News
Memorial for Rose Greene, lesbian checkbook activist, set for August 4
The LGBT community often fetes its celebrity top-donors at black tie and gown galas to show gratitude for helping grow or keep an organization afloat. Less well-recognized are the cadre of volunteer board members, checkbook activists who are just as dedicated to serving the LGBT movement as any grassroots activist, but other than a line at the bottom of their LinkedIn profile, prefer to lead and work in the background to make things happen.
Rose Greene was such a leader. She served twice on the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s Board of Directors from 1989-1995 and 2006-2011, critical times in the LA LGBT movement’s history. Only with her death on July 11 is the community learning the depth of her commitment and her contribution—which will no doubt be recounted at her memorial service on Sunday, August 4 at the Renberg Theatre at The Village at Ed Gould Plaza, 1125 McCadden Place in Hollywood. The service, officiated by Rabbi Denise Eger, will begin at 1 pm.
Greene died of bone cancer, said Lorri L. Jean, CEO of the Los Angeles LGBT Center. She was 72.
Rose Greene was an Angelino. Born in 1946 to a father who owned a cement company and a mother who died when she was 12, Greene attended Fairfax High School, graduated from Cal State Northridge in 1968 with a bachelor’s in fine arts, then briefly taught photography at Hamilton High School, according to an obituary in the Los Angeles Times.
In 1985, she graduated from the University of Southern California after studying personal financial planning. She subsequently founded her own business, Greene Group Financial, based in Santa Monica, which used a team approach to developing personalized plans for clients. She also promoted Community on her webpage.
“Rose believes passionately that one must give back to their community and encourages all of her clients to do the same. To that end, when Rose is not in the office, you’ll find her advising non-profits on their endowments and capital campaigns,” says the outdated post. She also believed in walking the talk.
Rose Greene, Helena Ruffin, Cousin and Client Mark Samara (and Maggie and Gabriel of course) participate in the 32nd annual July 4th, 5k and 10K run/walk benefiting Will Rogers Park. Everyone crossed the finish line, Gabe and Maggie however needed a little escorting.
Greene came out in the 1960s, Jean told The Times. It was a time of significant political and cultural turmoil and change with protests against the war in Vietnam and the music revolution reflecting and fueling it from Frank Zappa; Jim Morrison and The Doors; Carole King; The Byrds; Buffalo Springfield; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; Joni Mitchell and so many others centered in LA, West Hollywood and Laurel Canyon on and just off the Sunset Strip.
And yet homophobia and homo-hatred were still a constant during the “Make Love, Not War” generation. There were still violent gay bars raids such as at the Black Cat Tavern in 1967 and the very public murder of a gay nurse named Howard Efland by LAPD cops at the SRO Dover Hotel in downtown LA on March 9, 1969—a murder the Coroner called an “excusable homicide.” There were also organized public protests by such out gay leaders as Rev. Troy Perry and Morris Kight, captured on film by film activist Pat Rocco.
It was against this backdrop that Rose Greene developed her sense of community spirit. She was always forthright and honest. She wasn’t afraid to be herself, Jean told The Times.
Women’s Liberation movement was also developing at this time and Greene’s path was actually more lesbian-feminist focused than gay.
“I recruited Rose to work on our first women’s event — the June Swoon — almost as soon as I became executive director [of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center] in 1888 and onto the Board shortly thereafter,” longtime LGBT and political activist Torie Osborn tells the Los Angeles Blade. “I’d known her from around the lesbian community since the ’70s. She was a passionate feminist who was highly skeptical that the Center could transform into a place welcoming lesbians, as well as gay men.
“I watched her become more and more of a leader, more and more of an advocate for the Center, and more and more outspoken and militant,” says Osborn. “When we all hit the streets in October of 1991, in response to Gov. Pete Wilson’s veto of AB 101 [the gay civil rights bill he’d promised to sign], there was Rose, angry and loud, chanting and marching with the rest of us. She served as female co-chair of the Board during my tenure and brought her terrific business acumen, great humor and common sense to us at a time we needed all of it. She carried the hopes and dreams of the lesbian-feminist world into the Center with power, passion and purpose. She was a key figure at a key time in Center history.”
LA Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center Board co-chairs Ed Gould and Rose Greene with Center Executive Director Torie Osborn at event for the historic Capital Campaign. (Photo by Karen Ocamb)
Greene and Board co-chair Ed Gould followed the hard work of Board stalwart Karen Siteman who, with Mason Sommers, kicked off and led the first-ever LGBT capital campaign to buy the 44,000-square-foot old IRS building on the Hollywood street later renamed for longtime Center supporter and Board member, Judge Rand Schrader. Ironically, the IRS declined to grant the Center non-profit status in 1972, but did grant it on appeal after then-Center executive director Don Kilhefner promised that the Center would not advocate for homosexuality, only gay consciousness raising.
Schrader, who announced he was HIV positive in November 1991, joined LA City Councilmember Mike Woo, Board co-chair Ed Gould, Center Board member Will Halm (partially obscured in this photo), LA County Supervisor Ed Edelman, Center Board co-chair Rose Green (a stand out in white), actress Judith Light, Executive Director Torie Osborn, and LA County Assessor Kenny Hahn for the ribbon cutting ceremony in November 1992 for what became the Center’s headquarters at the McDonald/Wright Building.
Unbeknownst to most caught up in the historic ceremony was that the Center’s incoming executive director, attorney and FEMA San Francisco-based director Lorri L. Jean, was in the audience.
“I’ll never forget that day in the summer of 1992 when my San Francisco office phone rang, and it was Rose whom I had never met. Her mission was to recruit me to apply for the job of Executive Director at the Center. Her passion was infectious. Her commitment impressive. She succeeded, and that pivotal moment changed my life,” Jean says. The success of that first-ever Capitol Campaign “inspired others throughout the nation, among them the New York LGBT Center and the Human Rights Campaign.”
It inspired Greene, too, deciding to mount a second capital campaign to raise $15 million to purchase a $6.7-million Hollywood complex at 1125 N. McCadden Place and renovate it.
On June 21, 1998, it opened as The Village at Ed Gould Plaza, along with a $10-million endowment fund. Additionally, in 1993, Greene helped lead the Center in opening the Jeffrey Goodman Special Care Clinic, which expanded free and comprehensive early intervention HIV and AIDS medical care when AIDS was still crashing all around LA in the second wave of AIDS, according to Jean.
Perhaps Greene’s greatest legacy – that few know about – is her central significance in creating and developing the first California AIDS Ride in 1994. The 545-mile bike ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles, now known as the popular AIDS/LifeCycle, has raised more than $280 million for HIV/AIDS- related services at the Center and the San Francisco AIDS Foundation.
But it took Rose Greene to trigger the launch.
In an email to friends and supporters, Dan Pallotta, now leader in “transformation technologies,” writes about how he “originally developed the concept of the AIDSRide — an epic, multi-day, 4-figure pledge journey — for Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science, but they didn’t feel it was for them at the time. It sat on the shelf for a year or so until Torie Osborn hired me to help with the fundraising for the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Community Services Center.” Then, in January of 1993, he saw the movie, “Alive” and his life changed.
“It reminded me of the power of doing the impossible. Of the human hunger to go after the unreasonable result,” Pallotta writes. I decided immediately that it was time to make the AIDSRide happen and the next Monday my team and I began researching how to move, feed, house, shower and otherwise care for hundreds or thousands of people in the outdoors over the course of a week. And how to get them to agree to do it in the first place.”
New director Lorri Jean was looking for a signature event and the young event planner brought the idea to Jean and Development Director Joel Safranek.
“We had a deck for the concept, the cover of which read, ‘The road from San Francisco to Los Angeles is paved with $600,000,’ which was what we thought it could net the first time around,” Pallotta writes. “When the idea was ready, I asked myself, ‘Who will have the vision to really get this?’ That’s where Rose Greene came in — a woman diminutive in inches and enormous in spirit — an investment manager who sat on the board of the Center and with whom I had become friends while we were raising money for the Center’s capital campaign together.
“I took her out for lunch in Hollywood and explained the idea to her,” Pallotta writes. “She got it and she and Ed Gould, the board chair at the time, helped to shepherd it through board approval to get the $50,000 in risk capital we needed to launch it.”
Approval did not come easily. Greene had to convince one board member, in particular, who wanted to studying the proposal first before making any commitment.
“You know the type,” Pallotta writes his friends. “Makes covering your ass sound like absolute saintly virtue and integrity. But Rose had a strong entrepreneurial business sense about her. And she knew that the way you study something that has never been done before is singular and simple: you do it.”
Pallotta says that his idea for a multi-day pledge event “that I showed to Rose that day in the late winter of 1993, has raised in excess of $2 billion for causes from AIDS to breast cancer to pediatric cancer, suicide prevention and more.”
Dan Pallotta with actress Judith Light and her manager Herb Hamsher who rode the last portion of the first AIDS Ride (Photo by Karen Ocamb)
West Hollywood receives thousands of first AIDS Riders and their supporters. (Photo by Karen Ocamb)
“If Rose Green had not been there, I’m not sure it ever would have happened, at least not at that moment or for that organization. She understood the importance of taking a risk, and the rest of the board took comfort in her confidence,” he writes.
Greene’s courage and confidence in taking a risk when necessary to bring about change should serve as a model for others, Pallotta says.
“For all of the thought leadership that has been proffered about social change and risk since 1993, not too much has changed. Peoples’ attitudes toward risk is mostly still, ‘Sure, I’ll take a risk, so long as I know it’s all going to work out.’ But that is not the nature of risk. Rose Greene understood that, before the term ‘social enterprise’ ever even really existed. She was a mensch. A kindred spirit. Authentic. Full of real integrity and a sense of possibility. She loved life and living,” Pallotta writes.
