Bronx LGBTQ Community Denounces Defacing of Mural in Norwood

The local LGBTQ community gathered in the Norwood section of the Bronx on September 19 to speak out against hate after a mural that brought attention to the plight of Black trans lives ... Show more

defaced with homophobic and transphobic messages. A local group called Black Trans Media was originally involved in painting the mural at the corner of Bainbridge Avenue and East 204th Street over the summer. The mural sent an inclusive message to the local community in Norwood, stressing the importance of Black trans lives while also underscoring the general premise of the Black Lives Matter movement. It also included other intersectional messages in support of immigrant communities. In the blink of an eye, all of that worked was smeared. “Someone, no one knows who, defaced the mural and wrote lots of hateful speech and bigoted comments on the top of it in red spray paint,” Elisa Crespo, an out trans candidate for City Council in the Bronx, told Gay City News in a phone interview on September 21. Black Trans Media mobilized the community to paint over the anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, while Bronx Assemblymember Nathalia Fernandez organized a press conference on September 20 to denounce the act of hate. Black Trans Media reminded the city that community education and resources for housing and healthcare, not police, should be driving the response. “This sacred mural where we honored our ancestors will live on,” Black Trans Media noted in a tweet on September 19. “Whoever defaced our mural, you cannot drive out our power or our message.” Crespo said others on hand included Princess Janae Place’s executive direct...

A Gay Dad’s Letter to His Gay Son

When crossing the threshold into adulthood, many of us wish we had some sort of blueprint or roadmap helping us navigate life’s many dangers and inequalities, and that’s exactly what aw... Show more

-winning Broadway, television and film producer Richie Jackson has done for his elder son in his new book, “Gay Like Me: A Father Writes to His Son.” In the book, Jackson shares the raw, honest truth about his life as a gay Jewish man in America and gives a warning about the war being waged against the LGBTQ community in our seemingly accepting country. Jackson will discuss “Gay Like Me” with Hamptons International Film Festival co-founder and bestselling author Steven Gaines in a virtual conversation hosted by the Jewish Center of the Hamptons on Thursday, September 24 at 5 p.m. The story of the book’s creation begins when Jackson’s son came out at the age of 15, to the delight of his fathers. “I had hoped he’d be gay,” Jackson remarked. “But then he said, ‘Daddy, being gay is not a big deal. My generation doesn’t think it’s a big deal.’ And I got nervous that he didn’t understand what it meant to be a gay man. I didn’t want him to be one of those people who diminished it or demeaned it by saying, ‘Being gay doesn’t define me,’ or ‘I just happen to be gay,’ because if he did that, he would not take full advantage of the blessing it is, and he would break his own heart.” Richie Jackson cautions elder offspring  that being out is not yet “not a big deal” This moment inspired Jackson to write down all the things he wanted to tell his son about their starkly different gay experiences, and the importance of...

Ginsburg’s Successor Should Be Named in January

“I want you to use my words against me. If there’s a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said let’s let the ... Show more

t president, whoever it might be, make that nomination.” Graham, the South Carolina Republican who himself is up for reelection in November, made these remarks in March 2016, the day that President Barack Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland, who sits on the federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to replace the late Antonin Scalia, who died suddenly the month before. Graham was voicing support for the decision that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky had already announced — that Garland would get no Senate vote or even Judiciary Committee consideration because Obama was in his final year as president and the voters nearly eight months later should decide the president who names Scalia’s replacement. Now, in the wake of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, Graham, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, has reversed course, pledging to move — “without delay” — a nominee Trump is expected to name by week’s end to allow for a vote prior to the November 3 election. So we’re here to use Graham’s words against him. Those gathered remembered Ginsburg’s legal advocacy for women’s rights at the American Civil Liberties Union in the years prior to her appointment to the federal bench.Donna Aceto Graham and McConnell’s vow to confirm Trump’s pick is nothing short of a hypocritical and naked power grab. Four years ago, McConnell stressed that an election year vote on a Supreme Co...

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, A Giant on the High Court, Dies at 87

The September 18 death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who served on the nation’s highest bench since her appointment by President Bill Clinton in 1993, is sending shudder... Show more

hrough progressive Americans who lionized the uncompromising jurist who earlier in her career had founded the Women’s Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Ginsburg, who won the moniker Notorious RBG for her staunch opposition to the rightward tilt of the high court in recent years, was 87 and had suffered since 2019 with pancreatic cancer, an illness she had survived an earlier bout of a decade earlier. LGBTQ rights advocates noted Ginsburg’s consistent support for equal rights advances achieved by the community in decisions dating back to 1996, when the high court struck down a Colorado voter initiative that barred the state or localities from enacting gay and lesbian rights protections. She would go on to vote with the majority in the 2003 decision striking down sodomy laws, the 2013 decision which threw out the Defense of Marriage Act, the 2015 decision guaranteeing marriage equality nationwide, and this year’s ruling finding that employment  discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity is barred by the sex discrimination provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act’s Title VII. Alphonso David, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, released a written statement saying, “Today, we lost an unqualified, undisputed hero. She wasn’t just an iconic jurist, Justice Ginsburg was a force for good — a force for bringing this country closer to delivering on its promise ...

Trump Vows to Block Desegregation Funds for Schools Welcoming Tra...

The US Department of Education is threatening to withhold federal funds earmarked for racial desegregation initiatives at certain schools in Connecticut in retaliation for their complia... Show more

with a policy in that state allowing transgender athletes to participate in accordance with their gender identity. The threats represent another chapter in the administration’s years-long fixation on sidelining student-athletes who have played under the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC), an athletic governing body that has maintained that its rules allowing trans athletes to participate are in compliance with state law. The right-wing backlash against the policy exploded following the emergence of Andraya Yearwood and Terry Miller, two Black transgender track and field student-athletes who became the target of a federal civil rights lawsuit championed by cisgender opponents who competed against them in races. At least six cisgender student-athletes and their families have filed lawsuits against the policy. Department of Education continues aggressive campaign to sideline student-athletes who compete consistent with their gender identity In February, three of those students, backed by the anti-LGBTQ Alliance Defending Freedom, filed a lawsuit aimed at the policy in US District Court in Connecticut in which they argued that their “dreams and goals” were foiled because they had to compete against trans athletes. The Trump administration proceeded to use those complaints as a springboard to issue the funding threats. In June, the DOE declared that the CIAC policy allowing trans athlete...

Does Cinema Need Communal Viewing to Thrive?

Way back on March 8, Leigh Whannell’s “The Invisible Man” was the last film I watched in a theater. Knowing how the following months would pass, its conceit of an invisible villain stal... Show more

g a woman who can’t rely on authority figures for protection proved resonant in ways even the enthusiastic reviews it received in the spring couldn’t predict. Over the past six months, horror films’ vision has generally rung truer to me than the world views of our politicians or media. Most of the films that hit home in 2020 had some connection to the circumstances under which we have to watch them now. For instance, Charlie Kaufman’s “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” devotes half of its time to a couple arguing while trapped in a car driving through a snowstorm. In 10 years, this image will mean something different, but who can achieve some objective distance from our altered sense of time and atomized communities? Movie theaters have re-opened in 70 percent of the US, but not New York State. Just before I began writing this article, Film Forum joined with 16 other independent theaters in the state to urge Governor Andrew Cuomo to allow them to return to business, arguing that their ability to stay afloat is on the line. But where theaters were open even the promise of Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet,” touted as the first post-COVID blockbuster release, didn’t seem to get audiences willing to risk catching the virus for two and a half hours of entertainment. So what does it mean to mount a film festival under these grim circumstances? If you’ve attended enough arthouse screenings with audiences that can be co...