Race to the Midterms Preview: Rick Zbur ‘fighting for democracy’
Pacific Coast Collaborative recommitting on fighting climate crisis
Deleted Walsh blog post: Concept of adolescence “modern plague”
After Twitter lifted Libs of TikTok’s suspension- she went back at it
Anti-Trans far-right pundit Matt Walsh says gender affirming is evil
LA Metro celebrates the official opening of K Line
Triple A: Gas prices increase to new records, but reversing course
West Hollywood in brief- City government in action this week
LA County Parks & Rec relaunches free lifeguard training program
LAPD marks Breast Cancer Awareness Month
West Hollywood in brief- City government in action this week
West Hollywood in brief- City government in action this week
West Hollywood in brief- City government in action this week
West Hollywood in brief- City government in action this week
Sheriff’s detectives seek potential victims WeHo sex assault case
LAPD marks Breast Cancer Awareness Month
Historic LA gay bathhouse for sale- looks to be end of an era
LAT: Arrests made in gun theft burglary at Karen Bass’s home
Home of mayoral candidate Karen Bass burglarized; firearms stolen
Two shot during follow home robbery, LAPD needs public’s help
Longtime LGBTQ+ journalist & editor Thomas Senzee dies at 54
Trans Palm Springs Mayor responds to anti-LGBTQ+ Texas Governor
Historic swearing in of Lisa Middleton as Palm Springs Mayor
Everything you need to know about Palm Springs Pride this weekend
The LGBTQ Center of the Desert reopens in Palm Springs
The San Diego Union-Tribune: Tijuana Gay Men’s Chorus
San Diego County man charged with a hate crime after homophobic attack
Trans woman ‘viciously attacked’ in men’s jail cell lawsuit says
US Navy Fleet Oiler & supply ship, USNS Harvey Milk launches
Dignitaries tour the 60% completed USNS Harvey Milk
Tennessee Pride festival: ID check required for drag show
Miami Herald: The hunt for Alejandro Suarez
Attacker in Sandy Utah gay teen bashing case gets probation
President Biden pardons federal marijuana possession charges
Federal court curbs fed rules re: Texas trans kids & LGBTQ workers
Fallece la primera persona trans electa para un cargo público en Latinoamérica
Trans Brazil congresswoman-elect: Election is ‘important step for democracy’
Human rights groups condemn victimization of LGBTQ+ in Zambia
Slovenia legalizes same-sex marriage & adoptions
Two Transgender women elected to Brazil’s Congress
My Michigan neighbors call ‘Heartstopper’ porn, demand ban
Has Netflix abandoned Kenya’s LGBTQ+ community?
LGBTQ kid refuses to let ‘Moms for Liberty’ snatch liberty
Gay-bashed Utah teen & Mom seek safety from polygamy cult
Jeffrey Dahmer was white & gay — Deal with it
For Years to Come; irreverent romantic gay dramedy coming soon
Facebook busts 400 malicious Apps on Apple & Google App stores
Jon Stewart tackles the issue of gender-affirming care
LGBTQ+ ally & comedian Judy Tenuta has died at 72
Superfine Art Fair returns: women artists & LGBTQ+ artists featured
For Years to Come; irreverent romantic gay dramedy coming soon
‘Modern Family’ creator returns to form with hilarious ‘Reboot’
“Dr. Jackie: Unlicensed Psychotherapist” premieres on OUTtv
Fall TV offers vampires, royals, and return to Gilead
‘Monarch’s’ hot butterfly: an interview with Kevin Cahoon
The annual LA Times 101 list is here at last
Hit Instagram smash burger pop-up Chris N Eddy’s debuts in Hollywood
LA’s comeback, a lesbian community leader has a starring role
West Hollywood’s ‘Out On Robertson’ official launch
Give Daddy what he deserves
“Hamilton” creators donate monetary damages to LGBTQ+ group
Playwright queers a famous president in ‘Lavender Men’
“Hadestown” now at LA’s Ahmanson Theater
Barrier-breaking lesbian does a ‘Death-Defying Escape’ in her new play
Near-naked Ambition: ‘The Comics Strip’ is getting more exposure
Celebrate Judy Garland’s centennial by watching her movies
Billy Eichner ready to make cinematic history
Surviving Voices: The Black Community & AIDS
After months of hype, ‘Bros,’ ‘My Policeman’ ready to debut
Introducing Estelle Fox, but don’t call her the next Billie Eilish
Trail-Blazing trans artist Gio Bravo, brings hot fun erotic masculinity
“I know it can be hard to wake up to something so unreal-” Raue rocks LA
Bryan Ruby, Out baseball player & Out Country Music star: 2 icons in 1
