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A serious threat are those who know how to walk the fine line between first amendment rights and that defined as illegal harassment

LOS ANGELES – With cyberbullying at an all-time high, all states now have laws requiring schools to respond to this type of online harassment. But are those laws working? The escalating mental health crisis amongst queer youth would suggest that no, they are not. 

According to a pre-covid pandemic study conducted by stopbullying.gov, about 16 percent of students in grades 9–12 nationwide experienced cyberbullying. Dosomething.org reported that approximately 37% of young people between the ages of 12 and 17 have been bullied online- with 30% experiencing incidents more than once.

Among those are a significant percentage of LGBTQIA+ youth who are consistently targets of online bullying and hate speech. In fact, the organization says that about half of all LGBTQ+ students experience online harassment — a rate higher than their cis-gender peers . 

Many queer youth suffer acute mental health crises due to cyberbullying and have nowhere to turn for help and guidance. This is where Rainbow Youth Project (RYP) steps in. 

“The primary purpose of Rainbow Youth Project is to promote the health safety and well-being of LGBTQIA+ young people,” Michael Garrett, Communications Manager told the Blade. “Our nationwide mental health program is our core program that provides meaningful access to free, indefinite mental health counseling to LGBTQIA+ teens who otherwise would not have access to it.” 

“Cyber bullying has just gone through the roof,” Garrett said. “We get hundreds of calls every day that say ‘I don’t even want to turn my phone on when I get home because now the hate follows me home. I block and they make a new account, I block, and then they make a new account. I report it and I get told that this is not a violation.’”

Sadly, Garrett said, the need for mental health crisis intervention has quickly become overwhelming. 

“This past weekend we had 741 contacts to Rainbow Youth Project between Sunday morning at 8 AM and Monday morning at 8 AM. Those were all mental health needs.”

All in, RYP receives an average of 300 calls per day – such a large number that they have had to triage their mental health care which Garrett told The Blade “is a big no no,” because often, the calls RYP receives are of youths in acute and immediate distress. 

“We had a child just three weeks ago who was a trans girl from Louisiana,” said Garrett. “She had taken a very large quantity of various medications and all she wanted was somebody to speak to you while she went to sleep. We were able to do a welfare check immediately, and we were able to get her to the hospital. We were able to save her life.” 

Many of these calls come to Garrett and his Rainbow Youth colleagues as a result of cyberbullying, which leaves these queer youths traumatized and isolated and seeing no other recourse than taking their own lives.

Garrett shared two stories with the Blade:

“Tony Vallejo was a young man who was a gay teen. His parents were very involved with the church and he had a boyfriend at that church who was his age. That boy’s parents found their text messages and outed him. They literally emailed everyone in the church and in their community that Tony was a sexual predator and trying to make their son gay.”

“Tony ended up being attacked online because people were passing this false information along. He attempted suicide twice and had four or five hospitalizations. He was so distraught over the cyberbullying that he was undergoing that he was stabbing himself with pencils just to try to get rid of this pain.”

“All of this traveled through social media. It traveled through TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram. People were driving by the family’s house screaming ‘fag’ from their cars. The family couldn’t even go to a Walmart without people, saying ‘I saw online that your son is a sexual predator.’”

Finally, the family had to resort to leaving the state, uprooting themselves from Texas to California to save their son’s life. 

“If they hadn’t moved,” said Garrett, “Tony was literally going to be a victim of his own taking.” 

Christian Peacock, was another queer youth whose story went viral after RYP started working with him. 

“Christian was on his front porch in his hometown in Utah hugging his boyfriend when a car was driving by and these teens started calling them all kinds of slurs. Those teens then came back and beat Christian up on his front porch. The family ran out and videotaped it. The New York Daily News reposted it, and the assailant was arrested and just a matter of 24 hours later.”

“After he was arrested, it was found that he was part of a Mormon sect. Many of that clan started posting things about Christian’s family online and calling him a liar, saying the assault didn’t happen like he said it did. This manifested into people tormenting him, very similar to the Vallejo’s, by pulling up in front of his family’s house with squealing tires, yelling slurs. The police department had to send someone to drive by their house every fifteen to thirty minutes just to make sure the family was okay all as a result of what was posted online.”

Although Christian had been hospitalized with a concussion after the filmed beating, the false rhetoric that Christian was lying about the attack continued to spread on social media. The bullying wreaked havoc on Christian’s depression as he became more and more isolated from his peers and his community at large. 

When Christian’s assailant was sentenced, the judge ordered him to do community service with an LGBTQIA+ organization in Utah. This caused even more outrage amid the homophobic community, which then began to harass the organization itself online.

“He couldn’t go outside of his house, because people were sitting across the street waiting for him to come out,” said Garrett. “All of that harassment was a result of all the things that were being posted online.”

Alarmingly, so much of this hate speech and false rhetoric on social media could have been but was not stopped by the platforms themselves.  

“All these hateful comments should have violated the TOS [Terms of Service] on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Even though those things were reported, they were never removed.”

“Let’s just be honest, social media platforms do not care. They do not care,”  Garrett added.

Garrett noted he recently read about a social experiment wherein a group created and submitted purposefully hateful and bigoted posts to various social media platforms as paid ads. The platforms accepted these advertisements, which used words like “groomer” and “fag.”

When the group recalled these ads, explaining that they had only submitted them to test whether the platforms would accept them, the platform representatives responded claiming that they would not actually have allowed the ads to run, despite having already accepted payment for them in advance. 

It is no secret that social media has become an open playing field for hate speech. So many perfectly innocuous posts get taken down for “violating” the platform’s cryptic guidelines, while others, like the ones created for the aforementioned social experiment, run rampant and unchecked by these sites.

With so many social media users frustrated at the confusing rules of what is and is not allowed to be posted, California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed AB 587, authored by Assembly Member Jesse Gabriel, into law. The new bill is designed to hold social media platforms more accountable by demanding transparency of their rules and how they intend to implement them. 

In a recent interview with The Blade, West Hollywood’s first ever queer, Iranian Mayor, Sepi Shyne, explained that social media platforms need to treat online hate speech as real threats that can lead to real violence. 

“We also have to reconsider our laws about what is considered inciting violence,” Shyne said, “because those laws didn’t consider social media at the time. When those laws were created, they were about people saying things in person and then asking whether or not it is probable that violence will ensue from that interaction. But now we have people on social media saying horrible things that do lead to violence.” 

In addition to violence, another serious threat are those who know how to walk the fine line between what is considered first amendment rights and that defined as illegal harassment. These people are aware of those types of laws mentioned by Shyne, and actively harass and traumatize LGBTQIA+ youth to a certain point but without straying into unlawful territory. 

“There is a major box chain store known across the country for its inclusivity,” Garrett told The Blade. “It is known for having a specific section for pride, rainbow shirts, rainbow bracelets, things of this nature. In the last forty-three days we have had four reports of teen trans people who have been in this store shopping in that particular merchandise section who have been verbally attacked by adults. It is almost as if these people were stalking that section of the chain’s locations to harass people who were looking at those items.” 

Garrett explained that these adults avoided being charged with hate crimes by never physically assaulting or touching their targets.

“I think these people know just how far to go without going too far which tells me that they are actually putting training into this. I’m not a cop. I could be wrong. But it’s almost just too coincidental that in all four of these instances, people never physically threatened or touched, or did anything actually illegal. They were just making comments and being disruptive and possibly stalking.”

Garrett also made the connection between these verbal attacks and a particular TikToker who made it his public mission to stake out the queer section of this chain with the intent of “hunting down LGBTQIA+ people.” These videos did get removed initially, but resurfaced at a time coinciding with documented four attacks. 

One of these four victims is being featured in an article in the Advocate. 

“The harassment was so severe that she attempted suicide after the interaction. Someone was following her around the store, saying that she was ‘one of those freaks who was trying to sleep with children,’ calling her a pedophile and a groomer. This was a 17-year-old child. This man followed her out of that store. Like I said, we have had four kids who have called, and one who actually attempt suicide as a result of that attack. The other three were in acute crisis and they had to be met by a psychologist immediately,” Garrett said.

Sadly, there is only so much organizations like the Rainbow Youth Project can do for these victims. 

“I am happy to say that while her situation was very serious and very dire, she is doing well but she is very isolated. Her parents do not allow her to leave home without one of them or another adult that they know so that whole family is really suffering from this entire 10 to 15 minute interaction. It is trauma,” he added.

As Republican state legislators continue to pass bills stripping LGBTQ+ rights into law in GOP-led states, many parents turn to Rainbow Youth Project for things like gender affirming care, which they cannot attain in their home states. 

“The second program taking up a substantial amount of Rainbow Youth Project’s resources is the transgender non-surgical gender affirming healthcare assistance program. The program advises and assists young individuals who are underinsured or uninsured by setting them up with physician consultations and continuation of care. Like their mental health program, this assistance is nationwide, benefitting states like Oklahoma where gender affirming care is illegal. In October, the program was assisting twelve youths. Now the program assists 174 youths and has a waiting list of 223,” Garrett noted.

Despite all the help and advocacy they provide for targeted queer youth, RYP itself is not safe from virulent online hate speech and threats of violence.

“We have been called groomers and pedophiles,” said Garrett. “We had an accusation a few weeks ago that we were running a sex trafficking ring of children. We also have been accused of performing surgeries on children. These allegations are absolutely not true. We offer suicide prevention and mental health help. We do not perform surgeries on children, but Moms for Liberty and [the anti-LGBTQ+] Libs of TikTok attacked us, and said that we were indoctrinating children. People read that, and then they attacked us even though these are lies. They don’t take the time to research what we do or how we do it, but they attack us because they believe what they are seeing online.”

“Lance (RYP’s founder) does not take any bullshit. He served a ‘Cease and Desist‘ to the guy on his job hours after the tweet about sex trafficking posted. He also turned it over to the attorney general in the state of Minnesota where if you make an online statement that you cannot actually support, it is a crime. It’s a misdemeanor, and Lance actually told him in the letter, ‘I have reported you to the attorney general for the state of Minnesota and we will prosecute you.’ He removed the tweet immediately. We need to track these people down and serve them with these notice of intent to file litigation against them .”

Eric Nathan, a private investigator specializing in cybercrime, told The Blade that in many cases it is almost impossible to track down most cyberbullies, unless they link their handles directly to their personal emails, which many know not to do. 

“Last year we had so many bomb threats that we had over 24 pride events that we had planned in June for young people that we had to cancel,” said Garrett. “We had to cancel every single one of them because the threats were so strong and they were coming from Libs of TikTok and Moms for Liberty people. It was just too risky to expose children to that.” 

The online hate not only threatens youthful victims and supportive organizations, but misinforms parents who then are too frightened to seek assistance for their LGBTQ+ children. 

“As you might or might not know, 50% of LGBTQIA+ kids who seek mental health help cannot get it. 20% of those kids cannot get it because their parents will not consent. So when we are dealing with parents trying to get their consent for treatment, the biggest barrier is fear because of what they have read online,” said Garrett. We hear things like, ‘I read on Facebook that you’re going to transition my son. You’re not going to be happy that he’s gay you’re not going be happy that my daughters is a lesbian. You want everyone to be trans now. You’re going to teach my son that he is trans and not gay when you take him to counseling.’”

“But all of that false narrative is coming from the information that is on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok that they will not remove. It’s all lies, and it’s all misinformation, and they know that, but they will not remove it and that is exactly what happened with Tony Vallejo. Moms for Liberty started feeding his mom so much nonsense. They were sending pictures of mastectomies and telling her, ‘If you take your son going to counseling, they’re going to tell him he’s trans and they’re going to start doing surgeries on him.’ This woman was so convinced that if her son participated in mental health help, that they were going to put him in genital mutilation surgery.”

As in the cases of the children they help, hate against RYP often turns into physical actions.

“We have had to have all kinds of security measures since last year just going to these extremes to protect staff. Our staff has left the office and found zip ties on their car doors. Our staff has received death threats.” 

“At one point, our founder was getting in his car in front of our office and a phone call came in that said, ‘you can tell him that I just saw him get into his black car with his black and gray duffel bag. He was on his phone.’ Then the law enforcement had to get involved and had to try to find out where the threats were coming from and it’s all from stuff that they are starting online.”

And, also as in the cases of cyberbullying they deal with every day, social media platforms continue to be unhelpful in the face of hate says Garrett. 

“We submitted all the tweets that were threatening us to Twitter, and they responded by suspending our founder and president’s accounts. Eventually we got them back, but that was the response. We had threatened Twitter with a lawsuit, and that was their response sort of telling us not to push it.”

Editor’s Note: To access mental health help visit the Rainbow Youth Project website (link). RYP accepts phone calls, emails, and social media DMs. 

Why are so many gay influencers launching underwear lines?

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Why are so many gay influencers launching underwear lines?

Some influencers use their microcelebrity status to launch their own businesses- when it comes to gay influencers, one dominates, underwear

By Rob Salerno | WEST HOLLYWOOD – Social media has made it possible for gay men to connect with like-minded audiences all over the world, and in 2023, it’s basically axiomatic that with great social media reach must come great monetization. 

But while some social media influencers are content to get paid by flogging brand-name fashions, workout supplements, and vacation packages, some influencers prefer to use their microcelebrity status to launch their own businesses. And when it comes to gay influencers, one business in particular seems to dominate: underwear.

From porn stars to musicians, to models and artists, gay social media stars of all stripes seem to be in a rush to launch their own underwear lines. 

And this does seem to be a gay male phenomenon. While there are plenty of trans people and cis women marketing their own underwear lines, they all seem to be primarily trained fashion designers. It really does seem to just be gay men who make the journey from Insta-fame to undie-mogul.

So, what is it that makes the skivvies business so appealing for gay influencers? We talked to some of these upstart influencers for a briefing on the whys and hows of launching an underwear line.

For Steve Grand, owner of Grand Axis Clothing and a country-pop musician who first rose to internet fame ten years ago with his music video “All-American Boy,” underwear and swimwear seemed like a natural outgrowth of his brand, especially as his various social media channels began to focus more and more on showing off his ripped body in skimpy clothes. 

“I was always very picky about how things fit me,” Grand says. “After years of building up hundreds of pairs of speedos and underwear and jocks, I started to reach out to people who offered custom fits, so I began to have things custom made. I started sending them patterns, and I started driving them nuts. I would get a great fit, and I would post them on Instagram, and people would reach out and ask where can I get them. I figured I should start my own line because I’m already down in the details.” 

Grand Axis was launched in December 2019, which turned out to be an auspicious time, right before the world shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As Grand’s opportunities to perform live music dried up, he was able to devote his full attention to Grand Axis. Just over three years later, the fashion line is now Grand’s primary focus.

“It’s completely flipped in terms of income,” he says. “I’ll still do several gigs a year. But with Grand Axis, it hasn’t allowed me the time to record something new and write and get back out there. Which is a shame, because I really do miss that.” 

Grand designs every piece, coordinates with manufacturers, fills orders, handles customer service, and, of course, does all the social media marketing himself. 

“I create so much work for myself to get it how I want instead of just slapping a logo on something,” he says. “If I thought it would just a great way to monetize my social media presence, it’s consumed my whole life.”

Social media remains the most important marketing tool for Grand Axis, with Grand’s posts to his various channels showing off his underwear and swimwear driving the bulk of his orders.

“I’m saving on modelling fees by doing it myself. It’s a great excuse to stay in shape,” Grand jokes. “I’m really just posting there to get customers and connect to people through the brand. I want Grand Axis to stand outside of me. I don’t want to have to be the face of it, but it’s helping to sell it right now.”