“And damned if she didn’t actually ride the whole 575 miles with us in that very first AIDSRide. By the way, it didn’t net the $600,000 we had projected. It netted $1,013,000,” Pallotta writes. “The world needs more Rose Greenes.”
Greene continued to believe in the power of informed risk-taking. In January, she posted on her Rose Green Cfp Facebook page: “An important, exceptional excerpt about risk from the Behavioral Investor by Daniel Crosby. Remember this paragraph when thinking about investing for the long term (because thinking short term, reacting to negative moves in the market, will easily ruin your chances of success).”
Greene left the Center Board in 1995, but returned 11 years later in 2006, serving until 2011. During that time, California wrestled with marriage equality and then the war over Prop 8 in 2008.
Greene married Helena Ruffin on June 17, 2008, the day after same-sex marriage was officially legalized in California, before Prop 8 was put on the November 2008 ballot.
“Rose taught me to live my authentic life,” Ruffin told The Times, crediting Greene with helping her come out.
“Rose would tell me: ‘The more we tell people who we are, the easier it will be for us to be accepted,’” Ruffin said. For Greene, “it was always about advocacy and always finding places for people who were cast out, and making sure they could find a home and place to be… she fought for people to be treated as equals.”
That sense of equality extended to family. She and Ruffin broke up about 10 years ago but never got divorced and remained very close friends, including with Ruffin’s partner, Shari Robins.
“It’s been a difficult few months to say the least. As many of you know my partner Helena was brutally attacked on March 2nd in an attempted carjacking. The first person I called was Rose Greene, a women who had become my dear friend, and was the wife of, you guessed it Helena. It was complicated, but never for us. Rose was a 4 time cancer survivor and the first time we met, Helena and I promised her we would always take care of her,” Robins wrote on her Facebook page after Greene passed away, detailing how often they all stayed and traveled together.
“We had a really good thing going the 3 of us. When she discovered she had developed a type of bone leukemia, related to all the chemo she had endured, she vowed to do what was needed to make a 5th defense of this insipid disease. She was a fighter,” she wrote. Sadly things did not improve and Rose had really had enough. She agreed to give treatment one more week…. On Monday Helena got a call that things had gone south, Rose’s kidneys were failing. Tuesday Helen said I had to get to LA and I managed to get an earlier flight on Thursday AM Rose was hanging on. I got the COH at 7. O’clock in the car I ordered Din Tai Fung, our special comfort food, to arrive at the hospital when I arrived. Rose was still with us. Helena was telling Rose all day that I was coming and she held on.
“Helen and I and Bernadette, our caregiver, held Rose’s hand and prayed in 3 religions, me Jewish, Helena AntiochIan Orthodox and Bernadette Christian. We let her know she was good to go and that she had fought so admirably hard. She passed peacefully at 9:23 pm on July 11th.
“Our hearts are broken she will be dearly missed. I love you Rosie. Hope you are enjoying that Med Men and Tequila in the sky. Xo Rest In Peace Hon.”
Rose Greene; Helena Ruffin; Lorri L. Jean; Lillene Fifield; and Margaret Marshall (Photo courtesy Los Angeles LGBT Center)
“Rose left this Earth way too early at the age of 72. But she went out fighting following a stem cell transplant in her quest to defeat bone cancer,” Jean says. “The Center is what it is today, thanks in part to Rose’s leadership and vision….Today the Center lauds this tireless champion of the oppressed, this extraordinary, amazing, powerful, hilarious, and loving woman. May she rest in peace.”
Peace and happiness may be what she sought most for herself, her friends, family and clients to enjoy. Last February 27, she posted this on her Facebook business page:
“Our desire for happiness is something we all have in common.
As advisors we have the remarkable connections, intelligence, experience and technology, among other things, to help you plan for the future and invest for retirement but it is compassion that is our most important trait. Our concern for others’ well-being, our clients, whom are our family.
“Cooperation comes from friendship, friendship comes from trust, and trust comes from kindheartedness. Once you have a genuine sense of concern for others, there’s no room for cheating, bullying, or exploitation; instead, you can be honest, truthful, and transparent in your conduct. Be compassionate.” -Dalai Lama”
Five days earlier, she posted this photo, seeing herself and life in perspective: “It’s Friday! There’s a crisp chill in the air but skies are clear and blue. We can see the Hollywood sign all the way from Santa Monica. Though it really isn’t that far away when you look at the actual distance….”
Please note: this article was corrected to indicate that it was Karen Siteman, with Mason Sommers, who launched and did much of the hard work purchasing the old IRS building.
President Donald Trump removed Attorney General Pam Bondi from her post Thursday, following growing criticism over how she and the Department of Justice handled a range of issues, including matters related to sex offender and Trump ally Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump announced Bondi’s removal on Truth Social, where he also said Todd Blanche will serve as acting head of the Justice Department.
“Pam Bondi is a great American patriot and a loyal friend, who faithfully served as my attorney general over the past year,” Trump wrote on the platform. “Pam did a tremendous job overseeing a massive crackdown on crime across our country, with murders plummeting to their lowest level since 1900.”
Trump was seen as recently as Wednesday with the now-former attorney general at a Supreme Court hearing on citizenship.
The decision contrasts with Trump’s previous public praise of Bondi, the 87th U.S. attorney general and former 37th attorney general of Florida, who served in that role from 2011-2019 before joining the Trump-Vance administration. He has frequently lauded her loyalty and said he speaks with her often. Bondi was also one of president’s defense lawyers during his first impeachment trial.
Privately, however, Trump had grown frustrated that Bondi was not “moving quickly enough” to prosecute critics and political adversaries he wanted to face criminal charges, according to multiple sources. The New York Times reported that her inability to charge former FBI Director James B. Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James with any crimes is a large factor in the president’s choice to fire her from the government’s primary law enforcement agency.
The move comes as Trump has sought to minimize public turmoil within his administration, avoiding the perception of a revolving-door Cabinet that defined his first term.
Lee Zeldin, a former Republican congressman from New York who unsuccessfully ran for governor, has emerged as a leading contender to lead the Justice Department. He has been one of Trump’s most reliable allies.
“He’s our secret weapon,” Trump said of Zeldin in February during a White House event promoting the coal industry, adding, “He’s getting those approvals done in record-setting time.”
Bondi has also growing faced scrutiny from Congress.
The House Oversight Committee recently subpoenaed her to testify about the department’s handling of certain files, where she declined to answer key questions during a contentious House Judiciary Committee hearing in February.
The Tampa native has a long history of opposing LGBTQ+ rights through her roles in government. As Florida attorney general, she fought against the legalization of same-sex marriage, arguing it would cause “serious public harm,” pushing forward a legal battle that cost taxpayers nearly half a million dollars. She also asked the Florida Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling that found the state’s same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional.
More recently, Bondi established a “Title IX Special Investigations Team” within the Justice Department focused on restricting transgender women and girls from participating in women’s and girls’ sports teams and accessing facilities aligned with their gender identity. She also told Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia to turn over the medical records of anyone under 19 who received gender-affirming care.
Her removal follows Trump’s decision last month to oust another controversial female Cabinet figure, Kristi Noem.
U.S. Supreme Court
Supreme Court rules against Colo. law banning conversion therapy for minors
8-1 decision could have sweeping impact
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled against a Colorado law that bans so-called conversion therapy for minors.
The justices last October heard oral arguments in Chiles v. Salazar. Today they ruled 8-1 in favor of Kaley Chiles, a Christian therapist who challenged the 2019 law.
In the case, which was heard by the justices in October 2025, Chiles successfully argued to the court that the law restricting this type of therapy was unconstitutional, leading to it being struck down.
The Supreme Court ultimately found that lower state and federal courts has “erred by failing to apply sufficiently rigorous First Amendment scrutiny,” ultimately reversing the widely discredited “medical” treatment that has support by a very narrow margin of mental health specialists — specifically religious and socially conservative ones. This is despite the fact that Colorado state officials have never enforced the measure in practice, and included a religious exemption for people “engaged in the practice of religious ministry.” The now moot law carried fines of up to $5,000 for each violation and possible suspension or revocation of a counselor’s license.
In the ruling, the court said the law, that specifically applies to talk therapy “impermissibly” interferes with free speech rights of Americans, and despite it being “regard[ed] its policy as essential to public health and safety, but the First Amendment stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for himself and seven other justices from across the ideological spectrum who overturned the low court’s ruling. He went on to add that the original ban “trains directly on the content of her speech and permits her to express some viewpoints but not others,” sending it back down to a lower court.
Only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, which included an in depth summary of her departure from the other eight justices, explaining her fears about the verdict — and its eventual chilling effect on legislation that could attempts to restrict regulatory speech for religious attitudes— despite that these regulations are often made as a direct creation of years of essentially unanimous research, and are vetted though regulatory boards for specific jobs.
“This decision might make speech-only therapies and other medical treatments involving practitioner speech effectively unregulatable,” Jackson wrote on page 32 of the 35-page opinion issued by court in response to her opposing eight members comments on the bench.
Since the ruling late Tuesday morning, a slew of LGBTQ+ advocacy groups, as well as groups promoting LGBTQ+ discrimination, have issued statements on the direct impact this will have across the country for LGBTQ+ people.
