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Entertainment

- Anjimile Dreams of Kale in the Garden and Music Outside of Capitalism

- John Cameron Mitchell and My Chemical Romance Have a Secret Theater Project

- BBC Cancels 'I Kissed a Boy' and 'I Kissed a Girl' Due to “Funding Challenges”

- Anna Camp Comes Out as a "Really Proud" Bisexual

- We Can Call Gecqua the F-Slur

MUSIC | JAMES FACTORA | MAR 13, 2026, 3:37 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Anjimile Dreams of Kale in the Garden and Music Outside of Capitalism

The singer-songwriter opens up about his sixth full-length album You’re Free to Go.

Xander Opiyo

Anjimile has been writing and releasing intimate indie folk songs for over a decade, but he’s thinking about his relationship to music very differently these days.

Their sixth full-length album, You’re Free to Go, is out today via 4AD Records. Though the 32-year-old singer-songwriter, who uses he/they pronouns, maintains that his relationship to music itself is sacred, he’s letting go of traditional notions of industry success, trading them for dreams of teaching music in an elementary school and maintaining a home garden with his partner.

The album’s title is an aspirational expression of a message they hope to receive from the universe in these tumultuous times, but it’s also inspired by a newfound feeling of liberation that Anjimile is experiencing by practicing nonmonogamy with his partner. “That’s given me a nice sense of freedom, and a sense of excitement and joy,” the singer tells me over a Zoom call from his North Carolina residence.

Over the course of the album’s 12 songs, Anjimile explores topics that range from the simple desire for their partner to kiss them to the pain of experiencing familial transphobia and estrangement. Across this tumultuous emotional landscape, the songs are anchored by the singer’s gorgeous, mellifluous voice, and the warm tones of their acoustic guitar, offering a sense of hope even amid tremendous devastation.

In advance of the release of You’re Free to Go, Them spoke with Anjimile over Zoom about his spiritual relationship to music, his evolving voice, and the joy of making a very cute music video with his partner.

Xander Opiyo

In the press materials for the album, you refer to songwriting as a form of prayer. Could you expand on your relationship between music and spirituality?

Music is an expression of my spirituality, but it’s also just an expression of my spirit. Music has always moved me in that deep way. It exists in space and it surrounds you and envelops you and it has this inexplicable power, and that feels kind of godly to me. There’s something about the rapture of being at a concert, surrounded by sound and people and feeling the bass in your body. There’s that complete embodiment that music can encourage, which is always helpful for me because, I mean, my posture is terrible. I’m dissociating half the time. Music is this grounding spiritual force in my life in the same way that I consider my conception of God or a higher power as this ever-present, ever-loving, infinite something that has the best of intentions for no reason.

The press materials also say that the album is inspired by non-monogamy, so I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about that.

I fell in love with my partner, Hayden, two years ago, and I wrote a bunch of songs about them. Practicing non-monogamy in this relationship has been a really liberating and loving and beautiful experience in a way that I didn’t even realize was possible. That’s given me a nice sense of freedom, and a sense of excitement and joy.

Is the album’s title inspired by that?

Yeah, totally. It’s meant in a loving way, although of course folks I hope interpret it however it feels, but my interpretation of it is like a loving, “You’re free to go, you’re free to stay.” I feel like it’s what I would want, what I would be telling my inner child. Or what I hope the universe is telling me.

Can you say more about that?

Well, this timeline is fucked geopolitically. I think I believe in past lives and stuff. I don’t remember my past life, but I definitely feel like I had some. But I feel like this life is full of such incredible, beautiful, amazing people that I’m so grateful to exist around, and the bondage and exploitation of capitalism can still not touch that. It’s challenging to live in a world that’s scary. War is scary. Sexual predators in the government are scary and white people are scary. But at the very least, I can continue to spend time with the people that I care about and dig into my community and cry and rage and protest and dance together.

Yeah, and you kind of have to do those things.

Yeah. Or else it’s like… what’s it for?

This album was also shaped by your voice continuing to change while on testosterone. Can you tell me more about that?

The process of getting used to my new voice and letting go of my old one and letting go of the vocal control that I had with my old one, it was pretty intense. I mean, it was amazing, but it took a lot of love and patience, and now I feel like even though I started taking T in 2018, my voice is still ever-changing.

That’s partly because of testosterone insecurity with my health insurance, but I can also feel the subtle ways in which it’s different every day in a way that maybe I couldn’t before I transitioned. I can feel very intimately what my voice needs. Now I know that I need to take good care of my voice because I feel like it’s so much more powerful than it was before. The lower register, this depth, this cavernous, these low notes I have, I think that’s exciting, and I feel like I’m only just now getting a handle on how to use them.

But also I feel like my voice is so much more fragile than it was before, my higher register is so fragile — sometimes fragile, sometimes biting. I’m just discovering all these new characters of my voice that I didn’t know were there and I didn’t even realize that was a thing. So that’s exciting to be experiencing as a 32-year-old man. I’ve been discovering the extent of the acrobatic nature of my voice.

“Birthdays are a huge flex on the living and the dead.”

Has your relationship to music changed in your thirties?

Hmm. I think my relationship to the music industry has changed, or I guess I’m less invested in participating in it, so that feels nice.

Can I ask why that is or what sort of spurred that?

I think meeting my partner. I’m kind of in settled down mode. We’re moving in together in May.

Congrats.

We were just planting lettuce and kale and shit in their garden in the backyard this weekend, and while music is so much more important or integral to me than I could ever describe, the music industry is not. That’s just capitalism. I feel less anxious about my music career and my capacity or lack thereof to generate an income from it, and I guess that might also be because I’m no longer trying to do that. I’m trying to be a music teacher, like in elementary school.

My dream is to have my school-year job and then, in the summers, record or tour and just keep doing it, or something like that. I’m thinking about other things, and especially because, let’s see, what is collapsing… the economy.

What isn’t collapsing?

Yeah, I guess I’m like, “Yeah, since everything is collapsing, I really don’t feel invested in capitalist endeavors.” I’m like, “This is crashing down quickly, so I’m just going to try to make sure I can afford my meds and plant lettuce and shit.”

I know that your partner features in the music video for “Like You Really Mean It.” What was it like to collaborate with them in such a way?

Okay, is she going to kill me for saying this? All I’ll say is that when I was thinking of the concept of the video and mentioned having her in it, she was very excited, and when I was talking with her parents about it later, their dad was like, “Oh yeah, she used to make music videos with her friends every day at age seven, this is her dream.” So that was cute.

I know that you mentioned that you want people to have their own interpretations, but is there anything in particular that you hope people take away from the album?

I wrote these songs just because that’s how I process my life. It’s odd to break into song every couple of weeks, but it’s cool. I’m glad I can do it, and while all of these songs are about very specific experiences for me, I hope that the thing that listeners can relate to is the feelings behind them, whether that’s feelings of grief or feelings of love and excitement. I’m hoping that folks can walk away with some feelings of self-love for their current self and their inner child and kind of reflect on and appreciate their journey through life. Birthdays are a huge flex on the living and the dead. I hope folks feel some sort of self-appreciation, some sense of self-love, and yeah, I hope people feel love for themselves when they listen to it.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

You’re Free to Go is out now via 4AD.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/anjimile-youre-free-to-go-music-industry-gardening-interview on Mar 13, 2026 at 7:30 PM EDT.

MUSIC | MAR 13, 2026, 9:53 AM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

John Cameron Mitchell and My Chemical Romance Have a Secret Theater Project

The Hedwig creator told Bob the Drag Queen that the deal has not yet been inked.

Getty Images

Is Hedwig about to march in the Black Parade?

John Cameron Mitchell, the writer and director of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, who is also currently starring as Mary Todd Lincoln in Oh, Mary! on Broadway, revealed, in a since-deleted segment of a podcast conversation, that he is working on a secret theater project with My Chemical Romance.

