Commentary
Is Israel ‘gay heaven?’ It’s complicated
American LGBT delegation visits Middle East
Project Interchange participants ran into Paula Abdul in the Jerusalem market. From left-right: Kevin Naff, Andy Sacher, Tamika Butler, John Campbell, Brad Sears, Paula Abdul, Jorge Valencia, Kirk Fordham and Malcolm Lazin. (Photo courtesy Project Interchange)
When a delegation of nine LGBT leaders from the United States arrived last month in Israel for an intensive seminar, we knew the gay residents of progressive Tel Aviv enjoyed broad acceptance and myriad legal protections. But imagine our surprise when TV personality Gal Uchovsky announced that we had arrived in “gay heaven.”
Israel is “the best LGBT country in the world,” he told us, adding that the nation’s LGBT residents face no serious problems that he could identify. A gay child growing up in rural Israel is better off than a similar kid in the rural United States, he observed. Homelessness is rare here and Israeli parents embrace their gay kids because, well, better to be gay than dead.
Uchovsky is a proud cheerleader for his country, which is endearing, though his privileged worldview has perhaps shielded him from some unpleasant, inconvenient realities. Life for LGBT Israelis is, indeed, more complicated than Uchovsky’s rosy assessment and, thus, our trip’s catchphrase was cemented: “It’s complicated.”
The stellar seminar, sponsored by Project Interchange, a program of the American Jewish Committee, brought me well out of my comfort zone and right into Ramallah and to the edge of the Gaza Strip. The focus of the visit — LGBT issues — was often overshadowed by the frustrating stalemate of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Why can’t the two sides come to an agreement on a two-state solution? It’s complicated. And, as we learned, it’s far more complicated than American mainstream media seem to grasp.
And so from the West Bank to Jerusalem to Tel Aviv to the Negev, the nine of us trekked to learn all we could from a diverse range of perspectives, including from Palestinians and Israeli experts critical of the country’s record on LGBT rights. The other eight participants in the weeklong seminar were: Log Cabin Republicans Executive Director Gregory T. Angelo; Tamika Butler of Young Invincibles; gay Harrisburg (Pa.) Treasurer John Campbell; Gill Action Fund Executive Director Kirk Fordham; Equality Forum Executive Director Malcolm Lazin; Lavender Effect Executive Director Andy Sacher; Williams Institute Executive Director Brad Sears; and Point Foundation CEO Jorge Valencia.
We toured Tel Aviv’s bustling, posh community center, touted as the only such center in the world that is municipally owned. The government’s funding of such centers and related LGBT causes is a mixed bag. In the United States, small LGBT non-profits and HIV service providers jockey for limited public grants, often leading to turf wars. But most such U.S. groups aren’t beholden to the government or muzzled by fears of government retaliation. It’s not clear that the same is true in Israel. It’s a dilemma: accept public money to advance your important work and mute your criticisms of the government or reject public funds and risk financial shortfalls that will curb programming. As one speaker put it, “I’d rather our public money went to gay causes than to building another bomb.”
The highlight of that visit for me was hearing from Uzi Even, the first openly gay member of the Knesset and a pioneering elder statesman of the Israeli LGBT rights movement who has helped rid the military of discriminatory policies and liberalize adoption laws. In a true sign of the times, his latest cause involves sorting out Israel’s divorce laws as they relate to same-sex couples.
My advice to Israeli LGBT advocates: Take time now to celebrate and honor the contributions of Even and others like him. Record his personal history and share it with young people. It wasn’t so long ago in Israel when gay sex acts were illegal. Such lightning-speed progress doesn’t happen by accident and brave pioneers like Even deserve our gratitude.
As we made our way up the stairs to meet with Even in the community center, we could hear the giggles of young children and stepped over a pile of neatly arranged kids sneakers in a hallway. Another sign of the times.
Several speakers emphasized the role that a 2009 shooting played in advancing gay acceptance. On Aug. 1, 2009, a gunman burst into the LGBT community center in Tel Aviv and opened fire, killing two and injuring at least 15 others. It’s hard to quantify how significant a role that tragedy played in changing Israeli attitudes toward gays, but our speakers agreed it was a turning point.
It’s a stark contrast to what we see in the United States, where violent hate crimes continue to plague our community, from trans women routinely killed in our inner cities to the recent murder of a gay man in the heart of New York’s gay village. Americans are so inured to violence that these crimes barely register in the mainstream media, let alone lead to a widespread change in attitudes.
