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Social media can be a safe space for LGBTQ youth 

Whether on Instagram, YouTube or TikTok, queer youth are able to connect with stories and insight that they not only relate to, but can use to help cope with and resolve their own struggles. 

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With all the bad press social media gets when it comes to teens, its significant benefits to LGBTQ youth – including relating to others like themselves – can be overlooked, mental health experts and queer teens say.  

Members of racial and ethnic groups who have long been underrepresented or misrepresented in the media often say they find it empowering to follow and watch influencers with whom they can relate. In turn, they feel more understood and accepted. 

Queer social media influencers are willing to talk about topics general audiences may be uninterested in, but what can be frequent occurrences in the queer community, such as disrespect, bullying, misgendering and loneliness. Influencers draw from their own life experiences. Whether on Instagram, YouTube or TikTok, queer youth are able to connect with stories and insight that they not only relate to, but can use to help cope with and resolve their own struggles. 

 A September 2022 meta-analysis of 26 studies in the Journal of Medical Internet Research found social media may help LGBTQ youth with connection to LGBTQ communities,  identity management and support from peers, which all contribute to better mental health and well-being. However, researchers concluded that more robust studies are needed. 

Don McClain is a 16-year-old Baltimore youth advocate, social media entrepreneur and artist of multiple mediums, who is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns. They said it’s important for them to “be able to engage with queer influencers because it shows me that it’s okay to be authentically me.” 

“It makes me feel loved and even makes me smile,” they said. “Seeing people like you always helps.”  

McClain’s favorite queer influencers include Jewish social justice and LGBTQ+ activist Matt Bernstein, who has 1.3 million Instagram followers, trans woman Zaya Perysian, who chronicled her transition on TikTok, where she has 4.5 million followers and Ve’ondre Mitchell, a trans woman with 6.6 million TikTok followers who is an advocate for Black and transgender people. 

Engaging with queer content creators can help viewers with acceptance, reassurance, and even safety. And it can provide answers to the questions that frequently overwhelm queer youth.  

Washington, D.C.-based clinical psychotherapist Rose Shelton, who owns Your Thought Center in Washington, D.C. and often treats LGBTQ patients, discussed mental health trends in queer youth.  

”Questions around self-worth, anxiety – usually associated around acceptance – violence and violent response…contribute to high levels of depression,” said Shelton. 

She also cited insecurity around who’s “a real ally,” “a verbal ally” and “an actual actionable ally.”  

This can have deadly consequences.  

Forty-five percent of LGBTQ youth seriously contemplated attempting suicide between September of 2020 and December 2021, according to survey of LGBTQ youth conducted in late 2021 by the LGBTQ suicide-prevention nonprofit The Trevor Project. The survey also found that 78% experienced symptoms of anxiety in the past year and 58% experienced symptoms of depression. 

Of the LGBTQ youth surveyed by The Trevor Project, 45% were of color and 48% identified as transgender or nonbinary. 

The study, released last year,  also found that 89% of LGBTQ youth reported that seeing LGTBQ representation in TV and movies made them feel good – a key indicator of the importance of representation to queer youth and seeing yourself reflected in the media. 

“The fact that very simple things — like support from family and friends, seeing LGBTQ representation in media and having your gender expression and pronouns respected — can have such a positive impact on the mental health of an LGBTQ young person is inspiring, and it should command more attention in conversations around suicide prevention and public debates around LGBTQ inclusion,” Amit Paley, Trevor Project’s CEO, wrote about the survey.  

These serious trends in mental illness for queer youth are influenced by a variety of factors, but a primary issue is not feeling accepted, which is largely due to a lack of acceptance at home, the report concluded. The lack of adequate representation in media including television and film makes matters worse.  

Representation is important, but incomplete if it does not accurately paint a whole picture, experts say. Representation in traditional media, such as in books, films, and shows for the queer community often presents a portrayal that’s different from reality. In roles beyond the typical typecast queer character, the focus is usually on sensationalizing the struggle to come out or the struggle to combat anti-LGBTQ action.  

Canadian writer Katelyn Thomson published an analysis of LGBTQ representation in TV and film in 2021 in Ontario-based Wilfrid Laurier University’s Undergraduate journal, Bridges.  