While speaking to Bob the Drag Queen on the most recent episode of Bob’s Only Child podcast, the director hinted at a secret upcoming project with My Chemical Romance, but kept details scant. The segment in which he mentioned the project was originally a part of the recent episode, but had been edited out or deleted from the podcast as of Friday afternoon.

The secret was spilled during a conversation about Mitchell’s grueling theater schedule performing in Oh, Mary!, which often includes five shows over the course of a weekend.

“My Chemical Romance, who I am working on a project with for theater, they do one show a week,” Mitchell said.

“Is it a secret project?” Bob responded.

“It’s a secret, it’s not announced yet, but I’m gonna give you a little zzz there, that’s all you’re getting,” Mitchell said. “And you know, we still gotta sign stuff but they're great people."

While Mitchell is no stranger to theater, My Chemical Romance have yet to do anything for the stage. That doesn’t mean that they don’t know how to get theatrical. In 2022, while bringing their reunion tour to the United States, band fronter Gerard Way, who uses he/they pronouns and eschews typical gender roles, hoisted a flamethrower into the air while wearing a cheerleading uniform. So, yeah, Broadway doesn’t seem that hard.

During their conversation, Mitchell and Bob also spoke about the various casting possibilities for Hedwig; Mitchell revealed that they offered the role to Maya Rudolph, Patti Lupone, and Meryl Streep, all of whom turned down the role.

Streep, according to Mitchell, had the best response turning down the film.

Mimicking the letter, Mitchell said, “John Hedwig is a Hamlet in heels, but my knees aren’t up to it.”

“What I love is that Hedwig is kind of a genderless creature,” Bob responded.

“Raceless, ageless …” Mitchell continued.

“Herself, which makes it where anyone can play Hedwig.”

Mitchell is currently playing Mary Todd Lincoln on Broadway; his run in the role will end in April, where he will be replaced by Rudolph, whose run in the show was announced on Thursday.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/john-cameron-mitchell-my-chemical-romance-theater-project on Mar 13, 2026 at 7:30 PM EDT.

ENTERTAINMENT | MAR 11, 2026, 1:01 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

BBC Cancels I Kissed a Boy and I Kissed a Girl Due to “Funding Challenges”

The second, and final, season of I Kissed a Girl will air later this year.

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has canceled its first-ever LGBTQ+ dating shows I Kissed a Boy and I Kissed a Girl, citing “funding challenges,” the network confirmed this week.

In a statement to the U.K. tabloid The Sun on Tuesday, BBC representatives said neither show would be renewed after the second season of I Kissed a Girl airs later this year. Both Kissed shows were hosted by Australian singer and actress Dannii Minogue.

“We are exceptionally proud of I Kissed A Boy/Girl, the UK’s first dating show for the LGBTQ+ community,” a BBC spokesperson told The Sun. “We would like to thank our fabulous Cupid Dannii Minogue and the entire team at [production company] Twofour for bringing the series to screen. Unfortunately, we have to make difficult choices in light of our funding challenges and there are no current plans for the show to return.”

The news seemed to come as a surprise even for Minogue, who posted an Instagram video on Tuesday, shortly before news of the cancellation broke, hyping the franchise’s future. Minogue confirmed that the shows would not return on the BBC in a comment on her post.

Instagram content

“I’m so proud the show has given us the chance to celebrate so many people from the LGBTQ+ community, who made up our cast,” Minogue told The Sun in a statement this week. “I can’t wait for you to see the brand new series of I Kissed A Girl, bringing all the excitement and joy that this show represents. The integrity and intention of why it was created, along with the love and care from the crew and production over the four seasons, has made it the most special experience for me in almost 40 years of television.”

The first season of I Kissed a Boy premiered in 2023, featuring a cast of 10 twentysomething men who met on the show and greeted one another with a kiss. Subsequent episodes saw each contestant decide whether to change partners through a series of “kiss-offs.” Its sapphic spinoff premiered in 2024.

I Kissed a Boy was also swept up in the U.K.’s anti-transgender fervor last year, after producers announced the casting of gay trans man Lars Fellows. Anti-trans advocacy group LGB Alliance protested Fellows’ casting in a letter to the BBC that repeatedly misgendered Fellows and accused producers of “coerc[ing] young gay men” to kiss him. The BBC said that producers “made sure that all contributors were aware and comfortable with the application, casting and matching process” in a response at the time.

For decades, the BBC has been a public corporation primarily supported by annual licensing fees paid by its viewers, rather than the advertising-centric media model of the U.S. and other countries. But leaders now say they are prepared to “consider radical options” in response to a major funding shortfall, saying last week that the current licensing structure is “not sustainable,” per The Independent. In February, former BBC director-general Tim Davie said the BBC World Service would run out of money by April if the government does not decide on a new funding structure.

Unfortunately, I Kissed a Boy and I Kissed a Girl are now in good company with the scores of other LGBTQ+ TV series that have been canceled over the last several years. In November, a GLAAD report found that 33% of all LGBTQ+ characters on TV would not return due to a series cancellation or ending, although the report did not specifically examine reality TV.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/bbc-cancels-i-kissed-a-boy-and-i-kissed-a-girl-due-to-funding-challenges on Mar 13, 2026 at 7:30 PM EDT.

ENTERTAINMENT | MAR 10, 2026, 10:13 AM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Anna Camp Comes Out as a "Really Proud" Bisexual

Though Camp has previously been open about her queer relationship, she hadn't publicly put a label on her sexuality.

JEAN-BAPTISTE LACROIX/Getty Images

Though her same-sex relationship has been public for some time, actress Anna Camp has officially come out as bisexual for the first time.

While speaking on the I’ve Never Said This Before podcast, Camp spoke frankly about her bisexual identity.

"As a 43-year-old woman, I am very proud of myself for owning my sexuality at this age,” Camp said on the episode, released Tuesday morning. “I am a very strong person for doing it in somewhat of a spotlight with people criticizing and judging and making assumptions. I’m really proud to be bisexual."

Camp also spoke about navigating a “major evolution” in the public eye in her 40s.

“Sure, there are times I feel like I am taking a risk and this is scary and I’m doing it in a public forum,” she said. “But to say, ‘No, I only get one life and I want to be happy,’ that’s what life is all about.”

Though Camp has been out about her relationship with girlfriend, stylist Jade Whipkey, she hasn’t put a label on her sexuality publicly until now. In June, Camp brought Whipkey to the premiere of her movie Bride Hard and later responded to criticisms of the age gap between the two. At the time, Camp was 42 and Whipkey was 24.

“Thought I’d jump on here since I follow @pinknews and just say I’ve dated men exactly my age and Jade is FAR more mature than any of them,” she said in response to a reel from LGBTQ+ outlet PinkNews. Commenters under the reel had begun to criticize Camp.

That same month, Camp and co-star Rebel Wilson appeared in a video for the media outlet Pride and joked about the fact that both were now out as queer. While speaking about reuniting after Pitch Perfect, Wilson brought up the fact that, in the acapella-focused comedy, she makes a joke of saying, “I think we all know where this is going. Les-be-honest.”

“I made that joke secretly, maybe thinking I was the gay one! Surprise! All the Bellas are gay now! Everyone’s gay,” Wilson said in June.

Camp recently starred in the heavily boycotted Scream 7, which raised fans ire after the firing of Melissa Berrera for speaking out about the ongoing genocide in Palestine. Earlier this month, Camp issued an apology after she shared a statement on social media gloating about Scream 7’s box office triumph in the face of protests. The story said, “The boycott didn’t work. The critics’ hate didn’t work. The pathetic leaks didn’t work. What worked was audiences coming out and making the film a success.” The story was a repost from another account, per The Hollywood Reporter.

Camp later deleted the post and wrote: “It has come to my attention that I reposted someone else’s story that does not reflect my personal beliefs. I have since deleted the repost because I absolutely meant no harm. I’m sorry to anyone who was affected.”

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/anna-camp-comes-out-really-proud-bisexual on Mar 13, 2026 at 7:30 PM EDT.