After a couple of days in progressive Tel Aviv, we made our way to Jerusalem. In addition to the usual religious sites, a group of us visited the Jerusalem Open House, an LGBT community center engaged in broad grassroots work in the face of complicated problems like funding, space constraints, religious critics who have sometimes turned violent and the ever-present challenge of building relations with Arab residents of the city.
Celebrating gay pride in Jerusalem has been complicated, too. They don’t agree on much, but anti-gay animus was something that united the world’s major religions as conservative Jewish and Arab leaders denounced plans for pride parades in the holy city in recent years. In 2005, marchers were attacked by an ultra-orthodox Jewish man who stabbed three participants. The following year, Jerusalem was selected to host WorldPride, which led to more unrest and violent protests. Some lawmakers in the Knesset attempted to ban gay pride parades in Jerusalem, but those efforts fizzled. Our hosts in Jerusalem insist that relations are improving and that Pride is safer than in the recent past. Here, another stark contrast to the way we celebrate in the United States, with our corporate-sponsored pride villages, beer gardens and all-night parties.
From Jerusalem, we took a daytrip and toured Efrat, a small city in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc with its mayor, Oded Ravivi. The issue of settlements commands a lot of attention in U.S. media coverage of Israel and so I was curious and excited to see one up close. Efrat has eschewed the barbed wire fences that snake through so much of the Israeli landscape and officials have worked to cultivate economic ties with surrounding Palestinian villages. But we learned that such efforts only go so far. When the mayor approached a Palestinian schoolmaster about sending teachers to Efrat to teach Arabic to Israeli kids, he declined, fearing he would be “slaughtered” for collaborating with the Jews.
It was a sobering reminder of how moderates on both sides of the divide are thwarted by the extremists in their midst. Is there a cautionary lesson here for Americans, as our own political rhetoric becomes increasingly dominated by the most extreme, shrill voices of the far left and right; our legislators afraid to compromise and be seen as collaborating with the opposition?
In one awkward moment, a member of our group asked Mayor Ravivi how he would react if one of his children came out to him as gay. He seemed startled by the question and suggested it couldn’t happen in his family. Cue the eye rolling among some of us. Such reactions are common among many who proclaim they don’t discriminate but haven’t devoted much thought to the underlying issues. Gay kids are good for conservative politicians — just ask Dick Cheney.
After absorbing the complicated problems and history of Jerusalem, some of us needed a release and our gracious hosts at Open House took us to the lone gay bar in Jerusalem, called Video, where we had a few drinks and danced till the wee hours alongside a diverse crowd of revelers. Music, indeed, makes the people come together.
Accusations of ‘pinkwashing’
The concept of “pinkwashing” emerged as a hot topic throughout the week. Some critics claim the country’s embrace of LGBT rights is merely a propaganda effort to claim the mantle of modernity and establish a stark contrast to homophobic regimes in the West Bank, Gaza and elsewhere in the Middle East. These critics claim the government’s support for gay rights doesn’t threaten or undermine the structure of Israel and amounts to a “fig leaf,” and an attempt at distracting attention from the difficult problems of finding peace with the Palestinians.
I’m not convinced. Politics is about the art of the possible, not the ideal and certainly not the perfect. Sometimes we have to accept imperfect solutions or motives in the interest of securing protections for people in need. What’s most striking about Israel’s LGBT record isn’t what it has achieved legislatively or through court rulings, but the fact that all this progress is happening in the heart of the Middle East. Our group trip featuring nine outspoken American LGBT advocates is simply not possible anywhere else in the region. Even compared to the progress we’ve seen recently in the United States, Israel stands out because it is such a young country enacting these reforms. Americans are notoriously forward thinking and, as a result, we tend to forget our history. It was less than 10 years ago when President George W. Bush called for a federal constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and scores of states enacted their own constitutional bans. The architect of this shameful attack on LGBT rights was Ken Mehlman, a closeted gay man and modern-day Roy Cohn who has since come out as gay and now raises money for marriage equality campaigns. The change afoot is new and fast but fragile. Would America be seeing such dramatic change now if Mitt Romney had won last year’s election?
Meanwhile, Israel opened its military to out gays and lesbians and transgender service members — something still barred by the U.S. military. There is relationship recognition, if not full marriage equality. The government directly funds and supports the LGBT movement, for better or worse. And it doesn’t hide that support, but promotes it.
Still, some see nefarious motives.
