violent actions

February 1 begins Black History Month, a national annual observance since 1926, honoring and celebrating the achievements of African-Americans. Within the African- American lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community, Black History Month has always come under criticism.

Last week Lady Gaga joined Maine’s rally to send a message to the state’s two moderate Republican senators, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, asking them to repeal "don’t ask, don’t tell" (DADT), a critical vote in Congress. But, to no one’s surprise, Senate Republicans quashed it. Democrats needed only 60 votes to overcome a filibuster; the vote, however, was 56 to 43. The action President Obama should take is to issue an executive order on behalf of LGBTQ service members.

Soon after Obama’s inauguration in 2009, the LGBTQ community waited anxiously to hear that steps were being made to repeal DADT. But on June 8 of that year when the Supreme Court refused to review the Pentagon policy that prohibits LGBTQ servicemembers to serve openly in the military, Obama’s people added salt to the wounds of our LGBTQ servicemembers by stating in court papers that the ruling on DADT was correct because of the military’s legitimate concern of LGBTQ servicemembers endangering “unit cohesion”— a concept totally debunked by a 2002 study.

The Hate Crimes Bill passed in the House of Representatives Wednesday.  The bill passed despite argument from opponents like Virginia Foxx, a Republican from North Carolina, who called Matthew Shephard's murder "a hoax," suggesting his brutal murder in 1997 was part of a robbery and had nothing to do with his being gay.

The epic finale of The Hunger Games is on its way.

After 20 years in the motherland, lesbian journalist Masha Gessen is ready to get out of Putin's Russia, before the Kremlin takes away her children because she's gay.

The lovely ladies of Litchfield are back and bloodier than ever!

Machete Kills, the sequel to Robert Rodriguez’s wonderfully violent but hilariously guilty pleasure Machete, is already creating loads of buzz, and now, stunning out actress Amber Heard has signed on to costar, making it even more appealing.

As NoMoreDownLow.TV caught black celebrities commenting on the Trayvon Martin tragedy and hundreds of LGBT activists took to wearing hoodies in a show of solidarity, an unprecedented coalition of 23 of the largest national lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights organizations issued a joint open letter today about the Feb. 26 killing of the 17-year-old Florida teen — for which no arrests have been made — calling his death a "national call to action" and demanding that justice be served. The complete letter is below:

I was among those who took to Twitter Saturday night to voice my feelings when the verdict came in on the trial of George Zimmerman. Shocked, stunned, angry, sad. Pick an adjective and it likely applied to the whirlwind of emotions swirling in me and all over Twitter among those who supported Trayvon Martin’s family.

SPI Group, which owns the vodka brand Stolichnaya, has modified its employee nondiscrimination policy to include protections for sexual orientation.

In 1967 the world forever changed for LGBTs, whether they knew it then or not, with a momentous night at an unassuming gay bar in Los Angeles.

The nation is once again divided alone the fault line of race. In a perceived 2013 post-racial society, however, William Faulkner's prophetic quote "The past is never dead. It's not even past," has come back to haunt us in this century. Faulkner’s quote resonates now more than ever following the George Zimmerman verdict.