“Ultimately, anxious displacement is how TV shows try to ‘normalize’ the lives of LGBT characters,” Thomson wrote. “However, the process ends up taking away from the identity of the LGBT characters and enforces negative codified stereotypes of LGBT people and their lives.” 

While film and television depictions of the community can cause inaccurate portrayals, having queer representation is crucial to queer youth to feel accepted and allow them explore different identities and expressions. 

 “When used correctly, media can be a vital tool for representing, accepting, and discussing minority groups in society,” Thomson said. 

McClain agrees.  

“I believe queer youth can be better represented in the media through the displaying of our stories and breaking the stigma around our everyday existence,” they said. “For instance, we need more accurately queer characters and not the ones who are poorly stereotyped.” 

So while there is frustration with social media, there are benefits too, especially because it lacks some of the flaws that can arise with queer representation in other forms of media, experts say. Social media can help break through the often one dimensional narratives and depictions of the community presented in film and television through its authenticity. Rather than the creation of a writer or director, it is more often an expression of raw authenticity. Queer influencers shouldn’t be taken as a way of how you should feel, how you should present yourself or how you should look, but instead as a way of seeing that there are many ways of doing so, making it beneficial to follow multiple queer influencers. 

“I think sometimes the reason it’s important for social media, instead of…through media itself, is that media also has its own bias,” Shelton said. “And it loves to create stories and narrations and create characters out of people. So with social media, a lot of times people are just presenting their true self.” 

Through different faces, forms, and presentations, queer influencers offer an impressive look at queer culture and talent. Here’s a look at some of them: 

Noah Schnapp (He/Him)  

The 18 year old actor, Noah Schnapp, is mainly known for his role as Will in the wildly popular Netflix series, Stranger Things. Noah is not only known for his acting, but also his very popular TikTok and Instagram accounts. He has cultivated more than 50 million followers between both accounts, where he often posts funny videos, TikTok dances and pictures with his castmates and friends. The Gen Z star recently came out as gay, sparking many of his co-stars, friends and fans to share their positive messages to Noah on social media. Seeing celebrities congratulated for accepting and embracing their sexuality helps other queer youth feel not only more represented in their favorite media but also confident in themselves knowing that their sexuality is something to celebrate and share. 

Bretman Rock (He/Him) 

Bretman Rock is a 24 year old Filipino beauty influencer, who is openly gay. He currently lives and produces content from Honolulu, Hawaii. His YouTube channel, which has more than 8 million subscribers, includes comedic lifestyle and beauty videos along with content including his family, friends and collaborations with other influencers. He also has over 18 million followers on Instagram as well. His charismatic and energetic personality and loyal fan base has helped him win many influencer awards and become the first gay man on the cover of Playboy magazine.  

Tom Daley (He/Him) 

The British gold medalist diver and openly gay 28 year-old has become famous not only for his incredible athletic capability but also his internet personality. He has over 3.2 million followers on instagram and is known for his lifestyle, cooking and knitting content. He is a father to one child, married to American screenwriter Dustin Lance Black and very open and proud of his sexuality. 

Dylan Mulvaney (She/They) 

The 26 year old trans influencer began to rise to fame on TikTok with their viral series, “Days of Girlhood” that documents each day of Dylan’s transition. The series began to become so popular it has helped Dylan generate 10.8 million followers on TikTok. Beyond being a content creator on TikTok, Dylan is also an actress, comedian, model and trans rights activist who was recently featured in what’s been described as a “polarizing partnership” with Bud Light.  

Sarah Schauer (She/They) 

Sarah Schauer is a popular queer social media influencer known for her Instagram and TikTok accounts, YouTube videos and podcasts with influencer Brittany Broski. She is also known for her previous Vine account. Sarah’s lifestyle and comedic videos helped her grow her fan base into what it is today – more than 3 million on the three social media platforms combined. 

Emily Hawkins and Shane Gomez are juniors at Annandale High School working with the DMV-based Youthcast Media Group. YMG founder and former USA TODAY health policy reporter Jayne O’Donnell contributed to this report.  

