ORLANDO | Joel Strack has been an out and proud leader, activist and trailblazer in the Central Florida LGBTQ community for over 40 years.
Strack was instrumental in launching what would become known as Gay Day at the Magic Kingdom, helped create Orlando’s first Pride parade and assisted in founding both the Orlando Gay Chorus and the Gay and Lesbian History Museum.
After a nearly seven-month search, the Human Rights Campaign announced Tuesday its next president will be Alphonso David—marking the first time a person of color will lead the nation’s largest LGBT organization.
David, a 48-year-old gay black man with an extensive career in New York as a civil rights lawyer, legal advisor and law professor, is named after the board of directors launched an extensive search to replace Chad Griffin, who announced in November he’d leave the organization. David is set to start in August.
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) | A private high school is firing an educator to avoid having its ties cut with the Archdiocese of Indianapolis.
The Indianapolis Star reports Cathedral High School announced Sunday it’s terminating a gay teacher to avoid a split with the archdiocese, which last week stripped Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School of its Catholic identity over its decision to employ a teacher in a same-sex marriage.
BERLIN (AP) | A ceremony has been held at the former site of Germany’s Buchenwald concentration camp to remember people imprisoned there because they were thought to be gay.
The commemoration on Sunday was part of events in the nearby town of Weimar for Christopher Street Day, Germany’s LGBTQ pride observance.
More than 8,000 people participated in the Ukrainian capital’s annual Pride parade that took place on Sunday.
The Associated Press reported police kept parade participants separate from LGBTI rights opponents who protested the event. Officials said nine people were arrested during the parade, but Kyiv Pride Director Ruslana Panukhnyk told the Washington Blade there were “no major incidents.”
“Transparent” creator Jill Soloway is replacing Bryan Singer as the director and writer of the film “Red Sonja,” based on the 1973 Marvel comic.
The replacement announcement follows numerous rape and sexual assault allegations from underage boys against Singer as detailed in a lengthy report from the Atlantic in March.
NEW PORT RICHEY, Fla. | Pasco Pride has adopted a one-mile stretch of Moon Lake Road via Pasco County’s Adopt-a-Road program, a section previously claimed by the white supremacist hate group the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in 1993.
Pasco Pride exists to connect, build and strengthen the LGBTQ community in and around Pasco County. Now in its second year, the organization was seeking community outreach projects to raise awareness for its mission when it discovered Keep Pasco Beautiful. The not-for-profit environmental organization promotes the county’s Adopt-a-Road program to “reduce litter, promote waste reduction and encourage beautification.”
President of Marvel Studios Kevin Feige is defending Marvel’s first openly gay character who appeared briefly in “Avengers: Endgame.”
In a scene in the film, an unnamed man played by co-director Joe Russo, is seen at a support group for people who have lost their loves one to Thanos at the end of “Avengers: Infinity War.” The man describes going on a first date with another man but they both end up crying over their lost loved ones before they get their food.
A gay man in Dominica plans to challenge his country’s sodomy law.
The Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, a Toronto-based advocacy group, on Monday announced the man will file the lawsuit in Dominica’s High Court of Justice in the coming weeks. A press release says the University of Toronto’s International Human Rights Program is among the other organizations that are supporting the plaintiff who has asked to remain anonymous.
PARIS (AP) | The French government is drafting legislation to give single women and lesbian couples access to assisted reproduction in France instead of having to seek it abroad.
French law currently restricts the technology to infertile heterosexual couples.
Dozens of activists in a letter to the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo say the State Department under his leadership “has abandoned full support of LGBTI people within its global human rights policy.”
Council for Global Equality Chair Mark Bromley, Preston Mitchum of Advocates for Youth, American Jewish World Service President Robert Bank, Amnesty International USA Executive Director Margaret Huang, Sharon Nazarien of the Anti-Defamation League, Winnie Stachelberg of the Center for American Progress, Center for Health and Gender Equity President Serra Sippel, Bishop Joseph W. Tolton of the Fellowship Global, GLSEN Executive Director Eliza Byard, LGBTQ Victory Institute President Annise Parker, Rev. Jim Merritt of the Metropolitan Community Church’s Global Justice Institute, Human Rights Campaign Government Affairs Director David Stacy, Human Rights First Senior Vice President for Policy Rob Berschinski, Immigration Equality Executive Director Aaron Morris, InterACT Executive Director Kimberly Zieselman, International Women’s Health Coalition President Françoise Girard, Darrel Cummings of the Los Angeles LGBT Center, MPact Global Action for Gay Men’s Health and Rights Executive Director George Ayala, National Center for Lesbian Rights Legal Director Shannon Minter, National Center for Transgender Equality Executive Director Mara Keisling, National LGBT Chamber of Commerce President Justin Nelson, OutRight Action International Executive Director Jessica Stern, PFLAG Executive Director Brian Bond, Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights President Kerry Kennedy and Synergía-Initiatives for Human Rights Executive Director Stefano Fabeni signed the letter that was sent to Pompeo on June 20.
Organizers of Georgia’s first Pride parade that was scheduled to have taken place in the country’s capital on June 22 have postponed it.
Giorgi Tabagari, co-founder of Tbilisi Pride, on Twitter said he and other parade organizers decided to postpone the event in order to join protests against Russian MP Sergei Gavrilov, who spoke at the Georgian Parliament on Thursday, and a police crackdown against protesters who tried to storm the building that reportedly left more than 240 people injured.
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