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Austin Free Press: Anti-LGBTQ+ Legislation Leads to HateLGBTQIA rights still matter when resisting tyranny
Pride Flag - Kate CC NC Flickr
November 6, 2024
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Austin Free Press: Anti-LGBTQ+ Legislation Leads to Hate

Posted in Austin, and Journalism

Murder, assault, bomb threats, and verbal threats were some of the worst anti-LGBTQ+ hate incidents occurring in the greater Austin area over the last three years, according to data that the LGBTQ+ advocacy group GLAAD documented as the basis for a recent report on such incidents nationwide. Austin Free Press used GLAAD’s Texas data to analyze incidents in the Austin area.

Even as violent crime falls nationwide, threats against the LGBTQ+ community are on the rise nationally, in Texas, and in Austin. In explaining that contradiction, experts say anti-LGBTQ+ legislation is helping to drive those trends.

“We’re seeing this really massive rise in anti-LGBTQ incidents all across the U.S.,” said Sarah Moore, GLAAD’s senior manager of news and research. Moore’s research shows that between Pride Month in June of 2023 and that same time this year incidents increased by 112% nationwide. In Texas, the increase was 44% during that period.

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Texas Observer: Fuck You, Greg Abbott! (The Musical)The cast of "Young Greg Abbott: A FuQusical" line up on stage, middle fingers raised. They are dressed in simple, all-black clothing except for the band leader, who is in Western wear: a tan skirt, pale colored Western button down, and a cowboy hat. Behind them to the right is the band on a small riser, and on a screen behind the cast is the acronym FUGA: Fuck You, Greg Abbott.
Courtesy Tin Pan Pally
October 31, 2024
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Texas Observer: Fuck You, Greg Abbott! (The Musical)

Posted in Austin, Journalism, and The Texas Observer

Some theater experiences are dignified and serious, exploring the depths of human emotion with gravitas and solemnity. On the other hand, there’s “Young Greg Abbott: A FuQusical.”

“This ain’t a subtle show, just thought you should know,” sang the band leader, King Amy Blackard, at the beginning of “Young Greg Abbott,” a satirical show which saw its first two full performances on October 18 in Austin. “Please save your thoughts and prayers. It’s just Sondheim with swears.”

At this “FuQusical,” the audience was encouraged to sing along, shout, and curse at the cast—especially at the actor, Brently Heilbron, playing the youthful version of our now third-term governor. Heilbron also wrote the script and music. Many middle fingers flew during the performance I attended, among the packed crowd at the downtown State Theatre.

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The Barbed Wire: First Arrests at Austin Pride in Over a DecadeOn Congress and 4th St in Austin, Texas, multiple police officers pin a shirtless man to the ground (his features have been blurred) as a Pride parade passes in the background. A police officer on a horse, with a rainbow painted on its flank, stands guard.
Kit O'Connell
October 18, 2024
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The Barbed Wire: First Arrests at Austin Pride in Over a Decade

Posted in Austin, Journalism, LGBTQIA, and The Barbed Wire

At Austin’s Pride Parade in August, while rainbow-painted police horses stood guard and brightly decorated floats passed by, officers tackled two men, using kicks and pressure points to pin their bodies to the ground. They were taken to jail on charges of ignoring law enforcement commands and resisting arrest. 

They were the first arrests at an Austin Pride event in years — perhaps more than a decade, according to one of the event’s longtime organizers. And it left many who watched it unfold, including journalists like myself, with one unshakeable thought: That didn’t need to happen. 

I’ve spent the weeks since reporting on why it did.

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The Barbed Wire: Anti-LGBTQIA+ Incidents in TexasLGBTQIA rights still matter when resisting tyranny
Pride Flag - Kate CC NC Flickr
October 14, 2024
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The Barbed Wire: Anti-LGBTQIA+ Incidents in Texas

Posted in Austin, Journalism, and The Advocate

Before dawn on a Sunday morning in April, the bars in Austin had just closed. Joshua Ybarra started walking to his Uber. Then he heard an anti-gay slur hurled at him from behind. Three men leapt on him, pinning Ybarra to the ground and thrashing him so severely that he fell unconscious. The beating was so vicious that a friend of Ybarra’s “tried to defend him by covering his body on the ground, and she was also beaten by the attackers,” according to research from the nonprofit GLAAD, an LGBTQ+ advocacy organization. Even the alleged attackers’ own fraternity brothers tried to stop the assault, to no avail. 

Ybarra’s assault was just one of 93 hateful incidents of anti-LGBTQIA+ bigotry in Texas tracked by GLAAD’s new ALERT Desk (Anti-LGBTQ Extremism Reporting Tracker). The tracking project — which went public last week — serves as a central hub to count both non-criminal and criminal acts of hate towards the queer community since 2022. Using a wide variety of sources, from mainstream news outlets to social media and verifiable firsthand accounts, the GLAAD ALERT Desk attempts to paint a comprehensive picture of the threats against the larger queer community. (Editor’s note: GLAAD is using the term “incident” over “hate crime” because many of the events did not meet the definition of a criminal act.)

And that picture is a grim one that reflects a disturbing rise in attacks nationwide. The lead at the ALERT Desk and GLAAD’s senior manager of news and research, Sarah Moore, said across the country from June 2022 to June 2024, “we saw a 112% increase in incidents just looking at that two year period.” 

For Texas, that includes at least one murder.

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October 6, 2024
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Palestine Song at Austin City Hall (Oct 5 2024)

Posted in Austin, Journalism, and Video

The song performed before yesterday’s march at Austin City Hall was a lovely moment of international solidarity with the people of Palestine. I hope they could hear us.

This video represents me experimenting with CapCut to create more short videos in the style of TikTok posts or Instagram reels. As you can see, I’m still learning, but I’m also trying to get better at sharing my imperfect projects and works-in-progress more often too.

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The Advocate: The Joy of LGBTQ+ Reading ClubsIn a composite photo, at left, three people gather with books outside the Little Gay Book Club. In an inside shot, about two dozen people gather around long tables to discuss a book.
Courtesy of the Little Gay Book Club
September 24, 2024
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The Advocate: The Joy of LGBTQ+ Reading Clubs

Posted in Austin, Journalism, LGBTQIA, and The Advocate

The ever-evolving membership of the Little Gay Book Club in Austin, Texas, gathers several times a month to read together, to celebrate their love of literature, and of course to debate the latest selections. They’re one of a small, but growing number of LGBTQ+ book clubs springing up across the United States—from Philadelphia to Richmond, Virginia, among others—that meet regularly to share books and dish about their lives.

I first met Lex Loro, the genderqueer manager of the Little Gay Book Club, in the sumptuous roof garden on top of Austin Public Library’s main headquarters during a book fair. We spoke under the shade of solar panels as Loro took a break from slinging books on behalf of their employer and the book club’s sponsor, the Little Gay Shop. Lex was dressed in a casual-yet-fab Barbie-pink-themed outfit, complete with dangly earrings declaring her pronouns: ‘They’ down one ear, and ‘She’ down the other. In addition to managing the shop’s book club and other literacy programs, they’re also the director of community health at the San Antonio Pride Center.

“Book clubs create an opportunity for queer people in particular, or just any minoritized people, to access stories about our realities that are similar to us and access stories about people in our community that are different from us,” Loro told me.

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