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    Man With Neo-Nazi Ties Sentenced to Life in Killing of Gay Ex-Classmate

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    Samuel Woodward, who espoused anti-gay rhetoric and had ties to Atomwaffen, a neo-Nazi group, stabbed his victim 28 times in a hate-fueled murder, prosecutors said.A California man who expressed allegiance to a neo-Nazi group and espoused anti-gay rhetoric was sentenced to life in prison on Friday after a jury found him guilty of brutally killing a former high school classmate who was gay in a hate-motivated murder, the Orange County District Attorney’s office said.The man, Samuel Lincoln Woodward, 26, of Newport Beach, Calif., had reconnected with his former classmate, Blaze Bernstein, then a 19-year-old student at the University of Pennsylvania, on a dating app for men seeking men, the authorities said.On the evening of Jan. 2, 2018, Mr. Woodward drove Mr. Bernstein, who believed they were going on a romantic encounter, to a park in Lake Forest, Calif., where Mr. Woodward brutally stabbed Mr. Bernstein 28 times and buried his body in a shallow grave in the park, the district attorney’s office said.On Friday, more than four months after a jury found Mr. Woodward guilty of first-degree murder with a hate crime enhancement, a judge in the Superior Court of Orange County sentenced Mr. Woodward to life in prison without parole, according to court records.“With every hateful stab of his knife, Samuel Woodward stabbed at the very heart of our entire community,” Todd Spitzer, the district attorney for Orange County, said in a statement.He added that “those who commit acts of hate against others will be punished and those who are victimized by hate will be protected.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Dorothy Allison, Author of ‘Bastard Out of Carolina,’ Dies at 75

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      She wrote lovingly and often hilariously about her harrowing childhood in a working-class Southern family, as well as about the violence and incest she suffered.Dorothy Allison, who wrote with lyrical, pungent wit about her working-class Southern upbringing — and about the incest and violence that shaped her — and whose acclaimed 1992 novel, “Bastard Out of Carolina,” based on her harrowing childhood, made her a literary star, died on Tuesday at her home in Guerneville, Calif., in Sonoma County. She was 75.Her death, from cancer, was announced by the Frances Goldin Literary Agency, her longtime representative.Ms. Allison was flat broke in 1989 when she decided to try to sell “Bastard Out of Carolina,” the novel she had been writing for nearly a decade, to a mainstream publisher. “Trash,” a critically praised collection of short stories, had already been published by Firebrand Books, a feminist publishing house; so had her collection of poetry, “The Women Who Hate Me,” which she first published herself as a chapbook in 1983. In both books, she tackled lust, the scrum of feminist politics and her chaotic, beloved family. Feminism had saved her life, she often said, and she was certain that because of her political convictions, the mainstream press would not welcome her.“Bastard Out of Carolina” was published in 1992 to almost unanimous acclaim and made numerous best-seller lists.No creditMs. Allison liked to describe herself, as she told The New York Times Magazine in 1995, as a “cross-eyed, working-class lesbian addicted to violence, language and hope.”But at the time, she and her partner, Alix Layman, a trombone player who had been kicked out of the Army for being gay, were living on grits. Ms. Allison, who was legally blind in one eye, had numerous other health concerns and medical debt, and she could no longer support her writing with part-time clerical jobs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Australian Ballet’s ‘Oscar,’ Ventures Into New Romantic Territory

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      The Australian Ballet’s premiere of “Oscar,” based on the life of Oscar Wilde, explores the love relationship between two men.Boy loves girl. Prince enchanted by princess. Or swan queen, sylph, fairy, doll, peasant girl or courtesan.The central narrative elements of the full-length story ballets familiar to audiences mostly share a single element: The central romantic relationship is between male and female characters. Since many of these ballets (“Giselle,” “Swan Lake,” “The Sleeping Beauty”) date from the 19th century, that’s not surprising. But well into the 21st century, ballet — unlike opera, film or theater — has been slow to take up the challenges of telling other kinds of tales.That changed last month, with the Australian Ballet’s premiere of “Oscar,” about the life of Oscar Wilde. Choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon and set to a score by Joby Talbot, it is the first full-length narrative ballet that makes a gay hero and his love for another man its central subject.In a video call, Wheeldon pointed out that Matthew Bourne’s “Swan Lake — which featured an unhappy, repressed prince falling in love with a fiercely alluring male swan — was a groundbreaking forerunner, although not a classical ballet. But since then, he said, almost no narrative dance work has put a gay romance at its heart. David Bintley’s 1995 “Edward II” depicted something of the king’s relationship with Piers Gaveston, the Earl of Cornwall, but even the Yuri Possokhov-Kirill Serebrennikov “Nureyev” at the Bolshoi almost entirely skirted the issue of the dancer’s sexuality.It was time for something more. “I wanted us to be a company that tells stories that resonate, to be bold in our storytelling,” said David Hallberg, the artistic director of the Australian ballet. “Oscar Wilde wrote these beautiful tales, but was persecuted in a way that is still true for many people today.”Wheeldon, a major choreographer, clearly likes a narrative challenge. He has created the full-length “Alice in Wonderland,” “The Winter’s Tale” and “Like Water for Chocolate” for the Royal Ballet, and directed and choreographed (and won Tony Awards for) two Broadway shows, “An American in Paris” and “MJ: The Musical.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.S. Study on Puberty Blockers Goes Unpublished Because of Politics, Doctor Says

