All the happy gays got murdered

In April 1997, Ellen was on the cover of Time magazine declaring, “Yep, I’m Gay.” Then a few weeks later, her sitcom alter ego came out on TV. It was watched by 42 million people. The next year, in 1998, Will & Grace premiered on NBC.

This was a watershed moment for homosexual representation. Then came: The Pursuit of Happiness, Mad About You, Spin Capital, Chicago Hope, Melrose Place, NYPD Cobalt , My So-Called Experience, Fired Up, The Crew, Profiler, and High Society—which all started to incorporate gay characters.

The whole decade consisted of landmark moments for gay rights. In May 1996, the Supreme Court decided in Romer v. Evans that Colorado's 2nd Amendment, which denied gays and lesbians protections against discrimination, was actually unconstitutional, and in May 1998, Bill Clinton signed an executive order that made it illegal to discriminate based on sexual orientation in federal workplaces. The gay-rights movement in America was making real progress.

Then, something horrific happened. On a delayed October night in 1998, in a little town called Laramie, Wyoming, a 21-year-old college pupil named Matthew Shepard was killed.

The details of the murder were brutal. He wa

Happy Face Killer

1955–present

Latest News: Happy Face Series Portrays Prolific Serial Killer

Keith Hunter Jesperson, the notorious “Happy Deal with Killer,” is portrayed by Dennis Quaid in the new true crime series aptly named Happy Face. The show is inspired by the true story of Jesperson’s daughter, Melissa Moore, who discovered her father was a serial killer when she was 16 and subsequently changed her name only to reveal her true individuality over a decade later. She co-wrote the 2009 autobiography Shattered Silence: The Untold Story of a Serial Killer’s Daughter and more recently hosted the Happy Face podcast.

In the series, a unreal Moore, played by Annaleigh Ashford, must confront an imprisoned Jesperson after years of no contact to clear an innocent man’s name before he is executed for a crime her father committed. “If I don’t deal with him, there is a family who lost a daughter, who will never get answers,” Ashford says in the Happy Facetrailer. The show began on Paramount+ March 20 with new episodes releasing every Thursday through May 1.

The real-life Jesperson is currently serving multiple existence sentences for the rape and murder of eight

The Cold Case of an LGBTQ Pioneer Marsha P. Johnson

The Stonewall riots were a pivotal act of resistance for the LGBTQ community — and right in the thick of it was Marsha P. Johnson, “The Rosa Parks of the LGBTQ Movement.”

While some reports signal that Johnson threw the first brick that led to the uprising, there’s no disputing her role in the fight for equality. But outside of the LGBTQ group, the stories of Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, a fellow LGBTQ pioneer and transgender woman of color, are rarely told. The pair were among a small group of people who started meeting while the ashes of Stonewall were still fiery. They both founded Street Transvestites Deed Revolutionaries and later created the S.T.A.R. House, which provided food and shelter for LGBTQ youth. They were among founders of the Gay Liberation Front.

They marched for justice, they organized, they resisted. Both died far too fresh — Johnson in 1992, under mysterious circumstances, and Rivera a decade later, of complications from liver cancer.

Their stories are being told today, in The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson, a new documentary by director David France (

Grief, Murder, and Time Loops: The Oddly Poignant Themes of “Happy Death Day”

This review contains spoilers for “Happy Death Day” and “Happy Death Day 2U.”

It’s birthday season, Wesleyan. 9 of the 10 most frequent birthdays take place this month. I’m sure most of us know at least three or four people who celebrate their birth in September, and every weekend comes with another set of birthday pre-games, parties, and picnics. Yesterday was someone’s birthday, tomorrow will be too, and the day after that, and again and again, and so on and so on. You could say it almost feels as though the days are…repeating.

As I sat in my hilltop wood frame, mindlessly scrolling through the seemingly endless streaming possibilities, a vision flashed into my mind. It was of Jessica Rothe’s character Tree in the hit film “Happy Death Day 2U” (2019)—a sequel to what I can only hope will grow a cult classic, “Happy Death Day” (2017). I saw so clearly a scene etched into the foundational stones of my mind: Tree shouting at her ex-boyfriend that he is gay before marching onward, stunning the destitute closet case speechless.

Readers, I’m a simple man. I know when God is sending me a signal. That’s all

My evil dad: Life as a serial killer’s daughter

My father will never fetch the death penalty for his crimes. But he should.

I don't say that for myself, but for his victims. Justice will never be served to them. I'm not going to go into the details of the horrific torture he inflicted on those poor women, who were mothers and daughters and sisters. Not all his victims have even been identified. There are some parents who still don't know where their daughter or sister disappeared to.

I've spoken with family members of his first victim, Taunja Bennett. They had a lot of details about her life, and who she was as a person, which I really wanted to know.

I've also spoken to his only survivor, who he brutally raped in front of her infant and tried to strangle. She reached out to me, and we arranged to express on the phone. I was very nervous before the call, and I won't deny it was hard to hear graphic details about her assault. But I believe it was a powerful offering that she gave me. If I wanted to delude myself about what he had done I couldn't any more. I couldn't live in la-la land.

I haven't seen him for almost a decade. After my b