Q&A with Sara-Summer Oliphant, Candidate for PA State House District 39

Sara-Summer Oliphant

  We are revisiting our Political Q&A series for the upcoming elections of 2020. We’ve reached out to candidates who are pro-choice and pro-LGBTQ, asking them a series of questions about their campaigns. We’ve sent out about a dozen Q&A’s to folks and encourage you to suggest others. Candidates can be anywhere in Pennsylvania running for any […]

Q&A with Therapist Matthew Reinhart About Trauma During a Pandemic

Trauma

How are you doing? I feel the weight of the world so I reached out to some experts on trauma to offer some insight into navigating our personal challenges, our encounters with the anti-maskers, and more as queer people. These are really long reads because the topics are intense and novel (couldn’t resist.) I hope […]

Q&A with Blogger Mark S. King about Awards, HIV Storytelling, and Finding Hope in a Pandemic

Mark S. King GLAAD Award

As the reigning GLAAD OUTstanding LGBTQ Blog from 2019, it has been my duty to to pass the title and tiara to the 2020 winner, Mark S. King from My Fabulous Disease. While he’s been getting a lot of mileage from his Susan Lucci status as ‘always a bridesmaid, never a bride’ these past years, […]

Part Two – Plagued by Worry: An Historical Look at Pandemics in Four Parts

Part One can be read here. Part Two The Little Towns that Could (Quarantine) The bubonic plague made a large resurgence in Europe in the mid-1600s.  Venice was one of the first ports of entry.  Knowing their history, however, once it showed up, all boats were quarantined for a time outside of the harbor.  If […]

Q&A With Nina Ahmad, Candidate for PA Auditor General

We are revisiting our Political Q&A series for the upcoming elections of 2020. We’ve reached out to candidates who are pro-choice and pro-LGBTQ, asking them a series of questions about their campaigns. We’ve sent out about a dozen Q&A’s to folks and encourage you to suggest others. Candidates can be anywhere in Pennsylvania running for […]

Castiel, 36, is Bisexual and Gender Fluid in Westmoreland County #AMPLIFY

Bisexual, gender fluid, Westmoreland County

Name: Castiel Hess Age: 36 County of Residence: Westmoreland Pronouns: He, him, his How do you describe your identity? Bi-sexual, gender fluid Please describe your coming out experience. Where did you find support? What challenges did you face?  I let a few close people know slowly out of fear of judgment. It actually took me a really long time […]

Will Pittsburgh’s LGBTQ Mental Health Center merge with a non-LGBTQ health organization?

Persad Allies Merger

I was informed today that Persad Center faces a dire choice due to finances – either merge with the much larger Allies for Health + Wellbeing (formerly known as the Pittsburgh AIDS Task Force) or face potential closure altogether. Without any timeframe for this, I have to make immediate decisions about my mental health treatment […]

Persad Staff Vote to Unionize Their LGBTQ Mental Health Agency in Pittsburgh

The workers at Persad Center, the LGBTQ mental health and community center founded in 1972, voted affirmatively to unionize with the United Steelworkers (USW) on Thursday, December 5, 2019. The Persad Staff Union now joins the ranks of other white collar workers including the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh employees. That’s an interesting aside given that […]

The Persad Staff Union Q&A

The overworked, underpaid staff who have repeatedly resisted the board and consistently shown that have zero faith in their board leadership. They’ve posted open letters to the board. They have demands. They organized a door decorating contest to demonstrate their cohesion. They value and respect their current Executive Director, Carlos Torres, and seem to believe […]

Rural PA LGBTQ&A with West Branch Pride Organizers in Williamsport, Lycoming County

West Branch Susquehanna River Pride

This is part of a new occasional series exploring LGBTQ organizing in rural Pennsylvania communities. After our recent driving trip through the PA Wilds communities, I was impressed that after an almost complete lack of queer visibility, a slew of new LGBTQ projects unfolded in my feed – a Pride event in Elk County, a […]