Queer Vulturing
November 14, 2026
He may not be real, but Leo Mas Renard will always be queer. RFKJr. declares a war on poppers. Rumors fly after Orville Peck and Carl Nassib sing a duet. And Hudson Williams kisses his doppelgänger.
Leo Mas Renard creator reveals why his AI character will always be gay
SoaplandTV
The creator behind the AI-generated gay love story explains why his leading man’s sexuality isn’t up for algorithmic revision. It’s a small, strange marker of where queer storytelling is heading, synthetic actors and all.
Opinion: ‘Blue Wave’ Proves Transphobia Is Not a Winning Political Strategy
Washington Blade
Emma Cieslik argues that James Talarico’s Texas Senate win over Ken Paxton shows anti-trans attack ads don’t decide elections. She also tallies the midterms’ setbacks, including youth sports and care restrictions passed in states such as Colorado, Washington and Arizona, and warns that gains like Virginia’s repeal of its marriage ban remain fragile.
LGBTQ+ Advocates Look to New Congress for a Path Forward on Federal Protections
Los Angeles Blade
With Democrats taking both chambers in January, advocates see an opening to revive the Equality Act and the Transgender Bill of Rights, though GLAD Law’s Ricardo Martinez cautions that new protections may first require groundwork hearings. Democrats also plan oversight, with Rep. Robert Garcia expected to chair House Oversight, and budget fights over anti-LGBTQ+ riders and HIV funding.
30 Out LGBTQ+ Political Leaders Who Rewrote History
PinkNews
PinkNews profiles 30 out leaders, from Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten to Ana Brnabić, reportedly the first openly lesbian head of state as Serbia’s acting president. U.S. entries include Chris Pappas, newly elected as the first openly gay man in the Senate, and Rep. Sarah McBride.
Shooting at Gay-Owned VIDA Fitness in D.C. Leaves One Dead, Four Wounded
The Advocate
A gunman killed one person inside VIDA Fitness, the Logan Circle gym long tied to Washington’s LGBTQ+ community, and wounded four others before barricading himself in his apartment upstairs, where he was found dead. Police say the suspect, a resident in a feud with the building’s condo association, appears to have targeted his victim; whether bias played a role remains unclear.
Trump and RFK Jr. declared war on poppers — public health, or targeting gay men?
LGBTQ Nation
An FDA raid shut down Austin poppers maker Double Scorpio, two men tied to it have pleaded guilty, and the DOJ has even opened a portal for popper “victims.” Meanwhile, Kennedy keeps linking poppers to AIDS, a claim the NIH says can’t be supported.
15 Queer TV Characters 2026 Audiences Couldn’t Ignore
PinkNews
PinkNews rounds up the year’s groundbreaking queer roles, from Heartstopper’s explicitly aroace Isaac Henderson to an amputee young Avatar in Avatar: Seven Havens. The list also flags Bridgerton’s queer-centered Season 5 and the first out gay Hillman student in the A Different World sequel.
GLAAD Report: LGBTQ TV Characters Drop 25 Percent
GLAAD
GLAAD’s 21st Where We Are on TV report counted 369 LGBTQ characters on scripted series premiering between June 2025 and May 2026, 120 fewer than the prior season, with trans characters falling from 33 to seven and none set to return. The cuts, GLAAD argues, fly in the face of audience appetite for hits like Heated Rivalry, Pluribus and The Hunting Wives.
At Out100, Eugene Daniels Asks History-Makers to Support the People Covering It
The Advocate
MS NOW’s Eugene Daniels used the Out100 gala to pitch The Advocate Journalism Project, a new nonprofit effort to fund queer reporting, fellowships and the preservation of the magazine’s nearly 60-year print archive. “Yes, print is still important,” he told the room, as the publication heads toward its 60th anniversary next year.
Still Here, Still Desiring: Memory, Sex and Queer Old Age
Centre for Mental Health
Drawing on interviews with older gay men, researcher David Woodhead argues that AIDS-era health messaging never acknowledged sex as central to queer community, and that desire, friendship and grief in later life remain invisible to policymakers. He urges commissioners and clinicians to fund community groups, talk openly about sex and ageing, and recognize lasting AIDS bereavement.
