Let’s be honest: most local summer music guides read like they were written by someone who’s never been to a show. A few safe headliners. Maybe a festival or two. So we made our own and put it all in one place for easy reference. This is RVA Magazine’s...
The U.S. State Dept. on Thursday quietly published a notice in the Federal Registerannouncing it creating a new commission to provide "fresh thinking" about "natural law and natural rights," which is the religious right's code for anti-LGBTQ. The "Commission on Unalienable Rights" will "provide fresh thinking about human rights...
Behind every gay man, there is a great woman -- or, more accurately, great women. Joe Biden said of Will and Grace that the show “did more to educate the American public than almost anybody’s ever done so far.” And he was absolutely right. The sitcom was indeed groundbreaking, because it normalized gay people to American audiences. Yet, perhaps...
Every Monday throughout June, The Byrd Theatre will celebrate Pride Month with #MonGays, a series spotlighting the LGBTQ community. This week, Kenyan film Rafiki kicks off the month in memorable fashion. When was the last time you witnessed history unfolding and actually felt like humanity at its core was good? When was the last time you felt the...
Richmond drag performer Sweet Pickles describes herself as a "dancing troll with an AC Moore rewards card." Claire Gates has a busy theater career. But whenever she finds time, she paints her face, dons a wig made from yarn, and becomes Sweet Pickles, a rising star in Richmond’s ever-growing drag scene. “The way I like to describe myself is like...
In Critiques For The Culture's latest contribution to GayRVA, Taneasha White and Brooke Taylor examine TheatreLAB's An Octoroon, and ask: Did this play about racial relations in the 19th century -- and today -- achieve its intended goal? Critiques for The Culture is a conversational podcast and radio show (on WRIR and WRWK) that focuses on...
Why is a public school being housed in a building owned by a church, and how can it be required to not do anything that would violate "Catholic moral values, ethics and faith"? A New Jersey taxpayer-funded public charter school run by a private non-profit organization has the Catholic Church for its landlord. Last week administrators at the...
The attacks from this administration just do not stop. On Friday, Trump's Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) proposed a rule that seems calculated to have devastating effects on LGBTQ health care in the United States. Roger Severino, who is the director of HHS's Office of Civil Rights -- and, probably not coincidentally, a known...
RPS and Side By Side worked together in order to make school a more inclusive place for Richmond's LGBTQ students. At last Monday's meeting of the School Board for Richmond Public Schools, the school district presented the first draft of a revision to the school system's Student Code of Responsible Ethics (SCORE). And one of the most important...
This callous move affects a population significantly more likely to experience homelessness than the general population. On Wednesday, Trump's Department of Housing And Urban Development (HUD) released a proposal for a revised rule that would pave the way for homeless shelters to refuse accomodation to homeless people on the basis of gender...