ENTERTAINMENT | MAR 9, 2026, 11:27 AM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

We Can Call Gecqua the F-Slur

One of Pokémon’s newest starters proves queerness and water go hand in hand.

The Pokémon Company/Getty Images

When I was in elementary school, we had a once-a-week class called environmental science. Our teacher was a dorky, bespectacled guy who was overly excited to talk about his awe of nature. He took us on field trips to the marshland and helped us roast pizza bagels using the power of the sun. He said something once that has always stuck with me: “We know about 1% of everything there is to know about outer space, and we only know about 10% of what there is to know about the ocean.”

As a little gay guy who loved marine life — and water Pokémon — I was astounded that there was still so much unquantified about the ocean. You mean the thing that laps up on the sand at the beach? It seemed so well-known, so readily accessible: and yet, he was right. We have explored very little of our own planet and that’s because most of it lurks underneath the water’s surface.

There’s a metaphor for queerness here: as theorist José Esteban Muñoz taught us in his book Cruising Utopia, queerness is futurity, a progressive force always on the horizon, illuminating us toward something greater. (Ironically, fish are on the cover of this classic queer theory text.) But it is always potential, not yet here. In other words, queerness entails an inherent pull to the infinite and the unknown; as proof, look no further than the bevy of queer films that incorporate the sea into their storytelling, often as a metaphor for feminine desire, including Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Ammonite. I’d add to that canon Moonlight, which has many of its most memorable scenes either in or by the ocean.

So is it any surprise that the most recent water starters of Pokémon are looking so Laguna Gulf Bay Tsunami aQua-plus? Pokémon Sun and Moon brought us Popplio, the collared seal that eventually morphs into Primarina, a mermaid with pearls tying together her long blue hair. Sobble, the highly emotional water lizard of Pokémon Sword and Shield evolves into the high femme pose-striking diva Inteleon, who wields her fingers like Bayonetta. And the 2000s twink-haired Quaxly of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet becomes the bouffant-haired bird Quaquaval, who runs like he’s a little light in the loafers.

And if three constitutes a pattern, four is a standard.

With the recent announcement of the newest entries in the long-running monster catching franchise, Pokémon Winds and Pokémon Waves, came three new starters: the heavily-browed grass starter Browt, the already-beloved fire pup Pombon and the beat-for-the-gods Gecqua who, to quote Scissor Sisters’ Ana Matronic, had to “put on the wig and the heels and the lashes and the hair and take the train to the club.”

Gecqua in particular sparked a slew of social media posts recognizing that a brand new diva had, in fact, entered the clubhouse, including a viral tweet calling them the F-slur and multiple TikToks showing that the water starter lineage is a Pose-like family: the House of Aqua, if you will.

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TikTok content

When it comes to which is the gayest type overall, plenty of others could, of course, take the cake. There’s literally a fairy type, if we wanted to get pre-Stonewall about it. (Many of the monsters featured in the fairy type also just so happen to be decked in the colors of the trans flag, including Hatterene and Sylveon.)

But while the fairy types are obvious, water is a little bit more, well, under the surface. Take, for instance, the fact that the original genderless Pokémon, Starmie and Staryu, both hail from the water type. (And let’s not forget that, just a few months ago Mega Starmie became a long-legged queer icon.) A lightning round of examples: Cloyster is a giant vulva, Lapras is lebsian mother, Psyduck has debilitating anxiety, and Squirtle, who once played straight to fit in, but left to be part of Ash’s chosen family.

What is it about water that so evokes queerness in Nintendo’s collective imagination? Of course, on a surface-level reading, it has an inherent fluidity and resistance to rigidity that seems antithetical to the most inflexible forms of gender and sexual expression. There’s also the sea itself; as my teacher once said, it is unknown, as queerness itself is. Even to those of us who are inside it.

“To recognize water’s queerness is to pay homage to how representations and embodiments of queerness resist stasis, reject ontological stability, embolden fluid becomings, and seep into, through, and beyond commitments to heteronormativity,” Jeremy Chow writes in the opening of his book The Queerness of Water. “In other words, water doesn’t out, it’s not born this way.”

But beyond investigating why water is queer, this is a celebration of the fact that one of Pokémon’s three enduring starter types — the flagship of a flagship, if you will — is also dedicated to being unflappable in its foppishness and unrelenting in its divadom. For those of us gay kids who needed a buddy to help us navigate the foreign lands of Kanto, Johto, and Hoenn — and for the adults now who just need a new diva to stan — there will always be the various slurs in the House of Aqua.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/gecqua-pokemon-water-start-queerness-cruising-utopia on Mar 13, 2026 at 7:30 PM EDT.

Culture

- From Mormon Missionary Companions to Wives: A TikTok Creator Shares Her Love Story

CULTURE | MAR 13, 2026, 2:02 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

From Mormon Missionary Companions to Wives: A TikTok Creator Shares Her Love Story

TikTok creator Kami Skolmoski opens up about growing up Mormon and falling in love with her mission companion.

Courtesy of the subject

Earlier this week, I was doing my journalistic due diligence — scrolling through TikTok — when a video from creator Kami Skolmoski stopped me in my tracks. Immediately, she announces, “I married my mission companion. I was her trainer.” And based on the strength of that premise alone, I watched the rest of her ten-part series in one sitting.

As someone who also grew up Mormon and came out in college, finding another queer person with the same religious background and experience as you feels like winning the jackpot. Every time I meet a fellow queer person who knows what it’s like to be LDS, an angel gets its wings. There’s a shared culture, education, and vocabulary that immediately makes you want to connect. So, while watching Kami’s videos, all I could think was, “Wow, she’s so brave” and also “I need to talk to her right now.”

TikTok content

Throughout her video series, Skolmoski opens up about her experience as someone who was born and raised in Utah as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. She describes what it was like to go on her mission — an 18-24 month voluntary (but highly recommended) full-time experience in which Mormon youth proselytize and recruit new members. She also details her struggles with mental health and an eating disorder, and falling in love with her mission companion (and now-wife), Heysell.

“My favorite thing about Heysell is her willingness to drop anything and everything for her family and friends. She is definitely a ‘yes’ woman and it's always been really important to her to show up for the people that matter most, even if she gets nothing in return. She is incredibly selfless and has the biggest heart,” Kami tells me about her wife.

In her video diary, Skolmoski gets candid about how difficult her own mission to California in 2018 truly was, why she was sent home early, and her struggle to figure out her sexuality. But amid all the hardships, it’s clear how in love she is with Heysell, lighting up as she shares the sweet moments they’ve had together, including becoming roommates at church-owned Brigham Young University in 2020 (classic), getting a dog together, and the moment they realized that they were in love.

“She proposed on June 30th, 2024 and I proposed [back] on July 4th, 2024,” Skolmoski tells me. And while they celebrated their wedding last August, they’ve actually been married for just over a year after eloping last January.

“Our best friend Darcie actually married us in Cannon Beach, Oregon, one of our favorite places. We wanted the elopement to still feel special so we surprised each other with what we wore. She wore a pantsuit that suited her so well and I wore a white dress with colorful flower embroidery.”

By the end of the ten-part series, we learn that Skomolski still considers herself Christian and occasionally attends church with her family for special occasions. When I ask her about her decision to remain somewhat connected to the church in spite of their anti-LGBTQ+ policies, she admits that it’s a difficult answer.

“Part of it is because it’s what I know and it’s a comfort thing, but also because it’s a community that still hasn’t turned its back on me. I know that isn’t the case for a lot of queer members and that breaks my heart, but I have been so fortunate. The people that have known me my whole life have embraced me and welcomed me and loved me, even if the Church doesn’t. I can take everything being taught as I see fit and apply it to my life accordingly, and sometimes that means not at all.”

But she notes that’s a balancing act that requires charting her own path. “I don't answer to a church,” she tells me. “I answer to God. I may not agree with the policies and practices of the Church, but as long as I can be in it and be an ally and advocate for people like me, I will.”

