LGBTQ Breaking News Service

Alan White vanished three weeks ago on October 22

A KPMG executive, 55, has been missing for three weeks after doing a morning workout at an LA fitness branch in uptown Dallas before being last seen on surveillance footage filling his car with gas. 

Alan White vanished back on October 22 when he went to work out at LA Fitness on Haskell Avenue at around 5 a.m., reported WFAA.   

He was captured on surveillance footage leaving the gym at about 5:38 a.m. and was then seen around 20 minutes later on video at the Race Trac at Inwood and Maple filling his black Porsche Macan White with gas. 

He has not been seen since. Dallas Police found his car one week later in southeast Oak Cliff, near Bonnie View Road and Simpson Stuart Road, but there was no sign of White.   

White’s distraught mom and his partner of 18 years have said there was no reason why he would disappear and are offering a $15,000 reward for information as to his whereabouts. 

Scroll down for video 

Rusty Jenkins, White’s partner, said he grew concerned when he didn’t return home from the gym. Pictured together 

Rusty Jenkins, White’s partner, said he grew concerned when he didn’t return home from the gym. 

‘When he wasn’t home at 6:15, I thought it was odd. When he wasn’t home at 6:30, I knew something was wrong. When he wasn’t home by 6:45, I was panicking,’ Jenkins told WFAA.

Jenkins said he started searching for him along the route between the gym and their home and called local hospitals fearing he had been in an accident. 

Alan White (right) with his mother Maralu Craven (center). The KPMG executive, 55, has been missing for three weeks after doing a morning workout at an LA fitness branch in uptown Dallas before being last seen on surveillance footage filling his car with gas

‘I got in the car at 7, drove the route back and forth trying to find him. Trying to find evidence of a wreck somewhere,’ he said.

‘I was calling the hospitals trying to find out if there was an unidentified John Doe in any of the hospitals, because I didn’t know if he had his ID with him or not.’

White had been scheduled to dial in to a work conference call from home at 7:30 a.m. but failed to appear.  

Jenkins filed a missing person report with Dallas Police at around 11 a.m. that day.  

One week later, on October 29, police located White’s missing car in south Dallas.   

His mom Maralu Craven told WFAA she won’t give up hope that they will find him. 

‘I’m not going to give up hope at all. Until they tell me that he’s gone. Somebody has to know something,’ Craven said.

Alan White was last seen on surveillance footage at the Race Trac at Inwood and Maple (above) filling his black Porsche Macan White with gas

Dallas Police found his car one week later in southeast Oak Cliff, near Bonnie View Road and Simpson Stuart Road, but there was no sign of White

‘Somebody has to know something.’ 

She begged that, if anyone is holding him, they let him go. 

‘I don’t understand this. I don’t understand this at all. And if somebody’s got him and he’s hurt, bring him to us. We’ll take care of him,’ she said.

‘Because you evidently want money, you don’t want his car, so why are you holding him, if you are holding him?’

White’s family is pleading for anyone with information to come forward.   

They put forward a $10,000 reward and then increased it to $15,000 for any information that leads to his whereabouts.  

White is 5 foot 11 and 160 pounds. He was wearing a light gray tank top and dark gym shorts.

According to White’s LinkedIn profile, he has worked at KPMG since February 2020 as a managing director in the CIO Advisory practice in Dallas. 

The LA Fitness White visited the morning he vanished. White’s family are offering a $15,000 reward for information as to his whereabouts

Last week, many celebrated Joe Biden for embracing transgender Americans in his victory address – the first president-elect to do so.

“And to all those who supported us: I am proud of the campaign we built and ran. I am proud of the coalition we put together, the broadest and most diverse in history,” Biden said. “Democrats, Republicans and Independents. Progressives, moderates and conservatives. Young and old. Urban, suburban and rural. Gay, straight, transgender.”

In just a few short sentences, Biden signaled his readiness to usher in an era of renewed LGBTQ protection after four years of the very opposite.

Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris ran on what Alphonso David, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, billed in August as “our nation’s most pro-equality ticket in history.”

Among other things, he was referring to Harris’ pro-LGBTQ track record, which goes back to when she entered politics in 2004, and to the former vice president’s radical shift on LGBTQ rights. Biden went from voting for the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 to getting out ahead of former President Barack Obama in publicly backing marriage equality in 2012.

Biden and Harris’ win in the 2020 election couldn’t have arrived at a better time for LGBTQ Americans and those who care about equality. It’s no secret that under President Donald Trump, anti-LGBTQ ugliness has become a newly visible norm.

An extensive 2019 report from ProPublica cataloged the Trump administration’s anti-LGBTQ maneuvering and “found dozens of changes that represent a profound reshaping of the ways the federal government treats the more than 11 million lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans.”