Los Angeles-based model Dominic Albano, who’s shot with famed photographers like Rick Day and whose image graced the cover of the inaugural issue of the relaunched Playgirl magazine last summer, launched his self-named underwear line earlier this year after a decade of experience modelling other designers’ underwear.

“I booked all the underwear jobs, because I’m a little too muscular and a little too short for runway or high fashion,” Albano says. “I was working with all these brands and thinking if I were to make my own underwear, I would do it differently. It would be more classic and have better material,” he says.

A decade into his modelling career, Albano finally decided he needed a change.

“I wasn’t booking for a while, and I was like, this is bullshit. I wanna be busy all the time,” he says. 

Albano says he spent months researching how to get started and designing his first collection.

“I did my research. I found manufacturing companies and reviewed their portfolios. There were some I didn’t vibe with. Then I found one that was very responsive, very informative, and wanted to help me,” he says. “I got fabric swatches and I was just going by the feel and the touch and the weight.” 

Although Albano had no formal training in fashion design, he knew that he wanted simple designs, subdued colors, and sexy cuts.

“I did the drawings by hand here, taking pictures and sending them to the factory. I would say, whatever style you have in your head, make it skimpier, because this is for gay men,” he says. “They got my vision, created samples, and then they would send them to me, and I would revise them.” 

Albano is clear-headed about where his thousands of followers come from and why they’re buying his underwear. He’s done plenty of fully nude photo shoots over his career and been featured in magazines and gay body blogs for years. 

“I take it for what it is,” he says. “I’m a deep thinker, but I don’t talk about where I view things politically or my feelings. I try to stay very private because I know what they’re there for. They want to keep that mystery. They don’t want to know I have the same struggles as them. That’s what I’m providing: A fantasy, an escape, things they might not be able to do.”

And he’s never shied away from building that community with his gay fans.

“Being gay, sexuality, and the images I make go hand in hand. A lot of gay men express their sexuality through their underwear or imagery,” he says. “A lot of us are exhibitionists, we like to lounge around in our underwear.”

Boston-based OnlyFans creator Fabian Bonavento credits his background in marketing and his strong links to his local queer communities for helping him get his Fafabon underwear and clubwear line off the ground last summer.

“Working in queer spaces, you get exposed to a lot of talents, jobs, creatives. It gave me the opportunity to put together what I wanted to do,” he says. 

He had been reselling clothes before the pandemic, when he got the urge to start designing his own wares.

“I would go to brands and reach out, and I got a lot of rejections,” he says. “I was talking to this person, all online during the pandemic, it became like hey, I saw that you make dresses, do you know someone who can make underwear? It was just pitching myself over and over again. 

“Now I work with the manufacturers, some of the materials come from India, Portugal, China. So I had these contacts, but it was really just rolling with it and trying it.”

Bonavento says he was motivated to go into underwear specifically because he felt there was a gap in the gay underwear market for comfortable, everyday undies that are built for all bodies.

“Many of the gay underwear brands, they have a certain niche to them. This is for a furry person, or codified for sexuality, and all that. I thought it would be cool to have a brand that doesn’t just corner a person to a specific type,” he says. “The plan is to create a lifestyle brand that is the go-to brand to feel comfortable and sexy, supported and risqué.” 

He says the brand focuses on comfort and quality, without sacrificing the sexiness that queer people want in their underwear.

“It’s about the material and how we construct the products,” he says. “The seams are double-seamed inside so there’s no access to get your hair stuck. It’s made to be very smooth and very comfortable. We have sizes up to XXXL and we’re going to start XXXXL soon.”

Speaking of very large, Bonavento’s nearly 40,000 Twitter followers are likely attracted by the many pictures he shares of his, um, biggest asset. 

But Bonavento is far from the first well-endowed man from the gay porn world to venture into the underwear industry. Porn star Rocco Steele launched his X7 Collection (supposedly named for his measurements) in 2016, although he decided to shut it down in February. Miami-based OnlyFans star Abel Pirela has his own eponymous underwear brand too. 

Maybe it’s the next logical step after gay fashion icon Andrew Christian spent the better part of two decades associating his underwear with gay porn stars.

“I’ve always had this strong social media presence, and I thought, how can I capitalize on this, instead of just posting pictures?” Bonavento says. “To have a good online presence, you should know how to be online. I live on the internet and also study the internet. I’ve gotten the chance to work with different brands in social media marketing. I enjoy doing it, but because it started with me, I have to go along with it because it translates into sales.” 

Like the other influencers’ brands, Fafabon is still a one-man show, but Bonavento has a long-term goal of collaborating with other creators to serve the wider queer and trans community. 

“The plan is to collaborate perhaps with trans designers who understand how this project should be made. I hope it’s sooner than later,” he says.

Chicago-based photographer and OnlyFans creator Alex King is a bit of an outlier with his Tie Dye Undies project, which he describes as less of a brand and more of a “disruption model.”

“It all kind of came about because at my birthday party we had a tie-dye party and we had a bunch of white underwear and made them,” he says. “I had one of my friends come over and model, and I posted the photos on Tumblr and people started asking, where can I get them?”

King now makes and releases batches of tie-dyed Calvin Kleins as a kind of personal art project.

“It was a way of adding some color to a stale menswear space. I was shooting some models, and I just noticed the clothes were boring and I just added some color, some zest,’ he says. “I think it’s a bummer how color is disappearing from the world. Even McDonald’s is grey.”

But while the King’s art undies have their fans, he says it’s never been his goal to make money from them.

“It’s not like one of those things where I would tell people to make a brand because it’s hard work, and it’s a bit of a crapshoot,” he says. “Mine’s a disruption model, more fun, more whimsical. It gives me a little bit of happiness to know that those things are out there living their lives.” 

Moving product has gotten more difficult as social media channels crack down on posts they consider sexually explicit, especially posts featuring gay men, King says. 

“A lot of the free ways of marketing are dwindling on Tumblr and Instagram,” he says. “Even innocuous photos of men in underwear [on Instagram] are being flagged for being sexually explicit and ad tools are being taken away.”

King says social media remains the main way he markets his undies, even though he tries to keep his underwear business separate from his burgeoning porn work. 

“Sometimes there are models on my OnlyFans that are Tie Dye Undies models, but I try to keep that separate,” he says. “People think [sex is] the next thing that happens in a photo shoot. It has happened, but I try to keep those boundaries.” 

With the sudden explosion of gay underwear brands launched by social media influencers, one could be forgiven for assuming that this was a business that was an easy cash grab. But it’s clear that the men behind these brands are creating them out of a genuinely love for underwear and are putting in long hours of work to get them out in the world. 

It’s a good reminder that it takes passion, dedication, and talent to stand out in the crowd online, even when you’re in your underwear.

“I want more people to see my art; I want to see how it makes other people feel, you know, and all that sort of stuff” 

PASADENA – At a large apartment complex in Los Angeles’ Studio City neighborhood, Grey DeLisle – also known as Grey Griffin – and her 12-year-old son, Tex, followed a man down a long hallway and into his apartment. 

It was a cool night in late summer 2019, and DeLisle – a voice actor known for her role as Daphne in the “Scooby-Doo” franchise – was there for a psychic reading a friend had gifted her for her birthday. 

DeLisle described her friend, who was working as a producer on a show about psychics, as a skeptic. “Ninety-nine percent of people are full of it,” DeLisle recalls her saying. “But I went to this one guy who was amazing, told things not my like that nobody could know, he freaked out all the producers. He’s amazing.” 

So, DeLisle and her son entered the man’s apartment. “The guy gave me all my stuff about my grandma that nobody knew, conversations I had with people – stuff that was definitely not on the internet,” DeLisle said. 

During the reading, Tex was sketching in a notebook when the psychic turned to Tex, then looked back at DeLisle and said: “Your son is an artist.”

“Oh, yeah, you know, he likes to draw,” she remembers saying. 

“No, your son is gonna be one of the biggest artists of the 21st century,” the psychic said. “He’s gonna be a household name.” 

Jefferson “Tex” Hammond – now 16-years-old with a head full of long, curly hair – is proving those words may have meant something after all. 

In 2021, at 14-years-old, the California School of the Arts, San Gabriel Valley student became the youngest ever artist to exhibit at the prestigious LA Art Show – where he sold nearly all of his paintings. 

The feat proved so newsworthy that the Los Angeles Times featured Hammond – an abstract artist whose website bio describes his work as “a window into the mind of a young talent maturing in a chaotic world” – in an article last year. 

Since then, the Pasadena-based artist – who does not label his sexuality – has exhibited his work in art shows worldwide, from Los Angeles to Paris.

Arthur J Schwartz, a Willamina, Oregon-based salesman who collects Hammond’s art, said he “immediately was taken” by Hammond’s paintings. 

“His work is just so compelling that I just couldn’t take my eyes off of it,” Schwartz said. “I mean, in fact, my reaction was this kid is going to be the next Michel Basquiat [an American artist who rose to fame during the Neo-expressionism movement in the 1980s] – I mean, that’s how taken I was with his work.”

The success excites Hammond, but he was also quick to note that he doesn’t want to let his achievements hinder his progress. 

“Life is so much more than what we accomplish here,” he said, adding: “I gotta keep moving, I gotta keep moving always. I can’t let myself get wrapped up in, like, oh, I’m so special.” 

Like many 16-year-olds, Hammond doesn’t quite know who he is yet – both as a person and an artist. It is this exploration, he said, that motivates him and gives him a sense of purpose. 

“I don’t even know what I want to do with my art yet,” he said. “I’m still taking in inspiration from different art. I haven’t truly found what I want to do with it yet.” 

There is one thing Hammond is sure of: “I gotta paint,” he said. “I need to not give up, and I need to paint every single day.” 

When asked how she would describe her son, the first words that came to DeLisle were “old soul” – there’s “always been like a little old man in his body,” she said. 

DeLisle remembers flying with a two-year-old Hammond – his legs crossed, an in-flight magazine in hand. He wasn’t reading, she recalled, just taking in the photos on the glossy magazine paper. 

Hammond turned toward her, DeLisle said, pointing to a cello in a spread about a symphony orchestra. “Oh my God,” she thought, “the Lord gave me a kid that I can handle.”

Hammond may not remember the moment, but he, too, describes himself as an old soul – at least, that’s what he’s heard his whole life. 

“I may be young, but like, I already feel way older than I am,” he said. “I just turned 16, but people have thought I was 18 for two years now.”

“But a lot of that comes with the hype,” Hammond said.

Sometimes, Hammond said, he feels embarrassed – not necessarily with his accomplishments but with what he sees as a leg up and the pressure that arises as a result.  

“My mom has connections, you know; I’ve gotten a lot of help along the way,” he said. 

DeLisle is a Grammy- and Emmy-Award-winning veteran voice actress, comedian and singer-songwriter with almost three decades of experience in the entertainment industry. She describes her voice-acting bio as “braggy” to her 85,000 followers on Instagram. 

Recently, DeLisle has starred in Nickelodeon’s “The Loud House,” voicing the role of Lola Loud – one of the show’s main characters. Hammond joined his mother on the series’ third and fourth seasons, voicing the show’s main protagonist, Lincoln Loud.

Hammond’s father, Murry Hammond, is a musician who co-founded the alt-country band the Old 97s, which has released over a dozen studio albums and appeared in films and television. Murry Hammond is now a solo artist, preparing to release a new album, “Trail Songs of the Deep,” later this year. 

“I think that some people feel a little bit of anger or resentment towards me because of that,” Hammond said. 

He also noted that his journey as an artist is just beginning – if it has even started. 

“It’s amazing that I’ve done art shows, but I have a long way to go,” he said. 

Hammond didn’t “know quite how to respond” to a question about the statement he hopes to make with his art. He believes it takes an artist years – maybe even a lifetime – to find the true meaning of their work. 

“I’m not even in my career yet,” he said. 

For Hammond, art is compulsive. “I can’t sit down at a table and not draw,” he said. “It’s seriously like a problem sometimes.” 

Hammond said sometimes friends at school tease him for his drawing habits. “They’re like, it’s so funny,” he said, “you can’t sit down without drawing – even at the lunch table.”

“When I’m not drawing, I feel antisocial a little bit,” he said. “I just don’t really know what to do with my hands.” 

Like him, Hammond’s art is “ever-changing” – “I’m never going to want to stop or cut it off,” he said. 

“To be honest, I just want to be an old man and live in a cabin and lock myself away and paint,” Hammond said. 

In November 2022, Hammond and his family went to London – the first time he had stepped foot in the city. 

He remembers standing on the iconic Tower Bridge, gazing at the Tower of London, officially His Majesty’s Royal Palace and Fortress of the Tower of London – a historic castle on the north bank of the River Thames. 

“I love architecture,” Hammond said. “I love seeing the way humans have developed – making everything down to the finest detail, getting everything sculpted perfectly.” 

After fixing his eyes on the 900-year-old castle’s Kentish rag-stone, Hammond broadened his vision to see the city behind it. 

“I feel like it completely changed my perspective,” he said. “We can build these amazing, glowing sculptures – but also, there were people hundreds of years ago who could do these unimaginable sculptures on the sides of buildings that we probably don’t even know quite well how to do now.” 

Traveling, Hammond said, is fueling his growth as a person and inspiring his art. 

“When I go to different countries, the art is still just as good, but it completely changes,” he said, adding: “I want to bring in all of those elements. I feel like the more I travel, the more I’m just going to see and the more inspiration I’m going to take because I take inspiration from everything.” 

The places Hammond visits – whether an American city like Miami or what’s widely viewed as one of the most beautiful cities on Earth, Paris – affect his creativity and the direction of his artwork.  

“Naturally, when I visit a place that really makes me feel good and puts me in a creative space in my head, then I’m going to want to see what it does to my art,” he said. “I feel like it’s time to branch out more with my art.” 

Hammond has big goals for his art, so traveling allows him to get more eyeballs on his paintings. 

“That’s a big part of it, too,” he said. “I want more people to see my art; I want to see how it makes other people feel, you know, and all that sort of stuff.” 

In September 2022, Hammond took a trip to Paris for the Focus Art Fair – an annual contemporary art fair organized by HongLee, an international art agency based in Paris.

Before that show, Hammond said, he felt like he was creating solely for a specific art show – “following a specific theme or listening to a specific type of music or something just to get that certain flavor.” 

However, Hammond noticed a shift afterward. “I feel like since I’ve gotten such an influx of creativity,” he said. 

Hammond said his Paris art show was the “most exhilarating trip I’ve ever been on.” 

To Hammond, the LA Art Show was “one of the biggest things” to happen to him. But Paris is his favorite city – he “instantly fell in love with it” when he visited the city before. 

“So the fact that I heard that I got accepted into the Focus Art Fair was just like, surreal to me – traveling to one of my favorite cities and showing and just seeing people from around there, getting to know my work,” he said. 

But more than the show itself, Hammond was happy to have a chance to experience the city. 

“Being at the Louvre, that was incredible,” he said. “I mean, heck, it’s where they show the Mona Lisa, like, I mean, it’s pretty much any artist’s dream.”

On his last day in Paris, Hammond remembers going on a ferry trip around the city on the Seine. He and his mother, DeLisle, were on the boat’s top deck – where others were snapping photos of Paris on either side. 

“I wanted to tell her how thankful I was,” he said. “Because I feel like, you know, growing up, I saw a lot of starving artists and artists who really didn’t make it. They may have the talent but may have just never gotten the resources to show who they really were.”

So, Hammond turned to his mother and said, “Thank you, thank you for making everything that this is possible.”