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/lgbtq-mormon-wedding-missionary-kami-skolmoski-tiktok on Mar 13, 2026 at 7:30 PM EDT.

News

- Zohran Mamdani Announces Trans Director to Lead NYC’s First LGBTQIA+ Affairs Office

- Federal Court Bans Trans Care Funding So Adults Can “Appreciate Their Sex”

- Trans Editor Sues DreamWorks Over Alleged Bias While Making ‘The Bad Guys 2’

- Olympian Thanks Trump for Protecting “Biological Women” While Giving Him Her Medal

- Trans Chili’s Employee Says They Were Fired Over “Lifestyle Values”

- Iowa Bans Even Local-Level Protections for Trans People

- A Landmark Ruling Could Protect Trans Europeans’ Right to Correct ID Documents

- Nearly 4 in 10 U.S. Adults Think Homosexuality Is “Morally Unacceptable”

- Jake Adicoff Makes History with Paralympics Gold Medal Win

- Federal Prisons Are Beginning to Force Trans Inmates Off Hormone Therapy

- James Talarico Stands By Defense of Trans Youth: “Focus on the Real Problem”

- Controversial Dem Candidate Graham Platner Says Anti-Trans Attacks Are “Invented Culture-War Scare”

POLITICS | JAMES FACTORA | MAR 13, 2026, 1:00 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Zohran Mamdani Announces Trans Director to Lead NYC’s First LGBTQIA+ Affairs Office

According to the mayor’s office, Taylor Brown will be the first trans person to head a city agency.

ACLU

Amid nationwide attacks on transgender rights, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is set to establish the first-ever Mayor’s Office of LGBTQIA+ Affairs, which will also be the first city agency led by a trans person.

Mamdani will sign an executive order establishing the office Friday afternoon at the Brooklyn Community Pride Center, according to a press release from the mayor’s office. Taylor Brown, who is currently the Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Bureau of the New York State Attorney General’s Office, will serve as the office’s director. Per the announcement, the office will oversee city initiatives that concern LGBTQ+ New Yorkers, advance anti-discrimination measures, and reinforce sanctuary protections for LGBTQ+ people. The city’s extant Unity Project, which also addresses the needs of LGBTQ+ New Yorkers, will be absorbed into the newly formed office.

In an emailed statement, Brown said, “New York has given me everything — life-saving health care, education, a home, a career, my chosen family, and a life of purpose.” She added that she is “so proud” to be appointed as the inaugural director of the office. “I will work every day to ensure that the doors of New York City remain open to all and to continue New York City’s legacy as a beacon of opportunity and hope for those who have been ignored, discriminated against, and intentionally excluded,” she said.

Brown has a long history of LGBTQ+-focused legal advocacy. According to her Linkedin, she has previously worked at the National LGBTQ+ Task Force, Lambda Legal, and the ACLU. In addition to her accolades as an attorney, the press release describes her as a “proud bi-racial black transgender woman” who has “survived violence related to her transgender status, poverty, housing instability, employment and healthcare discrimination, to become a trailblazing civil rights litigator and advocate.”

“New York City is proud of its LGBTQIA+ community and will refuse to deny healthcare, safety or dignity to anyone on the basis of their identity. With Taylor Brown as Director of the new Office of LGBTQIA+ Affairs, the city’s queer community will not only be celebrated, but protected at every turn,” Mamdani added.

The establishment of the office comes at an uncertain time for access to gender-affirming care for trans youth in New York — a city that also functions as a sanctuary destination for families elsewhere in the U.S. seeking such care. In February, NYU Langone, one of the foremost providers of gender-affirming care in the city, announced that it would cease the provision of such care to minors, citing the “current regulatory environment.” The New York attorney general’s office sent a letter to NYU Langone last week, ordering the hospital system to resume the program and implying that the cessation could be a violation of New York’s anti-discrimination laws. Reports additionally emerged in February that Mount Sinai Health System was also ceasing gender-affirming care for trans youth.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/zohran-mamdani-new-york-city-office-of-lbtqia-affairs-taylor-brown-director on Mar 13, 2026 at 7:30 PM EDT.

NEWS | MAR 13, 2026, 12:10 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Federal Court Bans Trans Care Funding So Adults Can “Appreciate Their Sex”

The decision reversed an earlier one from the same court.

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A federal appeals court has ruled that West Virginia Medicaid can exclude coverage of gender-affirming procedures.

On Tuesday, March 10, a three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld West Virginia’s ban on using Medicaid funds to cover gender-affirming surgeries. This decision overturned a 2024 ruling by the court, which ruled that the policy violated the law.

The three judges on the panel — Paul Victor Niemeyer, Julius Ness Richardson, and Allison Jones Rushing — were all appointed by Republican presidents (Jones and Richardson were nominated by Donald Trump, while Niemeyer was nominated by George H.W. Bush).

“It is not irrational for a legislature to encourage citizens to appreciate their sex and not become disdainful of their sex by refusing to fund experimental procedures that may have the opposite effect,” Richardson wrote on behalf of the court.

Richardson then cited the Supreme Court’s June 2025 United States v. Skrmetti ruling, which held that U.S. states can ban gender-affirming care for trans youth.

“The Supreme Court made clear [through its Skrmetti decision] that prohibitions on sex-change treatments are not inherently rational,” Richardson added.

Lambda Legal took on the initial case, 2020’s Anderson v. Crouch, to challenge West Virginia’s exclusion of gender-affirming care in its Medicaid and state employee health insurance plans. The legal group filed the suit on behalf of two Medicaid participants.

In an April 2024 decision, the Fourth Circuit previously sided with Lambda Legal and its plaintiffs, ruling that “healthcare plans that cover medically necessary treatments for certain diagnoses but bar coverage of those same medically necessary treatments for a diagnosis unique to transgender patients” violate the Equal Protection Clause, the Medicaid Act, and the Affordable Care Act.

However, following the Supreme Court’s Skrmetti decision, it sent Anderson v. Crouch back to the Fourth Circuit for reconsideration. The Court also vacated and remanded a similar case, Kadel v. Folwell, which sued North Carolina officials for excluding gender-affirming healthcare coverage in state employee healthcare plans.

West Virginia’s Republican Governor, Patrick Morrisey, celebrated the Fourth Circuit’s latest ruling in a March 10 press release.

“As the former West Virginia Attorney General who spent years defending common-sense policies that protect women and ensure responsible use of taxpayer dollars, I’m grateful the court recognized West Virginia’s authority to set reasonable limits on taxpayer-funded healthcare,” Morrisey said. “States have a responsibility to manage public programs responsibly, and today’s ruling is an important victory for common sense and the taxpayers of West Virginia.”

In a December press release, Lambda Legal senior counsel Omar Gonazalez-Pagan argued that “Skrmetti should not affect the outcome in this case given that it has no application to the statutory claims at issue.”

“The Fourth Circuit’s decision in Anderson was right the first time and is right today,” Gonzalez-Pagan said. “Our clients are adults who have been denied coverage for essential medical care solely because they are transgender.”

The second Trump administration has repeatedly prioritized barring trans Americans’ access to gender-affirming care. In December, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released a series of draft notices for proposed rules that would prohibit any hospital that offers gender-affirming care to trans youth from participating in Medicare and Medicaid programs, as well as block Medicaid funds from covering gender-affirming care for patients under the age of 18.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/federal-court-bans-trans-care-funding-so-adults-can-appreciate-their-sex on Mar 13, 2026 at 7:30 PM EDT.

NEWS | MAR 13, 2026, 11:36 AM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Trans Editor Sues DreamWorks Over Alleged Bias While Making The Bad Guys 2

The suit alleges forcible outing, deadnaming and misgendering.

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A transgender man hired as a first assistant editor for the animated film The Bad Guys 2 is suing NBCUniversal and DreamWorks, alleging that they were subject to transphobic behavior, including forcible outing, deadnaming, and misgendering.

