According to federal authorities, Harris allegedly contacted an underage boy on social media and repeatedly enticed him to make sexually explicit videos and photographs of himself and send them to Harris. The victim in the case allegedly informed Harris during the initial online encounter that he was 13 years old, the complaint states.

In addition to the criminal charge, a lawsuit was also filed against Harris and three cheer organizations by the mother of twin boys in Texas for alleged sex crimes. It appears the victim in the criminal case is one of the two victims from the civil case.

Earlier this year, Gillum was found inebriated and vomiting in a Miami Beach hotel room with two other men and what officers believed was crystal meth. One of the other men – who was identified in the media as a sex worker – overdosed in the hotel room.

Gillum, who has three kids with his wife R. Jai Gillum, came out officially in an interview with Tamron Hall, saying “I don’t identify as gay but I do identify as bisexual. And that is something that I’ve never shared publicly before.”

The Gillums said that Andrew had been honest with his wife about his sexuality and that she knew he is bisexual before they were married.

After Democratic politician Andrew Gillum came out as bisexual a few months after a sordid sex scandal, Hughley did the expected. He punched down.

“So when #ANDREWGILLUM came out as bi-sexual [sic] yesterday! Is that considered halfway outa the closest? [sic],” he tweeted with the hashtag #TeamDL, a vanity tag that Hughley uses to increase social engagement.

The beloved drag entertainer just won her first ever Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Makeup for a Multi-Camera Series or Special (Non-Prosthetic).

Raven received her first nomination in 2018 for Outstanding Makeup for a Multi-Camera Series or Special, which ultimately went to SNL.

The star made her Drag Race debut on the show’s second season, where she placed runner-up behind Tyra Sanchez. She made her comeback on the first season of All Stars, where she lost out on the crown for a second time to Chad Michaels.

Raven rejoined the franchise for season nine as RuPaul’s personal makeup artist, and has served as a creative producer for Drag Race since its 10th season and All Stars since its third.

She’s also made sporadic guest appearances over the years. Her most recent stint was as a Snatch Game mentor for the season 12 queens.

In BuzzFeed News’ first story on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, two anonymous former employees recalled their roles being eliminated after they had taken medical and bereavement leaves. Employees at multiple Telepictures shows tell THR they feared asking their bosses to take a sick day — and rarely did. "I was always told by [my boss], 'Never take a sick day, even if you’re sick,' " one former Ellen employee from the 2010s says. "I saw other people literally vomit in the bathroom because they were so sick, but they feared for their jobs." Two former TMZ employees from the 2010s recall supervisors frowning upon staffers’ leaving the office for doctors’ appointments on weekdays. The same was true at The Rosie O’Donnell Show, one former crewmember recalls, saying that taking a sick day was "tantamount to getting let go." A representative of WarnerMedia says that "all employees get sick time" and that Ellen staffers have been reminded of the leave policy.

The announcements this week came in a formal speech for the State Opening of Parliament in Barbados. The speech is the mechanism by which the government sets out its agenda.

The Queen’s representative, Governor General Dame Sandra Mason gave the speech. However, it is the government that writes it.

In it, Prime Minister Mia Mottley promised wide-ranging changes in Barbados. And she made headlines around the world by announcing the country will drop Queen Elizabeth as its head of state.

But hidden in it was an indication Barbados will drop another vestige of its colonial legacy – its ‘sodomy’ law.

The country rarely enforces the law against gay sex. But it is technically one of the most punitive in the world with a maximum sentence of life in imprisonment. Scrapping it will almost certainly be a pre-requisite for recognizing same-sex relationships.