Democratic Senator, running for reelection in Colorado, John Hickenlooper issued a condemnation of the practice on his X account. “Conversion therapy is cruel and inhumane, plain and simple. This SCOTUS decision is dangerous for LGBTQ+ Americans,” Our LGBTQ+ community deserves safety, acceptance, and love. We won’t ever let up in our fight for a better nation.”
Conversion therapy is cruel and inhumane, plain and simple. This SCOTUS decision is dangerous for LGBTQ+ Americans.,” the former Governor said on the platform. “Our LGBTQ+ community deserves safety, acceptance, and love. We won’t ever let up in our fight for a better nation.”
Polly Crozier, director of family advocacy at GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD Law), provided a statement to the Los Angeles Blade on the court’s decision.
“Today’s Supreme Court ruling limited Colorado’s statute that preemptively shielded minors from conversion therapy, but it leaves open avenues for states to protect families from harmful, unscrupulous, and misleading practices that divide parents from their children and put LGBTQ+ youth at risk,” Crozier wrote, pointing to the overwhelming evidence on conversion therapy that argues this type of regulatory legislation is helping those suffering rather than harming. “The evidence is clear that conversion practices lead to increased anxiety, depression, and suicidality. This is a dangerous practice that has been condemned by every major medical association in the country. Today’s decision does not change the science, and it does not change the fact that conversion therapists who harm patients will still face legal consequences, and that family advocates, mental health practitioners, and all of us who care about the wellbeing of youth will continue working to shield LGBTQ+ young people and their families from this dangerous practice.”
Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson, who leads the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ advocacy group, also provided a statement, calling the courts choice a “reckless decision.” The statement also points out how their own data (from the group’s philanthropic arm of the organization) was cited in Brown Jackson’s dissent in the amicus brief.
“The court has weaponized free-speech in order to prioritize anti-LGBTQ+ bias over the safety, health and wellbeing of children,” her statement reads. “So-called ‘conversion therapy’ is pseudoscience, not real therapy. It has been condemned by every mainstream medical and mental health association and harms families, traumatizes children, and robs people of their faith communities. It is cruel and should never be offered under the guise of legitimate mental healthcare. To undermine protections that keep kids and families safe from these abusive practices is shocking — and our children deserve better.”
Liberty Counsel, a nonprofit, tax-exempt Christian ministry that uses litigation to promote evangelical Christian values and limit LGBTQ+ protections, which was designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, was also cited in the court’s amicus brief, but in support of overturning the law.
“The U.S. Supreme Court’s resounding decision in Chiles v. Salazar is a major victory for the integrity of the counseling profession,” Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Council said today. “This ruling ensures the government cannot strip the First Amendment away from licensed counselors and dictate a state-mandated ideology between counselor and client. Talk therapy is speech, and the government has no authority to restrict that speech to just one viewpoint. Counseling bans can now be struck down nationwide so that people can get the counseling they need.”
GLAAD, one of the nation’s oldest non-profit organizations focused on LGBTQ+ advocacy and cultural change issued a statement pon the verdict, emphasizing what multiple advocate groups have said — this decision will impact an already vulnerable youth population at an elevated high risk.
“The court once again prioritized malice over best practice medicine,” Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of GLAAD said in a statement. “In the face of this harmful decision, we need to amplify the voices of survivors of this dangerous and disproven practice, and continue to hold anyone who peddles in this junk science liable.”
Truth Wins Out, an organization that works towards “advancing liberty and democracy through protecting the rights of LGBTQ+ people and other minorities” called out the court’s majority opinion for its potential for religious extremism and spread of disinformation.
“This ruling is a profound failure of both logic and moral responsibility that confuses ‘free speech’ with ‘false speech’,” Wayne Besen, the executive director of Truth Wins Out said in a comment. “It opens the door for quackery to flourish and allows practitioners of a thoroughly debunked practice to continue harming LGBTQ youth under a thin veneer of legitimacy.”
Adrian Shanker, the former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health Policy at Health and Human Services under President Joe Biden who also led LGBTQ+ policy at the agency spoke about the detrimental impact this will have on rules and regulations within the healthcare field that are supposed to be inherently secular by nature.
“No matter what the Supreme Court decided today, it is irrefutable that conversion therapy is harmful to the health and wellbeing of LGBTQI+ youth,” Shanker told the Blade, continuing the Trump-Vance administration’s choice to no longer formally support LGBTQ+-inclusive policy. “That’s why in the Biden administration we advanced policies to safeguard youth from this harmful practice.”
In an consistently updated document started in 2018 that cites the major harms risks conversion therapy poses to LGBTQ+ people, the Trevor Project, the leading suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ+ young people, included that the federal government’s own research proved the practice at best questionable and at worst deadly.
In a 2023 report entitled Moving Beyond Change Efforts: Evidence and Action to Support and Affirm LGBTQI+ Youth, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration stressed that “[sexual orientation and gender identity] change efforts are harmful practices that are never appropriate with LGBTQI+
youth, and efforts are needed to end these practices,” the summary of the fight against conversion therapy in the U.S. reads.
More than 20 states and D.C. banned the widely discredited practice for minors prior to the Supreme Court’s ruling.
The Blade last October spoke to conversion therapy survivors after the justices heard oral arguments in the Chiles case.
Japan
Japanese Supreme Court to consider marriage equality
Japan only G7 country that does not legally recognize same-sex couples
The Japanese Supreme Court on Wednesday said it will consider six marriage equality lawsuits.
NHK, the country’s public broadcaster, noted all 15 of the court’s justices will consider the case.
Japan is the only G7 country that does not legally recognize same-sex couples, despite several court rulings in recent years that found the denial of marriage benefits to gays and lesbians unconstitutional.
Tokyo High Court Judge Ayumi Higashi last November upheld Japan’s legal definition of a family as a man and a woman and their children.
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who became the country’s first female head of government last October, opposes marriage rights for same-sex couples. She has also reiterated the constitution’s assertion that the family is an institution based around “the equal rights of husband and wife.”
Same-sex couples can legally marry in Taiwan, Nepal, and Thailand.
NHK reported the Supreme Court is expected to issue its ruling in early 2027.
Arts & Entertainment
LA Blade’s Best of LA 2026 winners announced!
The top names from SoCal’s LGBTQ community, as voted on by LA Blade Readers, are honored for the 9th annual Best of LA.
This week marks the Los Angeles Blade’s 9th Annual Best of LA Award Show, honoring leading members from the community as voted on by readers of the Blade. Presented in part by MISTR and Visit West Hollywood, the community gathered on Thursday, March 26th, at The Abbey, to celebrate the winners:
Best Drag Performer
Cake Moss
Kyra Jete, Runner-up
Best Drag Show
Rocc-ettes at Mattie’s
Hamburger Mary’s Weho. Runner-up
Local Influencer of the Year
Rose Montoya
Lucas Dell, Runner-up
Best LGBTQ Bar
Gym Bar
The Abbey, Runner-up
Best Happy Hour
Motherlode
Hi-Tops, Runner-up
Go-Go of the Year
Steven Dehler
Prince Joshua, Runner-up
Best Restaurant
Bottega Louie
WeHo Bistro, Runner-up
Best Radio or TV Station
REVRY
KTLA, Runner-up
Best Cannabis Retailer/Lounge
Green Qween
Artist Tree Lounge, Runner-up
Best LGBTQ Owned Business
MISTR
Green Qween, Runner-up
Best LGBTQ Social Group
Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles
Dark Circle Film Society, Runner-up
Best House of Worship
Hollywood United Methodist
Congregation Kol Ami, Runner-up
Activist of the Year
Maebe A. Girl
Rose Montoya, Runner-up
Public Official of the Year
John Erickson
Lindsey Horvath, Runner-up
Best Local Pro Sports Team, co-presented by Pride House LA/West Hollywood
LA Dodgers
LA Lakers, Runner-up
Local Ally of the Year
Kevin De Nicolo
Jessica Steinman, Runner-up
Best Doctor/Medical Provider
AIDS Healthcare Foundation
LA LGBT Center, Runner-up
Most LGBTQ-Friendly Workplace
Los Angeles LGBT Center
City of West Hollywood, Runner-up
Non-Profit of the Year
Los Angeles LGBT Center
Trans Lifeline, Runner-up
Best Local Actor
Annie Reznik
Matthew Scott Montgomery, Runner-up
Best Local Theatre
Celebration Theatre
Pasadena Playhouse, Runner-up
Local Musical Artist of the Year
Prince Joshua
Ross Alan, Runner-up
Best LGBTQ Event
Outloud Music Festival at Weho Pride
GLAAD Awards, Runner-up
Best Regional Pride
WeHo Pride
Long Beach Pride, Runner-up
Best Promoter of the Year
Beau Byron
Paul Nicholls, Runner-up
LGBTQ Professional of the Year
Erik Braverman
Michael Ferrera, Runner-up
Best Bartender
Danny Hernandez
Michael Susi, Runner-up
Best DJ
Boy Apocalypse
DJ Les Ortiz, Runner-up
Best Local LGBTQ Podcast
BabyGay
On The Rocks, Runner-up
Best Salon/Spa
Shorty’s Barber Shop
The Massage Company WEHO, Runner-up
Best Music Venue
The Hollywood Bowl
The Troubadour, Runner-up
Best Fitness/Workout Spot
LA Fitness, Hollywood
Barry’s WEHO, Runner-up
Best Hotel
Hotel Ziggy
SoHo House, Runner-up
This year’s Local Hero Award goes to Genevieve Morrill in honor of her role as an ally, serving as president and CEO of the West Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.
Gus Kenworthy received the first-ever Los Angeles Blade Athlete Legacy Award, co-presented by Pride House LA/West Hollywood.
