A federal judge has blocked RFK Jr.'s dangerous changes to childhood vaccine policy. Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, a former senior CDC official featured on The Advocate's January/February cover, called the ruling "big news" and a win for science and the law.
On Ash Wednesday, 2026, two Roman Catholic priests and a religious sister entered an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview, Illinois, to celebrate Mass with detainees inside. It might seem like a simple, routine event: a religious service to mark the start of Lent. But the Mass represented a legal win for the Coalition for Spiritual and Public Leadership, based in Chicago.
I could have decided to live in a grey area and lead a double life, as perhaps other priests do. But at a certain point, I realized that it wasn't right. I don't agree with celibacy or the doctrine that supports it.
Last year at Grace Cathedral's Carnivale, I found the plastic baby in the King Cake. Tradition dictates this brings good luck. In reality, it kicked off a spectacularly chaotic year where we were outbid on a house by a single minute, and then my daily professional life capsized. So, walking back into the cathedral this Friday night, now holding the keys to my first San Francisco home and owning The Bold Italic, felt less like attending a party and more like crossing a finish line.
Julia's friends remember the support and advice she so willingly provided, whether it was nursing or financial. Her activism could be quiet and private, or public and loud. She believed in women's rights, quietly encouraged financial independence for her women friends, marched down Market Street in support of PFLAG, and was featured in the first statewide television commercial for the No on 8 campaign.
Anne Hutchinson (1591-1643) was a religious reformer, Puritan dissident, midwife, and alleged prophetess whose beliefs and influence brought her into conflict with the magistrates of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, especially its governor, John Winthrop (1588-1649), in 1636-1638. She was the central voice of the so-called Antinomian Controversy, which divided the colony and, to the magistrates, threatened its mission and continued existence.
While the Justin Biebers and Lana Del Reys of the world have been in the thrall of "Hypepriest" Judah Smith, the underground set have been seeking wisdom from their own spiritual guide: Sister Irene O'Connor, a Franciscan nun from Australia whose 1973 album Fire of God's Love has been sampled by mainstream-y tastemakers like James Blake and Vegyn, was featured in Killing Eve, and become an unexpected grail for crate-diggers, with original vinyl copies selling for upwards of $500 on Discogs.
I have been in a prayer group for a few years now. I enjoy praying and discussing all the ins and outs of the Bible. However, even though spiritually it's enriching, the people are a bit 'meh' - they are a bit of a letdown.
On Sunday, the first snowfall of December covers the Convent of St. Birgitta in a blanket of pure white. "The world is cloaked in beauty today," Father David Blanchfield says as he begins delivering morning mass to a dozen or so churchgoers bundled up in puffy parkas and thick scarves. Sitting inside feels spiritually counterproductive. Snow, to me, has always felt holy. The purity of it, delivered straight from the heavens. The way it elongates shadows and sparkles in the sun.
i want back my rocking chairs, solipsist sunsets, & coastal jungle sounds that are tercets from cicadas and pentameter from the hairy legs of cockroaches. i've donated bibles to thrift stores (mashed them in plastic trash bags with an acidic himalayan salt lamp the post-baptism bibles, the ones plucked from street corners from the meaty hands of zealots, the dumbed-down, easy-to-read, parasitic kind): remember more the slick rubber smell of high gloss biology textbook pictures;
In the 1960s, after protesting for the Free Speech Movement and marching through the streets of Berkeley in support of women's liberation, Laura started accumulating pamphlets, manifestos, posters and newspapers from the early days of feminism. The collection became so voluminous it morphed into the Women's History Research Center, with more than a million pieces of paper. Now microfilm of those archives is spread in libraries around the world.
Matthew Marrero witnessed the emotional detainment inside of 26 Federal Plaza on Nov. 24. The pair had been attending what they thought would be a joyous Green Card appointment that would cement their life together; instead, it turned into a nightmare when the Marreros were separated by ICE, and Allan was transferred from facility to facility. After months of fighting for his husband's freedom, Matthew Marrero flew to the Magnolia State on Jan. 27 for Allan's bond hearing.
One political conversation with a gay friend that I'll never forget occurred the night before Election Day in 2016, where my friend told me that he hoped Donald Trump would win so that "The Revolution" would finally happen. The idea, I suppose, was that Trump would make things so bad that it would finally wake up the proletariat of the world, and it would unite in the ultimate class war to overthrow the messed-up liberal world order,
Over 2,000 queer activists and organizers from across the U.S. descended on Washington, D.C., last week to attend Creating Change, the nation's foremost political, leadership, and skills-building conference for the LGBTQ+ movement. The event marked the conference's 38th annual gathering since it began in 1988. If you've never been, the six-day conference features over 100 workshops and caucuses, day-long identity-based institutes led by community educators, keynote presentations by distinguished activists, and awards ceremonies honoring trailblazing queer civil rights pioneers.