The Daily Queer
June 25, 2026
Queer Eye alumnus Tan France recalls a heated confrontation with a castmate. A queer moment on a classic sitcom is remembered. Is Supergirl a queer icon?
NEWS & CULTURE
Tan France Recalls Past ‘Heated Argument’ with Queer Eye Costar Who Called Him a ‘Traitor’
People — Jun 24, 2026
On Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s podcast Dinner’s on Me, Tan France revealed for the first time that an unnamed Queer Eye castmate confronted him during season one filming after learning he wasn’t out to his family, telling him he was “kind of a traitor” for not “singing it from the rooftops.” France pushed back hard, reminding his castmate that they couldn’t understand his experience as “a queer Muslim, a queer brown person, a queer immigrant” coming out into a community where, as he put it, no one in his family’s world had ever even said the word before. France came out to his family just two days before the show’s 2018 premiere, and says they’re now close and fully embrace his husband and children.
A therapist was punished for refusing to affirm a gay client. He fought back & won.
LGBTQ Nation — Jun 24, 2026
Oregon’s counseling board has withdrawn nearly $90,000 in fines and remedial requirements against Beaverton therapist Frank Canepa, who had refused on religious grounds to validate a longtime client’s same-sex relationship. The reversal came after the Alliance Defending Freedom appealed citing this year’s Supreme Court ruling in Chiles v. Salazar, which struck down a Colorado conversion-therapy law on free-speech grounds — though the board’s order was withdrawn without prejudice, meaning the case could still resurface.
An openly gay pro baseball player speaks out on the SF Giants Pride controversy
The San Francisco Standard — Jun 24, 2026
As the fallout continues over four Giants pitchers’ protest of the team’s rainbow Pride hats, the conversation has lacked a voice that doesn’t currently exist at the MLB level: an openly gay active player. Former Giants minor-leaguer Solomon Bates, let go three days after coming out in 2019, says he later learned of a behind-the-scenes smear campaign questioning his locker-room conduct. He’d still rejoin the organization if asked, he says, even as he calls the current hat dispute a betrayal of the city’s queer history: “A rainbow should not hurt your heart like that.”
A Sitcom’s Message of Tolerance 50 Years Ago
The Contrarian — Jun 24, 2026
Fifty years ago this October, The Bob Newhart Show aired “Some of My Best Friends Are…,” an episode in which Bob Hartley’s therapy group erupts when a new member, played by Howard Hesseman, reveals he’s gay. Several patients walk out, but Newhart’s character stands firmly by his client, scolding the group for its narrow-mindedness and refusing to let him be voted out — a remarkably progressive stance for a mid-1970s network sitcom airing just three years after the APA removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses.
Barry Walters Wants to Expand the Boundaries of Queer Music
Pitchfork — Jun 24, 2026
Critic Barry Walters, who came out publicly while reviewing the Pet Shop Boys’ debut album for the Village Voice in 1986, discusses his new book Mighty Real: A History of LGBTQ Music, 1969-2000. Drawing on decades of writing for SPIN, Rolling Stone, and Pitchfork, Walters traces how artists from Sylvester to Bronski Beat to Luther Vandross found freedom, and sometimes danger, in embracing nonconformity — and argues that doubling down on queerness, rather than softening it for a broader audience, is often what makes the music resonate furthest beyond the LGBTQ+ community itself.
Dispatches from Route 66: How queer communities are rebuilding safety along the Mother Road
The Advocate — Jun 23, 2026
Continuing her Route 66 road trip series, Alysse Dalessandro reports from Oklahoma and Texas, where Black and LGBTQ+ communities have built their own systems of safety where institutions have failed them. In Oklahoma City, The District Hotel — once a refuge from nightly police harassment of gay bar patrons — still stands as the route’s only LGBTQ+ hotel, while in Amarillo, the Amarillo Area Transgender Advocacy Group runs a food pantry and keeps an informal list of which local businesses are safe for trans travelers, with members showing up in person to make sure no one navigates the area alone.
Elizabeth Warren warns new Trump federal housing rule could put LGBTQ+ people on the street
The Advocate — Jun 24, 2026
Sen. Elizabeth Warren and 22 Senate colleagues are calling on HUD to withdraw a proposed rule that would strip “sexual orientation” protections from federal housing regulations entirely — going further, the senators say, than even Trump’s executive order on “gender ideology” required. The rule would let shelters demand “assurances and evidence” of a person’s sex before granting access, a change advocates warn could turn away transgender women fleeing domestic violence and subject gender-nonconforming cisgender women to invasive scrutiny as well.
Queer comic Trey Toler pens memoir on how ‘Good Damage’ shaped his search for beauty
ARTS ATL — Jun 25, 2026
Atlanta-based comedian Trey Toler’s debut memoir, Good Damage, traces his closeted teenage years as his mother’s primary caregiver, a brutal outing by classmates who catfished him on AOL Instant Messenger, and the substance-abuse spiral that followed her death when he was 28. Dictated rather than typed to preserve his stream-of-consciousness comic voice, the book lands on an unlikely metaphor drawn from a humanitarian trip to Guatemala: choosing to live like a hummingbird, seeking out small beauty, rather than a vulture circling what’s already gone.
Exploring Supergirl’s History as an Unlikely Queer Icon
Den of Geek — Jun 25, 2026
Supergirl has never been written as anything but straight in DC canon, yet star Milly Alcock has said the character “doesn’t live in the binary” and would “swing both ways” — comments that track with a long history of queer fans gravitating to Kara Zor-El. From prolific Kara/Lena shipping on the CW series to an explicitly sapphic Supergirl-and-Wonder-Woman pairing in DC’s Dark Knights of Steel, the character’s recurring coming-of-age, outsider narrative has made her a surprisingly durable touchpoint for LGBTQ+ readers, even without an official canonical storyline to point to.
Here are the queer stories that you won’t find in most history books
The Advocate — Jun 24, 2026
Brooklyn-based archivist Daylonn Orr founded Fugitive Materials in 2020 to preserve queer, feminist, and radical histories that mainstream archives and the book trade have historically overlooked. The organization has placed collections — including materials on Black trans performer and ACLU client Sir Lady Java, and a member of the underground pre-Roe abortion network the Janes — with university archives, while also publishing affordable zines so the same histories stay accessible outside academic walls.
Judge blocks Trump DOJ from seizing trans youths’ medical records from NYC hospitals
The Advocate — Jun 24, 2026
U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla temporarily blocked the Justice Department from obtaining gender-affirming care records for minors treated at NYU Langone and Mount Sinai, calling a subpoena “expressly targeting members of a particular and uniquely vulnerable group” conduct that “shocks the conscience.” The DOJ has framed the records request as part of a drug-misbranding investigation, but Lambda Legal and the ACLU, who brought the suit on behalf of three families, argue it’s a pretext for dismantling trans youth health care — the latest in a string of at least eight federal courts to block similar subpoenas nationwide.
The Daily Queer • Thursday, June 25, 2026
Compiled for your reading. Links go to original sources.