The organizers of a Russian poetry competition have banned entries from transgender people. Rules posted online for this year’s Andrei Dementyev All-Russian Poetry Prize specify that while the competition will accept entries from poets “regardless of citizenship, nationality, profession, and place of residence,” entries from “citizens who have changed their gender” will not be considered, Reuters reported. Organized by the regional government of Tver, a city northwest of Moscow, the competition is named for the late prize-winning Russian poet Andrey Dementyev, who died in 2018. Previous compe ..read more

An inclusive children’s book is gaining praise from parents everywhere since queer author Markus Harwood-Jones brought attention to it on TikTok. What Makes a Baby by Cory Silverberg and Fiona Smyth is an extremely accessible story of the many ways babies come into this world. Written for kids ages preschool to eight, the book is bursting with color and imagery that makes learning the science behind creating life a joy for all ages and all types of families. Harwood-Jones read the entire story on TikTok and praised it as “a beautifully simple yet accurate and inclusive depiction of how babies ..read more

Here are this week’s most popular positive stories, with some fun social media posts tossed in too. Like seeing uplifting content like this? Sign up for our Good News email. While I’ve loved doing the Good News beat here at LGBTQ Nation for so long, I’m moving over to our sibling site GayCities. This is the last newsletter I’ll be doing. I’m handing it over to Senior Editor Daniel Villarreal. Daniel and I have worked together for almost a decade, so I know you’ll love him too. Shoot me an email sometime. Love to you all. -Bil Someone call HR stat View this post on ..read more

Welcome to the (somewhat shorter this week) LGBTQ Nation News Quiz. We’ve kept you up-to-date on politics, current events, and news from the LGBTQ+ community all week. Now, this is your chance to look back on what happened. We’ll be testing your knowledge with a series of questions taken from our headlines this past week. Try the quiz without looking up the answers or open another tab and use our search function to find the answers. (We won’t tell.)See how well you followed the LGBTQ+ news! Take this quiz on LGBTQNationy ..read more

Alabama’s legislature is advancing two censorious anti-LGBTQ bills: H.B. 130 would ban LGBTQ+ flags in classrooms and expand the state’s “Don’t say gay” law to include grades 6-8; H.B. 385 would jail librarians for giving “sexual or gender-oriented material” to minors without parental consent. Both bills were approved in the Alabama House of Representatives this week and now head to the state’s Republican-led upper legislative chamber. Alabama’s current “Don’t Say Gay” law says that K-5 classrooms “shall not engage in classroom discussion or provide classroom instruction regarding sexual orie ..read more

South Dakota Gov. and VP hopeful Kristi Noem (R) tried to build her national brand two years ago on the back of her attacks on transgender people’s rights. But now she’s facing criticism for proudly telling the story of how she shot her own dog because it was difficult to train, a story she said shows that she’s willing to do difficult tasks. The disturbing story appears in excerpts reported on by The Guardian from Noem’s upcoming book, No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward. “Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old,” Noem writes. “I ..read more

In its latest attack on transgender youth, lawmakers in Tennessee passed a bill to stop the nonexistent problem of adults kidnapping kids and taking them to other states for gender-affirming care. The bill, S.B. 2782, was passed by the Tennesee House of Representatives on Thursday and is on its way to the governor’s desk. It amends a 2023 gender-affirming care ban, adding civil penalties for any adults who aid an unemancipated minor get out-of-state gender-affirming care without their parents’ consent. The bill passed along party lines 63-16 in the Tennessee House of Representatives and ..read more

Transgender actress Patti Harrison recently appeared in a comedic advertisement for the dating app Hinge’s “Designed to be Deleted” campaign. In the ad, Harrison plays an angelic receptionist at the Gate of the Afterlife who welcomes deleted Hinge app icons after newly and happily united couples delete the app from their phones. While the ad is comical, online dating apps continue to provide an uneven experience for trans, nonbinary, and genderfluid users. Most dating websites and smartphone apps didn’t initially offer gender descriptions for these users to authentically present themselves to ..read more

Former daytime talk show host Ellen DeGeneres stepped out of self-imposed exile this week with the first stop on a promised summer-long stand-up comedy tour — and she’s still whining. “Oh yeah, I got kicked out of show business,” DeGeneres complained sarcastically from the stage at West Hollywood’s Largo at the Coronet Theater, according to Rolling Stone. “There’s no mean people in show business,” she continued. “I became this one-dimensional character who gave stuff away and danced up steps. Do you know how hard it is to dance up steps? Would a mean person dance up steps? Had I ended my show ..read more

Myles Sexton is often compared to Jonathan van Ness, but unlike the problematic Queer Eye hair expert, Sexton is Canadian. They’re a nice person. It’s in their bones. A former fashion model, Sexton has occasionally branched out to highlighting brands online, but advocacy has become the goal for their popular TikTok and Instagram accounts. Sexton, who is nonbinary, rocked an androgynous look throughout their fashion career and now educated others about the nonbinary experience, the importance of inclusive language, sobriety, and HIV information. LGBTQ Nation sat down with Sexton for a few quic ..read more