Understand the LGBTQIA+ news: Exclusive - Wes Streeting met and sympathises with parents group who advocate abuse towards trans children

Wow - welcome to the hundreds of you who have joined us in the last couple of weeks. You've come into the fold at a special time.

This weekend marks our third birthday - and whether you're new, or a long time supporter I need you to know we're at a critical juncture.

QueerAF, the UK’s beloved and biggest queer newsletter and largest advocate of queer creatives, needs your help to stay strong, thriving and fighting for you. 

This weekend, we're launching our annual LGBT+ History Month crowdfunder. This year's appeal is integral to our future.

In an age of Trump and Musk trying to take away our liberties and filter our content, we need your help to cut through the noise. 

We’ve also been hit by business tax rises, inflation and increasing costs. Your support will help us continue providing a vital service for the LGBTQIA+ community.

Information is a tool for liberation, and it shouldn’t be a luxury, so this crowdfunder will keep QueerAF’s newsletter free for everyone as well as allowing us to invest in marginalised creatives and critical investigative journalism. 

Why do we need your help now?

• The recent budget increased the cost burden on small businesses, disproportionately increasing our tax bill.
• The changes in the Meta and X algorithms have made it harder to build our audience, gather news, and fight against the hate our community faces.  
• We're committed to paying queer creatives as our number one value - we won’t compromise on this.
• Other parts of the gay media have moved away from news and investigations, including shunning reporting on Trans+ news for fear of advertiser pushback. There is now a vast gap in the information our community is getting.
• The mainstream media continues to actively harm our community, spreading misinformation and failing to tackle the issues and joys in our lives with justice.

We’ll level with you

We go over and above our community interest company regulation and publish our income and outgoings. So this is our reality:

• All our creatives are paid,
• Our part time staff are on proper industry rates
• But our founder and only full-time staff member takes home less than minimum wage, and delivers QueerAF on a shoestring budget.

Community media means delivering for the community. Over the coming weeks, we'll release our annual transparency report detailing our income sources, our contributor data - so you can see who we're investing in - and a list of our achievements as a small but mighty queer news publisher.

But here is the TL;DR of what our small but mighty publisher has achieved in just three years, without the profits and developed audiences of the UK’s legacy gay media:

• We’ve invested in, mentored, paid and published over 100 marginalised queer creatives. Six in ten of these are from a gender-diverse background. Three in ten have disabilities.
• We launched Trans+ History Week to end the pernicious lie that being gender diverse is a modern contagion, with nationwide campaigns declaring that ‘We’ve Always Been Here, and Always Will Be’, alongside hybrid events and international national media coverage.
• We’ve been recognised by the World Health Organisation as a crucial part of the response to the MPOX break out, delivering community journalism and holding government to account.
• We’ve launched the careers of journalists and audio producers by directly facilitating bylines and commissions with national media, like Virgin Radio and the Metro.

We’ve championed grassroot news, investigated the NHS, exposed government failures and set agendas for the UK LGBTQIA+ news that matters most to the community, not for clicks.

If that’s what we can achieve on a shoe-string, imagine what more we could do with proper funding

We have a long-term sustainable model, but with the modest additional investment from this crowdfunder, we’ll be able to double down our efforts.

It will secure the future of our output and our urgent schemes to build a new generation of LGBTQIA+ media creatives who can change the way we're seen, heard and celebrated in the media for good.

Please support our crowdfunder - and then stick around to see us put our money where our mouth is.

This week we're leading with another new exclusive investigation from a Trans+ and Bi journalism duo, exposing support for the worst forms of transphobia at the highest level of government.

In an age where the powers that be want to erase us, we'll be singing loud and proud: We've always been here and always will be. So let's get stuck in, and cut through the noise.

We are Queer As F**k, and so are you.

Understand the LGBTQIA+ headlines and keep track of the latest queer content and perspectives. The QueerAF newsletter is written by Jamie Wareham and a different queer creative each week.

💬 This week:

• Wes Streeting: New video footage shows the Health Secretary admitting he not only met with a pro-trans conversion therapy group of parents, but he sympathises with them. Sasha Baker and Valeria Rocco investigate. 
• ONS: New data shows a huge rise in young people identifying as queer - but not to the same levels as elsewhere in the world. We explain the gaps in the data.
• Ace spectrum: You asked for more stories from asexual writers about the ace experience. Our audience is our most important editor, so we're delivering in this week's Queer Gaze from Sarah Kenchington.

Skip the doomscrolling and support queer creatives instead. We are QueerAF – and so are you.

Revealed: Streeting met with and expressed sympathy for pro-conversion therapy parents group Bayswater

TL;DR: Exclusive: QueerAF has uncovered video footage of the Health Secretary Wes Streeting saying he’d met with Bayswater parents and expressed his sympathy for the “traumatic experiences” families with trans children had been through. Earlier this year, an investigation exposed how the parents in the group conduct conversion therapy and advocate for forms of abuse towards their children. The group was later invited to participate in the Puberty Blocker ban consultation.