In Defence of the Bitchy Queers
GAY TIMES
Tom George makes the case for catty wit as a queer survival skill, from Bernadette’s barroom standoff in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert back through Oscar Wilde and Quentin Crisp. What gets dismissed as bitchiness, he argues, is really armor, humor and solidarity.
WLW and MLM: Decoding Sapphic and Achillean
Gayety
Gayety’s explainer untangles “women loving women” and “men loving men” as umbrella terms covering lesbian, gay, bi and pan people, and separates them from multi-level marketing and the clinical labels MSM and WSW. It also traces “sapphic” and “achillean” and notes nonbinary variants such as NBLW and NBLM.
Inside the dirty tricks and deep pockets behind that dubious Lindsey Graham doc
Queerty
Queerty follows the money and operatives behind The CLOSETocracy, the Young Turks and Swamp Watch Studios film in which three men allege the late senator paid them for sex. None of the claims has been independently verified, and the film’s timing — days before his sister’s Senate race — raised as many questions as it answered.
Orville Peck Duets With Ex-NFL Star Carl Nassib Amid Raider-Kiss Speculation
TMZ
Peck brought Nassib onstage at Philadelphia’s Metropolitan Opera House for Bonnie Raitt’s “Something to Talk About,” the pair in matching black tanks. Fans immediately connected it to Peck’s confession, in his song “Ring the Bell,” that he once kissed a Las Vegas Raiders player; Nassib, the first active NFL player to come out, is an ex-Raider, though no one has confirmed a thing.
Andrew Scott Calls Pressure on Gay Actors to Stay Closeted “Insidious”
LGBTQ Nation
In a Vogue profile promoting Elsinore, Andrew Scott described the “silent choice” earlier generations of gay actors faced: hide who they were or lose the work, a bargain he notes straight actors never had to strike. He believes the industry is growing more accepting, but the point lands hard in a film about a man who played Hamlet while privately dying of AIDS.
Andrew Scott Talks Elsinore, Hamlet and AIDS
Washington Blade
Scott, who stars in and executive produces the film about Chariots of Fire actor Ian Charleson’s final National Theatre Hamlet, says he wanted to capture Charleson’s humor and joy as much as the stigma that kept performers of his era closeted. He also draws on his own grief over his mother’s death and an unsteady early career; Elsinore opens in limited release Nov. 20.
Andrew Scott Accepts Out100 Icon of the Year Award
The Advocate
Introduced by his Comeback co-star Lisa Kudrow, Scott recalled being too afraid as a boy in Dublin to even glance at a magazine cover, then paid tribute to Ian Charleson in his acceptance speech. The Los Angeles gala also saw Lily Tomlin and Stella Parton honor the late Dolly Parton, named Advocate of the Year posthumously.
Jonathan Bailey and Bill Nighy to Play Real-Life Lovers in Insomniac City
them
Bailey will play writer and photographer Bill Hayes opposite Nighy as neurologist Oliver Sacks in Dominic Cooke’s adaptation of Hayes’s 2017 memoir about finding love in New York after losing his longtime partner. Bailey is also producing, and Altitude is introducing the film to buyers at the American Film Market; no release date has been set.
Jordan Firstman Made Club Kid as “An Act of Compassion for Myself”
TIME
Firstman says his A24 feature debut, about a New York party promoter who learns he has a 10-year-old son (Reggie Absolom), grew out of feeling lonely in a crowd. He also pushes back on critics who read the film, which A24 bought out of Cannes for a reported $17 million, as a conservative rebuke to nightlife.
All the Best Movies Right Now Are Gay
British GQ
British GQ makes the case that the most exciting films in cinemas right now are queer ones. The argument lands in a season crowded with Club Kid, Coward, La Bola Negra and, next week, Elsinore.
Coward: A Gay Love Affair in the Trenches of World War I
The Hollywood Times
Lukas Dhont’s drama follows a Flemish farmer (Emmanuel Macchia) conscripted to the Belgian front, where he falls for a flamboyant soldier (Valentin Campagne) who stages cross-dressed shows for the troops. The MUBI release premiered at Cannes in May and screened this month at the American French Film Festival in Hollywood.