And, he said, he is going to continue saying that. “I really do feel like my mother and my father have played a really big card in what this is becoming,” Hammond said. 

In the midst of his junior year of high school, many days look the same for Hammond – up at 7 a.m. to make the train, which he will take to the end of the line and sit in school for hours, thinking about art. 

After school, it’s back to the train and home – snapping photos along the way, saving the inspiration for later. 

“It honestly feels like the same day sometimes because of school and everything,” Hammond said. 

Soon, though, it will be summer – and Hammond has an exciting one lined up, set to do an artist residency in Brussels. 

“The Brussels thing, it’s been driving me,” he said. “I’ve been looking at pictures of the city, and I’m like, ‘Oh, my gosh.’ You just get to go outside and have a drink at a cafe and paint – that’s my dream. That is my dream. I don’t get to do that in LA.” 

DeLisle is busy searching for a babysitter, as she described it, to look after Hammond while he’s in the city. “Who knows what happens in Brussels? I don’t know,” she said. “Is it the Vegas of Europe? I don’t know.” 

Looking past the summer, Hammond is excited to continue exploring himself and his art – and, in turn, show that to the world. 

“I feel like I’m waiting to show people what the next me is going to be,” he said, adding: “I want to show everybody everything that I am. I don’t want to confine it to a certain skill set or a certain style or color choices or anything like that. I want them to get a taste of all of it.” 

Hammond is especially excited about his future beyond school. “I just can’t wait till I’m an adult,” he said. “I can just like wake up and treat it like a nine-to-five and just paint.” 

He may not know what the future holds, but one thing is sure: He won’t stop searching. 

“I’m always searching,” Hammond said. “I’m always searching for what the next thing is going to be.”

Mary and Nancy used their “outside” activism to impact “inside” policy- the devoted couple died hours apart

By Karen Ocamb | WEST HOLLYWOOD – Mary Lucey’s eyes told all. ACT UP/LA’s firebrand was grounded, determined but deferred to Judy Cagle, the trembling center of the April 1, 1992 news conference at Being Alive’s Silver Lake headquarters. Cagle’s compassionate release from the California Institute for Women in Frontera five days earlier enabled the 37-year-old mother of a 16-year-old son to go home to die of AIDS.

Mary, also formerly incarcerated and diagnosed with HIV/AIDS, had been fighting for Cagle’s freedom for two years. Listening to Cagle beseech the public to care about women inmates, Mary’s eyes betrayed the moral burden she bore with anger, anguish, love and compassion. 

“I want people I left behind to know I love them,” Cagle, who would die six months later, told reporters. “Just don’t give up. You’ve got to fight. You’ve got to know your lives are important.”

Mary felt the same, as she shared with HIV Plus magazine: “After I was released from prison, I felt I could not turn my back on women who still suffer behind bars. It is our responsibility to continue to bring attention to the cruelty that people with HIV/AIDS face in the prison system.” 

That was the Mary Lucey I met in 1990 after she joined ACT UP/LA (the Los Angeles branch of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) and fell in love with Nancy MacNeil, the HIV-negative leftist AIDS activist who became her constant companion and future wife. Though I thought Nancy eyed me with suspicion and enjoyed the dyke art of intimidation, I was taken by their love story. Like Paul Monette and Stephen Kolzak (and later, Winston Wilde) and Jeff Schuerholz and Pete Jimenez, the ACT UP/LA couple defied death and danced with delight in a civil rights and healthcare minefield.  

For Mary and Nancy, the dance ended unexpectedly on Saturday, Feb. 11. Mary got up and started to prepare breakfast, letting Nancy sleep in as usual, close friends say. But when she checked on Nancy, she found her beloved unresponsive. Nancy had died.  

Mary called her neighbor and Jeff Schuerholz, her very close friend from ACT UP/LA. Jeff immediately called another close friend, Keiko Lane and the two promised to speed up to Oceano in San Luis Obispo County, 174 miles north on US-101 from Los Angeles. Mary was excited for them to come up. However, when Keiko and her partner Lisa picked Jeff up, a family member called to say Mary had also suddenly passed away. 

Both women had complicated health issues. After one accidental bone-breaking fall and several back surgeries, Nancy was fighting back with physical therapy, though she had become noticeably quieter. Mary — who was in constant pain — was her stubborn, brave primary care provider. Nancy died of natural causes. The cause of Mary’s death is still undetermined. 

Timer, their old mixed boy, looked for them after almost everyone left. The sweet animal orphan is being cared for by a member of Mary and Nancy’s community.”     

Learning how to be there for people with AIDS (PWAs) was terrifying, loving, infuriating and ultimately, spiritual. After I left the mainstream press in 1984 and started getting involved in the West Hollywood community, I noticed that some of my gay 12 Step friends were getting sick and disappearing. I found them isolated in hospitals where nurses left food outside and we were forced to wear masks and gowns and not touch them. I felt powerless. I didn’t know what to do except not judge and be of service. I took people to doctors’ appointments. I cleaned up messes, consoling friends deeply ashamed about their uncontrollable vulnerability and loss of dignity. I sat at bedsides. I learned that if a friend lashed out in anger it was because he trusted that I wouldn’t leave. I learned to talk about death and how to help my friends die. And like so many others, I searched for spiritual meaning in this ignored growing decimation of human beings.

I longed for a storm of rage from which an army of ghost-bearers would arise to confront this casual hate spewing from government to next door neighbors. Finally, in March 1987, a phalanx of the first wave of ACT UP resisters emerged in New York, harangued into being by curmudgeon playwright Larry Kramer. 

ACT UP/LA, founded in December 1987, held meetings in Plummer Park, West Hollywood. I thought about joining, but decided I could best serve as an eyewitness to history with the gay press instead. My first freelance story for Frontiers Newsmagazine was “Ten Days that Shook the FDA,” focused primarily on the hunger strike by PWAs Wayne Karr and Lou Lance in August 1989 at Crescent Heights and Santa Monica Boulevard. The Coalition for Compassion urged the Food and Drug Administration to add a parallel track to their glacier testing procedure and release experiential drugs to PWAs as compassionate triage. Luckily, writer Bruce Mirken joined ACT UP/LA and reported for the LA Reader on activism, scientific developments, and the pharmaceutical alphabet of AIDS drugs like AZT and ddi. I wrote about policy, politics and events that challenged and deepened our humanity in the face of death. 

ACT UP/LA’s trans AIDS Diva Connie Norman taught me about the range of AIDS issues. Mary Lucey was my second teacher, stressing the invisibility of women and lesbians with AIDS – something I missed because of the active leadership of Connie, Mary, Nancy, Judy Ornelas Sisneros, Patt Riese, Helene Schpak, Keiko Lane, Terry Ford, Mary Nalick, Cindy Crogan, Robin Podolsky, Stephanie Boggs, and Roxy Ventola McGrath, whose remembrance was written by her friend Nancy with whom she, Mary and others co-founded Women Alive, an empowerment organization for women with HIV/AIDS. 

“Roxy made us promise to keep fighting. She told Mary to continue to be loud and rude and in people’s faces! She told her to keep doing AIDS activism and AIDS work in whatever capacity that she could be effective for as long as she is healthy enough,” wrote Nancy, Women Alive’s founding executive director. “She told me to keep writing, to tell the women’s stories and give them information about the disease, and try to inspire women into action. She asked me to write about courage and foresight, and to keep trying to give women the incentive to fight back. ‘You’ll write the story, won’t you, Nan?’ Yeah, Rox, I’ll write it. But, you gotta tell it, OK? ‘No,’ she says, ‘I lived it, you tell it.’”

A native Angelino, Nancy Jean MacNeil was both a street and information activist. Schooled by police brutality during student protests against the Vietnam War and as a member of the Black Panther Party, Nancy attended the Institute for The Study of Nonviolence in Palo Alto and became an activist and organizer in the gay, lesbian, women’s and Lavender Left movements of the 1970s and 1980s.  In 1982, she lost her first friend to AIDS. Julian Turk had been diagnosed by Dr. Michael Gottlieb at UCLA, one of the first identified with the mysterious new disease. 

In 1990, after attending the first Women’s Caucus meeting, Nancy joined ACT UP/LA and applied her organizing and protest skills to fighting AIDS. She and Mary advocated for women prisoners and shouted at the CDC, the FDA, the National Institutes for Health and medical researchers to wake up and recognize that their government-funded treatment studies barred women of childbearing age from participating in clinical trials — thus ignoring how women’s bodies might react differently to dosages and drug treatments. Additionally, the exclusion of women in the CDC’s definition of AIDS meant women could not get insurance coverage or qualify for Social Security disability. 

Nancy shrugged off living in Mary’s media shadow, such as when Mary was dubbed “The Woman Warrior” by the Washington Post in an Oct. 1, 1991 story about ACT UP and the march on Congress as part of the second AIDS Treatment Activists Conference (ATAC2). 

“The Woman Warrior Mary Lucey, 32, a former bus driver and blacksmith and ex-con from Los Angeles, woke up to the fight against AIDS two years ago when she was six months pregnant and learned she was HIV-positive. She couldn’t find a doctor to deliver her baby. Not in Riverside County, where she lived then, or in all of L.A. What she found instead were doctors who prescribed huge doses of AZT that made her lose 50 pounds during her pregnancy. She also found a cause,” the Post wrote. “(Worried by the probability that she had only a few years to live and wouldn’t be able to raise her child, she gave up her baby, who was born in San Francisco, to a couple who have other foster children.)

“‘A lot of women don’t have the inner strength to fight…But I don’t take no for an answer. So, I became an activist,’” Mary told the Post. ‘We don’t know how many women have AIDS. Doctors say you’re not at risk. They don’t even include us in AIDS death statistics. My main concern is to get them treated.’”

Mary and Nancy were in Washington DC on Sept. 30, 1991 when Republican Gov. Pete Wilson vetoed AB 101, the gays rights bill he had promised to sign. Though the streets of LA were strewn with thousands of LGBTQ activists, PWAs and HIV-positive protesters, AIDS had taken a back seat to the politics of the time though Democratic presidential nominee Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton talked about ending the AIDS crisis in challenging Republican President George H.W. Bush, branded with the Reagan-Bush stain of death.  

Then came the unexpected. On Nov. 7, 1991, LA Lakers superstar Earvin “Magic” Johnson, 32, held a press conference announcing that he was HIV positive. The world gasped. Magic didn’t look gay or sick — which meant women could “catch” AIDS, too. Suddenly, the “Women and HIV: Facing the Epidemic” conference at UCLA two days later was packed. 

Dr. Julian Falutz told the UCLA conference that AIDS had become one of the top five causes of death for women between the ages of 20 and 40 and the leading cause of death among Black women in that age range. 

“We’ve been ignored,” Mary told the LA Times. “Women are starving for information. It’s been a need for a long time.”

Nancy and Mary were also members of the ACT UP National Women’s Committee and Nancy – hired by ACT UP/LA member and Being Alive executive director Ferd Eggan to work for the AIDS organization — used her highly regarded Women Alive newsletter to push issues and actions, including forcing the CDC to change their AIDS definition to include women-specific diseases, opportunistic infections and medical ailments. 

In New York, Katrina Haslip, a formerly incarcerated Black Muslim woman, was also a strong voice demanding a new CDC definition, according to ACT UP/NY historian Sarah Schulman.  A direct action campaign organized by Haslip and a slew of others “lasted for four years,” Lux Magazine reported in a story about Sarah’s monumental book, “and was led by women of color, poor women, formerly incarcerated women, and lesbians who rallied together under the slogan, ‘Women Don’t Get AIDS, We Just Die from It.’” 

On Jan. 1, 1993, the CDC officially revised their AIDS definition, adding, among other symptoms, cervical cancer, cervical dysplasia, pelvic inflammatory disease, and infections such as vaginal candidiasis or chronic yeast infections.    

Three months later, during the April 1993 March on Washington, Mary and Nancy were among 19 members of ACT UP Network’s Lesbian Caucus who met with Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala who forms lesbian AIDS task force. The CDC subsequently funds lesbian-specific prevention programs and NIH finally studies lesbians.  

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, ACT UP/LA brought urgent visibility to the dire need for expanded hours, rooms and services at LA County’s horrendously overcrowded AIDS Outpatient Clinic known as 5P21 and for an AIDS unit at County USC Hospital. “We are tired of government bureaucracy telling us it doesn’t matter. We are tired of government genocide,” Connie Norman told the LA Times. 

Deemed “militant” because of their rude, in-your-face tactics, ACT UP/LA and Queer Nation organizers frightened producers of the March 25,1991 Academy Awards at the Shrine Auditorium and the 1992 Oscars at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion but most of the AIDS and gay media visibility resulted from attendees wearing the new AIDS Red Ribbons created by Visual AIDS.  

Meanwhile, in 1991 another hidden group — injection drug users sharing dirty needles — was starting to draw attention within ACT UP/LA. “Initially the needle exchange committee attracted people from different committees, including novelist Steven Corbin” from ACT UP’s People of Color Caucus. The committee “as founding member, visual artist Renée Edgington, recruited more volunteers to launch (Clean Needles Now),” reported X-traonline.org. 

But California’s drug paraphernalia laws made possessing and distributing syringes a crime. Assembly Speaker Willie Brown and LA State Senator Diane Watson passed two bills in the California Legislature to decriminalize needle exchange – but Gov. Pete Wilson vetoed both, claiming the programs would become “a magnet for IV drug users.”  

Additionally, there was concern that the needle exchange committee pulled money for syringes and other supplies out of the general fund, cutting into money available for other ACT UP/LA actions such as the huge bus trip to Frontera women’s prison on Nov. 30,1990 to protest the segregated substandard AIDS ward, Walker A. Mary spent 18 months at Frontera and was keenly aware of the lack of proper nutrition, medications and qualified medical staff. On May 4, 1992, ACT UP/LA organized a statewide protest at the California Department of Corrections in Sacramento which mainstream media ignored. 

In 1993, new LA Mayor Richard Riordan appointed Ferd Eggan as the city’s third AIDS Coordinator. Ferd brought Nancy with him and hired Mary as a City AIDS Policy Analyst. By then, Mary had become adept at public hearings, including one before the CDC in 1992 on changing the definition of AIDS that was turned into a play in 2020 entitled “I, of Course, Was Livid.”  

“The outcome of this hearing will have a profound impact on my survival. And yet, a more offensive and revolting fact is that we die without even being counted, as if our lives didn’t mean anything. Don’t our lives count? Then count our deaths,” writer Terri Wilder recalled Mary as saying.  The play’s author, Valerie Reyes-Jimenez, noted that the CDC cut off Mary’s mic in the middle of her speaking. “She was telling the truth, and the truth was really uncomfortable,” she said. Nancy plugged the mic back in. 

Ferd, Mary and Nancy used their “outside” activism to impact “inside” policy, including launching of the first intergovernmental AIDS Policy Committee in 1996, pooling resources of 40 city governments within LA County and organizing a national conference on Women with HIV/AIDS at the Staples Center in 1997 featuring women of color with HIV/AIDS. And officially being a government official under a Republican mayor didn’t stop Nancy from stopping traffic at Wilshire Boulevard and Veteran in Westwood on Dec. 1, 1994 by sitting in the streets around burning coffins representing the AIDS dead — before being yanked away by her hair by an LAPD cop. 