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Let love and compassion guide our response to Joe Biden’s cancer diagnosis

Former president is diminished, but he and family deserve love and prayers

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(Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

When I heard Joe Biden had serious prostate cancer, I felt immediate compassion for him and his family. I am a prostate cancer survivor myself. Then I heard how Trump, and some of his MAGA Republicans, responded and was amazed at how they are able to constantly sink to new lows. Trump’s son posted on X “What I want to know is how did Dr. Jill Biden miss stage five metastatic cancer or is this yet another cover-up???” Clearly, they will never give up on being vile human beings. 

The equally disgusting Joe Scarborough had on a doctor who declared he positively knows Biden must have known about his cancer years ago, although he knows nothing about the case. The reality, coming from many specialists, is at this time only Biden’s doctors know when he was diagnosed, and whether he even had regular PSA tests done, and when. Based on the latest research, the American Urological Association (AUA) age guidelines are that they do not recommend routine PSA screening for men 70 or older. This is because prostate cancer is normally very slow growing, and if you were to be diagnosed after 70, you will likely die of something else. Then you had the felon in the White House talking about “stage nine” cancer. Is he really so dumb? Guess he is as he tries to prove it nearly every time he opens his mouth. Talk about diminished. 

Now is Biden diminished from what he was years ago? It is clear he is. Should the people around him have tried to hide that in order to have him run again, no! But the-then president’s hiding health issues is nothing new. Wilson was severely impaired and it is said his wife Edith ran the country for his last year in office. The same was said about Nancy Reagan when they hid Reagan’s Alzheimer’s. Kennedy hid his Addison’s disease and other infirmities, and Trump hid how sick he was from COVID, when being helicoptered to the hospital. Is it wrong to hide these things from the American public, yes, but clearly not unusual. Actually, the media is often complicit in this, which many said they were in Biden’s case. Then you have a guy like Jake Tapper who is happy to be complicit, so he can now write a book about it and make loads of money. Very sad.

I think the time has come in the case of Joe Biden, for us to just offer him and his family some love and prayers, and the hope he will be able to manage his cancer and live a long life. Then turn the page and deal with the things that will matter more to the lives of the American people today. 

Those are the things the felon in the White House, and his Nazi sympathizing co-president, along with the MAGA Congress, are trying to do to them. Things like taking away their healthcare, and thereby also causing the closure of some rural hospitals. Things like the mass firings of federal workers, including thousands of veterans. Things like making it harder for our veterans to access their healthcare by cutting services at the Veterans hospitals. Things like increasing costs for groceries, and other items, due to the felon’s ineffective use of tariffs. Things like seeing college costs go up, as foreign students who pay the full fare at most schools, are sent home or denied visas. Things like making it harder to file for social security by closing so many offices, and pretending to lower drug prices, but not really doing it. Things like cutting research looking for cures for cancer, Alzheimer’s, MS, HIV/AIDS, and a host of other diseases, which will hurt people for decades to come. Things like creating havoc in the world, and bowing down to dictators. Things like walking away from our allies and making the world a less safe place for all of us, including abandoning Ukraine, and cozying up to his friend Putin. I always believed Putin has some dirt on him. Trump said Zelenskyy would be responsible for WW III. But it’s Trump who will be, if it happens. Then we must put a focus on the idiot who is secretary of HHS, RFK Jr., and whether he will allow the flu and covid vaccines, being readied for the fall, to be available in a timely manner. Will he continue to disparage all vaccines, and by doing so, cause deaths here, and around the world. Things like abandoning the fight against climate change and thereby screwing the planet and future generations. 

These are the things the American public really needs to know about, and care about. It may have been wrong to hide Biden’s being diminished, but he is no longer in office, and he no longer impacts people’s lives on a daily basis. The felon in the WH does, and that is where the focus must be. 

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Frank Kameny’s legacy lives on

May 21 marks pioneering activist’s 100th birthday

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May 21 would have been Frank Kameny's 100th birthday. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

A first generation American from Queens, N.Y., Kameny was a decorated WWII veteran. With a prodigious 148 I.Q., he earned a Ph.D. in astronomy from Harvard University. In 1957 he was recruited by the Army Map Service, a pioneering agency in space exploration. 

