1. Johnny Depp’s ex, actress Amber Heard, told Allure Magazine she was warned that coming out as bisexual would ruin her career. “Everyone said, ‘You’re throwing it all away. You can’t do this to your career,’” Heard said. “And I said, ‘I cannot do this any other way. Watch me.’” Heard stars in “Justice League,” out Friday.
2. A county health director in Charlotte, North Carolina, is under fire from local LGBT organizations over comments she made concerning high rates of HIV transmission in the city, according to The Charlotte Observer. Mecklenburg County Health Director Gibbie Harris said that Charlotte is a “party town” and cited that as the primary reason for the city’s high rate of new infections, nearly double the national average.
3. Just a month after he was hired, Josh Rivers has been fired as editor of The Gay Times, the longest-running LGBT magazine in the UK. A closer look at Rivers’ Twitter account revealed transphobic, anti-lesbian, misogynistic, anti-Semitic and fat-shaming tweets that he’d posted from 2010-2015. Rivers, who is biracial and gay, issued an apology, but the 33-year-old magazine will appoint a new editor before its planned relaunch Nov. 30, and all of Rivers’ articles have been removed from the website.
4. Deeply conservative Tulsa, Oklahoma, is about to get its first openly LGBT lawmaker after lesbian Democrat Allison Irkley-Freeman beat Republican Brian O’Hara by 31 votes in a special election held yesterday. Irkley-Freeman, a married mother of three, will begin serving Senate District 37 on Feb. 1.
5. VIDEO OF THE DAY: Watch as Penny Wong, Australia’s first openly lesbian senator, breaks down in tears as she learns that Australians voted in favor of same-sex marriage.