One of Ferd’s greatest achievements was convincing Mayor Richard Riordan that he should declare a state of emergency for the City of Los Angeles to suspend the drug paraphernalia law and to fund and enable Clean Needles Now to operate without harassment from law enforcement. By Ferd’s death in July 2007, the LA Times reported that CNN, “which annually serves about 12,000 people, removed more than 1 million potentially lethal syringes off the streets last year, according to figures from the city’s AIDS coordinator’s office.”

“There is no question in my mind that the program saved thousands and thousands of lives,” Mary told The Times. 

Mary took over as Interim City AIDS Coordinator for two years after Ferd retired on disability in 2001. She was the first woman to hold the job. (See a White Paper on the City’s AIDS efforts here.) As the City noted in their statement on her passing: “She used tactics that confronted power outside of the system as part of ACT UP that carried on for the rest of her life. In 2002, she participated in a hunger strike to demand the lifting of federal prohibitions on the use of medical marijuana in the state of California. Yet at the same time, she worked within the government to ensure government responses had people like her in mind, and took her seat at the table to represent women like her in AIDS policy and planning.”

Mary and Nancy moved to Oceano where Mary’s vociferous challenging of town officials won her a spot on the local community services board where she served two terms. In 2021, the couple joined Jordan Peimer, Helene Schpak, and Judy Ornelas Sisneros in creating the ACT UP LA Oral History Project (see ACTUPLA.org). Meanwhile, Mary continued to participate in panels and Mary and Nancy occasionally ventured back to LA/WeHo for events such as “Lesbians to Watch Out For: 90s Queer L.A. Activism.” 

My last message from Mary was on Feb. 8 with a Facebook note after the death of my little dog Keely. “What a beautiful relationship the 3 of you had. Our hearts go out to you. Its hard to let go when you have the perfect team. Were thinking of you and Pepper.”

What a beautiful relationship you and Nancy had, as well. And here, look at us. We’re happy. Thank you for being my friend.

Karen Ocamb is the former news editor of the Los Angeles Blade. She is an award-winning journalist who, upon graduating from Skidmore College, started her professional career at CBS News in New York.

Ocamb started in LGBTQ media in the late 1980s after more than 100 friends died from AIDS. She covered the spectrum of the LGBTQ movement for equality until June 2020, including pressing for LGBTQ data collection during the COVID pandemic.

Since leaving the LA Blade Ocamb joined Public Justice in March of 2021 to advocate for civil rights and social, economic, and racial justice issues.

She lives in West Hollywood, California with her rescue dog Pepper.

“I realized my purpose is to illuminate- I did with my family & my advocacy work. I’ve done the same to illuminate & elevate people”

WEST HOLLYWOOD – West Hollywood Mayor Sepi Shyne announced at noon Tuesday her plans to run for the congressional seat currently held by Rep. Adam Schiff, who is running to replace California’s senior U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein who is retiring in 2024.

Shyne, the first Iranian queer female Mayor, took time out of her schedule to speak to the Blade about a lifetime of combatting prejudice, hate, and violence.

Mayor Shyne received her Bachelor of Science from San Jose State University with a double concentration in Accounting and Management Information Systems and a Minor in Drama with an emphasis in Directing. She received her Juris Doctorate with a specialization certificate in litigation from Golden Gate University School of Law in San Francisco.

She then served on the City of West Hollywood’s Lesbian and Gay Advisory Board (now LGBTQ+ Advisory Board), on the City of West Hollywood’s Business License Commission, and on the Los Angeles County Assessor’s Advisory Council on which she continues to serve.

Additionally, she has led many boards and organizations, including the LGBT Bar Association of Los Angeles and as a Board of Governor and Steering Committee leader with the Human Rights Campaign Los Angeles.

Shyne is a Co-Organizer of WeHo Neighbors Helping Neighbors, a community group created during the pandemic to help get resources to seniors, people with disabilities, and people in immunosuppressed households via social media and volunteer check-in calls. In every board and organization she has led, she has recruited and elevated women and people of color to leadership positions to create more diversity, inclusion, and equity.

“In the LBGT organizations and human rights campaigns, I was always fighting for equality,” said Shyne. “I made sure I brought in women and women of color into leadership positions because that was greatly lacking.”

 Shyne was encouraged by her peers to run for office. 

“I started learning more about the city, and I didn’t know that West Hollywood only had one queer woman in office in its entire, at that time, thirty-six years. That’s it. And no women of color ever in elected office.” 

“I lived in the city for ten years. I really wanted the city to get back to its progressive ways. I felt it had really lost its purpose.”

“I felt that West Hollywood had lost its way. There were so many LGBTQ folks under our umbrella who didn’t feel included in our community. I knew having representation in office would inspire others as it did for me.”

“We have done so much in changing our ordinances so that our trans siblings feel more welcome, and there is still more work to do. The bisexual community that is still so often ostracized gets discrimination from straight folks and lesbians and gays.”

“My wife and I separated in June. She was bisexual. When I was on the advisory board, we had the first bisexual pride celebration, and I was so glad that we did that. Since then, we have dedicated funds to Bi Pride week in West Hollywood.”

“I didn’t realize all this until after I had a deep spiritual awakening. I am a lawyer, but I am also an energy healer. My company is called Soulillume.” 

“I realized my purpose is to illuminate. This is what I did with my family and in my advocacy work. I’ve done the same to illuminate and elevate the people.”

Born in Iran, Shyne was two years old when the revolution happened in her hometown in Tehran, Iran’s capital. The Iranian Revolution, also known as the Islamic revolution, was a period of violent takeover by the Islamic regime that ultimately ended the Pahlavi dynasty in 1979 and resulted in the Imperial State of Iran being replaced by the Islamic State of Iran.

“As a little girl, my whole life turned upside down,” Shyne told The Blade. 

“It was very traumatic to experience the chaos around me, the chaos that my family was experiencing, and all the women when the revolutionary guard and Islamic regime came in. For a little kid, it felt like it happened overnight. They implemented so many rules. There were no more clubs. Women could not wear makeup. No drinking. Women couldn’t be in the streets with men anymore, and they had to wear the hijab.” 

“And it was violent.” 

“They would whip people in the streets. They would torture people. Free speech was being taken away.” 

As it is for so many children of the time, the brutality of the Islamic takeover took a deep toll on Shyne’s childhood. 

“Everyone was in shock. Everyone was going through trauma. There wasn’t time for my parents to take care of me. I learned that I needed to take care of myself because the adults could barely take care of themselves.”

Following the end of the revolution in 1979, the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988) continued to ravage the lives of Iranians, creating even more tragedy and chaos.

“It was very traumatic when the war started,” said Shyne. “When they were getting closer to Tehran, we would hear the sirens and the jets, and we would run down to the basement because of the fear of being bombed.”

Shyne told the Blade that her constant fear for her safety was further exacerbated by her gender: “I was so scared to be a girl because being a girl meant violence.”

In Tehran, Shyne lived on the top floor of a triplex and would often play soccer with her downstairs neighbors. Because she was fearful of what might happen to her as a young girl playing in the streets, Shyne created a male alias to make her feel safer. 

“My hair was short,” said Shyne. “I made up a boy name, Parviz, and told the neighborhood boys I was Parviz.”

Sadly, as Shyne stated, times were terrifying for both men and women. 

“They put my dad in prison for speaking against the regime. Then he started planning our escape from Iran.”

Shyne’s father made visa arrangements for their family but was unable to secure a visa for Shyne’s fifteen-year-old brother, who was of drafting age for the war. 

“Those boys were all dying on the front lines,” Shyne told The Blade. “So they smuggled him out of the country. They sent him off with some stranger.” 

Shyne, age five at the time, was concerned for her brother, whom she described as her “protector.” The family made their way to Italy, where they remained for a while before finally arriving in America. Her brother arrived safely as well. 

The move to America in September of 1982 saved Shyne’s life in more ways than one. “My mom had no idea my dad planned to stay here permanently. But he had made a plan with my eldest brother that that was the right thing to do. That may not have been the best thing to do in a marriage, but as a little girl who was a lesbian, I don’t think I would have survived if he had not done that.”

While America proved to be safer for Shyne’s family than Tehran, times were anything but easy, 

“It was a very difficult time for Iranians here with xenophobia and Islamophobia. People would see these Islamic extremists saying death to America and associate them with us, so we started calling ourselves Persian. All the while, we didn’t know if our families were going to be killed.”

Shyne’s family moved to her sister’s home in Cupertino, CA, where Shyne attended school.

“I was undocumented until I was 16. But I was able to go to school. I was supposed to have started school in Iran. There, you learn English, Arabic, and Farsi. But my dad hadn’t wanted me to start because he didn’t like that we also had to learn Islam, which they were forcing on the kids.”

Because Shyne had not started learning English in Tehran, she struggled in her first years of schooling in Cupertino.  

“I didn’t speak very much English. Some girls started bullying me. They started throwing wood chips at me, calling me ‘camel head’ and ‘terrorist’ because they knew I was Iranian. I ran over to one of the school’s adult volunteers on yard duty. Because I didn’t know how to speak English, I couldn’t explain that I was being bullied. I was the one who ended up getting detention.” 

“That day was one of my first lessons about the importance of knowledge. I told myself, ‘You need to learn English as soon as possible to speak up for yourself.’ My mom told me I used to have nightmares and that my first words in English were, ‘Leave me alone.'”

Shyne, who, like many immigrant children, felt that she was living two lives, one at home and one in school, feels that learning to stand up for herself was a pivotal moment in her life. The next pivotal moment was coming out. 

While she may not have had the support or language to express it at the time, Shyne knew she was queer from a very young age. 

“I remember being in Iran at age 4 or 5 and having a crush on my neighbor. I remember sitting on the entry steps to the building and holding her hand, and kissing her cheek. It just felt naturally right to me. Then around eight years old, I had a lot of cousins who ended up emigrating here, and they were talking about boys, boys, boys. I thought, ‘Wait. I’m a girl. They are girls. But they keep talking about boys. But I’m attracted to girls.'”

While Shyne knew she was attracted to girls, actually defining herself as a lesbian took some time. 

“When I hit puberty, I thought maybe I was bisexual. I kissed so many boys in high school, and I just didn’t feel anything. But I would say to my close friends that I’m bisexual because I knew deep down that I was into girls. When I was fifteen, I fell in love with my best friend. It was completely emotional because we were young, and she was Mormon. She was definitely one of my soulmates.”

However, Shyne’s love for her first soulmate was put to an end. 

“She had such a difficult life,” explained Shyne. “She was getting a lot of pressure from her Mormon family over me. They told her, ‘Sepi is taking you down the wrong path.’ But we were actually the best kids. We would just drive around and play music and dance around my car. I love to dance. But there was so much homophobia at the time. So much. She actually freaked out at some point and stopped talking to me for a few years.”

Around the same time, when Shyne was seventeen, she connected with her first-ever girlfriend. 

“There was one girl who came up to me and said, ‘Hey, Sepi, I have some playboy magazines at home. I would love for you to come over and look at them with me.’ She was very attractive. I went over to her house. That was the first time I kissed a girl. It was fireworks. It was like how it was on TV when boys and girls would kiss. She was my first girlfriend.”

I called my best friend, and I said, ‘Oh my gosh. This is what happened. Maryanne and I made out. I’m totally not bisexual. I need to figure out how to come out to my family.'”

“So I came out to the younger family members first. Then I came out to my mom when I was nineteen. She realized I had stopped dating boys, and my parents were constantly trying to set me up, which is very prevalent in the Iranian community. I was so uncomfortable it was awful.”

Shyne’s queerness was difficult for her traditionalist mother to process, so Shyne, always the educator, gave her mother some recommended reading, including Betty DeGeneris’ book about her daughter, Ellen DeGeneres coming out, and another book called Prayers for Bobby by Leroy Aarons.  

“My mom said, ‘don’t tell your dad.’ My dad was vocally homophobic. She also said, ‘Don’t get into a relationship too soon. Go experience as much as you want.’ She thought it was a phase.”

“Then she grieved as many parents do. She was in denial, then she was angry, and she said, ‘I hate you. You’re not my daughter.’ Instead of internalizing it, I said, ‘Okay. I need to educate my family because they don’t know better.'”

Shyne’s involvement in politics stemmed from a deeply personal place. In addition to her lifelong journey with her queerness, The Mayor recalled one hate incident that fueled her need to make a difference. 

“I ended up getting together with my best friend,” said Shyne. “When we were in college, we were still trying to plan out what we wanted for the rest of our lives. We were at a gay-friendly coffee bar, talking about what grad schools we wanted to go to. We didn’t know the management had changed. We were just holding hands. The next thing I knew, the manager and a police officer showed up and said, ‘You need to leave. The establishment doesn’t want your kind here.’ Then he blew a kiss and winked at me. 

“We couldn’t call our families. They were already worried about us as it was. We were driving around town crying. We felt demoralized. We felt powerless.”

“Finally, I pulled over and said to her, ‘I’m tired of feeling powerless. We need to go to law school and learn the law and stop this.’ So that was what we did.”

Shyne’s method of educating others has continued to serve her in her professional life.

“When people have hate speech about a group, I utilize the way I educated my family. We saw this with marriage equality as well. People did not understand why it was important until we shared our side from a vulnerable place.”

As a political figure, Shyne has received a tremendous amount of hate speech and personal threats for being a queer Iranian, woman. Amid the plethora of ignorance, one person commented on one of Shyne’s videos, “We don’t want a Muslim terrorist running city hall, if you come to my door, I’m going to mace you.” 

After some misinformation was printed about one of Shyne’s policies, she received the following message from an Outlook account: “You piece of shit queer bitch. I hope you get robbed or raped or both.” The Mayor filed an official police report following the incident. 

“When I’m getting personal attacks,” said Shyne, “if it’s a person that should know better, then it’s actually not my job if they are being abusive and engaging in toxic behavior to teach them that this is okay by allowing that. It is my job to stand up for myself and let them know that is not what I am willing to entertain by setting boundaries. There has been a lot of hate since I was elected office, from strangers to people in the community to local blogs printing so much misinformation.”

Shyne also blames the platforms themselves for allowing this type of hate speech and misinformation to spread, unregulated, through their comment sections.  

“These platforms are aware of it, and they allow a comment section to exist with racist posts. They allow misogyny. They allow transphobia. This is a choice. These are values they put out in the community. They are choosing to do this even though they are a part of the community and have likely experienced discrimination themselves. So this is very sad.”

When asked what she believed should be done to end hate speech online, Shyne said she believed more regulation and transparency should be enforced.

“I think these platforms need to come out very strongly against hate speech. It is very simple. Just take a stand for people. If their lawyers are saying this is protected speech, then as a corporation, they can take a stance. They can use their algorithms and all their technology and institute their community standards.”

“They need to apply the standards that they have equally,” continued Shyne. “They should be able to monitor and speak up against hate speech. It is easy to tell what’s right and what’s not right. Sadly, since 2016 there has been so much lack of civility. Everybody is just pointing fingers at each other. This is happening within each party too. The republicans are fighting. The democrats are fighting. Everyone is focused on making each other wrong instead of sitting down and just listening.”

“When social media started, I think they didn’t anticipate the state of our world becoming so divisive as we saw with Nancy Pelosi’s husband. This hate speech absolutely does turn to violence.”

In September 2022, Governor Gavin Newsom announced that he signed a social media transparency bill (AB 578) by Assembly Member Jesse Gabriel, which will require social media companies to publicly post their policies regarding hate speech, disinformation, harassment, and extremism on their platforms, and report data on their enforcement of the policies.

Shyne feels that revising social media platform practices is vital as the laws that deal with inciting violence are now outdated in the face of this new technology. 

