Opinions
My Celebrity BEYOND transatlantic cruise continues
Happy hours, stellar performances, politics, and more
Celebrity BEYOND Transatlantic Cruise: Blog #5
Day 6, our first sea day, dawned windy and cool and the boat was rocking. But that didn’t stop most of us from enjoying the day. There is lots to occupy your time on the Celebrity Beyond every minute of the day. Or if you are like me, it is a day of relaxing, reading, eating, and drinking. A hard life, but someone has to live it.
After spending time in the morning writing, I again headed to the gym. This time it was empty and three of the four lifecycles were available when I got there. The woman on the one next to me kidded we were not only doing leg work, but with the rocking motion of the ship, were doing some core work. Hey, a two for one exercise is always good. After the gym I headed back to the Retreat lounge for my usual cappuccino. The waiters there are nice. The Cappuccino machine was broken but the waiter said if I could wait a little, he was sure it would work. Well since I had nothing but time, that was fine, and about fifteen minutes later, he came over with a smile and my cappuccino. A few of the gang were there and we again headed to Luminae for lunch. Due to the rocking of the ship, it was not quite as full as the first time.
The rest of the day was nice and lazy. I read, walked around the ship getting in some of my steps; hey my Apple watch keeps reminding me to do them. I then found a nice place to sit and read above the Eden lounge. Then before I knew it was time to change, and head to the LGBTQ happy hour. It was better attended than I thought it would be considering some of our group was a little under the weather, suffering mild cases of sea-sickness. The boat was really rocking and it made walking a little difficult. I should mention we had begun turning back our watches every other evening; the goal to be on US time when we arrive back in Ft. Lauderdale, thereby avoiding any jet lag. It is why I like traveling east to west. On the nights when the ship was really rocking, it meant extra time tossing and turning for some.
After a short time at happy hour, I headed to the Retreat lounge to meet with Christophe, the Hotel Director. We chatted about several things including why the luggage was delivered late, to the art installations on the ship. He remembered we had met last year on APEX, and appreciated my comments. He is working closely this year with Dustin and Scott, helping them with their parties. He realizes they have over 100 guests, many in the Retreat. Watching Christophe do his job, it is clear Celebrity is really lucky to have him.
I then joined many in our group and headed to the theater to see Jesse Hamilton, Jr., a very talented singer. My review is he was trying too hard to involve the audience, and spending a lot of time giving us his resume. He didn’t need to do that, as he is very talented. The big decision for most evenings is whether to go to the 7pm show, and do dinner after, or dinner first, and go to the 9pm show. After the 7pm show, Paul, Ken, and I headed to our first dinner at Eden. Paul’s other half, John, was a little under the weather and didn’t join us. Eden is interesting.
There is a tasing menu, eight courses, with wine pairings, which they try to charge an enormous amount for. Then there is the regular menu, which is covered by what you paid when you reserved the specialty restaurants. Basically, the food choices on both sides of the menu are the same, and on the regular menu you can try all the appetizers. Either way, the food is great. The chef was pointed out to us, his name is David. He looked vaguely familiar but I wasn’t sure from where.
All-in-all it was the best meal I had onboard thus far. Then I stayed in the Eden lounge for the 10:45 show. It was called Dreams. The aerialists had their part of the show curtailed as the ship really was rocking too much for them to go flying.
After the show some headed to the Martini Bar, but I headed back to the cabin. My first sea day over. I looked forward to the next five. Sea days are really my favorite time on the ship.
Celebrity BEYOND Transatlantic Cruise: Blog #6
Day 7, our second sea day, dawned very windy and the boat was still rocking. My room service waiter brought breakfast on time at 7:30; my coffee, bagel, and orange juice. This time I added a banana to make myself feel more virtuous. After writing for a couple of hours I headed back to the gym. Again, it was fairly empty and a lifecycle was immediately available. I do thirty minutes on it each day, trying to keep my knees in shape. After all, I have had two knee replacements. I am always thankful we live in a time when we can get replacement body parts. Once again, my destination after the gym is the retreat lounge for my cappuccino. This time the machine was working and I sat with some of our group and ended up talking politics. Most of our group know I write a regular political column for the Washington Blade, so they often ask for my thoughts. Someone said to me, “Oh, you are a journalist,” to which I replied “No, I am a columnist, and that is very different, I give opinions.” Since we are nearly all members of the LGBTQ+ community in our group of about 100, we tend to share many of the same views. I always enjoy the discussions but must admit with the way the world is today, they can get very depressing.
