Photo: Gautam Raghavan. Credit: Department of Labor.
Gautam Raghavan, the White House’s LGBT liaison, will leave the Obama administration after more than five years to join the Gill Foundation as vice president of policy.
Raghavan, who is gay, departs the White House after three years. Previously, he served as Deputy White House Liaison for the Department of Defense and as the Outreach Lead for the Pentagon’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Working Group.
“As I make this transition, I find myself more hopeful than ever that big change (yes, the kind we can believe in!) is possible – because I’ve seen it happen,” Raghavan wrote in an email. “This kind of change can sometimes be slow, challenging, and frustrating. But when fierce advocates, unyielding activists, dedicated public servants, and strong allies work together, we can – and will – bend the arc of the moral universe towards justice.”
Raghavan’s last day at the White House is Friday. He will join the Gill Foundation on Monday. “I’m looking forward to joining a creative and innovative team dedicated to advancing equality for the LGBT community, nationally and in the states,” he said.
White House spokesperson Shin Inouye provided no timetable for naming Raghavan’s replacement. In the meantime, Monique Dorsainvil will serve in Raghavan’s place. Dorsainvil serves as the Director of Planning and Events for the Office of Public Engagement and the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. Previously, she served as a staff assistant in the Office of Public Engagement working on the White House Council on Women and Girls and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Outreach.
“We deeply appreciate Gautam’s work with the AAPI and LGBT communities on behalf of the White House Office of Public Engagement and wish him all the best in his next steps,” Inouye told Metro Weekly.
Raghavan’s departure comes after LGBT-rights advocates secured one of their final requests from President Barack Obama earlier this summer. On July 21, Obama signed an executive order prohibiting federal contractors from LGBT workplace discrimination and protecting transgender federal employees from discrimination, marking the end of a long campaign by LGBT-rights advocates to convince Obama to take such executive actions.
After more than a decade of fan pressure, Nintendo is finally allowing players of Tomodachi Life to choose the sexual orientation and gender identity of the characters they control -- a long-requested change for the popular social simulation game.
First introduced in 2009, Tomodachi Life lets players create customizable human characters, known as "Miis," who explore virtual worlds, play mini-games, and form social relationships. Until now, however, the social simulation game only allowed Miis to be heterosexual and cisgender.
A 47-year-old Colorado man has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for attempting to run over a lesbian couple with his vehicle and ramming their truck as they tried to escape.
As reported by CBS News, Vitalie Oprea took his parents' vehicle without permission on February 19, 2023, and was driving near the intersection of East Arapahoe Road and South Liverpool Street in Aurora when he spotted two women kissing.
Witnesses told police that Oprea became enraged, yelling at the couple and making obscene gestures before making a U-turn into oncoming traffic and driving toward them.
GLAAD has released new data showing that 1,042 anti-LGBTQ incidents were reported across 47 states and the District of Columbia in 2025 -- a 5% increase over the previous year, according to the organization’s ALERT Desk Anti-LGBTQ Extremism Reporting Tracker.
Anti-LGBTQ incidents were defined as "an act of harassment, threat(s), vandalism, and/or assault against an individual, group, and/or organization," with explicit evidence of anti-LGBTQ bias as a motivating factor.
The incidents included 128 acts of hateful vandalism, 76 violent assaults, 22 threats of mass violence, and 15 arson attempts.
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