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Be sure to check out GLAAD Blog each week for updates about our latest work to build support for LGBT equality through news, entertainment and online media.
The CBS sitcom Mike & Molly went over the line this week with an offensive scene in which the main character Mike joked about his friend having once hooked up with a "she-male" and spending the night weeping. Besides its use of an anti-trans slur, the joke was predicated on the hateful notion that transgender people are inherently disgusting, and was seen by 10.4 million audience members. After constituents and trans community leaders spoke out against the joke, GLAAD discussed the issue with CBS, who committed to meeting with GLAAD soon to discuss offensive content in their humor lineup more directly. Read more.
GLAAD pitched and placed articles on Ebony.com and The Root.com about the Boy Scouts of America's continued ban on gay scouts and volunteers. For nearly a year, GLAAD has been advocating that the youth group change its policy barring gay members from joining the organization. In January, GLAAD was on the ground in Dallas, TX to deliver more than 1.4 million Change.org petitions to the Boy Scouts of America headquarters, calling for an end to the ban on gay scouts and leaders. Read more.
GLAAD placed author Daniel Hernandez Jr on MTV.com, BuzzFeed, Queerty and in Spanish-language media to discuss his memoir about being gay and Latino. Hernandez was hurdled onto the national media stage last year after he saved Senator Gabrielle Giffords' life. Read more.
GLAAD successfully pitched and placed an op-ed by Dr. Pamela Lightsey, the Associate Dean and Clinical Assistant Professor at Boston University School of Theology, in The Washington Post about the evolution of the black church on marriage equality. Lightsey was also a graduate of the 2012 GLAAD National People of Color Media Institute. Read more.
GLAAD worked closely with a writer from Being Latino, (one of the nation's leading Latino community and social media platforms and publisher of English-language online magazine Being Latino) on a story about the importance of the first-ever Latino daylong institute at Creating Change, a national conference on LGBT equality hosted by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force . GLAAD connected the writer with the lead organizers and provided important data on the increasingly high levels of support for LGBT issues among Latinos, as well as sobering statistics about the challenges LGBT people face, in particular transgender people, in terms of health, employment, and violence.
GLAAD intern Todd Clayton's essay for Black History Month, "Gay Will Never Be the New Black" was posted on The Huffington Post, the GLAAD Blog, Bossip, and others, and has been shared hundreds of times. It talks about the relationship between white privilege and the LGBT community. Read more.
GLAAD's Religion, Faith & Values team helped tell the story of a group of Presbyterian ministers who gave out ashes on Ash Wednesday, including a man who requested that the word "GAY" be placed on his forehead, in The Huffington Post.
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