In 1953 in the wake of McCarthyism, President Eisenhower issued Executive Order 10450 that prohibited homosexuals from military or civilian employment. Having nothing to do with workplace conduct, the Army learned that Kameny might be a homosexual. When confronted, he equivocated and was terminated. Unlike then thousands of other homosexuals terminated from government employment, Kameny fought back.

He took on the military and Civil Service Commission including being the first openly gay man to file an appeal about gay rights to the U.S. Supreme Court. He helped co-found and chair the Mattachine Society of Washington, the first gay rights organization in the nation’s capital.

He wrote letters to, among others, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. He founded and chaired the Eastern Conference of Homophile Organization, the nation’s first regional gay organization.

In the 1960s homosexuality, even with a consenting adult in the privacy of one’s bedroom was criminal. The police entrapped and extorted gay men. The American Psychiatric Association classified homosexuality as a mental illness. A bar could lose its license if there was more than one homosexual in their establishment. Homosexuals were considered dangerous, deviant and demented.

Kameny coined the phrase “Gay Is Good.” He organized picketing called Annual Reminders each July 4 from 1965 to 1969 at Independence Hall. The picketers were the first to call for gay equality. The 1965 Annual Reminder had 39 activists making it then the largest demonstration for gay rights. In the mid-1960s the country had an estimated 300 gay and lesbian activists.

He published a newsletter that became the Washington Blade, now the nation’s oldest LGBTQ weekly newspaper. Kameny and Barbara Gittings, the mother of the movement that demonstrated for the right to be heard at the 1971 American Psychiatric Association meeting. Their panel at the 1972 meeting with a masked psychiatrist using a pseudonym and voice modulator was so impactful that the APA created a panel to determine if homosexuality as a mental illness was based on science or discrimination. In 1973, that classification was removed.

He advised gays and lesbians who were the subject of discharge from federal government service. He identified test cases and referred them to the ACLU, Lambda Legal and other counsel. Slowly, but surely those cases began a process for LGBTQ equality.

His efforts led D.C. to be the first city to overturn its sodomy criminal laws. He helped found the first national LGBTQ organization, the North American Conference of Homophile Organizations. His efforts laid the groundwork for HRC and National LGBTQ Task Force.

After Stonewall in June 1969, he chaired a meeting of NY, Philadelphia and D.C. activists that authorized and helped organize to help remember Stonewall the first New York Pride Parade. He believed that Stonewall could be the movement’s Boston Tea Party. He marched in that 1970 parade holding a picket emblazoned with “Gay Is Good.”

He was the first out person to run for Congress as the D.C. delegate. Money left over from his campaign was used to fund the first gay rights television commercial. In July 1975, he was the first to be advised by the Civil Service Commission that it would eliminate homosexuality as a basis for not hiring or for firing a federal civilian employee. In 1977, he attended the White House’s first meeting with gays and lesbians.

Kameny died on Oct. 11, 2011, National Coming Out Day. He lived to see marriage equality approved in several states. He attended the signing by President Obama of the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” which enabled gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military. Kameny is buried in the Congressional Cemetery. On his tombstone is inscribed “Gay Is Good.” Over 70,000 of his documents are in the Library of Congress and picket signs from the pioneering demonstrations are housed in the Smithsonian Institution.

On May 21 LGBTQ national organizations gather in front of the Supreme Court. One hundred activists will each hold a candle for his 100th birthday. Fifteen national leaders will engage in picketing similar to the 1965 picketing at the White House and Independence Hall. They will honor Frank Kameny; celebrate the 10th anniversary of marriage equality (Obergefell v Hodges, 2015); and push back on those who would attempt to render us invisible, deny our history and undermine our equality. We will remember the nation’s loss when it fired a Harvard Ph.D. in astronomy because of his status as a homosexual. History repeats itself. This month the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the federal government to terminate transgender servicemembers solely because of their sexual orientation. How far we have come. How much farther we have to travel.

