LGBT-Today

08/12/2021

WASHINGTON – The White House Friday released a list of another ten nominees to serve in key roles it is forwarding to the U.S. Senate. Included in the list were two more LGBTQ folks as nominees including Scott Miller, Nominee for Ambassador to the Swiss Confederation and to the Principality of Liechtenstein and Todd Harper, Nominee for Chairman of the National Credit Union Administration. Losangelesblade.com

05/28/2020

"Larry Kramer is one of America's most valuable troublemakers. I hope he never lowers his voice."
- Susan Sontag
Larry Kramer, RIP. An iconic AIDS activist and an in-your-face q***r advocate passes away.
He was an inspiration to me and to many other AIDS educators at the height of the AIDS pandemic.
I remember Larry from early non-activist works such as 'Faggots', a brilliant evocation of the promiscuous '70s, and a s*xually explicit capture of the compulsive, panting drivenness of the o**y scene in Manhattan and Fire Island back then.
Larry's switch to an activist role happened with the AIDS crisis.
Passionately concerned about the homophobic hatred behind the stigma surrounding HIV disease, Larry spoke out against the callousness of the US government and culture that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide.
He founded Gay Men's Health Crisis in the early '80s, and ACT UP in 1987.
This led to the openly confrontational group Q***r Nation which was a militant organization that integrated the LGBT spectrum in a rainbow cluster called 'q***r' and staged love-ins and protests in malls, streets, and other straight centers of power.
Larry's pioneering voice stimulated a whole culture of protest that eventually woke up a sluggish US government and stimulated research that led to the discovery of the 'AIDS cocktail', the three-drug combo that is an effective treatment of HIV disease.
The panicked scapegoating anxiety caused by the Coronavirus is very similar in some ways to the reaction to the HIV crisis of the '80s and '90s, except it goes much further. Whereas HIV disease rendered s*x iffy and highly risky except with condoms, Covid-19 renders the very physical presence of the Other as a risk. Thus, a pathological masked phobia of the Other comes with this territory.
On the other hand, because HIV was stigmatized a 'gay' disease, it was safely ghettoized and the search for a vaccine/cure was callously put on the back burner for years.
By contrast, the Corona crisis is seen as everybody's problem--hence the feverish race for a vaccine and cures.
Larry, may you be free of sorrow, may you be at peace and in a state of joy.
--Raj Ayyar

05/08/2019

I'm sorry to announce that LGBT-Today no longer exists.

It was never a high-traffic website, we never had ads or sponsors to subsidize the expense in all the 10 years I kept it up and running.

I was honored to have run this site in the memory of Jack Nichols and Lige Clarke, but it seems that no one is really interested in the history of gay rights anymore since g**s and le****ns are now allowed to marry and serve openly in the armed forces. It's a real crying shame that emphasis is no longer placed on any sort of historical studies, let along that of the gay and le***an community, but life has become far too complicated in the present for people to take even a passing curiosity in how we got to this point.

There are still fight to be fought for the transgender community, but now that g**s, le****ns and bis*xuals have claimed their rights (over the hard work and backs, lives and contributions of the transgender community) those people who have now are discriminating against those who gave the most blood for their fight.

I was never that good a writer or editor to begin with, so I doubt that too many will mourn the passing of this site or my retirement from public life (my health is steadily failing), I salute your dedication, intelligence and perception of my dream and hope that you can find something that satisfies your appetite for the path we followed or any obstacles that might lay in our future.

For the record and for all transgender rights, I have been transgender for 31 years, living under the gay/le***an radar, and ashamed I never came to Jack or Frank Kameny or most of the gay pioneers I came to know either in person or by phone and reputation. Most of all I am ashamed that I never had the bravery to come out to all of you, afraid of the judgment and possible repudiation that some of you might have heaped on me. To some, this may make me appear to be phony, but I assure you that heart and intentions were in the right place.

In closing, remember the words of George Santayana when he said; "Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

Take care and whatever higher power you believe in bless you for the rest of yours days.

Stephanie Donald (Formerly Donald Altpeter for half my life)
Managing Editor and Writer for LGBT-Today.com

May the Great Lady Lay in Peace.

You can read the old stories on https://archive.org/web/ and type in www.lgbt-today.com.

09/06/2018

About time.
A landmark Indian Supreme Court judgment, decriminalizing consensual same-s*x acts and same-s*x love.
This is a victory not only for LGBTQ rights but also for human rights in India, with the justices led by the Chief Justice Dipak Misra, proclaiming that 'history owes the LGBTQ community an apology', and rightly reducing Macaulay's colonial legacy (Macaulay framed the infamous colonial so**my law--Sec. 377 of the Indian Penal Code), to the dust heap of history. At least as far as consensual adult same-s*x love
Ironic that Hindutva, Islamic and Christian fundamentalist groups in India, have tried to pass off a colonial statute as their 'tradition', and blocked any attempt at parliamentary legislation to overturn Sec. 377 of the Indian penal code. Thus, Macaulay is co-opted as Hindu, Muslim or Christian 'heritage' by these groups!
This is also a reassuring sign that secular, liberal India is not dead yet. Over the past few years, we have witnessed the ugliness of lynch mobs killing the innocent, leftist activists being jailed or shot dead, books pulped or burned and their authors threatened by vigilantes and trolls,
The Indian SC is the one ray of light and hope in this mad chaos--Dipak Misra's court has upheld the right to privacy, blocked attempts by right-wing groups and governments to censor literature and art, abolished the triple talaq, and more.
Now, the decriminalization of same-s*x love.
Clearly, not a 'kangaroo court', in any sense of the word.

Constitution Bench declares the 156-year-old “tyranny” of Section 377 as “irrational, indefensible and manifestly arbitrary”.

11/12/2017

Instead of Cashing in on Stupidity Let’s Invest in Common Sense by Stephanie Donald | Nov 12, 2017 | Blog, Featured Articles | 0 comments The Raving Le***an 11/12/2017 Stephanie Donald| Publisher Emeritus, LGBT-Today Through the last 37 years, I have heard the religious right and neo-conservatives c...