La Bola Negra Harps on Queer History, War and the Refusal to Disappear
The Nerds of Color
Los Javis’ sprawling Spanish epic, steeped in the legacy of Federico García Lorca, braids together three men across 75 years: a Civil War survivor, a man hiding himself in 1932 and a grandson unearthing buried family history in 2017. Valerie Complex finds a film about queer history’s refusal to vanish, with singer Guitarricadelafuente leading the cast.
A Canceled Gay Theater Director’s Right-Wing Pivot Becomes a Darkly Funny Documentary
Queerty
Nicholas Clark and Dylan Frederick’s Slamdance-winning American Theater follows Brian Clowdus, the former Serenbe Playhouse artistic director who left amid abuse allegations in 2019 and reinvented himself as a MAGA-aligned provocateur. The film tracks his 2021 Salem witch-trials musical, staged at a rural cabin, with all the dark comedy that implies.
The Body Creator Quinn Shephard on Faith, Lesbian Camp and Whether God Is Real
Variety
Shephard, a lesbian raised in the church, unpacks her Netflix drama about a Catholic-school dance troupe whose botched 2004 initiation sets off mass hysteria. She says the show deliberately never settles whether God exists, mirroring her own place somewhere between belief and doubt.
Hudson Williams Kisses Himself in Yaga’s Viral Threesome Scene
PinkNews
Episode four of the HBO Max thriller features a threesome flashback in which Williams, playing both the narcissistic heir Henry and his doppelgänger Logan, ends up kissing himself. “There’s a three-person scene; two of them are me,” the Heated Rivalry star joked as the clip ricocheted across social media.
Julia Garner on the Shelved Madonna Biopic: “Every Hour It Changes”
Just Jared
Asked on CBS Sunday Morning whether the long-stalled Madonna biopic will ever happen, Garner said its status shifts constantly and the decision isn’t hers. Whatever happens, she added, she made a great friend, and the two will share the screen in Season 2 of Apple TV’s The Studio.
November LGBTQ Music: George Michael and Cain Culto
Gay City News
Gay City News’s monthly queer-music roundup pairs new George Michael material with Cain Culto, the Kentucky-raised former worship pastor whose debut album CULTO fuses Latin pop, hip-hop and bluegrass fiddle. Culto’s trek from evangelical bandleader to queer provocateur has made him one of the year’s more compelling breakouts.
Jordan Firstman Builds the Ultimate Gay Club With the Club Kid Soundtrack
Paste
The film’s companion EP features Shygirl’s “Waves,” Brutalismus 3000’s techno “Crusades,” an original Moby track and two covers of Arthur Russell’s “The Boy With a Smile,” one by Christine and the Queens. It arrives a week after the film stirred debate over whether it critiques queer nightlife.
Alanis Morissette Comes Out as Pansexual
VICE
On the Handsome podcast with Tig Notaro, Fortune Feimster and Mae Martin, Morissette casually revealed she is pansexual, joking that she likes to “leave it for the epilogue.” The hosts were caught off guard, though the singer has long spoken about stepping outside the binary.
Madonna Returns to the Coachella Dance Tent
Billboard
The 2027 Coachella lineup bills “Madonna in the Dance Tent,” a full-circle return to the festival where she unveiled Confessions on a Dance Floor in 2006, now touring the sequel’s club-ready sound. Robyn and Phoebe Bridgers are also on the bill, with Dua Lipa, Tame Impala and SZA headlining April 9–11 and 16–18.
Christine and the Queens Returns With “Rendez-vous avec toi”
The Line of Best Fit
Chris is back with the disco-flecked single, issued alongside an English version, as the first taste of a new album due next spring. The Paris-shot video, co-directed with Raphaël De Albuquerque, features choreography by Alexander Ekman.
Tom Cruise Sued a Gay Porn Star for $100 Million. What Would Paul Newman Do?