Upon returning home from this trip, I received a letter criticizing the visit from a group called New York City Queers Against Israeli Apartheid. It read, in part:
“The delegation met with some unspecified ‘Palestinian officials in Ramallah,’ which strikes us as nothing but a token gesture. Worse, ‘pinkwashing’ — the attempt to use Israel’s supposedly decent record on gay rights to whitewash Israeli occupation and apartheid — has been front and center in international LGBT organizing over the past several years, particularly in the US. Any delegation of LGBT ‘leaders’ to Israel that doesn’t address it is clearly intended to contribute to pinkwashing.”
Our group was sensitive to pinkwashing from the outset and several of us requested meetings with gay Palestinians and their representatives. Project Interchange worked hard to provide a balanced view of the issues and invited two Palestinian LGBT groups — alQaws and Aswat — to meet with us. Officials at the Tel Aviv and Jerusalem LGBT centers were also asked if they could assist in persuading those groups to meet our delegation or knew of other Palestinian LGBT representatives who would be willing to meet us. Sadly, the groups refused to meet with us. Change is simply not possible without dialogue and I deeply regret this lost opportunity the Palestinians had to engage with an open-minded group of visitors seeking nothing more than understanding and education.
(I invited NYCQAIP to respond to this story and they accepted. I look forward to publishing their reaction and thoughts on pinkwashing in the coming days.)
In Ramallah, we were scheduled to meet with Dr. Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator. He cancelled his appearance and we learned why the next day: He had just submitted his resignation to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas over frustration with the pace of negotiations. Abbas rejected Erekat’s resignation but it’s clear that the current talks, which began four months ago with a John Kerry-instigated deadline of nine months, are not going well. Given the sorry record of our involvement in decades of failed talks, perhaps it’s time for the United States to step aside and allow another party a chance at diplomacy.
In Erekat’s place, we met with Abu Zayyad, a scholar and Fatah and PLO adviser. It seemed somewhat silly to ask him about the state of LGBT affairs given all the day-to-day challenges facing Palestinians in the West Bank. But he insisted that there is a level of gay acceptance, even if such views differ widely among family members, noting there are no laws in Ramallah related to gay issues and that there are at least two non-governmental organizations that espouse gay rights. He spent most of his lecture discussing the state of life for Palestinians and much of what he said was not encouraging. He lamented the lack of mobility for Palestinians, who don’t have passports, making international travel difficult at best. Locally, the checkpoints that Ramallah residents must navigate just to visit nearby Jerusalem create daily headaches. Zayyad, who said he spent three months in prison for participating in an anti-Israel protest, fears that a two-state solution will be impossible five years from now, when an estimated one million Israelis could be living in West Bank settlements.
“It will explode again,” he warned.
It’s often been said that Israel is a land of contradictions and that assessment came into sharp focus during our visit. Israel celebrates its status as the only Democracy in the Middle East, while its non-Jewish residents live under a flag adorned with religious iconography. In a nation so steeped in history, Israel is just 65 years old and is surprisingly lacking in many traditions. Located in the heart of the Middle East, where homosexuality can be punished by jail time or even death as in Iran, Israel has emerged as one of the world’s most pro-LGBT nations. A country that is more than 60 percent desert has perfected drip irrigation and desalinated water from the Mediterranean to solve a decades-old water crisis. And in a nation with such ancient religious influences, a large chunk of the population — estimated by one speaker as high as 50 percent — identifies as secular or atheist.
It’s impossible to summarize our weeklong adventure in a couple thousand words. A sincere and heartfelt thank-you to the team at Project Interchange, all of our speakers and to the people of Israel for their hospitality. In addition to the aforementioned experiences, we met with law professor Aeyal Gross, entrepreneur Hamutal Meridor, Times of Israel editor David Horovitz, Jerusalem Post reporter Khaled Abu Toameh, former Knesset member Einat Wilif, film director Eytan Fox and many others. We were serenaded by Ivri Lider; walked the Stations of the Cross; toured Yad Vashem, the Western Wall tunnels, the Mahaneh Yehuda Market and indulged in far too much of Israel’s impressive cuisine. We visited Sderot, Mitzpe Ramon and slathered ourselves in mud before floating in the Dead Sea.
It was in that moment — nine of us standing half naked, covered in mud — that I perceived a lasting bond forming among us. Despite our differing views on policy back home and occasional misunderstandings, we’d been through something emotional, powerful and unique together. An experience impossible to explain or summarize here, because, well, it’s complicated.