Malcolm Lazin is the national chair, Kameny 100. He is the executive director, LGBT History Month and executive producer of three LGBTQ documentaries including Gay Pioneers. He was an adjunct professor of LGBT History and Rights at New College of Florida. www.kameny100.org

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Returning to Alcatraz: Memory through a queer lens

Trump would like to ‘rebuilt and reopen’ notorious island prison

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Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay (Photo courtesy of Estuardo Cifuentes)

When I arrived at Alcatraz Island, what I felt wasn’t curiosity — it was discomfort. Standing before such a photogenic landscape, something felt off. As if the place was trying to erase what it truly was: a mechanism of punishment, a machine built to control and define who should be excluded. I couldn’t walk those corridors without thinking about what this place represents for so many of us: a symbol of how the state has decided, time and again, that some lives matter less.

As a queer person, what struck me wasn’t just the past Alcatraz holds — but how that past is still alive in today’s policies. As I looked into the empty cells, I thought about the many LGBTQIA+ people who have been punished simply for existing. People like Frank Lucas Bolt, the first prisoner of Alcatraz — not convicted for violence, but for “sodomy,” a label the legal system used to persecute gay men.

He was not the only one. For decades, being gay or trans was enough to end up in a federal prison or a psychiatric hospital. Not for a crime, but for defying the norm. The legal and medical systems worked hand in hand to suppress any deviation from prescribed gender and sexuality. In prisons, queer people were subjected to physical punishment, solitary confinement, and even conversion therapy. Alcatraz was not an exception — it was one of the system’s most brutal epicenters.

But the queer memory of this place isn’t found in tourist brochures. To uncover it, you have to read between the lines, search through archives that are never taught in schools, and listen to those who still carry the scars. Walking among those walls, I realized that remembering isn’t enough — we have to contest the meaning of memory itself. What isn’t told, is repeated.

That’s why, when a few weeks ago President Trump said he’d like to “rebuild and reopen Alcatraz,” I didn’t take it as just another symbolic gesture. I took it as a warning. In times of crisis, punishment becomes an easy offer: lock them up, expel them, make them disappear. And in that narrative, queer, migrant, and racialized bodies are always the first to be targeted.

The danger isn’t just in the idea of a reopened prison, but in what it represents: The longing to return to a social order that was already deeply unjust. The nostalgia for “tough-on-crime” prisons is the same one that criminalizes unhoused people, persecutes migrants, and stigmatizes queer and trans youth in public spaces. Anyone who dreams of locking up more people isn’t thinking about justice — they’re thinking about control.

In 1969, a group of Native American activists occupied Alcatraz for over a year. They did it to denounce land theft and the government’s betrayal of treaties. During their occupation, they painted a message on the island’s water tower: “Peace and Freedom. Home of the Free Indian Land.” That gesture was a radical reclamation of space, a way of saying: this island can also be a place of resistance.

Alcatraz holds many layers. It was a high-security prison, yes, but it also became the stage for one of the most powerful acts of civil disobedience in the 20th century. That tension still lingers. The question is not just what happened at Alcatraz, but what we want it to represent today. A renewed model of punishment — or a site of memory that helps us prevent more harm?

As I walked its halls, I couldn’t stop thinking about the migrant detention centers that are still full today. About trans people held in inhumane conditions. About arbitrary detentions. About those of us who, like me, crossed borders just to survive. The distance between that Alcatraz and our present is not as wide as we’d like to believe. The walls may change, but punishment still operates on the same bodies.

Standing before the empty cells, I felt what many must have felt there: the weight of abandonment, the state’s mark upon their body, the feeling that their existence was a problem. But I also felt something else: conviction. The certainty that we will no longer walk into those spaces in silence. That we will not let ourselves be labeled as “mistakes” or “deviants.” That if they try to lock us up again, they will find us organized, with memory, with dignity.

Alcatraz does not need to be rebuilt. It needs to be understood. And we — queer, racialized, migrant communities — need to transform that understanding into action: to push back against hateful rhetoric, to protect those still living under threat, and to tell our full stories. Let no one be punished again for being who they are. Let history not become a locked cell once more.

The views expressed in this article are solely my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer, colleagues, or any affiliated organization. They are shared from a personal perspective shaped by lived experience and advocacy work.

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