A few weeks ago, I was supposed to take my sons to an outdoor activity that ended up getting canceled due to weather. We found out about the cancellation when we were halfway there. Before I turned around, I texted my husband that we would be heading home and never got a text back. This wasn’t unusual, as he usually puts his phone on “do not disturb” while he’s working. When we got home, I opened the door to find my husband and his best friend, “Ryan,” completely naked, and having fairly rough sex on our dining room table. They had music blaring, so they didn’t hear us come in, and my sons and I were all in shock and just stood there for a good 30 to 60 seconds before I was able to shut the music off, and they realized what was going on and could cover up. Obviously, this is a bit of a chaotic situation.

Ryan is like an uncle to my kids, has dinner at our house several times a week, has occasionally lived with us, and he and my husband actually work together. My husband and I are planning on staying together and are still trying to figure a lot of things out. Here’s the problem: My younger son (6) is pretty oblivious and thought Uncle Ryan was wrestling with his dad. My middle son (9) is very confused about the mechanics of what we saw (we’ve had the sex talk with him, but in hindsight, we made the mistake of only talking about heterosexual sex). My older son (12) is having a very difficult time. My middle son has a lot of questions that I’m not really sure how to answer, and I’m not sure how much detail I should be going into, and who should be leading this conversation (me? my husband? a doctor?). I’ve been getting phone calls home from my older son’s school. Ever since the incident, he has apparently been making derogatory remarks about gay people, using slurs, and is also refusing to speak to his father (they were previously pretty close). The school is threatening to expel him. We’re on the waitlist for individual and family therapy, but I was wondering if you guys had any advice about what to do with my two older sons?

—What Now?

Q. Catfishing: My daughters have been phone banking, calling Arizona and Michigan and so on to get out the vote. I didn’t want to do that but I felt guilty. Then I read an article in Slate about using the dating app Hinge to get out the vote. That sounded like fun to me, so I set up an account. I figured that there were few people my age (about 70) on Hinge, so I used a pic that was 40(!) years old and pretended to be young, single, and child-free. My state was also in the bag as far as electoral votes were concerned, so I decided to “live” in another state. Anyway, you could say I was catfishing, but I figured it was for a good cause—no one would get hurt, thus, no harm, no foul.

However. I found a match. Of course he is much younger than I am and lives in a different state. But we are politically similar. And we have the same (very niche!) hobby. (I can’t name the hobby, because all my friends who read this column would immediately identify me! But, as a false example, it is not that we both like to read biographies—it is more like we both like to make art with old encyclopedias. So we share this unusual passion.)

Now I want to tell him the truth and be friends. But I know that no one wants to be fooled. Is there any way to break the news—that I am decades older than he is and not interested in dating—that would not destroy this budding relationship?

When I was 14, I had a particularly vivid dream about Helen Hunt. I know, just go with me on this.

In the dream, she was teaching me how to play the piano, an instrument I have inexplicably always found to be very sexy (but probably because of that one scene in Pretty Woman). After I'd performed well, she leaned over and gave me a kiss.

My mom, being of sound mind and body, rolled her eyes and told me to stop 1) eating so many weird midnight snacks, and 2) worrying about my sexual orientation.

4. Gay or lesbian sex dreams might mean you're pregnant.

My family have known Alex since we were teenagers and point-blank refuse to accept her as a woman. Alex has kept her original first name, as it’s gender-neutral, so it’s not even as though my parents and sister have had to adjust to learning a new name. They just won’t consider it. They refer to her as my “boyfriend” and have made comments about how glad they are that I’ve “finally grown out of my lesbian phase.” This is starting to eat away at my sense of identity. I was never attracted to Alex before her transition or to men in general. But my sister has argued with me that, since I’ve known Alex “since she was a boy,” I’ve obviously been in denial about my feelings toward her and must have been attracted to a guy all this time. My parents have repeated similar theories, and it’s getting to me. I’ve already started cutting them off on the phone every time they refer to my “boyfriend” or are rude to Alex on Zoom, but their constant speculation about my sexuality is gnawing at me. I took a long time accepting my lesbian identity. Does my relationship with Alex undermine that, or is that just transphobic thinking getting to me? How do I shut my parents down permanently on these horrible comments?