Kevin Naff is editor of the Washington Blade. Reach him at [email protected].
Commentary
Defunding LGBTQ groups is a warning sign for democracy
Global movement since January 2025 has lost more than $125 million in funding
In over 60 countries, same-sex relations are criminal. In many more, LGBTIQ people are discriminated against, harassed, or even persecuted. Yet, in most parts of the world, if you are an LGBTIQ person, there is an organization quietly working to keep people like you safe: a lawyer fighting an arrest, a shelter offering refuge from violence, a hotline answering a midnight call. Many of those organizations have now lost so much funding that they may be forced to close.
One year ago this week, the U.S. government froze foreign assistance to organizations working on human rights, democracy, and development worldwide. The effects were immediate. For LGBTIQ communities, the impact has been severe and far-reaching.
For 35 years, Outright International has helped build and sustain the global movement for the rights of LGBTIQ people, working with local partners in more than 75 countries. Many of those partners are now facing sudden closure.
Since January 2025, more than $125 million has been stripped from efforts advancing the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer people globally. That figure represents at least 30 percent of yearly international funding for this work. Organizations that ran emergency shelters, legal defense programs, and HIV prevention services have been forced to close or drastically scale back operations. At Outright alone, we lost funding for 120 grants across nearly 50 countries. We estimate that, without intervention, 20 to 25 percent of our grantee partners risk shutting down entirely.
But this is not only a story about one community. It is a story about how authoritarianism works, and what it costs when we fail to recognize the pattern.
The playbook is not subtle
Researchers at Outright and partners across human rights and democracy movements have documented the same sequence playing out across sectors worldwide: governments defund organizations before passing restrictive legislation, eliminating the groups most likely to document abuses before abuses occur.
In December, CIVICUS downgraded its assessment of U.S. civic freedoms from “narrowed” to “obstructed,” citing what it called a “rapid authoritarian shift.” The message was unmistakable: independent organizations that hold power to account are under growing pressure, in the United States and around the world.
And the effects have cascaded globally. When one of the world’s largest funders of democracy support and human rights work withdraws, it doesn’t just leave a funding gap. It sends a signal to authoritarians everywhere: the coast is clear.
The timing is not coincidental. In the super election year of 2024, 85 percent of countries with national elections featured anti-LGBTIQ rhetoric in campaigns. Across the 15 countries we tracked, governments proposed or enacted laws restricting gender-affirming care, rolling back legal gender recognition, and censoring LGBTIQ expression. The defunding often came first. Governments know that if they can starve the movement, there will be no one left to document what comes next.
Why US readers should care
It may be tempting to see this as a distant crisis, especially at a moment when LGBTIQ rights in the United States are under real pressure. But this story is closer to home than it appears. American funding decisions often help determine whether organizations protecting LGBTIQ people abroad can keep their doors open. And when independent organizations are weakened, no matter where they are, the consequences do not stay contained. The same political networks driving anti-LGBTIQ legislation in the United States share strategies and resources with movements abroad. Global repression and domestic rollback are not separate stories. They are the same story, unfolding in different places.
LGBTIQ organizations are often the first target, but never the last
Why target LGBTIQ communities first? Because we are politically easier to isolate. The same playbook — foreign funding restrictions, bureaucratic harassment, banking access denial — is now being deployed against environmental groups, independent media, women’s rights organizations, and election monitors. When one part of our community is silenced, all of us become more vulnerable. What happens to us is a preview of what happens to everyone.
This is not speculation. It is documented history. In Hungary, the government restricted foreign funding for civil society before passing its “anti-LGBTQ propaganda” law. In Russia, “foreign agent” designations preceded the criminalization of LGBTIQ identity. In Uganda, funding restrictions on human rights organizations came before the Anti-Homosexuality Act. The pattern repeats because it works.
And yet, even as these attacks intensify, victories continue. In 2025, Saint Lucia struck down a colonial-era law criminalizing consensual same-sex intimacy after a decade of regional planning and coalition-building. Courts in India, Japan, and Hong Kong upheld trans people’s rights. Budapest Pride became the largest in Hungarian history — and one of the country’s biggest public demonstrations — despite a government ban. In Thailand, years of patient advocacy culminated in marriage equality becoming law in 2025, the first such victory in Southeast Asia.
These wins happened because our movement built the capacity to survive hostility. Legal defense funds. Documented evidence. Regional coalitions. Emergency response networks. The organizations behind these victories are precisely the ones now facing drastic funding cuts and even closure.
