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. Did you know that Rome had a transgender “empress?” That gender fluidity was all the rage in the 19th century? Or how the word “gay” replaced “homosexual? The more you know, right? Lesbians Have the Power of the Strap View this post on Instagram A post shared by Col & Ari (@heycolanda) How a nonbinary barber & a self-proclaimed bigot became unlikely friends Their town is one of the mo ..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

LGBTQ+ adults overwhelmingly favor President Joe Biden – and Democrats generally – over former President Donald Trump and Republicans, a new survey has found. But while queer respondents also said the Democratic Party should be doing more to fight anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, the survey also revealed that LGBTQ+ issues aren’t the most important thing on queer voters’ minds leading into the November general elections. A survey of 873 LGBTQ+ adults conducted by Data for Progress found that 57% of respondents had a favorable view of the Democratic Party and 51% had a favorable view of Biden. Compara ..read more

Time magazine is out with its list of the Most Influential People of 2024, and several LGBTQ+ notables made the cut, along with at least one ally and two officials who are openly hostile to the queer community. In the Icons category, transgender actor Elliot Page of Umbrella Academy got a tribute from fellow trans activist and author Raquel Willis, whose own transition memoir came out at the same time that Page’s memoir Pageboy hit bookstores. The Juno star’s autobiography “ultimately landed at a time when conservatives were — as they still are — [passing legislation against] trans people’s b ..read more

In a sworn statement, a witness claims that anti-LGBTQ+ Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) attended a 2017 party where illegal drugs and an underage girl were present. ABC News reports that the House Ethics Committee obtained the written statement as part of its ongoing investigation into whether Gaetz used illegal drugs while he was a member of Congress. In the statement, which was not written specifically for the committee and is not primarily about Gaetz, according to ABC News, a woman claims to have attended a party in Florida during the summer of 2017 at which the congressman was also present. The u ..read more

Conservatives shared a video of students staging a walkout protest in Utah this week, with online commentators claiming that the students were protesting “the furries that bite them, bark at them, and pounce on them,” according to Chaya Raichik, who goes by “Libs of TikTok” online. Another conservative said that the students were particularly angry that “when a student retaliates, they are the one who gets suspended.” But there’s no evidence of any of that happening. The conspiracy theory has its origin, according to the Salt Lake Tribune, with a misinterpretation of a message sent by the adm ..read more

Activists gathered in Washington, D.C., Thursday to demand European Union sanctions on Uganda over its Anti-Homosexuality Act. The law “is driving already marginalized people away from needed services and codifies state-sponsored discrimination and violence against real or perceived LBGTQ people in all areas of life,” the Convening for Equality (CFE) coalition wrote in a letter to EU Commissioner for International Partnerships Jutta Urpilainen ahead of the demonstration. “The European Union should immediately announce a comprehensive review of all of its funding to Uganda, and should pause or ..read more

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is well known for her belief in numerous outlandish conspiracy theories, and her past statements denouncing space lasers allegedly owned by wealthy Jewish people starting wildfires in California are probably among her best-known. Greene has repeatedly exploded in anger when confronted by journalists about her comments on “Jewish space lasers.” But this week, she filed an amendment to fund “space laser technology” to stop immigration into the U.S. “America needs to take our national security seriously and deserves the same type of defense for our border that ..read more

A self-described hacker group of gay furries called SiegedSec claims to have leaked data from the far-right media outlet Real America’s Voice and publicly released the cell phone number of a transphobic pastor. The hack of Real America’s Voice allegedly included the names and phone numbers of over 1,200 users of the outlet’s phone app as well as information about the network’s top shows, including ones hosted by anti-LGBTQ+ Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk and other far-right figures. Real America’s Voice has broadcasted numerous segments accusing the LGBTQ+ community of “targeting” and ..read more

Two transgender women have filed a class-action lawsuit against Montana and several state agencies over the government’s policy forbidding people from changing sex markers on their birth certificates. The inability to change this document puts trans people at risk of discrimination and harassment, the lawsuit’s plaintiffs say. The lawsuit takes issue with a 2022 rule by the Department of Public Health and Human Services (DPHHS) stating that the department would only change gender on birth certificates if an individual’s sex assigned at birth was misidentified or incorrectly recorded. DPHHS of ..read more