Los Angeles Blade publisher Alexander Rodriguez shared, “In light of the year we’ve had to contend with as the queer community, it is imperative that we take moments to share the accomplishments and resilience of our local family of activists, leaders, and allies. Honoring our nominees and winners this year is proof of the power of queer joy. Until next year!”
Los Angeles
The Connie Norman Transgender Empowerment Center opens full-service health clinic
Saturday marked the opening of the center’s new health clinic and another step forward in its “righteous rebellion” for trans equality.
It’s warm on Saturday morning, and there’s joy in the air at the Connie Norman Transgender Empowerment Center (CONOTEC). By 10 a.m., community members have packed out the center’s first floor, waiting eagerly for the grand opening of its new healthcare clinic. It’s a historic moment that flows from the core of CONOTEC’s purpose: advocating for, creating pathways and uplifting the safety, resilience and wellbeing of trans and queer people.
Established by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) in 2021, CONOTEC honors the legacy of its revered namesake, the “AIDS diva” Connie Norman: a trans activist who was at the frontlines of fighting against government inaction and negligence during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. For five years, the center has been the home base for various local trans and queer organizations, providing a sanctuary for queer elders and advocates to expand and continue their advocacy.
Now, the center’s new health clinic takes this mission further. A collaborative effort between trans medical professionals, activists, and AIDS Healthcare Foundation leaders, the clinic offers an expansive breadth of services that covers primary care, HIV medicine and treatment, sexual health, cancer screenings, and vaccinations. It is open to everyone, regardless of gender and sexual identity, as well as one’s ability to pay.
Advocates name the last few years as a major setback to trans health care, safety, and rights. As the federal administration targets this community by shuttering gender-affirming health clinics, writing laws that approve surveillance of and violence against trans people, the opening of this clinic is both an act of resistance and care. “We get to open doors instead of watching them close,” said Queen Chela DeMuir, who is vice president of AHF’s trans affinity group FLUX and the chief operating officer at CONOTEC.
Addressing the room with tenderness, DeMuir recounted the beginning of her transition. Her first hormone shot was administered by a queer elder she trusted, the medicine bought from a shop at a local swap meet. She remembered the confusion, the concern, the absence of professional care. But, like many other trans folks, she was willing to take these risks to actualize and make physical the person she always was.
The clinic removes the “guessing, fear, and barriers” DeMuir experienced, making sure trans people can receive the care they need in safe, affirming, and accessible spaces. “In this clinic…we care for everyone. We are building access with people who look like us, who understand us, and who carry a shared, lived experience…This is not just a ribbon-cutting. It’s a statement about who we are and what we deserve,” said DeMuir.
What trans and nonbinary community members deserve is easy access to healthcare and, thus, easy access to “justice, dignity and the right to live fully,” stated AHF chief medical officer Dr. Carl Millner. He reiterated that trans people, specifically trans women, are disproportionately impacted by HIV yet have fewer pathways to access care and support.
The clinic rewrites standard medical practice by centering trans lives in both their patient outreach and in their staff. Razan Alawadhi, an AHF nurse practitioner and trans woman, will bring nearly two decades of healthcare experience to help guide the clinic’s operations. “It is a dream of mine to establish this clinic,” said Alawadhi, who also hopes to advance studies and treatment in neglected research areas like sexual health for trans people.
On the other side, trans people who seek care are repeatedly met with varying levels of hostility and misunderstanding in health care spaces. “I remember going to an emergency room for a back injury — something unrelated to my transness — and being looked at like a freak,” said FLUX ambassador Laith Ashley, who described the humiliation with crystal clear detail. Those experiences don’t fade away; they leave lasting marks and create cycles of medical avoidance in trans and nonbinary communities.
“This [clinic] is here to help change experiences like that,” Ashley continued. “Here…providers recognize that affirming someone’s identity is not controversial. It’s compassionate medicine…So when we open a clinic like this, we are not just expanding health care services. We are expanding hope [and] sending the message that transgender people in this community are not alone.”
This message is not new. The fight for freedom was forged by trans ancestors, and is carried onward by present and future generations. It’s a “full-circle moment,” DeMuir explained to the Blade. “I knew that I was putting myself at risk when I was younger, so part of the work that I do is really making sure we make things better for those that come [after] us, and give them a sense of pride that they are seen.”
The fire beneath this fight for visibility blazes with the warmth and strength of its leaders and community. It’s just beginning. “I want to welcome you to the righteous rebellion,” said Queen Victoria Ortega, president of FLUX and the chief visionary officer of CONOTEC. “[This is] a place where doors will be open for folks…No one’s going to deport us. No one’s going to erase us off the earth. This is a place for [us] to have dignity and have access to health care for all.”
More information about the Connie Norman Transgender Empowerment Center can be found on their website.
Kristie Song is a California Local News Fellow placed with the Los Angeles Blade. The California Local News Fellowship is a state-funded initiative to support and strengthen local news reporting. Learn more about it at fellowships.journalism.berkeley.edu/cafellows.
Crime & Justice
Ed Buck is ordered to pay $2 million in wrongful death lawsuit for Gemmel Moore
On Wednesday, advocates celebrated their court victory: one that would make sure Moore’s story would not be ignored or forgotten.
On July 27, 2017, Gemmel Moore, a young Black queer man who was unhoused, was found dead in prominent West Hollywood political donor Ed Buck’s apartment. At the scene, police discovered glass pipes, syringes, and plastic bags with methamphetamine. Moore’s death was ruled an accidental overdose, and Buck skirted charges.
On January 7, 2019, another Black queer man, Timothy Michael Dean, was found dead from an apparent overdose at Buck’s home. In September of that same year, a third man, Dane Brown, overdosed but survived his encounter with Buck. Brown later died in 2024.
These deaths paint a picture of negligence, harm, and racialized violence. Advocates argued that Buck targeted and preyed upon the queer community’s most vulnerable people.
“[Buck] intentionally chose Black gay men…Black gay men who were unhoused, who were suffering from addiction, who were in need of things,” said political strategist and journalist Jasmyne Cannick in a recent interview with NBCLA. “He used his power and his money to take advantage of them, and that just isn’t right.”
In 2021, Buck was found guilty on nine federal charges: the deaths of Moore and Dean, the distribution of methamphetamines, solicitation of prostitution, and the maintenance of a drug den. A year later, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
This week, another legal victory was secured for the family of Gemmel Moore. Moore’s mother, LaTisha Nixon, had filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Buck and sought damages based on charges of sexual battery, hate violence, as well as unlawful and negligent conduct. After a brief deliberation, a jury unanimously found Buck liable. He has been ordered to pay $2 million to Nixon.
2026 marks nearly a decade since Moore’s death, and nearly a decade of hard-fought justice, accountability and remembrance. Cannick has been present from the start, reporting on legal proceedings and fighting back against attempts to silence her. During this most recent suit, Cannick described how Buck’s attorney filed to place a gag order on her, in order to limit what she was allowed to publicly say about the trial. The motion was denied.
“There were times when people hoped the story would fade away,” Cannick wrote to the Blade. “From the very beginning, I made a commitment to make sure Gemmel Moore’s life and death were not ignored or minimized…Seeing a jury deliver this verdict is a reminder that persistence matters and that the truth eventually has a way of catching up with people who thought they were untouchable.”
Kristie Song is a California Local News Fellow placed with the Los Angeles Blade. The California Local News Fellowship is a state-funded initiative to support and strengthen local news reporting. Learn more about it at fellowships.journalism.berkeley.edu/cafellows.
California Politics
“I’ve always been an ally.” Seven gubernatorial candidates discuss LGBTQ+ rights at recent forum
Read what seven Democratic candidates running for governor said about how they would support queer Californians.
On Monday evening, seven Democratic candidates running for California governor walked into a packed auditorium in front of the county’s most prominent LGBTQ+ communities. In a forum co-presented by civil rights organization Equality California and the local queer nonprofit Los Angeles LGBT Center, each candidate tried to convince the crowd why they are the best choice for LGBTQ+ Californians.
The candidates present were: former California Attorney General and U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra, former Congresswoman Katie Porter, Congressman Eric Swalwell, billionaire entrepreneur and environmentalist Tom Steyer, California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, former L.A. mayor and Speaker of the California State Assembly Antonio Villaraigosa, and former California State Controller Betty Yee.
Swalwell, Steyer, and Porter are top contenders, according to a recent statewide survey conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California. 30% of the survey’s voters are split between other candidates, including Villaraigosa, Yee, Thurmond, and Becerra.
Political analysts and reporters are stumped; it’s difficult to parse out a clear frontrunner at this moment. As we head towards a primary election in June, community offerings like Monday’s forum allow constituents, including those who are LGBTQ+, decide which candidate is most likely to fulfill their promise of defending queer rights.
The Blade gathered notable quotes from each candidate in regards to LGBTQ+ issues. Passages have been edited for clarity.
How has each candidate stood with LGBTQ+ communities?
Each candidate was individually called up to the stage and given about 13 minutes to answer the same set of questions. A forum rather than a debate, the evening allowed each person to discuss their past work with LGBTQ+ communities as well as their perspectives on transgender health care, LGBTQ+ youth, homelessness, and the war in Iran.
The first question of the evening was definitive. NBC4 anchor Colleen Williams, the forum’s co-moderator, asked candidates to give themselves a letter grade to define their past work with LGBTQ+ communities.