—Harried and Harangued

The doctor that has pioneered penis transplant surgery believes that soon it will become possible to operate a successful transplant.

“This would be a quantum leap if you were able to transplant a real penile structure. It’s certainly pushing the boundaries,” plastic surgeon Curtis Cetrulo, M.D. told MedPage Today.

“We’re ready to do it, and we could do it pretty soon if we get it approved,” the Boston doctor claimed.

Cetrulo, who works at Massachusetts General Hospital, was the first to complete a successful penis surgery in 2016. Now he has to convince the medical community and hospital administration that it can be done.

The Covai Trans Kitchen opened in the Coimbatore district when Sangeetha, president of the Transgender Association of Coimbatore, noticed the impact of the pandemic on the area’s already struggling trans community.

To help tackle joblessness due to COVID-19, a problem that has hit the trans community especially hard, the 32-seater restaurant has a fully trans staff.

Sangeetha told Indian Express: “Catering is our primary business. But due to Covid-19, many of the restaurants where our community members were working had been closed. They were jobless.

“So, we thought we should open a small kitchen that would beneficial to everyone.

The Texas State Board of Education has given preliminary rejection to a plan to include lessons about sexual orientation and gender identity in the sex education curriculum, but LGBTQ+ advocates are fighting back.

The Republican-majority board last week voted down a proposal by member Ruben Cortez, a Democrat, to teach students in middle school and high school about the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity, ABC News reports. It also rejected a move to start lessons about consent in middle school, as some board members thought the topic inappropriate for students that age. A final vote will come in November.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a quasi-independent agency of the federal government, is suing grocery chain Kroger, alleging that two employees were fired because they refused to wear aprons bearing a rainbow heart.

“The women believed the emblem endorsed LGBTQ values and that wearing it would violate their religious beliefs,” says an EEOC press release. The suit alleges the company violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans religious discrimination in employment.

The two, Brenda Lawson and Trudy Rickerd, worked at a Kroger store in Conway, Ark., near Little Rock. They have “sincerely held religious beliefs that homosexuality is a sin,” according to the EEOC complaint, filed Monday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas.

Burger King celebrated Helsinki Pride in Finland with a most unusual advertising campaign that featured their royal mascot kissing Ronald McDonald.

The images, which appeared in public spaces throughout Finland, were part of September's Helsinki Pride Celebration, MediaPost reports. The image shows the famous icons making out — with only the back of Ronald McDonald's head visible — and the accompanying message: "Love Conquers All."

As the new sex and relationships curriculum comes into place across England, Kantar conducted a study into attitudes toward the LGBTQ+ community.

The study asked 2,363 people, aged 16 or over, living in the United Kingdom about their opinions toward LGBTQ+ people being in certain roles.

Although the study found high levels of comfort toward LGBTQ+ people being teachers, 91% in favour for gay men, lesbians and bisexual people and 77% for trans people, it still found that nearly four in ten people (38%) thought it “inappropriate” for a 6-year-old to be taught that being gay is fine.

For the first time since 2000, the official guidance on relationships and sex education (RSE) in England is changing. From this month, RSE is mandatory in every secondary school, regardless of whether they are state or private (though the Government has said it will make allowances for schools as yet unable to implement the change because of the coronavirus crisis).

Relationships education – which is now compulsory in every primary school – will mainly deal with families and friendships. It will cover the risks of online relationships, digital privacy, physical boundaries and recognising abusive behaviour.

But will the new guidance protect and empower young people for sex and relationships in a modern world?“The curriculum puts the physical health and emotional wellbeing of young people at its core,” Chiquita Henson, headteacher of Cirencester Deer Park School, a secondary school in Gloucestershire, tells i.

Dear Prudence,

I’ve been low-contact with my abusive dad for several years now, and my mental health has drastically improved as a result. I’m a queer trans person (they/them) and would be happiest never speaking to him again. I am in contact with my mother, who occasionally gives me updates on his life. I know my mother was victimized by him in her own right, but she also enabled and justified his abuse of me and my siblings. Now my mother is currently dying of a chronic illness, and her prognosis is only another year or two. I live across the country, although I plan to move to be closer to her this fall. But I’m already thinking about her funeral: I don’t want to go when it finally happens.