Parker Goldsmith, who is trans and uses they/them pronouns, filed the civil suit against NBCUniversal and DreamWorks on Tuesday in California state court, accusing the companies of gender-based harassment, retaliation and failure to prevent harassment while they worked on The Bad Guys 2, according to Law360. Goldsmith was accessing gender-affirming care and undergoing a medical transition during their time at DreamWorks.

The suit alleges that shortly after getting hired in the spring of 2023, Goldsmith was subjected to harassment from their direct supervisor, John Venzon, who is named as a defendant.

Goldsmith alleges that Venzon asked invasive questions about their personal life, commented on trans stereotypes and inquired about the medical transitioning process, as well as asking about bathroom usage.

The lawsuit also alleges that Venzon sent Goldsmith the cover art for the Lambda Literary award-winning zine 2 Trans 2 Furious, perhaps because he thought it was a meme.

“Just four days after plaintiff started, Venzon texted plaintiff an unsolicited meme captioned ‘2 Trans 2 Furious’ depicting a man transitioning into a car,” the suit states. "The meme purported to be from ‘An extremely serious journal of Transgender Street Racing Studies.’

Despite the lawsuit calling the zine a “meme,” the zine is real and won the aforementioned literary award.

Venzon allegedly sent Goldsmith other memes, including one about the testicles that people append to the backs of their trucks.

“This meme said, ‘If you have a truck with balls hanging from it, and your truck wasn’t born with balls, and you put the balls on an elective process, you have a trans truck. Congratulations,”" the suit states, per Law360.

Goldsmith also alleges that Venzon outed them to other staff members and deadnamed them in front of team members. Venzon also asked to have private meetings with Goldsmith. The suit also alleges that Venzon would speak during private meetings about his own sex life and personal life problems, while pushing Goldsmith to talk about his gender identity, as well as asking Goldsmith if he was in an open relationship.

Goldsmith says that some higher-ups did witness the behavior, but didn’t do anything to curb it.

Goldsmith says that he did eventually speak to someone in human resources about the harassment, and then participated in a private meeting with Venzon, in which it was announced that Goldsmith would work remotely, which allegedly “appalled” Venzon.

According to the suit, the HR manager later told Goldsmith that other employees corroborated their version of events.

"She also advised plaintiff that the company had 'failed them at every level,’ Goldsmith alleges. "Despite plaintiff’s detailed complaints and this acknowledgment, Employers took no meaningful action for nearly two months and instead plaintiff was forced to work from home, secluded from the rest of their team.”

Following Venzon being fired in March 2024, the suit alleges that Goldsmith’s HR meeting became fodder for office talk, and that they, according to the suit, “can’t say anything anymore.”

“Our client brought this case to vindicate their right to work in an environment free from harassment and hostility based on sex, gender, gender identity, and gender expression,” Eliot J. Rushovich, Goldsmith’s attorney, told Law 360. “The entertainment industry has long struggled with these issues, and even though speaking up can carry real professional risks, our client felt these rights were too important to remain silent.”

Venzon told Law 360 that “this is the first” he’d heard about the suit and that he had no comment.

Them has reached out to NBCUniversal for comment but did not immediately hear back.

Goldsmith’s lawsuit is the second from a trans employee of a recognizable brand to gain national attention this week. A trans former Chili’s Grill & Bar employee in Illinois is currently suing the chain for being fired less than a month after starting to work there due to being told that their “personal values and lifestyle values did not align with the restaurant.”

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/dreamworks-nbcuniversal-bad-guys-2-trans-assistant-editor-lawsuit on Mar 13, 2026 at 7:30 PM EDT.

NEWS | MAR 13, 2026, 10:57 AM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Olympian Thanks Trump for Protecting “Biological Women” While Giving Him Her Medal

Kaillie Humphries presented Trump with her Order of Ikkos award.

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Olympian Kaillie Humphries thanked Donald Trump for his anti-transgender policies in sports while awarding him with her Order of Ikkos on Thursday.

Humphries, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Canada, has won six Olympic medals over the course of her career — most recently, two bronze medals at the Milan Cortina Olympics. Created by the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee in 2008, the Order of Ikkos medal is “presented by Team USA medal-winning athletes to a coach, mentor, or other individual who has been instrumental in their success,” per the United States Olympic & Paralympic Museum’s website.

While presenting Trump with her Order of Ikkos, Humphries said she was giving him the medal to “recognize the support and the impact you’ve had on women’s sports throughout the Olympic movement — specifically standing up to keep biological women in women’s sports to keep the field of play safe and allow for fair competition.”

“I believe this actually makes you the first president in history to ever be awarded an Order of Ikkos as well,” she added.

Humphries previously voiced her support for excluding trans women from women’s sports during a February Fox News interview.

“I think it’s very important that women have their own category to compete in,” she said at the time. “There’s categories for a reason… women have their own category and deservedly so, men have a category, and if the trans community would like to compete [in] a sport, there should be a category for them as well.”

The second Trump administration has made targeting trans athletes a cornerstone of presidential policy. In February 2025, Trump signed an executive order attempting to bar trans student athletes from participating in women’s sports. (The order itself did not carry the power to order a unilateral ban.) While the order mainly applied to trans athletic competition at the K-12 level, it also mandated that major athletic bodies promote “policies that are fair and safe, in the best interests of female athletes, and consistent with the requirements of Title IX.”

The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) subsequently banned trans women and girls from women’s sports in preemptive compliance.

In November, reports surfaced stating that the International Olympic Committee is poised to prohibit trans women and cis female athletes with “male levels of testosterone” from competing in women’s sports. The IOC has not performed chromosomal tests to determine female athletes’ eligibility since the 1996 Olympics.

Trump previously announced that he would push for genetic testing at the 2028 Olympic Games, which are set to take place in Los Angeles. Last August, the Department of Homeland Security also announced plans to deny visas for trans athletes during the Olympics.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/kaillie-humphries-order-of-ikkos-medal-white-house-ceremony on Mar 13, 2026 at 7:31 PM EDT.

NEWS | MAR 12, 2026, 1:05 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Trans Chili’s Employee Says They Were Fired Over “Lifestyle Values”

The complaint alleges six violations of state and federal law in total.

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A Chili’s Grill & Bar in Chicago allegedly fired a transgender man after less than a month last year because of his “lifestyle values,” according to a discrimination complaint obtained by The Independent this week.

Former Chili’s employee Hudson Webber filed the complaint in Illinois’ Northern District on February 26 against a Chili’s franchise in Rosemont, IL, where they worked between April and May 2025. (The complaint uses they/them pronouns in reference to Webber.) About two weeks after they began working at the restaurant, Webber’s manager Martin Perez allegedly began excluding them from shifts, even telling them that the restaurant was closed due to a burst water pipe on a day it remained open and staffed.

On May 12, Perez fired Webber, claiming that their “‘personal values and lifestyle values’ did not align with the restaurant,” per the complaint. Perez also allegedly told Webber that a worker at a different Chili’s location was due to be fired “for the same reasons,” which the complaint describes as “a pattern of discriminatory decision-making based on protected characteristics.” Webber’s complaint states they did not disclose their gender identity during the hiring process, and the adverse actions began only when management learned they were trans.

Chili’s “intentionally discriminated against Plaintiff based on Plaintiff’s sex and gender identity,” the complaint argues, alleging three violations each of the Illinois Human Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination and harassment based on sex, and the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964. Webber is seeking front and back pay with interest as well as compensatory and punitive damages. They are represented in the case by employment and consumer law firm Atlas Law Center.

“The stated reason for Plaintiff’s termination had nothing to do with Plaintiff’s job performance and was instead based on discriminatory views about Plaintiff’s sex and gender identity,” the complaint alleges, adding that Webber “suffered loss of employment, loss of income, emotional distress, and humiliation” as a result of being fired.

A spokesperson for Brinker International, the conglomerate which owns Chili’s, reportedly did not respond to The Independent’s request for comment this week.