These changes include reversed, dropped, removed and withdrawn LGBTQ protections in areas such as employment, health care, criminal justice and public life.

In particular, the administration has made a target of transgender Americans, whom some LGBTQ advocates say the Trump White House has attempted to use as a wedge against the broader coalition.

During Pride Month this past June, the administration rolled back an Obama-era regulation prohibiting discrimination in health care against transgender patients. (In August, a federal judge blocked the rollback, a day before it would’ve gone into effect.)

There’s also Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s third pick to the high court.

During the Senate hearings in October, Republicans and the Christian right sought to brand Barrett as a sort of conservative feminist icon, an approach that hinged on their apparent obsession with her family size.

For many LGBTQ Americans, though, the new justice is more like a specter, waiting to strike at their rights.

Barrett has limited experience as a federal judge. But that doesn’t mean that she hasn’t participated in important cultural and political conversations and, in consequence, offered insight into her convictions.

For instance, in a lecture at Jacksonville University in the run-up to the 2016 election, Barrett supported the dissenters in “Obergefell v. Hodges,” the 2015 Supreme Court ruling that cleared the way for marriage equality nationwide. She also signaled that the Title IX rights protecting transgender Americans should be subject to congressional review.

“Maybe things have changed so that we should change Title IX,” Barrett said in 2016. “Maybe those arguing in favor of this kind of transgender bathroom access are right. … But it does seem to strain the text of the statute to say that Title IX demands it, so is that the kind of thing that the Court should interpret the statute to update it to pick sides on this policy debate? Or should we go to our Congress?”

In a similar vein, an October report from The Associated Press detailed Barrett’s previous position, for almost three years starting in 2015, on the board of a private Christian school system, one that the AP said has anti-LGBTQ policies.

The system “effectively barred admission to children of same-sex parents and made it plain that openly gay and lesbian teachers weren’t welcome in the classroom,” the AP found.

While it remains to be seen whether Barrett’s opinions on the 6-3 conservative majority high court will track with her prior stances and affiliations, the anxiety hovering over LGBTQ Americans is real.

“Lawyers are sharing advice for how same-sex families can ensure legal protections if marriage equality goes away – secure second-parent adoption papers, living wills, healthcare proxies,” as Allison Hope wrote for CNN Opinion. “We don’t and can’t know for sure how Barrett will rule on cases relating to LGBTQ rights, but the overall signs, given past comments and statements from other conservative justices on the Court, are not promising.”

Just on Thursday, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito reiterated in an inflammatory speech his retrograde belief that marriage is only between a man and a woman.

“Until very recently, that’s what the vast majority of Americans thought. Now, it’s considered bigotry,” he said.

More broadly, the abiding fear is that Trump – who’s successfully appointed more than 200 federal judges, including his three Supreme Court picks – has reshaped the federal judiciary in a manner that could embody his administration’s anti-LGBTQ animus long after he’s left office.

One example is Steven Menashi, Trump’s successful appointee to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. Menashi has a “history of denouncing women’s marches against sexual assault, dismissing education about multicultural awareness and accusing a major LGBTQ group of exploiting the brutal murder of a gay student for political ends,” CNN’s KFile found in 2019.

To an extent, the concern over such appointments isn’t even about Trump – it’s about the kinds of people the President has sought to empower. According to a 2019 report from Lambda Legal, more than a third of the President’s circuit court nominees have “records of working to undermine LGBT rights and protections.”

No one knows the continued attempts to erode equality that a second Trump term might have brought. But it’s no little thing to be able to look ahead to repair and progress instead of injury.

The Biden administration won’t be able to fix everything that its predecessor has damaged over the past four years. And there will be no easy triumphalism, especially if Republicans hold the Senate majority.

But Biden and his team can take meaningful actions to undo much of the harm.

In fact, in March, the Biden campaign previewed how it’d protect and expand LGBTQ rights via the wide-ranging “Biden Plan to Advance LGBTQ+ Equality in America and Around the World.”

For one thing, the plan commits to passing the Equality Act, a bill that would protect against anti-LGBTQ discrimination in commercial and public life, with no religious exemptions. In addition, the plan pledges to combat the violence afflicting transgender women of color, get rid of the transgender military ban and restore safeguards for homeless LGBTQ Americans.

Gay, transgender. To many, Biden’s words might have seemed unremarkable. But given their centrality in the President-elect’s victory speech, these words registered as a promise – that come January, LGBTQ Americans will have a champion in the White House.

Staying active and maintaining your personal fitness has never not been important. But given the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, with so many people self-quarantining at home — and/or avoiding the gym — staying fit is perhaps more important than ever. And not just for your physical health, but your mental health! But if you’re like many, staying active while stuck at home is easier said than done. So we reached out to personal trainer and actor Sam Leicht for some quarantine workout tips. Because everything helps, right?

