I was 21 years old when I walked into the offices of Chicago’s GayLife newspaper in the spring of 1984. Fresh out of journalism school, I had just learned about gay media and was excited that there might be a career ahead for an aspiring lesbian journalist. I had been afraid that being out would limit my choices — and it did. Fortunately, the only choice was the right fit for me.

When I started 40 years ago, I had no idea that 60 years prior, a postal worker named Henry Gerber joined forces with a few brave men to launch the country’s first gay-rights group, the Society for Human Rights, and the nation’s first known gay newsletter, Friendship & Freedom. The men were soon arrested, and their organization shut down.

But we can trace the descendants of gay media to those roots 100 years ago. There were some short-lived and long-running “homosexual” publications — from Lisa Ben’s Vice Versa to the Mattachine Review, The Ladder, Gay Community News, BLK, Lesbian Connection and hundreds more. These media especially thrived after the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion in New York City, in part because of the growing movement, and in part because the tools to produce media became more affordable and accessible.

Now, as many community media outlets are looking at ways to counter the narrative of a collapsing ecosystem, News is Out, a collaboration of six LGBTQ+ media representing more than 250 collective years of experience covering the community, is launching the first Local LGBTQ+ Media Giving Day Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2024, during LGBTQ History Month. The timing for this first annual event is to celebrate the 100-year anniversary work of Henry Gerber and his peers. 

Tax-deductible donations are being accepted now at https://givebutter.com/LGBTQequityfund. With one click, you can support six of the top LGBTQ+ outlets: Bay Area Reporter, Dallas Voice, Philadelphia Gay News, Tagg Magazine, Washington Blade and Windy City Times. News Is Out plans to expand the campaign in year two. 

LGBTQ+ media has always had a vital and symbiotic relationship with the LGBTQ+ movement. Since most mainstream media either ignored or vilified our community for most of the past century, media by and for us helped document, amplify and change the trajectory of our movement. Whether it was covering the joy and celebrations or making sure we had ways to advocate for our rights and safety, or when we covered the start of HIV/AIDS in a way that was empathetic and educational, the LGBTQ+ press has been there, on the front lines, writing the first draft of our history.

Forty years later, I still feel so lucky to have found my niche in LGBTQ+ media. When I walked into GayLife, tucked between a men’s bathhouse and a men’s leather bar, I had no idea that my own life, and the whole movement, would have made it this far in a relatively short period of time.

But if the next 40 years are to continue to bend the arc of the moral universe forward, we need to make sure LGBTQ+ media are here to document and amplify the fight.

Donate here: https://givebutter.com/LGBTQequityfund.

Tracy Baim is co-founder and owner of Windy City Times.

GayVeterans.us was launched in February 2024 and has rapidly grown, providing expansive support for the LGBTQ+ veterans community. Established by three LGBTQ veterans and a Rabbi ally, who were frustrated with the bigotry and discrimination in their Beirut veterans organization, they created a non-profit, charitable organization. This new venture offers a welcoming online community safe zone for all LGBTQ veterans, free from the discrimination they faced for more than 35 years. 

Initially a community resource directory, it has now blossomed into a fully fledged online community. Aa powerful journey of empowerment and unity with GayVeteransUS-Inc. and our dedicated website, GayVeterans.us. We are a community-driven platform passionately supporting over 1 million LGBTQ veterans, active-duty military, and allies across the United States. An organization at the forefront of LGBTQ advocacy within the LGBTQ veteran community. Here’s why our partnership is a game-changer:

Our impact extends beyond our website, reaching a diverse audience through our strong presence on major social media platforms. Within our portal, as a publisher with a versatile audience, we cover various sectors such as retail, travel, books, clothing, electronics, health & beauty, and more. GayVeterans.us was established and is continually managed by Bill Kibler, a completely hearing-impaired and disabled Marine veteran, alongside his fellow Beirut veteran, John Kiknslow, a survivor of the Beirut bombing on Oct. 23, 1983. Dedicated to aiding LGBTQ veterans, Bill and John ensure that their voices are heard and their needs addressed. They are supported by Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff, also a Beirut veteran and the first responder at the explosion site. 

