Q&A With Emily Skopov, Candidate for PA State House District 28

Your Name: Emily Skopov Your Pronouns: She/her Your District: 28  How do you describe your identity? I identify as a woman, a mother, and member of the Jewish community. Tell us about the first LGBTQ person you met and what impact they had on your life? The first openly gay person I met was named Ronnie. He […]

UPDATED with Comment from Mayor Peduto – City Earns Perfect Score in LGBTQ Equality Index, Remains Mum on Chick-fil-A Sponsorship of Pittsburgh Marathon

This one hurts me on a personal level. When we learned that the Pittsburgh Marathon was teaming up with Chick-fil-A to sponsor the youth events, some of the first people contacted for support were City of Pittsburgh officials. They made a lot of promises about looking into things, standing with the LGBTQ community in a […]

Q&A With James Craig, Candidate for PA State Senate District 46

I learned about the James Craig campaign via Facebook. His district includes portions of Beaver and Washington counties as well as all of Greene County. His personal story is rather compelling. He’s the first candidate to respond to this round of Q&A’s. I hope you will give his response your consideration. We began this Political […]

Celebrating Ten Years of Queer Burlesque with the Velvet Hearts

I was thrilled to see another local Velvet Hearts performance scheduled. We’ve been supporters of them over the years. Queer burlesque is special. I like the variety in the performances as well as the body positive messaging. You should check out this show Friday evening and take a few moments to read what the founder, […]

AMPLIFYing LGBTQ History Month: Q&A with Gary Marzolf

Gary Western Pennsylvania

To date, the AMPLIFY project has published over 270 Q&A’s from the Western Pennsylvania region. These stories capture important moments in LGBTQ History, from the current day and extending as far back as the Kennedy Administration in terms of lived experiences of LGBTQ people. I’ve asked some folks to weigh in on the impact of this project […]

A List: Creating Opportunities for Pennsylvanians to Show Up for #Midterms2018

Voting Deadlines Pennsylvania

UPDATED! Our politicians have failed, but this nation is in our hands. Here is a list of things I think might be useful for you to pursue. I’ve tried mightily to get more information, but the challenge is that the folks holding it are overwhelmed and overextended so it is hard to get them to […]

Ciara Minaj Carter Frazier is 22nd Transgender Homicide Victim in 2018

Ciara Minaj Carter Frazier was a 31 year-old Black trans woman living in Chicago. On Wednesday, October 3, she became the 22nd transgender person identified as a homicide victim in the US during 2018. According to local reports, Ciara was stabbed to death by an unknown man. A transgender woman who was found dead with […]

Midterms 2018 Political Q&A Not Generating Much Interest or GOTV Information

In followup to our primary Q&As earlier this year, I had three plans in mind to do my bit to turn out informed voters. First, I tried to install voter registration widgets and links. Unfortunately, my latest (now former) webguy wasn’t timely in helping me realize that we needed to do more behind the scenes […]

Pittsburgh Marathon Defends Chick-fil-A Partnership

Chick-fil-A Pittsburgh Marathon

Yesterday, I blogged about the Dick’s Sporting Goods Pittsburgh Marathon bringing on Chick-fil-A as the title sponsor of their youth programming, including the Chick-fil-A Kids Marathon. People began contacting the Marathon offices known as the non-profit, P3R. Early responses indicated that the staff were in a meeting to discuss the blowback. A few hours later, […]

Why Did @PghMarathon Add Chick-fil-A As a Corporate Sponsor?

Chick-fil-A Pittsburgh Marathon

UPDATE: Please sign the petition against this turn of events. The Pittsburgh Marathon has teamed up with Chick-fil-A, the new title partner of the Chick-fil-A Pittsburgh Kids Marathon and the presenting partner of the award-winning Kids of STEEL program. Last night we celebrated our expanded partnership w/ @ChickfilA Pittsburgh! The cow came dressed in running gear […]