Free Republic

In middle school, it's hard to be different. It's even harder if a student identifies as LGBTQ. This week, a couple of teachers at Central Park School for Children in Durham, North Carolina, decided to enlist the help of some local drag queens to celebrate the unique differences between the school's students. Taylor Schmidt, an eighth-grade teacher at the school, and his colleague, Schara Brooks, saw the impact bullying and other negative behavior was having on students in their school who identify as LGBTQ. They said students were even leaving the school because of some of their experiences. In December,...

GLAAD’s “Where We Are on TV” report for a third consecutive year forecasts an all-time high in the number of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender and queer (LGBTQ) characters on TV, while also noting that both greater racial diversity and gender parity has been achieved among those roles. Broadcast TV’s representation of LGBTQ characters in the 2018-19 TV season is forecast to be 8.8 percent (or 75 out of 859 series regular roles), up nearly one-third from 2017-18 to mark an all-time high. (Broadcast TV also will have 38 recurring LGBTQ characters, up from last season’s 28.) The CW ranks...

DES MOINES — Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and actress Ellen Page, of “Juno” fame, got into a testy and free-wheeling discussion Friday over gay rights here at the Iowa State Fair. “I’m happy to answer your question but not to have a back-and-forth debate,” Cruz told Page, as she pressed him about discrimination against LGBT citizens, approaching him as he flipped pork chops over an open grill. But the two then proceeded to have a spirited exchange over gay rights and whether private businesses — florist companies, for example —can refuse to cater gay weddings in the name of their...