Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD)

History

GLAAD was founded in 1985, when a small group of writers and reporters organized to protest the allegedly defamatory coverage of the AIDS crisis by the New York Post. After the initial protest, GLAAD began targeting other media outlets. In 1987, the GLAAD successfully pressured the New York Times to change its editorial policy to start using the term “gay” instead of “homosexual” in reference to gay people. In 1988, GLAAD activists on the West Coast began protesting purported discrimination in entertainment as well as in news media. GLAAD coordinated with other LGBT activist groups to criticize the allegedly discriminatory portrayal of bisexuality in the TV series “Midnight Caller.” ²

In 1990, GLAAD launched “Project 21,” an effort to insert more pro-LGBT material into public school curricula, and protested under slogans such as “school textbooks have been set a little too straight.” That year, GLAAD also held its first annual media awards ceremony. In 1991, GLAAD convinced Hallmark Cards to start printing cards celebrating lesbian relationships, and in 1994, GLAAD successfully lobbied the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games to move an event that was supposed to take place in Cobb County. The previous year, the county had passed a symbolic resolution stating that “gay lifestyles are incompatible with community standards,” which GLAAD compared to anti-gay laws passed in Nazi Germany. In 1999, the group began a successful campaign to have radio host Laura Schlessinger removed from the radio for criticizing gay relationships. ²

Throughout the first decade of the 2000s, GLAAD pushed for greater acceptance and legalization of gay marriage and built connections with Spanish-language media outlets. In 2005, GLAAD criticized the Ford Motor Company for working with the social-conservative American Family Association, with GLAAD eventually securing a donation pledge from Ford. From 2012 to 2015, GLAAD led a successful campaign to pressure the Boy Scouts of America to accept gay members and leaders. ²

In 2019, GLAAD attacked the Hallmark Channel for deciding not to air ads that showed two women kissing. Hallmark reversed its decision and apologized. ³

Name Change

In 2013, the group dropped its full name, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, but kept its acronym, “GLAAD.” In an interview on MSNBC, spokesperson Wilson Cruz said that the updated name “reflects our work on transgender issues” in addition to gay and lesbian issues. In the interview, Cruz also stated that the group had “expanded beyond fighting defamation” and was now working on “changing the culture” around LGBT issues. ⁴

Initiatives

GLAAD’s objectives include “shaping the media narrative” and “changing the culture” to be more favorable towards LGBT interests.

GLAAD Media Institute

The GLAAD Media Institute is responsible for organizing training, consulting, and research to further the group’s mission. The Institute offers courses on tailoring pro-LGBT messaging to different audiences, using social media to spread pro-LGBT content, and incorporating other activist skills into media. The Institute also provides consulting services, coaching corporations on GLAAD-approved messaging and training newsrooms to use GLAAD-approved terminology. Finally, the Institute conducts research on Americans’ attitudes towards the LGBT community and the representation of LGBT issues in media. ⁵

One of the Institute’s main products is the annual “Accelerating Acceptance” report. The 2018 report found that despite pro-LGBT trends over the past several decades, Americans were becoming less supportive of LGBT causes. The report blamed the Trump administration for this shift. ⁶ The 2019 report found that most Americans supported legal equality for LGBT individuals, but that an increasing number of people were uncomfortable with the prominence of LGBT issues in their families, their children’s schools, or their places of worship. ⁷

Youth Engagement Program

GLAAD runs several programs designed to mold teenagers and young adults into LGBT activists. ⁸ The group recruits and trains campus ambassadors to promote pro-LGBT initiatives at American colleges. According to GLAAD, campus ambassadors are necessary because more than 30% of Americans are still uncomfortable with at least some presence of LGBT issues in their personal lives. At the same time, the group claims that 20% of young people identify as LGBT or queer. ⁹

GLAAD also offers grants to pro-LGBT artists and influencers as part of its Rising Stars program, and celebrates LGBT activists between the ages of 13 and 20. One of these “20 under 20” award recipients is transgender activist Jazz Jennings, who started transitioning at the age of six. Several large companies, including Delta Airlines and Netflix, have sponsored Rising Stars. ¹⁰¹¹¹²

Global Voices

The Global Voices initiative promotes the acceptance of the LGBT community around the world. In majority-Christian countries, such as Ireland, the initiative prepares journalists to cover religious meetings, as well as “events related to marriage and family,” in a GLAAD-approved manner. GLAAD has worked in countries including Chile, Italy, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, China, and Nigeria. ¹³

Southern Stories

In the United States, GLAAD devotes special efforts to its initiatives in the South, citing its finding that “Southerners feel significantly more discomfort” about LGBT issues than the country as a whole. The group aims to “create a cultural shift” to make Southerners more accepting of the LGBT community. ¹⁴

Advocacy

In December 2025, GLAAD hosted a panel on HIV/AIDS in which, “panelists drew a direct line between historic U.S. systems of white supremacy and current attacks on PEPFAR, Medicaid, Ryan White programs, DEI, and transgender rights—framing them not as isolated policy choices, but as part of a deliberate eugenics strategy aimed at shrinking Black life expectancy and controlling whose lives are valued.” ¹⁵

In January 2026, GLAAD denounced the arrests of Don Lemon and Georgia Fort for their conduct during demonstrations against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The group released a statement claiming that “journalists are under siege in America by their own government.” ¹⁶

