By Ann Rostow—
End Times
What the hell, you guys! What exactly is going on with AI? I consider myself to be a very sensible person, not prone to panic. I’m optimistic and take the long view of things. I think climate change, for example, is a serious global dilemma. But I figure that, with our technology and innovation, we’ll arrive at some solutions before it’s too late. These weird AI doomsday warnings, however, issued by those in the know without any concrete suggestions of what to do about it, are truly unnerving.
One pundit noted that Bush, Obama, or Biden would have created an ad hoc committee of experts with recommendations to Congress and given prime-time speeches to the nation by now. American diplomats under any of those men would have organized international summits to assess the dangers and advance global policies. But Trump sees no problem and urges everyone to proceed full steam ahead. We have a blithering idiot in charge while we face what appears to be an imminent catastrophe. He is clueless, his “advisers” are helpless sycophants, and Congress is useless. Why aren’t the midterm candidates campaigning on taking this threat seriously?
We’ve already seen cyberattacks on local water systems in a dozen states, perhaps thanks to Iran. Imagine if our communications infrastructure was hit? Or the national electrical grid? I’m not even going to toy with the notion that some AI program itself could somehow “take control” of various systems, although that idea is apparently no longer far-fetched. I’m just fearing the most obvious calamities: powerful AI systems weaponized in the hands of bad actors. My generation worried about nuclear bombs. This generation has to contain random hackers.
And this could happen in the next decade? Yikes! And that timetable has been advanced because of developments they’ve seen in the last two months? Help! Paging Jean-Luc Picard, or Data.
Still Fighting to Protect Trans Medical Records
I had to get that out of my system, because I’m trying to gather my list of interesting LGBT news items, and I find background discussions about the possible end of human existence, um, distracting.
I’m also frazzled because I’m about to go on vacation and I’m unfocused. For example, I just wrote two paragraphs on a ruling from the Second Circuit that made sure the Justice Department could not access the medical records of transgender kids at New York hospitals. I went to check something from the last issue and noticed that I already wrote about this one-sentence victory, so I had to delete all that.
I subsequently realized that one of New York’s major hospitals, Mount Sinai, agreed to stop transgender youth healthcare and settled with the Justice Department even though the Trump administration was blocked by court order, and just as the Second Circuit confirmed that halt. Say what? Mount Sinai explained that the situation was complicated, that the Supreme Court might reverse lower court decisions, and that this settlement was the only way it could prevent medical records from reaching government hands.
Still, the battle is joined and it looks like Mount Sinai didn’t have the stomach for it. That said, transgender kids who were treated there are apparently safe from disclosure. On the other hand, their programs are now shut down and no further treatment will be available at Mount Sinai.
The Party’s Over
I then went searching for a particular transgender story that I can’t find, and stumbled on a piece about a social media influencer who died from a penis enlargement procedure. Naturally, I gave this story precedence over civil rights.
The influencer, 43-year-old Igho “Tiny” Ubiribo (also known as “Denisi” or “Ego”), was a British-Nigerian businessman who gained online fans by documenting high-end vacations and expensive activities alongside his wife, Danielle Samba-Allen.
According to The Advocate (via Out), the couple traveled to exotic locales like Bali, Cape Town, and Paris. The fateful penis pump procedure took place in Thailand, where Ubiribo had several injections into his member. After leaving the clinic, he felt tired, complained of chest pains to his wife, and passed out. He was transported to a hospital where he died. Apparently, some of the material in the penis filler triggered a pulmonary embolism.
The headline caught my eye because the coroner’s report was just released September 5, but the man actually died last March, so this is not exactly hot off the presses. Also, I started writing this thinking it was a side piece to get us going, but it’s actually very sad, and I wish I hadn’t launched into it with a frivolous mindset.
Tiptoeing Through the Transgender Traps
James Talarico, whom I fervently support for the U.S. Senate, backtracked on transgender sports a bit, telling Fox News he “would oppose trans athletes playing in girls’ sports if it endangers safety or fairness.” He went on to say that “every sport has to be safe and fair.” No one liked this anodyne remark, with our side complaining that he was hedging his support and the other side claiming his statement was so ambiguous that it meant nothing. He has also come out against transition surgery for minors, which many people have mixed feelings about, including me. And which is also very rare.
Talarico has a perfect record on transgender rights in the Texas legislature, voting against all kinds of nasty proposals. His opponent, the horrible Attorney General Ken Paxton, accused him of flip-flopping. “James Talarico voted against two bills that would have prevented men from playing in women’s sports,” Paxton posted. “He also called it a ‘far-right conspiracy theory.’ This is just the latest episode in James Talarico’s long saga of lies and flip-flops.”
On the other hand, trans podcaster June Sternback said that if you “give Democrats a choice of ‘capitulate to fascism’ or ‘support minority groups,’ they’ll always end up capitulating to fascism.” Ouch, June.
