LGBTQ Breaking News Service

Suze Orman never wanted to be known as the lesbian money lady. 

“I wanted to be known as the money lady who was also a lesbian,” she says. “Big difference.” 

And she doesn’t tailor her financial advice for gay audiences. Whether you’re gay or not, she believes, the mechanics of saving, investing, and building wealth are the same. “Money has no sexuality, no preference, nothing,” Orman says. 

But her sexuality is hardly irrelevant. In fact Orman, now 70, says the strength she derived from being a gay woman was the most important factor in her unlikely rise from a 29-year-old waitress making $400 a month to one of the most powerful and influential voices in finance. 

“Being gay has been the foundation of my success,” Orman told NextAdvisor in advance of an upcoming digital event celebrating Pride Month. On June 24, Orman will join NextAdvisor for a one-hour livestreamed conversation about her experiences as a gay woman breaking into—and ultimately conquering—the male-dominated finance industry. In a rare joint appearance, she’ll be joined for part of the interview by Kathleen “KT” Travis, her wife and partner of 20 years. 

Standing in Her Truth

In 1980, Orman became one of the first female stockbrokers in the Oakland office of wealth-management firm Merrill Lynch—a world away from her previous gig waiting tables at the Buttercup Bakery. She was a novice at investing, surrounded by men in a testosterone-driven culture. Some of the men expected sexual favors in exchange for leads, she recalls. 

It was the fortitude she developed from growing up gay that allowed her to compete with and ultimately outperform those male colleagues, Orman says. “What allowed me to be strong is because I had already had to be strong as a lesbian,” she says. “And therefore I was like, ‘You ain’t coming near me.’”

Orman was born in 1951 on the South Side of Chicago. She struggled at school with a speech impediment and an unusually slow development in reading. Kids teased her for being a lesbian before she even knew what the word meant, she says. Her parents never approved of her sexuality, but her mother eventually pretended to, she says.

None of that mattered. “I was unapologetic” about being gay, Orman says. By her 20s, she had decamped to the liberal community of Berkeley, California, where she lived in a women’s house, went to gay bars, and wasn’t afraid to walk down the street holding hands with her girlfriend. She got to know the people behind Olivia Records, the pioneering women’s music label, and grew into her identity as a lesbian. “It was the greatest part of my life, before my life became Suze Orman,” she says. “The greatest part of my life was being gay.”

Rich, Beyond Dollars

From then on, Orman never hid her sexuality, whether in the boardroom of Merrill Lynch or in the office of her book publisher in the early 1990s, when she signed the deal that would begin a run of nine #1 New York Times-bestselling titles. 

Technically speaking, she came out publicly in a 2007 New York Times article in which she called herself a “55-year-old virgin” because she had never slept with a man. But anyone who had done business with Suze Orman knew that she was gay. “I always told people,” she says. “I just think it’s important that you really stand behind your identity against all odds.” 

In her upcoming conversation with NextAdvisor, Orman will open up about her uncompromising fight to preserve her identity as a gay woman while achieving unprecedented success in an industry not known for diversity or inclusivity. She’ll give her best advice for LGBTQ+ individuals trying to build wealth while also reckoning with systemic inequalities and unwelcoming spaces. Then, joined by her wife KT Travis, she’ll get personal about the relationship she says has made her rich beyond dollars.

Join us on June 24 for a livestreamed conversation with Suze Orman about life, money, and standing in one’s truth. Sign up here.

The First Amendment does not protect a Colorado attorney from being disciplined for using an anti-gay slur to describe a judge, the state Supreme Court ruled on Monday.

While acknowledging the professional misconduct rule for lawyers does serve to censor speech that is permissible in other contexts, the justices determined there was a well-established, compelling interest in regulating the language of attorneys.

The rule “protects clients and other participants in the justice system from discrimination and harassment. There is no question that a lawyer’s use of derogatory or discriminatory language that singles out individuals involved in the legal process damages the legal profession and erodes confidence in the justice system,” wrote Justice Melissa Hart in the Court’s opinion.

Robert E. Abrams, who was representing a couple in a dispute against a contractor, reported that former Arapahoe County District Court Judge Phillip Douglass attacked him verbally during a case management conference in March 2016. Abrams left the hearing feeling that he could not represent his clients before a jury if the judge treated him that way at trial.