But before we get to Same’s quarantine workout tips, a quick note from him: “There is, ultimately, nothing that can make you workout during this crazy time if you don’t want to make it a priority,” he says. Now, with that in mind …

Here are 5 quick quarantine workout tips to make staying fit during a pandemic more manageable:

1. Get Your Quarantine Workout Done Early

If you’re anything like me, my 💯 starts just about an hour after I wake up, and it’s pretty much downhill from there. When you get your quarantine workout done early, you take away the opportunity to dread it, put it off, or make an excuse to skip it. You may not be a morning person, but what better time than in a freaking pandemic to give it a try and see if it sticks?!

2. Workout (Virtually) With Friends

This may sound silly, but doing a Zoom call with friends for a group quarantine workout has been one of the best ways to hold myself accountable. You don’t even have to be doing the same routine, but that group sweat that you feel in a Barry’s Bootcamp or SoulCycle class translates over Zoom, too. I promise.

I should mention, though: I really don’t like how music works through Zoom, so I’d strongly suggest having someone curate a playlist that everyone is listening to at the same time through headphones. You can put one ear bud in and still be able to communicate with each other on the call.

3. Try New Types of Workouts

Y’all, I’m so sick of hearing people complain about not being able to go to the gym. We all miss it! But in the grand scheme of things, there are so many opportunities for virtual exercise; I’d strongly suggest checking out YouTube for some new options.

Take a new yoga class. Take a Jiu-Jitsu class. Try an advanced level Pilates class. There is so much free stuff at our disposal, and now is the perfect opportunity to find your favorite and take advantage of it.

4. Give Yourself a Break

Sometimes a workout is just not going to happen. That’s OK. Rather than shaming yourself, the best alternative is to go for a walk. Just 20 minutes.

In this time you’ll either 1) gain the energy to indeed do your workout, or 2) come to terms with the reality that today is not your day and there is always tomorrow. Neither is better or worse, but they’re both established by the walk.

5. Set a Timer

This is my secret weapon for the Leichtning Fitness Program (my online training program). When I don’t workout with a timer, I waste so much time. I use the timer for my rest between sets, the tempo of movements, and the total time of my workout. It’s a reminder that if I’m checking emails or scrolling through Instagram during breaks, the clock is still running and I need to stop wasting time.

The satisfaction for each workout is exponentially superior with a timer versus without. Give it a try!

I hope these quarantine workout tips help you get out of that rut! The best part about movement is that it’s going to ebb and flow throughout your life. There are always going to be good and bad times. But you can do yourself a favor by trying to shift the narrative and making exercise a friend instead of an enemy during this pandemic. Easier said than done, I know. But absolutely worth it!

Sam Leicht is a Midwest boy living in NYC. A fitness trainer, Broadway actor and entrepreneur, he is working to make health & wellness accessible for all. For more information, stop by leichtninghealth.com or visit him on Instagram.

In this video of Spanish dancer Marta C. González, a former prima ballerina, she listens to the music from Swan Lake and instantly remembers and performs the choreography while sitting in her wheelchair. The clip was actually filmed in 2019 by Música para Despertar (Music to Wake Up To), an advocacy group for music therapy for patients who have memory loss, dementia, and Alzheimer’s disease, but was recently shared on their social media accounts.

The music has transported González back to the stage as she gracefully moves her arms and head. And while the video includes clips of a young ballerina dancing, it is actually not González but rather former prima ballerina from Russia’s Mariinsky Ballet, Ulyana Lopatkina, according to prominent dance critic Alastair Macaulay, who has been trying to track down González’s history.

Música para Despertar said González has since died, according to NPR. In this video, we get to witness the emotional effect music and dance can have on the body and mind, despite the effects Alzheimer’s disease can have on memory. We can feel the immense joy and emotion in her heart.

November 10, 2020 |
:

Fitness company Peloton and award-winning musician Beyoncé are partnering with 10 historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to provide memberships to students so that they can use the Peloton app to learn yoga, meditate and exercise at home while listening to inspirational music.

Beyoncé

“I’m proud to celebrate the students at HBCUs with this donation, to encourage them to find and embrace their own wellness regimens,” said Beyoncé, adding that she has been a Peloton member for multiple years.

The ten schools getting Peloton memberships include Morehouse College, Bennett College, Clark Atlanta University, Grambling State University, Hampton University, Howard University, Morehouse School of Medicine, Spelman College, Texas Southern University and Wilberforce University.

“Many of our students cannot afford local gym memberships because they live in households with an income of $40,000 or less,” said Monique Dozier, vice president of Morehouse College’s Office of Institutional Advancement. “This donation will make it easier for them to maintain a healthy lifestyle as they pursue their degrees.”