The Dish: k.d. lang, Sia And Other LGBTQ Stars On Pride, Martina Navratilova Goes Ham On Margaret Court

Happy Pride Month! I can hardly believe it’s June.

So many beautiful queers penned essays about Pride for PopSugar, and I was lucky enough to be included. Check out these very personal pieces from GLAAD Prez Sarah Kate Ellis, “Hamilton” star Ariana DeBose and actor/writer Jo Chiang, to name a few. Every single one has such a different, important perspective, and it will certainly make you proud AF.

I also had the good fortune of writing a piece about Lauren Jauregui and Halsey‘s new same-sex duet “Strangers” for ELLE and so I’m passing it along in case you love the song as much as I do. Choice quote from Lauren: “We’re making art, and we’re making stuff we believe in. If people buy it, that’s great, but we don’t do it for the commodity purpose of it. We want to just make music that impacts people—we don’t really care about the rest.”

One person who Lauren mentions in the article, Syd, is making some of the best music about women out there, but she feels somewhat ignored because the gay community feels some of her earlier stuff was misogynistic. “Backlash from the gay community hurt my feelings,” she told The Guardian. “It made me think more, [which] sucked cos when you’re young, making art before you start thinking too much is when you come up with the best ideas. [But] when you put those ideas out, all the judgment definitely makes you think twice.” Ah, to be young again.

Billboard also enlisted some LGBTQ or allied musicians and public figures to reflect on Pride by writing “love letters” to the community, including Hayley Kiyoko, Sia, Kristen Ellis-Henderson of Antigone Rising, June Millington of the legendary FANNY and k.d. lang. Read one every day of June, like an Advent calendar!

Rumor has it Debbie Reynolds had some lesbian affairs. Specifically, one with “Bewitched” star Agnes Moorehead, who was a total lez and I had no idea. So even if Debbie wasn’t that into Agnes, at least I learned something new.

Casey Dellacqua and Martina Navratilova are both tired of Margaret Court‘s outspoken homophobia and sticking up for themselves and their community. Dellacqua, whose family was the focus of Court’s initial attacks, addressed the issue at a press conference, saying: “The main focus for us is to win tennis matches, and that’s what we are here to do. So it’s a fine balance of wanting to be you and speak up, but also, like I said, the main focus is our tennis. But I felt like it was time for me to speak up. I never come out and say anything. I don’t really do interviews or things, you know, in regard to that. But I just felt like it was time for me to speak up. … And I guess, more to the point, I’m fine and I’m very conscious of the fact that everyone is allowed their opinion, but when you start singling out my family especially, that’s when it’s not okay. My family do not deserve to be subject to that. She can have her opinion but my family does not deserve that and did not deserve that. That’s when I thought, you know what, it’s my time to speak up.” Martina, on the other hand, is asking for Australia’s Margaret Court Arena to be renamed. Slow clap into raucous applause for Martina, everyone.

The stars of “Orange is the New Black” would like to applaud the fans who did not illegally download the new season and are waiting to watch on Netflix next week. Patience is a virtue, or so I’ve heard.

The Hindu talks with out writer/star of “Signature Move” Fawzia Mirza about creating media that mirrors her experiences as a Pakistani, Muslim lesbian. “I set out to make a film that has stories [of] people that look like [me] and are experiencing things that either I had experienced or people in my world have experienced,” she says. “Other people will call it only a queer film. This is the human nature of people. It’s not just about the movies – everyone wants to label you. Because when they label you, they think they [know better]. So they say, acchha acchha, you speak this language and you live in that neighbourhood, that means you are this. Then they think they know how to talk to you.” “Signature Move” is playing film festivals all summer long, and probably at one near you.

And how necessary films like that are, as queer films are still failing women of color. White. Lesbians. Every. Where.

Sadly, Wonder Woman is not queer in the new film, despite her long history of being totally Sapphically inclined.

Bisexual Oregon Governor Kate Brown has officially signed a bill that will allow trans, non-binary and genderfluid people to shield gender updates on their birth certificate from public record. The new measure will go into effect next year, helping to protect trans people from discrimination from potential employers or landlords. Oregon is the second state to do this, as California was the first.

Renate Stendhal’s new memoir “Kiss Me Again, Paris” details some erotic and Sapphic affairs she had in 1970s France. Ooh la la!

A Catholic farmer in Michigan was banned from an East Lansing farmers market because he refused to host a lesbian couple’s wedding at his orchard, Country Mill Farms, in nearby Charlotte. Now he’s suing, and I hope he loses because I’m from Michigan and I hate people like him. Luckily, my home state has some stand-up Democrats working to help the LGBT people who still live there.

We need better queer characters in gaming, and by reading this piece on how it can happen, I learned what “playersexual” meant. Perhaps from the context in this excerpt, you will get it too: “If the sexuality of a playersexual character is disclosed at any point, it is mentioned lightly after advances of a player of the same gender, yet this is left completely out of the game if approached by a player of a different gender. Because the character isn’t written as bisexual, and only ‘coded’ to have this sexuality at key points, it’s completely possible to play through the entire game believing that the character is completely heterosexual, defeating the goal of having visible representation. … Sexuality is a big part of a person’s life. By simply reducing this to a sex scene we lose out the intended inclusion of diversity and are left with only tokenism.” This extends to television and film, too. A brief same-sex fling is no longer enough!

TTYL!