Xavier Becerra
“I have been an ally. Equality California has recognized that twice. But I go further back than that. There was a time in the 1990’s where two individuals who loved each other couldn’t get married if they were the same sex. There was a law that passed in Congress, called the ‘Defense of Marriage Act.’ 67 members out of 435 voted ‘no’ against that discriminatory law. I was one of them.
I will never put a vote down or take an action that would discriminate against someone else. That’s why I’ve taken action year over year, whether it was as Attorney General when I defended the ability of our LGBTQ community to have access to affordable care under the ACA [or] as Secretary of HHS. When it [came] to gender affirming care, it’s not what the politicians in Congress say: it’s what the medical and scientific experts say is the best health for every American.
I have a history that runs longer than anyone who’s running for governor in talking about how I’ve been a true and enduring ally of the LGBTQ+ community.”
Katie Porter
“I’m a professor, and I’m a pretty notoriously tough grader. I don’t really believe in A-pluses, because I think there is always work to be done. But I would give myself an A, and I feel proud of the way that I’ve fought alongside the LGBTQ+ community, the way that I have represented those that I was fortunate enough to represent in Orange County, and to do that in an area that has historically been very, very hostile to the gay community.
I’m so very proud to have flipped the seat and to have been bold in voting for the Equality Act, in calling out Republicans for trying to attack LGBTQ families and limit their ability to adopt, for example. What would I do differently as governor? I think that starts with recognizing that we are not at a place of full equality. It is a journey, and we are not at our destination, and that is particularly true for transgender people. They are still facing discrimination in health care, housing, and employment in so many other areas. So I think that’s something I would really want to focus on, is recognizing that within the coalition, within the LGBTQ+ community, we have real work to do, particularly for those who are facing the most challenges.”
Eric Swalwell
“I’ve been in Congress for 14 years. So, you get as a future governor someone who’s been in the arena and someone who has been on record, and my record with the Human Rights Campaign has been 100%, and I’m proud of that. I’ve always been an ally. I always will be an ally, but there’s a lot more for me to learn. [There’s] always room for improvement, but [I have] a 14-year record of working on these issues and 100% of the time being with the community.”
Tom Steyer
“I don’t think my grade for myself is the way to think about it. I think the LGBTQ community’s grade is the one that counts. And I have worked actually very closely over the years with Equality California. And in fact, the former executive director of Equality California, Rick Zbur has endorsed me. I mean, we’re friends, but we’ve done so much work together through this organization. So for me, my question is going to always be: What are the people in the community think about what I’m trying to do? Does it have real impact in terms of doing a better job as governor? You have an ability to have immense impact on this community and in general.
To me, the question is going to be to make sure that this is a priority that is incredibly high because of what’s at risk. What’s the cost of not coming through for this community? Very, very, very high.”
Tony Thurmond
“As the State Superintendent of Schools, I sponsored the legislation to establish gender neutral bathrooms in our schools in California. I sponsored the legislation to ban any banning of curricula that would block the contributions of LGBTQ Californians to our great state, and I sponsored the legislation that made the law the Safety Act that says we don’t do forced outings in the state of California.
And as governor, I will continue to support our LGBTQ+ community: to support the right for health care, including gender affirming care, to make sure that there are health care resources, [and] that we address discrimination in housing. As we speak right now, I’m sponsoring legislation that would provide subsidized housing to minors who are homeless. In our state, there are 10,000 homeless youth in our state who are on their own under the age of 18. And as many of you know, our young people [who are homeless] are oftentimes disproportionately LGBTQ+.
As [for] a grade, I’ll say I’m a work in progress, because I’m hungry to do more. I think that more needs to be done. I’m not here to rest on laurels. As a governor, I’m going to fight back on the Trump administration in the same way that I’ve done to pass legislation that says ICE has no place in our schools [and] in our hospitals. We are under attack, but we’re going to fight back, and as your governor, I’m going to help lead that attack against Trump in this reckless administration.”
Antonio Villaraigosa
“A+. I started in the beginning. I was doing this. When I was Speaker of the California State Assembly, I was chair of this budget subcommittee that dealt with the AIDS formulary. I took on Pete Wilson, [who] had pushed back constantly on that formulary, and we won. [And the] first anti-discrimination bill in housing and employment. We’d been working on it for 30 years. I authored it. I joined [what was then the] Gay and Lesbian Caucus at the time. I authored, with Carole Migden, the first domestic partnership bill.
Then, when I was mayor, I led Mayors for Equality. When I was chairman of the convention, the first thing they asked me in 2012 was my position on gay marriage. I said: ‘You know it. I’ve been strongly for it since 1994.’ Obama’s people got upset with me because I was the chair of the convention, and I said it should be on the platform. I was the first person in the country to take out transgender females [and] separate them in the men’s jail.
So, what would I do to continue the A+? Continue to be at the forefront of fighting for LGBTQ rights.”
Betty Yee
“I would give myself an A. I’ve been a lifelong ally to this community. Being from San Francisco, I have really seen the emergence of this community to where we are today. I think in terms of any room for improvement, it’s because we are under attack, and so we’re going to have to double down in terms of the advocacy, the ways that we stand up for our communities and the way we protect each other. I know that as the next governor — that is going to be the first order of business. California does not take lightly that our rights and protections are being taken away from all of our communities, so we have to continue to be the beacon of hope for so many.”
Transgender health: how would the candidates protect gender-affirming care as the federal administration tries to shut down these essential services?
Candidates were asked about the current state of gender-affirming care for transgender people and youth, which continues to be threatened and shuttered by the administration. Last year, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles closed its Center for Transyouth Health and Development as well as its Gender Affirming Care surgical program. Amidst rampant protest, federal efforts targeting these programs continue to grow.
The forum’s next question was: How would candidates handle this gap in gender-affirming care? Would they enforce state law that states that gender-affirming care should be offered, on the grounds of anti-discriminatory practices? How would they enforce this if federal funds are withheld?
Xavier Becerra
“First, we would not take a knee to Donald Trump. Secondly, we would enforce and you’re hearing that from the voice of a former enforcer: the former Attorney General for the state of California. Third, I will tell you, as the former Secretary of Health and Human Services, that the medical experts [and] societies that have done the research and have done the work and the studies, are the ones that should guide the care that we provide to all Americans, including our children.
They have said that gender affirming care, including for our children, is not only supportive of good health, it also provides for a good life. As Governor, I will enforce the laws. I will not discriminate, and I will be an ally for those who need access to the kind of care that lets you live a thorough life. Remember, today we have 10 year olds who are contemplating suicide, and too often you find so many of those youth in our LGBTQ community. That’s because they don’t feel like they are heard, and we need to make sure we are there.”
Katie Porter
“I’ve had conversations with some of our largest health care providers in the state about this. It is a really big concern. I’ve heard about it directly from parents and from affected youth. I think we need to be very clear about what’s at stake here. This is a health care issue, and we are fighting for health care.
We have seen women’s health care under attack not very many years ago, and by the way, coming again under the Trump administration. I think the answer to what I would do is: we need to provide state funding for this. I believe that what the legislature is fighting for, which is $26 million in order to provide a state-only medical pathway [to] make sure that we are not putting our institutions in a choice between losing their funding, which provides health care for lots of Californians, and having to provide appropriate medical care for every single kid in California, including gender affirming care.
That $26 million, I want to be very, very clear: it sounds like a big number. It’s less than [what] one of my opponents spent on TV ads in the last couple months. It is a number that we can fund. We are the world’s fourth largest economy. We should be able to provide health care for every single California kid, including gender affirming care.”
Eric Swalwell
“This President has declared war on the health care of our kids, with gender affirming care. Troops are in our streets. Women are being dragged by their hair and thrown into unmarked vans. Advocates of the most vulnerable in our community are publicly being executed. We need a fighter protector in Sacramento, and that’s the experience I offer as the son of a cop, as a prosecutor for seven years in Oakland, who led the hate crimes unit in Alameda County, but also someone for the last 10 years as the worst, cruelest, most incompetent person ever has been President of the United States, I was with Adam Schiff in the Russia investigation. I was a part of both impeachments. I have the only lawsuit that has survived this new presidency. I know you have to go on offense, otherwise the most vulnerable are on defense.
But it’s my job also to find as much revenue as possible to backfill what you just described. There’s a real opportunity not to get it all back, but to leverage being in the majority, being the fourth largest economy in the world and the might that we have in the congressional delegation, adding five more seats with the work we’re going to do for Prop 50 to get back as much as possible on day one.”
Tom Steyer
“I would, and I’ll tell you why. It goes back to my relationship and experience with Rick Zbur, because he made sure that I knew transgender people, that I got a chance to talk to them, and I got information on that community a long time ago. What I learned was how much risk they’re at, especially transgender youth. I think when I first learned about it, the percentage of transgender youth who tried to kill themselves was 50 percent. The last statistic I’ve seen more recently is 39 percent. When I said priorities: what is the risk if you don’t do it? And the answer is, the risk is really, really, really high. To me, that’s a risk that is unbearable as a state. And therefore I would insist on enforcing those laws, and I would insist on that care.”
Tony Thurmond
“I would enforce that law, and as governor, I intend to implement a single payer health care system, and build into that an understanding that we provide gender affirming care and to continue to lift up the principles of gender affirming care in our state. I’ve spoken out already as a UC Regent, because there are some hospitals in the regent system that try not to provide care, and as governor, I’ll continue to make that a priority.”
Antonio Villaraigosa
“Yes, I would enforce state law because it is discrimination, number one. And it’s not just LA Children’s Hospital. I think San Diego just did the same thing. We’ll backfill. The state will backfill that money that the feds have taken out. It is discrimination, pure and simple.”
