Did Army Secretary Eric Fanning Hint at Lifting Trans Military Ban?

It’s been less than three weeks since Eric Fanning made history by becoming the first openly gay leader of any U.S. military branch. On Wednesday he hinted at more progress to come.

Last night he was honored at the Capital Pride Heroes Gala at the Carnegie Library in Washington, D.C. where he received the Paving the Way award, along with eight other individuals. The award “honors those in public life who have shown courage and leadership in helping to advance the cause of LGBT rights,” and it’s given annually by the Capital Pride Alliance.

In his five-minute acceptance speech, Secretary Fanning “hinted at a possible lifting of the ban on out transgender military service,” as reported by Metroweekly:

“Time and time again in the military, as we have opened it up to people who weren’t allowed to serve in the past: African-Americans after World War II; women over many years, not just recently; the end of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’; [and] things haven’t fallen apart, they’ve gotten better,” Fanning said.

“The problems we’re facing, the challenges we’re facing, are ever more complicated in the world, certainly in the national security sphere,” he continued. “Why wouldn’t we want as many people as possible solving those kind of problems? The more backgrounds we have, the more viewpoints we have, the more experiences we have…the better off we’re going to be. And we’re going to keep getting better, fighting for more people to be included and have rights. … That’s all that this is about, to have the same opportunity to defend the nation we all love.”

Earlier today, Fanning told NBC’s Matt Lauer he didn’t even imagine he would have a future in the military as an openly gay man.

A little over five years ago, ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ prohibited gay and lesbian people from serving openly in the military.

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MTV announces pride month special 'Proudest Moments,' launches digital series 'No I.D. Required'

www.glaad.org/blog/mtv-announces-pride-month-special-proudest-moments-launches-digital-series-no-id-required

Mormon Church Finds a New Target for Their Homophobia

Will LDS members continue to open their purses and wallets to stop marriage equality?

www.advocate.com/marriage-equality/2016/6/02/mormon-church-finds-new-target-their-homophobia

Reflecting On 35 Years Since First Reports Of AIDS

We’re coming up on a grim anniversary–35 years since the first reported cases of what we would come to know as AIDS. To mark the occasion, the Bay Area Reporter has interviewed some high profile survivors about their experiences, their memories and what might lie ahead. It’s required reading for anyone who’s been touched by the crisis–which is everyone.

Related: “How to Survive a Plague” Explores The Passion And Progress Of Early AIDS Activists

One of the most important milestones of the last 35 years was the introduction of cocktails in the mid-90s. Following that innovation, death rates–which had been skyrocketing year after year– immediately took a nosedive.

That followed a decade of experimental treatments, many of which had no effect or actually made suffering worse. But there was virtually no knowledge about how the disease worked, and it was spreading so fast that doctors were desperate for any form of treatment. What’s more, officials in the Reagan administration did as little as they could to address the crisis.

Activist Cleve Jones recalls bringing the AIDS quilt to Washington in the mid-90s, when the Clinton administration was finally starting to take action to save lives.

“I talked to President Clinton on how my friends were now thriving and asking him to make sure these drugs would be available to everybody,” he tells the Bay Area Reporter.

In 1994, he suffered an infection that he expected to take his life, but the cocktails saved him.

Related: WATCH: Elizabeth Taylor’s Fight To Raise AIDS Awareness Changed History

Gabriel Quinto talks about being an early test subject. He also expected to die, and sold all of his belongings in preparation for the end. The drugs that he took saved him, but also had devastating side effects.

“These drugs were not tested for people of color and the side effects could make you feel worse than the disease itself,” he explains. “Many of my friends could not take these drugs and gave up. … The current medications have not raised my number of T cells above 150, so consequently I have good days and bad days when I need to rest.”

Terry Beswick, who runs the GLBT Historical Society, holds regular events and organizes exhibits to reflect on the last three decades. He cites the crisis as having taught the LGBTQ community a hard lesson about organizing and establishing leadership, one that ultimately helped the fight for civil rights but at an unbearable cost.