CMA bans display of ‘Confederate’ flag at major music festival, CMA Fest
New ACT UP book is part history, part memoir
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‘Knocking Myself Up’ a hilarious, hopeful read
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Two new political memoirs reveal how the sausage of democracy is made
A new data interactive looks at the impact of HIV criminal laws on people living with HIV in nine states, including Louisiana
BATON ROUGE – Since 2011, as many as 176 people have had contact with Louisiana’s criminal legal system because of allegations of HIV crimes, according to a new report by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law. HIV-related crimes are disproportionately enforced based on race and sex. In Louisiana, Black men represent 15% of the state population and 44% of people living with HIV, but 91% of those arrested for an HIV crime. Using data obtained from the Louisiana Incident-Based Reporting System and from the state’s most populous parishes, researchers found that enforcement of HIV crimes is concentrated in East Baton Rouge Parish, Orleans Parish, and Calcasieu Parish. Furthermore, the number of HIV incidents—or interactions with law enforcement involving allegations of HIV crimes—is not declining over time. HIV criminalization is a term used to describe laws that either criminalize otherwise legal conduct or increase the penalties for illegal conduct based upon a person’s HIV-positive status. Nearly two-thirds of U.S. states and territories currently have laws that criminalize people living with HIV.
A new data interactive looks at the impact of HIV criminal laws on people living with HIV in nine states, including Louisiana. Louisiana has one criminal law related to HIV, which makes it a felony for a person who knows of their HIV-positive status to intentionally expose another person to HIV through sexual contact or other means without consent. The maximum sentence for an intentional exposure conviction is 10 years, and people convicted of an HIV crime are required to register on the state’s sex offender registry for at least 15 years. Louisiana’s HIV criminal law does not require actual transmission, intent to transmit, or even the possibility of transmission to sustain a conviction. Between 2011 and 2022, incarceration for HIV crimes cost Louisiana at least $6.5 million. “The cost of Louisiana’s HIV criminal law is likely much higher. Even with only partial access to the state’s criminal enforcement data, the trends were dramatic,” said lead author Nathan Cisneros, HIV Criminalization Analyst at the Williams Institute. “Louisiana’s HIV criminal law may undermine the state’s public health efforts by deterring the communities most impacted by HIV, including people of color and sex workers, from seeking testing and treatment.” KEY FINDINGS
This report is part of a series of reports examining the ongoing impact of state HIV criminalization laws on people living with HIV. Take a look at our new data interactive summarizing the findings of our research.
Suicide risk & access to care among LGBTQ college students
Moms for Liberty hiding behind front groups targeting schools
New ACT UP book is part history, part memoir
Art spotlights people of color lost to AIDS in the South
The White House celebrates “A night when hope & history rhyme”
Recently, Walsh has been helping lead a campaign against children’s hospitals providing gender-affirming care
By Ari Drennen | WASHINGTON – From early 2010 through August 1, 2011, Matt Walsh co-hosted a radio show called The Matt and Crank Program along with Andrew “Crank” Murr at WZBH “The Beach” 93.5 FM based in Georgetown, Delaware. The show featured all of the worst of Walsh’s bluster and bigotry without the production value given to his current work as a host for The Daily Wire, where he was hired in August 2017.
Recently, Walsh has been helping lead a campaign against children’s hospitals providing gender-affirming care. On August 15, Walsh made the false, incendiary claim that these hospitals are “butchering, mutilating, and sterilizing their young patients.” The hospitals highlighted by Walsh and others have been inundated with violent threats — threats that the Daily Wire personality dismissed as a hoax before continuing his campaign.
