Sayer Johnson is a busy dude, to put it mildly. The executive director and co-founder of the Metro Trans Umbrella Group, or MTUG, always has another project in the works to serve his community — to make life easier, safer or better for his trans siblings. MTUG, founded in 2013, offers meet-ups, trainings and panels…
Features
Sean Michael: Conscious Theatre
Sean Michael is the mastermind behind the socially conscious theatre troupe the Q Collective. Founded in February 2018 in the context of the #MeToo movement, various protests and the Women’s March, the Q Collective has a mission of “exploring the spectrum of gender, sexuality and romantic orientation” through the lens of intersectionality and acceptance. Before…
Shawn Jennings Kohrs: He Makes a Wish Come True
Sitting in the garage with family in 2012, Shawn Jennings Kohrs stumbled upon a Facebook post that changed his life. A woman in Kentucky wrote with intimate details about how her thirteen-year-old son knew he was going to die, but still worried about her well-being. “Two seconds in I was invested, and knew I had…
Tony Corso: Boo Boo Brings the Bucks
Tony Corso — better known around these parts as Boo Boo — revitalized the Bartender Revue at Just John a decade ago, making it the hotly anticipated annual event it remains today. The annual drag comedy event, held in January, raises money for charities handpicked by Corso and Just John co-founder Jeromy Ruot. Founded in…
Mo Costello: The Grassroots Disorganizer
Mo Costello, the Mo in MoKaBe’s Coffee House, insists that her establishment’s standing as a community cornerstone has nothing to do with her. “I get a lot of credit for this, but we’ve literally just allowed the space to be the space,” says Costello, a youthful, angular mother of three adult children who has been…
Better Together: How Alicia Markstone and Janessa Highland saved each other — and rose to the top
When Janessa Highland became show director at Martha’s Vineyard in Springfield, Missouri, in 2011, she knew she was following in big footsteps. That included those of Alicia Markstone, the 2002 Miss Gay USofA at Large, who had gone from small-town Missouri to Florida to be the show director at the famed Suncoast Resort Hotel. But…
Where We Live: Presenting the St. Louis Area’s Top 5 LGBT Neighborhoods
There was some grumbling in conservative Jefferson County when the 2016 DeSoto Christmas Parade was slated to include the county’s drag bar, Rumors on Ice. Among the garden-variety homophobic comments posted to the event’s Facebook page, one stuck with me: “Go back to the Central West End.” The remark amused me on a couple of…
Jake Bain: Grace Under Fire, On and Off the Field
After Jon, an eighth-grade student at a St. Louis area private Catholic school, heard about how a star football player at John Burroughs School had come out and managed to remain calm despite being put on blast by the infamously hateful Westboro Baptist Church, he decided to reach out to the player. His Instagram conversation…
Pride and Zero Prejudice
“What’s unique about The College School is that we are a private, independent school for everyone,” says Vincent Flewellen, the school’s director of equity and inclusion. We’re seated in an open area that I happen to know was once used as a library. It’s next to the principal’s office and directly across the hall from…