Betty Yee
“Absolutely. I think that’s what we have to stand on, and we have to strengthen those laws to be sure that they are being enforced. And also look at our regulatory agencies to be sure that our providers are exactly following state law. Look, we are really the leader in all of this. And I am very, very saddened to know that here in California we have providers that feel like they can step away from this requirement. And I certainly want to bring that back full focus to be sure that no one [who needs it] is going without gender affirming care.”
To hear the other topics discussed, exclusive livestream partners NBCLA and Telemundo 52 have uploaded the full forum on their respective channels. Click the hyperlinks to view.
Kristie Song is a California Local News Fellow placed with the Los Angeles Blade. The California Local News Fellowship is a state-funded initiative to support and strengthen local news reporting. Learn more about it at fellowships.journalism.berkeley.edu/cafellows.
California
Equality California has sponsored 12 bills to advance LGBTQ+ rights in the state
On Feb. 27, the LGBTQ+ civil rights organization announced its 2026 legislative priorities, which cover trans healthcare and queer education.
Nationally, queer and trans people are facing a crisis. Last July, the Trump administration defunded the 988 suicide prevention lifeline for LGBTQ+ youth. Anti-trans hate crimes are on the rise, specifically those targeting Black and brown trans women. Just last week, trans people living in Kansas who had changed their gender designations in the past received abrupt letters stating that their driver’s licenses were no longer valid.
Federal and statewide legislation is targeting LGBTQ+ rights, creating a social landscape that is reverting to sanctioned violence against these communities. In response, LGBTQ+ civil rights organization Equality California has sponsored 12 new bills that are fighting to strengthen queer people’s rights, safety, and sense of stability.
This means “being able to access health care, live free from discrimination, gather safely, and trust that our personal information will not be weaponized against us,” said Equality California’s executive director, Tony Hoang, in a press release. Hoang also states that these bills offer Governor Newsom an “opportunity to define real leadership” and set himself and the state apart from the proliferation of anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric amongst the most politically elite.
What are the bills and what would they do?
The 12 priority bills Equality California has sponsored span various areas, from healthcare to the criminal justice system and from schools to emergency hotlines.
AB 1876 (Dawn Addis): Protecting transgender patients from discrimination
Introduced on Feb. 12, AB 1876 would prohibit health insurers and plans from discriminating against people based on sexual orientation, gender identity, or sex characteristics. This would help advance the rights of trans, gender diverse/expansive, and intersex (TGI) people across California, allowing them greater accessibility when seeking the healthcare they need.
AB 1930 (Rick Zbur): Protecting transgender patient privacy from out-of-state investigations
Introduced on Feb. 13, this bill was written by Assemblymember and former Equality California executive director Rick Zbur. It focuses on protecting transgender patients who have received gender-affirming care, abortions, or any other form of trans health care in California. AB 1930 will place greater protections on confidential, private medical information, barring out-of-state agencies from readily obtaining these records and using them against trans people.
SB 1114 (Christopher Cabaldon): Protecting LGBTQ+ data privacy
California-based agencies continue to champion research on LGBTQ+ communities, collecting data related to gender and sexual identity. However, there are concerns that federal officials will try to surveil, shut down, or extract this data. SB 1114 would counter this by limiting when state agencies can share this sensitive data and barring the disclosure of such data outside of California.
AB 1540 (Mark González): Restoring the youth crisis support hotline
Since last year, after the administration ended the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline’s specialized services for queer youth, L.A. officials have been advocating for its revitalization. AB 1540 was introduced this January by prominent LGBTQ+ Assemblymember Mark González, and the bill calls for the restoration of the “Press 3” option for queer youth struggling with their mental health. Many have lauded the service’s necessity, urging officials to recognize and take action to address the broader mental health crisis of young LGBTQ+ people across the country.
SB 934 (Scott Weiner): Advocating for conversion therapy survivors
SB 934 aims to extend the statute of limitations so conversion therapy survivors can pursue legal claims against licensed mental health professionals who have subjected them to conversion therapy practices.
In other states, victories against conversion therapy have taken a step backwards. In 2023, conversion therapy was legally banned, to prevent the “horrific practice” from continuing to harm LGBTQ+ youth. This past December, the ban was blocked, on the grounds that it violated First amendment rights for therapists and counselors — even if they engaged in the practice.
AB 1775 (Chris Ward) — Supporting transgender veterans
In January 2025, the Trump administration issued an executive order that barred trans people from serving in the military, stating that the forces had been “afflicted with radical gender ideology.” As a result, tens of thousands of active-duty service members, veterans, and their family members were abruptly cut off from a steady income, putting them at risk of homelessness and financial instability. AB 1775 will make sure trans veterans impacted by the executive order can access housing assistance, employment support, and be able to correct their military orders.
AB 1836 (Jesse Gabriel): Protecting safety of LGBTQ+ community events
This bill intends to expand the state’s Nonprofit Security Grant Program so that organizations can access funding for security efforts when hosting LGBTQ+ community events. Currently, the grant program provides funding for LGBTQ+ community centers and nonprofit facilities, but does not cover off-site events. For queer people celebrating their joy in public, which can be its own act of resistance, the possibility of retaliation leaves in many a remnant of fear and apprehension. This bill combats these fears by creating funding opportunities to ensure proper protections can be accessed at such events.
SB 1023 (John Laird): Creating greater access to injectable PrEP
Assemblymember Laird’s bill proposes improved insurance coverage and reimbursement practices so that healthcare providers can offer long-acting injectable PrEP without being slowed down by financial or administrative barriers.
Community clinics often face the brunt of ineffective insurance reimbursement practices, which blockade and clog their ability to provide HIV preventative medicine. SB 1023 aims to make these processes smoother, ensuring that clinics and providers can provide PrEP in a timely, equitable manner.
AB 908 (Jose Solache): Ensuring LGBTQ+ curriculum is meaningfully adapted
This bill would require California’s Department of Education to make sure school districts are complying with the state’s FAIR Education Act, which calls for curricula to cover the histories and contributions of various marginalized communities, including Black, brown, indigenous, and LGBTQ+ people.
The FAIR Education Act was signed into law in 2011, but AB 908 calls attention to the fact that only 37% of school districts actually implement meaningful LGBTQ+ education in their curricula. The bill reaffirms what has already been legally mandated for 15 years: that school systems concretely cover LGBTQ+ history and contemporary advancement for their students.
SB 1328 (Sabrina Cervantes): Creating more LGBTQ+ outreach for higher-ed students
This bill would require higher education institutions to designate specific confidential employees at satellite campuses, outreach centers, and other external branch facilities to support the needs of LGBTQ+ students and staff.
LGBTQ+ “points of contact” can be found at various primary campuses, and this bill calls for the same measures to be taken at outreach centers related to higher education institutions. SB 1328 argues that more should be done for queer students, faculty, and staff who are present at an institution’s various locations — not just its main campus. It highlights a need for intention and care for queer people’s needs within the education system: cursory attempts at inclusion are not enough.
AB 2014 (Sade Elhawary) — Preventing gender bias in criminal trials
The California Committee on Revision of the Penal Code released its 2025 annual report in December and identified that an important point of reform was the way gender-based evidence is treated in court. AB 2014 would require courts to apply heightened scrutiny — a more demanding form of review that requires substantial evidence — before hearing arguments based on harmful gender-based stereotypes.
SB 1149 (Maria Durazo) — Expand Bereavement Leave for Chosen Family
This bill expands the definition of work-protected bereavement leave to include chosen and extended family members. Currently, California law restricts bereavement leave to immediate family, and does not take into account that queer people are often piecing their own families together after abandonment, estrangement, or fear for their safety and health.
The pain of losing a chosen family member can be just as, if not more, searing and altering than the loss of a blood relative. SB 1149 would protect workers experiencing this kind of grief.
Kristie Song is a California Local News Fellow placed with the Los Angeles Blade. The California Local News Fellowship is a state-funded initiative to support and strengthen local news reporting. Learn more about it at fellowships.journalism.berkeley.edu/cafellows.
Obituary
Appreciating literature’s gay genius, Michael Silverblatt
Journalist Karen Ocamb remembers literary guru and host of KCRW’s Bookworm, and his place among LGBTQ legends.
The superlative does not exist to describe Michael Silverblatt’s passion hosting KCRW’s Bookworm, which the New York Times described as a “literary salon of the air.” Michael died from complications of diabetes at his Fairfax district home on Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day. He was 73.
Many, many famous writers and artists have described their appreciation for Michael’s unique, insightful depth of literary knowledge. Norman Mailer called Michael “the best reader in America.” Susan Sontag called him “a national treasure.” Joyce Carol Oates called him “the very Mozart of literary interviewers.”
“Michael was a genius. He could be mesmerizing and always, always, always brilliant,” Alan Howard, Michael’s friend and Bookworm editor for 31 of the show’s 33 years, told the Los Angeles Times. “It’s an extraordinary archive that exists, and I don’t think anyone else has ever created such an archive of intelligent, interesting people being asked about their work.”
A curious twist of fate landed Michael in what turned out to be his own wonderland, conducting more than 1,600 interviews with brilliant writers and artists such as Joan Didion, Toni Morrison, Susan Sontag, Margaret Atwood, Ann Beattie, Kurt Vonnegut, Salman Rushdie, Gore Vidal, Tom Wolfe, Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro, and David Foster Wallace.
Michael was born in Brooklyn, New York, on Aug. 6, 1952, and raised in Queens by parents who were two accountants – children of Russian and Polish immigrants who didn’t quite know what to do with their reclusive, budding gay, Jewish intellect.