A review of Walsh’s commentary for The Matt and Crank Program reveals that the pundit has previously praised violent political action, saying that enacting change means that “you have to make people hurt. … Holding signs and yelling loudly will not make anyone hurt.”
The current Daily Wire personality and What is a Woman filmmaker also claimed that “we probably lost our republic after Reconstruction” and that “as the Anglo-Saxons, which were the original Americans, die off, our identity and our culture goes with it.” And he performed racist impressions and defended teenage pregnancy and marriage, saying that “at about 16, you’re an adult who is mature and can make decisions. … It’s just recently where all of a sudden we’re all r——- until we’re 25.” Walsh additionally encouraged subordinates to participate in sexually demeaning stunts, coercing an intern into exposing himself and allowing Walsh to shock him with a stun gun “in the ass.”
While working at WZBH, Walsh attracted attention with a speech at a tea party rally glorifying violence, saying, “If you want extreme things to happen, you have to be willing to take — to go to extremes.
MATT WALSH: Our Founding Fathers had very specific goals in mind that they wanted to accomplish. There wasn’t a generalized sense of outrage. It was, these are our goals we want to accomplish. And by the way, they were willing to back it up with guns and violent force. If you want extreme things to happen, you have to be willing to take — to go to extremes. … Everyone keeps bringing up our Founding Fathers. They were willing to pick up guns and kill people for what they wanted. A sign won’t do it. And calling your congressman won’t do it.
On air, Walsh expanded and doubled down on his comments, saying that “if you want extreme change, you must take extreme action. … You have to make people hurt” and adding that “we probably lost our republic after Reconstruction,” seemingly criticizing the country’s first attempt at a multiracial democracy after the Civil War. Walsh further derided members of the so-called tea party movement as “not willing to do what they [the Founding Fathers] did.”
MATT WALSH (CO-HOST): But what I was trying to say, if you want extreme change, you must take extreme action. What you have to do is look at the situation and decide what exactly you want to have happen. And then you have to honestly approach it and say, what do we have to do to make this happen? But it is, in fact, true that you have to make people hurt. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry. But holding signs and yelling loudly will not make anyone hurt.
Most people will admit that we’ve been on this path not for a year, because of Obama; not for 10 years, because of Bush; not for 20 years, because of Clinton. Not Reagan, not Carter. We’ve been on this path for a hundred years or more. We probably lost our republic after Reconstruction. If you want actual change that isn’t going to reverse itself in 10 years or five years or even one year, then you do have to look at extreme action.
And by the way, I’m not the one — you go to these tea parties, you’ve got people that are literally dressed up like it’s a costume party, dressed up like our Founding Fathers, dressed up like Samuel Adams and so forth. They’re the ones that keep harkening back to the revolutionary times. You’re the ones, tea party people, that are comparing yourself — in a not subtle way at all — to the revolutionaries.
ANDREW MURR (CO-HOST): But then you forget what they did to accomplish their goals.
WALSH: Right. I’m saying, OK, you guys are dressing up like revolutionaries, you’re calling this the Tea Party. Don’t you understand what they did? Even the Tea Party was an illegal act. It was trespassing and vandalism. Don’t you get that? OK. You — don’t, don’t compare yourself to them because you’re not willing to do what they did.
Walsh has called for and defended political violence in many more recent examples, calling for “real men” to assault drag queens, defending secession after the January 6 storming of the Capitol, and defending violence against abortion providers in response to a mass shooting.
America is coming apart at the seams. We don’t want to admit it but it’s true. Eventually we will have to talk seriously about secession and national divorce. I’ve been saying it for years. Maybe the time has finally come.
Walsh defended girls as young as 16 getting pregnant as long as they’re marrying men, saying, “The problem is not, per se, teenage pregnancy — it’s unwed pregnancy.” Walsh used an ableist slur to dismiss the idea that people are unable to consent to life-changing decisions before age 25 and said that girls “still in high school … want, biologically and metaphysically and with everything in their body, they want to settle down, they want to start a family.”
