a&e features
To fight book banning, it’s time to get loud
Librarians, queer activists, free speech supporters unite to combat frightening trend
Cynthia Sherman, executive director of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, recently saw something she never thought she’d see in the United States.
Sherman was online, and suddenly she says, “I saw a book burning, I couldn’t believe it!”
Sherman wasn’t imagining things. Earlier this month, in Mt. Juliet, Tenn., Greg Locke, a pastor, led a book burning, CNN reported. Copies of books in the “Harry Potter” series and “Twilight” series were burned.
There’s been an alarming increase in the number of books nationwide that have been removed from school classrooms and libraries, according to free speech advocates, writers, and LGBTQ activists and allies, interviewed by the Blade by phone and email.
Many of the books being banned, they said, are written by LGBTQ and/or BIPOC (Black, indigenous, people of color) authors, and deal with racism, sexual or gender identity.
Over the last year, calls for the banning of LGBTQ books have frequently taken an ugly turn.
In October, Jen Cousins and Stephana Ferrell attended an Orange County Public Schools school board meeting in Orlando, Fla. Cousins and Ferrell are parents.
Cousins has a 12-year-old daughter named Saffron, who came out as nonbinary a month before the school board meeting.
Ferrell has two children, aged six and eight. “I don’t know what their sexual or gender identity will be,” Ferrell said.
At the school board meeting, a man read a short excerpt from “Gender Queer: A Memoir,” a graphic novel by Maia Kobabe. “He was thrown out,” Ferrell said, “but based just on that brief excerpt the book was removed.”
Sometimes anti-LGBTQ attacks have been aimed at school board members and/or their families.
Rebecca Bender is a parent in Hastings, Minn. Bender and her partner have a son named Reese and a daughter named Reagan. Reese and Reagan, age 5, are twins.
Reese is transgender and out and proud. At two-and-a-half, Reese knew he wasn’t a girl. “I’m a boy, Mom,” he told Bender.
“I’m the brother!” Reese said, referring to his twin sister Reagan.
Reese, who is autistic, attended an early childhood program run by his school district. “We had to advocate for the correct pronouns to be used for him,” Bender said.
People in the community and school district knew Reese. His experience as an out transgender kindergartner has been good, Bender said. But things worked out badly for another mom with a transgender child in Hastings, Bender said.
Kelsey Waits’s youngest child is transgender (and uses they/them pronouns). Waits, who had served on the school board, ran for another term. During the campaign, a group called Concerned Parents outed her daughter as trans (before they were ready to come out).
“I have no issue with people critiquing votes that I have taken or stances I hold that they disagree with,” Waits wrote in a letter to the Paper Boy News. “However, even in this time of political division, a line must exist. Surely, this line was crossed when a group of parents decided not only to attack me, but to attack my children.”
Those concerned about censorship have reason to worry. “Book challenges and removals are significantly up this school year from last year,” said Nora Pelizzari, director of communications, National Coalition Against Censorship. “The most frequently challenged books are by and about people of color and LGBTQ+ people. All of the intersections apply.”
The American Library Association tracks reports of challenged books. From Sept. 1 to Dec. 1, 2021 alone, the ALA tracked 330 book challenges.
In normal times, a book challenge takes the form of a formal request to have the book reviewed, Pelizzari said, “to review if it should be removed or included in a school curriculum or school library.”
The challenge is filed with a school or school district depending on the policy, she added, “this initiates a process by which a school or district reviews the book to determine whether to take action or not.”
These reviews are conducted by committees of librarians, teachers, pedagogical experts, such as curriculum developers, parents, and, ideally, older-grade trained students, Pelizzari said.
But these are not normal times, Pelizzari said. This year, increasingly, people, often parents, are circumventing the review process.
They are demanding, frequently vocally, in school board meetings that books be removed without going through the review process.
Most of the books that have been challenged, such as “Heather Has Two Mommies” by Lealea Newman and “George” by Alex Gino (to be published in April as “Melissa”) have LGBTQ content, said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director, American Library Association, Office for Intellectual Freedom.
“Heather has Two Mommies” is about a family headed by same-sex parents, and “George” is about a transgender girl named Melissa.
In the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, people have “challenged books about slavery – the lived experience of Black people,” Caldwell-Stone said, “along with books about LGBTQ+ people.”
The ALA encourages libraries to file reports with “us if they’ve had challenges or encountered censorship,” Caldwell-Stone said, “we promise confidentiality.”
