Joe.My.God. LGBT News
Today marks the 21st blogiversary of this here website thingy. Counting this one, we’re at 166,311 posts over 21 years, the last 16 of which have been without a full day off, although my posting on weekends is usually at a slower rate. As I’ve said on this day every year, whether I am insanely committed or am insane and should be committed – that is entirely your call.
I appreciate all of you for sticking with me all these years, particularly over the last few years when the entire world was turned upside down by the pandemic.
Like most other mainstream and progressive sites, since the November 2024 election, JMG has seen a hit to our traffic due to folks seeking relief from the seemingly nonstop onslaught of bad news related to the actions of the Orange Ogre. Which is a totally understandable and probably healthy coping mechanism.
Bans of LGBTQ books, “Don’t Say Gay” laws, the seemingly unstoppable erosion of trans rights, the rise of ardently anti-LGBTQ Christian nationalism, attacks on Pride and drag events by literal Nazis, and the ever-looming threat to same-sex marriage dominated our posts on LGBTQ issues over the last year. We’ve won some of these battles, but we’ve lost a frightening number of them. And since November, we’ve seen the literal history of LGBTQ people erased from federal websites.
But despite all that, we didn’t lose nearly as many readers as most other sites and things have begun returning to normal levels, for which I am grateful to you all.
On the business side, I continue to refuse pitches from ad services seeking to load JMG with pop-ups, page takeovers, and full-screen videos because while they pay much better than static ads, they sure are intrusive and annoying. (Seriously, I get about five of these pitches every week.)
But that’s also why some of the ads you’ve seen lately on JMG have tended to be PSA types and other annoyingly ill-targeted “remnant” fillers. And to be fair, a lot of those ad dollars now go to social media “influencers” – a word that spellcheck still says doesn’t exist.
If you’re not seeing those ill-targeted ads, it’s likely because you’re among the around 60% of JMG readers who use ad blockers and therefore miss those forlorn messages from lonely young ladies wanting to chat right now.
If you are seeing them, my apologies. (Please do not sign up for any Russian brides.) Most ads are regionally targeted and/or tailored to the web habits of the reader, so if you see any ads that definitely do not belong on this “far-left radical” website, as Richard Grenell calls us, let me know.
As I said last year on the topic of cratering ad rates, it’s the generous support of the JMG community that keeps the lights on around here. PayPal sends me a monthly tip jar recap, but for those who donate without a PayPal account and for other reasons I still don’t understand, I usually don’t get an email address to send a note of thanks. To steal a line from the fabulous Coco Peru, that bothers me.
On behalf of myself and our tireless tech support guy Jack, who deals with a lot of stupid nonsense at stupid hours, you have our eternal thanks for being part of the rollicking community of “homosexual buccaneers” and straight allies that fight the good fight. Thanks to Jack (and a few licensed defense programs), we had virtually no downtime since our last blogiversary post.
Thank you for enduring my typos, my “Don’t Panic” messages, and for sending in news items. I get too many emails to respond to them all, but all of them are very appreciated. The fight continues but we’ve got the kids and righteousness on our side.
Help yourself to some punch and cookies. Please don’t let the cat out. Onward to year TWENTY-TWO!
And now, here’s a first for this annual post. A couple of months ago I asked three AI chatbots what it knows about JMG. Below are the replies. You might have to embiggen the screencaps to read them in full, but it’s worth your time as some of it is about YOU. 
