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

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said that his state wouldn’t comply with new rules intended to prevent discrimination against LGBTQ+ students. “Florida rejects Joe Biden’s attempt to rewrite Title IX,” he said in a video posted to social media. “We will not comply, and we will fight back.” At issue are Title IX rules released by the Department of Education earlier this month that forbid discriminatory and harassing behavior against LGBTQ+ students. Title IX bans discrimination on the basis of sex, and the Biden administration based the rules on the legal argument that it is impossible to discri ..read more

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have said that “vampire facials” conducted in an unlicensed New Mexico spa caused multiple women to contract HIV. It’s the first time that the cosmetic procedure has been linked to an HIV outbreak. The facials, also known as platelet-rich plasma (PRP) microneedling, extracts blood, separates its plasma, then injects the plasma into the face with tiny needles. It leaves behind blood droplets on the skin, which is why it’s called “vampire facial.” The procedure claims to treat scarring, lesions, wrinkles, and other skin issues, but the Americ ..read more

Colorado’s Supreme Court has said that an anti-LGBTQ+ “parents’ rights” group may start collecting signatures to approve Ballot Measure 142, a proposed law that would require schools to out transgender students to their potentially unsupportive parents. The group now has until August to collect about 125,000 signatures needed to get the measure on the November general election ballot. The Colorado Parent Advocacy Network (CPAN) — a group who believe that a “radical agenda” of “indoctrination” in schools has “exploited” children by teaching them “x-rated sex acts” and giving them access to gen ..read more