This story was originally published in Virginia Pride Guide 2025. Virginia Pride Festival 2025 is presented with the support of Out RVA, Allianz, Hit Play, Virginia Lottery, CarMax, Bank of America, CoStar Group,...
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Celebrate Summer at Diversity Richmond with Safe Space RVA
Safe Space RVA's Summerfest is coming to Diversity Richmond this weekend, and if you haven't checked them out yet, this is a perfect opportunity. Safe Space RVA was founded in the past year by several local queer activists, makers, and small business owners, who put it together to be both a monthly community market and a safe community space in...
Black Pride RVA 2022 Is In Full Swing!
Five years ago, Black Pride RVA became the first Black LGBTQ event in the state of Virginia. Created and hosted by Us Giving Richmond Connections (UGRC), Black Pride RVA came into being in order to celebrate the unique intersection of identities experienced by all Black LGBTQ people, to promote equality for Black LGBTQ people within the broader...
One Last Thing Before We Go: More Sights From Hampton Roads Pride Fest
Pride Month is over for another year, and that's a bummer especially in 2022, when the forces of hate are on the march and the Supreme Court has all of us running scared. Scared that in another year or two our marriages, maybe even our rights to be in loving relationships, will disappear. It's rough, and honestly, I can't think about it for long...
Hampton Roads Pride Fest: Thanks, I Needed That
We're only halfway through 2022, and already it's been a rough year for the LGBTQ community. While overt attacks on transgender people in particular have been happening for a while now, legal actions by states like Texas and Alabama have outright made it unsafe for trans youth and their families to even live in those states. Then, on Friday, June...
Supreme Court Conservatives Say Taxpayers Must Fund Anti-LGBTQ Religious Private Schools
The Supreme Court voted 6-3 that it’s unconstitutional for a state government to withhold taxpayer funds from religious schools. The case, Carson v. Makin, involved two Maine families who were denied state tuition assistance because they wanted to enroll their kids at a private Christian school that provides religious teaching. The state’s...
‘Manufacturing Hysteria’: Activist Who Weaponized CRT Tells Conservatives to Make Drag Queens ‘More Lurid’
Christopher Rufo, the far right activist who intentionally turned a college-level school of thought to examine social structures for systemic racism into a fear-mongering right-wing nationwide panic, is now focusing his attacks on LGBTQ people, by effectively weaponizing transgender identity. Rufo, a senior fellow at the right-wing Manhattan...
Biden Order: It Is the Policy of the U.S. Gov’t. to ‘Defend the Rights and Safety of LGBTQI+ Individuals’
President Joe Biden has declared it is the policy of the United States Government to defend the “rights and safety” of LGBTQI+ individuals in a historic executive order that encompasses several executive branch agencies and extends that policy into international areas. It effectively directs the federal government to use its...
Punchline Pride: An Interview With Apple Brown Betty
Hello reader! It’s Pride month and Sandman Comedy Club has a show for and by the local LGBTQ community. Punchline Pride is this Sunday, and will feature a lineup representing different faces of the community’s funniest comedians in Richmond. I’ve seen most of the lineup at different shows around town, and they all kill. I got to talk with...
Pushing Us Back Into The Closet: Banned Books Edition
Two prominent Virginia Republicans are trying to have Maia Kobabe's Gender Queer declared obscene and prohibited to be sold or lended to minors. Is it really obscene, though, or is it the graphic memoir's open and unapologetic depiction of nonbinary identities and experiences that's the issue? We decided to see for ourselves. Last week, the...