“My first crucial book was Alice in Wonderland. My mom used to take me with her to the beauty parlor, and I asked her to get me the big Walt Disney Alice in Wonderland with the colored pictures because it was so pretty and mysterious to me. I remember the Cheshire cat, pink and purple with a heckler’s smile,” Michael told Sarah Fay during an interview at the University of Iowa in 2010. “My mother instead bought me the Lewis Carroll Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland with the black and white Tenniel engravings, and I was very disappointed. She did it not because she had a particular investment in literature but because the Disney was so much more expensive and we were always mindful of our economy.
“And when I finally read it,” he continues, “it took me a good two years—I was absolutely fascinated and perturbed by it, particularly by the section where Alice finds herself in the wood where nothing has a name, and she doesn’t know her own name. The engraving has Alice in the woods with her arms around the neck of a fawn, not strangling the fawn, but embracing it as if for dear life, or as if she doesn’t know if she is a fawn, too. The mystery of reading all of those poems that made less sense if you didn’t know the popular poems they were parodies of made it even stranger. I was absolutely entranced by Alice and Lewis Carroll.”
Through Lewis Carroll’s Symbolic Logic and The Game of Logic, Michael taught himself logic and math. “I developed quite a proficiency for abstract math.”
Intellectual challenges became games when, in junior high, Stephen Sondheim published “Cryptic Crosswords” in New York magazine, and Michael would “enter the words as a knight would move across a chessboard.”
As “[Donald] Barthelme has his Snow White character say in his first novel (1967), I want to hear words I have never heard before. I want the words and sentences to peacock around, to open their plumes,” Michael told Fay. “I have an experience of the book, and it’s as if I have not a flat surface in front of me but rather a beehive around my head. It’s very strange.”
In 1968, after graduating from Bayside High School at age 16, Michael enrolled in SUNY at Buffalo, where authors such as Michel Foucault, John Barth, Donald Barthelme, and J.M. Coetzee were professors. Michael was awkward, shy, and inhibited by a stammer – but he secretly considered the professors friends and spoke with them after class.
During summer vacation, his parents pushed him to be a postal worker with a mail route on the Upper East Side that took him past old bookstores. He subsequently bought the complete works of Charles Dickens while his literary tastes were also expanding to the experimental and avant-garde.
Michael refused to major in business, choosing math as a compromise. But he quickly switched to English, graduating with a BA in 1974. He went for a PhD at Johns Hopkins University but dropped out after a year, paralyzed by writer’s block. “I thought I wanted to be a writer, but that really didn’t turn out to be my gift,” Michael told Kristy Davis for Oprah.com.
After a screenplay he co-wrote received some Hollywood attention, Michael relocated to Los Angeles to pursue his dream of writing scripts and books. But the script wasn’t picked up, and he found himself lost, broke, jobless, and drinking a lot. “At the time,” he told Davis, “I resembled a homeless person who unaccountably had an apartment.”
Michael found a 12 Step program, and his life changed. Friends helped him learn how to take care of himself and found him a job at Freeman & Sutton Public Relations in West Hollywood.
That’s where I met Michael in the mid-80s. Brad Bessey, Michael, and I became the gay troika in that office. I was a fellow 12 Stepper, so Brad and I helped brainiac Michael with living in the real world – like cleaning up crumbs. Showbiz-sharp Brad helped Michael and me with the who’s who in Hollywood. And I learned how to write spin-filled press releases about “causes” like I used to read as a journalist.
“We were odd friends,” Brad remembers about Michael. “Back in the mid-eighties, we met in the glittering churn of celebrity PR. I was young, handsome, brash, and built for the room. Michael, on the other hand, was quieter and a little awkward—as if words lived more comfortably on the page than in the room. I loved his laugh, his intellect, and the way, when I trusted him with my poetry—shared with few—he met it with tenderness: an encouraging question, a precise insight, never once making me feel small. When he landed KCRW’s Bookworm, it felt like a metamorphosis—awkwardness transforming into flight—his brilliance suddenly finding a home, audible at last, lifting literature into the air. And always, that laugh.”
We three broke up in the late 80s: I went to live with Wallis Annenberg in Beverly Hills, intending to write plays; Brad wound up as E!’s Director of Talent & Development where he resurrected Joan Rivers career by putting her on the red carpet; then on to Entertainment Tonight where he encouraged actor Michael Jeter to come out in 1997 as a gay man with HIV/AIDS, and highlighted transgender actor Alexis Arquette.
In 1988, Michael had a famous encounter at dinner in Santa Monica, where he was representing actor Ray Sharkey (Wiseguy). He overheard KCRW’s general manager, Ruth Seymour, talking about Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, a victim of one of Stalin’s purges in the 1930s.
“I had just gotten back from Russia, and we were at this dinner with an actor, a producer, and a director who were talking Hollywood,” Seymour told Lynell George for a 3,596-word LA Times feature on Michael in 1997. “And Michael and I got into this whole discussion about Russian poetry, talking to the exclusion of everyone else. He’s a great raconteur, and so the rest of the world just vanished….So afterward I just turned and asked him: ‘Have you ever thought about doing radio?’”
Soon thereafter, Michael started volunteering as host for Bookworm on KCRW, a public radio station on the campus of Santa Monica College. Five years later, thanks to enthusiastic Lannan Foundation support, he was paid, treated like royalty on college campuses and other venues for the special Lannan Foundation “Readings and Conversations” series, and became syndicated nationally.
“The purpose of the show is to help my listeners look through writers’ eyes,” Michael told The New York Times in 1999.“It’s to show them, whether they’re reading or not, how writers re-enchant the world, how they surround us with the miraculous. That’s what books do to me and what I want my show to do, to remind people how odd and special writers’ minds and imaginations are.”
But Michael also cared about public relations, as he shared with his friend Tosh Berman in this 1987 interview. “For people like me, wearing a sports jacket [for PR work] is like the best rebellion of all,” Michael says. “It’s like wearing a clown suit every single day – and enjoying the formality of it, too. The great joy, as William Burrows pointed out, is to feel completely costumed and to be absolutely anonymous.”
“I care about deeply serious writing in America – dance, art. Why should all sorts of less valuable forms be winning attention in the press and the media when the arts languish in need of budgets and government funds,” he says. “This is very important – that we have a government that supports the arts. But it’s more important that we have a culture that supports the arts.”
However, it needs to be created. “I think it is there but very embryonically,” Michael says. “That’s the kind of thing I’m interested in doing – in helping the arts reach their audience and making that audience aware that, like an addiction to drugs – there are those of us who are art addicts – whose lives are changed by the brilliant people who make new things, new forms, new forms of culture.”
One of Michael’s most famous interviews was with David Foster Wallace in 1996 after the publication of Wallace’s 1078-page ultimate mega-meta novel Infinite Jest. Michael immediately stuns the author by observing that the book was written and structured in fractals. After an awe-struck Wallace agrees and explains, Michael goes deeper.
“[W]e’re entering a world that needs to be made strange before it becomes familiar,” he says. Infinite Jest isn’t difficult “for difficulty’s sake; it seemed like immense difficulty being expended because something important about how difficult it has become to be human needed to be said, and there weren’t other ways to say that.”
Wallace is heard quietly saying, “I feel like I wanna ask you to adopt me.”
Over the years, Michael’s vision becomes clearer. “There are all sorts of other things that you get on radio and television,” he told Oprah.com in 2009, “but I wanted listeners of Bookworm to hear words, ideas, but particularly emotions that don’t get discussed in public, if at all elsewhere. That is to say, for one reason or another, the show is a crusade that’s much larger than the subject of books.”
That includes books by and about LGBTQ+ people. In a 2006 interview, Brokeback Mountain author Annie Proulx shares how Ang Lee’s film Brokeback Mountain reflects her vision that the main romantic characters of Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist are not traditional “cowboys” but poor ranch hands in 1963 rural Wyoming. She’s also annoyed with gay fans who have inundated her with alternative “happy” endings.
In an introduction to his 2014 interview about Hilton Als’ book, Michael writes: “White Girls (McSweeney’s), his first book in 14 years, is a series of essays that defy easy categorization – in each he takes the risk to say what must be said. Countering books that define ‘blackness’ in the title like Richard Wright’s Black Boy, Als, a black gay male, is interested in making words opaque. He chronicles longing, loss of loved ones, and the establishment of his voice in the New York of the late ’80s and ’90s. He looks back to Richard Pryor and forward to Eminem. His ‘white girls’ are neither necessarily girls nor white. They are Diana Vreeland, Michael Jackson, Truman Capote, and Louise Little. He posits: what if we existed in a world that was not categorizable?’ Wouldn’t we be left with something more humane and complicated?”
Michael is keenly aware of the importance of identity.
“A book about English children in a castle,” he tells the LA Times, “that was the training, when I was young, to imagine a world that didn’t include me. Books and television are our cultural mirrors… and when you look into the mirror, and you don’t see your face, this is possibly a nightmare situation–the act of looking but not finding yourself, or looking and finding yourself where you don’t belong. So until I found books that had a Michael in them, part of me didn’t fully yet exist.”
Finding an image was also startling. “When I learned that there were [such] books–Bernard Malamud, Grace Paley, Henry Roth, that generation of Jewish writers–my first impulse was to resist. ‘This isn’t the castle!’ I was frightened. It was the language I heard around the house. If you’re any kind of minority, to open a book and hear the people around you, your aunts and uncles talking to you . . . that that language should be in a book? I mean, this is an enormous day!”