“We also have to reconsider our laws about what is considered inciting violence because those laws didn’t consider social media at the time. When those laws were created, they were about people saying things in person and then asking whether or not it is probable that violence will ensue from that interaction. But now we have people on social media saying horrible things that do lead to violence.” 

Shyne also sees an imbalance between protection for federal and local officials that needs to be corrected. Local officials need the same level of protection that federal officials have. She also stated that there is an imbalance of women, particularly women of color like The Mayor, getting a disproportionately large share of online hate speech.

Shyne shared a final message of hope with The Blade for the young leaders of the future. 

“Always, no matter what your circumstance in life has been, if your life was difficult or traumatic, whatever anyone has said to you, whether strangers or close to you, if it is negative, don’t believe it. Just don’t believe it. Go within yourself and give yourself the healing you need to know that you are absolutely perfect as you are. You were born exactly as you were meant to be. You were meant to live a free, incredible, magical life. All the young people that are being born are so special. They are literally meant to shift this world into a much better place. No matter what, don’t ever give up. Step into your power and reach out to people like me and other leaders and ask for mentorship. Know that you can overcome any adversity. If you just set your mind to it, anything is possible.”

The sudden spike of all hate crimes inspired Breed to create a street violence intervention program to respond to violence

SAN FRANCISCO – Mayor London Breed has invested a large amount of financial resources and support in fighting hate crimes in the City by the Bay.

In 2021, hate crimes against Asians represented 53% of all hate crimes. The sudden spike inspired Breed to create a street violence intervention program to respond to violence, including shootings. Responders act quickly to not only aid the victims and their families but also to help prevent retaliation which might then lead to a never ending cycle of violence. 

Breed also partnered with the Community Youth Center to help train and cultivate young Asian people by providing job opportunities and leadership opportunities and helping support one another within the community. She also created a senior escort program to provide seniors with help getting home safely and running errands.  

“We are going to support the community,” Breed told The Blade explaining her mission. “We are going to band together against anyone, no matter what their race is, when they attack. We are going to bring Black and Asian communities together to create solidarity and support and to address public safety in the community. Most importantly, we are going to implement restorative justice by getting to the heart of people, trying to understand why these people are committing these crimes, and how to address it and prevent it in the future.”

Already, Breed’s programs and initiatives have produced positive change. According to a study shared with The Blade by the Mayor’s office, In 2022, hate crime cases went down significantly (68%) when compared to 2021. Hate crimes went up 81% in 2021 when compared to the average for the previous three years (2018-2020). Hate crimes against AAPI people contributed to this increase. In 2022, the number of hate crimes against the AAPI community went down tenfold compared to 2021(from 60 to 6 cases)   

Unfortunately, hate crimes against LGBTQ+ individuals are high as a proportion of all cases (including gay males, trans individuals, and lesbians). In 2022, 28% of hate crimes targeted LGBTQ+ individuals.

On average, 22% of recorded hate crimes in the last five years (2018-2022) targeted LGBTQ+ individuals.  

The Mayor’s office also shared the following list of efforts to tackle hate crimes in San Francisco:

Examples of main efforts to tackle hate crimes in San Francisco  

Breed is the 45th Mayor of San Francisco and the first African-American woman elected to the position, previously having served as president of the Board of Supervisors from 2015-2018. She is well known for her immediate and effective response to COVID-19 as well as her devotion to helping underprivileged youth, ending homelessness, advancing public safety, and advocating for the Asian, Black, and LGBTQ+ communities’

In Breed’s childhood San Francisco community, violence and fear were a way of life.

“People I grew up with had a lot of conflict with other people I grew up with like close family and friends,” Breed told The Blade, “so in that type of situation, there was a lot of fear. For example, with the African-American men in my family, my brothers, my cousins, my uncles, there was fear because of where you lived or whose family member might have killed or had beef with another family member. I grew up concerned about my community, concerned about someone dying. I went to sadly more funerals than I can count.” 

Breed was raised in poverty primarily by her grandmother in a house of five, often taking random jobs like delivering elderly people’s groceries for one dollar per store run to scrape together some extra cash.

As Breed got older, she began to take an active role in bettering her community and advocating for those in similar underprivileged states. For a long time, financing the type of change she was trying to implement proved to be her biggest challenge. 

“As a community advocate and someone who worked with young people to help address these types of challenges, it was a constant battle to get resources to invest in the kind of programs that would help turn people’s lives around.” 

The Mayor has come a long way from her early struggles to finance programs as she recently signed a $14 billion dollar budget that prioritizes economic recovery, public safety, workers and families, homelessness, and behavioral health needs.

Breed also told The Blade that her experience growing up surrounded by fear is what inspired her to become a politician. 

“When I first ran for the Board of Supervisors, I did it unfortunately because there was a lot of violence in my community,” said Breed. “So, there was a lot of need to not only help prevent violence but to respond to it. I really felt like there was a voice needed at City Hall that actually understood what it was like to live in that situation every single day, and in some cases to live in fear because of the issues around gun violence. A big reason why I ran was wanting to do better for my community.” 

As a woman of color and the first Black woman to be elected to her position, Breed has faced a backlash of racism, threats, and discrimination throughout her career. 

“When I got into the political arena, that is when sadly a lot of the real nastiness started to take shape –the name calling, the threats, the various kind of attacks on me based on being either a woman or because of my race,” Breed said. 

Some of these attacks even escalated to protests in front of her residence.

“I do remember someone with a pitchfork,” recalled Breed, “like a real pitchfork outside, and some of the language used like ‘tar feather.'”

The expression to Tar and feather a person is an expression that alludes to a former brutal punishment in which a person was smeared with tar and covered with feathers. It is a form of public humiliation that has been used for centuries to take revenge or to punish someone. It was used during the American Revolution and throughout American history to harm people with certain political or religious beliefs.

Scarily, these types of ignorant attacks have even come from well-educated and respected individuals in the community Breed said. 

“I just remember this one individual who worked for one of the lawyer’s groups, I forget which one it is, he went on this rampage and basically called me a coon. He was a white man who worked with lawyers to address civil rights-related issues, and yet this was the kind of language that he used at me. 

It is unfortunate that it gets to that point, but sadly when you are an elected official, that is something you have to be prepared for, even though it’s still hurtful when it happens,” she noted.

The word Coon is an extremely disparaging and offensive contemptuous term used to refer to a Black person. The use of this term as an ethnic slur derives from the practice of using coonhounds (dogs trained to hunt raccoons) to recapture escaped black slaves prior to the end of the Civil War and later adopted by extremist white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, intolerant individuals or other groups.

Selflessly, in these moments, Breed said she feared more for the well-being of her community than for her own personal safety. 

“I kind of feared more what would happen if people from my community decided to respond to these kinds of attacks, which they also took offense to, or what would happen if the police responded. I was always more so concerned about someone getting hurt or some sort of altercation or anything that could happen as a result of a lot of this hate speech.” 

When asked why this type of bigotry is still so common, Breed said she believes there are a number of reasons, listing mental illness and lack of proper education both in schools and in homes. 

“I was fortunate to grow up in a household with a grandmother who made me feel that I needed to treat everybody right,” said Breed. “That stemmed from her growing up in Jim Crow south with segregation just one generation removed from slavery and how she felt the way she was treated was wrong. That was really embedded in me.” 

“I think that if you have the kind of people in your life who make you understand from day one that that type of thinking is wrong, it makes a difference.” 

“Also, we need to think about what we are teaching in our schools. Are we teaching kids as they come up how to treat one another? Are we teaching ethical behavior? I just think that to a certain extent, we have gotten away from all that.” 

Breed also shared her desire for other social change, mainly in the way schools are addressing gendered bathrooms, as she feels this debate is emblematic of the same lack of empathy that leads to hate speech and hate crimes.  

“I would like to see a change, for example, in this whole debate around bathrooms and the, ‘I don’t want my kids in the bathroom with this other person’ perspective. Why is this made into such a big deal? Why can’t we figure out a better way to allow people to grow up in a society where there is no stigma attached to who uses the restroom based on what they feel their gender is? How do we change that? How do we maybe change the bathroom options that we have? How do we naturally create as kids grow up more of a congregant society around that? And I think we have to think about how there are different kids with different experiences, and we need to learn how to be respectful of one another and not feel like we deserve something more than someone else. Everyone deserves to have the right to use the restroom based on the restroom of their choosing, and how we address that is by making sure that we make it a part of what we do in our public schools and our school systems in general.”

When asked for her opinion on why online hate speech can turn to violent hate crime, much like with the recent Club Q shooting, Breed said she believed some people might take cyber hate speech as a call to action.

“I do think we have a responsibility to be very careful about what we put out there because it definitely can imply that you were asking people to go after someone because of their stance on their race, gender, or their political stance.”

“I just think that social media has really damaged our society,” said Breed. “I remember when the kids at the Cultural Center started using Myspace. At first, the kids were on Myspace, and they were just showing pictures of each other and talking about each other, and saying nice things like telling each other they looked nice. I thought this was kind of a cool thing, and then all of a sudden, it became a tool that the kids started using to figure out people’s whereabouts. Then people started attacking one another to the point where all of a sudden, there were shootings between communities because of battles on social media. It went from being what was meant to be this positive way of communicating and staying in touch with one another to being used as a tool to push for fights and violence.”

“I do think we have a responsibility to monitor social media to the best of our ability. If we are a company responsible for the platform, we need to ensure that when we see something getting out of hand, we are dealing with it. Because when you are on the computer typing, you are not looking at a person face-to-face. You are talking to a computer, and you may have all these things on your mind that you want to get out, but then that information goes to the public to a whole other arena and kind of takes on a life of its own. For some people, that’s empowering, and they feel like people are finally paying attention to them when they weren’t before. And then they continue to push the envelope. So I really think it can be very dangerous, and I do think we have a responsibility to provide a lot more regulation, especially around hate speech.”

Of all the social media platforms, Breed takes the most issue with San Francisco-based Twitter, which has become increasingly controversial and toxic since billionaire Elon Musk’s takeover of the company. 

“Twitter is pretty horrible. It’s toxic, and it’s sad because, again, a tool that should be used for good has turned into just a place where it is really all about attacking somebody and coming up with the most creative or clever way to go after somebody. I really think Twitter is the most dangerous of them all. I just would like to see it become more responsible,” she said.

“I do think that when the rise of hate crimes elevates to violence, there have to be consequences. People need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Breed added.

“Stay true to who you are. Do good work in the community, and feel good about what you are doing.”

When asked about her most proud accomplishment thus far in elected office, the mayor named her Opportunities for All (OFA), program which provides paid internships for high school students in the city.

“No matter what school you go to, no matter where you live, we will not turn any kid away. Even if we don’t have a place to fit them, we will still make sure they have some sort of paid opportunity for the summer so that no one gets left out. I never want money to be a barrier to someone’s desire to be successful in their life.”

“When I was 14, I was able to get a work permit and be part of the Mayor’s Youth Employment and Training program,” said Breed. “The problem with that was there were only so many spaces.”

While Breed was able to secure a spot in the program, seeing what happened to some of her peers as a result of the program’s limited space deeply affected her. 

“I remember a whole lot of people not getting a space in the program, and all I could think about were some of the kids who I went to school with who went from being not so bad to being actually really terrible. They were involved in a lot of drug dealing in violent crime. I just felt like there was a really critical moment where I realized that if we were not going to send these people on the right path, they were going to go in a very different direction. I just want to make sure we never miss out on an opportunity to turn someone’s life around.”  

Thanks to her policy of never turning any child away from OFA, Breed is able to boast of the program’s positive impact on San Francisco’s youth. Some participants in the program have learned valuable skills like leadership and coding. Some now work for nonprofits, tech companies, and city government, to name a few. Many go off to college and return to help manage and run the program for other youths. 

“I feel like this program is really going to, and has already transformed lives, and will continue to do so,” said Breed. 

Finally, she shared some words of encouragement for future leaders:

“I would say to any young person looking to become a leader, one day, number one, just believe in yourself. You know what’s in your heart. Stay true to who you are. Do good work in the community, and feel good about what you are doing. When opportunities present themselves, don’t be afraid to take advantage of them. Sometimes it can feel scary and overwhelming, but at the end of the day, if you feel it in your heart and you want to go for it, I say go for it.”

Carter became the oldest living former U.S. chief executive after the death at 94 of former president George H.W. Bush on November 30, 2018

PLAINS, Ga. – Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has elected to receive hospice care at his family home in Plains according to the announcement by the Carter Center in Atlanta Saturday. The 98-year-old former president, who has been in ill health recently and hospitalized several times, decided to spend his remaining time at home with his family.

The Carter Center said that the former president had elected to decline additional medical intervention and that he has the full support of his family and his medical team.

The former president’s grandson, former Georgia State Senator, Jason Carter tweeted: “I saw both of my grandparents yesterday. They are at peace and—as always—their home is full of love. Thank you all for your kind words”

I saw both of my grandparents yesterday. They are at peace and—as always—their home is full of love. Thank you all for your kind words https://t.co/9rhG61sZEV

Carter became the oldest living former U.S. chief executive after the death at age 94 of former president George H.W. Bush on November 30, 2018. He was diagnosed with cancer in Aug. 2015 — melanoma that had spread to his liver and brain — but was later declared cancer-free. In 2019, he also suffered a black eye in a fall and was later hospitalized with a fractured pelvis due to a separate fall.

Carter’s 76-year-long marriage makes him the longest-married U.S. president on record.

The thirty-ninth President of the United States, he served from 1977 to 1981. After leaving office in 1982, he and his wife Rosalynn founded The Carter Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of people around the globe. The former president was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his life-long advocacy for human rights.

The announcement by the Nobel Committee stated that the committee decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2002 to Carter, “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.”

Born October 1, 1924, at the Wise Sanitarium [hospital] in his hometown of Plains, Georgia where he was raised on his parent’s peanut farm, Carter’s decades of public service commenced after his graduation from the United States Naval Academy in 1946 and he began his service as a submariner.

Carter left naval service after the death of his father in 1953 taking over the Carter family business in what was then a segregated Georgia with sharp lines between Blacks and Whites. He was an early supporter of the nascent civil rights movement and became an activist within the Democratic Party, a leading voice of change to end racial segregation.

First elected to office in 1963, Carter served as a state senator until 1967. In 1970 he successfully ran for governor, winning the office and then going on to serve until 1975. Like most progressive Democrats of the era, Carter was appalled by U.S. foreign policy in Vietnam and then by the scandal of Watergate that took down the Republican administration of President Richard Nixon leading to the president’s resignation in August of 1974.

Previous to the Watergate scandal in 1972, Carter was selected to lead as chair of the Democratic Governor’s Campaign Committee. This position gave him access to key Democrats nationwide, and the major Democratic gains in the first post-Watergate election allowed Carter to raise his visibility nationally.

Although a relative unknown outside of Georgia and within the leadership of the Democratic Party, Carter was able to parlay voter fatigue and the public’s response to the twin nightmares of Vietnam and Watergate, that had shattered public confidence in government into setting up his run against incumbent Republican President Gerald ‘Jerry’ Ford.

Robert A. Strong, Professor of Politics at Washington and Lee University and a visiting fellow at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center noted: [In the 1976 presidential race] Americans gravitated toward leaders who were outside the Washington sphere. Answering the nation’s need, Carter’s slogan was “A Leader, For A Change.” Nine other Democrats were seeking the nomination in 1976, most of them better known than Carter. 

During a campaign stop on May 21, 1976, Carter was giving a fund-raising campaign speech at the Hilton hotel in San Francisco, California when he met local gay rights activist Harvey Milk. The moment was caught by famed San Francisco-based gay photographer Donald C. Eckert as Governor Carter shook Milk’s hand.