I’m giving Talarico a pass on this one. Yes, it was a calculated remark. But, unlike Seth Moulton, the U.S. Representative from Massachusetts, Talarico didn’t throw trans athletes under the bus. We all want sports to be fair and safe, right?
(For the record, I support top surgery for some transgender teenage boys on a case-by-case basis. But anything else can wait until age 18.)
No Charges in Buttigieg Case
Do you remember what happened to Pete and Chasten Buttigieg earlier this year? An insane woman who was visiting family in Indiana called a tip line and reported the couple for child abuse. Without checking details, Indiana forwarded the “tip” to authorities in Michigan, where the Buttigiegs live. Again, obviously, without investigating the source, Michigan cops removed the Buttigiegs’ four-year-old twin sons from their home, took them to their grandparents, and interviewed them the next day before returning them. The child welfare services in Indiana did not even tell the Michigan police the name of the accuser, and no one questioned the account she gave. Instead, they traumatized the fathers and sons in an outrageous manner that has not received the level of coverage it deserves.
Do you think for a moment the Michigan police would have taken preschool kids out of the home of, let’s say, a respectable middle-class white heterosexual family on the basis of a vague, unsubstantiated report? Do you think these law enforcement agents would take kids from a well-known politician, former cabinet official, and former presidential candidate if he and his wife were heterosexual? Why was this a one-day story?
I’m bringing it up because Indiana has decided not to prosecute the woman who made the false phone call, because she is apparently in no condition to face a criminal charge. According to The Washington Post, the Indiana prosecutor, Nelson Chipman, Jr., said she is delusional and has a long history of alcohol abuse and mental illness.
“She responds to voices only she hears and grandiose ideation including self-identifying as God,” Chipman wrote, adding that she frequently says she has enjoyed an evening meal with the Obamas, the Post reports. During her brief visit to Indiana, she was involved in three police encounters, Chipman added, including an arrest for domestic battery with a blood alcohol level of .32. She’s now in a halfway house in Alabama, where it seems as if she’ll be free to continue being a homophobic lunatic at will.
All this being said, there are still no explanations from the Indiana services or the Michigan police. The Michigan Attorney General’s office is conducting an ongoing investigation, and the Buttigiegs are “still seeking answers and accountability for what happened,” according to a statement. At the time, Pete Buttigieg called this event “the ugliest thing that has happened to me since my career in service began.”
Just think about it!
Jayhawk Transmen on the Move
In Kansas, my wife’s home state, a group of transgender men have formed the “SB 244 Compliance Crew,” named for one of the most draconian anti-transgender laws in the country. Not only is it illegal to use a bathroom that does not correspond to your sex at birth, but also random individuals have the right to sue you if they are “aggrieved by the invasion of [their] personal privacy or [are] otherwise harmed by a violation of this section by an individual of the opposite sex.”
The Compliance Crew are protesting by using ladies’ rooms in public spaces. Under the law, since they were born female, this is not just legal, it’s obligatory. You and I know that trans men are guys, look male, and often have beards and muscles. The general public, however, seems to have no concept of what a transgender person looks like, male or female, and, naturally, the ladies are bent out of shape when the Crew arrive in their toilettes.
The Crew started in February and have no plans to stop, according to The Lawrence Times. They plan to focus on rural areas, and have found that most people are not aware of the law. At one location, they spent twenty minutes discussing their genitals with police before being allowed to carry on. I can’t wait to hear about their future adventures.
Dallas Convention Sounds Hot
I gather that, during the Republicans’ midterm convention in Dallas, the Grindr servers went down from overuse. Why are we not surprised? According to one report, the profiles during the event included a lot of new faces with American flag emojis, and a particular bathroom at the convention center was designated as a cruising location on “Sniffies.” I hadn’t heard of “Sniffies” before. Launched in 2018, it describes itself as “the original map-based platform for Cruisers.”
Meanwhile, The Advocate tells us that a photo of Hasan Piker in his underwear was put on a 25-foot-tall display screen in front of the audience. Piker, a radical leftist with antisemitic and various other unpalatable views, was (I’m guessing) presented as a representative of socialist communist evil Democrats. His private parts were pixelated, likely to the disappointment of many attendees.
What else is new? Turkey has launched a new campaign against the LGBT community, arresting 47 people in police raids of LGBT organizations and clubs across the country. The crackdown over last weekend, under the name “My Family Is Safe,” also shut down various LGBT websites.
Finally, can I just say that the college football season has started and my team, the Texas Longhorns, came from behind to beat the number-one-ranked Ohio State by one point, scoring 21 unanswered points in the fourth quarter. I had turned it off because I couldn’t stand the heartbreak of watching my team get clobbered by a clearly superior band of Buckeyes. It was my Ohio friend Denise who called to tell me to keep watching, and we scored touchdown after touchdown until we found the end zone with less than a minute left and closed it out. As I was waking up Sunday morning, I had that vague, sleepy feeling that there was something wonderful in the back of my mind, and then I remembered.
I just hope Texas can win a national championship before AI destroys the human race.
GLBT Fortnight in Review
Published on September 24, 2026
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