Today was the day I had arranged to meet Vladyslav, one of the aerialists, to interview him. We had agreed to meet at 4:00pm in the back of the Ocean Café, near the pizza stand. I was looking forward to it. I had invited him to join me after the interview at the Sea Day party Dustin and Scott, of My Lux Cruise, our travel agents extraordinaire, hosted in their Iconic suite. But he, like all the entertainment crew, needed to get special permission to attend a guest’s party.
Even though Captain Leo and Christophe said they could. He said he would try to get permission for our next party, a sail-away party from Bermuda. I told him he could invite the entire cast after getting permission from Scott to do that.
I had a great interview with him. He told me his friends call him Slavik which is what he uses on his Instagram. I learned much about him and his family, some of who are still in Ukraine. His parents are now in Poland but his god-father is in the military and his cousins and their children are still in Ukraine, in the Kherson area.
Slavik spent some time at the beginning of the war there as well. While he was not in the military, he was a volunteer. I learned he began his gymnastics career at the age of 4 and has gone on to compete in a European, and two world championships, the last in China in 2016, in sports acrobatics. He is quite an amazing young man and I intend to write up the interview.
Then it was off to the party in the Iconic suite. It was crowded and as the evening progressed the weather got a little better so people could be on the big deck of the suite. There was a short moment when I got a great picture of the sunset.
Captain Leo and Christophe were there, but we had all hoped Captain Kate would show, but she didn’t. After the party I had dinner in Luminae with Kenny, Tom, and their friends. At one point as dinner began, Tom started feeling a little sick and headed back to his cabin. The ship was definitely rocking, and after dinner I called it an evening and headed back to my cabin and read for a while. Turned on the TV and watched MSNBC which I never do at home. We had been told by the Captain the weather would now start to get better in the next days, and we were all looking forward to that.
Celebrity BEYOND Transatlantic Cruise: Blog #7
Day 8 of our cruise dawned a little smoother, and it was warmer. I woke up early and started writing my column for the Blade which was going to be submitted late because I was going to wait to hear the results of the Tuesday elections. The top of the column would have to wait for results, but the rest was going to be about the irrelevant poll the New York Times had released showing Biden down in six of the swing states. Politics was going to be the conversation of the next two days, even in the middle of the Atlantic.
But that wouldn’t be the whole of my day. Breakfast was delivered to the room as always and after a couple of hours of writing, which included drafting of the column based on the interview I had done with Slavik, I headed to the gym. It was fairly empty and my lifecycle was available. It was a good hour in the gym, and then it was back to the retreat lounge to treat myself to my morning cappuccino, and conversation with friends. This was going to be the first day we thought we could head to the sun deck. It was going to be a great day to sit outside. The new deck in the retreat was beautiful. Deck 17 had various areas to sit with full lounges and chairs with great comfortable cushions. It was nice to feel the sun on my body. I even treated myself to a strawberry daiquiri, the first such drink I had since my last cruise. I am not a drinker but daiquiris and mudslides go down like milkshakes, and are perfect when sitting in the middle of the Atlantic. I do tend to stay away from them during the rest of the year. But since I have invested in the ‘premium’ drink package it would be wasteful not to partake.
The day went by quickly, and suddenly it was 3pm and I headed to the Comedy show in the theater. The comedian, Jeff Stevenson, is English, and very funny. For some reason I haven’t always put those two things together. It was billed as an 18+ show but the humor was very clean and could have been for all ages. The theater was packed to the rafters for the show. After, I headed back to the cabin to read and relax, after-all it had been a hard day, lol. Then got ready for happy hour and a second dinner at Eden with Ken, Paul and this time John joined us. It has been the best food on the ship by far. This time as we were leaving after finishing another superb dinner, the chef, David, was standing at the entrance podium. I took the occasion to find out why he looked so familiar. Turned out he had been the chef at Eden on the EDGE when I traveled on it before the pandemic. I had met him the first night of that cruise, when he came to our table to chat, along with the food and beverage manager at the time. I told him we thought the food at Eden was again as great as it was that first time.
After dinner we stayed in the Eden lounge to see the Decadence show, with the Aerialists, Slavik and Vlad. The entire cast is great, really good singers and dancers, but some felt the show didn’t quite live up to its name. Guess they were hoping to see more skin or something. I really enjoyed the show. By that time, it was nearly midnight and way past my bedtime. So, when some of the gang headed to the Martini Bar and the casino, I went to my cabin. Tomorrow was going to be election day back home.