According to Jimmy Carter Presidential Library researcher Dale Dancis, Eckert, speculated that “Carter and his aides had no idea who Harvey was at the time. (Milk) had scraped together the $100 or so for the fund-raising dinner so he could meet Carter.”

The Jimmy Carter Presidential Library has a recording of Carter’s speech from that night, which doesn’t mention gay rights. However, Carter spoke out in support of gay rights at the news conference he held just before the fund raiser, saying he would sign New York Democratic Congresswoman Bella Abzug’s Equality Act amendment to the 1964 Civil Rights Act if it reached his Presidential desk. “I will certainly sign it, because I don’t think it’s right to single out homosexuals for special abuse or special harassment,” he said.

In the outcome of the 1976 presidential election, Carter narrowly defeated Ford, in part due to the latter’s pardoning of his predecessor president Nixon, but also as the inflation rate in 1976 topped 5.76% and the American economy had significantly slowed.

Washington & Lee’s professor Strong wrote: “The election was very close. Ford’s strategy was to try to win five of eight elector-rich states-California, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas. He won four, but not five. Carter won with an interesting coalition of the entire Old South (excepting conservative Virginia) and northern industrial powers such as New York and Pennsylvania.”

Carter later factored into a gay rights campaign by Harvey Milk, when as an elected Supervisor for the Castro (District 5) in San Francisco in 1978, wrote the president asking for his support in defeating ballot Proposition 6, which would have banned gay and lesbian individuals from working in the California public school systems as teachers or staff.

Proposition 6, was also known as the Briggs Initiative—named after Republican state Senator John Briggs who had authored the legislation. In his letter Milk stressed that he hoped that the President would oppose the Briggs Initiative and “take a leadership role in defending the rights of gay people.” 

A couple of days before sending the letter Milk expressed his frustration over what he perceived as inaction by the Carter White House on gay rights in a speech he gave on June 28, 1978, that later was known as the “Hope Speech.” Milk targeted Sen. Briggs and Florida resident and anti-gay activist Anita Bryant for her national Save Our Children campaign which labeled gay and lesbian Americans as deviants.

“….There are some 15 to 20 million lesbians and gay men in this country listening and listening very carefully. Jimmy Carter, when are you going to talk about their rights?” Milk told the crowd in front of San Francisco City Hall that bright June morning.

In his letter to Carter after the speech Milk wrote: “In it, [Milk’s speech] I called upon you to take a leadership role in defending the rights of gay people. As the President of a nation which includes 15-20 million lesbians and gay men, your leadership is vital and necessary.”

Carter’s presidency saw the creation of two new federal cabinet-level roles- the Department of Energy and the Department of Education. Carter also focused efforts on bringing peace to the troubled regions in the Middle East.

The Camp David Accords, signed by President Carter, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in September 1978, established a framework for a historic peace treaty concluded between Israel and Egypt the next Spring in March 1979.

Carter along with his Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, pursued intensive negotiations with Arab and Israeli leaders, hoping to reconvene the Geneva Conference, which had been established in December 1973 to seek an end to the Arab-Israeli dispute after decades of bloody and costly conflict.

His presidency however would be marred by a series of events that critics would charge showed Carter’s inability to govern effectively as well as manage the massive and somewhat unwieldy Federal government. 1979 proved to be challenging to Carter as he was confronted by the oil crisis brought about by the revolution in Iran that toppled Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and installed a fundamentalist Islamic regime, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, the Nicaraguan Revolution, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Ultimately it was the revolution in Iran and the take-over of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979 and the hostage-taking of 52 United States diplomats and citizens by militant Iranian college students and youths supported by the government of Ayatollah Khomeini, that proved to leave a negative impact on Carter’s chances for reelection.

Writing about that campaign, Professor Strong noted: “Three days after the embassy takeover in Iran, Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination. Incumbents rarely face a challenge from within their own party, but Kennedy was encouraged by Carter’s weak poll ratings. When told of the Kennedy challenge, Carter snapped to a Congressman, who later spoke to reporters: “I’ll whip his ass.” Kennedy came close to defeating Carter as the party split into two wings.”

In the Fall of 1980 Republican nominee former California Governor Ronald Reagan won in an electoral landslide. Many political observers an historians believe that Carter’s record in office despite his successes with Middle East negotiations for peace belied the fact that he was a below-average president.

The final straw in dooming his chances for a second term for his presidency some historians said was that in addition to his seeming inability to gain the release of the American hostages held in Tehran, the final debate between the president and Governor Reagan capped what would become his defeat at the polls.

Reagan was an infinitely superior television candidate. Someone asked Carter a question about the arms race with the Soviets, and he claimed that he had helped decide policy towards it by discussing it with Amy, his eight-year-old daughter. When Carter acted querulous and sounded shrill, Reagan turned to him and said in a mock tone of exasperation, “There you go again.” At the end of the debate, Reagan looked into the camera expertly and asked viewers, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” The next day, Carter was stunned at the latest poll numbers-the very bottom had dropped out.

Carter’s years after leaving the White House has been filled with years of work dedicated to his passion for the advancement of human rights, peace negotiations, monitor elections, and advancing disease prevention and eradication in developing nations. Much of that charitable work advanced by the Carter Center’s efforts in 65 plus third-world countries.

A published author, Carter has written over 30 books, ranging from political memoirs to poetry, and he and his wife Rosalynn are also celebrated for their hands on work with the nonprofit organization Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing home ownership opportunities to low-income families.

Both have been publicly documented lending their labor and time on the construction of new homes by Habitat for Humanity.

Carter has continued to lend support and allyship to the LGBTQ+ community. During a book tour promoting his book, “A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety,” speaking with HuffPost Live in July of 2018, the former president was asked about gay marriage said he believes “Jesus would approve of gay marriage.”

“I think Jesus would encourage any love affair if it was honest and sincere and was not damaging to anyone else and I don’t see that gay marriage damages anyone else,” Carter who describes himself as a born-again Christian said adding though as a caveat churches that disagree with same-sex marriage should not have to perform them.

“We won’t stand for the Times platforming lies, bias, fringe theories, and dangerous inaccuracies,” says GLAAD. “We demand fair coverage”

NEW YORK CITY – In a one-two punch aimed directly at the New York Times, more than 100 contributing writers, fellow journalists, celebrities and advocacy organizations today joined GLAAD in demanding change in how the newspaper covers transgender issues and trans people. 

First, GLAAD hired a billboard truck to circle the newspaper’s Manhattan headquarters this morning with signs saying, “Dear New York Times: Stop questioning trans people’s right to exist & access to medical care,” among other messages.  

“I think what what’s most upsetting here is the damage this is doing,” Sarah Kate Ellis, GLAAD CEO and president of the world’s largest LGBTQ+ media advocacy organization, told the Blade in her first phone interview on the topic Tuesday. “Every day they’re not stopping is doing more damage. Every time a new article comes out that debates whether or not trans people should receive board-approved healthcare is damaging. And so I feel really strongly that their coverage is dangerous.”

Then, to protest what GLAAD calls the Times’ “irresponsible, biased coverage of transgender people,” representatives of the organization joined contributors for the Times outside the paper’s building this morning, as they delivered two open letters and issued a joint statement, calling out a “pattern of inaccurate, harmful trans coverage.” 

The coalition demands the Times immediately “stop printing biased, anti-trans stories,” meet with members and leaders in the trans community within two months, and within three months hire at least four trans writers and editors as full-time members of the Times staff.

Joining GLAAD are HRC, PFLAG, the Transgender Law Center, Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund, the Women’s March, director Judd Apatow, comedian Margaret Cho, actor Wilson Cruz, actresses Tommy Dorfman, Lena Dunham, Jameela Jamil, drag superstar Peppermint, activist Ashlee Marie Preston, Jeopardy! champion Amy Schneider, writer/director/actress Shakina, actress, Instagram influencer and stepmom to Zaya, Gabrielle Union-Wade, TV personality Jonathan Van Ness, activist Charlotte Clymer and more. 

“This has been an effort at GLAAD for over a year now,” Ellis told the Blade. “We’ve had several off-the-record meetings with the New York Times to share with them our concerns about the coverage and the reporting that they’ve been doing on the trans community.”

But those concerns fell on deaf ears, said Ellis, and the conversations were unfruitful.  “We wouldn’t be going out with a public letter in coalition if they were fruitful. You know, for us going public, it’s always the last resort.”

As GLAAD worked toward publishing its letter, the organization was contacted by Times contributors already in the process of composing their own. A core team of eight journalists collaborated to condemn what they called the newspaper’s anti-trans bias and the real-world impact of that transphobic coverage.

The authors are Times freelancers Harron Walker, Eric Thurm, who is also campaigns coordinator at the National Writers Union and a steering committee member of the Freelance Solidarity Project, Sean T. Collins, who is also a member and organizer of the Freelance Solidarity Project, Cecilia Gentili, a longtime trans activist, Jo Livingstone, Muna Mire, and Chris Randle, a member of the steering committee at the Freelance Solidarity Project.

They were joined by Olivia Aylmer, a member of the steering committee at the Freelance Solidarity Project who is not a freelancer for the Times. 

Not only did other contributing writers sign-on, but so did journalism colleagues, both cisgender and transgender, as well as members of the Trans Journalists Association.

“A diverse group of people came together to bring you this complaint,” they wrote. ”Some of us are trans, nonbinary, or gender nonconforming, and we resent the fact that our work, but not our person, is good enough for the paper of record. Some of us are cis, and we have seen those we love discover and fight for their true selves, often swimming upstream against currents of bigotry and pseudoscience fomented by the kind of coverage we here protest.”

Those signing that letter include Ashley P. Ford, Roxane Gay, Carmen Maria Machado Thomas Page McBee, Andrea Long Chu, Carmen Maria Machado, John Cameron Mitchell, Zach Stafford, Raquel Willis, Maia Monet, among others.

Their letter, addressed directly to Times Standards editor Philip Corbett, calls out the country’s third most-read paper for executing what it says is “poor editorial judgment,” repeated lack of context in its reporting on trans issues and following “the lead of far-right hate groups in presenting gender diversity as a new controversy, warranting new, punitive legislation.” 

“There is in fact an unethical bias against trans people and transnesss within its coverage of trans issues, by and large,” said Walker, one of the organizers of the contributors’ letter. “There is a pattern of bias, and it’s a violation of the standards own policy as laid out by the standards desk.”

States that have seized upon this anti-trans reporting and opinion pieces by the Times include Alabama, Arkansas and Texas. Already, those states have joined Florida, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee and Utah in enacting discriminatory legislation. 

Of these, Utah and South Dakota have passed healthcare bans that journalist Erin Reed calls “exceedingly cruel.” For example, South Dakota’s ban is one of those providing specific provisions on how to medically detransition transgender teenagers, a practice now state law in Alabama and Arkansas. 

“The New York Times coverage is feeding into defending these laws, by virtue of the fact that it’s the so-called paper of record,” Walker told the Blade. “It has one of the largest reaches of any newspaper in the world, it is respected. Even if people on the far right may dismiss it as the ‘failing New York Times,’ it still holds a legitimacy in a process that, you know, means something.”

“Plenty of reporters at the Times cover trans issues fairly,” the contributing writers’ letter states. “Their work is eclipsed, however, by what one journalist has calculated as over 15,000 words of front-page Times coverage, debating the propriety of medical care for trans children published in the last eight months alone.”

GLAAD notes that officials in Texas quoted Emily Bazelon’s June 2022 report to go after families of trans youth in court documents over their private, evidence-based healthcare decisions. 

Former Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge cited three Times articles in her amicus brief supporting an Alabama law that criminalizes doctors and parents for ensuring trans youth can access necessary medical care: Bazelon’s 2022 story, Azeen Ghorayshi’s January 2022 piece, and Ross Douthat’s April 2022 op-ed.

The Times’ reporting on trans youth and its reputation as the “paper of record” was cited just last week to justify a bill in a Nebraska legislative hearing, that would criminalize healthcare for trans youth.

Scores of other bills are in the works. Missouri Republicans are once again pushing for healthcare bans. Anti-trans bills in Montana, West Virginia, and Mississippi have passed an entire chamber.

But by far the worst anti-transgender legislation and existing laws against transgender community are already on the books in Texas, which Reed calls “home to the weaponization of [Department of Protective Family Services] against transgender people.”

New restrictive bathroom laws are in place in Oklahoma, Alabama and Tennessee. Oklahoma’s healthcare ban restricts even adults, up to the age of 26, from accessing gender-affirming care. Florida has banned Medicaid coverage for trans-related healthcare for adults and is banning gender affirming care for trans teens. And as mentioned earlier, Utah, South Dakota, Arkansas and Alabama have targeted trans teens as well.

For the most part over the last two decades, U.S. media had reliably shared a positive view of transgender people, especially youth, highlighting the stories of out trans celebrities like Chaz Bono, Laverne Cox, Caitlyn Jenner and Jazz Jennings. But since the Obergefell decision at the U.S. Supreme Court in 2015, trans people have become the religious right’s handy-dandy political boogeyman, to scare the flocks, rally the base and get out the vote. That’s a shift that was preceded by all-out negative coverage of trans issues in the United Kingdom, where with rare exception the mainstream media is in lockstep with what is called the “Gender Critical” movement, opposing trans rights. 

Ari Drennen is the LGBTQ program director for Media Matters, and has been tracking coverage of trans issues at the Times. 

“I think it’s good to see people speaking up and talking about the really troubling pattern of coverage coming out of the Times, just because the Times is seen as the kind of gold standard for a lot of mainstream liberals,” Drennen told the Blade. “That pattern is especially notable at the Times. But there has been a sort of, you know, Britification, for lack of a better word, of the American media’s approach to trans people.” 

Drennen cites a Reuters article from October about gender-affirming care for transgender children that featured an extreme close-up photograph of a child wearing braces with a hormone pill on their tongue. “That was really just clearly intended to scare parents,” she said. 

Also keeping a close watch on the Times and this Britification effect is Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic, where she works to advance the civil rights of LGBTQ+ people in a variety of civil legal contexts such as healthcare access, immigration, and family law. 

“In the U.K., the far right, particularly the religious far right, is almost a non-entity. They just don’t have the kind of cultural power and political power that they do in the United States,” Caraballo told the Blade, noting that the Gender Critical movement has taken a a more secular approach to its opposition to trans people, rather than a religious angle.

“In the United States, it’s always been the religious far right, but they are now trying to launder those narratives through these kind of secular outlets, to try to make it seem that the concerns aren’t just inherently based on religious ideology,” she said. “Part of it is this concerted strategy that I think a lot of the Gender Criticals have of particularly appealing to narratives that upper middle class white women would often be more amenable to, especially this idea that women have fought for rights, and somehow the existence of trans people is undermining those rights, because it’s hard to just oppose rights for people if it doesn’t impact you, so you have to create a sense of scarcity, and that’s what they do there. They say that ‘This is erasing women,’ ‘This is erasing women’s rights.’”

Caraballo noted that the people who are writing these stories at the Times are almost universally upper middle class, middle-aged white women, which speaks to the lack of racial diversity at the newspaper. 

“I think what’s interesting is the kind of subject of every panic about over-medicalization in mainstream media tend to be white, and then the subject of the panic about kids and sports tend to be Black,” said Drennen. “I don’t need to have a Ph.D to see what’s going on.”