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      The leader of the long-running study said that the drugs did not improve mental health in children with gender distress and that the finding might be weaponized by opponents of the care.An influential doctor and advocate of adolescent gender treatments said she had not published a long-awaited study of puberty-blocking drugs because of the charged American political environment.The doctor, Johanna Olson-Kennedy, began the study in 2015 as part of a broader, multimillion-dollar federal project on transgender youth. She and colleagues recruited 95 children from across the country and gave them puberty blockers, which stave off the permanent physical changes — like breasts or a deepening voice — that could exacerbate their gender distress, known as dysphoria.The researchers followed the children for two years to see if the treatments improved their mental health. An older Dutch study had found that puberty blockers improved well-being, results that inspired clinics around the world to regularly prescribe the medications as part of what is now called gender-affirming care.But the American trial did not find a similar trend, Dr. Olson-Kennedy said in a wide-ranging interview. Puberty blockers did not lead to mental health improvements, she said, most likely because the children were already doing well when the study began.“They’re in really good shape when they come in, and they’re in really good shape after two years,” said Dr. Olson-Kennedy, who runs the country’s largest youth gender clinic at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles.That conclusion seemed to contradict an earlier description of the group, in which Dr. Olson-Kennedy and her colleagues noted that one quarter of the adolescents were depressed or suicidal before treatment.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Pentagon to Give Honorable Discharges to Some Kicked Out Under ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’

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      More than 800 service members administratively separated from the military under the now-repealed policy will receive discharge upgrades.The Pentagon announced on Tuesday that more than 800 service members who were kicked out of the military under the now-repealed “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy will receive honorable discharge upgrades.Pentagon officials said they had completed a review of about 2,000 cases, as Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III ordered last year.Mr. Austin said in a statement that the military would “continue to honor the service and the sacrifice of all our troops — including the brave Americans who raised their hands to serve but were turned away because of whom they love.”About 13,500 service members were separated from the military because of their sexual orientation while the policy was in effect from 1994 until 2011. About a third of them were not considered for discharge upgrades because they were separated during their initial military training and had not served long enough to qualify.Some groups that work with veterans said the Pentagon should review those cases as well.“We don’t have a ton of clarity about how the Department of Defense went about its process here,” said Renee Burbank of the National Veterans Legal Services Program, which provides legal assistance to veterans on a wide array of issues.Ms. Burbank, who serves as the group’s director of litigation, said that about 7,000 of the 13,500 people ousted under “don’t ask, don’t tell” had already received honorable discharges.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Can Rugby League and Drag Queens Coexist? A U.K. Mill Town Finds Out.

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      A gay couple embraced inclusion after buying an English rugby team. To their surprise, the fans bought in, too.Kaue Garcia and Ryan O’Neill had owned a sports team for no more than six months when they decided the time was right to shake things up. What they needed more than anything else, they felt, was a drag queen.They were not entirely sure what the reaction would be. Keighley Cougars, the English club they had bought almost as an act of mercy, was not an obvious place to start pushing boundaries.Keighley is an old textile town, surrounded by the windswept moors of Yorkshire’s Brontë Country. The scars of postindustrial decay remain livid here: spectacular scenery that houses some of the most deprived areas in England. And the Cougars play Rugby League, an especially brutal iteration of a famously bruising discipline.Largely the exclusive preserve of old pit towns in northern England and northeastern Australia, Rugby League involves 26 musclebound players charging into each other at full speed for 80 minutes. Think N.F.L.-level collisions, but without all the helmets and padding. It is a tough game, played by tough people, in tough places.The plan hatched by Mr. Garcia and Mr. O’Neill, then — to arrange a Pride-themed day at Keighley’s stadium, and to employ a drag queen as the pregame entertainment — seemed ambitious.“We were worried nobody would come,” Mr. O’Neill said. His husband feared an even more stinging rebuke. “We’d put a drag queen on the middle of the field, have a big party, and everyone would just disappear,” Mr. Garcia said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sadness Among Teen Girls May Be Improving, C.D.C. Finds