MATT WALSH (CO-HOST): Teen pregnancy is a new problem.
In the sense that it’s only recently that we decided that it is a problem, OK? But it is not a new problem in the sense that it’s a new phenomenon. It is not. In fact, ever since the beginning of time, teenage girls have been getting pregnant. It used to be more common.
WALSH: That’s my point, OK? So to all of a sudden act like this phenomenon of girls getting pregnant at that — at a young age — that we consider young, 16 or 17, to act like it’s a new thing is ridiculous. It’s always been that way. … Girls between the ages of like 17 and 24 is when they’re technically most fertile.
WALSH: OK? That’s biological. That’s a fact. I am just stating facts. That’s all I’m doing. But what happened recently, and this is the fourth fact, recently in the last 30 years or so, we decided that that’s way too young to start a family.
WALSH: So what I’m saying is that the problem is not, per se, teenage pregnancy — it’s unwed pregnancy. That’s the problem in society. It’s only problematic when you are not married and you don’t have the man there to help you take care of the kids because he’s a coward.
What I’m saying, though, is that if society was, if society was different and that we stopped insisting that you’re a kid until you’re 25 and we just deal with the reality that at about 16, you’re an adult who is mature and can make decisions — you are that at 16. I don’t care what anybody says. And if you’re going to tell me it’s different, well, then how come for the first 10,000 years of human civilization, that’s the way it was? It’s just recently where all of a sudden we’re all r——- until we’re 25?
And I got some more news for you. 17-year-old girls and 18-year-old girls that are still in high school, just getting into college, many of them want, biologically and metaphysically and with everything in their body, they want to settle down, they want to start a family, and that’s always gonna be that way, no matter what you do.
ANDREW MURR (CO-HOST): And I think a good example as to why that’s probably true is the whorish behavior of these same-aged girls when they get to college.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: There are some sluts.
MURR: They start, you know, these girls — believe me, when I went to the University of Maryland and I was a little bit older than everybody, it was like you get there and you see these innocent girls and by the end of the year, it’s just like the stories you’ve heard about them — it’s like this internal need to breed and it just comes out at the wrong time. They’re out there trying to get an education, but meanwhile —
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: To biology, that’s the perfect time. That’s when they’re, like Matt said, is most fertile. But society has told you that when you’re 18, that’s when you’re an adult, not when you’re 16 or 17.
WALSH: Yeah, and that’s a problem.
Walsh has repeatedly defended sexualization or sexual abusers of children in the more recent past, saying of the Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal that “the problem is not pedophilia; the problem is gay priests” and saying that the response to a sexual abuse scandal in the Boy Scouts of America was “a lesson to us all” that “surrendering to the Left” will lead to being “completely obliterated.”
Walsh initially defended Josh Duggar after the reality TV star was accused of sexual abuse of children, minimizing the allegations before later issuing a retraction once it came to light that Duggar had also cheated on his wife as an adult. The Daily Wire host has also minimized the #MeToo movement, suggesting that it’s “a hysterical witch hunt” and saying that women who feel violated after casual sex “consented to, and participated in, [their] own degradation.”
If #MeToo now includes "someone had a weird conversation with me and it was awkward," then this thing really has become a hysterical witch hunt.
As a radio DJ, Matt Walsh promoted the racist great replacement theory, expressing anxiety about “the extinction of the Anglo-Saxon race” and saying that “as the Anglo-Saxons, which were the original Americans, die off, our identity and our culture goes with it.”
MATT WALSH (CO-HOST): It is because we’re all dying off. Yes. That’s what the problem is. It’s not that, it’s not that we’re just, as the Mexicans come in, we magically meld with them and become like them. It’s not like that. It’s that we are dying off just like, just like any other species of animal does. We’re dying. And the way that animals — there’s two ways that animals die off. Well, three ways. One is disease. Two is deforestation, or they lose their habitat, which OK, look at us. And then the third one is that they stop reproducing. And those — and usually all three of those things happen kind of simultaneously. And that’s what’s happening with us. The extinction of the Anglo-Saxon race is just like that.
