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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Are gay guys tired of being twinks?

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It’s been nearly two years since the internet popularized the term “twink death” and shared all its favorite examples of men getting too old to be part of the gay tribe, which is reserved for young, hairless, skinny (and usually femme) guys.

Though twink death has largely referred to aging out of the category, it can also mean simply becoming a different body type by, say, working out and becoming more muscular — a transformation that influencer Noah Miller pointed out is becoming more and more common in a viral TikTok.

“There is a cultural reckoning unfolding before us,” Miller said in the video, which has garnered 2.9 million views. “We as a society are on the verge of a global twink death. With the way that gym culture is moving, these carnivore diet people, everybody squawking about protein and creatine — it’s reaching even the furthest members of my community, the furthest reaches of the gay world. The skinniest and most frail of gay men are trying to put on weight in the gym. Like, fast forward 10 years, there’s gonna be none of us left.”

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The Queer Elder Crisis

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Why are there seemingly no inter-generational queer communities? What in our history has led us here? What kind of lives are queer elders leading now? And what does the path look like as a new generation of queer youth and adults head towards our futures?

We Need To Talk About The “Queer Elder” Crisis

What does the U.S. election result mean for LGBTQ+ rights?

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Throughout his campaign, President-elect Donald Trump has made big promises on issues of enormous consequence to Americans, from the economy to reproductive health care — but offered few details on how he would see those promises through.

What he’s said in his campaign and what he did during his first term offer some clues, as does Project 2025, the blueprint for a second Trump term written by the conservative Heritage Foundation. Though Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025, saying he has “no idea who is behind it” and that he has not read it, six of his former cabinet secretaries contributed to it in some form and much of what is in the 920-page document aligns directly with statements Trump has made this year.

LGBTQ+ community fearful of rights under Trump

Though there are still many unknowns, here is what we know so far about how a second Trump term will approach reproductive rights, the economy, education, immigration and aging & disability care and LGBTQ+ rights.

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Trump’s pick for vice president is an anti-LGBTQ+ nightmare

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Donald Trump has chosen J.D. Vance as his running mate, the former president announced on Monday. Vance, a first-term Republican senator from Ohio, was widely expected to be Trump’s vice presidential pick as the pool of potential hopefuls narrowed earlier in the day.

A former critic of Trump who recast himself as a politician in the MAGA model, Vance’s LGBTQ+ record differs very little from the man at the top of his ticket. During his two years in the U.S. Senate, Vance opposed the Respect for Marriage Act, which codified federal same-sex marriage rights in the event that Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2004 ruling legalizing marriage equality, is repealed by the Supreme Court.

Who Is JD Vance? Why Trump Nominated Him for VP | WSJ

He also authored the Protect Children’s Innocence Act, which would make it a class C felony, punishable by up to 15 years in prison, to provide gender-affirming surgery to trans minors. (This despite the fact that transition surgeries are rarely offered to patients under the age of 18 and only in cases of extreme medical need.)

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Love always wins

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In Portugal last Saturday, hearts were melting. It was Pride in Porto, and as the city’s second annual march was winding through the ancient town’s cobblestoned streets, a parade-goer named Lily was singled out by an old gentleman in the doorway of his house.

Lily explained in a TikTok backstory that she’s Portuguese and living in London. She had been in Porto for a few days with her girlfriend and her family. She said the couple decided to go to the march “because we’re gay and we can.”

“There was a gentleman holding this [Portuguese] flag,” Lily recalled. “He kept pointing at me and calling me,” she said. So she approached him. Lily said she felt unsure about the old man’s intentions. Holding up your national standard flag can mean a lot of things, and she wasn’t sure which one he intended in this case.  The crowd stopped behind her, Lily said, though she didn’t know it at the time, “because everyone’s really worried about what could happen next.”

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