Dear How to Do It,

My boyfriend of just under a year, “Tom” is pansexual, which has never been a problem (I’m a straight woman, FYI). However, the night we met he told me that he had recently hooked up with a straight male friend, “Brandon,” and then been rejected, and this situation in particular is an issue. It is obvious that Tom has a huge crush on Brandon. Tom has said on a few occasions that he was ready to come out to his religious parents for Brandon and was hoping to be his boyfriend, but Brandon told him that the sex was a one-time thing and asked him not to tell anyone (a request which he obviously did not honor). Instead of backing off, Tom will text Brandon to join our group at any outing unless I expressly ask him not to by saying that I would like tonight to be just us, or that our friends have invited only us out. When Tom does invite Brandon places, Brandon often does not respond or responds hours later vaguely. Once, Tom said that he wanted to use my phone to call Brandon because he thought he’d actually get him to pick up by using a number not his own that Brandon didn’t recognize. If we pass a bar that Brandon is known to frequent regularly, Tom likes to stop in to see if he’s there, and will want to hang out if Brandon is there. He also repeatedly violates Brandon’s request to keep their hook up under wraps. He’s told many people, not just me. The one time he did get Brandon to hang out, Tom pissed me off by staying out hours after he told me he was coming back, letting his phone die so that I couldn’t reach him, and then waking me up at 3:30 in the morning to let him in because he didn’t have his keys. He’s also lately been floating the idea of Brandon joining us in a threesome, because I have expressed interest in us finding a male partner for one and wants me to spend one on one time with Brandon as a start to getting him home with us. At this point, I think I’m about ready to throw in the towel and let Tom chase this man and implode their friendship unencumbered by a relationship with me. What do you think?

—Brandon Blues

Even in a community outwardly campaigning for inclusion and acceptance, exclusion and judgement still exist on a personal level. Now, Bright Light Bright Light is shedding a light on his experience with that phenomenon within the LGBTQ community.

“Feeling like I belonged within the gay community I think has been a bit of a struggle," he said. "The LGBTQ+ community is such a vast umbrella; everyone is so different and trying to work out where you belong within that is hard. It kind of presumes that everybody queer gets on with each other, which they don’t, and that everyone is alike, which they’re not.”

Thomas also said that he wasn't considered "body-appropriate" to some in the community, which made him constantly feel like he was an outsider within a space built for him. “It doesn’t matter because those people don’t matter," he explained. "But I found that a huge struggle -- feeling invisible or not welcome in queer spaces -- even more heart-breaking than not being welcome in heterosexual spaces, because these spaces are there for everybody that needs them.”

TikTok has "shadow-banned" several hashtags relating to the LGBTQ+ community.

A report released by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute indicated that terms like "gay," "lesbian," and "transgender" were restricted in several languages for global users, "no matter where in the world they live."

"TikTok users posting videos with these hashtags are given the impression their posts are just as searchable as posts by other users, but in fact they aren’t. In practice, most of these hashtags are categorised in TikTok’s code in the same way that terrorist groups, illicit substances and swear words are treated on the platform. On some occasions, hashtags are categorised as non-existent, when in fact they’re tagged on videos across the platform.

Henry Golding had a head-turning starring role in the blockbuster hit Crazy Rich Asians. Since, he's been reaping the rewards, knocking one project after the other out of the park. But this fall Monsoon, his latest project, releases and he's playing Kit, a Vietnamese man who returns to his home country after fleeing as a child. But Kit is gay.

"From my point of view, with this particular role, it was the fact that his journey wasn’t hinged on the fact he is gay,” the straight actor told Attitude in a new cover story. "It's almost like, yes, he's a young gay man. but the bigger issue is who he is as a person".

Golding falls within a long line of straight actors taking on gay roles — often the most prominent and most lauded gay rols are taken by straight actors. Over the past decade, this has drawn increased scrutiny with both audiences and gay actors. Many have spoken about how their careers are impacted after coming out.

