Recently, my team traveled to Washington, D.C., for the first run-through of our upcoming expansion of Project Liberate, a leadership development initiative equipping Liberators with the knowledge, skills, relationships, and resources to become advocates and change-makers in their communities. The program is launching in the historic city of Montgomery, Ala. As a Black, gay man, the significance of the city’s legacy as home to critical civil rights movements, and today, its growing rates of new HIV diagnoses, both weighed heavily on my mind.

What has been lost in all of the chatter and media coverage is the very real possibility that Last Ditch, which just opened in April 2025, will have to close its doors. The venue’s one remaining founder, Jackie Matellian, revealed in a community Zoom meeting that she’s working four jobs, is now solely responsible for the bar’s $50,000 business loan and is struggling to keep up with the bills. So as we laugh about the controversy’s similarity to a “Portlandia” skit and how one of the bar’s founders left to enroll in clown school, we forget that yet another lesbian bar is facing an existential crisis—and this time the call is coming from inside the house.

Gay clubs were stripped of their accounts on Meta's platforms and the company only relented when politicians and the media got involved.

Screenshots in Campbell’s divorce court filing reportedly show a February 2025 text message in which Yiannopoulos allegedly wrote to Campbell, “Fk you. Stupid worthless [n-word]. I hope you rot in hell with your mkey ancestors…. I was only using you for a Green Card in the first place.”

The pop star has announced The Super Graphic Spectacular, an event taking place at Los Angeles’ Shrine Auditorium on October 21 and 22.

The two-night event will feature drag, live entertainment, special guests and community engagement, with a performance from Roan herself. All net proceeds will go to her Midwest Princess Project.

This week, we learned that, once again, the world’s richest man will turn his fortunes against one of the world’s poorest communities. According to The New York Times, Elon Musk has directed his America PAC to spend upwards of $100 million in advertising targeting Democratic candidates for the Senate, primarily focusing on their past support for transgender people and our families. Setting aside Musk’s personal investment in the issue, the massive ad buy follows similar efforts in nearly every election of the past six years to alienate transgender people from the rest of the broader public, paint Democrats as effete, out-of-touch cultural Marxists, and energize a Republican base with a well-documented habit of sitting out elections without Trump on the ticket.

A rapidly growing older LGBTQ+ population faces a future of poorer health, greater financial insecurity and increased social isolation unless urgent action is taken, a new report has warned.

Analysis by the Centre for Ageing Better found that older LGBTQ+ people are significantly more likely to live alone and less likely to have support networks than their heterosexual peers, while also facing disadvantages in housing, employment, health and access to services.

The charity's first dedicated State of Ageing LGBTQ+ spotlight report found that more than half of gay and bisexual men aged 65 and over live alone, compared with fewer than a quarter of heterosexual men.

Margate Pride has been around for ten years, and depending on which local you ask, it celebrated its tenth, or 11th, anniversary this year. See, that’s the thing about local and regional queer stories and history. You often have to rely on one of the queerest forms of communication to find them out - gossip.

Media, activists need to do more to challenge stereotypes

The analysis shows that a majority of LGBTQ+-identifying adults are below the age of 35.

Two LGBTQ+ couples recently sued the MGM Resorts International after they were assaulted in June 2025 outside the MGM Grand Detroit while waiting for the valet to bring their car. Their assailants shouted homophobic slurs before knocking one of them unconscious and causing a traumatic brain injury. The plaintiffs said security failed to intervene after being notified.

[…]

Wilson reportedly pulled out his phone to record the two couples and then hit Way in the face before shouting homophobic slurs at the group and using a collection of pronouns in a mocking way. Chearheart then went to alert security, but, according to the lawsuit, when security came outside, instead of intervening to stop the assault or protect anyone, they simply filmed the incident on their phones.

The family has already fled the country

JK Rowling // Wikimedia Commons

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Billionaire TERF influencer J.K. Rowling has announced that she will cover the legal costs of anti-trans groups named in a report by Amnesty International (UK), which called them “anti-rights.”

The report was retracted shortly after publication and replaced with a statement from the organization saying the report was uploaded “without going through the established internal review processes” and that its “language does not reflect the position of Amnesty International UK, which is why it was promptly removed.”

But the withdrawal and public acknowledgement was not enough to sate the organizations that have fought tooth and nail to exclude and/or antagonize the transgender community in the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom is notoriously more perilous for free speech than the United States. For our neighbors across the pond, the burden of proof lies with the defendant to prove the statement is true; here in the United States, the burden of proof lies with the aggrieved to prove that a statement is categorically false, and published knowingly or at least recklessly regardless. The US also benefits from “anti-SLAPP” laws to prevent such frivolous lawsuits waged by wealthy individuals or powerful corporations against those who criticize them.