The Western white race is not having kids. They’re just not. That’s why before, 10 years ago, was like the average family was, whatever it was, 2.3 kids, now it’s 1.-something. I mean, we’ve lost a whole kid in 10 years. And, I mean, you just can’t survive when you refuse to have kids.
When the Mexican people come here, which is fine that they want to come, as long as they come legally, which most of them aren’t, but they bring with them — being that they’re a different culture, a different race, and everything else — they bring with them a identity, and they bring it to America. And so as the Anglo-Saxons, which were the original Americans, die off, our identity and our culture goes with it. Now, China and Japan and Korea and Vietnam and Egypt, all those countries, for thousands of years, have got to keep their identity and their culture. They’ve been allowed to preserve it, whereas ours is dying off in less than 200 years.
At other times, Walsh performed racist impressions of Black men, including calling Barack Obama Elementary School and pretending to be a father trying to enroll his son in the school. He pretended to have heard that the school was lenient with its grades, saying while posing as a Black man that Obama’s “main principle was that just cause you ain’t put in the work for something don’t mean that you shouldn’t be supplied with it.”
MATT WALSH (CO-HOST): Yeah, but let me put you on the spot right quick, because what is y’all honoring about my man Barack Obama?
EMPLOYEE: Well, just in terms of, they named the school after him, you know, and inside the school, they, you know, have pictures of him and they probably teach the students, you know, some of who he is. But overall, this, it’s still a regular school. You know, it’s not a school that — overall, the school is still run like the other schools are run.
WALSH: OK. But it just seemed to me that the way that he would want to run it, you know, was similar to the way that he would want to run the health care and the economy, whatnot. Well, he want to make sure that, you know, I mean, just because you ain’t worked for something don’t mean that you shouldn’t get it. I mean, you feel me on that, right?
WALSH: Well, just because — just cause you ain’t really put in the work for something don’t mean that you shouldn’t be, shouldn’t be supplied with it, because that’s a right that we have as Americans.
EMPLOYEE: Well yeah, there are certain rights that we have, right?
WALSH: Yeah. We got, I mean, I got a right. I mean, my kid got a right as an American to really get good grades in school and whatnot. You know, he’s got a right to that.
Yeah, but y’all’s, y’all Barack Obama Elementary, you know, I mean, which — which makes me presume the fact that y’all follow his principles, you know, his guiding principles and whatnot.
WALSH: His, his main principle was that just cause you ain’t put in the work for something don’t mean that you shouldn’t be supplied with it, because that’s the equal right that all Americans have, you know? So I want to make sure that I bring my kid over to you. You know, he can do his thing laid back, you know, but he still gonna be supplied with the grades, same as, you know, his big pops, hat would be me, you know, I’m going to be supplied with the checks, the government checks and whatnot. You know, just because I ain’t currently working don’t mean that I shouldn’t be supplied with it, you know?
WALSH: So. So would that be the way you y’all run things, like maybe everybody, you know, they do their own thing, they get their own grades at the end of the semester or whatever how y’all partition it. They, you put all the grades in one pool and then, y’all split —
EMPLOYEE 2: No, all kids. I mean. No.
WALSH: So you telling me–
EMPLOYEE 2: You said in one pool?
WALSH: Yeah. Yeah. You put all the grades together, you average it out, and then everyone get that average so that it’s really a team effort, you know what I mean? And everyone get the same thing because no one really has the right to be above no one else, especially when they kids. Right?
EMPLOYEE 2: Well, all kids are treated equally.
WALSH: Yeah, so. But how, but that ain’t the way in the school now. The school he at now right, he ain’t being treated equally. You know? Because he getting a E, he failing out while other people, you know, was getting A’s and passing on. My man on the second grade twice now, you know, and other people, they in fourth grade by now. So that ain’t equal. You know, I’m looking for some real equality. And I knew that when I saw Barack Obama Elementary was open and I said, now my man is going to supply me with what I’m looking for, because my man’s gonna run school the way he run the economy, the way he run health care — where he said, everybody’s going to get it whether you work for or not. You’re going to get it.