Throughout his Navy tenure, he advocated for LGBTQ rights, even delivering the prayer at the 2010 presidential ceremony repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” His younger brother Joel, a renowned artist, succumbed to AIDS in 1986. Another LGBTQ veteran, Bonnie Tierney, is globetrotting during her retirement and plans to return to the States this fall. She regularly checks in to monitor our progress. As a proud non-profit organization based in Tennessee, we are in the process of securing IRS §501(c)(3) status. With our low operational expenses and utmost transparency, your contributions will enable us to expand our services and support LGBTQ veterans in a meaningful way.

Our newly launched community portal offers a safe space for LGBTQ veterans to connect, share experiences, and access valuable resources. With 45+ groups and user-created groups, forums, chatroom, videos, and more, our members have a platform to support one another. A safe space for LGBTQ veterans to connect, share experiences, and access valuable resources.

We have partnered with Wreaths Across America’s 2024 Campaign and will be assisting the San Francisco National Cemetery at the Presidio of San Francisco in remembering and honoring our LGBTQ veterans by laying Remembrance wreaths on the graves of our nation’s fallen heroes. All LGBTQ organizations are welcome and encouraged to register under our LGBTQ Veterans sponsorship umbrella. Details can be found on our website, gayveterans.us.

Based on the responses so far, I know we’re making an impact on LGBTQ veterans’ lives, and that’s the rewarding aspect of our efforts. We have lots more on the horizon.

GayVeteransUS-Inc. is a non-profit, charitable organization in the State of Tennessee and has applied for IRS §501(c)(3) status, allowing you to deduct donations as charitable contributions on your tax filings. GayVeterans.us is run by veteran volunteers, so our expenses are extremely low – no rent, no payroll, nothing fancy. Each year GayVeterans.us will file a publicly available Form 1099 with the IRS allowing you to see how money is spent.

Bill Kibler, a Marine veteran, manages GayVeterans.us.

“I stopped reading Facebook feeds,” one of my queer Jewish American friends told me. I won’t say their name, but they are one of the many who showed similar sentiments.

We were speaking about increasing antisemitism among the LGBTQ community, and they were devastated.

Unfortunately, recent events in the Gaza Strip caused a peculiar situation when all Jewish people are blamed for the brutal response of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government; and LGBTQ Jews faced microaggression and direct violence, get insulted and attacked, even at Prides. 

First and foremost, I want to say that indiscriminate slaughtering of Gazan civilians is definitely a war crime that should be condemned and avoided in the future, but there are a lot of articles written on this topic by others who are more competent on this topic. This time I deliberately wouldn’t discuss Hamas and Israeli politicians here, because this story is not about them — this story is about the way the LGBTQ community is treating their Jewish siblings right now.

There are not so many visible queer politicians among Netanyahu supporters, and they are not spending time in social media queer groups. 

Moreover, right-wing LGBTQ people with connections to the Israeli government don’t care much about LGBTQ communities in the US, the UK, or Russia. 

LGBTQ people who suffer from everyday antisemitism are the ones who need community the most. Unfortunately, we live in a world where many families don’t accept their LGBTQ children, and for many queer people, the LGBTQ community became the only family support they had. 

And now antisemitism is taking this support away.

Why political opposition toward the Israeli government turned into Middle Ages-style bigotry is a very good question that doesn’t have a simple answer. 

Double standards

For a person who is not deeply into political and social issues, this situation may seem quite typical. After all, people are often used to judging the whole nation based on what their government did, right? Actually, wrong.

As a person from Ukraine, I may say that I spoke a lot about the Russian-Ukrainian war with LGBTQ and progressive activists in the West, and most of them showed enormous levels of compassion to “ordinary Russians,” despite the fact that the vast majority of the Russian population supports the Russian-Ukrainian war. Moreover, even after Russia in 2022 deliberately bombed the Mariupol Theater with Ukrainian children inside, Russians en masse weren’t called “child killers” by the American and European LGBTQ communities, and Russian activists still welcomed at Prides.

So it is definitely not about bombing children.

Also, all LGBTQ organizations in the US, UK, and European Union known to me that now openly support Palestine and call themselves anti-Zionists have never openly spoken up against concentration camps, ethnic cleansing, and the genocide of Muslim Uyghur populations in East Turkestan, which is under Chinese occupation right now. 

