GLR July-August 2025

Georgian, the danger of such laws, as GLAAD president Sarah Kate Ellis pointed out, is that they create a weapon against “cis gender girls who don’t fit neatly into societal expectations of gender.” So, if the rationale for these laws is to protect cisgen der girls from unfair competition, the practical effect is to ex pose all female athletes to accusations leveled for frivolous or vengeful reasons. Georgia Equality executive director Jeff Gra ham noted that “anyone who loses can throw a tantrum, bring a lawsuit, or bully the champion simply for being deemed ‘too good’ at their sport.” Given the dearth of actual people or prob lems covered by this law, it’s all about hypothetical possibilities that sound scary and play on pre-existing bigotries. Bishop to Black Square Practitioners of “conversion therapy” have popped up here numerous times, usually for one of two reasons. Either they were “ex-gay” evangelists who got caught in a decidedly gay situation, or they were therapists who used their position to initiate inappropriate sexual contact with their charges. In the latter category is Scott Dale Owen, who was once a Mormon bishop but then became a mental health coun selor in Provo, Utah. Owen ran a “person-centered” practice where he treated men for their “same-sex attraction.” His MO was to tell clients that their relationships with men were “bro ken” and that the only way to repair them was through physi cal contact with a man. Owens would start with touching and work his way to full sexual relations. Of course, he was work ing with gay men, so the seduction wasn’t such a long shot, analogous to an AA counselor using alcohol to seduce clients. Owen also played the God card, telling his victims that he’d been specially chosen for this work: “God gives certain people special permission to do things that are normally wrong.” And it worked, at least for a time. Police tracked down over a dozen former clients who said they’d been sexually abused by Owen, who was found guilty of forcible sodomy, among other crimes, and sentenced to a fifteen-year prison term. Hearts of Gold When you think of gay-friendly public spaces, the restaurant chain Hooters probably doesn’t spring to mind. And yet. A piece in The New York Times reported that Hooters has been a godsend for many a teenage boy growing up in a hostile environment. It works like this: for boys who display certain, um, tendencies early on, fathers and grandfathers every where seem to land on a single idea: take them to Hooters! But by now the waitresses have learned to spot such scenarios, and they know just what to do. Rather than subject these kids to the awkwardness of pretending they’re enjoying this, they’ll pull a boy aside and reassure him that it’s okay to be gay. The Times writer, Peter Rothpletz, endured an annual ritual as a teenager with his clueless grandfather; one waitress whispered: “You’re perfect the way you are, kid.” When he posted a story about this experience on Bloomberg.com, he received “hundreds of direct messages from other gay men who felt the trajectory of their lives had changed after a single meal at Hooters.” The question remains: why are the waitresses so nice to these boys, who clearly aren’t there for the boobs? Rothpletz surmises that many of the women see themselves as outsiders, often mistaken for sex workers, and may identify with members of another sexual minority. In any case, it’s another example of a pocket of re sistance where you’d least expect to find one. July–August 2025

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