Powderhorn

Salt Lake City’s oldest and longest-running LGBTQ+ bar has closed, with workers claiming the shuttering was a “stunt” to prevent unionization.

The SunTrapp, widely considered the oldest LGBTQ+ bar in Utah, was founded in 1973 and is one of the few safe havens for the community. It shut on 31 October after workers pushed to unionize.

Workers who spoke with the Guardian allege the owner of the bar engaged in numerous unfair labor practices after they submitted a letter requesting voluntary recognition of the union with Communications Workers of America Local 7765 in late September.

In a Republican dominated state ranked as one of the least safe states in the US for the LGBTQ+ community, workers called the bar “a really special place” and a safe haven for the community. The bar had to increase security after the Charlie Kirk assassination that occurred in Utah in September heightened concerns over threats toward the community.

“It’s a really special place where you can go and be judgment free,” Natalie Jankowski, a lead bartender at the SunTrapp, told the Guardian. “We have a lot of older queer people, older trans people, who feel comfortable coming there and nowhere else. We have a lot of Mormons who just left Mormonism who want to have their first drink, judgment free, come there, and we get a lot of people who are questioning their sexuality and they just want to talk to the bar staff about it.”

Yeah, I added a comma. Close your asides, Guardian!

I know, I know ... ew, Reddit. But this is actually one of those stories that gives a little hope that we aren't completely fucked.

A battalion of transportation workers armed with cans of black paint has been deployed to open a new front in Ron DeSantis’s “war on woke”, while young students trying to make their schools safer have joined the LGBTQ+ community as targets of Florida’s Republican governor.

The saga began with the state moving in the dead of night to paint over a rainbow-colored crosswalk outside Orlando’s former Pulse nightclub, where 49 people were killed in a 2016 shooting. The city’s mayor, Buddy Dyer, called the erasure of the memorial to the mostly LGBTQ+ victims “a cruel political act”.

Since then, DeSantis’s crosswalk wars have spread across Florida. The governor has ordered the removal of about 400 “non-standard” pieces of street art, even though they all received state approval as a condition of installation. A growing number of municipalities has pledged to fight him.

The state’s declared intent, acquiescent to a national directive by the Trump administration last month, is to “keep our transportation facilities free and clear of political ideologies”, Florida’s transport secretary, Jared Perdue, wrote in a post to X.

LGBTQ+ celebration is not a fucking "political ideology." One might even suggest that it's in line with the teachings of Jesus, though somehow those in power who to claim to follow them lost the plot quite some time ago.

To be human is to be uncertain, conflicted, divided, and yet we grow up in a world that tells us we should feel whole, certain of our sexual desires. Encouraged to see love through the starry-eyed cliches of social media and celebrity news, we’re diverted from asking ourselves the awkward questions: what is my desire? Why is my sexual self as it is?

Psychoanalysis, too, has its own predictable narratives, but when done properly, it does not provide ready answers. Instead it offers a place where two people can be ruthlessly honest, think together, find meaning together. This work can change our understanding of ourselves, and in doing so change our lives.

A longtime music teacher at a Catholic school in the New Orleans area recently lost his job when it was revealed to an evidently “disgruntled” parent that he was another man’s widower, igniting a scandal within an archdiocese that has otherwise largely been occupied with trying to reorganize its finances in federal bankruptcy court after its clergymen spent decades sexually molesting children.

In an email to community members at the archdiocese-run school from which he was dismissed, Mark Richards explained that he had been fired because a parent notified officials about an obituary for his husband, who died of a heart attack in September 2023.

Richards’ email alluded to how his employment contract at St Francis Xavier school in Metairie, Louisiana, contained a morality clause prohibiting educators from “contracting a marriage in violation of the rules of the Catholic church” and “actively engaging in homosexual activity”, along with other conduct that the document maintains is inconsistent with the teachings of the religion that does not recognize same-sex matrimony.

This week, 75-year-old artist and scholar Kay Turner will take the stage at Brooklyn’s Branded Saloon with her feminist-lesbian punk band Kay Turn Her and the Pages in a “gray gay pride” celebration. Throughout the decades, Turner and her bandmates have donned and distributed merch including pins that read “More Madonna, Less Jesus” (one of her original songs) and t-shirts with the phrase “vintage lesbian.”

Turner formed her first band in 1972, but her performances extend beyond songwriting and often intersect with her other pursuit — the study of folklore. The artist, who holds a PhD in folklore and anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin, has worked as a professor, authored several books, and served as folklorist for the borough of Brooklyn and president of the American Folklore Society. Her varied and interconnected interests began to develop in childhood, when she discovered music, ritual, and writing as a means to understand the unshakeable feeling of being different. Over Zoom, Turner delved into one of her favorite songs, what it means to be a “reader of Madonna,” and the ever-changing world of academia. Below is a condensed version of our conversation.

