LGBTQ+ Issues

Katharine Jefferts Schori, the first female bishop to preside over the Episcopal Church, has faced a number of crises since she accepted the post in 2006. At least one diocese has seceded in response to the ordination of the denomination's first openly gay bishop, and more may follow.

Sean Penn stars in Gus Van Sant's biopic about an out gay politician who inspired a community; screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, who grew up Mormon, says he was among those for whom Harvey Milk made a real difference.

Initially known for his role on the short-lived but critically acclaimed TV series Freaks and Geeks, the actor stars alongside Sean Penn in Gus Van Sant's newest film.

Film critic David Edelstein says the Harvey Milk biopic, starring Sean Penn, is one of the most heartfelt portraits of a politician ever made. "The personal and the political aren't just hand-in-hand," he says: "They dance."

Beliefnet.com founder and Editor-in-Chief Steven Waldman discusses the role of religion and the state of the religious right in post-election politics. Will the coalition of religious groups that united in support of Barack Obama fracture over specific issues?

Screenwriter Mike White and his father, gay rights activist Mel White, recently danced, ran and bobsledded around the globe as part of The Amazing Race. The duo talks about their relationship and reality-TV adventures.

Jack Wrangler, an icon of gay adult films, died April 7. He appeared in more than 30 gay adult films and 20 straight adult films in the 1970s and 1980s. Fresh Air remembers him with an interview from 1985.

Camilla Taylor, lawyer for the gay-rights group Lambda Legal, was lead lawyer on Varnum v. Brien — the case that led to an Iowa Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage there.

Once, Dan Gurley oversaw anti-gay campaigns for the Republican National Committee. Now he works for Equality North Carolina, a statewide group dedicated to securing equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.

In Outrage, the Oscar-nominated director looks into the hidden lives of some of America's most powerful policymakers — closeted gay legislators and executives with voting records that activists decry as virulently anti-gay. He says it's a film about hypocrisy.

Gay rights activist Rodger McFarlane was involved in the earliest efforts to combat the transmission of AIDS during the 1980s. McFarlane, who was 54, died May 15. According to his bother, the cause of death was suicide.

Seven years after being discharged from the U.S. Army under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," openly gay veteran Alex Nicholson is the executive director of Servicemembers United, an advocacy organization he founded.

Intended as a productive if imperfect compromise, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" has resulted in thousands of discharges — many of them involving service members with critical skills. Historian Nathaniel Frank says it's time the ban was ended.

Sacha Baron Cohen's latest jaunt — as a flamboyantly gay Austrian fashionista — is funnier and riskier than Borat. Sure, he's a cheap-shot artist, but he's one who's often got a righteous point.

When Sacha Baron Cohen grants an interview, it's usually in character -- as Borat, the clueless faux-Kazakh journalist; or as Bruno, the outrageously shallow, ostentatiously gay Austrian fashionista at the center of Cohen's most recent film. Today, though, Cohen joins Fresh Air as himself, for a conversation with Terry Gross and Bruno director Larry Charles.

Tom Ford has put his creative sensibilities to work in the service of a Christopher Isherwood tale: A Single Man, which marks Ford's big-screen directorial debut.

Bob Hunter, a member of the secretive religious group The Family, responds to a November Fresh Air interview about the group's role in both U.S. and Ugandan politics. Hunter is credited as the liaison between the Family and leaders of the current Ugandan administration, which has proposed a brutal anti-gay law.

Yesterday Colin Firth received a Best Actor nomination for his starring role in A Single Man, the Tom Ford adaptation of Christopher Isherwood's 1964 novel. Today Firth talks to Terry Gross about playing professor George Falconer, a gay professor navigating Southern California in 1962.

In California, lawyers are two weeks into a landmark federal court case challenging California's Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage in that state. Margaret Talbot has been blogging about the trial for The New Yorker's Web site, and she has written about it in this week's issue of the magazine. A veteran journalist and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, Talbot writes about family life, women's work, children's culture, and politics and moral debates as they intersect with science and law.

Ewan McGregor has played a heroin addict in Trainspotting, a young Obi-Wan Kenobi in three Star Wars films, and a poet in Moulin Rouge. In his latest film, Roman Polanski's Ghost Writer, McGregor plays an unnamed writer uncovering a political scandal. He recounts his favorite acting roles — and how he prepared for them.