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      A national survey found promising signs that key mental health measures for teens, especially girls, have improved since the depths of the pandemic.In 2021, a survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on teen mental health focused on a stark crisis: Nearly three in five teenage girls reported feeling persistent sadness, the highest rate in a decade.But the newest iteration of the survey, distributed in 2023 to more than 20,000 high school students across the country, suggests that some of the despair seen at the height of the pandemic may be lessening.Fifty-three percent of girls reported extreme depressive symptoms in 2023, down from 57 percent in 2021. For comparison, just 28 percent of teenage boys felt persistent sadness, about the same as in 2021.Suicide risk among girls stayed roughly the same as the last survey. But Black students, who reported troubling increases in suicide attempts in 2021, reported significantly fewer attempts in 2023.Still, the number of teens reporting persistent sadness in 2023 remained higher than at any point in the last decade aside from 2021. And around 65 percent of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender high school students reported persistent hopelessness, compared with 31 percent of their cisgender or heterosexual peers. One in five L.G.B.T.Q. students reported attempting suicide in the past year.“For young people, there is still a crisis in mental health,” said Kathleen Ethier, head of the C.D.C.’s adolescent and school health program. “But we’re also seeing some really important glimmers of hope.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How the Kids Online Safety Act Was Dragged Into a Political War

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      The Senate was set to pass the Kids Online Safety Act on Tuesday, but the legislation faces an uphill battle in the House because of censorship concerns.Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union sent 300 high school students to Capitol Hill to lobby against the Kids Online Safety Act, a bill meant to protect children online.The teenagers told the staffs of 85 lawmakers that the legislation could censor important conversations, particularly among marginalized groups like L.G.B.T.Q. communities.“We live on the internet, and we are afraid that important information we’ve accessed all our lives will no longer be available,” said Anjali Verma, a 17-year-old rising high school senior from Bucks County, Pa., who was part of the student lobbying campaign. “Regardless of your political perspective, this looks like a censorship bill.”The effort was one of many escalations in recent months by those who oppose the bill. In June, a progressive nonprofit, Fight for the Future, organized students to write hundreds of letters to urge lawmakers to scrap it. Conservative groups like Patriot Voices, founded by the former Republican senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, are also protesting with an online petition.What was supposed to be a simple piece of legislation to protect children online has been dragged into a heated political war. At the heart of the battle are concerns about how the bill could affect free speech on culturally divisive issues, which both sides of the spectrum worry could be weaponized under the guise of child safety. Liberals worry about censorship of transgender care, while conservatives are concerned about the same with anti-abortion efforts. The tech industry has also latched onto the same First Amendment arguments to oppose the bill.The controversy stems from the specific terms of the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA. The legislation would require social media platforms and other sites to limit features that can heighten cyberbullying, harassment and the glorification of self-harm. The bill would also require tech companies to turn on the highest privacy and safety settings for users under 17 and let them opt out of some features that have been shown to lead to compulsive use.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Queer Mountain Lion Leaps From the Page to the Little Island Stage

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      Henry Hoke’s 2023 novel, “Open Throat,” narrated by an animal in peril in the Hollywood Hills, is adapted for a staged reading.The concept behind Henry Hoke’s 2023 novel, “Open Throat,” is an eyebrow-raising one: It’s a story about overdevelopment and climate change narrated by a mountain lion who muses on the lives of hikers and loved ones.Hoke was loosely inspired by the mountain lion known as P-22 whose regular sightings in the hills surrounding Los Angeles’s Hollywood sign, successful crossing of two freeways and eventual death captured the public’s attention in 2022. In “Open Throat,” according to the book’s publisher, the animal identifies as queer, and uses they and them pronouns.The book is “what fiction should be,” the novelist Marie-Helene Bertino wrote in her review for The New York Times, and it made several end-of-year best-of lists and awards shortlists.With an internal monologue that has poetically broken stanzas and a fluid sense of time and reality, “Open Throat” does not immediately call for theatrical adaptation. Yet a staged version of the work is premiering Wednesday as part of Little Island’s ambitious summer series of live performances at its outdoor amphitheater.The narration is divided among three performers, including Chris Perfetti, who is holding the book, and Calvin Leon Smith. “I think the beauty of it, and the reason we’re intentionally having three different voices, is making it universal,” Perfetti said.Jeenah Moon for The New York Times“It reads beautifully,” Zack Winokur, Little Island’s producing artistic director, said of the book. “The way it’s placed on the page is visually interesting. The way the voice exists is not like anything else. I kept thinking that it being so voice-driven would make an amazing show, and I didn’t know how to do it, which is the greatest thing in the world.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More