Far Out
Far Out revisits Cruise’s 2001 defamation suit against adult performer Chad Slater, who allegedly claimed an affair with the star, and weighs it against how Paul Newman might have handled the same whispers. Cruise ultimately won a $10 million default judgment, a sum he likely never collected.
Andrew Rannells Calls Out Fan for Filming During the Show
BroadwayWorld
After a theatergoer complained online that Rannells skipped the stage door following a preview of It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play, then posted a photo taken mid-performance, Rannells tagged the fan: “You broke my heart for filming DURING THE SHOW!” Theater Reddit overwhelmingly took his side.
Jinkx & DeLa Take On the Billionaire Scrooges
Queerty
Jinkx Monsoon and BenDeLaCreme launch the ninth edition of their holiday show, this year built around a corporate takeover of the production itself. The queens tell Queerty that skewering billionaire consolidation of the entertainment business was a no-brainer, and yes, Sexy Krampus returns.
Sufjan Stevens Breaks a 15-Year Christmas Silence
SPIN
Stevens has released “On This Christmas (It Only Gets Better),” his first new Christmas song written, produced and performed by himself in nearly 15 years, built around apology and asking forgiveness. It anchors Worst Christmas Ever!, a 16-track distillation of his famously sprawling holiday catalog.
Gay MAFS UK’Groom Hoped to Show a Positive Life With HIV
PinkNews
Tom Byatt has revealed he was a groom on the Married at First Sight UK season Channel 4 scrapped after misconduct allegations, and says he had hoped to show viewers what thriving with HIV looks like. Diagnosed nearly two years ago, he says he’s determined that his message of acceptance won’t end with the axed series.
ICE Detains and Separates Gay Married Couple, Admits They’re Not Criminals
Here’s Why with Kevin (Substack)
Argentine husbands Agustin Baccega and Gustavo Romanello, acrobatics coaches and performers at Universal Studios Orlando, were detained by plainclothes ICE agents at Phoenix’s airport Nov. 7 while traveling to a memorial service. Both have pending asylum claims and work authorization; DHS concedes neither has a criminal record but cites visa overstays, and Sen. Ruben Gallego has offered help.
He Went on a Dating Show to Find a Wife. Two Years Later, He’s Back to Meet a Husband.
Queerty
In 2024, William Laven went on the UK’s First Dates hoping to meet a wife; this year he returned and dated a man. In an essay for Attitude, he writes that he came out at 27 with no big announcement, simply mentioning it in conversation.
Beach Volleyball Pro Alex Ukkelberg Comes Out: “I’m Thankful That I’m Gay”
PinkNews
Ukkelberg came out publicly in an Instagram reel after years of mental-health struggles and of believing athletes couldn’t be gay. The 2025 AVP Laguna Beach Open champion, raised in a Minnesota town of fewer than 800, says he has long been out to family and fellow players, including a group chat of gay pros.
John Violinist Faces Backlash After Allegedly Snubbing a Gay Couple Onstage
PinkNews
Rev. Darrell Goodwin says musician John Randolph, known as John Violinist, ignored him and his husband during an onstage anniversary shout-out at Hartford’s Bushnell on Nov. 7, even after audience members pointed them out. Goodwin says Randolph has since apologized privately and the venue offered a refund, but he is still waiting on public statements from both.
Family Killer Chris Watts Allegedly Caught in Prison Relationship With Male Inmate
The Mirror
Citing a Daily Mail report, The Mirror says guards at Wisconsin’s Dodge Correctional Institution separated Chris Watts from a male inmate over a suspected sexual relationship, and that younger prisoners “flock” to him. Prison officials have not confirmed the claims, which surface weeks after Watts reportedly called off a planned prison wedding.
Atlanta Approves Demolition of the House Where Bowers v. Hardwick Began
The Advocate
Zoning officials have cleared the way to tear down 811 Ponce de Leon Place, where Michael Hardwick’s 1982 arrest for sex with another man led to the 1986 Supreme Court ruling upholding sodomy laws until Lawrence v. Texas overturned it in 2003. Preservationists note the house appears in Atlanta’s own LGBTQ+ historic survey; the owners want a new home and a pool.