“I think part of it speaks to the lack of racial diversity,” echoed Caraballo. “I’m not surprised that one of the first really positive, outspoken editorials in the opinion column in the New York Times was by a Black man. I think there’s a sense of solidarity and understanding of how these things work, and I think when you have no trans people in the newsroom and no trans people as opinion columnists, and you have a newsroom that’s almost entirely stocked with a demographic that is particularly being targeted by Gender Criticals for pushing their views. I think it’s not a surprise.”

Caraballo said her conversations with people who work at the Times leads her to suspect this shift toward anti-trans narratives is not the writers or reporters themselves, but the result of an agenda set by their editors. 

“For some people like Katie J.M. Baker, who has written extensively about how the media actually works to push transphobic narratives, to then write an article like she did about forcibly outing trans students, it just speaks to either opportunism, not really having a deeply-held belief about this, or just being pushed by the editors. I mean, this was her first major story,” she said. “I worry that what happens is the New York Times often times gives those kinds of views credibility. And you see this with the anti-trans people celebrating every one of these articles, because they view that they’re trans eliminationist and anti-trans positions are being laundered into the mainstream.” 

In 2014, Time Magazine put Laverne Cox on its cover and declared that trans Americans had achieved a tipping point in acceptance. But at the Times, a shift in who writes opinion pieces has tipped the balance the other way, noted Drennen. 

“The New York Times has never been perfect in their coverage, of course. But over the last year, Jennifer Finney Boylan departed from the Times’s opinion section,” she said. While Boylan is still a freelancer for the Times, the bestselling author and scholar’s byline now regularly appears in the Washington Post.

“In the interim, they’ve added two incredibly anti-trans regular columnists, Pamela Paul and David French, the former lawyer for the anti-LGBTQ+ hate group, the Alliance Defending Freedom. This has a really troubling pattern of anti-trans sentiment. So, any perceived balance there was just got totally blown out the window over the last year.” 

“I’m proud of the work I did for Times Opinion from 2007 to 2022, on hundreds of topics from presidential dogs to the history of the Negroni,” Boylan told the Blade. “As a freelancer, I felt lucky to have a regular slot on the page and was grateful for the trust the editors placed in me. I also wrote many essays about trans identity and trans politics, and was proud to be, for many years, the only ongoing voice on the page representing the wide range of trans identities. I am hoping all those stories put a human face to trans issues for readers of the Times, and opened some hearts.”

Boylan’s name does not appear alongside other Times freelancers in the open letter or the GLAAD letter, but ironically, the Times has been publishing her name in its Bestsellers list for 18 weeks in a row. Her novel, Mad Honey, co-written with Jodi Picoult, has yet to be reviewed in the newspaper or covered in any way, despite it being the most successful book co-written by any transgender person, ever. Is that more evidence of bias, or just a coincidence?  

“I am really disappointed that it’s come to this,” said Ellis. “The science is settled on transgender health care. As far as the New York Times is concerned, it is not settled science and they want to use their pages to debate it.”

“It’s so dehumanizing,” added Caraballo, “because you have people debating your rights who have no stake in it whatsoever. They’re not the ones that are going to be denied healthcare. They’re not the ones who are going to be denied housing. They’re not the ones who are going to be kicked out of their homes when they’re forcibly outed to their parents. They have no stake in this. And that is particularly what’s so upsetting, to see all these people that literally will never feel the effects of these policies, constantly talking about how they have ‘concerns.’” 

Drennen said it’s hard to say whether these open letters will have any impact, because “so much of their decision-making is internal.” 

For her part, Walker said she remains excited by the coalition that’s been assembled and optimistic, but also realistic. 

“Ideally what happens is the New York Times says, ‘Okay, yeah, let’s stop debating whether trans people should be allowed,’ and they start hiring a bunch of trans people. It’s the end of the story. I’m also realistic. I think it’s important to keep some idealism and some optimism in place and also realistic at the same time, which I also think is important. And I fully expect them to do their best to ignore it.”

“We’re too loud to ignore. If you ignore our letter, we’ll find some other way. If you ignore that, we’ll find another way,” Ellis said. “We’re not going to quit until the New York Times acknowledges our demands. And our demands are not outrageous. Within the letter, we’re just talking about stopping your irresponsible reporting, meeting with the trans community and hiring trans writers and editors. These are not outrageous demands that we’re making.”

Charlie Stadtlander, the Director of External Communications, Newsroom, for the New York Times responded Wednesday afternoon in an email to the Blade addressing the controversy:

“We received the open letter delivered by GLAAD and welcome their feedback. We understand how GLAAD and the co-signers of the letter see our coverage. But at the same time, we recognize that GLAAD’s advocacy mission and The Times’s journalistic mission are different.

As a news organization, we pursue independent reporting on transgender issues that include profiling groundbreakers in the movement, challenges and prejudice faced by the community, and how society is grappling with debates about care.

The very news stories criticized in their letter reported deeply and empathetically on issues of care and well-being for trans teens and adults. Our journalism strives to explore, interrogate and reflect the experiences, ideas and debates in society – to help readers understand them. Our reporting did exactly that and we’re proud of it.”

“Dianne Feinstein has been a trailblazer for more than 50 years, We’re so proud of her & grateful for her service to our city & our state”

WASHINGTON – California’s senior U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein announced Tuesday that she will not seek re-election in 2024, but will continue to serve out her current term in office.

“I am announcing today I will not run for reelection in 2024 but intend to accomplish as much for California as I can through the end of next year when my term ends,” Feinstein said in a statement.

Feinstein added she will be focused on the pandemic of gun violence that has gripped the American nation, her announcement coming a day after a mass shooting at Michigan State University that killed three and wounded five others and Tuesday’s 5th anniversary of the Valentines Day massacre at Marjorie Douglas Stoneman High School in Parkland, Florida on February 14, 2018, that killed 17 and grievously wounded over a dozen others.

The shooter used a Smith & Wesson M&P15, an AR-15 style semi-automatic assault rifle which had been previously banned under the Federal Assault Weapons Ban legislation she had co-authored in 1994 that expired on September 13, 2004, in accordance with its sunset provision. Attempts to renew the ban had failed.

In her statement Feinstein wrote: “I also remain focused on passing commonsense legislation to fight the epidemic of gun violence.

She ended her statement saying: “Even with a divided Congress, we can still pass bills that will improve lives. Each of us was sent here to solve problems. That’s what I’ve done for the last 30 years, and that’s what I plan to do for the next two years. My thanks to the people of California for allowing me to serve them.”

Feinstein, 89, has been the target of questions and critique in the past couple of years over her mental acuity, which the Senator has characterized recently as caused by the death of her husband Richard Blum last year, as a chief distraction in her life causing uneven perception of her abilities.

Last Spring in April of 2022, in an article by The San Francisco Chronicle, the newspaper cited four anonymous senators — including three Democrats — and three former Feinstein staffers as well as a Democratic lawmaker from California who said her memory is rapidly deteriorating and it appears she can no longer fulfill her responsibilities in Congress without her staff doing a good deal of the work. They also said her memory lapses did not appear to be constant.

The story quoted one anonymous Democratic senator who said Feinstein has a hard time keeping up with conversations. Another lawmaker, identified only as a California Democrat, told the newspaper that they had to reintroduce themselves to Feinstein several times during an interaction that spanned several hours.

Earlier today on Capitol Hill, according to The Hill’s Capitol correspondent  Al Weaver, apparent signs of her declining mental acuity were clear on Tuesday. After a reporter asked her what message she has for her Senate colleagues, Feinstein asked why she would have a message for them. 

“About your not seeking reelection,” the reporter asked.

“Well, I haven’t made that decision. I haven’t released anything,” Feinstein said.

A Feinstein staffer then interjected, telling her that they put out a press release with her retirement statement. 

“You put out the statement?” she asked, adding a few seconds later, “I should’ve known they put it out.”

“It is what it is. The time is come,” Feinstein continued. 

In March of 2021, California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaking with MSNBC host Joy Reid in an appearance on her show, said that should Feinstein retire early at that point, the governor committed to nominating a Black woman for the Senate seat.

Newsom’s remarks came after he had appointed then California secretary of state Alex Padilla to the Senate seat vacated by Kamala Harris as she was sworn in as the Vice-President of the United States. At the time Politico noted many women’s groups and Black leaders, including San Francisco Mayor London Breed, expressed disappointment when Newsom picked Padilla. Among those whose names considered in the mix for the Harris seat were Rep. Karen Bass of Los Angeles, Rep. Barbara Lee of Oakland and Breed.

Political sources have told the Blade that should Feinstein change her mind and step down early, Newsom is expected to keep his commitment of appointing a Black woman to replace her.

As news of her retirement spread Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.)  and her senatorial colleagues, President Joe Biden and Governor Newsom all weighed in praising Feinstein’s 31 years serving in the Senate starting with the 102nd Congress in 1992.

Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff and Katie Porter of California have declared their candidacies for Feinstein’s seat, while their colleague Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) is expected to also run. 

The senator has yet to make clear whom she will be endorsing. Her office has not returned requests for comment on this question from The Washington Blade.

From Sacramento Governor Newsom said in a statement:

“Senator Feinstein has been a powerful champion for California and California values on the national stage for three decades – changing lives across our state and nation for the better while opening doors for generations of women leaders. 

“A daughter of San Francisco, Senator Feinstein became the first woman to serve as mayor of the city after the assassination of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. The tragic events of that day led to her lifetime crusade for common-sense gun control laws, including her role as author of a federal assault weapons ban. For the last 30 years, she has served her state with distinction as our senior U.S. Senator, blazing a trail for a new generation of female lawmakers. 

“Throughout her career, Senator Feinstein has worked tirelessly across the aisle to advance tremendous progress on priorities that matter deeply to Americans. Her lifetime of service and leadership has made our country fairer, safer and stronger, and I am proud to call her a mentor and a friend. California and the nation owe Senator Feinstein a deep debt of gratitude.” 

Speaking to reporters, Senate Majority Leader Schumer called her “a legend” and “an amazing person.”

“She’s a legend. A legend in California as the first woman senator. A legend in this Senate, she was the leader on so many different issues,” he said.

Schumer also told reporters that Feinstein at the Democrats’ caucus lunch “got a standing ovation that lasted minutes and minutes and minutes, one of the longest I’ve ever seen, which shows the love our caucus, and our country, have for this wonderful leader and legend.”

California’s other U.S. Senator Alex Padilla said in an emailed statement:

“You can’t tell the story of California politics—or the story of American politics—without the trailblazing career of Dianne Feinstein. For five decades, California has been privileged to have as gifted, as dedicated, and as iconic a public servant as my colleague.

“From her early days in San Francisco City Hall helping bring together and heal a wounded city after the assassination of Mayor Moscone and Harvey Milk, to her election as the first woman to represent California in the U.S. Senate, in the face of violence, stifling misogyny, and great personal loss, she broke down barriers and created a government that better represented the people—and the spirit—of California.

“Her selfless service and unrivaled grit and persistence have given our state so many treasures that many Californians now take for granted, from Joshua Tree National Park, to the clear blue water of Lake Tahoe, to the thriving redwoods north of San Francisco Bay and the wetlands that surround it. And because of her leadership against all of the odds, the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban saved countless lives and made our country safer in the 1990s and early 2000s.

“On a personal note, Dianne gave me one of my first jobs in politics as a young MIT grad looking to make a difference in my community. She was the embodiment of principled leadership and taking on the difficult issues, and it’s in part because of her groundbreaking career that a Latino son of immigrants could one day join her in breaking down barriers and serving alongside her.

“I’ll truly miss her leadership and her counsel in the U.S. Senate. But the legacy she leaves behind will be carried on by the 40 million Californians who now see their government—and their country—differently because of her service.

President Biden who served with Feinstein in the Senate said in a statement released Tuesday afternoon by the White House:

Senator Dianne Feinstein was elected in 1992 – dubbed the Year of the Woman in part because of her victory. Often the only woman in the room, she was determined to lift America up, and through her intellect, empathy, character, and drive, to make this country everything it could be.    As Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I knew I wanted Dianne to serve alongside me, with her proven track record of standing up for people’s rights and fighting to make their lives better. She agreed to join the Committee, and the nation was better for it.   Through force of will, she led the fight to get the assault weapons ban passed. Like so many who have been touched by gun violence, that victory was personal for her. She is a passionate defender of civil liberties and a strong voice for national security policies that keep us safe while honoring our values. A lifelong Californian, she has worked tirelessly to protect our environment for future generations.   Over the three decades I’ve known her, Dianne and her late husband Richard became dear friends to Jill and me. I’ve served with more U.S. Senators than just about anyone. I can honestly say that Dianne Feinstein is one of the very best. I look forward to continuing to work with her as she serves out her term.

Rep. Schiff who is vying to replace her in the Senate having declared his candidacy a week ago praised Feinstein’s record in a tweet:

Dianne Feinstein is one of the finest legislators we’ve ever known. From the torture report, a dogged pursuit of gun safety, and championship of LGBTQ+ rights, her body of work defines her legacy. We are so grateful for her ongoing leadership.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed, the city’s first Black female mayor, paid tribute to her predecessor in a statement calling her “a trailblazer in every sense of the word.”

“From becoming San Francisco’s first female mayor in 1978 to being sworn in as California’s first female senator in 1992, she has always served our city, state, and country with conviction and honor,” Breed said. “Her landmark policy victories in the Senate like the Assault Weapons Ban, the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, and reckoning with our country’s past with unlawful interrogation tactics made our country safer, our society more equal, and our nation more true to its ideals. As the longest serving female senator in our nation’s history, Senator Feinstein will leave a long legacy of legislative achievements and shattered glass ceilings that young women everywhere can look to and be inspired by as they too consider what service they can do for their country.”

A native San Franciscan born in the city on June 22, 1933, she first attended San Francisco public schools and then graduated from the Convent of the Sacred Heart High School in 1951.

She earned her degree at Stanford University in Palo Alto in 1955 and became actively involved in government service first serving as a member of the California Women’s Board of Terms and Parole 1960-1966.

In her first foray into city politics she won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors representing the Marina neighborhood, serving from 1970-1978, and as president 1970-1971, 1974-1975, 1978.

In 1978 Feinstein was thrust into the state and national political spotlight when on November 27, 1978 she became the mayor of San Francisco, after disgruntled former city supervisor Dan White entered City Hall and assassinated Mayor George Moscone after Moscone refused to appoint White back into his seat he had resigned from days before. White then also murdered openly gay city supervisor Harvey Milk who had sparred with White over gay rights and had opposed White getting his seat back.

Feinstein served as mayor for ten years from 1978-1988 then she served on the board as a director of the Bank of California 1988-1989 at which point she made an unsuccessful run as a candidate for Governor of California in 1990.

After losing that race for governor in 1990, Feinstein later won a special election on November 3, 1992, as a Democrat to the U.S. Senate. The special election was triggered by the resignation of Pete Wilson, who had defeated her in the 1990 gubernatorial election. She took office on November 4, 1992, and was subsequently reelected in 1994, 2000, 2006, 2012, and again in 2018 for the term ending January 3, 2025.

Senator Feinstein’s record on LGBTQ+ rights was mixed as reported on by San Francisco’s LGBTQ+ newspaper The Bay Area Reporter’s Assistant Editor John Ferrannini who noted:

Earlier in that campaign [1979] she’d faced some opposition from members of the LGBTQ community after she made remarks to Ladies’ Home Journal perceived as homophobic, but later won community support after gay candidate David Scott endorsed her in a runoff against independent Quentin Kopp. Scott endorsed Feinstein after she committed to appoint a gay person to the police oversight panel, which Feinstein followed through on with her appointment of lesbian Jo Daly.

