The Advocate September/October 2022

I’M NOT SURE when I became aware of such a thing as LGBTQ+ history. Consumed with my newly realized high school attraction to a senior girl who’d been driving me home from Godspell rehearsals, I wasn’t paying attention in history class. Not that it would have included lessons about Stonewall, let alone the Mattachine Society, The Ladder, or Lorraine Hansberry’s queerness. I found more to identify with in English literature. I had an inkling of queerness when reading Tennessee Williams’s potboiler Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Later. While reading Willa Cather’s O Pioneers!, something pinged for me in her writing. I was convinced she was a lesbian. Cue me blowing off writing papers to rifle through literary criticism about Cather to prove her queerness to myself — a fruitful exercise,…

Dear Advocates, WE’RE WRITING TODAY w it h some wonderful news for our LGBTQ+ community as well as women and people of color. We are pleased to tell you that The Advocate and all of its assets have been acquired and are now operated by an LGBTQ+ certified company, equalpride! Along with Out, Out Traveler, and Plus magazines and Pride.com, The Advocate is now part of equalpride, the leading LGBTQ+ voice reaching more than 90 percent of the queer media audience every month across digital, social, TV, print, experiential, and soon, a streaming Advocate TV channel! We are Mark Berryhill and Michael Kelley, and we are honored to be among the LGBTQ+ principal owners of equalpride. Additionally, Mark serves as chief executive officer and board member and Michael serves as board chair…

To rev up Pride Month, The Advocate and its sibling publication Out magazine teamed with GLAAD and Google Pixel to celebrate the #SeenOnPixel program. PRIDE: A Night with Google Pixel + GLAAD + Out + The Advocate featured queer luminaries, tastemakers, terrific food, and outstanding music. The event kicked off June 9 in West Hollywood at The London Hotel’s rooftop venue that afforded attendees panoramic vistas of the Los Angeles skyline. Among the notable guests were: Nick Adams, Christine Chiu, Shea Diamond, Braunwyn Windham-Burke, Raquel Willis, Mollee Gray, Jeka Jane, Kent Boyd, Wils, Robinick Fernandez, Howin Wong, Jacob Tobia, Vincint, Billie Lee, Greg Mathis Jr., Elliott Cooper, Bunny Barbie, Kodye Elyse, Anna Shumate, Kelsi Davies, Daisy Egan, Daniel Franzese, Gregory Zarian, and more. Lining the gathering were Zoom Out covers in which classic…

RUNNING. ACTIVISM. TEACHING. Poetry. Cal Calamia isn’t exactly sure what their one thing is, but the 26-year-old high school Spanish and health teacher knows that whatever it might be, it must combine social engagement and athleticism. “I have become a sports activist, and I love writing,” Calamia says. When they won the San Francisco Bay to Breakers 12K footrace in May, they made history by being the first to win the nonbinary category. “I didn’t care if I had won a bag of M&Ms or a medal,” Calamia says, adding that the win was “sweet” because they had to rally allies in the media and the community to pressure the race’s owner, Capstone Event Group — whose founder has donated to farright political candidates — to offer an award in the nonbinary category…

The LGBTQ+ community in Washington, D.C., is trying to wrap its collective mind around the disappearance of a community leader who many queer and trans youth had respected. Transgender activist Ruby Corado fled El Salvador as a teenager and was unhoused for a time. In 2012, she founded Casa Ruby, a bilingual and multiracial organization that provides temporary housing and social services to LGBTQ+ people in D.C. But Casa Ruby’s operations ceased earlier this year when its founder disappeared, leaving staffers without access to their company’s bank accounts, residents unhoused, and employees unpaid. Last fall, when the D.C. Department of Human Services declined to renew a grant that had provided Casa Ruby $839,460 to run a low-barrier shelter, Corado resigned. The Washington Post obtained court records and more than 8,000 emails from and to…

THE SUPREME COURT overturned Roe v. Wade in June, allowing states to ban abortion. A concurring opinion in the case released a flood of concern that marriage equality is also in the court’s crosshairs. The 6-3 ruling came in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which revolves around a draconian Mississippi law. A draft opinion for that case, written by Justice Samuel Alito, was leaked to the press in May. For many LGBTQ+ people, the loss of rights to bodily autonomy was devastating, but Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion was even more chilling. Thomas wrote that the court should revisit decisions that struck down state restrictions on contraception, gay sex, and marriage equality, saying they are “demonstrably erroneous.” “Either the mass of the majority’s opinion is hypocrisy, or additional constitutional rights are under…