The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit vacated a lower-court ruling that blocked Texas’ Senate Bill 12, the state’s controversial “sexually-oriented performances” law that state legislators framed as an anti-drag measure, and ordered a narrower review, The Advocate noted. The three-judge panel found that only one plaintiff, San Antonio–based 360 Queen Entertainment, had standing to challenge the law. The ruling was quite different from a September 2023 decision by U.S. District Judge David Hittner, who struck down SB 12 as an unconstitutional restriction on free speech.
In Pennsylvania, trans woman Democrat Erica Deuso was elected mayor of Downington, which is about 30 miles west of Philadelphia, per The Advocate. “[The] victory shows what we can accomplish when we come together with respect, hope, and purpose.
I’m honored by your trust and ready to get to work,” posted Deuso, who earned 64 percent of the vote compared to Republican Rich Bryant’s 35 percent. Victory Fund President/CEO Evan Low said in a statement, “With Erica Deuso’s election, Downingtown has made history—and sent a message far beyond Pennsylvania.”
In Virginia, a gay couple woke up the morning after Election Night (Nov. 4) to find their farm vandalized—and it wasn’t the first time, LGBTQ Nation noted. “It’s medical waste that is strewn all the way across the entrance of our farm,” Gardening Gays Farm co-owner Kevin Graham (along with his husband Dragan Kurbalija) told The Advocate. “There are bedsheets that have human feces and urine on them. You can smell the human waste while you’re out there standing near it.” In a video posted to the King George County farm’s Facebook account, Kurbalija said the couple found trash at the farm’s entrance a few weeks ago.
The California Supreme Court ruled that a state law barring residential elder-care workers from misgendering residents should be upheld, Bloomberg Law noted. The law—which bars workers from willfully and repeatedly using names and pronouns other than those chosen by residents—is meant to prevent discrimination against seniors in a “captive audience” setting, Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero wrote. Workers remain free to otherwise express their views on gender to anyone, including residents—as long as the staff member does not intentionally and repeatedly misgender the resident.
The Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) investigated a vehicle crash into an LGBTQ+ bar on Tampa’s 7th Avenue that left four people dead and 11 others injured, per Scripps News. According to Tampa authorities, the driver eventually lost control during a chase and crashed into Bradley’s on 7th; the vehicle hit more than a dozen people outside on the popular gay bar’s patio. Officers detained the driver at the scene, identifying him as 22-year-old Silas Sampson.
After the story of cisgender man Jarod Adkison, 33—who suffered a concussion and a badly broken jaw over the summer in Austin, Texas, while defending a trans woman—went viral, strangers helped him cover his reconstruction surgery, according to Them. The family’s GoFundMe raised $74,715 and local plastic surgeon Dr. CJ Langevin performed reconstruction surgery on Adkison’s jaw after offering to do the surgery for free as long as Adkison paid for the surgical suite time, which cost $1,400. In September, 28-year-old Joshua McKeith Bell and 29-year-old Matthew Robert Villanueva were charged with aggravated assault in connection with the case, according to CBS Austin.
Exit polls revealed that New York City Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani captured 81% of the LGBTQ+ vote in the general election race on Nov. 4, per Gay City News. Just 15% of LGBTQ voters backed independent and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and so few voters preferred Republican Curtis Sliwa that the percentage did not register in the exit polls. The polls showed that LGBTQ+ people made up 14% of the electorate—and there was a stark difference between LGBTQ voters and non-LGBTQ voters. Among non-LGBTQ+ individuals, Mamdani had 46% of the vote while Cuomo pulled in 45% and Sliwa had 8%.
Transgender sprinter Sadie Schreiner and her attorney, Susie Cirilli, are suing Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), claiming the school discriminated against her by blocking her from competing in a women’s track meet eight months ago, The Athletic noted. In the lawsuit, Schreiner says RPI violated New York’s Human Rights Law when it refused to let her run in the women’s 200-meter and 400-meter events at the school’s “Under the Lights Invitational,” a two-day meet held in April. According to the filing, on April 8, Schreiner registered as an “unattached” runner through the website Direct Athletics, meaning she is not affiliated with any school or organization, and paid a $44 entry fee.
Virginia Lt. Gov.-Elect Ghazala Hashmi unveiled a diverse transition team, The Advocate noted. The group includes established lawmakers, local leaders and advocates from across Virginia’s political spectrum—including Equality Virginia Executive Director Narissa Rahaman.
“My first reaction is that the Virginia GOP spent all their money on attacking transgender children, and it failed visibly,” Rahaman told The Advocate on Election Night, Nov. 4, after Democratic Gov.-Elect Abigail Spanberger’s win. “I could not be more excited and relieved for LGBTQ Virginians right now knowing that we’ve turned the page on the Youngkin administration and that we have a governor who is going to see our dignity and give us an opportunity to thrive in Virginia.”