What we are doing and what we need
On Jan. 20, 2026, Outright International publicly launched Funding Our Freedom, a $10 million emergency campaign running through June 30, 2026. We have already secured over $5 million in pledges from more than 150 donors. But the gap remains enormous.
The campaign supports two priorities that must move together. Half of the funds go directly to frontline LGBTIQ organizations facing sudden shortfalls: keeping staff paid, maintaining safe spaces, securing legal support, and continuing essential services. The other half supports Outright’s global work: documenting abuses, training activists, and advocating for LGBTIQ inclusion at the United Nations and other international forums. This is how LGBTIQ people remain seen, heard, and defended, even when governments attempt to erase them.
We structured Funding Our Freedom this way because frontline support without protection is fragile, and global advocacy without frontline truth is hollow. Both must survive.
Funding Our Freedom is not charity. It is how we keep the global LGBTIQ movement alive when governments try to erase it.
A call to those who believe in equality and democracy
If you are part of the LGBTIQ community, this moment is personal. Whether you give, share this work, host a small fundraiser, or bring others into the effort, you become part of what keeps our global community connected and protected.
If you are an ally or simply someone who believes in fairness, free expression, and accountable government, this fight is yours too. The defunding of LGBTIQ organizations is not an isolated decision. It is a test case. If it succeeds, the same tactics will be used against every group that challenges power and defends vulnerable people.
We are not asking for sympathy. We are asking for commitment. The organizations now being forced to close are the ones that document abuses, provide legal defense, support people in crisis, and show up when no one else will. If they disappear, we lose more than services. We lose the ability to know what is happening and to respond.
Authoritarians understand this. That is why they target us first.
The question is whether the rest of us understand it in time.
Maria Sjödin is the executive director of Outright International, where they has worked for over two decades advocating for LGBTIQ human rights worldwide. Learn more at outrightinternational.org/funding-our-freedom.
January arrives with optimism. New year energy. Fresh possibilities. A belief that this could finally be the year things change. And every January, I watch people respond to that optimism the same way. By adding.
More workouts. More structure. More goals. More commitments. More pressure to transform. We add healthier meals. We add more family time. We add more career focus. We add more boundaries. We add more growth. Somewhere along the way, transformation becomes a list instead of a direction.
But what no one talks about enough is this: You can only receive what you actually have space for. You don’t have unlimited energy. You have 100 percent. That’s it. Not 120. Not 200. Not grind harder and magically find more.
Your body knows this even if your calendar ignores it. Your nervous system knows it even if your ambition doesn’t want to admit it. When you try to pour more into a cup that’s already full, something spills. Usually it’s your peace. Or your consistency. Or your health.
What I’ve learned over time is that most people don’t need more motivation. They need clarity. Not more goals, but priority. Not more opportunity, but discernment.
So this January, instead of asking what you’re going to add, I want to offer something different. What if this year becomes a season of no.
No to things that drain you. No to things that distract you. No to things that look good on paper but don’t feel right in your body. And to make this real, here’s how you actually do it.
Identify your one true priority and protect it
Most people struggle with saying no because they haven’t clearly said yes to anything first. When everything matters, nothing actually does. Pick one priority for this season. Not 10. One. Once you identify it, everything else gets filtered through that lens. Does this support my priority, or does it compete with it?
Earlier this year, I had two leases in my hands. One for Shaw and one for National Landing in Virginia. From the outside, the move felt obvious. Growth is celebrated. Expansion is rewarded. More locations look like success. But my gut and my nervous system told me I couldn’t do both.
Saying no felt like failure at first. It felt like I was slowing down when I was supposed to be speeding up. But what I was really doing was choosing alignment over optics.
I knew what I was capable of thriving in. I knew my limits. I knew my personal life mattered. My boyfriend mattered. My family mattered. My physical health mattered. My mental health mattered. Looking back now, saying no was one of the best decisions I could have made for myself and for my team.
If something feels forced, rushed, or misaligned, trust that signal. If it’s meant for you, it will come back when the timing is right.
Look inside before you look outside
So many of us are chasing who we think we’re supposed to be— who the city needs us to be. Who social media rewards. Who our resume says we should become next. But clarity doesn’t come from noise. It comes from stillness. Moments of silence. Moments of gratitude. Moments where your nervous system can settle. Your body already knows who you are long before your ego tries to upgrade you.
One of the most powerful phrases I ever practiced was simple: You are enough.