Other Chili’s locations have previously faced complaints for anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination, as The Independent noted. The ACLU filed one such suit against an Arizona Chili’s in 2019, after a manager refused to promote a lesbian worker for dressing too masculine and told other employees he “didn’t want a gay girl behind the bar.”

Anti-trans employment discrimination has also risen in the public sector in recent years, amid the Trump administration’s ongoing campaign against trans rights on all fronts. Shortly after Trump took office last January, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission rolled back trans workplace protections and ordered workers to stop processing gender identity discrimination complaints. Last month, nonbinary biologist S.J. Joslin filed a First Amendment suit against several federal agencies after they were fired from their position at Yosemite National Park in May 2025 for hanging a large trans flag on the cliff face of El Capitan.

Although there are comparatively fewer cases in which a gay worker is explicitly fired for being gay, such dismissals “happen all the time with transgender employees,” Lambda Legal attorney Greg Nevins told The Independent this week.

“In most of the transgender cases I’ve worked on, the employer has come right out and said, ‘This is why we’re not having you continue to work here,’ Nevins said. “People have always been willing to be more discriminatory towards transgender workers.”

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/trans-chilis-employee-says-they-were-fired-over-lifestyle-values on Mar 13, 2026 at 7:30 PM EDT.

POLITICS | MAR 12, 2026, 11:30 AM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Iowa Bans Even Local-Level Protections for Trans People

Gov. Kim Reynolds said she signed the law in hopes of preventing trans women from joining women's sports.

Tom Williams/Getty Images

Local civil rights commissions in Iowa are no longer allowed to ban gender identity discrimination, under a new law signed by Gov. Kim Reynolds this week.

Reynolds signed Senate File 579 into law on Tuesday, after the measure easily cleared Iowa’s Republican-controlled legislature earlier this month. The law amends a section of the Iowa Code dealing with local-level enforcement of civil rights law. Under SF 579, cities and local governments “shall not enact any ordinance or other law which is broader or has different categories of unfair or discriminatory practices” compared to the state Civil Rights Act.

Iowa added gender identity to its list of protected civil rights in 2007, but Reynolds signed another law last year which rolled back those protections, making Iowa the first U.S. state in history to remove a protected class from civil rights law. Because the state no longer guards gender identity, SF 579 means that Iowa municipalities may not include it in their own civil rights acts, forcing local governments to comply with the Republican anti-trans mandate.

In statements to the press this week, Reynolds said that she signed SF 579 in part to prevent trans women from participating in women’s sports, an issue which has become a major focus for President Donald Trump.

“It does have an impact on protecting girls’ sports and making sure that we’re protecting girls in safe spaces, in restrooms and in lockers,” Reynolds said, per the Des Moines Register. “And so that was at jeopardy if we have a hodgepodge of mixed laws within our state.”

Thirteen Iowa cities currently ban gender identity discrimination under their local civil rights ordinances, including some of the state’s most populous cities like Des Moines and Iowa City, according to data from the Movement Advancement Project. More than 9,000 trans people aged 13 or older are estimated to live in Iowa, per a 2022 Williams Institute analysis.

“The state can now take away any civil rights, and no city has a recourse for that,” Coralville City Council member Katie Freeman told Iowa Public Radio on Wednesday. “And unfortunately, I think there are too many people that still believe it will never happen to them, and we don’t have the luxury to believe that any longer.” Freeman added that they would work with trans advocacy groups and other city councils to “gather information, reach out and start seeing what we can collaborate on and start moving forward.”

LGBTQ+ advocates condemned SF 579 this week, saying that Reynolds and her fellow Republicans were enemies of civil rights.

“The Iowa GOP has once again opted for erasing the civil rights of Iowans rather than passing meaningful legislation to make all our lives better,” wrote Max Mowitz, executive director of the LGBTQ+ rights group One Iowa, in a press release shortly before SF 579 became law. He added, “This is sure to be a shameful period in Iowa history, and we cannot wait until more fair-minded legislators replace those who have shown nothing but contempt for individual rights.”

This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/iowa-bans-even-local-level-protections-for-trans-people on Mar 13, 2026 at 7:30 PM EDT.

NEWS | MAR 12, 2026, 10:31 AM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

A Landmark Ruling Could Protect Trans Europeans’ Right to Correct ID Documents

The European Court of Justice’s ruling applies to all 27 countries currently a part of the EU.

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The European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled Thursday that Bulgaria’s ban on transgender people changing the gender marker on their birth certificates is in violation of European law, specially the freedom of movement rules, in a landmark decision reported by The Telegraph. The ECJ ruled that, in this case, the EU’s rules supersede national law.

The case centered on “Shipova,” a Bulgarian trans woman who moved to Italy, where she began hormone therapy. However, her request to change the gender on her birth certificate in her home country was rejected, which spurred the now-decided legal tussle.

The ECJ ruled that Shipova had been exercising her right to freedom of movement and was therefore protected by EU laws protecting gender identity. Under the European Commission, all EU citizens and their families have the right to move and reside freely within member countries, a statute known as “freedom of movement.”

The judges ruled that the right to freedom of movement “protects gender identity and obliges Member States to provide for clear, accessible and effective procedures for the legal recognition of it,” in a decision that applies to all 27 countries currently a part of the EU. The ruling continued, “The Court notes that the discrepancy between a person’s lived gender identity and the gender data appearing on his or her identity card is such as to hinder the exercise of his or her right to freedom of movement.”

The ECJ’s decision will now to go back to the Bulgarian court; the country’s court referred the case to the ECJ to make sure that it was not breaking EU rules.

In September, ahead of this decision, the European Court of Justice released a non-binding opinion saying that Bulgaria should issue documents that reflect a trans person's lived experience, as reported in German news outlet Deutsche Welle. In his opinion, Advocate General Richard de la Tour wrote that any law that "prevents that person from enjoying a right guaranteed by EU law, such as obtaining an identity document enabling them to freely exercise their right to move and reside within the territory of the Member States, constitutes a restriction on that right."

The Bulgarian Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that trans people would no longer be allowed to change the gender marker on their documents, per news outlet Balkan Insight. At the time, the judicial body said that “the constitution and Bulgarian legislation are built on the understanding of the binary existence of the human species.”

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/european-court-member-states-transgender-identity-documents-ruling on Mar 13, 2026 at 7:30 PM EDT.

NEWS | MAR 11, 2026, 11:42 AM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Nearly 4 in 10 U.S. Adults Think Homosexuality Is “Morally Unacceptable”

The U.S. placed ninth among 25 countries surveyed.

Madrid traffic lights to promote gender equality and LGBT toleranceBen Vine

Thirty-nine percent of U.S. adults still believe homosexuality is “morally unacceptable,” according to a new report from the Pew Research Center published last week.

Pew researchers surveyed a representative sample of 3,605 adults in the U.S. last March, as part of a study about moral attitudes in 25 different countries, according to the report. Respondents were asked whether they believed certain behaviors — including homosexuality — were morally acceptable, unacceptable, or not a moral issue. (In U.S. surveys, the word “unacceptable” was changed to “wrong.”)

Within the U.S. sample, 39% viewed being gay as morally wrong. That placed the U.S. ninth among all countries surveyed by rate of anti-gay sentiment, between Israel (47%) and Hungary (34%). There was a slight net shift upward compared to Pew research from 2013, which found 37% of adults in the U.S. believed homosexuality was immoral.

Researchers did find significant differences in opinion between demographics, however. Sixty-two percent of U.S. women said it was acceptable or not a moral issue to be gay, compared to 56% of men. Disapproval also skewed older, with 43% of U.S. adults 40 years old or older saying homosexuality was unacceptable, compared to 33% of those aged 18-39. People with lower levels of formal education were also more likely to disapprove of all the behaviors surveyed, which included getting an abortion, gambling, and watching pornography.