So Rowling capitalized on the spectacle to, in essence, help dozens of groups in what appears to be an attempt to sue Amnesty into oblivion.

CAPTION: Screenshot from Rowling’s Twitter, where she offers “women’s organizations” backing to sue Amnesty International (UK) through her own charitable fund. She quote tweets a group of people who self-identify as “trans widows”—referring to cisgender people whose spouses or ex-spouses came out as transgender.

The saga began earlier this month, when Amnesty International (UK) released a report titled “A growing threat: the anti-rights movement in the UK.” It released a similar report last year, but this year, it added a new category for what appears to be the anti-rights movement’s most rapidly growing sector: “Gender critical” groups, or groups that are antithetical to transgender rights and inclusion.

Rowling rushed to tweet about the situation.

CAPTION: Rowling tweets a group’s response to Amnesty International (UK)’s report on “anti-rights” groups.

She lauded “LGB” groups—another anti-trans buzzword, which, as the name suggests, describes groups that wish to erase transgender people from the queer liberation movement—like the Gay Men’s Network, an organization that has pushed for anti-trans policies. That group posted a public letter indicating it might sue Amnesty International for defamation. The Network demanded a retraction of the report and then claimed that Amnesty is guilty of “trying to control gay and lesbian free speech.”

In the day or so that followed, Rowling retweeted around a dozen similar letters. The posted letters include groups like Genspect, a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate group that threatened Amnesty International with legal action, as well as groups like LGB Alliance and Sex Matters.

Amnesty International (UK) did not formally reply to a request for comment for this piece.

Gender critical activists, often financed by Rowling, rely on legal “guerilla warfare” said one U.K.-based trans rights organizer, who could only speak to Erin in the Morning if granted anonymity. The tactic is familiar: Wear down non-profits and individuals who dare speak out against anti-trans and anti-rights groups. They don’t have to win a lawsuit; they can just file again, and again, and again, draining valuable time and resources.

“They have sued organizations into the ground,” the advocate said.

Some context for just a handful of these groups so up in arms about being labeled as hateful: Helen Joyce, the director of advocacy for Sex Matters, gave a speech at a Genspect conference (both are groups on the anti-rights list) about how “beauty” is “inimical to trans bullshit.

She also boasted about manufacturing a moral and medical panic about how, although only a “small” segment of trans kids are prescribed puberty blockers, it has been a strategic “rhetorical device” to erode the rights of transgender people more broadly.

Depending on who you ask, TERFs are considered either a self-branded liberal faction of gender critical ideology, or a different term for what is essentially the same movement. TERF stands for “trans exclusionary radical feminist,” a term to describe self-proclaimed “feminists” who oppose giving transgender women and cisgender women equal rights.

Many of these TERF or “gender critical” groups have close ties to far-right Christian groups. DonorsTrust, the conservative donor behemoth and primary financier of initiatives like Project 2025, also forked over hundreds of thousands of dollars to groups like the Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine and Thoughtful Therapists, both of whom made the “anti-rights” list because, as Amnesty International (UK) among many others have put it, they promote “conversion practices.”

One major point of contention was the inclusion of Rowling’s own organization, Beira’s Place. It does not primarily seem to function as any sort of advocacy organization. Rather, it’s a women’s shelter for those fleeing domestic violence, but it also has an explicit anti-trans policy, banning transgender women from accessing its services.

However, as the report explained, none of these groups exist in a vacuum. “These entities must be understood as an ecosystem sharing values, goals, strategy and tactics and, for some of them, formal collaboration,” it reads.

Amnesty isn’t the first or last institution or expert to call out gender critical ideology for being anti-rights. UN Women has published materials saying as much.

Meanwhile, University of Sheffield sociologist Dr. Sally Hines has called this framework “deeply conservative.” In the Journal for Gender Studies, she writes that “despite its origins within a branch of radical feminism, [gender-critical ideology] has a profoundly misogynist agenda that stands opposed to the rights of women.” It is a “key force within a current conservative pushback against the rights of women and minoritized sexual groups.”

Gender critical activists continue to use the language of oppression to characterize their plight. Many say “TERF” is a slur. Others believe criticizing a group because of its arguably regressive politics is grounds for a lawsuit.

Despite the fact that the report was pulled down, Erin in the Morning was able to retrieve a copy reposted by an anti-trans news outlet. You can read a full version of that archived version below.

Report A Growing Threat The Anti Rights Movement In The Uk July 2026

345KB ∙ PDF file

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for every $100 philanthropy gives to LGBTQ+ issues, only about three cents goes specifically to trans issues, according to the 2024 LGBTQ Funders Tracking Report. That was the landscape even before this administration took office.

Source (Instagram)