Badass, indeed.

Who'd have guessed it would be a 6-3 ruling?

A Tennessee state law banning gender-affirming care for minors can stand, the US supreme court has ruled, a devastating loss for trans rights supporters in a case that could set a precedent for dozens of other lawsuits involving the rights of transgender children.

The case, United States v Skrmetti, was filed last year by three families of trans children and a provider of gender-affirming care. In oral arguments, the plaintiffs – as well as the US government, then helmed by Joe Biden – argued that Tennessee’s law constituted sex-based discrimination and thus violated the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment. Under Tennessee’s law, someone assigned female at birth could not be prescribed testosterone, but someone assigned male at birth could receive those drugs.

Tennessee, meanwhile, has argued that the ban is necessary to protect children from what it termed “experimental” medical treatment. During arguments, the conservative justices seemed sympathetic to that concern, although every major medical and mental health organization in the US has found that gender-affirming care can be evidence-based and medically necessary. These groups also oppose political bans on such care.

Posters advertising a “bear weekend” cling to the utility poles on Fire Island, punctuating the wooden boardwalks that meander through a lush dune landscape of beach grass and pitch pine. It’s not a celebration of grizzlies, by the looks of the flyers, but of large bearded men in small swimming trunks, bobbing in the pools and sprawled on the sundecks of mid-century modernist homes. You might also find them frolicking in the bushes of this idyllic car-free island, a nature reserve of an unusual kind that stretches in a 30-mile sliver of sand off the coast of Long Island in New York.

Over the last century, Fire Island Pines, as the central square-mile section of this sandy spit is known, has evolved into something of a queer Xanadu. Now counting about 600 homes, it is a place of mythic weekend-long parties and carnal pleasure, a byword for bacchanalia and fleshy hedonism – but also simply a secluded haven where people can be themselves.

“My most vivid memory of my first visit here in the late 90s is being able to hold my boyfriend’s hand in public without fear,” says Christopher Rawlins, architect and co-founder of Pines Modern, a non-profit dedicated to celebrating the modern architecture of the island. The palpable sense of community and liberation here is, he says, “what happens when people who are accustomed to a certain degree of fear no longer feel it.”

Never before have I seen such a fusion of hate and brainwashing unfold on TV. But much of it veers so far off into the absurd (think girl being accused of being trans in a softball game for the length of her hair and "being really good") that it's fertile ground for Oliver.

Have you seen softball players? There should have been no surprise here. I ... uh ... have a bit of experience. But pick the right complaint as scaremongering conservatives! They're not all transitioning ... anecdotally, they tend to marry their female boss at The Sports Authority.

Bills focused on transgender people rose to prominence in 2016 with a North Carolina law requiring people to use bathrooms based on their sex assigned at birth (later rolled back). By 2021, the number of bills climbed with a new emphasis on transgender athletes' participation in school sports and, later, on restricting gender-affirming treatments, especially for minors.

By 2024, some advocates on the other side thought the effort had peaked. A group that opposes restrictions on transgender people, the Human Rights Campaign, issued a report last year declaring it, "increasingly clear that the tide is turning and momentum has begun to shift" against these bills.

But later that year, Republicans saturated campaigns with ads about gender, including attacks on Biden administration policies. The Trump campaign highlighted the issue in ads in swing states. Down-ballot candidates picked up the message, too.

The American Civil Liberties Union tracks "anti-LGBTQ bills." The group says the bulk of them contain restrictions on transgender people and that a record 575 bills had been filed in states through April. Last year, there were 533 and there were 510 in 2023, according to the ACLU, which opposes such laws.

Flooding the zone with "shit somewhere else."

A trans teacher at a Texas high school has resigned after becoming the target of conservative backlash and online attacks.

Rosie Sandri came out as a trans woman about seven months ago. Her colleagues at Red Oak high school and the Red Oak independent school district were very supportive, she recalled to NBC News.

Sandri posted videos speaking about her life as a trans woman and teacher on TikTok. Last week, the rightwing social media account Libs of TikTok posted one of Sandri’s TikTok videos in which she talks about “gender euphoria”.

“They call me ma’am. They call me miss. They use my correct pronouns and know my correct name, and it is incredibly affirming,” she said in the TikTok video describing her positive experiences with her students.

In the post, Libs of TikTok deadnamed and also misgendered her.

The mind boggles with the sheer absurdity of this administration, and it's not poised to improve. Be safe, y'all!