I wrote this piece for a newsletter for Uncloseted Media about coming out of the closet for the final time. It's the first time I've written anything personal. I hope you all enjoy, happy pride!
In April, dominatrix and sex worker Shy Sotomayor revealed that she had had a nine-year professional relationship with Bryon Noem, the husband of former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. Following reports in March that Bryon Noem had allegedly engaged in feminization and “bimbofication” fetishes with other sex workers, Sotomayor is sharing more details about his interest in trans identities.
These interests represent a stark contrast to his wife’s anti-trans record. As Governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem signed bills into law that allow businesses to use religious refusal to deny service to LGBTQ people; ban gender-affirming care for trans youth; and ban trans women and girls from competing on women’s and girls’ sports teams. Through all of this, Bryon Noem never denounced his wife’s policies.
In addition, experts have raised concerns about Bryon Noem’s relationship with sex workers from a national security standpoint. “If a media organization can find this out, you can assume with a high degree of confidence that a hostile intelligence service knows this as well,” Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA officer, told the Daily Mail. “Damaging information like this can be a tantalizing lead for a hostile intelligence service.”
In April, dominatrix and sex worker Shy Sotomayor revealed that she had had a nine-year professional relationship with Bryon Noem, the husband of former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. Following reports in March that Bryon Noem had allegedly engaged in feminization and “bimbofication” fetishes with other sex workers, Sotomayor is sharing more details about his interest in trans identities.
These interests represent a stark contrast to his wife’s anti-trans record. As Governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem signed bills into law that allow businesses to use religious refusal to deny service to LGBTQ people; ban gender-affirming care for trans youth; and ban trans women and girls from competing on women’s and girls’ sports teams. Through all of this, Bryon Noem never denounced his wife’s policies.
In addition, experts have raised concerns about Bryon Noem’s relationship with sex workers from a national security standpoint. “If a media organization can find this out, you can assume with a high degree of confidence that a hostile intelligence service knows this as well,” Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA officer, told the Daily Mail. “Damaging information like this can be a tantalizing lead for a hostile intelligence service.”
>Since the U.S. was founded in 1776, visibility of the lesbian, bisexual and gay communities has increased. Though progress has not been linear, this timeline of key events explores how rights related to politics, healthcare, military service and marriage have developed over time and brought us to where we are today.
>Milo Miles, a Toronto-based adult film actor, was recently banned from entering the United States for the next 10 years after he says he was detained and questioned by Customs and Border Protection agents over the course of two days.
>Miles, who was trying to fly to Las Vegas from Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, says he had never faced significant issues at the border ahead of this instance.
>While U.S. Customs does have the right to deny entry to people they believe have engaged in sex work, Miles says he was questioned for upwards of eight hours, often about his sexual orientation. He says one agent asked him why he has so many “gay clothes” and if he was “sick” upon seeing his PrEP medication and his fiber pills.
>The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, best known as a Reaganomics champion, is using anti-LGBTQ politics to advance its broader political goals. But that wasn’t always part of its strategy.
>Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs when he signed a bill into law that prohibits any local government in the state from spending money on DEI-related initiatives. The restrictions could threaten nondiscrimination ordinances, local pride events and other services, leading some LGBTQ advocates to label it a “pride ban.”
>The law’s definition of DEI is adapted from a model bill by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (MI), a New York City-based conservative think tank that formed in 1978. Since its model bill was released in 2023, at least 10 states have introduced anti-DEI bills that include nearly identical language. Additionally, MI has informed the Trump administration’s policy on gender-affirming care through collaboration on the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) controversial pediatric gender dysphoria report.
>Prior to the 2020s, efforts to undermine LGBTQ rights were not a focus for MI. But since then, it began parroting many of the talking points of the anti-LGBTQ movement. While the shift may seem random, an assessment of MI’s history and strategy reveals how these attacks fit into its broader political goals.
>“Attacking LGBTQ rights is an effective strategy because bluntly, people don’t like gay people and don’t like trans people,” says Quinnehtukqut McLamore, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Missouri. “It’s effective because it makes it really easy to get … folks who usually don’t sign on with right-wing agendas to back anti-trans positions which set precedent for greater advancement of right-wing goals.”
>Over the last week, it’s been nearly impossible to miss the headlines about the history-making drama that has unfolded at CBS News’ 60 Minutes.
>It all started last Thursday, when CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss fired correspondents Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi, as well as executive producer Tanya Simon. Weiss replaced Simon by hiring Nick Bilton, a technology journalist and filmmaker with no TV news experience. The event was followed by an explosive Monday morning meeting where Scott Pelley, who had been a correspondent at the show for over 20 years, accused Weiss of “murdering” the program. The following day, Pelley was fired.
>60 Minutes has ranked as the most-watched TV news program for 52 consecutive years, and they just finished a season where they averaged 9.1 million viewers per episode, a 9% increase from the year prior—remarkable numbers in an era where everyone is pivoting to streaming.
>So what’s behind the seismic shift in leadership and talent? And how did a few ideologues manage to dismantle one of the most trusted, award-winning and iconic news shows in American history?
>Since President Donald Trump’s reelection, the full force of the federal government has been working to dismantle anything and everything it calls “gender ideology.” The past four and a half months have seen the Trump administration’s key agencies using executive orders from the president’s first days in office to further upend queer and trans rights. While federal judges continue to block some of his agencies’ anti-LGBTQ policies, his administration has ignored court orders at least 31 times. Here is every move Trump and his administration have made on LGBTQ issues since Jan. 21 of this year.