After the couple expressed concern, Abrams explained over email that “I probably remind [Douglass] of someone who beat him up [when he] was a fat kid and now that he’s a big fat judge he gets even w/ the bullies. Maybe he just hates Jews, who knows?”

Then, Abrams wrote that while he was handling a related case, “I was getting yelled at by Fatso [Douglass]. The judge is a gay, fat, [f-g], now it’s out there.” Abrams, during his disciplinary hearing, later said his comments were a “street read” on Douglass, and claimed he was calling the judge a “sissy,” rather than commenting on his sexual orientation.

In 2019, the Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel filed a complaint alleging Abrams violated a rule regarding client billing, as well as the rule deeming it misconduct if a lawyer behaves in a way that engenders “bias against a person on account of that person’s race, gender, religion, national origin, disability, age, [or] sexual orientation.”

Although Abrams argued he was not acting out of bigotry, and a three-member hearing board for the Presiding Disciplinary Judge agreed there was no evidence of that, the board determined Abrams violated the rule.

“This rule does not regulate bigotry; it regulates behavior,” the board concluded.

In reaching its decision, the board was unpersuaded by Abrams’s explanation that he was calling the judge a “sissy,” instead finding that he knew the slur referred to a gay man. It ordered Abrams to complete 18 months of probation in lieu of suspending his license. He also needed to attend ethics training, plus eight hours of cultural awareness and sensitivity education.

Abrams appealed to the Supreme Court, and his lawyers asserted the hearing board’s decision was intended to “demean Abrams by improperly attacking his psyche and unfairly suggesting he is a bad lawyer who is psychologically flawed.” Abrams further argued the disciplinary action against him impaired “his right to speak freely in Colorado and as a citizen of the United States of America.”

It “seems appropriate and needed,” he added, for the Supreme Court to give lawyers a list of words that are unacceptable to use.

Justin P. Moore, assistant regulation counsel, responded that the First Amendment does not provide attorneys with an “impermeable cloak” to protect their comments. He referenced the Supreme Court’s 2019 censure of former Court of Appeals Judge Laurie A. Booras, who privately called her colleague — a Latina judge — a “little Mexican,” using it as an example of the First Amendment not protecting biased comments.

According to the Supreme Court, in nearly 30 years, only four other attorneys have received sanctions for violating the rule against biased speech. Those instances involved lawyers employing sexist language, using the term “ghetto” in reference to a Black client’s child and making “overtly sexual comments” to a judge. Abrams’s slur against Douglass, Hart wrote, was “exactly the type of conduct” the rule was meant to curb.

The Court determined the rule was neither so broad nor vague that it failed to put lawyers on notice about what type of conduct was barred. The justices also believed the Presiding Disciplinary Judge did not abuse his authority by limiting favorable testimony about Abrams’s past interactions with the LGBTQ community.

“We agree with the hearing board’s conclusion that proof of a violation of this Rule does not require the People to demonstrate that an attorney actually harbors bias against a person on the basis of a protected classification,” Hart explained. “The Rule only addresses the attorney’s outward behavior; it does not attempt to police whether a lawyer privately holds prejudicial beliefs.”

Ann Stanton, president of the Colorado LGBT Bar Association, said this was the first time a lawyer had received public discipline for anti-gay comments, and the case illustrated a persistent need to eradicate bias in the legal profession.

“The conduct described in this disciplinary action is abhorrent. But the facts of this case reflect an all-too-familiar reality to many of us LGBTQ attorneys: anti-LGBTQ bias persists in the legal community today,” she said. “Whether it’s in the form of microaggressions, overt harassment, or discrimination, many of us have experienced some form of implicit or explicit bias in this profession on account of our sexual orientation or gender identity.”

Abrams and his attorneys did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

LGBTQIA+ people and cannabis enthusiasts share similar experiences when it comes to legal progress, political challenges, and a continued quest for equality.

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Weed is not attracted to other same-sex weed. A nug cannot have a gay wedding. A joint does not identify as genderqueer. An edible cannot talk with me about the new L Word: Generation Q.

However, weed is core to the experience of many queer people. In fact, one study says that queer people consume cannabis at higher rate than straight and cis people.

In this series, part of Leafly’s celebration of Pride month, we’ll explore some of the connections between queer people and cannabis in terms of history, health, culture. 

