We Asked #AMPLIFY Contributors About Their Favorite Characters

LGBTQ characters AMPLIFY

We are pulling out some of the responses to the AMPLIFY survey for a closer examination. These are open-ended questions and people take liberties with their interpretation. What I did here was use a word cloud program that eliminates common words like ‘the’ and generates word size in proportion to frequency. So the largest words […]

Monica Loera, 43, First Trans Woman Murdered in 2016

Trans murder

Very sad news from Austin, Texas. A 43 year old transgender woman was murdered earlier in the month. From TransGriot According to the Austin Police Department, 43 year old Monica Loera was engaged in a conversation with a man in front of her home along the 300 block of East Powell Lane in north Austin […]

Jill, 49, Wants Young LGBTQ People To Have a Safe Place to Go In Cambria County #AMPLIFY

lesbian cambria county

  Name: Jill Age: 49 County of Residence:  Cambria, grew up in Somerset Preferred Pronouns: she/her How do you describe your identity? Woman, female, lesbian Please describe your coming out experience. Where did you find support? What challenges did you face? I was 23. Married to a man who very much understood me. Met a woman and spent the next […]

Congrats to Michael Fuoco For His 2nd GLAAD Media Award Nomination

What seems like a very long time ago, I contacted GLAAD about Pittsburgh media coverage of a story involving the University of Pittsburgh and the trans community. In fact, it was just April 2012 when I did that and one of the most responsive reporters involved was Michael Fuoco of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. His coverage […]

As A Gay Man, Ryan Wants More Scrutiny of Bath Houses and Non-Profits #AMPLIFY

Gay Allegheny County

Name: Ryan Age: 42 County of Residence: Allegheny.  I grew up in NE Ohio until the age of about 23. Preferred Pronouns: He, she, it, they, etc? How do you describe your identity? I’m an adult, white, gay, male, humanist, Democrat. Please describe your coming out experience. Where did you find support? What challenges did you face? It happened in stages, false […]

Welcoming Pittsburgh Forum on LGBTQ Refugees

This looks really interesting. Unfortunately, I seem to have some sort of sickness so I don’t think I’ll be able to attend. I also continue to wonder why the City tends to schedule these types of events during the middle of the workweek when so few people can attend. I realize that’s when the employees […]

Dani Janae, 23, Identifies as a Black Femme Lesbian Poet & Trauma Survivor #AMPLIFY

Allegheny County lesbian

Name: Dani Janae Age: 23 County of Residence:  Allegheny, attended college in Crawford County Preferred Pronouns: she/her How do you describe your identity? I identify as a black femme lesbian, poet, trauma survivor. Please describe your coming out experience. Where did you find support? What challenges did you face? My coming out process was gradual. I started by self-identifying as […]

117 Ways to Describe LGBTQ Identity

We ask contributors this question “Please describe your identity.” No checkboxes. No drop down menu. No predetermined categories. Just an open-ended question and a text field for people to write their response. 117 people have responded thus far (110 published, the others in the ‘to be published’ queue.) As you can see, each person wrote […]

Jay, 54, Considers His Gay Identity Both Now and Then #AMPLIFY

Allegheny Gay

Name:  Jay Age: 54 County of Residence:  Allegheny Preferred Pronouns: he How do you describe your identity? father, gay male, spiritual and social worker Please describe your coming out experience. Where did you find support? What challenges did you face? I came out to friends and family my first year of college. The friends I hung around in high […]

The Return Of Fish Fry Fridays 2016 Edition

Pittsburgh Fish Fry

Lent will be here in three weeks and we are revving up to bring back a popular feature #FishFryFridays – our review of regional fish fry events. In 2014, we visited five fries. Unfortunately, we slacked off in 2015 and only visited one (or maybe two?) One of our biggest challenges is timing – Laura […]