I said it for years before I believed it. And when I finally did, everything shifted. I stopped chasing growth just to prove something. I stopped adding just to feel worthy. I could maintain. I could breathe. I could be OK where I was.
Gerard from Baltimore was enough. Anything else I added became extra.
Turning 40 made this clearer than ever. My twenties were about finding myself. My thirties were about proving myself. My forties are about being myself.
I wish I knew then what I know now. I hope the 20 year olds catch it early. I hope the 30 year olds don’t wait as long as I did.
Because the only way to truly say yes to yourself is by saying no first.
Remove more than you add
Before you write your resolutions, try this. If you plan to add three things this year, identify six things you’re willing to remove. Habits. Distractions. Commitments. Energy leaks.
Maybe growth doesn’t look like expansion for you this year. Maybe it looks like focus. Maybe it looks like honoring your limits. January isn’t asking you to become superhuman. It’s asking you to become intentional. And sometimes the most powerful word you can say for your future is no.
With love always, Coach G.
Gerard Burley, also known as Coach G, is founder and CEO of Sweat DC.
Commentary
Honoring 50 queer, trans women with inaugural ‘Carrying Change’ awards
Naming the people who carry our movements forward
Dear friends, partners, and community:
We write to you as two proud Black and Brown queer women who have dedicated our lives to building safer, bolder, and more just communities as leaders, organizers, policy advocates, and storytellers.
We are June Crenshaw and Heidi Ellis.
June has spent almost 10 years guiding the Wanda Alston Foundation with deep compassion and unwavering purpose, ensuring LGBTQ+ youth experiencing homelessness have access to stability, safety, and a path forward. Her leadership has expanded housing and support services, strengthened community partnerships, and helped shift how Washington, D.C. understands and responds to the needs of queer and trans young people. In her current role with Capital Pride Alliance, June advances this work at a broader scale by strengthening community infrastructure, refining organizational policies, and expanding inclusive community representation.
Heidi is the founder of HME Consulting & Advocacy, a D.C.–based firm that builds coalitions and advances policy and strategy at the intersection of LGBTQ+ justice and racial equity. Her work spans public service, nonprofit leadership, and strategic consulting to strengthen community-driven solutions.
We’re writing because we believe in intentional recognition — naming the people who carry our movements forward, who make room for those who come next, and who remind us that change is both generational and generative. Too often, these leaders do this work quietly and consistently, without adequate public acknowledgment or what one might call “fanfare,” often in the face of resistance and imposed solitude — whether within their respective spaces or industries.
Today, we are proud to introduce the Torchbearers: “Carrying Change” Awards, an annual celebration honoring 50 unstoppable Queer and Trans Women, and Non-Binary People whose leadership has shaped, and continues to shape, our communities.
This inaugural list will recognize:
- 25 Legends — long-standing leaders whose decades of care, advocacy, and institution-building created the foundations we now stand upon; and
- 25 Illuminators — rising and emerging leaders whose courage, creativity, and innovation are lighting new paths forward.
Why these names matter: Movement memory keeps us honest. Strategy keeps us effective. Recognition keeps us connected. By celebrating both Legends and Illuminators side by side, we are intentionally bridging histories and futures — honoring elders, uplifting survivors, and spotlighting those whose work and brilliance deserve broader support, protection and visibility.
Who will be included: The Torchbearers will represent leaders across a diverse range of sectors, including community organizing, public service, sports, government, entertainment, business, education, legal industry, health, and the arts — reflecting the breadth and depth of queer leadership today. They include organizers providing direct service late into the night; policy experts shaping budgets and laws; artists and culture workers changing hearts and language; healers and mutual-aid leaders; and those doing the quiet, essential work that sustains us all.
Intersectionality is our core commitment: identity in its fullness matters, and honorees must reflect the depth, diversity, and nuance of queer leadership today.
How you can engage: Nominate, amplify, sponsor, and attend. Use your platforms to uplift these leaders, bring your organization’s resources to sustain their work, and help ensure that recognition translates into real support — funding, capacity, visibility, and protection.
We are excited, humbled, and energized to stand alongside the women and non-binary leaders who have carried us, and those who will carry this work forward. If history teaches us anything, it’s that the boldest change happens when we shine light on one another, and then pass the flame.
YOU CAN MAKE A NOMINATION HERE
June Crenshaw serves as deputy director of the Capital Pride Alliance. Heidi Ellis is founder of HME Consulting & Advocacy.
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