At the 2019 GLAAD Media Awards, held last Thursday, Beyoncé and Jay-Z were presented with this year’s Vanguard Award. This is an award is meant to annually acknowledge people who don’t identify as LGBTQ, but are considered to have made great strides towards promoting the acceptance of LGBTQ people (in other words, it’s an award for LGBTQ “allies”). When I first learned that GLAAD was planning on presenting them with this award a couple of weeks back, I…immediately had questions.

In doing a little digging to figure out what all, exactly, Bey & Jay have done to help advance the plight of LGBTQ people, the answers that I found largely just reaffirmed what I’d long figured. That their advocacy is cool, but nothing particularly risky, threatening to the status quo or revolutionary. Look, y’all know I love me some Beyoncé (and Jay-Z is cool too, or whatever). But let’s be honest. This award is just…not it. [Read more…]