Feinstein’s veto of city employee benefits for domestic partners led to a recall effort in 1983, though she won 81% to 18%.

 In the Senate she was one of the few Democratic members who voted against the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, which had been supported by then-senator and current President Joe Biden (D). The last vestiges of DOMA were formally repealed in December when Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act. DOMA had key provisions struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2013 (Section 3, U.S. v. Windsor) and 2015 (Section 2, Obergefell v. Hodges).

Feinstein was never without controversy though, and in 2004 upset more progressive Democrats when she said then-mayor and now Governor Gavin Newsom’s decision to order San Francisco officials to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples was “too much, too fast, too soon.”

She was criticized in 2020 when she said U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hearing was “one of the best” and hugged Senator Lindsay Graham (R-South Carolina), then the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Barrett’s vote last June on the Supreme Court was key for the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which had protected abortion as a constitutional right, a key issue for Feinstein.

In 2017 the Senator openly criticized then President Trump’s ban on trans military service.

Out gay California state Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) wrote on Twitter:

“Dianne Feinstein has been a trailblazer for more than 50 years,” he stated. “Her accomplishments are legion. We’re so proud of her in San Francisco & grateful for her service to our city & our state.”

Dianne Feinstein has been a trailblazer for more than 50 years. Her accomplishments are legion. We’re so proud of her in San Francisco & grateful for her service to our city & our state.

Equality California, the nation’s largest statewide LGBTQ+ civil rights organization, released the following statement from Executive Director Tony Hoang:

“Throughout her storied political career, Dianne Feinstein has been a champion for LGBTQ+ rights – from her early days on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors serving alongside Harvey Milk, to her historic service as the first woman Mayor of San Francisco and the first woman to represent California in the United States Senate.

“From being one of only 14 Senators to oppose the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 1996 to being the lead Senate sponsor on the recently-signed Respect for Marriage Act, which repealed DOMA, Senator Feinstein has worked tirelessly to improve the lives of not only her constituents, but all LGBTQ+ Americans.

“She has supported landmark federal hate crime legislation, fought for access to life-saving treatment for people living with HIV, sponsored the Equality Act, spoken out in support of LGBTQ+ service members before and after ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’, and has stood up for our community – even before it was popular to do so and when it presented significant political risks. Senator Feinstein has also been a leading champion in the fight against gun violence, recently reintroducing legislation to ban high-capacity magazines in the wake of deadly mass shootings like those at Club Q – an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Colorado.  Equality California has been proud to call her a friend and ally –we are eternally grateful for her service and will continue to work with her as she finishes out her term.”

Additional reporting by Andrés I. Jové Rodríguez

Direct from Austria – and with a German TV crew in tow – these lovable daddy influencers are our hottest new imports

PALM SPRINGS – Just a year and a half ago, handsome Vienna-based couple Mike and Sebastian Hilscher posted their first video to YouTube, a touching highlight reel of their recent Bora Bora wedding featuring their adorable young daughter Mia. Originally just meant for family and friends, the video’s picture-perfect beach backdrop, the guys’ own movie star good looks, and their powerful and palpable love for each other and their daughter helped the clip go viral – and a pair of daddy influencers was born.

That wedding video has now been viewed nearly a quarter of a million times, and it spawned a collection of some 60 Mike and Sebastian videos and counting on YouTube alone – not to mention their rapidly growing Instagram presence – in which the guys’ sparkling personalities and frank honesty about themselves, their relationship, and the trials and triumphs of double-dad parenthood are helping them take social media by storm. 

Now the guys and Mia are set to launch their next chapter as the latest residents of Southern California, settling in the gay-friendly enclave of Palm Desert. Following them along for the journey will be a German film crew from the popular German TV show Goodbye Deutschland!, which for 15 seasons has told the real-life stories of expats from German-speaking countries to all points around the globe.

So why California? “It was always clear to us that it had to be California,” says Mike, the taller of the hunky two papas, unless you count Sebastian’s voluminous hair. “We just love this state. Coming from Austria, where two-dad families are viewed skeptically and gay acceptance is questionable, it’s just relaxing for us to live in an environment where we’re not the oddballs.”

Their original plan was actually to become Angelenos. “We had even already chosen an apartment, but then we noticed that Los Angeles might not be so family-friendly,” Mike shares. “When we happened upon the Palm Springs area and looked it over, we fell in love immediately. There is no better place for us. We are absolute fans.”

While the guys are naturally excited about the prospect of growing their social media presence from their new U.S. home base, there’s much more behind their emigration story – including first and foremost, hopefully a new sibling for Mia. “The main reason we are coming to America is that we’re planning our second baby by surrogacy and want to be part of the pregnancy,” explains Mike. “Our surrogate lives in Florida, so we’ll commute regularly to visit her. We know stories of parents who couldn’t pick up their baby due to travel restrictions during COVID and we didn’t want to take that risk either, which is why we’re coming to the USA. What began with this thought has matured into an emigration plan.” 

Fittingly enough on several fronts, Mike and Sebastian met at a pre-party for Vienna’s famous Love Ball in 2015. It was just before Mia’s birth (also through surrogacy), and Mike had long planned on being a single father to her. As he shared in one of the couple’s videos, Mike went into the Love Ball thinking it would be his last big party night before fatherhood. ” I was so looking forward to being a dad, but this one last time I wanted to go crazy, he says.” Instead, he wound up meeting Sebastian that night, and by the time Mia was born three or for weeks later, they were a couple. They’ve been a two-dad family ever since.

“We have a very strong vision that got us into social media in the first place,” Mike explains. “Our vision is to normalize two-dad families, and we believe this is only possible through visibility. In the last few months, our social media channels have grown so much that it’s now a full-time job to look after them.” 

Mike especially likes that he’s been able to utilize his experience as a psychological consultant with some of their followers. “I bring my expertise to individual consultations, especially in the area of ​​family planning for LGBT couples, and also advice for LGBT young people in dealing with their sexuality and finding their identity. I have at least two to three consultations a week, free of charge of course.”

Consulting is just one of Mike’s many successful and varied career chapters. In the early 2000s, when he was in his early 20s, Mike sang in a popular Austrian pop band called Sugar Free, and even won an Amadeus Award, the country’s top music prize. He later went on to pass the bar exam and run a successful facility management company, and he also wrote a best-selling children’s book.

For his part, Sebastian is hardly a slacker. At just 24, he won a major national competition with his innovative concept for transforming democracy into the digital age. He pumped the $150,000 prize money into the highly successful construction business that he still runs – he’ll return to Austria periodically to that company flowing, and he’ll meanwhile be introducing its products to the American market.

“Sebastian will continue to do his company, but I will concentrate full-time on our work in the social media area,” says Mike. “We’ve been fully committed to driving the success of our social media. It’s our declared goal to become one of the big players in this area in order to be able to change something for the better.”

After the craziness of packing up their lives in Austria, the young family won’t be slowing down any time soon – the first weeks of their California schedule are already jampacked. “We will first be busy shooting the TV show, then our own cameraman will come with us to produce some episodes for our YouTube,” says Mike. “Of course we have Mia’s first day of school, moving into the house, buying a car, moving into the new office, etc. We’re also looking for our infrastructure, meaning gym, a dance center for Mia, and so on. Then we also have the jet lag, and Mia has to study English as well learn the German curriculum. So we certainly won’t get bored.”

Founder Jaimee Michell has a long history of slinging baseless accusations of pedophilia and abuse against political opponents

By Mia Gingerich | WASHINGTON – In January, the Anti-Defamation League released a report naming Gays Against Groomers, a group that “peddles dangerous and misleading narratives about the LGBTQ+ community,” among notable amplifiers of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric online.

GAG reacted to the report as the group has consistently done whenever it has been called out for targeting LGBTQ rights and inclusion — by claiming that as a “coalition of gay people” it and its members are incapable of spreading anti-LGBTQ propaganda.

In reality, before the group’s founder Jaimee Michell rode the recent surge in anti-LGBTQ rhetoric to guest spots on Fox News and right-wing podcasts, she and her fellow GAG chair David Leatherwood were pro-Trump operatives employed by right-wing communications firms representing other conservative figures who have attempted to capitalize off of the anti-LGBTQ fervor of the last two years.

This recent employment history underscores the far-right pedigree of both Michell and Leatherwood — a record that includes promotion of the QAnon conspiracy theory, intimate involvement with the efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, and emphatic support for the violent actions of the January 6 insurrectionists. 

GAG claims to fight against “the sexualization, indoctrination, and medicalization” of children, with Michell professing to have founded the group last year “to protect the kids” and “reclaim” the gay community’s “good standing in society.” The group has catered to a far-right audience, with Michell promoting the group on fringe outlets like One America News and Infowars. At the end of last year, GAG attended Turning Point USA’s convention, AmericaFest, where the group’s leaders cavorted with white nationalists, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, and Kyle Rittenhouse. 

ADL’s report also noted the coordination between GAG and far-right groups like Moms for Liberty. As with Moms for Liberty, GAG encourages its members to attend school board meetings and speak out against LGBTQ inclusion and policies. The group used this tactic to claim a victory in Florida last September, when it successfully harassed the Miami-Dade County School Board into voting against recognition of LGBTQ History Month. Last month, a member of the group’s executive team testified at a school board meeting in California where he argued that “every teacher that has a pride flag in their classroom should be fired and arrested.”

Before founding GAG, Michell was a steadfast Trump supporter. In her one-episode podcast from 2017, she claimed she began supporting Trump in part following her interactions with online conspiracy theories and a pro-Trump Reddit forum that was later banned from the platform for issuing threats of violence. Michell’s earlier Twitter presence involved predominantly pro-Trump content which she posted well after revelations had been made involving Trump’s inappropriate comments and actions directed at underage girls, not to mention myriad reports by women ranging from verbal harassment to inappropriate touching and outright sexual assault.

Michell likewise used her online presence to promote conspiracy theories related to QAnon and the false claim that Democratic politicians were involved in child trafficking, retweeting support for the conspiracy theory from popular QAnon influencers (with whom she continued to interact through 2019) and tweeting that anti-Trump conservative writer Bill Kristol “has some skeletons in his closet. I’m guessing pizza flavored,” seemingly a reference to the QAnon-adjacent “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory. Michell also repeatedly posted a meme she created making similar accusations against liberal celebrities, using it to brand everyone from CNN anchor Jake Tapper to Late Show host Stephen Colbert as “a pedo.”

While lobbing these accusations at her political enemies, Michell posted a pro-Trump quote and picture from far-right figure Milo Yiannopoulos, months after Yiannopoulos’ 2016 comments supporting pedophilia came to light. Michell also continued to use her identity as a lesbian to falsely claim that Trump was a “pro-gay” politician, earning her an advisory board seat on the campaign’s “Trump Pride” coalition.

Leading up to the 2020 election, Michell had frequent online communication with Ali Alexander, the founder of the “Stop the Steal” movement that heavily pushed conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election. Michell would go on to be intimately involved in Alexander’s movement, being listed alongside right-wing activist Alex Bruesewitz as a contact for the Stop the Steal rally in Wisconsin under her online account, “TheGayWhoStrayd.” Following President Joe Biden’s victory, Michell asserted the election had been stolen, telling her followers “the war is just getting started” and later speaking at a Stop the Steal event in Washington, D.C., that November. In reaction to the January 6 insurrection, Michell posted in support of the rioters on Instagram and Telegram, including reposting more content from Yiannopoulos.

Following the insurrection, Michell redirected her focus to taking extreme positions on other far-right talking points, including comparing COVID-19 public health measures to Nazi persecution and calling police murder victim George Floyd “fentanyl Floyd.” Michell continued to attempt to deflect criticism and moderation of her offensive rhetoric by appealing to her sexual orientation, claiming that “right wing gays” were being treated like “thought criminals” after she was temporarily suspended from Instagram, seemingly for posting content mocking memorials to Floyd’s death. 

In May 2022, Michell started a new job at X Strategies, a right-wing social media communications firm that promises its conservative clientele the ability to “create, shift, and control narratives.” The firm, co-founded and led by Bruesewitz, was previously implicated in a scheme involving paying online influencers as young as 14 years old to run ads for Trump insiders, including the campaign’s “Election Defense Fund.” 

Michell’s new job, which she has since scrubbed from her online profiles, coincided with a precipitous rise in misuse and exploitation of the term “groomer” by right-wing figures to malign LGBTQ people and their allies. The smear campaign was part of the Republican strategy to drive right-wing voters to the polls for the midterm elections. The month after Michell started her new position, she announced the creation of Gays Against Groomers, which Michell used to compare any signs of acceptance for LGBTQ youth by schools, companies, public figures, or online users to “grooming.” 

In September 2022, Michell announced the two other board members who would be leading GAG alongside herself — her fiancée Sasha Leigh and right-wing pro-Trump activist David Leatherwood. 

Like Michell, Leatherwood gained notoriety in part for offensive content attacking Black Lives Matter. Like Michell, Leatherwood previously served as a board member for “Trump Pride” (listed under his social media account name, “Brokeback Patriot”) and had ties to the “Stop the Steal” movement, having spoken at an event hosted by Trump ally Roger Stone on December 14, 2020. Like Michell, Leatherwood lauded the rioters involved with the January 6 insurrection, an event he had previously stated he would attend, celebrating that they had made politicians “cower in fear.” 

Leatherwood is still apparently employed as a writer and director by conservative communications firm Arsenal Media, for which he appeared in an ad last year for GOP Florida state House candidate Jake Hoffman. Michell also listed Arsenal as an employer until November of last year. The firm claims to “manage some of the largest conservative social media influencers in the game,” promising increased exposure for its right-wing campaign clients.

Michell and Leatherwood have worked to stock GAG’s executive board with fringe pro-Trump influencers with patterns of promoting conspiracy theories. 

The group’s Director of Chapters Mario Presents, whose legal name is Mario Estrada, is a right-wing activist and blogger previously focused on rallying in support of Trump and protesting COVID-19 health measures. Estrada reportedly has connections with extremist groups including California’s Central Valley Militia and the Proud Boys, and he has participated in rallies tied to the QAnon conspiracy theory and promoted QAnon talking points online. He has also taken extremist positions on a number of issues, including defending Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who was responsible for mass murder and torture of political opponents.

GAG’s communications director, Judith Rose, is most notable for a viral TikTok in 2020 where she declared she had been converted to supporting Trump, who she claimed was “taking down human traffickers and a satanic secret society that most of Hollywood, the Vatican, and many elites are involved in” — key tenets of QAnon. Rose later appeared on pro-QAnon show RedPill78. 

GAG’s New York chapter leader is Marky Hutt, the founder of LGBTrump (cited as the largest gay pro-Trump Facebook group). Hutt has twice been arrested for defacing a Black Lives Matter mural. 

GAG’s North Carolina chapter leader, Brian Talbert, founded Deplorable Pride, another pro-Trump organization. Talbert, who has a history of pushing anti-Islam and misogynistic rhetoric, was arrested in 2018 for assaulting a woman during a pro-Trump rally his group had organized.  

The group’s list of “ambassadors” is similarly stocked with anti-vaxx activists, pro-Trump acolytes, online influencers, and those with connections to right-wing politics, like Rafaello Carone (now listed only as “Raf” on the group’s website) who last month was hired by the embattled gay Rep. George Santos (R-NY).

Mia Gingerich is a researcher at Media Matters. She has a bachelor’s degree in politics and government from Northern Arizona University and has previously worked in rural organizing and local media.

The preceding article was previously published by Media Matters for America and is republished by permission.

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