Pride

Thursday

Philip Patrick

Will FIFA cancel its LGBTQ Pride match for Iran and Egypt?

FIFA looks set to face its first major scandal of the 2026 World Cup – if you don’t count the exorbitant cost of the tickets, that is. The Egyptian FA has made a formal request for the cancellation of an LGBTQ+ celebration planned to take place at their Group G game against Iran on June 26 in Seattle. The game roughly coincides with the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots of 1969. The Seattle Pride match committee are planning to combine celebrations of the anniversary with the game.  A Pride match or Pride night is a tradition in American sports going back to around the year 2000 and is now embraced by most professional leagues. These events usually involve a particular game being dedicated to certain communities.

Tuesday

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

Queers for Palestine burst Pride

The annual Ottawa Pride rally was cancelled on Sunday after the group, Queers for Palestine, blocked the parade, owing to the refusal of the organizers, Capital Pride, to agree to the demands of “pro-Palestine” activists. Among the demands was for Capital Pride to back a complete boycott of Israel, and for Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe to apologize for not attending last year’s parade, which was described by Jewish groups as more a ‘protest against Israel’ than a rally for LGBT rights.

Queers for Palestine

Wednesday

Ella Whelan

It’s hard to take Pride

For the entirety of June each year, companies and institutions go rainbow for Pride. But this year, social media seems a little less awash with multicoloured flags – and fewer and fewer companies have bothered with their annual logo change. Could it be that we have all, finally, tired of this mandatory rainbow charade? Donald Trump has certainly made his feelings known. World Pride was held in Washington DC this year. An awkward stage for the annual global celebration considering that when asked what his position was on Pride, Trump’s spokesperson said that the president was "fostering a sense of national pride that should be celebrated daily". Eek.

Pride
salvador ramos
Peter Van Buren

Salvador Ramos and our crisis of masculinity

There's a well-done, nasty piece of filmmaking available on Hulu right now called Pistol, ostensibly a Sex Pistols biopic but so much more. The series is only partially about the Pistols themselves and more about the post-war Britain that formed them. Pistol seems to suggest that all that anger and despair was going to have to come out somewhere, either repressed and hidden, crunched deep down inside, or allowed to lance out as "music," more screaming than lyrical. I wonder if America isn't somewhere similar. Post-war Britain was a terrible place to grow up.

Wednesday

Ella Johnson

On the ground with drag queens on Capitol Hill

A group of around thirty people gathered on the lawn of the United States Capitol Building to hear speeches from three drag queens on Tuesday. MoveOn Political Action organized the event to champion the Equality Act and the Transgender Bill of Rights. The lobbying day came at the heels of the new polling that a "healthy majority of Americans across the political spectrum support federal legislation protecting LGBTQ+ individuals." Jiggly Caliente spoke first, addressing her gratitude for being on RuPaul’s Drag Race and for the blessing of being able to be your true self. “I have always known that I was living in a shell that didn’t align with my soul,” she said. Jiggly, or Bianca, accused politicians of blocking local and up-and-coming drag queens from making money.

drag queens moveon

Thursday

Cockburn

Is Mayor Francis Suarez too ‘woke’ for the GOP?

Miami mayor Francis Suarez is running for president, and his opponents already have plenty of attack ad images. The Cuban-American Republican with leading man style might have checked the boxes for an early 2010s GOP. Now it’s 2023 — and it seems no one told Suave Suarez that posing with a Pride flag-emblazoned mayoral sash is way out of style. Suarez’s Twitter feed is littered with rainbow flag paraphernalia. In June 2021, Suarez posted a video pledging Miami’s support of Pride Month. https://twitter.com/FrancisSuarez/status/1403449097453985798 The year prior, Suarez signed an “LGBTQ ordinance” to recognize “the decades of contributions by the LGBTQ Miami residents to the economy and diversity of the city!

francis suarez pride

Sunday

Cockburn

Trans White House flasher’s rack confuses conservative radio hosts

It only took one hot trans woman flashing her breasts in front of the White House to topple the GOP’s anti-trans agenda.  After President Biden banned transgender activist Rose Montoya from future White House events for going topless on the South Lawn, some conservatives have taken to social media to declare their admiration for her. For the most part, this bold display of equity and inclusion has taken the form of middle-aged men slavering over her bust. “That tranny that flashed everyone at the White House looked pretty good and I’m tired of pretending he didn’t,” tweeted alpha male pundit Jesse Kelly yesterday. “I’m with you,” radio host Clay Travis responded. “Great boobs. And I don’t think I’d know that was a dude.

rose montoya trans
spongebob squarepants
Chadwick Moore

Why has Nickelodeon outed SpongeBob Squarepants?

On the eve of the 10-year anniversary of the suicide of Tyler Clementi, an 18-year-old Rutgers University student who killed himself after being outed as gay by a roommate, children’s television network Nickelodeon dragged a cartoon sponge out of the closet in a tweet posted Saturday. In doing so, Nickelodeon set a dangerous precedent for LGBT youth everywhere. ‘Celebrating #Pride with the LGBTQ+ community and their allies this month and every month’, the network posted on Twitter above an image of SpongeBob Squarepants bathed in a rainbow glow. https://twitter.com/Nickelodeon/status/1271795092391682048?s=20 Fans have long speculated the beloved cartoon character might be homosexual.