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The largest gaps in acceptance appeared to be based on religiosity. Fifty-eight percent of U.S. adults who said they pray daily disapproved of being gay, compared to just 24% of those who said they pray less often or not at all. That was especially true for Christians, who were “often among the most likely to consider each of the nine behaviors to be morally unacceptable,” researchers noted. In Nigeria, one of several African nations where U.S. evangelical groups have heavily influenced anti-gay laws and public opinion over the past two decades, 96% of respondents said being gay was immoral. (The most gay-accepting countries of the 25 surveyed were Germany and Sweden, where only 5% said homosexuality was unacceptable.)

The Pew questions specifically asked respondents for their views on homosexuality, rather than the broader LGBTQ+ umbrella, and did not ask about transgender people. A Pew survey of LGBTQ+ adults in the U.S. last year found that most believed attitudes toward gay, lesbian, and bisexual people were becoming more positive, but that acceptance of trans people had declined.

The new Pew report also found that the U.S. was the only country where a minority of respondents (47%) viewed their neighbors as “very” or “somewhat” morally good. Democrats and left-leaning independents were more likely to view other citizens as morally bad, researchers noted, but that trend was also true for people outside the U.S. who did not support their country’s governing party. Overall, the U.S. is “in the middle of the pack” on most behaviors surveyed and was not uniquely judgmental, researchers noted, though U.S. respondents were generally less approving of extramarital affairs than most other countries and more positive about marijuana use than any country other than Canada.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/nearly-4-in-10-us-adults-think-homosexuality-is-morally-unacceptable on Mar 13, 2026 at 7:30 PM EDT.

NEWS | MAR 11, 2026, 9:04 AM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Jake Adicoff Makes History with Paralympics Gold Medal Win

Adicoff said it was “super important” to show that he could “reach this upper echelon of sport.”

Buda Mendes/Getty Images

Gay skier Jake Adicoff has made history at the 2026 Paralympic Games.

The skier claimed victory on Tuesday in the 1.5km sprint, Adicoff won his first-ever individual gold medal and became the first out gay male Paralympian to win gold as individual, per Outsports.

Team USA celebrated his victory on Instagram, showing Adicoff in a picture alongside guide Peter Wolter. Wolter guides Adicoff while he is on the course, “ensuring the skier’s power is translated into forward momentum,” per Outsports.

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Adicoff has more events to look forward to; on Saturday, he will compete in a 20km race, as well as middle-distance and long-distance vision-impaired events. He has previously won silver medals in those races at previous Paralympic Games, per Outsports.

The skier previously told Outsports that his goal was to win four gold medals during this year’s games in Milan. He said that, though he had the same goal for the games in China in 2022, he feels more confident this time around.

“I’ve definitely been at a different level since Beijing. Accumulating all of these experiences as a very high-level skier has helped me be more confident,” he said. “It’s also an amalgamation of all the small things: looking at past seasons, efforts and races and identifying pieces that I can work on. That’s what I’ve done in the past four years since China, really taking in information and data from races and acting on it.”

He has also spoken to the importance of competing as an out, gay, and disabled athlete.

“Going to the Paralympics, being a gay athlete there, showing that it’s possible to reach this upper echelon of sport as an out athlete and as a para athlete, that’s super important to me,” he added.

Adicoff is one of five out LGBTQ+ athletes competing at the 2026 Paralympic games, including wheelchair curler Jo Butterfield, snowboarder Jackie Hamwey, and alpine skiers Michael “Mikey” O’Hearn and Hailey Griffin.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/jake-adicoff-paralympic-gold-medal-skiing on Mar 13, 2026 at 7:30 PM EDT.

NEWS | MAR 10, 2026, 1:35 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Federal Prisons Are Beginning to Force Trans Inmates Off Hormone Therapy

Federal inmates will also no longer have access to social accommodations such as binders and makeup.

Busà Photography

The United States’ federal prison system no longer offers gender-affirming care to incarcerated trans people under a new Bureau of Prisons policy.

Signed into effect by Bureau of Prisons (BOP) director Billy Marshall on February 19, the policy prohibits the bureau from providing gender-affirming surgeries or hormone replacement therapy to federal inmates diagnosed with gender dysphoria. Inmates who were previously receiving hormone medications will be forcibly tapered off of them and given a new individualized treatment plan that “may include psychotherapy, group counseling, psychiatric services, and psychotropic medications.”

Prisons will also no longer support gender-affirming social accommodations for trans inmates, including breast padding, binders, makeup, wigs, butt padding, and undergarments, per the policy.

Of the United States’ roughly 150,000 federally incarcerated people, about 700 are trans men, while fewer than 1,600 are trans women, according to government documents reviewed by the New York Times. The Marshall Project reports that, according to 2025 court documents, over 600 people with gender dysphoria were receiving gender-affirming hormones in federal prison. Since 2017, previous federal prison policy had allowed trans people access to hormones, surgery, and placement in prisons consistent with their gender identity.

The Bureau policy specifically cites Donald Trump’s January 2025 anti-trans executive order federally defining gender as binary and determined as either male or female at birth. As part of the order, the Trump administration commanded that the Attorney General “ensure that no Federal funds are expended for any medical procedure, treatment, or drug for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex.”

The policy claims that the Bureau will comply with Trump’s order “unless compliance with the Executive Order is prohibited by a court injunction or court order.” In June 2025, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to provide gender-affirming medical care and social accommodations for incarcerated trans people while a class action lawsuit that three incarcerated trans people filed against the BOP plays out. Plaintiffs in the case, Kingdom v. Trump said that their medical care was interrupted following Trump’s aforementioned executive order.

Last month, eight current or formerly incarcerated trans people told Uncloseted Media that they had been denied or impeded access to gender-affirming care despite the injunction. Grace Pinson, a trans woman incarcerated at North Carolina’s Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Butner, said that former Butner Warden David Rich refused to follow the injunction because “he believed [that]... Trump would appeal and win.”

“He told me flat out, he and his staff would be ignoring the injunction from Judge Lamberth in the Kingdom case and even to this day they are still ignoring it,” she told the outlet.

During a recent interview with The Advocate, Dr. Carl Streed, a Boston-based clinician-researcher who specializes in transgender health, said that forcing trans inmates to be tapered off their hormones could have serious health consequences.

“People are going to have changes in cognition,” Streed explained. “They’re going to experience mood changes. They’re going to see brain fog issues, difficulty concentrating.”

He added that trans inmates losing access to hormones will also likely lead to “an increase in cardiovascular disease events.”

Denying access to gender-affirming care is just one way in which the second Trump administration has targeted incarcerated trans people. In February 2025, the government moved forward with plans to transfer incarcerated trans people to prisons according to their assigned gender at birth. Since then, multiple federal judges have blocked the transfer of trans women to men’s prisons.

Meanwhile, in December, the Trump administration omitted data about trans people from reports about sexual violence in prisons and jails, despite research showing that incarcerated trans people are over 10 times more likely to experience sexual assault than their cis peers. These omissions came shortly after after a Department of Justice memo announced plans to dismantle protections for trans inmates in federal, state, and local prisons and jails under the Prison Rape Elimination Act.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/federal-prisons-are-beginning-to-force-trans-inmates-off-hormone-therapy on Mar 13, 2026 at 7:30 PM EDT.

POLITICS | MAR 10, 2026, 10:38 AM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

James Talarico Stands By Defense of Trans Youth: “Focus on the Real Problem”

“The only thing the media wants to ask me about are trans athletes,” Talarico told MS NOW.

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Texas State Rep. and Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico is standing by his defense of trans youth.

During a March 9 interview on MS NOW, formerly known as MSNBC, the politician remarked that although he’s had “a lot of interviews with national media” since winning Texas’ Democratic Senate primary, he hasn’t been asked about issues like “the cost of housing” and “the cost of prescription drugs.”

“The only thing the media wants to ask me about are trans athletes,” he said. “What I would say is that the only minority destroying this country is the billionaires.”