Long before modern attempts to further queer rights, queer people existed. Cultures across the world began mentioning the presence of a third gender, two-spirit individuals, and other alternate gender presentations centuries ago.

In ancient societies like Greece, Rome, and Egypt, it wasn’t unheard of for same-sex pairs to be depicted together in a romantic sense in art or mythology or even buried together. And while it’s hard to draw direct conclusions from the little information we have about queer people in ancient society, there is mention of queer people in visual arts and literature going back thousands of years.

• 1688: Japan’s first gay bar opens
• 1790s: Monaco, The Kingdom of Prussia, Luxemburg, and Belgium decriminalize sodomy
• Late 1800s and early 1900s: the concept of a “Boston marriage”, or the long-term partnership between two women, appears in American high society.

But despite centuries of existence, many modern religions and societies struggled to accept LGBTQIA+ people – perpetuating false ideas that they were dangerous or morally corrupt.

Cannabis has a history just as ancient. People in Central Asia have known about its power, including it in tales since as early as 2737 B.C. Cannabis seeds have been found in the graves of shamen in both China and Siberia as early as 500 B.C. And we also know there is a vibrant history of edible usage during the Islamic Golden Age.

Related

Weed rituals: a cross-cultural connection to calm

Hemp played a vital role in helping America become an industrial and agricultural powerhouse from its inception. But eventually, taxation and fear won over.

The US government passed legislation like the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act and The Controlled Substance Act of 1970 – leading to federal cannabis prohibition. Once cannabis was criminalized in this way, it was easy for many people to write weed off as a danger.

Both the LGBTQIA+ community and cannabis have more than their ancient history in common. They have been unfairly demonized in the public forum, where cannabis prohibition and anti-LGBTQIA+ policy have been used as moral imperatives instead of intentional political choices.

The shift towards the more fair and compassionate treatment of both cannabis users and queer people has been a welcome change in recent years.

Nearly two decades after the Defense of Marriage Act was signed in 1996, gay marriage became nationally legal. But only after a string of states legalized it on their own. While gay marriage isn’t the only issue facing LGBTQIA+ people, its legalization helped speed up other protections for queer people for things like housing, employment, parenting, and medical care.

Weed has followed a similar blueprint towards national legalization, with an increasing number of states legalizing either medical or recreational cannabis. There’s pressure on the current administration to consider a path forward for national legalization, and the passage of every state’s cannabis program helps provide cannabis users with more protection and care. Sound familiar?

Hate goes up in smoke

Today, the majority of Americans support both the rights of queer people and comprehensive cannabis legalization. 76% of Americans say they are pro-LGBTQ+, while 68% of Americans support cannabis legalization.

Related

Dear Joe Biden: Here’s the data, now it’s time to embrace marijuana legalization

We’ve got a long way to go, but it’s important to celebrate the little victories and appreciate activists in both cannabis legalization and LGBTQIA+ rights. They are the people that have helped us get to where we are today. 

The future is brighter, safer, and more just for cannabis users and for queer people, as long as we never stop fighting for what’s right and never stop confronting the work we still need to do as a community and as a country.

Read more on weed and queer culture

C. Merten

C. Merten is a Chicago-based writer, creative, and cannabis enthusiast. Their passions include breakfast, 70’s music, pina coladas, and getting caught in the rain.

View C. Merten’s articles

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As Pride month celebrations kick off, one activist is sharing his journey of activism since moving to New York City and how it’s helped pave the way for the LGBTQ community today.

“What the LGBTQ community of New York City gave me was the freedom to live and to love as myself,” said community activist, Brendan Fay.

Fay lives in Astoria with his husband Tom.

He moved to New York City from Ireland to study at St. John’s in 1984.

“I was so excited about the thought of coming to America,” he said. “In the 1980s, in the Ireland that I left, it was still a criminal offense to be gay,” Fay said.

In New York, Fay began to feel free but it wasn’t easy – even when he attended his first Pride march.

“This is going to be the day that will change my life,” Fay said. “Stepping onto Fifth Avenue cause for the first time in my life in broad daylight, I was coming out as gay. Then the screams began, the rage happened. ‘Go back to where you came from,’ somebody threw beer cans.”

It was at that Pride march where Brendan’s spirit of activism for his community was born.

