Carl Nassib shares why he came out

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Former NFL star Carl Nassib has revealed why he felt he had to come out as gay publicly. The one-time defensive end for the Cleveland Browns, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Las Vegas Raiders came out on Instagram in 2021, becoming the first active NFL player to do so. He pledged to donate $100,000 to LGBTQ+ youth suicide-prevention charity, The Trevor Project.

Appearing recently on The Pivot Podcast, Nassib said he made the decision despite there being a chance it would hurt his career. “I knew I wanted to do it for years before that,” he said, adding that there were “a few catalysts” that pushed him on.

The first was that his uncle Bill, who was also gay and whom he described as a “touchpoint”, had died from cancer in 2019. Nassib was already out to some of his immediate family and close friends by then. “I saw him on his deathbed. He was in really bad shape and I came out to him. We were from a huge family, 44 first cousins, and he was the only gay person in the family.

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Where the new pope stands on LGBTQ issues

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Robert Francis Prevost, the first American pope, will now lead more than a billion Catholics around the world. Where does he stand on queer issues?

The Catholic Church was at a crossroads, with many wondering whether new leadership would be more progressive like Francis or more conservative, like the majority of the American Catholic bishops. It appears he is pastorally aligned with Pope Francis, who named him a cardinal in 2023. Notably, Francis also asked him to preside over one the most revolutionary reforms, in which he added three women to the voting bloc that decides which bishop nominations are greenlit and sent to the pope.

Some advocates were against his candidacy for the papacy because he has been accused of mishandling sex abuse cases in Peru and Chicago. His dioceses have maintained that the accusations were handled according to Church policy at the time.

While Pope Francis made substantial strides in pushing the church toward including LGBTQ+ people, Pope Leo XIV is seen as less progressive on queer issues. The New York Times noted in a recent story that as a bishop in Peru, he opposed a plan to include gender teaching in school, noting that, “The promotion of gender ideology is confusing, because it seeks to create genders that don’t exist.”

In speaking to bishops in 2012, he criticized Western news media for cultivating “sympathy” at odds with gospel including “homosexual lifestyle” and “alternative families comprised of same-sex partners and their adopted children.”

It’s unclear if his views have changed since. He has not fully endorsed nor opposed a document that would bless same-sex unions in the church. That said, he had supported Pope Francis’ general aim to make the church more inclusive.

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Alexander von Humboldt

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In its latest episode the Bad Gays podcast discusses the German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt. Born in Berlin in 1769, he would travel the world amassing a wealth of botanical, geological, and human knowledge.

Working in Europe, Russia, and South America, Humboldt became a pioneer of Western environmental thinking, breaking with contemporary scientific norms to forge an interconnected, ecological view of the world that still resonates today.

His life was one of illuminating contradictions, and he is a fascinating figure for thinking about the creation of new concepts of ‘Nature’ as racial capitalism was in its ascendancy – a vocal anti-slavery advocate, who was personal friends with Thomas Jefferson.

And an early European proponent of the idea that colonial extraction created massive environment destruction, who also forged a career through that colonial infrastructure; and a man with many famous friends whose very private – and homosexual – private life is still shrouded in mystery and historiographic embarrassment.

News Roundup *103

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On Thursday, a council in the southeastern Polish town of Łańcut officially abolished the country’s last remaining ‘LGBT-free’ resolution.

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Conservative justices side with homophobes on “Don’t Say Gay”

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Today, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in Mahmoud v. Taylor, a case about religious parents who don’t want their children to be taught about LGBTQ+ people in public schools. The conservative justices seemed to side with the religious parents, but a lawyer for the schools argued that it’s unrealistic to allow parents to opt-out of any lessons they personally disagree with.

The plaintiffs in the case objected to their children being read books at storytime like Love, Violet, a 2021 children’s picture book about a shy girl who has a crush on her classmate, and Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, a 2025 picture book about a male same-sex wedding.

The religious parents objected to the books, saying that the books infringe on their First Amendment rights to not have their children taught about gender and sexuality in ways that conflict with their religious beliefs.

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Queer titles top list of most-banned books in the US

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The American Library Association (ALA) has released its annual report into banned books, and LGBTQ+-themed titles topped the list again.

Seven of 10 books banned last year had LGBTQ+ characters, while the top two – All Boys Aren’t Blue, by George M Johnson and Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer – are memoirs by LGBTQ+ authors which have previously been banned or had their sale restricted in the US. Both have featured on the list since 2021, with Gender Queer hitting the number-one spot three times since it was published in 2019.

The full list remains largely unchanged since last year, with queer semi-autobiographical graphic novel Flamer, by Mike Curato, The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which was turned into a film starring Logan Lerman, Ezra Miller and Emma Watson, and Tricks, by Ellen Hopkins, all included.

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Several studies prove porn addiction to be a myth

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Though porn addiction is not diagnosable, and never has been, there is a large self-help industry surrounding the concept. This industry promotes the idea that modern access to the Internet, and the porn that thrives there, has led to an epidemic of dysregulated, out-of-control porn use, and significant life problems as a result.

Over recent years, numerous studies have begun to suggest that there is more to the story than just porn. Instead, we’ve had growing hints that the conflicts and struggles over porn use have more to do with morality and religion, rather than pornography itself.

Now, researchers have put a nail in the coffin of porn addiction. Josh Grubbs, Samuel Perry and Joshua Wilt are some of the leading researchers on America’s struggles with porn, having published numerous studies examining the impact of porn use, belief in porn addiction, and the effect of porn on marriages. And Rory Reid is a UCLA researcher who was a leading proponent gathering information about the concept of hypersexual disorder for the DSM-5.

These four researchers, all of whom have history of neutrality, if not outright support of the concepts of porn addiction, have conducted a meta-analysis of research on pornography and concluded that porn use does not predict problems with porn, but that religiosity does.

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News Roundup *102

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A law banning free assembly by LGBTQ+ people — passed at the direction of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán last week by Hungary’s ultra-right conservative majority — has unleashed a wave of protests.

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