>On a Friday afternoon in February, Teresa McCleary and Rose Milner sat near the entrance to Calgary’s Boddums Up Pub, collecting signatures for a petition pushing for Alberta—which is widely recognized as Canada’s most conservative province—to separate from the rest of the country.
>“I want the old Alberta back. I want our free Alberta back. … We are a cash cow for the East. They don’t care about us,” says McCleary, who sported a baseball cap with the words “I am Albertan!”
>As for Milner, she feels Canada is becoming “communist.”
>“Bring back the ‘60s,” she told Uncloseted Media and GAY TIMES. “I don’t give a shit who you love, but don’t shove your ideology down my throat and tell me that I need to use pronouns.”
Focus on the Family (FOTF) is a Christian ministry with a half-century history of anti-LGBTQ advocacy. Through the years, they have worked with the biggest American politicians and lawmakers to pass or maintain laws that treat LGBTQ people as second-class citizens. The nonprofit, which today amasses more than $100 million a year in revenue, was founded by James Dobson, who believed secularism was the cause of the rapid decay of American society. Here is the organization’s complete track record on LGBTQ issues.
>“Canada, we are well-known to build equality, caring, and we stand up for each other, and that is so special,” Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow told a room of over 100 prominent Canadian queer people and allies last Tuesday at Uncloseted Media’s first Canadian fundraiser at the Royal Canadian Yacht Club.
>“Right now, people are not really reading news. … So you have to cut through a whole lot in order to capture people’s imaginations. You have to really dig deep because truth matters. That’s why journalism matters,” she told the crowd.
>“If we don’t have truth, we have this,” she said, pointing to Uncloseted Media stories covering anti-LGBTQ movements on a TV screen. “Can I call it bullshit? Homophobic bullshit!”
>In a time when so many politicians have ditched LGBTQ rights or watered down their support, Mayor Chow’s unfiltered remarks were refreshing.
On May 6, the Trump administration released their new counterterrorism strategy. It delineated three “major types of terror groups,” including “narcoterrorists and transnational gangs,” “legacy Islamist terrorists” and “violent left-wing extremists, including anarchists and anti-fascists.” In a glaring departure from the Biden administration’s strategy focused on far-right extremists and white supremacists, the Trump administration is cracking down on ideology that they call “anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.”
I'm gonna give them these! I hastily made a bunch waiting for my partner to get back from the store before the game today.
>Peter Boykin founded Gays for Trump 10 years ago as an organization to “get out the vote” for gay Trump supporters during the president’s first run for office. The organization grew fast by creating Facebook campaigns and hosting events at the Republican National Convention. Now, over one year into Trump’s second term, Boykin’s group is smaller but still boasts 11,000 members.
>In this episode of “UNCLOSETED, with Spencer Macnaughton,” Spencer sits down with Boykin to learn about why he remains “hopeful for Donald Trump” despite his disagreements about how the president has been handling LGBTQ issues.
>Natalia Soloviova always knew she was putting herself at risk. As the chair of the Russian LGBT Network, the largest queer advocacy group in the country, she had spent years preparing detailed security protocols for what she would do if the government came after her.
>But it was still a nasty shock when she had to use them. In November 2023, almost two weeks before Russia’s supreme court would designate the “international LGBT movement” as an extremist organization, Soloviova’s heart sank when she watched Channel One, a state-funded TV network, air a report about her organization. They flashed her and her colleagues’ names on screen while accusing the organization of “extremist” activities, including spreading propaganda to minors and trying to destroy “traditional family values.”
>“It was so disturbing, and it made me physically sick,” Soloviova told Uncloseted Media.
>She knew she had to get out. The following days blurred together as she checked off the steps in her security protocol: She called her lawyers, told her mom and wife she was leaving, and boarded a plane to another country. Over the next few years, she would move between several countries before settling in New York City.
>It all happened so fast that she didn’t process her emotions until a month later, when she was scrolling Instagram and saw a video of her hometown, Novosibirsk.
>“I start just crying … because my previous life was lost,” she says. “I started to feel anger for the government, for the situation itself, because it was absolutely horrific and absolutely unfair.”
>While U.S. intelligence agencies under the Trump administration have indicated an interest in targeting trans people, Russia’s extremism designation has allowed for a whole other level of persecution. Because the designation targets the entire LGBTQ movement, the court’s ruling allows the government to impose broad crackdowns on the community.
>As of June 2025, Human Rights Watch (HRW) had identified 101 people convicted on LGBT extremism charges, with punishments ranging from fines to 12-year prison sentences. Since late last year, the government has also taken eight Russian LGBTQ advocacy organizations to court, aiming to label them as extremist groups.
In 1992, James Dale sued the Boy Scouts of America after they kicked him out for being gay. The case lasted nearly a decade and made it all the way to the Supreme Court.
While SCOTUS ultimately ruled against Dale in a 5-4 decision, his case paved the way for LGBTQ inclusion across the organization. In 2014, the Boy Scouts started allowing gay boys to join the organization. Three years later, the organization began allowing trans boy scouts, and a year later, girls became eligible for membership.
But today, Scouting America is presented with a new challenge as Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has put the organization “on notice,” and has threatened to pull Pentagon support if the they fail to erase what he calls “an insidious radical woke ideology,” which includes allowing trans scouts and girls to join the organization, and promotion of diversity, equity and inclusion.