Celebrity BEYOND Transatlantic Cruise: Blog #8
It was Day 9 of our cruise. Time was going too quickly. It was also Election Day back home, and again it was part of the conversation all day. But it didn’t stop anyone from having fun. The day began for me as always with room service breakfast. Some think returning from a trip to Europe involves jet lag, but that is ameliorated when coming back by ship. But the real change for me, is when I wake up that first day at home, no one is knocking at the door at 7:30 with my coffee, juice, and a bagel. I actually have to walk a full block to Java House to get my coffee. To be honest, I never have a bagel at home, that is reserved for my cruises where overeating seems to be ok.
After a little writing, I once again headed to the gym to assuage the guilt of the bagel, and whatever else I would eat during the day. Sitting on the Lifecyle, and peddling, watching the ocean through the windows, I was surprised when it started to rain. Watching the rain slide down the windows as the ship continues to move forward, is kind of cool. But it meant no sundeck today. Didn’t stop me from treating myself to cappuccino after the gym. Today I was going to meet Scott and Dustin for lunch at Raw on Five, the great sushi restaurant on the ship. I was pleasantly surprised when Mark and his mom, and Piotr and his sister, Tatiana, joined us. Mark and Piotr, who insists he is a Peter, are great guys, who I had met on previous cruises and had dinner with when they visited DC. Scott and Dustin, as always, were great hosts and the food in the restaurant is always great and plentiful. The conversation included discussing a potential future cruise to the Norwegian Fjords which I was pushing Scott to investigate. It is another place on my bucket list.
After lunch it was another wonderful, and lazy, afternoon. Some more reading, and a look at MSNBC to see what they were predicting about the elections. TV viewing is limited on the ship. They have MSNBC to balance FOX and BBC. I have come to believe BBC is very right-wing.
Then it was suddenly happy hour time again. After happy hour some of us headed to the theater to see the magician, Matt Johnson. I had seen him on America’s Got Talent do a Houdini type escape from the water. Turns out he is a very likable guy, also English, now living in Vancouver, Canada, with loads of tattoos. He did levitate a woman he selected from the audience, and then escaped from a straight jacket while hanging upside down with an electric saw threatening him, if he couldn’t reach the bottom to stop it within 60 seconds. Thankfully he did, or his next show, which he had already been paid for, couldn’t have happened.
Seriously, it was a good show. After the show Mary, Nancy, and I headed to the Cosmopolitan restaurant, one of the four main dining rooms, and had a relaxed dinner. After dinner I wandered around the ship, headed to the Martini Bar to see who was around, but realized I was very nervous about the elections, and headed back to the cabin and turned-on MSNBC and brought up the New York Times on my computer to wait for results. MSNBC was going to have Steve Kornacki on with his running commentary on the chances each candidate had, as the results started to come in.
As the polls started closing at 7 p.m. East Coast Time, that was about 10 p.m. ship time, it was quickly becoming clear that Democrats were going to have a good night. The first race he called was Andy Beshear (D) winning reelection by a good margin in Kentucky, a very red state. I was still holding my breath for Virginia and hoping voters there would hand a defeat to MAGA Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin. When it was clear they did, I went back to the column I was preparing for the Blade and headlined it: “Virginia is for lovers, and Democrats.” By the time I turned off the TV at about 1 a.m. I knew it had been a good night for Democrats.
The state of Tennessee has a long history of political discrimination against its 225,000 LGBTQ citizens. In 2019, a district attorney remarked that gay people should not receive domestic violence protections, and in 2023, for five months in Murfreesboro, homosexual acts in public were illegal, prompting a federal judge to have the ordinance removed.
In 2022, I briefly lived in Tennessee and played rugby with the LGBTQ-inclusive Nashville Grizzlies, who welcomed me with open arms as an ally, teaching me that rugby isn’t always about winning or losing – it’s about creating a safe, inclusive, and joyful space for people looking to feel welcome.
In Tennessee, where 87% of the LGBTQ community has experienced workplace discrimination, and where, each year, countless bills that target their identities are introduced, it can be difficult to feel welcome. The Nashville Grizzlies played rugby with the exuberance of newly liberated people who were finally able to be their authentic selves. I was inspired by their brotherhood.
When I read about the Charlie Kirk Act being passed last week, I felt a visceral need to write about it.
While the bill is presented as legislation that strengthens free speech and encourages greater public discourse on campuses, it would effectively allow a school to expel a student who felt compelled to walk out on a speaker with hateful views, forcing marginalized groups to sit through existentially harmful rhetoric.