The attempt to censor and ban books by queer writers with LGBTQ+ characters, shouldn’t be viewed as an isolated phenomenon, said Mary O’Hara, a GLAAD rapid response manager. (For info on GLAAD’s #BooksNotBans campaign, go to glaad.org.)
The battle for marriage equality has been won. More than 21 percent of Generation Z adults identify as LGBTQ, according to a Gallup poll released on Feb. 17. “It’s no coincidence that anti-queer groups have made schools their new battlegrounds,” O’Hara said.
The effort to ban LGBTQ books is connected to proposed anti-trans bills that would limit transgender and nonbinary students’ access to health care, rights to participation in sports and use the bathroom, O’Hara said. (In the first week of this year alone, seven states proposed such anti-trans bills.)
“We’re seeing bills [such as the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill before the Florida Legislature] advance in state legislatures that would prohibit conversation about sexuality or gender identity in schools,” said Jonathan Friedman, director of free expression and education at Pen America.
People seeking to ban LGBTQ books have an unrealistic view of the world, author Newman said, “they want to show kids a society where all families are white, cisgender, Christian, able-bodied – with one mom and one dad.”
In October, Matt Krause, a Texas state legislator, compiled a list of 850 books that he would like to see removed from schools because they might make students feel “discomfort…because of their race or sex.”
Kalynn Bayron, author of the YA novel “Cinderella Is Dead” and the forthcoming middle-reader novel “The Vanquishers,” lived in San Antonio for many years. She was disheartened to hear that “Cinderella” is on Krause’s list.
“I write about Black, queer protagonists,” Bayron said. “Representation is so important. When books are banned, Black, queer, disabled and other marginalized kids don’t see themselves in stories.”
“And kids who aren’t marginalized won’t see people who are different from themselves,” she added.
LGBTQ activists and allies are fighting back against censorship.
Lily Freeman is a transgender and Jewish activist, and a member of GLSEN’s 2021-2022 National Student Council Cohort. Freeman and her mom run the Instagram and TikTok account @projectuncensored.
“Having representation in books creates acceptance and empathy,” Freeman said. “In online videos, my Mom and I talk about books that have been banned that folks should read.”
Bender and her partner held a fundraiser so that LGBTQ books could be donated to libraries and teachers in her community’s schools.
Early this year, Cousins and Ferrell established the Florida Freedom to Read Project, a group that advocates for the right for students, hetero and LGBTQ, to access ideas and information in schools.
Lisa Keating, director, My Purple Umbrella, and sweet pea Flaherty, owner of King’s bookstore in Tacoma, Wash., co-run the Queerest Book Club Ever. Flaherty, through her bookstore, runs 11 book clubs, including the Banned Book Club.
“We try to select books that tell stories that for so long haven’t been told,” Flaherty said.
It might be time to break through the stereotype of the “quiet librarian,” said Jennisen Lucas, president of the American Association of School Librarians, a division of the ALA.
The effort to ban books could place some librarians’ jobs in jeopardy, said Lucas, who is a librarian for seven schools in Cody, Wyo. “It might be time [for librarians] to get loud,” she said, “about standing against censorship and supporting the First Amendment.”
“It’s what makes the news,” Lucas added.
In December, NCAC issued a statement, “The Attack on Books in Schools,” which was signed by more than 600 organizations.
“It is freedom of expression that ensures that we can meet the challenges of a changing world,” the statement said. “That freedom is critical for the students who will lead America in the years ahead.”
a&e features
Memorial for groundbreaking bisexual activist set for May 2
Loraine Hutchins remembered as a ‘force of nature’
The Montgomery County Pride Center will host a celebration honoring the life and legacy of Loraine Hutchins, Ph.D., on May 2. People are invited to attend the onsite memorial or a livestream event. The on-site event will begin at 10 a.m. with a meet-and-greet mixer before moving into a memorial service around the theme “Loraine a Force of Nature!” at 11 a.m., a panel talk at 12 p.m., break out sessions for artists, academics, and activists to build on her legacy at 1 p.m. and a closing reception at 2 p.m.
Attendees are encouraged to register for the on-site memorial gathering or the livestreamed memorial. The goal of this event is also to collect stories and memories of Loraine. Attendees and others can share their stories at padlet.com.
An obituary for Hutchins was published in the Bladelast Nov. 24, where people can learn more about her activism in the bisexual community. A private service for friends and family was held in December but this memorial service is open to all.
