Queer Kentucky

2025 GLAAD Awards Nominee

2025 Winner: NLGJA’s Jeanne Córdova Award

There is no dedicated LGBTQ+ newsroom in most American states. Only 13 states have one at all. Only 3 of those are nonprofits. Kentucky is one of them.

That matters because the LGBTQ+ community in Kentucky is not an abstraction. It is the person whose pharmacist refused to fill their hormone prescription. The neighbor who drives across the Ohio River to Cincinnati because no doctor in their county will see them. The 43.2% of LGBTQ+ residents in Northern Kentucky who report very negative mental health outcomes tied to policy debates – the highest rate of any metro in the state, according to our own IRB-approved research with university partners.

Queer Kentucky is the journalism that fills that gap.

We are the only dedicated LGBTQ+ newsroom in Kentucky. We publish on public health, government and politics, and arts and culture for queer people across the commonwealth – from Louisville to Lexington to Ludlow, from Paducah to Pikeville. We are queer-led and community-funded. In 2025, we reached 8 million readers and published 30% more content than the year before – while absorbing a 42% cut to our operating budget.

We do more than publish. We operate 12 harm reduction supply lockers across the state. We conduct the only IRB-approved public health survey of LGBTQ+ Kentuckians – 559 respondents in 2025 – and we turn that data into journalism people can actually use. Our research shows community belonging is the single strongest predictor of LGBTQ+ mental health outcomes in Kentucky. Building it is part of our job.

Our work has earned national recognition. GLAAD nominated Queer Kentucky for Outstanding Independent Journalism in 2026. We have sustained operations through funding cuts that would have shuttered most independent newsrooms. We are still here because the community we serve needs us to be.

When you give to Queer Kentucky, you are funding the reporters, editors, and infrastructure that make this journalism possible – and you are telling a rural, at-risk, often-invisible community that the people and institutions in their lives see them and believe their stories deserve to be told.