In 2005, Michael and his team produced a 10-part series entitled Escaping the Cage: Identity, Multiculturalism and Writing, playing off Angelou’s autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings about the human desire to make one’s voice heard even when shackled. Michael “inverted the concept: Writers of defined backgrounds — such as ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation — can become imprisoned by it, he believes, an effect of everything from publishers’ marketing strategies to the editing decisions of anthologists,” The Times reported.
“The cage became the cage of ethnicity,” Silverblatt said. “People were being asked to see literature as entirely a matter of identity…. People were not being allowed to be writers. They were being turned into spokespeople.”
Part 6 is devoted to Sexuality and Literary Theory: “James McCourt discusses the emergence of ‘queer identity’ and gives an overview of French literary theories and their influence on multiculturalism–while Camille Paglia explains the destructive nature of such theories. Booker Prize winner Alan Hollinghurst, who writes about the gay experience, reveals that he reads very little popular gay literature. Edmund White explains how he has turned away from the aesthetic and has embraced social realism in his desire to document the AIDS crisis.”
Author John Rechy, famous for the 1963 gay classic City of Night, wrote a letter to Michael agreeing with his premise. Quoting from one of his essays, he writes: “There is a counterattack by the `mainstream’ to consider. One of its main tactics to effect that countering is through the creation of `liberated ghettos’. When book-chains assign labeled sections to `Chicano literature,’ `Gay Literature,’ `Women’s Studies,’ they segregate. So do `mainstream’ publishers who aim minority books only at minorities and who promote such works, if at all, with restricted advertising.” Brad Bessey is now the director of Communications and Talent Relations at Project Angel Food, where he used to volunteer in 1989. And after 46 years as a journalist for the LGBTQ+ community, I am now writing a Substack called LGBTQ+ Freedom Fighters.
And Michael – he found loving friends, deep admiration, and captured his dream. “I’m as fantastical a creature as anything in Oz or in Wonderland,” he told the Cornell University English department in 2010. “I like it if people can say, ‘I never met anyone like him,’ and by that they should mean that it wasn’t an unpleasant experience.”
I never met anyone like him.
This tribute to Michael Silverblatt is cross-posted from Karen Ocamb’s Substack LGBTQ+ Freedom Fighters.
The 2026 Los Angeles Blade Best of LGBTQ LA Awards are here! You submitted your nominations—now it’s time to vote for the finalists. Voting is open through March 6, 2026.
Among some of your favorite categories are Best Drag Performer, Local Influencer of the Year, Best Happy Hour, Go-Go of the Year, Activist of the Year, Public Official of the Year, Best Non-Profit, Best Bartender, Best DJ, Best Local Podcast, and so many more!
Winners will be revealed at the Best of LGBTQ LA celebration on Thursday, March 26 at The Abbey. Stay tuned for more party details coming soon!
Vote using the form below or by clicking HERE.
Here are this year’s nominees!
Best Drag Performer
- Cake Moss
- Charles Galin King
- Kyra Jete
- Laylah Amor
- Misty Violet
Best Drag Show
- Bring It To Brunch at Mattie’s
- Brunch Service at The Abbey
- Hamburger Marys West Hollywood
- Las Reinas at Mickys
- Rocc-ettes at Mattie’s
Local Influencer of the Year
- Charles Hernandez (CnoteLA)
- Curly Velasquez
- Justin Martindale
- Lucas Dell
- Rose Montoya
- Victoria Pousada Kreindler
Best LGBTQ Bar
- Gym Bar
- Kiso Los Angeles
- Mattie’s Weho
- Or Bar
- The Abbey
Best Happy Hour
- 33 Taps
- Fiesta Cantina
- Hi-Tops
- Mickys
- Motherlode
- The Abbey
Go-Go of the Year
- Daniel Mooney
- Gabriel Gonzalez
- Jay Nova
- Prince Joshua
- Steven Dehler
- Victoria Shaw
Best Restaurant
- Bottega Louie
- Hamburger Mary’s
- La Boheme
- Pura Vita
- WeHo Bistro
Best Radio or TV Station
- CHANNEL Q
- KTLA
- LatiNation
- Out TV
- REVRY
Best Cannabis Retailer/Lounge
- Artist Tree Lounge
- Elevate
- Green Qween
- Med Men
- The Woods WeHo
Best LGBTQ Owned Business
- Fan Girl Cafe
- Green Qween
- JJLA
- MISTR
- Wildfang
Best LGBTQ Social Group
- Dark Circle Film Society
- Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles
- NLGJA Los Angeles
- Outloud Sports
- Unique Woman’s Coalition
- WeHo Dodgeball
Best House of Worship
- Congregation Kol Ami
- Founders Metropolitan Community Church Los Angeles
- Hollywood Boulevard Episcopal
- Hollywood United Methodist
- InVision Church Los Angeles
Activist of the Year
- Cory Allen
- Joshua Marin-Mora
- Liliana Perez
- Maebe A. Girl
- Rose Montoya
Public Official of the Year
- CA State Treasurer Fiona Ma
- Chelsea Byers
- John Erickson
- Lindsey Horvath
- Maebe A. Girl
Best Local Pro Sports Team
- Angel City FC
- LA Chargers
- LA Dodgers
- LA Lakers
- LA Rams
- LA Sparks
- Los Angeles FC
Local Ally of the Year
- Abbe Land
- Jessica Steinman
- Kevin De Nicolo
- Lindsey Horvath
- Senator Lena Gonzalez
Best Doctor/Medical Provider
- AIDS Healthcare Foundation
- Better U
- Dr. Eric Chaghouri
- LA LGBT Center
- St. John’s Wellness
- UCLA CARE Center
Most LGBTQ-Friendly Workplace
- AIDS Healthcare Foundation
- City of West Hollywood
- JJLA
- Los Angeles LGBT Center
- Revry
Non-Profit of the Year
- AJ Socal
- Equality California
- Los Angeles LGBT Center
- OutAthletes
- Project Angel Food
- Trans Lifeline
Best Local Actor
- Annie Reznik
- Jason Caceres
- Michael Scott Montgomery
- Nhut Le
- Shaan Dasani
- Trevor Dow
Best Local Theatre
- Celebration Theatre
- Center Theatre Group
- Geffen Playhouse
- International City Theatre
- LA Opera
- Pasadena Playhouse
Local Musical Artist of the Year
- Prince Joshua
- Robert Rene
- Ross Alan
- San Cha
- Tom Goss
Best LGBTQ Event
- Dinah Shore
- GLAAD Awards
- LA Opera Pride Night
- MISTR’s National PrEP Day
- Outloud Music Festival at Weho Pride
- Pride Night by Hyperion LA
Best Regional Pride
- DTLA Proud
- Hermosa Beach
- Long Beach Pride
- Palm Springs Pride
- WeHo Pride
Best Promoter of the Year
- Andres Rigal
- Ash Rodriguez
- Beau Byron
- Joshua Flores
- Paul Nicholls
LGBTQ Professional of the Year
- Cory Allen
- Erik Braverman
- Kathleen Rawson
- Liliana Perez
- Michael Ferrera
- Tristan Schukraft
Best Bartender
- Alex Satoshi DiDio
- Danny Hernandez
- Manny De Cielo
- Matt Stratman
- Michael Susi
- Michael Vega
Best DJ
- Boy Apocalypse
- DJ Les Ortiz
- DJ SRO
- Lord Izac
- Simon Harrison
Best Local LGBTQ Podcast
- BabyGay
- No Matter What Club
- No Matter What Recovery
- On The Rocks
- Sloppy Seconds Podcast
- Very Delta
Best Salon/Spa
- Bautis LA
- Folklore Salon & Barber
- Project Q
- Shorty’s Barber Shop
- The Massage Company WEHO
Best Music Venue
- The Disney Concert Hall
- The Hollywood Bowl
- The Roxy Theatre
- The Troubadour
- The Wiltern
Best Fitness/Workout Spot
- Barry’s WEHO
- Equinox on Sunset
- Gold’s Gym
- John Reed Fitness
- LA Fitness, Hollywood
Best Hotel
- Andaz
- Edition Hotel
- Hotel Ziggy
- Kimpton La Peer Hotel
- SoHo House
Speak ‘English’: Pooya Mohseni on reclaiming language and self
Spring into your power
Meet your local musician: Ross Alan
Longtime AIDS/LifeCycle rider Gary Boston raises $13k for new Center Ride Out
As No Kings momentum shifts to midterm elections, beware of expectation traps
Longtime AIDS/LifeCycle rider Gary Boston raises $13k for new Center Ride Out
Pam Bondi ousted as attorney general
April encourages us to be practical and stay close to home, according to Intuitive Shana’s April tarot reading
The house that gay Key West built: 50 years of Island House Key West
Trans-driven ‘Serpent’s Skin’ delivers campy sapphic horror
-
Features2 days agoLongtime AIDS/LifeCycle rider Gary Boston raises $13k for new Center Ride Out
-
White House3 days agoPam Bondi ousted as attorney general
-
Tarot Readings and Astrology5 days agoApril encourages us to be practical and stay close to home, according to Intuitive Shana’s April tarot reading
-
Travel3 days agoThe house that gay Key West built: 50 years of Island House Key West
-
Movies4 days agoTrans-driven ‘Serpent’s Skin’ delivers campy sapphic horror
-
Commentary2 days agoAs No Kings momentum shifts to midterm elections, beware of expectation traps
-
a&e features1 day agoMeet your local musician: Ross Alan
-
Real Estate1 hour agoSpring into your power
-
Theater1 hour agoSpeak ‘English’: Pooya Mohseni on reclaiming language and self