Alongside her groundbreaking work organizing for U.S. bisexual rights and liberation including co-editing “Bi Any Other Name: BIsexual People Speak Out” (1991), she also integrated faith into her sexual education and advocacy work. Her 2001 doctoral dissertation, “Erotic Rites: A Cultural Analysis of Contemporary U.S. Sacred Sexuality Traditions and Trends,” offered a pointed queer and feminist analysis to sex-neutral and sex-positive spiritual traditions in the United States. Her thesis was also groundbreaking in exploring the intersections between sex workers and those in caregiving professionals, including spiritual ones.
In an oral history interview conducted by Michelle Mueller back in August 2023, Hutchins described herself as a “priestess without a congregation.” While she has occasionally had a sense of community and feels part of a group of loving people, she admitted that “I don’t feel like we have the shape or the purpose that we need.”
“I’ve often experienced being the Cassandra in the room, the Cassandra in the community. Somebody who’s kind of way out there ahead, thinking through the strategic action points that my community hasn’t gotten to yet, and getting a lot of resistance and hostile responses from people who are frightened by dissent and conflict and not ready for the changes we have to make to survive,” she said.
“For somebody who’s bisexual in an out political way and who’s been a spokesperson for the polyamory movement in an out political way, it’s very exposing. And it’s very important to me to be able to try to explain and help other people understand the connection between spirituality and sexuality,” she explained citing how even as a graduate student she was “exploring how to feel erotic and spiritual, and not feel them in conflict with each other in my own spiritual contemplative life and my own sensual body awareness of being alive in the world.”
“Every religion has a sense of sacred sexuality. It’s just they put a lot of boundaries and regulations on it, and if we have a spiritual practice that is totally affirming of women’s priesthood and of gay people, queer people’s ability to minister to everyone and to be ministered to be everyone, what does that do to the gender of God, or our understanding of how we practice our spirituality and our sexuality in community and privately?”
“There’s no easy answer,” she concludes, and she continued to grapple with these questions throughout her life, co-editing another seminal text, “Sexuality, Religion and the Sacred: Bisexual, Pansexual, and Polysexual Perspectives,” published in 2012. Her work blending spiritual and queer liberation remains groundbreaking to this day.
Rev. Eric Eldritch, a local community organizer and ordained Pagan minister with Circle Sanctuary who has worked for decades with the DC Center’s Center Faith to organize the Pride Interfaith Service, is eager to highlight this element of her legacy at the memorial service next month.
a&e features
Queery: Meet artist, performer John Levengood
Modern creative talks nightlife, coming out, and his personal queer heroes
John Levengood (he/him) describes himself as a modern creative with a wide‑ranging toolkit. He blends music, technology, civic duty, and a sharp sense of wit into a cohesive artistic identity. Known primarily as a recording artist and performer, he’s also a self‑taught music producer and software engineer who embodies a generation of creators who build their own lanes rather than wait for one to appear.
Levengood, 32, who is single and identifies as gay and queer, is best known as a recording artist who has performed at Pride festivals across the country, including the main stages of World Pride DC, Central Arkansas Pride, and Charlotte Pride.
“Locally in the DMV, I’m known for turning heads at nightlife venues with my eye-catching sense of style. When I go out, I don’t try to blend in. I hope I inspire people to be themselves and have the courage to stand out,” he says.
He’s also known for hosting karaoke at Freddie’s Beach Bar in Arlington, Va., on Thursday nights. “I like to create a space where people feel comfortable expressing themselves, building community, and showcasing their talents.”
He also creates social media content from my performances and do interviews at LGBTQ+ bars and theatres in the DMV. Follow the Arlington resident @johnlevengood.
How long have you been out and who was the hardest person to tell?
I have been fully out of the closet since 2019. My parents were the hardest people to tell because my family has always been my rock and at the time I couldn’t imagine a world without them. Their reactions were extremely positive and supportive so I had nothing to fear all along.
I remember sitting on the couch with my mom, dad, and sister in our hotel room in New Orleans during our winter vacation and being so nervous to tell them. After I finally mustered up the nerve and made the proclamation, I realized my dad had already fallen asleep on the couch. My mom promised to tell him when he woke up.
Who’s your LGBTQ hero?
My LGBTQ heroes are Harvey Milk for paving the way for gays in politics and Elton John for being a pioneer for the fabulous and authentic. My local heroes in the DMV are Howard Hicks, manager of Green Lantern, and Tony Rivenbark, manager of Freddie’s Beach Bar. Both of them are essential to creating spaces where I’ve felt welcome and safe since moving to the DMV.
What’s Washington’s best nightspot, past or present?
Trade tops the list for me because of the dance floor and outdoor space. It’s so nice to get a break from the music every once and a while to be able to have a conversation.
