The title draws from a phrase by Errin Haines, the president of the American Association of Black Journalists, and it carries the weight of an imperative that cannot be ignored. She is right, of course. We cannot pretend we cannot see what is before us. We cannot claim we are unable to move, unable to react. The moment demands something more than complacency, something closer to courage.
Collage by GAY45.You can simply scroll past—but please don't overlook the importance of an independent queer press.
Time is now or never.
Queer voices disappear without independent journalism to amplify them.
We document what others won't touch.
We hold power to account when it threatens our communities.
This work exists only because you choose to fund it directly.
Donate over €25/month and receive our limited-edition tote bag — a badge of resistance, a statement that you stand for fearless journalism.
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You can simply scroll past — but please don’t overlook the importance of an independent queer press.
You can simply scroll past—but please don't overlook the importance of an independent queer press.
Time is now or never.
Queer voices disappear without independent journalism to amplify them.
We document what others won't touch.
We hold power to account when it threatens our communities.
This work exists only because you choose to fund it directly.
Donate over €25/month and receive our limited-edition tote bag — a badge of resistance, a statement that you stand for fearless journalism.
We are grateful!
Can't donate? Sharing our work helps more than you think
For too long, queer journalism has failed the very people it purports to serve. It has refused to fully grapple with the intersecting realities of politics, race, gender, and power, preferring instead the safer terrain of listicles and lifestyle coverage. The top ten bulges of 2025, the most beautiful arses of the year—this content has its place, perhaps, in the broader ecosystem of gay media. I am not suggesting it should cease to exist. But if we want that content to survive, if we want any of it to endure, then we must also support the kind of rigorous, quality journalism that fights for our rights, that holds power accountable, that does not flinch when the story becomes difficult. Otherwise, we will wake one morning to find ourselves without our bulges and our listicles, yes, but also without our freedom—locked away in some deep, dark prison in a country whose name we never bothered to learn, in a place we never imagined we would end up.
Journalism—real journalism, the kind that matters—was not born to preserve institutions or to maintain the status quo. It was born to challenge them, to interrogate them, to make the promises they offer more real and more accessible to all people. In 2026, journalism will play a central role in framing the story of who we are as a society and who we aspire to become. This is also an opportunity to continue the ongoing work of what might be called the Gay Revolution: a project that is clear-eyed about history, honest about power, and reflective of the emerging democratic majority that includes us.
For too long, we have failed to live up to our own ideals. We have treated race and gender as episodic concerns, issues to be addressed only in moments of acute crisis, only to sideline them again when political pressure mounts, when economic strain sets in, when backlash begins to build.
For too long, LGBT organisations have cared more about money—about their own institutional survival, their own fundraising goals—than about rights or journalism, the only real voice we have in the public sphere. When we asked ILGA, the large and ostensibly powerful organisation connected to the European Council, to provide a list of queer press outlets, we received the same answer every year: they do not have such a list. The question, then, is why. Why this disinterest in the press? Perhaps because these organisations behave like any other officials, perpetually afraid of the dark shadows in their own closets, terrified that the press—which they view as the number one enemy—might expose what they wish to keep hidden.
We reached out to the European LGBTQIA+ Media Association—ELMA, as it calls itself—on multiple occasions. No response ever came. Their website remains stuck in 2022, a digital monument to institutional neglect. The queer press, it seems, is not only ignored by the broader world but also by the very organisations purporting to represent it. One begins to wonder whether even they take themselves seriously.
The attacks on journalism we are witnessing today—from political intimidation to disinformation campaigns to media consolidation—are deeply tied to the attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion that are occurring across global life. Efforts at erasure and exclusion are not separate from efforts to undermine press freedom; they are part of the same strategy, part of the same deliberate project to determine whose voices, whose identities, whose truths are allowed to exist in the public conversation. And the LGBT organisations that scream for more money, that have grown accustomed to a comfortable lifestyle for themselves, are living proof of how far we have drifted from any coherent sense of meaning or purpose.
A revolutionary journalism rejects this model entirely. It understands itself as part of the work of perfecting our union, of making real the promises that have been made to us. It means newsrooms committing to sustained democracy coverage that extends beyond election cycles. It means journalists interrogating power with consistency and rigor, not just when it is convenient or popular to do so. It means outlets centring lived experience, recognising that impact cannot be measured by numbers alone, that some stories matter even when they do not generate clicks. And it means reporters willing to name backlash for what it actually is—a deliberate, coordinated attempt to roll back hard-won gains and to suppress accountability.
Audiences are ready for a revolution in journalism. In many ways, that revolution is already here, already underway. But to rebuild trust, to earn back credibility, requires the kind of courage that comes only with coverage that helps people understand their lives and their country, coverage that does not retreat in the face of controversy or capitulate when the pressure becomes intense.
A revolutionary journalism for 2026 will be about accountability, inclusion, and truth-telling—especially when it is difficult, especially when it is unpopular. It will understand that freedom of the press means little, means almost nothing, if only some voices are protected while others are silenced. Our own organisations, the ones that claim to fight in our names, risk becoming tools of erasure rather than engines of democracy.
This year, we saw—read our investigations—homonationalism on the rise. We saw proven corruption in gay organisations. We saw lesbian organisations becoming far-right, radical anti-feminist organisations. We saw left-wing politicians turning fascist. We saw an American president who wanted to be king of the world, and it is not stopping here.
The work before us now is not to make bigger and more expensive parades full with corporate hypocrisy or find more money for organisations that hang us out to dry. The work before us now is not to celebrate ideals, but to make them real.
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