“We need to meet people where they are at and base public health policy on science rather than morality,” he says. “My big goal is to build a bigger LGBT museum (than the one in the Castro), complete with an educational and cultural center so we can tell the story of AIDS more effectively and learn not to make the same mistakes we made 20, 30 years ago.”

Related: Six Pioneering Gay Writers Who Helped Bring HIV/AIDS To The American Forefront

“I think marriage equality came out of our struggle with AIDS. For my generation of radical activists, marriage was not on any of our priority lists,” Jones says. But when partners died and there were no legal protections, “suddenly that little piece of paper became critically important. And that’s why working class gays and lesbians lined up when Mayor Gavin Newsom opened up City Hall in 2004 so they could get married, despite flack from the political establishment.”

Gavin Newsom, it’s worth pointing out, recently sent out an email to supporters about that time. Back in 2004, when he issued marriage licenses, most of the Democratic Party abandoned him.

There was only one high-profile politician willing to work with him during that time: Hillary Clinton.

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This Mississippi Teen Is A High Schooler By Day And A Drag Queen At Night

By day, Trevor Ladner is your typical Mississippi high-schooler. But by night, he’s high-fashion drag queen Annie Thang.

Ladner was struggling to fit into typical concepts of masculinity and femininity, but drag opened up a new way of thinking about it… and dealing with it.

Related: Nine Queens Who Turned Their Drag Careers Into Some Serious Coin

The Sun Herald brings you his story in a fabulous video piece that’s just begging to be extended into a documentary or adapted into a TV show/movie of the week.

And, oh yeah, did we mention he’s going to Harvard in the fall?

We know it’s the internet in 2016, but this one is definitely worth six minutes of your time. Check it out below…

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The Maytag Man Wants to Celebrate Pride with You

For 49 years, he’s been America’s “reliable and strong repairman who loves to do the dishes.” This year, he’s also “dependable, powerful and stocked full of Pride.”

After last year’s successful ad campaign that showed the Maytag Man holding a colored layer cake with a caption that read “Proud to be in any home,” an allusion to bakeries that had refused to serve same-sex couples, Maytag is bringing back the rainbow version of the good-looking handyman to celebrate LGBT Pride month. And this year, Maytag’s parent company Whirlpool also joined in.

On its Facebook page, the caption reads “It’s just that simple.”

It’s not as simple, however, to please everybody. Tweets applauding and criticizing the initiative quickly appeared on the social network.

The lgbt pandering is nauseating @TheMaytagMan .

— DernDawn (@noprezzie2012) June 2, 2016

@TheMaytagMan love you Maytag Man lol 😁🌈

— des (@603Lezzy) June 2, 2016

@TheMaytagMan Stop making lgbt identities saleable product shit man machine seller

— real subtle (@realsubtle) June 2, 2016

@realsubtle @TheMaytagMan pic.twitter.com/Ia3ctr3NOX

— Andrew S. (@shoutingboy) June 2, 2016

Whirlpool is proud to be the first and only appliance manufacturer to receive a 100 score from the Human Rights Campaign on its annual Corporate Equality Index, a list of the nation’s most LGBT-inclusive companies based on their treatment of LGBT employees, consumers and investors. The company says it has received perfect scores since 2003.

#EqualityWorks, which is why we are proud to support the #LGBT community by participating in @HRC’s #CEI2016 pic.twitter.com/c9B9S3rFhY

— Whirlpool Corp (@WhirlpoolCorp) November 18, 2015

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LGBT Hotel Chain Wants You To Be ‘Heterofriendly’ – WATCH

We’ve seen a spate of new gay and gay friendly ads released as of late, which might not seem surprising given that June is national LGBT Pride month in the U.S. Still, some of the more memorable ads have come from overseas. Take for instance Dove for Men ad featuring Australian LGBT ally and rugby player David Pocock, or the heartwarming ad about a gay soccer star and his boyfriend created by a German rail company.

