The Daily Queer
June 3, 2026
What? No wedding gift from Donald and Melania? Sure sign that same-sex marriage support has fallen amongst Republicans. A vicious Pride protest. New doc reawakes Cruising debate. And Michelle Visage says get wise to PrEP.
NEWS & CULTURE
Republican Support for Same-Sex Marriage Has Fallen 18 Points Since 2022
A new New York Times survey reveals a dramatic and rapid erosion of Republican support for same-sex marriage — down 18 percentage points in just four years, reversing gains that had taken decades to build. The shift tracks closely with the broader political realignment around LGBTQ+ issues under the second Trump administration, as anti-gay rhetoric has moved from the fringes of the GOP to its mainstream messaging.
GOP Senate Candidate Struggles to Burn Rainbow Flag on Top of U-Haul While Screaming at Two People
Jake Lang — a Republican candidate for Florida’s U.S. Senate seat who was jailed for allegedly assaulting Capitol Police on January 6 — climbed on top of a U-Haul outside a Newark ICE facility to burn a Pride flag, yelling slurs at his cameraman and a single supporter holding a gong on the sidewalk. The wind promptly extinguished the flames before the flag could seriously burn — a fitting end to what may be the most performatively pitiful Pride Month stunt of 2026.
Kicking Off Pride Month, Mayor Mamdani Announces Trans Rights Awareness Campaign
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani launched a “Trans Rights are Human Rights” awareness campaign on June 1, spanning multiple city agencies and appearing on transit and LinkNYC kiosks across all five boroughs. The campaign comes as the city has recorded its highest number of gender discrimination complaints in five years — and as more than half of U.S. states have moved to restrict gender-affirming care for youth.
Man Charged with Killing Gay Dancer O’Shae Sibley Claims Self-Defense
Dmitriy Popov, now 20, took the stand at his Brooklyn murder trial to claim he acted in self-defense when he fatally stabbed dancer and choreographer O’Shae Sibley at a Coney Island Avenue gas station in July 2023 — despite surveillance video showing Sibley walking away from him and flashing a peace sign. Popov denied using any homophobic slurs, even as prosecutors pointed to video evidence and witness testimony contradicting his account.
World Premiere: ‘Mineshaft: The Cruising Murders’ at Tribeca Film Festival
A new documentary premiering at Tribeca examines the notorious Mineshaft, the legendary and transgressive gay leather bar in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, through the lens of a series of unsolved murders connected to the cruising scene that surrounded it. The film arrives as William Friedkin’s 1980 film Cruising — long controversial in the gay community for its depiction of the same world — has seen a significant critical reappraisal.
Why Michelle Visage Needs You to Get ‘PrEP Wise’
The Drag Race judge and lifelong HIV advocate has partnered with ViiV Healthcare on their new PrEP Wisdom Campaign, drawing on her personal history from the 1980s New York ballroom scene — where she watched friends die of AIDS — to make the case for injectable PrEP. “More than 2 million Americans could benefit from PrEP,” she notes, “yet only 25 percent are currently using it” — a gap she intends to help close.
GAY45 Fashion: 2026 Is the Year Men’s Streetwear Came Out of the Closet
GAY45’s fashion roundup argues that 2026 marks a genuine inflection point in menswear — with queer aesthetics moving from subcultural reference to mainstream streetwear language, driven by a generation of designers and consumers who refuse to separate style from identity. It’s a counterintuitive story to tell in a year of political retrenchment, and all the more powerful for that.
Clashing Pride Month Values on Display in Detroit
As Motor City Pride prepares for its June 6–7 festival at Hart Plaza, Detroit finds itself a notable outlier in 2026: while cities like New York, San Francisco, and Seattle have seen dramatic drops in corporate Pride sponsorships following anti-DEI pressure, Detroit’s event has retained more than 140 sponsors — with the one company that pulled out quickly replaced. The contrast speaks to both the strength of Detroit’s LGBTQ+ community and the increasingly fractured national picture.
NFL Social Media Accounts Were Silent to Start Pride Month
The NFL’s official X and Instagram accounts — with a combined audience of nearly 70 million followers — posted nothing about Pride Month on June 1, breaking from years of visible LGBTQ+ support and contrasting sharply with the NBA, MLB, and NHL, which all acknowledged the day. Nine of 32 teams also stayed silent; the league later issued a statement saying it would “continue to highlight and amplify Pride-related content” throughout the month, without explaining the opening-day silence.
Karamo Brown Reveals the Final Straw That Led to His ‘Queer Eye’ Fallout
In a cover interview with People, Karamo Brown confirmed that the breaking point in his estrangement from the Queer Eye cast came when his mother — visiting the set in 2025 wearing production headphones — overheard Jonathan Van Ness, Tan France, and Antoni Porowski speaking negatively about him. “The thing I know is the tears I saw in my mother’s eyes,” Brown said, adding that he had relapsed from 12 years of sobriety during the show’s third season amid what he described as years of being made to feel “like an outsider.”
10 HIV/AIDS Activists Arrested on Capitol Hill
Ten HIV/AIDS activists were arrested on Capitol Hill during a protest demanding the federal government restore funding for HIV prevention and treatment programs — cuts that advocates say will cost lives, particularly in communities of color and among trans people who rely on federally funded clinics. The arrests come as the Washington Blade reports that multiple trans-led HIV clinics across the country are already struggling to survive amid the funding rollbacks.
Ghana’s Parliament Approves Sweeping Anti-LGBTQ+ Bill
Ghana’s lawmakers have passed a bill imposing severe criminal penalties on same-sex conduct, LGBTQ+ identity, and advocacy — one of the harshest such laws on the African continent. The bill now heads to the president for signature, drawing immediate condemnation from international human rights organizations and raising urgent concerns for LGBTQ+ Ghanaians who now face prosecution simply for existing.