Record Number Of LGBTQ Athletes At Winter Olympics + More News

Out freestyle skier Gus Kenworthy at the Olympic Games

Happy Friday! Some news stories for you as we head into the weekend:

Outsports: There will be at least 44 publicly out LGBTQ athletes (including Gus Kenworthy – lead photo) competing at the 2026 Milan Winter Olympics starting Feb. 6, a record for the Winter Games.

New York Times: The Senate voted 71 to 29 to pass the bipartisan spending deal to fund most of the government and keep the Dept. of Homeland Security running for 2 weeks while Dems and Trump negotiate restrictions on ICE crackdown. It still has to clear the House before becoming law. Continue reading “Record Number Of LGBTQ Athletes At Winter Olympics + More News”

Out Hockey Player Gets Surprise ‘Heated Rivalry’ Message + More

Out hockey player surprised with message from Heated Rivalry star Hudson Williams

Some news items you might have missed:

Gay Times: Out hockey player Jesse Kortuem recently shared how “Heated Rivalry” helped him in his coming out journey. Drew surprised Jesse (above) with a message from one of the show’s stars, Hudson Williams. Click below to play video. Continue reading “Out Hockey Player Gets Surprise ‘Heated Rivalry’ Message + More”

Hillary Clinton Prediction On SCOTUS & Same-Sex Marriage + More News

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

Some news items you might have missed:

The Hill: Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton predicts – “The Supreme Court will do to gay marriage what they did to abortion — they will send it back to the states.”

Instinct Magazine: Heartstopper creator Alice Oseman says there may be some surprises for fans in the upcoming film finale of Nick and Charlie’s love story. “There is a point in the movie where we slightly diverge from the events of volume six, and it takes a slightly different path to get to the ending.” Continue reading “Hillary Clinton Prediction On SCOTUS & Same-Sex Marriage + More News”

Conservative Radio Host Suggests Slavery As An Answer To Illegal Immigration

This week, Iowa-based conservative radio host Jan Mickelson took to the airwaves to share HIS solution to illegal immigration in the United States – “compelled labor,” or, something commonly known as slavery.

Mickelson is an extreme right-wing WHO Radio host and a close ally of Rep. Steve King of Iowa.

On his Monday morning radio show, Mickelson broke down his approach – instead of rounding up every undocumented worker in Iowa, he’d simply put up signs warning undocumented workers to get out or become indentured slaves.

Via Mediaite (emphasis added):

I would put them on the end of the highway, on western part of the interstate system, and I’d put them on the eastern side of the state, right there on the interstate system, and in the north on the Minnesota border, and on the south Kansas and Missouri border and I would just say this: “As of this date… 30 to 60 days from now anyone who is in the state of Iowa that who is not here legally and who cannot demonstrate their legal status to the satisfaction of the local and state authorities here in the State of Iowa, become property of the State of Iowa.” So if you are here without our permission, and we have given you two months to leave, and you’re still here, and we find that you’re still here after we we’ve given you the deadline to leave, then you become property of the State of Iowa. And we have a job for you. And we start using compelled labor, the people who are here illegally would therefore be owned by the state and become an asset of the state rather than a liability and we start inventing jobs for them to do.

[…] We’re going to invite the illegal Mexicans and illegal aliens to build [a border wall]. If you have come across the border illegally, again give them another 60-day guideline: “You need to go home and leave this jurisdiction, and if you don’t you become property of the United States, and guess what? You will be building a wall. We will compel your labor. You would belong to these United States. You show up without an invitation, you get to be an asset. You get to be a construction worker. Cool!”

Later in the radio show, a caller asked if this sounded a lot like slavery. Mickelson’s completely sober answer?

“Well, what’s wrong with slavery?”

Head over to Mediaite to hear Mickelson calmly explain his plan.

Right-Wing Website Says Same-Sex Marriage Is Like Slavery

The conservative website, Public Discourse, posts an essay today that says the legal arguments for marriage equality and 1857’s Dred Scott case for slavery law are pretty much the same thing.

The structure and logic of the legal arguments made for nationwide judicial imposition of same-sex marriage are remarkably similar to the arguments made by those who argued for the judicial imposition of slavery nationwide.

[snip]

In both Dred Scott and Windsor, the Court’s legal analysis was transparently result-oriented: the justices wanted a particular result, and manipulated the law to reach the outcome they thought preferable as a social-policy matter. In both cases, the majority’s “reasoning” wanders aimlessly before finally settling into the same oft-discredited judicial invention of “substantive due process”—the idea that it is simply morally wrong, or mean, for a democracy to deny a legal right or status conferred under the law of a different jurisdiction. In both cases, the majority opinions were subject to devastating dissents, and they produced greatly divided public reaction. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Dred Scott and Windsor are two peas from the same judicial-activist pod.