You can now add to that list a more bizarre entry: an ad for a European-based LGBT chain of hotels called Axel Hotels that features a faux gay boyband satirically flipping stereotypes on their heads and urging guests to be ‘heterofriendly.’

In the music video-style ad, members of the boyband preach tolerance for straight boys and sing about taking a hapless straight under their wings a la Queer Eye For A Straight Guy.

Juan Juliá, founder and president of Axel Hotels, said of the ad, “We wanted to blink an eye at society when facing the struggle for true normalization of the LGBT community, we wanted them to step in our shoes for a moment.”

Said the company on its YouTube posting:

“The world get closer to be more gay”. With this pharse begin “Be Heterofriendly”, the new video launched by Axel Hotels, and which uses humor sense to put an accent on positive discrimination in current society.

Axel Hotels supports since its opening the normalization and rights of the LGBT community. Straights, we love you too!

Watch the video, below.

[h/t Attitude]

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Man Booker Prize Winner Marlon James Was Tortured By ‘Ex-Gay’ Exorcism: VIDEO

Jamaican author and Man Booker Prize winner Marlon James has claimed that preachers tortured him in order to “cure” him of his sexuality.

James, who had struggled to come to terms with being gay, said the treatment involved “a mixture of prayer and support and shaming and vomiting.”

Speaking during an interview at the Hay Festival of Literature & Arts in Wales, he said the ‘exorcism’ made him feel cured. “I thought ‘Great, I am getting rid of demons’, until I read up on the whole ex-gay thing,” he said.

RELATED – Human Rights Watch Documents Abuse Of Gays In Jamaica: VIDEO

James added that “ex-gay” therapy is “dangerously misleading and I think has been discredited. It is a really primitive and backward way of curing people.”

Homosexuality remains illegal in Jamaica.

The country celebrated its first Pride Festival in August last year.

Watch an interview in which James talks about being black, Jamaican and gay below.

(Image via Twitter)

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Senator Casey Endorses the Equality Act

Today, U.S. Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) announced that he will co-sponsor the Equality Act. Senator Casey will become the 42nd senator to cosponsor the legislation, in addition to 175 members of the House.

The bipartisan Equality Act would provide consistent and explicit non-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people across key areas of life, including employment, housing, credit, education, public spaces and services, federally funded programs and jury service.

Our nation’s civil rights laws protect people on the basis of race, color and national origin and in most cases, sex, disability and religion.  However, federal law does not provide consistent non-discrimination protections based on sexual orientation or gender identity.  The need for the Equality Act is clear—nearly two-thirds of LGBTQ Americans report having experienced discrimination in their personal lives. 

“Despite the Supreme Court’s decision in favor of marriage equality in June of 2015, it’s still legal under federal law and in many states, including Pennsylvania, to fire someone, or deny them access to public accommodations because they’re gay or transgender,” Casey said in a press release announcing his support for the Equality Act. “Just recently states like North Carolina and Mississippi have enacted laws that are nothing more than state sponsored discrimination. Much of the discussion around these laws has centered on public restrooms. These laws are about much more that: they are a license to discriminate in all aspects of our society like the workplace and in housing. These laws are contrary the values of our nation and make clear the need for the Equality Act.”

Senator Casey, who defeated the notoriously anti-LGBTQ Rick Santorum, has been a strong proponent of LGBTQ rights in the Senate. He is the lead sponsor of the Safe Schools Improvement Act (SSIA), which would require school districts to adopt codes of conduct prohibiting bullying and harassment, including explicitly on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity and religion.

Everyone should have a fair chance to earn a living and provide a home for their families without fear of constant harassment or discrimination. HRC applauds Senator Casey’s leadership and will continue to work with Members of Congress to increase support for commonsense, explicit non-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people.

www.hrc.org/blog/senator-casey-endorses-the-equality-act?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed