Transilient has announced that it is giving two transgender individuals the opportunity to go on its fall tour across the U.S. on a paid contract basis from Sept. 16-Oct. 30. Funding for the positions is being made available through contributions and fundraising initiatives. Transilient is seeking someone to serve in part as Basil Soper’s executive assistant among other duties and a communications assistant to work with Klie and Jonah. Pay is $1,500 with all expenses covered. Deadline for applications is June 23. FInal candidates will be chosen by July 10. More details are available online at
bit.ly/2JA2WyP.
info: wearetransilient.com.
A new analysis by the Williams Institute estimates that 21,000 uninsured LGBTQ adults, ages 18-64, could gain access to health insurance under Virginia’s recent Medicaid expansion. In May 2018, Virginia became the 33rd state to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act when the Virginia General Assembly voted to extend eligibility to households earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level.
info: williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu.
GLMA has announced that its 36th Annual Conference on LGBTQ Health will take place from Oct. 10-13 in Las Vegas, Nev. The organization is providing a limited number of student/trainee scholarships to help offset the cost of attending in exchange for service during the event. Full details and information is available online. Deadline for application is July 1 via bit.ly/2kZFDUw.
info: glma.org.
Beverly Little Thunder, a Two-Spirit Native American activist, Standing Rock Lakota elder and author of the memoir, “One Bead at a Time,” says the new novel, “Swimming Upstream” by Jacob Anderson-Minshall is “a must read.” Anderson-Minshall is a non-Native transgender man who grew up on the banks of Idaho’s Portnuef River in the ancestral land of the Shoshoni. He was gratified and humbled by Little Thunder’s comments. The majority of the novel’s characters are Native American or mixed-race, including Ki, a gay man who was assigned female at birth; Ki’s adopted son Flint, who was born with an intersex condition; Ki’s birth daughter, Brooke; and the couple that raised Brooke as their own, Joe and Tallulah Redfish. Secrets were kept by Brooke’s adoptive parents because of fear and mistaken ideas of who Ki was.
info: transgresspress.org.
Jack Daniel’s Country Cocktails unveiled the first-ever projection mapping show truck during the LA Pride Festival in West Hollywood from June 9-10. The mobile interactive art project, titled “#flavorsofpride,” featured a three-minute video show that celebrated the LGBTQ community’s increasing diversity across genders, ethnicities, sexualities, religions and generations.
info: jackdaniels.com. lapride.org.
GLAAD launched its “Amp Your Voice” LGBTQ youth voter engagement campaign, which will empower young LGBTQ individuals to speak up, speak out, register to vote and then take the issues that matter most to them to the polls on Nov. 6.
info: glaad.org.
A study has shown that 55 percent of Americans do not care about sexuality or gender expression when it came to working with LGBTQ co-workers. Over 1,000 across the U.S. were queried for the research by Bospar and Propeller Insights with representation breakdown resulting in: 55 percent, no preference; 31.6 percent, straight women; 31.1 percent, straight men; 9.8 percent, gay men; 8.0 percent, lesbian women; 4.7 percent, transgender men; and 4.6 percent, transgender women. Work preference research results are available online by category (gender, bit.ly/2LCoGe4; age group, bit.ly/2sJk1Qr; political affiliation, bit.ly/2HDO5Se; sexual orientation, bit.ly/2JqNKbw; ethnicity, bit.ly/2JqibhN; marital status, bit.ly/2sKm8nc; level of education, bit.ly/2LzekvB; household income, bit.ly/2JG0lqG; and children in household, bit.ly/2JFlEbM.
info: bospar.com. propellerinsights.com.
More than one-third of LGBTQ adults identify as having a disability, RespectAbility reported. To bring the issue to the forefront during Pride Month, celebrities and business leaders have shared their stories as a way to give a face to the stigma faced by those with disabilities. Some featured are: Anderson Cooper (dyslexia), Frida Kahlo (multiple disabilities), Josh Feldman (deafness), Eddie Ndopu (first African individual with a disability to graduate from Oxford), among others.
info: respectabilityusa.org.
HIV: The Long View Coalition created the “Never Alone” video series, which helps those who are newly diagnosed or living with HIV feel less isolated and better connect with their community.
info: hivthelongview.com.
Atlanta, Ga.’s Christopher Coleman has undertaken an exploratory presidential campaign for 2020.
info: christophercoleman2020.com.
Adameve.com has announced the results from their annual sex survey, where they asked over 1,000 adults if they felt that the sex organs one was born with determine one’s gender. While 43 percent of the respondents (36 percent of the women and 51 percent of the men) said they believed that our sex organs determine our gender, 35 percent (42 percent of women and 26 percent of the men) said they did not. Twenty-two percent of those who were polled (21 percent of the women and 23 percent of the men) said they were not sure.
info: adameve.com.