But LGBTQ groups and activists have never called themselves anti-Chinese, didn’t create a “queer for Eastern Turkistan” movement, and didn’t push Chinese LGBTQ people on campus to condemn the actions of the Chinese government.

So, it is also not about fighting Islamophobia.

What is it about? I have been a refugee in three different countries, and I have been involved in LGBTQ activism in some way in Russia, Ukraine, the UK, and the US, and I may say that antisemitism in LGBTQ communities exists in all those countries in some way. 

And in different cultural contexts, antisemitism represents itself differently among LGBTQ people. 

Eastern European antisemitism 

Me and three other LGBTQ activists in 2018 held a small demonstration in the middle of St. Petersburg on Victory Day, a big state-promoted holiday when Russians celebrate the Soviet victory over Nazism. We were holding posters about the common threats between Nazi Germany and the modern Russian Federation, including the persecution of LGBTQ people.

Suddenly, a very respected-looking man came to us, blaming us for an anti-Russian Western conspiracy just because we criticized the Russian government, and then started to say that the Holocaust never happened. When I yelled back at this man, telling him that I’m partly Jewish and daring him to repeat his antisemitic accusation, the man announced that Jews “paid to live in Auschwitz, so later they would create their own state.”

No one said anything against this man, but Russians were angry with me for “spoiling a holiday.”

Holocaust denial and everyday antisemitism are extremely prominent in Eastern Europe, from Poland to Russia. It is especially strong in Russia.

Russian pride about “victory over Nazis” is not about fighting Nazi ideology, but rather about being proud of a Soviet legacy. Simplifying Nazis is bad only because they killed Russian Soviets.

Even in state Russian Orthodox Churches, you could buy the “Protocol of the Elders of Zion” Nazi propaganda book.

LGBTQ activists in Russia are generally less antisemitic than the majority of the population, but all the same, they were raised in this culture, so they allow themselves antisemitic jokes and sometimes share Russian supremacy ideas.

So, for them, anti-Zionism is just another, new, and more appropriate way to hate Jews, and they didn’t even try to hide antisemitic rhetoric, especially because many prominent Jewish LGBTQ people moved to Israel or to the US, so the community is mostly non-Jewish. 

Western European and American antisemitism

The situation is quite different in America and Western Europe.

“Why are you supporting Palestine in a way you have never supported people from other war zones, including any other Muslim lands?” I asked my friend and activist from Sheffield in the UK.

“Because there is a first time in modern history when a country committed such an attack against civilians!” They answered me. “Especially with our government’s support.”

I closed my eyes, suddenly remembering the Iraqi city of Mosul that was wiped out to the ground by US-led allies, killing not just ISIS fighters, but also peaceful townsfolk stuck under the occupation of the self-proclaimed “caliphate,” or the Syrian town of Baqhuz Fawqani, where families of ISIS fighters, including babies and pregnant women, were bombed together with Syrian civilians. 

And to mention, once again, Russian “clearing” operations and bombings in Chechnya and Ukraine, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s crimes against his own people in Syria, crimes committed by ISIS, or the ongoing war in Mali. 

My friend has no idea how wrong they were. 

Modern wars are extremely brutal, and there is an ongoing problem of dehumanizing enemies and war crimes that need to be solved. It’s a much broader problem than just Israeli‘s actions, but like one of my Jewish nonbinary friends is saying, “no Jews, no news.” 

Western antisemitism in the LGBTQ community, including the idea that all Jewish people are extremely privileged white oppressors, is based on a simple ignorance, no less than on prejudice. If in Russia I saw more activists who hate Jews and just want to be anti-Jewish in a modern way, in the UK and US LGBTQ community I saw more people who are generally caring about war crimes. But they refused to make their own analysis and refused to use the same standards for Jews that they use for other minorities — for example, not pushing them to condemn crimes they never committed.

The Palestinian rights movement has one of the biggest and more successful PR campaigns in modern history, while Jewish organizations failed to promote their agenda among non-Jewish populations.

“Most of them [LGBTQ activists and friends] don’t even know what Zionism is, to be really anti-Zionist,” my queer American friend noticed.

But, just like in Russia, some queer people are just bigots who now could show their hate publicly in a way that wouldn’t be condemned by their community.

Ayman Eckford is a freelance journalist, and an autistic ADHDer transgender person who understands that they are trans* since they were 3-years-old.