EMPLOYEE 2: Well, no, he’s not in charge of the school.
Since this video, Walsh has said that white supremacists “don’t exist, for the most part” and the great replacement conspiracy theory is “just a fact.” Walsh has expressed doubt that racism exists and said that “when a white person says that all white people are inherently racist, all he’s really done is confess to being personally racist.” Walsh has also attacked Muslims, deriding them as “easily provoked,” and suggesting that “every mass attacker is Muslim.” One video from The Matt and Crank Program shows Walsh wearing a Confederate flag T-shirt.
When America oppresses racial minorities, they become presidents and NFL quarterbacks. We're really bad at this, apparently.
At The Matt and Crank Program, Walsh appears to have sexually harassed someone at least posing as his employee (named only “Intern A” on camera), demanding that his subordinate remove his pants and allow Walsh to use a taser on his exposed butt despite multiple protestations.
MATT WALSH (CO-HOST): I would never usually suggest that a man expose his buttocks to me. … Well, here’s a serious suggestion. Why don’t we seriously shock you in the ass? Got a lot of padding in there. A lot of muscle … lot of muscle in that ass, boy.
INTERN A: You don’t want me to pull it out.
ANDREW MURR (CO-HOST): Yeah, I don’t either. I really don’t. I think we should just go.
WALSH: Hear me out. For the comedy of it, and also because that will hurt the least, I think we should shock you in the ass, at least at first.
INTERN: I think we should shock you.
WALSH: No, I don’t like that idea. What I do like is shocking you in the ass. So get over here.
INTERN: You’re not shocking my butt.
MURR: And I do want you to put the old hardhat on. There we go. Does he not look amazing now?
WALSH: I’ll shock you in the stomach. All right? I’ll shock you in the stomach. Are you ready for this?
INTERN: No! No. I am not ready for this.
INTERN: This is not cool!
MURR: I’m totally ready for this.
MURR: Matt, are you ready?
WALSH: I’m totally ready.
MURR: I’m totally ready.
WALSH: As long as we’re ready, that’s all that matters.
MURR: That’s all that matters.
WALSH: Should I press it? Hold on a sec.
WALSH: Hold up. I’m not hitting it yet, I’m not hitting it, I’m not hitting it, but should I put it up against him like this? And then do it — is that how you do it?
INTERN: Oh, my God, I thought you were my friend.
CRANK: We are. That’s why we’re doing it.
WALSH: This is for your own good. This is for your own good, intern.
INTERN: I love you so much I’m hurting you.
WALSH: This hurts you more than it hurts me.
MURR: Yes it does. Oh God. I’m tingly with anticipation.
WALSH: One, two, three, go!
MURR: Did it shock you too?
WALSH: Wait, I only got like half a second.
INTERN: That’s all you’re supposed to get.
WALSH: Let’s try it one more time.
MURR: You want me to hold onto you while we do it?
MURR: Do you want me to hold onto you while we do it?
WALSH: Let’s try one more time. I dropped it. I didn’t get a good one.
INTERN: Not in the stomach anymore, because that hurts.
WALSH: All right, we’ll do it in the uhh —
WALSH: All right, in the chest. But this time we’re going in for the real thing!
INTERN: Wait, just do it in the arm. One, two, three, go.
WALSH: Hold on, hold on.
WALSH: How bad does it hurt? Describe it.
INTERN: It’s like being muscle tenched.
(Intern reaches for stun gun)
WALSH: Muscle tenched? I’m not giving you this thing, dude.
INTERN: Was it good for radio? You want to do it in the butt?
WALSH: I do, kind of. Let’s just try it once in the ass. Turn around. Ready?
MURR: I don’t even know if we can put this on the blog site.
WALSH: You’ve got a pimply, pale ass, bro.
INTERN: Go! Ow! Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow! All right, we’re done. That’s it. All right, good radio. You’re welcome, Delmarva. You’re welcome.
