump would make good on his promise to roll back LGBTQ+ rights and threaten trans healthcare and the overall safety of the queer community.
“I was anticipating an attack,” Kuzma said. Still, watching Trump sign an executive order that rolled back trans and non-binary people’s rights felt like “a twist of the knife”.
Continue reading...Right Rev Mariann Budde’s appeal amounts to bold public criticism and prompts frosty response from US president
The Episcopal bishop of Washington has appealed directly to Donald Trump to “have mercy upon” communities across the country targeted by the new administration’s immigration and LGBTQ+ policies.
“There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families, some who fear for their lives,” the Right Rev Mariann Budde said from the pulpit at an inaugural prayer service sermon at the Washington National Cathedral, as Trump sat stone-faced in the front row, alongside Melania Trump and JD Vance.
Continue reading...In frank and hilarious style, the author recounts the significant encounters that helped make him who he is
In this, Edmund White’s sixth memoir, the American novelist and critic observes that a universal prudishness about sex sits alongside the fact that it is constantly on our minds. Sex, White writes, with the nonchalant wisdom that runs throughout this book, is “a language one speaks” that is both “communal and isolating”. Transcribing the vocabulary of sex – especially sex between men – has been White’s lifelong literary project, most famously in the semi-autobiographical 1982 novel A Boy’s Own Story. Loves of My Life approaches the task with refreshing candour. The result is something like an erotic almanac, charting the shifting sexual mores and conventions of gay life through seven decades, from the “oppression of the 1950s” to the “brewing storm in the 2020s against everything labelled ‘woke’”.
White begins the memoir by confessing that, despite having “a small penis”, he has been “stung” by sexual desire since the age of 10. This early moment of authorial undress is a typical piece of self-satire, part of his puckish compulsion to make himself the butt of the joke. It is, he admits in one of many sharp asides about the mechanics of life writing, an auto-fictive sleight-of-hand, an act of “literary daredevilry” which here makes him a consistently endearing, amiable narrator. The book’s funniest moments arise in dialogue that White has himself speak as a delightfully dry and “curiously wise” adolescent. In one scene, he gauges the receptiveness of an apparently straight potential lover by inventing a tall tale about a promiscuous queer schoolmate. Noticing that his audience has become aroused, he announces: “Well it’s me. I’m the cocksucker.”
Continue reading...Midsumma organisers say the decision to exclude uniformed Victoria police from march is based on ‘trauma-informed practice’
Victorian police officers will not participate in this year’s Midsumma pride march after organisers announced officers would only be allowed to march if they did not wear uniforms.
About 100 police, including the chief commissioner, Shane Patton, marched in the event last year, but police were confronted by a group of 50 protesters, leading to a clash between the two groups.
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Continue reading...The incoming president is ready to sign a slew of executive orders on day one of his second term. Here’s what’s planned
In the grand theatre of American politics, presidential inaugurations typically follow a familiar script: the oath, the speech, a few carefully chosen executive orders to satisfy campaign promises. Franklin D Roosevelt used his first day to tackle the banking crisis. Barack Obama moved to close Guantánamo Bay (though it remains open). Donald Trump’s first term began with a single executive order targeting Obamacare.
But as Trump prepares to return to the White House for round two, he’s promising to tear up the traditional presidential playbook entirely. With more than 100 executive orders reportedly prepared, his agenda represents a new attempt to reshape American governance through sheer executive will. It’s a blueprint that, if enacted, would touch everything from international trade to immigration, from cryptocurrency to classroom curriculums.
All of the Trump executive orders and speech fact checks
Experts alarmed by Trumps’ crypto meme coins
Elon Musk appears to make back-to-back fascist salutes
What is birthright citizenship?
Continue reading...
The essential step toward a world in which people fleeing war, persecution, and poverty no longer need to risk their lives on overcrowded rickety boats, impale themselves on razor wire border fences, or be preyed upon by human traffickers is the establishment of safe and legal pathways that meet both the protection needs of refugees and the labor needs of countries of immigration.
Though far from perfect, the Biden administration, to its credit, did take steps to establish safe and legal pathways. Building on decades-long programs for refugee resettlement and executive parole authority, Biden introduced innovations, including establishing “safe mobility offices” in South and Central America to identify and process refugees and embracing new technologies, like the CBP-One application, that provided orderly alternatives for scheduling asylum appointments at US ports of entry. Homeland Security statistics show that as these safe and regular pathways expanded, irregular border crossings dropped.
With a flurry of executive orders signed by President Donald Trump, purportedly to stop an “invasion” at the US southern border, regular migration pathways, particularly for people fleeing conflict and abuse, have effectively been closed. These orders suspend US refugee resettlement indefinitely, terminate the parole programs for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans, cease use of the CBP-One application, and revoke President Biden’s executive order “To Provide Safe and Orderly Processing of Asylum Seekers at the United States Border.”
With the stroke of a pen, much of the overseas refugee and parole infrastructures built slowly since the Vietnam War era appears to have been dismantled. The end of these humanitarian programs would signal the end of a remarkable partnership between the US government and ordinary people often in faith-based groups who have worked together for decades to welcome newcomers and enrich the country. These orders also proclaim the abandonment of US leadership that has been so instrumental in building and nurturing responsibility-sharing between well-to-do donor and resettlement countries and those countries on the front line of mass migration that have historically – and still – struggle the most to provide asylum to those fleeing conflicts or crises in neighboring countries.
And what happens in the absence of safe, orderly, and lawful pathways? Well, lawlessness and chaos, with brutal enforcers on both sides of insensate walls keeping the privileged and the unwanted apart. If these orders stand, the world will certainly become a more dangerous, less humane place for everybody, regardless of which side of Trump’s divide we find ourselves.
Tony Ray Baker
RE/MAX Professionals
(520) 631-TONY (8669)
Contact Tony Ray: [email protected]
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