“There’s a beautiful community that is celebrating what I was told,” Fay said. “What I had been told all my life to be ashamed of all my life.”

Brendan was a voice in the marriage equality movement. He says he helped organize the first rally for the right to marry at City Hall in February of 1998.

In 2003, before it was legal in the United States, the marriage laws in Canada changed.

Brendan and his husband were one of the first gay couples to cross the border and get married. He then helped organize the “Civil Marriage Trail Project,” where he led other gay couples into Canada to do the same.

One of those couples was Edie Windsor and her wife Thea Spyer.

“Little did we know there was a profound moment of history taking place in that small hotel room, the Sheraton, in the Toronto airport,” explained Fay.

Fay also fought for the LGBTQ right to March in St. Patrick’s Day Parades.

“I’ve been arrested everywhere,” he said. “I said to Tom, I’m going to apply for a parade permit. And we’re going to build a parade that will be dedicated in a spirit and love. “St. Pat’s For All,” said Fay.

Fay said he is grateful for the community New York City gave him and he will keep being loud for them.

“I want our city, our society, our schools, our churches, our mosques, our synagogues to be a place where everyone can flourish. Life is short. We need to celebrate and to love and to give each other hope,” Fay said.

Sir Derek Jacobi at the Acting For Others’ Golden Bucket Awards 2020 on March 13, 2020 (Dave Benett/Getty)

READING, Pa. | In partnership with Met-Ed, a First Energy Company, the ECHL Reading Royals, a proud affiliate of the Philadelphia Flyers, announced Tuesday its plans to collect donations for the LGBT Center of Greater Reading.

Starting in the summer of 2021, The LGBT Center of Greater Reading said it is launching its Art Collaborative, an initiative to inspire LGBT youth and the community at large, to develop, build, and grow their level of self-esteem through the arts.

As a celebration of Pride Month and in support of this new program, the Royals and Met-Ed announced they will call on fans, fellow employees, and community members to contribute various art supplies to support this initiative.

“Met-Ed is proud to continue our partnership with the Reading Royals to further our commitment in creating a more equitable, diverse and inclusive community. Our ongoing collaborative partnership with the LGBTQ Center of Reading and the Reading Royals reflects this commitment to our core values and the greater Reading & Berks County community.” stated David Turner, manager of Regional External Affairs at Met-Ed.

They say donations will be collected through the month of June at the Reading Royals Lion’s Den Team Store at any time from Monday-Thursday, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., the Santander Arena Box Office on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., and the Met-Ed Headquarters on Pottsville Pike.

In addition, donations can be dropped off at the Reading Royals booth at Art on the Avenue in West Reading on Saturday, June 19, officials stated.

This initiative is one of several in the partnership between the Royals and Met-Ed this year, according to their joint announcement.

Since November, the partnership has assisted nine local non-profits by volunteering time, raising funds and supplies, and building awareness. For more information on those initiatives and to learn more on how to participate, visit their website.

Pride Month is more than a colourful parade or a series of parties (though those are great, too) — it’s the commemoration of the people who came before us that made these celebratory events possible.

Why is Pride in June?

If you’ve ever wondered why Pride is in June, it’s pretty simple: Pride, which has blossomed into a global phenomenon in recent years, owes its roots to a watering hole and refuge for the LGBTQ community, which, on a pivotal summer night, became the site of the Stonewall rebellion. The riots took place during the early hours of June 28, 1969 at the Stonewall Inn — an event that many historians now credit as the turning point for the pro-LGBTQ movement (though many LGBTQ communities in other major cities had already begun to organise by this time).

Photo: Drew Angerer, Getty Images

Before the riots, the Stonewall Inn was a safe haven for individuals in the LGBTQ community during the ‘60s. Then, it was a nightclub with no running water, drinks were made with alcohol that was rumoured to be stolen, and patrons were required to sign a guestbook to give Stonewall the appearance of “exclusivity,” though many used aliases. The Stonewall Inn’s owners even extorted its rich customers by threatening to “out” them, which soon became a more profitable business than serving drinks.

