Mud Flies in Windy City Mayoral Runoff

Pot legalization is in trouble. Citing a need for more time, Governor Andrew Cuomo said on March 19 that the bill to legalize marijuana has been nixed from the state budget package that is due by April 1 and would inst... Show more

ead be considered through a standalone vote, sparking concern from advocates who are worried the legislation’s fate is in jeopardy. “If we don’t do it in the budget, it’s going to be a lot harder to pass as a standalone,” Brad Usher, a senior aide to Senate Finance Chair Liz Krueger, warned in an email. Krueger, an East Side Democrat first elected in 2002, is one of the sponsors of the legalization bill that has united advocates in recent years. The Drug Policy Alliance, a major drug reform organization, was equally alarmed about the latest development. “The governor and the Legislature previously said that there is a pathway to get this done, but their latest comments are non-committal,” said Jag Davies, a spokesperson for the group. Cuomo said lawmakers need additional time to come to an agreement on the bill, but maintained he is hopeful it will be pass by June. Still, he acknowledged that the standalone legislation would face an uphill battle “because it’s now just marijuan

Our Worse Selves

Lori Lightfoot, an out lesbian candidate for mayor in Chicago, has gained key endorsements from across the political spectrum and appears to have the edge in the home stretch of the race despite getting hit with a vicious... Show more

last-minute wave of homophobic flyers distributed outside of churches. Lightfoot, the former president of the Chicago Police Board, narrowly edged out the two closest vote-getters in a crowded election on February 26, but fell well short of the majority needed to avoid a runoff. She garnered slightly more than 97,000 votes, or 17.54 percent, while Cook County Board president Toni Preckwinkle trailed closely behind with 16.04 percent of the vote. President Barack Obama’s former chief of staff, Bill Daley — whose father, Richard J. Daley, and brother, Richard M. Daley, previously served as mayors of Chicago — wasn’t too far behind in third place, as he notched 14.78 percent. The 56-year-old Lightfoot is vying to become the first black woman and first openly LGBTQ person to be elected mayor of Chicago in the April 2 runoff, but her sexual orientation has become a hot topic in the final weeks. Misleading flyers about her LGBTQ positions were posted around the city in recent days — and

Another St. Pat’s Win for Inclusivity

Jordan Peele’s directorial debut, “Get Out,” is one of the most acclaimed American films of this decade. Needless to say, his second film “Us” arrives in theaters with a lot of baggage, particularly because the recept... Show more

the reception of “Get Out” felt like a political event as much as a cultural one. Coming one month after Trump’s inauguration, the massive commercial success of “Get Out” felt like a widespread acknowledgement of the persistence of white supremacy under new and more subtle guises. “Us” moves in a new direction, simultaneously artier and closer to conventional genre fare. The film starts out in 1986. A young girl named Adelaide goes to a beach in Santa Cruz with her family. The excursion turns creepy. Heading into a mirrored funhouse, she sees her doppelganger. “Us” then takes us to the present, where the adult Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o), her husband Gabe (Winston Duke) and their children Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and Jason (Evan Alex) are driving to their summer house for a vacation. Their expectations of relaxation are shattered by a power outage and, an instant later, the arrival of four strangers who look exactly like them but are dressed in clothes that resemble prison jumpsuit

Bolsonaro: US, Brazil United in Promoting Hetero Norms

New York’s St. Patrick’s Day season culiminated on March 17, the day after the traditional Manhattan parade was held on Fifth Avenue, with the Brooklyn St. Patrick’s Day Parade, which included an LGBTQ group for the... Show more

or the first time. Every March, communities cross the New York area hold parades in honor of the Irish saint and to celebrate Ireland’s culture, and each year it seems at least one more becomes inclusive. In 2019, however, there remains one stubborn holdout — I’m looking at you, Staten Island. The Manhattan parade and traditional Mayor’s Breakfast were held Saturday, March 16, a day before the official holiday. It’s a sign of the times that Irish-American LGBTQ activist and filmmaker Brendan Fay was invited to introduce the morning’s program and Mayor Bill de Blasio at Gracie Mansion. Fay was a member of the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization that originally protested Manhattan’s exclusionary policies in the early 1990s, and he went on to found both the Lavender & Green Alliance, which now marches on Fifth Avenue, and the inclusive St. Pat’s for All Parade in Queens. “It was quite a difference to be preparing remarks to introduce the day and the mayor in contrast with preparing to

Federal Judge to Pentagon: Not So Fast on Trans Ban

President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil stood alongside President Donald Trump in the Rose Garden at the White House on March 19 and said the two nations are aligned in promoting straight relationships and rejecting political ... Show more

correctness. “May I say that Brazil and the United States stand side by side in their efforts to ensure liberties in respect to traditional family lifestyles, respect to God, our creator against the gender ideology or politically correct attitudes and against fake news,” Bolsonaro said. Trump did not address Bolsonaro’s comments on LGBTQ rights, but later complimented him on using the term “fake news.” During a subsequent question and answer session with the press, reporters did not ask the two leaders about those comments or LGBTQ issues. Bolsonaro’s remarks, made during his highly anticipated visit to the US, represent the latest twist in his longstanding pattern of homophobia dating back to his time in Brazil’s Congress. He once described himself as “homophobic — and very proud of it,” and upon taking office as president he immediately took action against LGBTQ rights by removing those issues from the Ministry of Women, Family, and Human Rights. Just two weeks before his visit

Equality Act Rejected by Dem Senator, Former Log Cabin Leader

In a three-page notice to the Pentagon, US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly reminded the Trump administration that the nationwide preliminary injunction she issued in October 2017 against the proposed ban on tran... Show more

sgender military service remains in place, at least until such time as the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit issues a final mandate in its review of her order. The notice offered a bit of caution against the Defense Department’s March 12 announcement that it planned to implement within 30 days the ban on military service first announced in a series of tweets by President Donald Trump in July 2017. In a brief order issued on January 4, followed by written opinions released on March 8, the Circuit Court vacated Kollar-Kotelly’s injunction, directing her to reconsider whether the transgender plaintiffs were entitled to a preliminary injunction. Since three other injunctions against the policy’s implementation had earlier been stayed — by the Supreme Court in January in the case of rulings out of Riverside, California, and Seattle and by the US District Court in Baltimore on March 7 — the Pentagon, on March 12, announced that the ban proposed by then-Defense Secretary James Mattis i