The Pride at Work triennial convention will be held in Phoenix, Az. from Aug. 23-26. The theme this year is Proud & Powerful which counters Donald Trump and his administration’s divisive and hatefulness toward working Americans by engaging in power building for the LGBTQ working community through a shared agenda.
info: prideatwork.org.
The UK’s Peter Tatchell Foundation issued a challenge via an advertising campaign to governments and blood services worldwide to “Screen the blood, not the sexuality.” This was done ahead of World Blood Donor Day on June 14. Currently, there is a shortage of blood supplies in blood banks across the globe and restrictions exist in over 40 countries that prevent gay and bisexual men from being blood donors. A petition is circulating calling for reform.
info: screentheblood.com. petertatchellfoundation.org/screen-the-blood.
Lambda Literary has released the winners of the 30th Annual Lambda Literary Awards. In other news, its board of directors has announced that Sue Landers has been selected to be the next executive director of Lambda Literary succeeding Tony Valenzuela.
info: lambdaliterary.org.
In honor of worldwide Pride, W Hotels, in collaboration with them, has released a series of LGBTQ destination travel guides featuring locales that are not always explored by LGBTQ travelers. The partners have also expanded their Queer Me Out speaker series.
info: theangle.whotels.com.
The June 3 debut of Ryan Murphy’s “Pose,” set in the late 1980s New York City world of black and Latino drag competitions known as “balls,” presents an opportunity to raise awareness of the harsh lives of many transgender people of color, particularly those on the ball culture scene, who do sex work to survive. In light of the new series, a book released earlier this year, “Transgender Sex Work and Society” by LGBTQ publisher Harrington Park Press (Columbia University Press), helps to describe the lives of those sex workers portrayed in “Pose.”
info: bit.ly/harshlivesbehindpose.
The Play Proud crowdfunding campaign has been launched to bring attention to youth soccer teams where LGBTQ youth may not find a welcoming or safe environment due to lack of skills and knowledge of many coaches in ways to protect the rights of their LGBTQ players. Play Proud, led by U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team’s Megan Rapinoe, is the first program of its kind and will give coaches the tools they need to protect and empower their LGBTQ youth through a free digital toolkit they can access online. The campaign will also be supported by a three-part content series that will air on FOX Sports during its 2018 World Cup coverage, featuring real-life stories from LGBTQ youth whose lives were positively impacted by soccer and soccer coaches.
info: crowdrise.com/playproud.
Lambda Legal and OutServe-SLDN filed a lawsuit on behalf of a sergeant in the D.C. Army National Guard who was denied the opportunity to serve as an officer and faces possible discharge from the U.S. armed services because he is living with HIV. The lawsuit challenges the Pentagon’s current policies preventing enlistment, deployment or commissioning as an officer if a person is living with HIV, and likely would affect implementation of the new “Deploy or Get Out” policy unveiled by the Trump administration in February
info: outserve.org. lambdalegal.org.
A new report from The Reunion Project on HIV Long-Term Survivors Awareness Day called for a national coalition of survivors of HIV to advance the needs of survivors in four key areas: research, programs, community building and advocacy.
info: tpan.com/reunion-project.
“Home, A Queer Cooking Series,” an on-going web series created by queer filmmaker Michael Chernak, invites viewers into LGBTQ individuals’s homes to listen to their stories, create community, discover new recipes, and have real discussions at the kitchen table. The show features queer activists, drag kings, drag queens, photographers, couples, medical professionals and more, with episodes discussing immigration, growing up in church, racism in the queer community, childhood memories and the comfort of home cooking.
info: homequeercooking.com.
Fastweb has released its LGBTQ Community Scholarships & Internships resource that focuses on the needs of LGBTQ students.
info: fastweb.com.
The Dr. Peter Centre is the recipient of a $100,000 grant from ViiV Healthcare Canada to continue its Evening Program over the next two years.
info: drpeter.org.
The Georgia Voice has reported that gay men, primarily in rural areas, are avoiding HIV testing according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
info: bit.ly/2xZopQv.
Revry announced its launch channel on the XUMO platform. With its addition to the platform, Revry will provide hundreds of hours of LGBTQ domestic and international entertainment that includes award-winning narrative and documentary films, cutting-edge series and originals along with music videos to XUMO’s viewers through Smart TV, mobile and other streaming device integrations.
info: revry.tv. xumo.tv/channels.
A transgender man who is challenging an Indiana state law that bars immigrants from obtaining a change of legal name has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a federal trial court’s decision to dismiss his case, according to a petition for certiorari filed on May 31.
info: transgenderlawcenter.org. maldef.org.
Transgender Law Center, Familia: Trans Queer Liberation Movement and Organización Latina de Trans en Texas are demanding changes by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after the death of a transgender asylum seeker who died while in ICE custody at the Cibola Correctional Facility.
info: transgenderlawcenter.org.