Police raids were common during this time, too. Officers often harassed, arrested, and discriminated against the bar’s patrons. This was indicative of the time’s broader social climate, especially in New York state, which enforced a law that revoked the liquor licenses of any bar that served LGBTQ customers. Stonewall operated beneath the fray, however: Like many gay bars in Greenwich Village, Stonewall was owned by the Genovese Crime Family, which opportunistically sought profit by catering to the LGBTQ community when the law forbade others.

To stave off the impact of frequent raids, Stonewall’s owners cut an under-the-table deal with the police, exchanging cash for tips on forthcoming raids; the police also turned a blind eye to the bar’s lack of a liquor licence, a badge of legitimacy that was typically not granted to bars that served LGBTQ clientele. (Stonewall operated as an “open bottle bar,” meaning customers were technically supposed to bring their own hooch).

What was the Stonewall Rebellion?

During the early hours of June 28, police conducted another raid on the bar. The events of that night are mostly a puzzle made up of different personal accounts, and you’ve likely read conflicting facts about how exactly the riots started. According to a 1989 interview with Sylvia Rivera, a transgender activist who was at Stonewall that night, it started as any other raid.

“The police came in,” Rivera said. “They came in to get their payoff as usual. They would come in, padlock the friggin’ door … This is what we learned to live with at that time. We had to live with it. We had to live with it until that day.”

It was, per History’s retelling, a typical crackdown, with the NYPD arresting 13 people, “including employees and people violating the state’s gender-appropriate clothing statute (female officers would take suspected cross-dressing patrons into the bathroom to check their sex).”

On this night in June, however, the bar’s patrons fought back and a crowd formed outside the Stonewall, throwing cans, bricks, and other objects at the police who were forced back into the bar for protection. Many different sources attribute transgender activists, Marsha P. Johnson and Rivera, among the first to begin the rebellion. (Johnson later said she had joined the riots while they were already underway. Still, she played an important role according to many personal accounts.)

Sylvia Rivera at a march in 1994 (Photo: Justin Sutcliffe, AP)

What is Pride today?

In the months following the rebellion, at least four different LGBTQ organisations formed in solidarity, including the Gay Liberation Front, the Gay Activists Alliance, Radical Lesbians, and the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (formed by Johnson and Rivera). This was hardly a first: The first gay rights organisation in the country’s history, the Society For Human Rights, was established in 1924, while just four years before Stonewall, the first American gay rights march took place in Philadelphia when around 40 LGBTQ activists rallied in Philadelphia outside of Independence Hall on July 4, 1965.

Precisely a year after the riots, the Gay Liberation Front organised the first Christopher Street Liberation Day March (later known as the Gay Pride March), along the street where Stonewall Inn is located. Similar marches took place in cities across the globe shortly thereafter, giving rise to the events of Pride Month as we know them now. Still, Pride wasn’t officially recognised as such for over 30 years; former President Bill Clinton eventually declared June “Gay and Lesbian Month” in 1999. Former President Barack Obama expanded this moniker to become more inclusive in 2009 with “LGBT Pride Month.”

By 2016, Obama designated the Stonewall Inn a national monument, too. “Stonewall will be our first national monument to tell the story of the struggle for LGBT rights,” he said in a statement. “I believe our national parks should reflect the full story of our country, the richness and diversity and uniquely American spirit that has always defined us.”

Photo: Spencer Platt, Getty Images

In recent years, the pivotal role of people of colour and transgender individuals during the riots, including DeLarverie, Johnson, and Rivera, has come more to the forefront of the conversation, reversing some of the whitewashed, cisgender-focused narratives of what happened that night.

Today, what was once a one-day parade has expanded into a month-long series of Pride events around the world. These days, Pride has been thoroughly mainstreamed, with major corporations lending solidarity in the form of sponsorships, albeit with a dose of cynicism at times. Many cities also hold memorials to remember LGBTQ individuals who died from AIDS/HIV.

This June is especially significant in that it marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Inn rebellion, with New York City hosting World Pride for the very first time, the only global Pride event.

How to celebrate Pride

If you want to find events around you, you should do an online search for local Pride events or organisations and remember to honour those figures who’ve paved the way for LGBTQ people everywhere; one way to do this is to support pro-LGBTQ causes, like the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, which seeks to empower and provide legal resources to low-income people and people of colour who are transgender, intersex or gender non-conforming. Pride is a time for hard-earned celebration, but it’s also a time to reflect on the work of those who came before us, and strategize for how much farther we still have to go.