Growing up, I was mercilessly mocked for being too “sensitive” by my relatives. The environment was incredibly homophobic and transphobic. I don’t like showing emotion in front of them. I haven’t seen any members of my extended family in years and don’t want to. I have one sibling I sometimes commiserate with about how messed up our childhood was, but we’re not otherwise close. I realize not attending would likely destroy my relationship with my remaining relatives, but I don’t want to maintain that relationship anyways. I do feel guilty about not wanting to stay close sometimes, but I’d rather grieve with my partner and my friends, who accept me and love me for who I am. Based on previous interactions, I worry that attending might trigger a mental health crisis. But I also know these people think I’m overdramatic, selfish, and attention-seeking. The last time I tried to bring up my panic attacks to my mom, she told me to “just close my eyes if I get scared,” so I dropped the subject. What are my obligations here? How do I take care of myself when skipping your mother’s funeral is pretty universally seen as an awful thing to do?

—Can’t Grieve Together

Dear How to Do It,

My partner and I have been together for six happy years. Here is my (female) problem: He and our gaming friends (all male) have this habit of making gay jokes constantly. They think it is hysterical to just tack some fellatio-related quip onto every. damn. sentence. I’m exaggerating, but it is frequent. I am part of a text chain with these guys, and it is relentless—I rely on my husband to tell me when we have plans with them because I have to mute it unless I want to be inundated. These jokes aren’t hateful, per se, but they’re just constantly referencing gay, male-on-male sex, and to me, there often seems to be no discernible punchline. I see and speak to these men (and they are indeed men—we’re well out of our 20s) often and consider games with them to be a huge and rewarding component of my social life. I am the only person in the group who is not a hetero man, and I feel that if I try to say “Enough, already!,” I stand to slightly alienate myself, though they’d respect my preference.

I must say that I have never seen even a hint of outright bigotry from any of them. My partner is super kind to my close gay buddy and his partner and doesn’t act uncomfortable in the slightest when they are affectionate around us. He has embraced them with no issue whatsoever and considers them some of our best friends. In my experience, the friends have also been completely normal around them, and two other group members also have great relationships with gay family members. In fact, one guy expressed a purely religious judgment about homosexuality once (to someone outside the group), and everyone else has discussed how gross it was.

So what is my question? Well … is this a thing? Do hetero guys really talk like this, or are they just anomalous pervs? Is there any chance they stick to the gay stuff because they don’t want to be gross about sex with women with me around? Do I need to “stand up” to this humor, even though it seems to be free from hate? I’m not even uncomfortable with it exactly, I’m just concerned I might be dropping the ball as a citizen of the LGBTQ world. They really don’t seem hateful. Could this just be a way for them to engage with something that makes them uncomfortable?

— No Homo

New research suggests that sexual promiscuity negatively impacts social responses toward both gay and straight men. The study, published in the journal Psychology of Men & Masculinities, found that women are more likely to seek to avoid gay men described as promiscuous compared to gay men who are not described as promiscuous.

“Perceptions of masculinity, and stereotypes toward gay men, are multifaceted,” said study author Corey Cook, an assistant professor of psychology at Pacific Lutheran University.

In the study, 354 heterosexual undergraduate students were randomly assigned to report their social attitudes towards either gay men, straight men, gay men who are sexually promiscuous, straight men who are sexually promiscuous, gay men with very feminine qualities, straight men with very feminine qualities, gay men with very masculine qualities, or straight men with very masculine qualities.

To assess their attitudes, the participants were asked how strongly they agreed or disagreed with statements such as “I would like for a member of this group to work in the same place as I do” and “Members of this group are the kind of people that I tend to avoid.”

The governor of Texas has warned that he could reimpose a lockdown on the state if coronavirus prevention measures were not heeded, as states across the U.S. battled to get the pandemic under control.

Friday brought 63,900 new cases nationwide - a new record, according to data from Johns Hopkins University analyzed by CNN.

Bioethicist Dr Zeke Emanuel said up to 250,000 Americans could die directly from the coronavirus by the end of the year.