We live in challenging times. How do you cope?
I’m still figuring this out. What is working right now is writing music and spending time with family and friends. I’ve also been spending less time on social media going to the gym at least three times a week.
What streaming show are you binging?
After “Traitors” Season 4 ended, I was in a bit of a show hole, but “Stumble” has me in a laughing loop right now. The writing is so witty.
What do you wish you’d known at 18?
At 18, I wish I would have known how liberating it is to come out of the closet. It would have been nice to know some winning lottery numbers as well.
What are your friends messaging about in your most recent group chat?
We are planning our next trip to New York City. If you can believe it, I visited NYC for the first time in 2025 for Pride and I’ve been back every quarter since. Growing up in the country, I was subconsciously primed to be scared of the city. But my mind has been blown. I can’t wait to go back.
Why Washington?
It’s the closest metropolitan area to my family, but not too close. I love the museums, the diversity, the history, and the proximity to the beach and mountains. It’s also nice to live in a city with public transportation.
Aging RFK Stadium has come down, but the RFK grounds are still getting lit up. Welcome back to the stage Project GLOW, D.C.’s homegrown electronic festival, on May 30-31. Back for its fifth year on these musically inclined acres, Project GLOW returns with an even more diverse lineup, and one that continues to celebrate LGBTQ antecedents, attendees, and acts.
Project GLOW 2026 headliners include house and techno star Mau P, progressive house legend Eric Prydz, hard-techno favorite Sara Landry, and bass acts Excision b2b Sullivan King, among the lineup of trance, bass, house, techno, dubstep, and others for the fifth anniversary year.
President & CEO Pete Kalamoutsos — born and raised in D.C. — founded Club GLOW in 1999. In 2020, GLOW entered into a partnership with global entertainment company Insomniac Events to produce live events like Project GLOW, which kicked off in 2022.
As in past years, Project GLOW not only makes space, but is intentionally inclusive of the LGBTQ community, one of its most dedicated fan bases. The festival’s LGBTQ-focused Secret Garden stage blooms again — a more intimate dance area that stands on the strength of DJs and musicians who draw from the LGBTQ community. D.C.’s LGBTQ nightlife mastermind Ed Bailey is the creative mind behind Secret Garden again. He joined Project GLOW in 2023.
“Kalamoustos says that “he’s proud of his partnership with Ed Bailey, along with Capital Pride and [nightlife producer] Jake Resnikow. It’s amazing to collaborate with Bailey at the Secret Garden stage, especially after the curated lineup we worked on at Pride last year.”
The Secret Garden will be a bit different from other stages: Eternal (“At the Eternal stage, time stands still. Lose yourself in the dance of past, present, and future, surrendering to the eternal rhythm of the universe”) and Pulse (“Feel the rhythm of the beat pulse through your veins as the heartbeat of the crowd synchronizes into one. Here, every moment vibrates with life as it guides you through a new dimension of euphoria”). The Secret Garden stage is in the round, surrounded by 16 shipping containers. The containers play canvas to muralists from around the world, who are coming in to paint them in a vibrant garden-style vibe. “We gave this stage some extra love with this layout,” K says, “ we finally cracked the code.”
K says that this will be the biggest lineup yet for the Secret Garden, featuring Nicole Moudaber b2b Chasewest, Riordan b2b Bullet Tooth, Ranger Trucco, Cassian, Eli & Fur, Cosmic Gate and Hayla. The stage is also the largest yet, featuring an expanded dance floor and 360-degree viewing.
Across all stages, K says that his goal for the fifth anniversary is “More art and fan interactive experience, more like a festival, strive to be like a Tomorrowland, as budget grows to add more experience.” Last year’s Project GLOW alone drew 40,000 attendees over two days.
K, however, was not satisfied with one festival this spring. GLOW recently announced a “pop-up” one-day event. Teaming up with Black Book Records, GLOW is set to throw a first-of-its-kind dance-music takeover of Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., headlined by electronic music star Chris Lake. Set for April 18, this euphoric block party will feature bass and vibes blocks from the White House. Organizers expect as many as 10,000 fans to attend. Beyond music, there will be food, activations, and plenty of other activities taking place around 6th St and Pennsylvania Ave NW – a location familiar to many in the LGBTQ community, as this sits squarely inside the blocks of the Capital Pride party that takes place in DC every June.
Over the past two decades, Club GLOW has produced thousands of events, from club nights to large-scale festivals including Project GLOW, Moonrise Festival, and more. Club GLOW also operates Echostage.
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