Missouri Republican secretary of state candidate Valentina Gomez shared a provocative campaign video of herself running through a historically LGBTQ+ neighborhood and telling voters not to be “weak and gay.”

“In America, you can be anything you want, so don’t be weak and gay,” Gomez says while jogging in a bulletproof vest. “Stay f–king hard.”

Right-wing media figures are increasingly using homophobic and sexist rhetoric to shame LGBTQ couples, including some who work in right-wing media, and single women for using surrogacy and in vitro fertilization to have babies. Since Fox News’ Guy Benson announced his son’s birth via surrogate earlier this month, some conservative media figures have begun amplifying the attacks on fertility treatments that arose last year, attacking Benson and his husband’s use of surrogacy as “disturbing” and “an abomination.”

John Oliver took a closer look at the monkeypox outbreak ― and, more specifically, just how badly the federal government has handled it so far. 

One reason for it, he said, is because many of those affected are gay men. 

“You have to believe that if monkeypox were spreading largely through heterosexual sex, things would be drastically different,” he said. “By now, you’d probably be able to get a ‘free vax with purchase’ at every J. Crew in the country.”

Pride month events around the country are stepping up security alongside a wave of attacks and violent threats from far-right extremists and a surge in anti-LGBTQ rhetoric from the GOP. 

The Supreme Court, already poised to take a significant turn to the right, opened its new term Monday with a jolt from two conservative justices who raised new criticism of the court’s embrace of same-sex marriage.

The justices returned from their summer break on a somber note, following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, hearing arguments by phone because of the coronavirus pandemic and bracing for the possibility of post-election court challenges.

Books with LGBTQ themes — from popular children's book “And Tango Makes Three” to Pulitzer Prize-winner “The Color Purple” — are prominently featured on the American Library Association’s newly released list of the Top 100 Most Banned and Challenged Books of the past decade.

Titles with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer themes, including “George” by Alex Gino, “I Am Jazz” by Jazz Jennings and Jessica Herthel, and “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky, composed half of the list’s top 20 and about a quarter of the top 100.

In a divisive speech at Mount Rushmore on the eve of Independence Day, President Trump railed against “cancel culture” and the left’s supposed wholesale embrace of totalitarianism (err, “toe-tally-terrio-tism”). He accused his political opponents of “shaming dissenters and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees,” arguing that such behavior has “absolutely no place in the United States of America.”

"Cancel culture", the term for when individuals or companies face swift public backlash and boycott over offensive statements or actions, has been an incendiary topic in the movements of recent years, whether relating to misogyny, race or homophobia.

To some, it's a new way to flag past wrongs. To others, it's an ineffective over-reaction in the court of public opinion. In the wake of the George Floyd protests, some see the dethroning of historical figures associated with racism as the latest iteration of cancel culture.

An epidemic of workplace discrimination is sweeping the United States. It threatens not only people’s jobs and livelihoods, but the very structure of our civic life. It calls out for an amendment to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

A substitute teacher at a Utah elementary school was fired after she allegedly told the fifth-grade students in her classroom that "homosexuality was a sin" during a pre-Thanksgiving classroom lesson centered around students expressing why they were thankful.

The Salt Lake Tribune reports the students at Deerfield Elementary School in Cedar Hills, Utah, she launched into an angry anti-homosexual rant when an 11-year old student expressed that he was thankful he was going to be adopted by his two fathers. The school confirmed the incident in a statement to ABC News on Sunday.