This was part of a series of videos of Walsh, Murr, the intern, and another man called “Tater” participating in a series of fraternity-style challenges, sometimes involving sexually suggestive behavior. In another video, “Intern A” was dressed in a diaper, wrestling a man who gave his name as “Tater.” In a video called “Intern A Earns His Name,” the titular intern was encouraged to lick the inside of a dumpster.
MATT WALSH (CO-HOST): He’s going to lick the inside of this dumpster. This dumpster has not been licked in years. So what it’s going to be is he’s going to sort of kneel down, put his tongue against the wall and then stand up.
A further video available on the old YouTube channel for Matt and Crank showed “the intern” washing a car in underwear while disco music played.
According to one report, Walsh announced his departure from The Matt and Crank Program just hours after recording his final episode on Monday, August 1, 2011, claiming that he wouldn’t be allowed to do further shows to say goodbye. The next day, he announced a two-week hiatus that he walked back the day after to let fans know that he’d be taking a job at WGMD, a smaller station in the region where he would work for less than a year. In December 2013 Walsh announced that he was “leaving radio forever” to spend more time with his blog. While Walsh spun this as voluntary, critics reported that WLAP’s programming director had said that the show had been canceled. After a period of time joining Matt at WGMD, reports say Walsh’s co-host returned to WZBH through 2015.
Additional Research by JASON CAMPBELL, MIA GINGERICH & ALEX PATERSON
Ari Drennen is the LGBTQ program director for Media Matters, where she has worked since January 2022. She has a bachelors degree in political science and economics from Middlebury College. Previously she worked at the Center for American Progress and the League of Conservation Voters
The preceding article was previously published by Media Matters for America and is republished by permission.
LGBTQ college students with access to mental health services through their college had drastically lower odds of attempting suicide
NEW YORK – The Trevor Project’s researchers team published new data this week that assessed suicide risk, access to mental health services, and access to LGBTQ student services among a national sampling of LGBTQ+ college and university students.
The report’s findings show that LGBTQ college students with access to mental health services through their college or university had drastically lower odds of attempting suicide in the past year compared to those without access.
The data in the report takes on greater relevance as National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month is observed this September and highlight the ways in which community leaders, parents, and others can help prevent suicide among LGBTQ youth — a group that is more than four times more likely to attempt suicide compared to their straight and cisgender peers.
“These findings are strikingly clear: LGBTQ college students who reported having access to mental health services at school had dramatically lower odds of attempting suicide compared to those without access,” said Dr. Jonah DeChants (he/him), Research Scientist at The Trevor Project.
“While college environments offer a number of positive and protective factors for LGBTQ students, the reality is that suicide risk still very much persists, especially among those who do not have access to affirming spaces and services. We urge all colleges and universities to realize that access to mental health care services, as well as LGBTQ-specific student services, on college campuses is critical for ensuring the mental health and safety of their LGBTQ student body,” he added.
Moms for Liberty’s Book Look & Book Looks are facilitating the book banning process as they gut public school libraries
By Olivia Little | WASHINGTON – As we enter Banned Books Week 2022, a new movement to gut public school libraries is sweeping the nation, with far-right “parental rights” group Moms for Liberty and two pro-censorship organizations — Book Look and Book Looks — at the forefront.
Moms for Liberty’s book banning campaign is growing in both size and intensity, with a clear strategy: manufacture moral panic in your community to pressure public schools into removing titles with LGBTQ themes or discussions of racism in American history. With the help of Book Look and Book Looks, it’s been increasingly successful.
With over 200 chapters, Moms for Liberty has become the largest driver of the nationwide book banning crusade, which has led to harassment and threats against public school teachers, librarians, and education officials. Moms for Liberty chapters have challenged Martin Luther King Jr. and the March to Washington because of “photographs of political violence” and Ruby Bridges Goes to School because of “racist remarks,” among other objections. Moms for Liberty is also a vocally anti-LGBTQ organization and has advocated for trans bathroom bans in public schools.
