Happy Pride, queer stars. On celebrating loudly, the Queerbomb march, and why the move is to blast the haters with bubbles and keep being you.
🏳️🌈 Happy Pride Month, my queer stars, and welcome back to Big & Bright 🌈 ⭐ 👏. I’m grateful to still be here sharing all the latest news from queer Texas. As long as you keep reading and clicking, we’ll keep publishing this newsletter. Now, let’s talk about celebrating Pride and the importance of being ourselves, in public …
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A special thanks to Kind Clinic and Texas Health Action for underwriting our first sponsored vertical and our newsletter. All essays, reporting, and analysis will remain, as always, editorially independent.
🔬 Recently, my TikTok feed served up a video of Round Rock Mayor Craig Morgan addressing his city’s Pride rally. It reminded me that we’re being judged by everything we do, including how we celebrate. His speech ends with “be safe, cause you know people are watching.” Whether he meant it or not, he implied that the biggest risk for us is appearing to be dangerous to others, not the danger posed to us by violent bigots.
🤠 Round Rock’s mayor is to be commended for continuing to support us despite right-wing pressure. But I can’t help but hope we someday reach a place where we don’t need to act like our every move could be judged by Ken Paxton or Libs of TikTok, because bigots like them no longer wield power over us.
🫧 On Saturday, I joined one of Austin’s largest alternative Pride events, Queerbomb, on a march past the night clubs of 6th Street. Although our chants were sometimes ragged, and the humidity near overwhelming, I saw and heard from passersby how important it was to see us being loudly and publicly queer. One participant rode alongside the march in an electric cab, leaning out the window in a full-body fur suit of a goat, shooting us with a bubblegun, to the crowd’s delight.
🐐 In my experience, furries are consistently kind and sweet people, but are dragged through the mud for their perceived differences. Yet here they are, still joyously being themselves. It struck me as an encapsulation of the energy we need to bring to Pride and the rest of 2026: Blast the haters with bubbles and keep on loudly being you.
🌈 I hope you’ll find ways to be your joyous, riotous, gorgeous selves out in the open, this month, and every month, my queer stars, and read on for all the latest from Texas and beyond. …
Steers & Queers 🐂
What we’re writing and reading in Texas.
🏳️⚧️ Ken Paxton threatened a lawsuit over Big Gay Swim Day, an event that took place last weekend in Denton, but backed down when the city agreed to keep same-sex bathroom and changing facilities intact at the pool. The event’s organizers called the legal threats “frivolous” and a “waste of taxpayers’ time and money.” Doesn’t Ken have some corruption to commit or some child abusers he could be pardoning?
💃 Round Rock honored historic queen Barbette, who Chron.com’s Gwen Howerton correctly classifies as “once one of the most celebrated acrobats and drag performers,” with a permanent historical marker.
🎤 For Austin Free Press, I wrote about some of the challenges trans adults face accessing gender-affirming care, and an upcoming fundraiser show to help pay for the surgeries of several drag performers and musicians. If you’re in the area, check out Tops & Bottoms on Saturday.
🤖 Writing for progressive publication Truthout, Texas State University journalism student Ryan Claycamp created a rather comprehensive overview of the decline in LGBTQ+-related courses and degrees at Texas universities, including the usage of AI to review and censor prospective syllabi.
🖼️ Austin’s MASS Gallery, an art space led by volunteers from the queer community, is hosting a double exhibition for Pride: “Butch Is Not A Dirty Word,” a portrait series by photographer Esther Godoy, and “Artemisia Tridentata: From Rugged Soil,” a collection of the work of rural queer artists.
⚾ More upcoming Pride events around the state: sports fans can celebrate with the El Paso Locomotive (soccer) on June 13 or with the El Paso Chihuahuas (baseball) on June 18, and Tyler, Texas celebrates Rose City Pride on June 20.
Stars & Stripes 🇺🇸
What’s happening in the rest of the gayborhood.
🪖 The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that Trump’s ban on transgender military troops is unconstitutional. Under the ruling, trans troops could remain in the military, though new enlistment is still blocked.
👩🤝👩 Support for LGBTQ+ rights in the U.S., including same-sex marriage, is on the decline according to a recent Gallup poll, with Republicans leading the way. As Erin Reed of Erin in the Morning put it, the GOP will not be satisfied with just attacking trans people, they’ll attack anyone who’s not straight and cis.
🔫 Mathew Rodriguez at Them reports that Rihanna Kelver faces felony charges in Wyoming after defending herself from transphobic attackers, even though Wyoming has a “Stand Your Ground” law. Rihanna has also struggled to raise money for her legal defense after being kicked off of multiple crowdfunding platforms.
🍍According to S. Baum at Erin in the Morning, a law signed into effect in Hawaii adds protections for gender-affirming care to an existing shield law that protects access to reproductive healthcare.
📺 Last month people flooded the Federal Communications Commission with comments urging them not to create special warning labels for LGBTQ+ or trans content on TV. A second window for comment is open until June 22, with instructions available from the nonprofit GLAAD on how to share your thoughts with the FCC.
⚕️ Because what starts in Texas never stays here: families are continuing to fight the Trump administration’s attempts to access their trans’ kids healthcare records, while the Cleveland Clinic became the second in the nation, after Texas Children’s Hospital, forced into offering a “detransition clinic.”
🍎 Under Mayor Zohran Mamdani, New York City will open a city-sponsored clinic for gender-affirming care, but they’re already signaling they won’t accept patients under 19.
🍑 Adventures in corporate Pride: Food-kit vendor, perennial podcast sponsor (and accused union-buster) HelloFresh made waves with an Instagram post offering high-fiber foods for “prepping” bottoms, while Levi’s Jeans went viral for this year’s leather-forward Pride collection.
Bright & Buzzy📱
Memes and more.
🍴 What are we having for dinner?
🍅 Queer kids can make anything queer
👑 Everyone can learn from drag queens …
Shameless Merch Plug 🧢
🏴 In this house we stand for the flag … and by flag, of course I mean our Texas Pride Window Flag, which puts the Lone Star State in full rainbow glory against a trans pride backdrop. No slogans or logos, just showing the neighbors you believe in human rights for all!
Reach out if you have tips, story ideas, or just to tell me how you’re celebrating Pride. (kit@thebarbedwire.com).
🌈 Stay big, bright, and bold,
Kit (They/Them) 💖