"What’s happened is that, when someone comes out of the closet, we celebrate them," Billy Eichner told Deadline in a recent, unrelated interview. "We applaud them. We put them on the cover of magazines. We say, thank you for living your truth, and thank you for being brave, and you’re such a role model for our gay kids. And then instantly, that actor gets taken off so many casting lists in the business." The casting lists they do stay on, for the most part, are those for gay roles or projects that want queer appeal. One argument is that if queer actors are only going to be considered for queer roles, they should be the only ones considered there.

Kevin Spacey is facing a new lawsuit. Two men—one of whom is actor Anthony Rapp—have accused Spacey of sexually assaulting them when they were 14 years old in a new suit filed Wednesday in New York. The other man in the suit is identified only as C.D.

Rapp was one of the first high-profile voices to speak out against Spacey, accusing him of making sexual advances toward him at a party in Spacey’s home in 1986. (Spacey released a statement apologizing to Rapp, but claiming he had no memory of the alleged interaction.) In the suit, Rapp claims Spacey grabbed his buttocks and laid on top of him in bed at the party, Variety reports. He claims the alleged assault has led to “sustained psychological injuries, including but not limited to, severe emotional distress, humiliation, fright, anger, depression and anxiety.”

The second accuser, C.D., claims he was 12 years old when he first met Spacey in 1981, in an acting class taught by the disgraced actor. He alleges that when he was 14, Spacey invited him to his apartment, where C.D. performed anal and oral sex on him, and claims that there were more inappropriate sexual encounters after that. On their final encounter, the suit notes, Spacey allegedly attempted to perform anal sex on C.D., which C.D. declined, resisting and verbally saying, “No.” The accuser claims Spacey did not stop, forcing C.D. to flee the apartment.

Hoadley, a Democrat who’s currently a Michigan state representative, is running for U.S. House in the state’s Sixth Congressional District against Republican incumbent Fred Upton. Victory Fund, which works to elect out candidates, has endorsed him.

The trope being used by the National Republican Congressional Committee originated with a Live Journal blog that Hoadley maintained in 2004 and 2005, when he was a student at Michigan State University. In it he referred to women as “breeders” and joked that he was learning about crystal meth. It also included a comment from a friend saying he had no desire to see a 4-year-old wearing a thong.

Three weeks ago, I was looking down into my husband’s unblinking eyes, seeing blood spill from his nose and mouth, and feeling my hand trying to stop the bleeding from the back of his head. In the background someone kept yelling, “Apply pressure! Apply pressure! Apply pressure!”

Why? Because we had just said to a couple of men passing by us on the narrow sidewalk on our block, “Wear a mask!”

In less than a minute, Francisco was hit in the face and the back of his head with some kind of weapon and laid unconscious on the sidewalk.

The NYPD and an NYFD ambulance arrived quickly. Francisco – still unable to talk – was taken to the ER at the old St. Vincent’s Hospital. I drove around with police officers to canvass the neighborhood and see if I could ID the perpetrator.

Frankly, I was too hysterical to be of any use to them. Nevertheless, I won’t forget the kindness the officers showed me.

Like most crime victims, I immediately blamed us. Why did we say anything? We deserved it.

San Francisco, it turns out, is not all flowers and gentle people. Livable California, the statewide anti-density organization with headquarters in the city, recently used a homophobic slur about my coworker and me. In a July 9 response to someone else’s tweet on the topic of housing, Isaiah Madison, a member of the board of directors of Livable California, wrote:

"I don’t get paid by Livable California Mr. Anonymous. I fucking wish I did though lol. Maybe Abundant Housing can hire me like they did the other brown &black faggots to push for new housing on vacant parcels of land/strip malls once y’all get the fuck off of my community’s homes[.]"

A Christian school in Texas has expelled a student for coming out as gay, and the school principal is defending his decision saying that Jesus wanted him to expel the student.

Devin Bryant, 17, has attended the Covenant Christian Academy in Dallas since he was in kindergarten, but last month his mother Consolata got a call from the new headmaster, Tony Jeffrey, telling her that Devin won’t be allowed to attend the school for his senior year because he’s gay.