And ironically, it doesn’t seem like free speech goes both ways — a Tennessee University administrator lost their job last year for sharing negative views on Charlie Kirk, and countless LGBTQ books have been banned not only in schools, but even in adult libraries.
We like to think that as time moves forward, progress is inevitable, but this isn’t always the case. In a 2023 study, 27% of LGBTQ Tennesseans and 43% of transgender people in the state have considered relocating, forcing them to reckon with leaving home in pursuit of a better life. Nashville Grizzlies Captain Ethan Thatcher told me, “I’ve thought about leaving Tennessee. Hard not to when the government does not want you here. What has kept me here is the Grizzlies community, and the thought that existence is resistance.”
Everybody in our country deserves to feel safe. I thought that was a core value of the American ethos, but apparently, in some states, certain groups are welcome while others are ostracized.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee should reject the Charlie Kirk Act.
Tyler Kania is a 2025 IAN Book of the Year nominated author and civil rights activist from Columbia, Conn.
Opinions
The latest Supreme Court case erasing LGBTQ identity
Chiles v. Salazar a major setback for movement
In its recent decision in Chiles v. Salazar, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated Colorado’s law prohibiting licensed counselors from engaging in efforts to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of minors. The decision, which puts into question similar laws in 22 other states, relied on the First Amendment to hold that the law violates counselors’ free speech rights. But the decision also strikes a blow against LGBTQ dignity, a point the court’s opinion does not even address.
The eight-member majority, which included Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, who usually side with LGBTQ groups, justified its reasoning by suggesting that the law was one-sided: it permitted treatment that affirms LGBTQ identity but forbade treatment that seeks to change it. But the law is one-sided, as Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s lone dissent pointed out, because the medical evidence only supports one side: reams of research show that “survivors of conversion therapy continue to suffer from PTSD, anxiety, and suicidal ideation.” And major medical associations all agree, no evidence demonstrates the efficacy of conversion efforts. This isn’t surprising. Medicine often take sides — some treatments work, and some don’t.
But particularly concerning is the vision of LGBTQ identity that undergirds the majority opinion when compared to the dissent. Justice Jackson’s dissent explains that LGBTQ identity is simply “a part of the normal spectrum of human diversity” — not something to be “cured.” By contrast, for the majority, how best to help LGBTQ minors is “a subject of fierce public debate.” That can hardly be the case if LGBTQ identity stands on equal ground with straight, cisgender identity, or if LGBTQ people are as deserving of safety, rights, and dignity.
Indeed, the LGBTQ rights movement only began in earnest when advocates in the 1960s decided to end the “debate” over gay identity. Until then, community leaders would routinely cooperate with psychiatrists who were interested in researching homosexuality as a medical condition. A new generation of activists, led by Frank Kameny, a key movement founder, began arguing that this got the issue upside down: Rather than wondering if they could be “cured,” LGBTQ people had to assert a right to their identity. As Kameny put it—“we have been defined into sickness.” Only once the case was made that it was society that had to change, and not LGBTQ people, could LGBTQ consciousness, LGBTQ pride and LGBTQ rights develop. Their activism led to the first Pride parade in New York, and the official declassification of homosexuality as a disease in 1973.
The Supreme Court’s conservatives don’t just want to reignite this half-century old medical “debate”; they also treat medical claims that undermine LGBTQ identity very differently from those who support it. Last year, in an opinion backingTennessee’s law that banned gender affirming care for minors, the court sympathetically marched through the reasons Tennessee offered for “why States may rightly be skeptical” of such care, and cited three times, in some detail, to “health authorities in a number of European countries” (that is, some Nordic countries and the UK) that had curbed pediatric care. It failed to mention that most of Western Europe and every major American medical association provides access to this care.
In Chiles, by contrast, the court cites none of the evidence that Colorado amassed that conversion therapy harms LGBTQ children. None of the countries that the court had invoked to justify anti-trans policies allow conversion therapy in their health care systems (indeed, one of them criminalizes such practices). So rather than cite medical evidence, the court simply asked — why trust medical evidence at all? “What if,” asks the court, “reflexive deference to currently prevailing professional views [does] not always end well?” and cites an infamous 1927 Supreme Court case, Buck v. Bell.
