u/NiConcussions

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.

>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.

>Shlomo Satt remembers first thinking he might be gay at 13 years old after seeing an article about gay marriage in the newspaper. Growing up in an Orthodox Jewish community on Long Island, New York, Satt immediately felt anxious about what this could mean for his future.

>“I think that’s when I started thinking, ‘Oh, am I that? Am I gay?’” Satt, now 30, told Uncloseted Media and GAY TIMES.

>As Satt came to realize he was gay, his anxiety skyrocketed. He was aware that only half of Orthodox Jews—and 20% of ultra-Orthodox Jews—are accepting of homosexuality.

>“In my community, it’s very shunned to be gay,” says Satt. “So it was really, really, hard for me to accept that I was attracted to other men, because I was like, ‘It’s not what the Torah says you’re allowed to be.’”

>A LOOKOUT and Uncloseted Media investigation has found that millions of dollars from various state motor vehicle departments are being funneled into far-right groups that use that money to lobby lawmakers and fund litigation that defeat equity measures for millions of people across the country, including for women, people of color and, more specifically, LGBTQ people. And it’s all being done through what’s on the back of people’s cars.

>In a nationwide sampling of state specialty license plate financial data since 2020, more than $7 million has gone to groups that have helped champion anti-LGBTQ legislation, funded litigation that struck down conversion therapy bans, and promoted Christian nationalist values that have direct ties to nationally recognized anti-queer groups.

>Many specialty state license plates fund organizations that have indirect ties to extremist groups, although Uncloseted Media and LOOKOUT’s investigation found that four states give money to Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate groups, including the American Family Association (AFA) and members of the Family Policy Alliance. Those states are: Arizona, Montana, Florida and Mississippi.

>Since 2019, Arizona’s “In God We Trust” license plate has given more than $1.4 million to Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). The group is most well known for supporting legislation that bans trans youth from gender-affirming care and access to gender-aligned bathrooms and youth sports, and for recently winning their case in the U.S. Supreme Court, striking down Colorado’s conversion therapy ban.

>A majority of states in the U.S. have a specialty license plate that has brought in tens of millions of dollars for the Choose Life movement, a Christian conservative anti-abortion campaign that has been supported by ADF.

>In Mississippi, the AFA—which operates media outlets like American Family Radio and American Family News, formerly known as OneNewsNow, and has a long record of promoting anti-LGBTQ rhetoric—launched a specialty plate that nets the group $24 per plate and has already generated more than $8,000 since rolling out this year.