In just a few days, The Buckeye Flame will celebrate our fourth birthday, which gave me an excuse to go back and read what I penned in 2020 when we launched:
This is the perfect time for The Buckeye Flame to ignite and serve its purpose: to shine a light on our LGBTQ+ lives, to (symbolically!) burn down the systems that neither serve nor represent us and to provide a spark to stir the activism needed to achieve the equality we simply do not have.
Four years later, those words are both true and more important than ever.
Ohio’s fraught landscape
The background against which The Buckeye Flame puts forth our work continues to be fraught. The Republican super-majority in the Ohio legislature is still hellbent on introducing bills to restrict the lived experience of LGBTQ+ Ohioans, including (but certainly not limited to) bills to:
- Forcibly out LGBTQ+ youth to their families
- Ban drag story hours
- Ban gender-affirming care for trans minors (already passed but temporarily delayed)
- Ban trans female athletes (already passed but temporarily delayed)
- Ban library books with “objectionable” content
- Ban trans individuals from multi-person restrooms
And in the rare instances that LGBTQ+ individuals and issues are centered in pieces by larger media outlets, their coverage often contains elements that can inflict harm on the LGBTQ+ community. Articles in Ohio publications from just the past few months alone have:
- Printed the names given to them at birth of trans individuals who have legally changed their name
- Amplified hate speech
- Attempted to equally cover “both sides” of issues like the condemned-by-all-major-medical-and-psychological “practice” of conversion therapy, representing the views of a conversion therapy “provider” with the same weight as the family whose loved one took his life due to conversion therapy
- Conflated HIV and AIDS, two very different medical diagnoses
- Presented recaps of Pride celebrations with coverage that gave as much weight to the experience of a singular protester as it did to the Pride-goers, even though the latter outnumbered the former by a margin of (literally) 2000:1.
Yes, so much more work to do. But The Buckeye Flame is committed to doing it.
Our birthday surprise
We are beyond excited to announce that The Buckeye Flame will be leasing our first ever brick-and-mortar newsroom! That’s right: a real life, offline, in-person Buckeye Flame space is coming to Ohio this very summer!
Having an office brings immediate benefits to our journalism. Our team will be able to meet and work together – and our team just keeps growing as we welcome new interns and new full-time writers, including the country’s only known “Rural LGBTQ+” beat reporter (more on him in a few weeks!).
We will also be able to connect more with you, our community, and we’re already looking forward to hosting you in our space.
Supporting queer journalism
For our annual birthday fundraiser, we have set an ambitious goal of $6,540, which would cover the costs of leasing our newsroom for the first year. We need your help to achieve that goal. There are a ton of ways you can help keep queer journalism alive here in Ohio:
- Become a monthly supporter! We’ll be counting new monthly gifts as an annualized amount towards the goal. And if you start a $25+/month contribution, we’ll send you a very comfy limited edition Buckeye Flame hoodie!
- Come to our party! On June 30, we’ll be hosting a Buckeye Flame Birthday Bash with raffles, entertainment and almost no speeches. We would love to see you there!
- Buy raffle tickets! We’ve selling raffle tickets with some amazing prizes. Winners will be drawn at our party, but you don’t have to be there to win!
- Grab a drink at Bookhouse Brewing! Our friends at Bookhouse Brewing (1526 W 25th St in Cleveland) are celebrating Pride Month by running a fundraiser for The Buckeye Flame! Stop in to grab a pint and support Ohio’s LGBTQ+ newsroom.
As we celebrate our 4th birthday, The Buckeye Flame remains the most important work of my life to-date. I get to work with incredible writers, help amplify inspiring Ohioans and support the creation of vital LGBTQ+ Ohio content.
It is as much true today as it was when I wrote these words in 2020: The Buckeye Flame is here to “provide a bit more light and warmth as we not only blaze this path forward but do so together.”
Flame on, indeed. 🔥
Know an LGBTQ+ Ohio story we should cover? TELL US!
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