2,229 articles
Laura Loomer
Laura Loomer (born 1993, Tucson) is an American far-right activist and conspiracy theorist, informal Trump adviser, twice failed congressional candidate, deplatformed across major platforms, and, after a July 2026 Kyiv trip, a converted Ukraine advocate.
Lauren Drain
Lauren Drain (born 1985, Tampa, Florida) is an American registered nurse and author of Banished (2013), a New York Times bestselling memoir of her years in the Westboro Baptist Church and her 2007 excommunication.
Lauren Southern
Lauren Southern, Canadian far-right and alt-right YouTube commentator, Rebel News and Tenet Media contributor; made Farmlands (2018) and Borderless (2019), denied UK entry 2018, later published 2025 memoir This Is Not Real Life.
Laurie David
Laurie David, American environmental activist and producer of An Inconvenient Truth (2006) and Fed Up (2014), also known for The Biggest Little Farm, the Detroit Project, and climate books.
Lavender marriage
A lavender marriage is a marriage of convenience, typically between two LGBTQ+ people of opposite sexes, contracted to hide their sexual orientation or gender identity.
Laxmi Narayan Tripathi (लक्ष्मी नारायण त्रिपाठी)
Laxmi Narayan Tripathi (लक्ष्मी नारायण त्रिपाठी) is an Indian transgender activist, Bharatanatyam dancer, author, and Kinnar Akhara acharya mahamandaleshwar; first transgender Asia-Pacific UN representative (2008) and NALSA third-gender petitioner.
Leaders of the Ku Klux Klan
Leaders of the Ku Klux Klan across three eras: Forrest's 1865 Reconstruction Klan, Simmons's 1915 revival and Evans's 1920s empire, Shelton's United Klans, Duke's rebranding, and today's rival factions.
Lean In
Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead is Sheryl Sandberg's 2013 Knopf bestseller, co-written with Nell Scovell, urging women to overcome internal barriers at work; it spawned LeanIn.org, Lean In Circles, and major structural-feminist criticism.
Leelah Alcorn
Leelah Alcorn, born Joshua Ryan Alcorn, was an American transgender teenager from Kings Mills, Ohio, whose December 2014 suicide and Tumblr note sparked international outcry, the Leelah's Law petition, and US movement against conversion therapy.
Legal recognition of non-binary gender
Legal recognition of non-binary gender: state acknowledgment of genders beyond male/female via markers like X, diverse, or third gender. Nepal (2007), India NALSA (2014), Germany (2018), Argentina recognize it; the UK and, since 2025, US passports do not.
Legality of polygamy
Legality of polygamy: marriage with more than two spouses is legal to some degree in over 40 countries, mostly Middle East, Africa, and Asia, almost always as polygyny capped at four wives, while criminalized in Western states.
Leigh Anne Tuohy
Leigh Anne Tuohy, Memphis interior designer and philanthropist whose family took in Michael Oher, inspiring The Blind Side; subject of the 2023 conservatorship dispute and head of the Making It Happen Foundation.
Léo Taxil
Léo Taxil, pen name of Gabriel-Antoine Jogand-Pagès (1854-1907), was a French journalist whose 1885-1897 Palladium hoax fabricated a Luciferian inner circle of Freemasonry and the convert Diana Vaughan, confessed in 1897.
Lesbian
Lesbian: a woman with enduring sexual or romantic attraction to women; defined across identity, attraction, and behavior; prevalence, health, and legal context worldwide.
Lesbian bed death
Lesbian bed death is a 1980s-popularized term for a supposed decline of sex in long-term lesbian relationships, rooted in Blumstein and Schwartz's American Couples study and since qualified by matched-comparison and desire-discrepancy research.
Lesbian erasure
Lesbian erasure is the denial or omission of lesbian identity, culture, and same-sex attraction in academia, media, healthcare, and data, related to bi-erasure and heterosexism erasure, documented since 1994 scholarship.
Lesbian feminism
Lesbian feminism: 1970s second-wave feminist movement, also called lesbian-feminist or radical lesbianism, founded around Radicalesbians and the Furies; challenged homophobia in feminism and sexism in gay politics, advocated separatism, and built a print culture.
Lesbian sexual practices
Lesbian sexual practices: sexual behaviors between women, including oral sex, digital penetration, mutual masturbation, and intercrural sex. Covers prevalence, STI transmission risk, safer sex methods, orgasm research, and screening disparities versus heterosexual women.
Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners
Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM), a London lesbian and gay activist group founded July 1984 during the 1984–85 UK miners' strike, raised about £20,000 for the Dulais valley mining community in South Wales and helped win NUM backing for lesbian and gay rights.
Leslie Feinberg
Leslie Feinberg (1949–2014), who used zie/hir pronouns, was an American butch lesbian, transgender activist, author, and communist, author of Stone Butch Blues (1993) and Transgender Warriors (1996).
Letter from Birmingham Jail
Letter from Birmingham Jail is Martin Luther King Jr.'s open letter of April 16, 1963, written in Birmingham City Jail responding to eight clergymen's "A Call for Unity," defending nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience of unjust laws.
Levirate marriage
Levirate marriage, also called widow inheritance, is the custom whereby a widow marries her deceased husband's brother, keeping her and her children within his family's lineage.
LGBT parenting
LGBT parenting: lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people raising children as parents or foster parents. Meta-analyses find child outcomes comparable to heterosexual-parent families; family relationship quality, not orientation, predicts adjustment, with ongoing methodological and legal debates.
LGBT rights opposition
LGBT rights opposition: organized resistance by Christian Right movements, anti-gender networks, and states to LGBTI rights, via criminalization, religious freedom laws, propaganda censorship, and ballot campaigns; 60 UN states criminalize same-sex acts.
LGBT-free zone
LGBT-free zones (Strefa wolna od LGBT) were Polish municipalities, counties, and provinces that declared themselves free of "LGBT ideology" from 2019; non-binding resolutions covering about a third of Poland, repealed by 2025 after court challenges and EU funding pressure.
LGBT-free zones
LGBT-free zones were declarations by Polish municipalities, counties, and regions, adopted mainly between 2019 and 2021, rejecting "LGBT ideology"; at their peak they covered a third of Poland.
LGBTQ advocacy in the Gaza war
LGBTQ advocacy in the Gaza war: positions since October 2023 by ILGA World, Outright International, alQaws, Queers for Liberation, and Queers in Palestine, covering ceasefire demands, pinkwashing critiques, HRC protests, Tel Aviv Pride 2024, and Safebow evacuations.
LGBTQ history in the Soviet Union
LGBTQ history in the Soviet Union: decriminalization of male homosexuality after 1917 and in the 1922 RSFSR code, Stalin's 1934 recriminalization of muzhelozhstvo after the 1933 OGPU arrests, the 1965–75 decriminalization debate, and repeal in Russia in 1993.
LGBTQ movements
LGBTQ movements are social and political campaigns for LGBTQ rights, from the 1924 Society for Human Rights and 1950s homophile groups through Stonewall, ACT UP, Obergefell, and today's global ILGA-era movement.
LGBTQ people
LGBTQ people (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning; variants LGBT, LGBTQIA, LGBTI) are sexual and gender minorities defined by sexual orientation, gender identity, expression, and sex characteristics; 63 countries criminalize same-sex acts while 33 have marriage equality.