In Buck, the Supreme Court embraced eugenic reasoning, backing a eugenic state law that allowed the sterilization of individuals with mental disabilities, on the grounds that such disabilities were hereditary. As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes opined, “three generations of imbeciles are enough.” Look at what happens when we listen to medical expertise, today’s court seems to say, as an excuse to disregard the LGBTQ-affirming medical evidence they don’t like.
But the court has missed the key lesson of Buck. The law at issue in Buckdiscriminated against a certain group, seeking, through sterilization measures, to erase it from existence. Indeed, LGBTQ people (whom doctors of the day would have referred to as sexual “inverts”) were exactly the kind of people that the eugenic program of Bucksought to eliminate. Conversion therapy seeks similar erasure.
The lesson of the 1960s LGBTQ rights movement remains as relevant today as it was then. Without an unapologetic LGBTQ identity, LGBTQ Pride, LGBTQ rights and the LGBTQ movement itself can all founder. By supporting only the anti-LGBTQ side in this medical saga — and by suggesting that LGBTQ existence is subject to medical debate at all — the court is reaffirming, rather than repudiating, minority erasure.
Craig Konnoth is a professor of law at University of Virginia School of Law.
I was disappointed when the Blade didn’t publish my response to a personal attack on me in a column by Hayden Gise, in last week’s print edition. They did publish it online. To be clear, I have no problem with people disagreeing with my columns and opinions. That is absolutely fair. But when they get into personal attacks, it often means they don’t have enough to say about the ideas they are trying to criticize.
In a recent column ‘Why the Democratic Socialists of America are right for D.C.,’ the author decided to attack me personally. Here is the response I wrote to her column:
“I am responding to a column by Hayden Gise who says in her column she is a transgender, lesbian, Jewish, Democratic Socialist, and supports having the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in Washington, DC. She is definitely as entitled to her view on this, as I am to mine. However, I was surprised she clearly felt it important to use the column to attack me personally, without even knowing me. What she didn’t do is respond to the issues in the DSA platform I wrote having a problem with, and which I asked candidates endorsed by the DSA to respond to. 1. Are they for the abolishment of the State of Israel? 2. What is their definition of a Zionist? 3. What is their definition of antisemitism? 4. Will they meet with Zionist organizations? 5. Do they support BDS? One needs to know when a candidate claims they are only a member of the local DSA, according to the DSA bylaws no person can be a member of a local DSA without being a member of the national organization. So Hayden Gise has a little better idea of who I am she should know: I was a teacher and a union member. I worked for the most progressive member of Congress at the time, Bella S. Abzug (D-N.Y.), and supported her when she introduced the Equality Act in 1974, to protect the rights of the LGBTQ community, and have fought for its passage ever since. I have spent a lifetime fighting for civil rights, women’s rights, disability rights, and LGBTQ rights. I have no idea what Hayden Gise’s background is, or what her history of working for the causes she espouses is. But I would be happy to meet with her to find out. But she should know, I take a back seat to no one in the work I have done over my life fighting for equality, including economic equality, for all. So, I will not attack her, as I don’t know her, and contrary to her, don’t personally attack people I don’t know much about.
“I have, and will continue to attack, what the government of Israel is doing to the Palestinian people, and now to those in Lebanon and Iran. I will also attack the government of my own country, and the felon in the White House, and his sycophants in Congress, for what they are doing to our own people, and people around the world, and will continue to work hard to change things. However, I will also continue to stand for a two-state solution with the continued existence of the State of Israel, calling for a different government in Israel. I also strongly support the Palestinian people and believe they must have the right to their own free state.”
I have not heard from Gise, but I hope she knows that since she wrote her column indicating her support for Janeese Lewis George for mayor, her preferred candidate has attended a birthday party to celebrate a person who still refers to gay people as ‘fags.’
We should not personally attack people we don’t know as a way to criticize their views on an issue. Once again, I have no problem with people disagreeing with what I write, and having the Blade publish those contrary columns. But a plea to all who disagree with any columnist, or story: disagree with the issues and refrain from making personal attacks on the writer. That actually takes away from whatever point you are trying to make.
Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist.
Australia lifts additional restrictions on LGBTQ blood donors
Top EU court strikes down Hungary’s anti-LGBTQ propaganda law
Tennessee’s Charlie Kirk Act is harmful
Victory Fund brunch draws top LGBTQ officials, 2028 hopeful Andy Beshear
Inside the lonely world of MAGA gay men
Calendar: April 17-23
Team DC’s annual gala set for this weekend
The latest Supreme Court case erasing LGBTQ identity
Judge rescinds stay-away order in Capital Pride anti-stalking case