On Nov. 14, Beth Ahavah—Philadelphia’s first LGBTQ+ synagogue—hosted a 50th-anniversary celebration of the synagogue’s founding, Philadelphia Gay News noted. The celebration included a special Torah service and festive Shabbat dinner. Regarding the choice of the name, co-founder Jerry Silverman said, “I thought we should have a name that was connected to Philadelphia, which is the City of Brotherly Love. So, the Hebrew word for ‘love’ is Ahavah.”
The movie Heightened Scrutiny will stream on Gathr on Nov. 13-20 for Trans Awareness Week, per a press release. The film follows Chase Strangio—an ACLU attorney and the first out trans person to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court—as he fights a high-stakes legal battle to overturn Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth (United States v. Skrmetti).
Maryland’s State Board of Education reversed a local book ban for the first time under the state’s Freedom to Read Act—and it was to protect an LGBTQ+ work, LGBTQ Nation noted. The state board’s ruling came after the Harford County school board banned author Mike Curato’s semi-autobiographical 2020 young adult graphic novel Flamer last summer. The 2021 Lambda Literary Award winner is about a teenage boy’s experience of being bullied for being gay and of experiencing his first crush at a Boy Scouts summer camp in 1995. According to the American Library Association, Flamer was among the five most challenged/banned books in the country in 2022 and 2023.
Trans actress Laverne Cox (Orange Is the New Black) hosted The LGBT Center’s (The Center’s) 28th annual Women’s Event—New York City’s premiere celebration of the contributions of LGBTQ+ women, Gay City News reported. “I’ve had a relationship with The Center since 1999,” Cox told the news outlet. “I used to come to The Center for support groups and the Gender Identity Project, and those support groups helped save my life.” Honorees included former America’s Next Top Model competitor Kim Stolz, a managing director at Bank of America Private Bank; and Shamina Singh, founder and president of Mastercard’s Center for Inclusive Growth and executive vice president for sustainability at Mastercard.
In California, a felony charge has been filed against a Cloverdale man accused of shouting homophobic slurs at members of the Sonoma County Pride Bowling League during their Oct. 14 league night in Rohnert Park, East Bay Times noted. The Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office charged Vincent Charles Belfiore, 64, with violating another person’s civil rights, according to court records. Belfiore, a registered sex offender, also faces a misdemeanor battery charge.
Vermont artist Tai Ericson has used the Harry Potter books (authored by anti-trans writer JK Rowling) to make portraits of transgender women who have been murdered, according to PinkNews. One of the figures represented is Ra’Lasia Wright—a Black Latina trans woman of Puerto Rican descent who was fatally shot in Minneapolis in December 2024; she was 25. A print of the portrait is available to buy, with 20% of proceeds going to Advocates for Trans Equality, not-for-profit organization based in New York.
Columbia University School of the Arts alum Aaron H. Aceves was awarded the 2025 Judith A. Markowitz Award for an Exceptional New LGBTQ Writer from Lambda Literary—a non-profit dedicated to amplifying LGBTQ+ stories for more than 35 years, per the school. The Judith A. Markowitz Award annually recognizes two early-career writers with each receiving a $1,500 cash prize. Emet North—whose debut novel, In Universes, was the winner of the 2024 Otherwise Award and was named one of the New York Times’ 10 Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels of 2024—was the other recipient.
An 1861 letter that President Abraham Lincoln wrote on behalf of his young Black friend and valet, William Johnson, is now on display at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, per the AP. Johnson’s dark complexion caused freed Black White House staffers with lighter skin to shun him. At the time he penned the letter, Lincoln was fewer than two weeks removed from his inauguration, taking over a country on the brink of the Civil War.
Montage Events, the producer of Cathedral City LGBT+ Days, announced the continued partnership with Agua Caliente Casinos as presenting sponsor for the 10th Annual Cathedral City LGBT+ Days taking place March 6-8, 2026, a press release noted. Cathedral City LGBT+ Days is California’s first Pride celebration of the year. The 2026 celebration will feature a weekend of live entertainment, community programming, drag performances, music, local artisans, the infamous bed race and parade, and special tributes.
On Tom Papa’s podcast Breaking Bread, lesbian comic Tig Notaro said she ended her friendship and her own podcast with actress Cheryl Hines because of the latter’s marriage to Robert Kennedy Jr., per Queerty. “Cheryl’s married to Bobby Kennedy Jr.,” Tig said, “and when he was announcing his run, I just felt like I needed to step away, because there are beliefs that were like a gnat on the arm years ago, that were getting further into the spotlight.” Notaro added, “Cheryl wanted me to hear Bobby out. I was, like, ‘I can’t… I didn’t trust it.’” Sex offender Jeffrey Epstein referred to Donald Trump as the “dog that hasn’t barked” and told his former companion Ghislaine Maxwell that an alleged victim had “spent hours at my house” with Trump, according to email correspondence that Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released, per Yahoo! News. That email exchange was one of three released by the Democrats from more than 23,000 documents the committee recently received from the Epstein Estate in response to a subpoena. House Republicans subsequently released 23,000 pages of documents from Epstein’s estate after months of delays, per The New York Times.