This morning, GLAAD announced the nominees for the 25th Annual GLAAD Media Awards and many of this year's nominees included LGBT characters and people of color telling important stories and reflecting the true diversity of the LGBT community.
In the entertainment categories, film Geography Club, documentary The New Black and television series Shameless, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Glee, an individual episode of The Soul Man, Big Freedia: Queen of Bounce, Cyndi Lauper: Still So Unusual, Project Runway and Orange is the New Black included out characters of African descent. Talk shows Oprah's Next Chapter, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell and Raising McCain all saw nominated episodes featuring out Black people sharing their stories with the country and comic series Life with Archie and Young Avengers included regular out Black characters.
On the journalism side, ESPN's E:60 profiled Kenneth Faried and his two moms, PBS' To the Contrary talked about open and affirming Black churches. MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry, TheNew York Times, Los Angeles Times, ESPN The Magazine, The Advocate, Black Enterprise, the Buzzfeed pieces "How One Lawyer Turned the Idea of Marriage Equality into Reality" and "Sex, Lies and HIV: When What You Don't Tell Your Partner is a Crime" and HuffPost Live' s "Remixing The Trans & Hip Hop Conversation" included nominations for coverage featuring or written by out Black people.
The films Reaching for the Moon and Valentine Road and series Grey's Anatomy, Cyndi Lauper: Still So Unusual and Glee featured LGBT Latino characters and people. In news coverage, The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, San Antonio Express-News, The New York Times, The Advocate and Advocate.com all featured nomination-worthy coverage inclusive of LGBT Latinos.
The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, Concussion, Geography Club and comic series Fearless Defenders featured representation of LGBT Asian/Pacific Islander (API) characters and people. Nomination-worthy news coverage of LGBT API individuals included stories by the Los Angeles Times, Advocate.com and Al Jazeera English.
ABC Family hit dramas The Fosters and Pretty Little Liars both feature gay or lesbian multi-racial characters, as did the Sundance TV series Dream School. News coverage from Juneau Empire, Advocate.com and HuffPost Live included nomination-worthy reporting on multi-racial LGBT Americans.
Documentaries Call Me Kuchu and God Loves Uganda as well as the Advocate.com piece "We Are Here: LGBTI in Uganda" all highlighted the harsh realities of life for LGBT Ugandans. The Juneau Empire series "LGBTQ in the Capital" featured coverage of an LGBT Native Alaskan. Film Out in the Dark focused on the love story between a gay Palestinian man and a gay Israeli man and in music, Vampire Weekend's out songwriter, keyboardist and singer Rostam Batmanglij is Iranian American.
For a complete list of nominees, please click here.
The GLAAD Media Awards recognize and honor media for their fair, accurate and inclusive representations of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community and the issues that affect their lives. The GLAAD Media Awards also fund GLAAD's work to amplify stories from the LGBT community and issues that build support for equality.
The GLAAD Media Awards ceremonies will be held in Los Angeles on April 12, 2014 at The Beverly Hilton and in New York on May 3 at the Waldorf Astoria New York. Find out how you can buy tickets or host a table here.
To receive the latest updates on the GLAAD Media Awards, follow @GLAAD on Twitter and use the hashtag #glaadawards.