Official News Outlet for the Rainbow Round Table of the American Library Association
By John Mack Freeman Last week at Midwinter, the 2015 Over the Rainbow List was announced. The top ten titles are: Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive. By Julia Serano. Gender Failure. By Ivan Coyote and Rae Spoon. Living Out Islam: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Muslims. By Scott Siraj al-Haqq Kugle. […]
By John Mack Freeman The proposed bylaws change mentioned earlier in the news here has been tabled for more discussion. If you have any questions about this, please contact the Executive Board.
By Ashley R. Lierman Last column, I talked about how our conservative television culture tends to classify any hint of LGBT themes as strictly “for adults,” and how frustrating that is. As has been pointed out, age-delimiting sexually explicit material is one issue, but the taboo on any discussion of queer issues on children’s TV […]
By John Mack Freeman A clinic in Canada has found an alternate way to accept blood donations from men who have sex with men. Currently, Canada has an MSM ban that lasts for five years from the last sexual encounter. Because this is clearly insane, the Canadian Blood Service is hosting a one-day event at […]
By John Mack Freeman In a recent study that will doubtlessly not shock any of our consistent readers, Lead researcher Nicholas Eaton, Ph.D., of Stony Brook University and colleagues at the TransYouth Project found that trans youth had a clear understanding of what gender meant and a well-established idea of how their gender fit into their […]
By John Mack Freeman The United States State Department is expected to announce the creation of an LGBT rights envoy some time during February. While the envoy’s name has yet to be released, sources inside the State Department say that it is an openly gay member of the Foreign Service who is going through the […]
By John Mack Freeman Magic: The Gathering, the long-running trading card game, added its first trans character with an expansion pack that released at the end of January. Part of her character story reads as follows (the full story can be found here): She had been so different—only sixteen, a boy in everyone’s eyes but her […]
By John Mack Freeman Fusion magazine’s “Massive Millennial Poll” surveyed 1,000 18-34 year olds. Via Advocate.com: 50 percent of the 1,000 peoplebetween the ages of 18 and 34 who were interviewed by telephone agreed with the statement “Gender is a spectrum, and some people fall outside conventional categories.” Before answering, interviewees were informed, “Some countries, including India, recognize […]
A recent question on Jeopardy! may have snuck a bit of political discourse into the game show. The $800 clue for a category called “Civil” was, “Some opponents of same-sex marriage say, hey gay folks, how about these? Wouldn’t these be good enough?” The answer – or question, rather – was “civil unions.” According […]
By Ashley R. Lierman Michael Stokes, a photographer whose work focuses on male homoeroticism, is one of a growing number of Facebook users to report censorship of gay-themed images on the site. According to Stokes, Facebook has been opaque about the process of removing images and it is difficult to establish a pattern or reason […]