Jeremy Hooper's Blog

This is an archive of Good As You, as it existed from 2005–2018. While further updates are unlikely, this site will remain online indefinitely as an historical record of the LGBTQ rights movement during some of its most crucial battles on both the nationwide and state level.

For over a decade, G-A-Y served as an invaluable tool, providing impactful opposition research, thought-leading commentary, and a healthy dose of quick wit. Hopefully this historical record will serve future activists as the...

On October 2, 2003, the Office of the Public Liaison at the Bush White House sent around a press release to a short list of only four names. The press release was from the rabidly anti-LGBTQ Concerned Women For America, and the subject was the Bush administration's then-nascent effort to turn the United States Constitution into a weapon against same-sex couples. The whole point of the email was to highlight how CWA and its then-president, the truly extreme Sandy Rios, was standing in praise o...

Since I was once so vocal about these so-called “religious freedom” cases, a number of people have asked me to jumped back on here and weigh in on the Masterpiece Cakes decision in longer form than my Twitter habits (@goodasyou) will allow. So here are a few thoughts.

1) I’m not surprised. Based on what we heard in court, I expected to lose. Not because we should’ve lost, but because we very much live in a country where questions regarding religion can be morphed and twisted in a way that o...

Even in the moment, as devastating and other-worldly as it was, I made note of the way she was looking at me. At age three, a child can have strange reactions to a parent’s emotions. Sometimes they nervously laugh. Other times they recoil in an outsized way. Savannah, someone who has always been hard on herself whenever she thinks she has upset someone, has (and had) a tendency to turn into a problem solver who throws out a million on-the-spot ways she might be able to help lighten the situat...

Sure, the TEA Party started making things weird even before our current decade began. And yes, the attacks on President Obama started trending off the political pages and into high school slambooks. I don’t want to be halcyon about an era that had an ability to feel hallucinatory.

But still, the political game from 2004–2016 was largely played in the same basic arena that we had known throughout modern history. With a studied understanding of governmental affairs and the ability to form opini...

So parenting is a lot. Like a whole lot. As in it’s impossible to compare to anything I’ve ever done prior in life. 

In the three years since I stepped away from daily updates on this site to spend the bulk of my time shaping a tiny human, I have pushed myself harder, worked myself longer, sacrificed sleep more readily, practiced patience more studiously, been humbled more frequently, and Doc McStuffins-ed more Doc McStuffins-ingly than I ever thought possible. And while individual moments ha...

For LGBTQ people and our associated rights, the second decade of the 21st century has been a time of unprecedented progress. Despite setbacks and goals yet achieved, we are living in landmark times for our civil rights movement, and the history books will surely reflect this rise.

But it didn’t necessarily feel that way at millennium’s turn. Throughout the aughts, we experienced a number of setbacks that made the road ahead seem stark, lonely, and treacherous. It was a depressing time; it was...

I’m not saying there’s a direct connection. But it is weird.

If you followed politics anytime between 2013–2015, you are certainly aware of the preponderance of stories surrounding LGBTQ rights and the Russian government’s hostility toward them. From the 2013 “gay propaganda law” to the controversies surrounding the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, to the many stories about American anti-LGBTQ activists’ acting in concert with Russian activists in order to strategize around shared co...

Jared and Ivanka: If you support us, show the work

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, both of whom are universally seen as influential figures in the President of the United State’s life and decision-making, are getting much credit in the press for their supposed role in killing a proposed Executive Order that would’ve reversed LGBT protections put in place by the Obama administration. And that’s good. Great, even. But it’s also not enough to earn praise.

Let me start by saying I do believe that...

In the mid-1980s, the United States military had yet to even enact its discriminatory Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy, operating instead under an even more sweeping ban on openly LGBTQ soldiers whether they were silent or not. As they usually are on hot topics of the day, university students across this nation were embroiled in debate as to whether or not military recruiters should be allowed on their campuses, since the armed forces’ hiring practices were in violation of many of these schools’ o...