Namibian Court Denies Entry To Gay Couple’s Surrogate Daughters
Photo courtesy of BigStock/zhudifeng The BBC reports that a Namibian court has refused to issue a gay man emergency travel documents so that he can bring home his twin daughters from South Africa where they were born by surrogate. Read the full story at the BBC
Gay Man’s House Given Rainbow Makeover By Neighbors After Homophobes Threatened To Kill Him
Photo courtesy of BigStock/MicroOne Pink News reports that homophobic thugs threatened to kill a gay man for planning to paint his house rainbow colors – so his community rallied together to send an important message. Read the full story at Pink News
Politicians Urged To Ban Gay Conversion Therapy
Photo courtesy of BigStock/marphotography The Belfast Telegraph reports that activists campaigning for a ban on gay conversion therapy have urged Northern Ireland's politicians to make history and outlaw the practice. Read the full story at the Belfast Telegraph
Alaska Denied Benefits To Gay Couples Despite Court Rulings
Photo courtesy of BigStock/AlexLMX ABC News reports that Alaska wrongly denied some same-sex spouses benefits for years by claiming their unions were not recognized even after courts struck down gay marriage bans, court documents obtained by The Associated Press show. Read the full story at ABC...
Disney Introduces New “Gender-Inclusive” Rules For Cast Members
Photo courtesy of BigStock/presian1801 Gay Times reports that Disney Parks has announced plans to create a more gender-inclusive space for its employees. Read the full story at Gay Times
Florida Passes Bill Requiring Some Girls To Undergo Genital Inspections For School Sports
Photo courtesy of BigStock/designer491 LGBTQNation reports that the Florida House passed a bill on Wednesday banning transgender girls from participating in school sports and requiring girls whose sex is “disputed” to undergo inspections of their genitalia. Read the full story at...
Four Time WNBA Champions Minnesota Lynx Open Their Season Against the Phoenix Mercury on May 14, 2021 at the Target Center Minneapolis MN
Casual, Quick, Centro
Photos by Mike Hnida When you’re craving great tacos and delicious margaritas, Centro has you covered. The other night, my partner and I made plans with our two friends who have become our (very small) quarantine circle over the past year. We wanted to have a game night, which quickly turned into...
Mall Cuisine: Novel Noshing + Fan Favorites
Photos courtesy of Mall of America The combination of the spring weather and the vaccine rollout has a lot of us Minnesotans slowly crawling out of hibernation, ready to try some new things and discover what we missed over the last year. We are going to go ahead and assume that the Mall of America...
What A Time To Be Alive And Dine
Photos courtesy of The Aliveness Project The Aliveness Project has been helping Minnesotans deal with both pandemics, COVID-19 and HIV/AIDS. Now it’s time to celebrate. The Aliveness Project provides lifesaving services, food, and other basic necessities to people living with HIV (PLWH) throughout...
Keeping in Spirit(s): Du Nord Craft Spirits
“We make five products. We only make what we like…We like our gin. We like our vodka. We like our whiskey. We like coffee liqueurs and we like apple liqueurs.” Photo by Soona “Anything worth doing is always done with a group of people,” says Chris Montana, owner and founder of Du Nord Craft...
A Spirited History: Haskell’s Wine and Spirits
Photo courtesy of BigStock/stokkete Haskell's Wine and Spirits has been a Twin City tradition since prohibition times. This well-stocked libation destination is steeped in hometown history. I spoke with Haskell's Vice President of E-commerce & Digital Marketing, Beau Farrell—to learn more...
#DineSaintPaul
Many industries were hurt by the pandemic, the immediate wrath being dealt swiftly to the restaurant industry. The Twin Cities restaurant community is tight knit; this is an expansive family that looks out for one another. Sustained months of dynamic restrictions have left our food scene changed...
A Word In Edgewise: Never Too Early to Adult
Max Brooks’s novelization of Minecraft: The Island, and Julie Lythcott-Haims’s Your Turn: How to Be an Adult, target widely differing audiences—yet each addresses the ongoing struggle to personal agency. Brooks’s character must survive on an alien, sometimes hostile, world; Lythcott-Haims’s...
Books: 675
Poor Queer Studies: Confronting Elitism in the University Matt Brim Duke University Press $26.95 Brim foregrounds a problem seldom considered by today’s elitist universities. Ivied halls point to well-attended Women’s and LGBTQ+ programs. Even if queer themselves, how many have stopped to consider...
Skirting The Issues: Exuberance
Photo courtesy of BigStock/Mihailo K In January, I moved from a cramped twelfth-floor heart-of-downtown Minneapolis condo to a two-story house with a walkout basement in Victoria. Actually, rural Victoria is more apt: the house—newly constructed in a development with many soon-to-be-built homes...
Leather Life: CLAW 21 Coming in November 2021
With hopes that the coronavirus pandemic will have subsided by autumn, several major leather/BDSM/fetish events are being scheduled for November 2021. One of these is CLAW (which stands for Cleveland Leather Annual Weekend—but everyone just calls it CLAW). CLAW, a huge leather/BDSM/fetish event...
From the Editor: Mall Munchies
Photo by Ryan Patchin The mall is back. After months of mostly-empty hallways and roped-off food courts—the Mall of America has rebounded to pre-pandemic crowds, eateries abound. By random coincidence, I was visiting the mall on March 17, 2020—the day it was announced the mall would close for two...
BigGayNews for Friday, April 2, 2021
Today's Top Headlines Mean Girls’ Jonathan Bennett Reveals The Horrific Toll Homophobic Bullying Took On His Health Pentagon Issues Policies For Open Service By Transgender Troops Pink Cake On Canals – Amsterdam Celebrates Same-Sex Weddings
Mean Girls’ Jonathan Bennett Reveals The Horrific Toll Homophobic Bullying Took On His Health
Photo courtesy of BigStock/artursz Pink News reports that in an Instagram post for World Theatre Day, Bennett, who played Aaron Samuels in the cult classic Mean Girls, shared how high school theatre was the only place to give him “the tiniest bit of refuge” from the homophobic bullying that was so...