Nearly a quarter of zoomers in the US are queer

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According to a new analysis from Gallup, 23% of American Gen Zers identify as LGBTQ+, the highest proportion of any generation.

Gen Z was also the most likely generation to identify as transgender, with 4.1% of Gen Zers IDing as trans, compared to 1.7% of Millennials and less than 1% of each older generation. That’s more than three times the overall proportion of trans adults in the U.S., which is 1.3%. Breaking things down by gender within Gen Z, 2.6% of women identified as trans compared to 1.4% of men.

The survey also identified the overall proportion of U.S. adults who identify as LGBTQ+: nearly 1 in 10 at 9.3%. That’s nearly triple the share from 2012, when Gallup first surveyed Americans on this topic, and a two-thirds increase from 2020.

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News Roundup *100

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On the heels of legalizing same-sex marriage, Thailand’s Public Health Ministry is now allocating roughly $4.3 million toward funding trans health services.

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The Messy Life of Chaos Bisexual Lord Byron

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Once called “Mad, bad, and dangerous to know,” Lord George Gordon Byron was a mess of historic proportions. His talent was as famous as his bisexuality, along with numerous scandalous affairs, leading to his effective exile from England. But he also died a national hero in Greece, leaving Lord Byron with an incredibly mixed legacy.

The Messy Life of Chaos Bisexual Lord Byron

Pride and protest: a photographic history of the LGBTQ+ rights fight

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Manhattan photographer Fred McDarrah came to prominence documenting the Beat movement that overtook Greenwich Village in the 1950s, capturing, among others, Jack Kerouac (who sat for a portrait in McDarrah’s apartment) and one of the earliest photos of a very young and unknown Bob Dylan.

It was this portfolio that made his name at the Village Voice, where he would work for an astonishing 50 years, but toward the end of the 1960s McDarrah began to photograph an entirely new movement sweeping over the Village.

In spring 1966 at Julius’s Bar, a short walk from the Stonewall Inn, four gay men – Dick Leitsch, Craig Rodwell, John Timmons and Randy Wicker – engaged in what they termed a “sip-in” in order to challenge a law that made it a prosecutable offense for one man to buy another a drink. It was one of the first salvos in the incipient gay rights movement, and McDarrah was there to see it, perfectly capturing the decisive moment when a bartender – collaborating with the group – placed his hand over the drinks and stated that it was against the law to serve the men.

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Sex Secrets of the Caesars

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The Roman historian Suetonius’ The Lives of the Caesars, written during the early imperial period of the Roman Empire, is a seminal biography covering the biographies of the early emperors of Rome, during two spectacular centuries of Roman history.

Delving deep into the personal lives of the caesars and sparing no detail, no matter how prurient, pungent, explicit or salacious, it vividly captures Rome at the peak of her power, and those colourful individuals at the heart of everything. It is an unsettling yet fascinating portrait of the alien and the intimate, that sees some of history’s most famous characters revealed as almost modern men, plotting a delicate line between private and public, respectability and suspicion.

From the showmanship of Augustus, the first Caesar, and his convoluted family melodramas, to Tiberius, a monster in the historical record famed for his sexual misdeeds, to Caligula, who delighted in voyeuristic moral degeneracy, and the looming shadow of Nero; all will be revealed.


Number of queer young adults in UK quadrupled

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The number of young adults identifying as lesbian, gay or bisexual has reportedly quadrupled over the last decade in the United Kingdom.

One in ten 16-24-year-olds in the UK now identify as gay, or bisexual according to newly released figures. A report shared by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) found that 10.4% t of 16 to 24-year-olds identified as gay, lesbian or bi in 2023 – a significant increase from previous years.

According to the Annual Population Survey, the number is up by at least 2.8% compared to statistics in 2018, with ONS saying this is mainly due to the number of people identifying as bisexual.

7.5% of 16-24-year-olds identified as bisexual in 2023, up from 2.8% in 2018. The figure is even higher among women, 9.2% of which identify as bisexual compared with 5.9% of men. Overall, however, men are more likely to identify as gay or bi (4.2%) than women (3.4%).

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Reed Erickson

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This episode of the Bad Gays podcast profiles an eccentric, wealthy businessman––with the pet tiger, Mexican nudist ashram, ketamine and cocaine habits, and baroque legal battles over the title to various compounds to prove it––who also financially supported trans research, gay history, and dolphin ESP.

Reed Erickson forged his own path in a difficult world and his life helps us understand two connections that were crucial for the developing gay and trans liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s: sexology and the New Age.

News Roundup *99

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LGBTQ+ couples and activists gathered in Bangkok to celebrate ahead of Thailand’s first same-sex weddings on Thursday (23 January).

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Meta allows (only) queer people to be called ‘mentally ill‘

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The removal of independent fact checkers and moderation by Meta – which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads – recently announced by Mark Zuckerberg, means social media users can call LGBTQ+ folks mentally ill because of their sexuality and gender identity.

Earlier this month Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a raft of changes to the company’s policies. Meta no longer moderates “divisive” issues, like immigration and gender, and ends its independent fact checking programme. Revised hate speech guidelines following the announcement make it clear that social media users will be able to call specifically only LGBTQ+ mentally ill.

“We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words like ‘weird’,” the loosened guidelines read.

Also removed is a prohibition on claiming that there is “no such thing” as a trans or gay person, reports The Independent. Another major change in the same section is the removal of rules that users couldn’t call protected groups “freaks” or “abnormal.”

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Handball pro Villads Raahauge Jensen comes out

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Danish handball player Villads Raahauge Jensen says he was ‘terrified’ about the possible response, but now regrets not coming out sooner.

A professional handball player with experience of playing in Europe’s top leagues has come out publicly as gay, saying his news has been “received positively” by his teammates.

Villads Raahauge Jensen is a 28-year-old attacking player from Denmark who currently plays for Lugi HF in the second-tier Swedish Allsvenskan league. He posted a coming out message to his Instagram account on Sunday alongside a photo of himself as a young boy.

“I am gay,” wrote Jensen. “Three words that in reality should be easy to say, but which for many years I’ve been afraid to be open about. I’ve been thinking of posting a post like this for a long time, and have been thinking if this was the right way to come out. But there is probably no right or wrong way.”

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