Update on the Murder of Candra Keels #SayHerName

Candra Keels

Domestic violence within the LGBTQ community is a taboo topic. Much like family based violence, it is something that we disregard and shoosh off to the side of the conversation around the epidemic of violence sweeping through our community, particularly among QTPOC. In January, a 20 year-old young woman of color named Candra Keels was […]

Gary Has Lived in Northwest and Southwest PA As An Openly Gay Man #AMPLIFY

Gary Western Pennsylvania

Read the entire AMPLIFY LGBTQ Q&A archive. AMPLIFY LGBTQ is a new occasional series of blog posts designed to give a “signal boost” to the voices of our LGBTQ neighbors throughout Western Pennsylvania. We are using a Q&A format and will mostly avoid editing their responses. The questions, however, may change as we ask each […]

Happy Birthday Ledcat

Happy Birthday Ledcat

Today marks the birthday of the best person in the world – Laura Ellen Dunhoff aka Ledcat. We are off having adventures and enjoying the gift of being together so no blogging today.  

Unofficial Calendar of LGBTQ Pride Events in Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh Pride Calendar

I was pretty disgusted when I read that Iggy Azalea will be headlining Pride in The Streets, but not particularly surprised. Rather than recreate the wheel of all the reasons why you should be disgusted, I opted to focus on something else – the lack of information about the many *other* interesting things happening to […]

UPDATED: Free Summer Things To Do In Pgh 2015 Edition

Free Things To Do

Time for the annual round-up of free (or low-cost) things to do in Pittsburgh this summer. This is by no means comprehensive, just a sample of things we like to do or things that we’ve heard about from friends.   NEW this summer is Art City USA which is a pop-up, city-sized public arts festival […]

Where Would I Live?

If you were asked to spend a year living in a different location, where would you choose and why? So, my first impulse is to move to Europe. My very next thought is “what about the pets?” So I’m going to stick with a US location. My first choice would be Seattle and/or Portland. I’ve […]

The Bible That Got Away From Me

Think of a time you let something slide, only for it to eat away at you later. Tell us how you’d fix it today. It was August 1995. My good friends Charles and Julie were getting married. I traveled from Pittsburgh to their home in Atlanta (yes, in August) for the wedding. I was a […]

When Elder Dogs Stumble

My guys are 13 years, 2 months old this week. That’s a good long life for their breed mixes. Over the past two years, they have slowed down considerably. They stopped playing as much in the yard and began meandering or simply sitting to sniff the wind. They both had trouble navigating the steps to […]

Update on the Lives and Deaths of Britney Cosby and Crystal Jackson

Crystal Jackson and Britney Crosbey

The story of Britney Cosby and Crystal Jackson resonates through recent events even though they’ve been dead for more than ten months. Britney and Crystal were 24-year-old queer women of color from Houston. Their bodies were left near a dumpster, Crystal died of a gunshot wound and Britney due to severe head trauma. They were […]

A Thank You Note To Share from Persad Center

Rainbow Thank You Note

A lovely follow-up to a post I wrote earlier this week. One of the gentlemen from Persad’s SAGE program sent along this thank-you note (written at 4 AM on Boxing Day) in response to your generosity: Hi;I wish to thank you again for the lunch and the company. But I REALLY was floored by the […]