In March 2026, GLAAD denounced a U.S. Supreme Court’s 8-1 ruling against a Colorado law which banned “conversion talk” therapy as a violation of the First Amendment. ¹⁷

In March 2026, GLAAD supported the “No Kings” protest campaign against the second Trump administration. ¹⁸

GLAAD has an ongoing feud with the New York Times over their coverage of LGBT issues. In April 2026, the group criticized the paper for supposed “anti-trans” reporting. ¹⁹

GLAAD has criticized social media companies for their lack of protections of LGBT people and advocated increased censorship. In May 2026, the group released a report which denounced social media companies for being more unsafe towards LGBT people. The group criticized Meta for enacting “anti-LGBTQ policy changes included: modifying major sections of its Hateful Conduct policy to allow anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and removing key protections for LGBTQ people globally, especially transgender people; utilizing anti-LGBTQ terminology to refer to LGBTQ people in its Community Standards; terminating its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs; deleting trans and nonbinary themes on Messenger; and ending its fact-checking program in the U.S.” The group criticized YouTube because, in its words, it “removed gender identity from the list of protected characteristics in its hate speech policy around this same time. It remains a standard best practice across all platforms that gender identity is expressly included in protected characteristics lists for hate speech policies and community guidelines in the same way that other historically marginalized categories of people are listed such as race, religion, disability, etc. YouTube’s policy change continues to be particularly concerning given the current climate of ongoing political attacks on the rights, dignity, and lives of transgender people. The company’s 2026 score decline also reflects a retreat from best practices in reporting workforce diversity numbers.” ²⁰

In May 2026, GLAAD led a campaign which submitted comments to the Federal Communications Commission in opposition to a proposed rule which would require an on-screen notice of LGBT content. “Content warnings that specifically single out LGBTQI+ people, including transgender and non-binary people, or mentions of gender identity on screen are unnecessary, unhelpful, and discriminatory. They do not serve to inform parents or guardians; they serve to further a strategic political agenda that has targeted a minority for exclusion from public view. Requiring a content warning based solely on the identity of a character establishes a dangerous precedent, and one with a troubling historical context,” the coalition said in their comments. The group also denounced the FCC for trying to control what people were watching on television and claimed that it was a threat to democracy. ²¹

Controversies

LGBT Presidential Forum

GLAAD hosted a forum for Democratic candidates during the months prior to the 2020 Presidential election. At the event, GLAAD President Sarah Kate Ellis claimed that right-of-center policies such as building a border wall and opposing abortion hurt LGBT people. Then-Presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden suggested that male prisoners who identify as female should be housed with female prisoners, and vice versa. Then-candidate and U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) stated his opposition to laws requiring HIV-positive individuals to disclose their status to sexual partners. ²² 

Criticism from the Left

In addition to opposition from conservative publications and organizations, GLAAD has received criticism from liberal and left-leaning observers. As early as 2001, left-of-center news outlet AlterNet claimed that “GLAAD has lost its way” and that the group “may have become what it’s supposed to be critiquing – a caricature.” ²³ In 2013, The Atlantic’s James Kirchick suggested that “the best thing the organization could do is dissolve.” ²⁴

CEO Compensation and Expenses

In August 2024, the New York Times wrote a story about the pay and benefits that GLAAD CEO Sarah Kate Ellis received from the group. Ellis received pay between around $700,000 to as much as $1.3 million, which the Times quoted experts as characterizing as more in line with the pay for a for-profit company, not a nonprofit of the size of GLAAD. GLAAD also granted Ellis a $25,000 allowance to rent a home in Cape Cod for the summer and provided her up to $20,000 to renovate her home office. Ellis spent $18,000 to renovate her home office and did not claim the home office renovation as a part of Ellis’s income, which means she did not pay taxes on the renovation as of the report time. ²⁵

Michael West, a lawyer who advises charities at the New York Council of Nonprofits, told the Times that GLAAD’s pattern of spending on Ellis represents “a potentially abusive use of charitable funds that would be surprising and insulting to a lot of their donors,” adding, “It appears she may have fallen into the trap of excess.” ²⁵

Liz Jenkins, a chairwoman for the organization, told the Times, “The board and I stand firmly behind Sarah Kate Ellis, with respect and appreciation for how she and her team are leading the movement at a time when our community is under attack. We have full confidence that they’re doing so with integrity and that they share the board’s commitment to irrefutably strong governance and business practices.” ²⁵

Ellis told the outlet in a separate statement, “I take my role as GLAAD’s financial steward incredibly seriously, and we’ll continue updating our procedures to keep pace with the organization’s rapid growth.” ²⁵

Leadership

Sarah Kate Ellis is the president and CEO of GLAAD. She joined GLAAD in 2014 and oversaw the expansion of GLAAD’s mission from pressuring the media and entertainment industry to promoting LGBT issues in society as a whole. ²⁶

Rich Ferraro is the chief communications officer of GLAAD. He also sits on Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council, which is responsible for censoring “offensive” speech on the social media platform. ²⁷

Financials

According to GLAAD’s 2024 tax returns, the group had $13,635,114 in revenue, $22,524,131 in expenses, and $42,683,861 in net assets. Salaries and other compensation made up nearly half of all expenses at $10,649,366. CEO and president Sarah Kate Ellis made $674,100 in total compensation that year. ²⁸

Some of GLAAD’s major donors included Disney, Netflix, and Google. ²⁵