Talarico added that common right-wing scapegoats, such as trans people and undocumented people, each make up roughly 1% of the United States’ population.

“We are all focused on the wrong 1%,” he continued. “Trans people aren’t taking away our healthcare. Undocumented people aren’t defunding our schools… It’s the billionaires and their puppet politicians. And so we need not only the media, but all of us, to focus on the real problem at hand.”

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This isn’t the first time that Talarico has been outspoken in support of the LGBTQ+ community. In 2023, a TikTok video of Talarico speaking out against a Republican bill attempting to require Texas public schools to display the Ten Commandments went viral.

“Why is having a rainbow in a classroom indoctrination and not having the Ten Commandments in a classroom?” he said at the time. “Every time on this committee that we try to teach students values like empathy and kindness, we’re told we can’t because that’s the parents’ role… But now you’re putting religious commandments — literal commandments — in our classroom, and you’re saying that’s the state’s role. Why is that not the parents’ role?”

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Following Donald Trump’s 2024 reelection, multiple Democratic members of Congress — such as New York Rep. Tom Suozzi and Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton — claimed that in order to rebuild political power, their party must become more conservative on trans issues and, as Suozzi put it, “stop pandering to the far left” by supporting basic trans rights, particularly trans-inclusive school sports.

Yet more recently, a wave of new Democratic candidates have refused to throw trans people under the bus in hopes of scoring points with voters. Last year, New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani pledged to spend $65 million on trans healthcare as part of his mayoral campaign.

During an appearance on Slate’s Death, Sex, and Money podcast earlier this week, Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner argued that Republican attacks on trans rights are an “invented culture-war scare” meant to sow division in his home state.

“I think there are, like, two trans kids that compete in high school sports in Maine,” Platner said. “There are 40,000 Mainers who are going to lose health care because of the lack of the Affordable Care Act extension. One of those things seems very important and real to me. One of them seems like an invented culture-war scare to keep people divided.”

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/james-talarico-trans-youth-focus-on-the-real-problem on Mar 13, 2026 at 7:30 PM EDT.

POLITICS | MAR 9, 2026, 1:35 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Controversial Dem Candidate Graham Platner Says Anti-Trans Attacks Are “Invented Culture-War Scare”

Platner said the GOP rhetoric against trans people aims to “keep people divided.”

Sophie Park/Getty Images

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Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner says that Republican attacks on transgender rights are an “invented culture-war scare” to foment division, as he attempts to unseat Maine GOP Sen. Susan Collins later this year.

Platner, a former Marine and military contractor who now owns an oyster farm, made the comments on Slate’s Death, Sex, and Money podcast last week, responding to a question about trans rights in Maine. Following Gov. Janet Mills’ feud with President Donald Trump over trans student athletes last year, right wing activists launched a ballot initiative to ban trans athletes from women’s and girl’s sports leagues in Maine, funded in large part by conservative billionaire Richard Uihlein.

“The anti-trans campaign in Maine [is] funded by an out-of-state billionaire to make sure that we have this discussion and we don’t talk about raising his taxes,” Platner told Slate, likely referring to Uihlein, whose primary residence is in Illinois.

“I think there are, like, two trans kids that compete in high school sports in Maine,” Platner continued. “There are 40,000 Mainers who are going to lose health care because of the lack of the Affordable Care Act extension. One of those things seems very important and real to me. One of them seems like an invented culture-war scare to keep people divided.” Platner went on to say he had wrestled with cisgender girls as a high school athlete, but “[t]here was no uproar [...] I’m sorry — I cannot take it seriously.”

As the Trump administration attempted to strip funding for Maine educational institutions last year, some like the University of Maine professed that no transgender athletes were registered there in the first place. But even in areas where there are no known trans athletes currently participating in sports, such bans can still lead to poor mental health outcomes for trans youth, per research from the Williams Institute. Anti-trans sports bans are also often adopted alongside “bathroom bill” policies that block trans athletes from using gendered bathrooms and locker rooms, which can lead to poorer health and increased harassment.

Platner is vying for Collins’ Senate seat this November, hoping to unseat the five-term Republican incumbent. But he has faced significant obstacles along the way — partly from party leaders, who Platner alleged had threatened to “rip [his] life apart” if he ran against Gov. Mills in the Democratic primary this year. “[T]hey essentially said that if we do this, they’re going to come after me,” Platner claimed in comments to Slate. New polling published last week showed Platner leading Mills by about seven points, with three months to go before the primary.

Though Democrats like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer are still pushing for Mills, some of Collins’ Senate colleagues have come out in support of Platner. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a longtime voice for gay rights in the Senate, endorsed Platner last August as a candidate who is “prepared to take on the billionaire class and fight for working people.” On March 2, however, Platner was also endorsed by Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego, who legitimized trans sports bans last year and said some trans youth should simply “find other activities” besides sports.

Gallego and other high-profile Democrats such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom have claimed that Democrats should moderate on trans rights issues like sports, after Trump made trans athletes a major focus of his 2024 campaign.

Platner has also faced major public criticism for his conduct prior to running for office, especially centered on a Nazi totenkopf tattoo on Platner’s chest he reportedly got as a Marine in 2007. Following outcry over the tattoo last October, Platner covered it with an image of Celtic knots and a wolflike creature, claiming that he was unaware of the totenkopf’s association with Nazi secret police. An anonymous source alleged to Jewish Insider last October that Platner had publicly joked about having a totenkopf by name more than a decade ago.

Before running for Senate, Platner was also an active Reddit user, and his comment history under the handle “P-Hustle” has also sparked outcry. Some moderates criticized a comment in which Platner stated that many white rural voters were racist, while progressives and leftists denounced an earlier remark in which Platner said he would have volunteered for U.S. wars against Native Americans and the Vietnam War.

In other comments, Platner used anti-gay slurs and made derogatory remarks about homosexuality while also joking about playing games of “gay chicken” in the military. Platner told The Advocate last year that he no longer uses such language and apologized.

“These were words that I used for a long time in ways that I did not take seriously,” Platner told The Advocate, adding that making friends with gay and trans people after leaving the military shifted his thinking. “I stopped using that specific kind of language a while ago [...] and today I find that stuff abhorrent. And I am sorry that I ever used it,” Platner said.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/graham-platner-anti-trans-attacks-invented-culture-war-scare on Mar 13, 2026 at 7:30 PM EDT.

Table of Contents

Them.: 2026 Mar 13

Entertainment

Anjimile Dreams of Kale in the Garden and Music Outside of Capitalism

John Cameron Mitchell and My Chemical Romance Have a Secret Theater Project

BBC Cancels 'I Kissed a Boy' and 'I Kissed a Girl' Due to “Funding Challenges”

Anna Camp Comes Out as a "Really Proud" Bisexual

We Can Call Gecqua the F-Slur

Culture

From Mormon Missionary Companions to Wives: A TikTok Creator Shares Her Love Story

News

Zohran Mamdani Announces Trans Director to Lead NYC’s First LGBTQIA+ Affairs Office

Federal Court Bans Trans Care Funding So Adults Can “Appreciate Their Sex”

Trans Editor Sues DreamWorks Over Alleged Bias While Making ‘The Bad Guys 2’

Olympian Thanks Trump for Protecting “Biological Women” While Giving Him Her Medal

Trans Chili’s Employee Says They Were Fired Over “Lifestyle Values”

Iowa Bans Even Local-Level Protections for Trans People

A Landmark Ruling Could Protect Trans Europeans’ Right to Correct ID Documents

Nearly 4 in 10 U.S. Adults Think Homosexuality Is “Morally Unacceptable”

Jake Adicoff Makes History with Paralympics Gold Medal Win

Federal Prisons Are Beginning to Force Trans Inmates Off Hormone Therapy

James Talarico Stands By Defense of Trans Youth: “Focus on the Real Problem”

Controversial Dem Candidate Graham Platner Says Anti-Trans Attacks Are “Invented Culture-War Scare”