Now, Media Matters has obtained documentation showing that Moms for Liberty has created “Books/Library Director” chapter positions that would be responsible for surveying and evaluating library book lists and challenging them within local school districts. These positions would allow each individual chapter to have a member organizing the gutting of public school libraries. One chapter has already started a “book review committee” and encouraged parents to go to their child’s public school open house and take pictures of books in the library containing “material most of us would not want our kids reading.”
Media Matters has also uncovered evidence that Moms for Liberty chapters “have teamed up” with Book Look and Book Looks, which appear to be distinct entities that are crowdsourcing parents’ book reviews and using them as justification for literature bans in public schools. And while the two organizations are separate, they use nearly the same book rating system, have overlapping book reviews, and operate in a seemingly identical manner.
Book Look and Book Looks both collect reports to expedite the process of challenging books, helping conservative activists organize campaigns around parents’ outrage and demand a book’s removal without even reading it. Anonymous volunteers create reports by documenting examples of profane or inappropriate content with their corresponding page number, which are then packaged into “easy to understand book content reviews centered around objectionable content.” Books are given a rating on a scale from zero to five, with zero being “appropriate for all audiences” and five being “might be arrested for reading at school board meetings.”
The rating system allows heavily biased right-wing reviewers to disguise themselves as objective arbiters. For example, a Book Looks report about Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home — an award-winning graphic novel about the author’s “journey from childhood to college student to adult in relation to both her identity as a lesbian and her dynamic with her family, particularly her father who is a closeted gay man” — cites the depiction of “alternative sexualities” and “alternative gender ideologies” among other justifications for why it should be removed from school libraries. It was given a four rating: “Not for minors.”
In addition to rating books, sharing out-of-context quotes on Facebook of “objectionable” books is another part of the groups’ broader strategy that they say “gathers attention” on social media and “gets people engaged with outrage.” Individuals are also encouraged to send school boards snippets of the most objectionable books and attend board meetings to “ask publicly about progress,” or, “if you have brave volunteers, attempt to read some passages from these books and ask if the board thinks this is OK for minors. Let them stand behind this material and own it if they are not working to get rid of it.”
Notably, Book Look’s website directs parents to links about the anti-LGBTQ “grooming” smear and articles about Moms for Liberty “fighting against porn” in schools; it also provides users with anti-trans memes to spread on social media. Some of the group’s infographics push back against the accusation that Book Look and Moms for Liberty encourage banning books, claiming that they “support the process of challenging and removing books in school libraries” and establishing “book boundaries” — which they argue is distinct from “the banning of books.” (It’s not.)
There is a clear electoral initiative in this strategy, as the last point on Book Look’s plan of action is to “vote them [school board members] out next election if they refuse to work on this issue.” Taking over school boards has been a key strategy of Moms for Liberty since its inception, and it’s no surprise that the group’s efforts are accelerating as the midterms approach.
In addition to overlapping strategies, there is an undeniable connection between Moms for Liberty and these two organizations. Book Look was originally formed as the Moms for Liberty Library Book Committee, and while Book Looks claims to be unaffiliated with Moms for Liberty, Book Riot uncovered that the organization was actually spearheaded by a Moms for Liberty member. Book Looks also uses the same rating system that was shared on the Moms For Liberty Brevard County public Facebook page one month before the group formally began.
Even though the organizations are clearly tied, they have successfully duped reporters. The Washington Post extensively reported on Book Look and Book Looks without mentioning their close affiliation with Moms for Liberty (although the piece did quote the chair of a local Moms for Liberty chapter praising the group’s efforts to “prevent children from encountering sexually explicit material”). MIT’s Technology Review did the same.
Moms for Liberty has positioned itself at the center of the book banning movement to whitewash American history and push an anti-LGBTQ agenda while placing right-wing propaganda in school libraries instead. And it is using the cover of supposed parent reviews to advance this right-wing campaign, intentionally stoking outrage and encouraging distrust in public schools.
Olivia Little is a researcher at Media Matters. She holds a bachelor’s degree in law and public policy from Indiana University. Olivia previously worked as a research associate for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign.
The preceding article was previously published by Media Matters for America and is republished with permission.
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