Tuesday

Cockburn

Topless trans guests reveal systemic inequality at the White House

The White House lawn became the latest battleground in the “Free the Nipple” fight this weekend.  A shocking display of inequality was captured on video when TikTok influencer and trans woman Rose Montoya filmed herself topless in front of the White House, flaunting her breasts during a Pride event. Montoya was joined by two trans male activists who were also shirtless. Yet only Montoya — whether out of a sense of decency or internalized social pressures — censored her nipples with her hands. For all the White House's moral posturing, Cockburn is shocked they would tolerate such brazen inequality.

Rose Montoya takes her shirt off on the White House lawn (Rose Montoya/TikTok)

Friday

Cockburn

Has Mark Meadows shopped Trump to the Justice Department?

The speculation in Trumpworld surrounding Mark Meadows, and whether the former congressman and White House chief of staff handed Special Counsel Jack Smith the tools he needed to indict the former president, continues to rise.  It’s already known that Meadows’s staff was the source of an audio recording where the former president made comments about the classified documents he took from the White House — they recorded an interview in July 2021 at Bedminster for Meadows’s memoir about his time in the White House, The Chief’s Chief, which you can purchase at Amazon in hardcover for a very modest $8.07. Trump discussed a document, one that he said he ought to have declassified before leaving the White House, about potentially attacking Iran.

mark meadows

Wednesday

Cockburn

Coca-Cola’s ‘Indigiqueer’ Pride workshops for kids

Coca-Cola is kicking off Pride Month by sponsoring events for preteens that are taught by Native American "Indigiqueer" and two-spirit artists. On the first day of Pride Month, Coca-Cola is partnering with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian to bring workshops from “across the Western Hemisphere working towards equity and social justice for Indigenous peoples” to middle- and high-school students. “Fashion is often used to confirm identities, challenge social structures and display personalities,” the event description reads. “Discover the joy of fashion in our conversation celebrating PRIDE month.” There are four panelists.

coca-cola

Monday

Casey Chalk

Michael Gerson’s descent into liberalism

Not all pro-lifers are happy with the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. In a column at the Washington Post, former George W. Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson acknowledges that Roe was “poorly argued,” but says he is “more comfortable with the gradualism” recommended by Chief Justice John Roberts. Gerson ends even more soberly: “The abortion debate — with all its tragic complexities — has been returned to the realm of democracy. And there is little evidence our democracy is prepared for it.” Why? Because the “GOP has become captive to an ideology of power.” Anyone who has been following Gerson over the years will not be surprised by these comments.

Friday

Cockburn

Parenting writer: take your kid to a Pride parade!

Cockburn is not a parent, at least so far as his public records are concerned. However, even he knows that taking children to a Pride parade is not the best idea for a family field trip. Heather Tirado Gilligan, the author of this Fatherly article, disagrees. She writes, “Pride Parades and the Pride festivals that follow are noisy and crowded. They’re filled with sights that may be new to kids, like public nudity and kink.” If Gilligan wanted any chance at all for her point to succeed, why would she mention “public nudity” and “kink” in the first two sentences? Taking a kid to a sex parade is like bringing a baby to a gun range: it sounds just a bit like bad parenting.

pride

Friday

Chadwick Moore

God loves flags, apparently

When it comes to former president Trump and the gays, one of the innumerable enduring myths perpetrated by media claims he banned US embassies from flying the rainbow gay Pride flag during the month of June. This lie is a personal favorite as a radiant example of the media’s pettiness during the Trump years and the degree to which they’ll just make something up or, at the very least, refuse to conduct the tiniest bit of due diligence to fact-check a falsehood they want so badly to be true. Here’s what really happened: in 2019, of the 307 US embassies, consulates, and diplomatic missions around the world, three requested to fly the rainbow gay Pride flag during the month of June.

flags

Wednesday

They/Them

Happy corporate wokewash month!

It’s June and the biggest corporations on the planet want you to know that they are celebrating gay Pride — unless you live somewhere like Saudi Arabia in which case they couldn’t care less. On their main Twitter page, Procter & Gamble have put a Pride flag in their banner and in their pinned Tweet they proudly proclaim: 'We strive to be a champion of #LGBTQVisibility year-round, using our voice to drive acceptance, inclusion and a love for humanity.' I guess there are no gay people in Saudi Arabia to champion, which must be why P&G’s Saudi Twitter handle has not a single rainbow flag in sight and a pinned tweet simply wishing people a blessed Ramadan. But that is the beauty of corporate wokewashing.

pride wokewashing corporate

Thursday

Cockburn

The Pride of Joy Reid

Why isn't MSNBC proud? The progressive cable network have been scratching their heads over who should fill the 7 p.m. slot formerly occupied by Chris Matthews. Matthews exited acrimoniously following claims he was out of touch with their viewership and made several off-color remarks to female guests and staff. You might think, therefore, that MSNBC would be opting for an uncontroversial successor. But if the Wall Street Journal is to be believed, you would be wrong: apparently the network is lining up Joy Reid. According to the Journal, 'Talks over Ms Reid’s appointment are still ongoing and an agreement isn’t a certainty, one person close to the situation said.

joy reid homophobia