I won’t repeat the whole story of why Pride moth is in June—I told it once already. TL;DR, it’s because of a violent revolt against the police in 1969—but I will reiterate that it’s not Cinco de Mayo or St. Patrick’s Day. In one sense it’s vaguely inspiring that an LGBTQIA+ celebration is being coopted by straight white people as an excuse to day drink, but on the other hand please, fellow straight white people, don’t colonize everyone else’s holidays and make them an excuse for you to day drink. Be better.

Anyway, in celebration here are five musicians who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex or asexual, In case you were wondering what that acronym stood for beyond the first four. And unlike the White House (for some reason), in this column we don’t exclude asexuals.) We begin with Kim Petras.

Kim Petras — “Alone”

To give you an idea of how far we’ve come, then how far we’ve slid back, Kim Petras became the youngest person in Germany to get gender affirming surgery at age 16 in 2008. It was international news! She was billed as the “world’s youngest transsexual,” which is also evidence of how far we’ve come, because these days that term is only used to refer to the planet.

The good news is that now kids are aware that being transgender is a thing and are comfortable expressing that they feel they’re the wrong gender at a younger age, and many parents are more supportive of that and allow the kid to dress like the person they are. The bad news is that, like any progress that acknowledges a group’s existence and humanity, the world’s worst people are throwing an absolute fit and trying to legislate away an entire community. Because there are always, always, awful people ready to ruin everything.

Anyway, Kim Petras is also notable for having massive backlash for working with Dr. Luke, who had been credibly accused of sexual assault. It just goes to reinforce that transgender people can make terrible business decisions just like anyone else.

The Breeders — “Cannonball”

I could have gone with either the Breeders or the Pixies. I went with this song for two reasons: First, the reason they’re included is Kim Deal, (the frontwoman of the Breeders and bassist for the Pixies). Second is that I loved this song back in the ’90s and anything I loved in the ’90s wins out. I still wear flannel, after all.

But I digress. Kim Deal came out as asexual in an interview back in 2009. It’s weirdly rare! Of all sexual orientations, ace people seem to get the least attention or representation. For example, and I’ve already pointed this out once but it deserves to be mentioned again, the President dropped the A from LGBTQIA+ in every single tweet about Pride this year, even though they kept the +. That’s messed up. It’s like the theme song calling the Professor and Mary Ann “and the rest” in the first season of “Gilligan’s Island.”

So this paragraph is going to list some canonically or clearly ace characters in fiction. Speaking of “Gilligan’s Island,” Gilligan is pretty clearly ace, it’s a running theme that people keep trying to seduce him and he doesn’t care. Jughead from Archie Comics was implied to be ace early, changed to implied gay later on, then to explicitly gay, then made canonically ace in the “New Riverdale” reboot. Most famously, Sherlock Holmes was very clearly asexual in the original Doyle stories because it’s pointed out numerous times that he has no sexual temptation and that’s kinda the definition.

Jethro Tull — “Dun Ringill”

It’s deep cut time! Both the song and the band member. That’s what this column is for: musical minutiae I remember instead of where I put my keys.

This song specifically is included because Dee Palmer, Jethro Tull’s keyboardist from 1976 to 1980, is intersex. She was an arranger for the band since its beginning but the songs she worked on are hard to pin down so I went with an obvious one she played on. I’m not willing to do that much research.

Back to Palmer: She was born with genital ambiguity which is what it sounds like, some or all of both male and female genitals. For all the talk from the wingnut right of gender affirming surgery on children being abuse, standard procedure for intersex babies has been to pick a sex and surgically alter the infant to be just that one, which is super messed up. You can at least wait until they’re old enough to ask, obviously, but there’s also an obsession with chromosomes among anti-trans people and they don’t check those either.

In Palmer’s case, they picked male, which was incorrect. She got corrective surgery and changed her name to Dee. Which all could have been avoided if, again, they’d just waited a bit and asked.

Adeem the Artist — “Going to Hell”

A friend of mine pointed me to Adeem the Artist but I refuse to admit that this friend actually likes a good musician for once, so nobody tell him Adeem is included. He says he reads my column so this will test that claim.

Adeem is nonbinary and pansexual. Also, they’re a country singer. Not to stereotype country musicians or their fans, but that doesn’t seem like a natural fit. It’s the rare good modern country music so I get it, they make it work. The lyricism is great. Check out this verse: “Well, I met the devil at the crossroads and I asked if we could make a deal/ He seemed puzzled, so I told him the story, and he said, ‘None of that shit’s real’/ It’s true I met Robert Johnson, he showed me how the blues could work/ But white men would rather give the devil praise than acknowledge a black man’s worth.”

Just amazing.

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Jobriath — “World Without End”

Let’s go way back to the very first openly gay rock musician signed to a major label. In 1973, Jobriath signed with Elektra Records for $500,000, the most money any artist had been signed for at the time. The promotion was huge, as was his talent, but his albums and tour didn’t sell especially well on account of all the bigotry.

He released two albums, Jobriath and Creatures of the Street, about six months apart, and went on one tour that Elektra tried to cancel halfway through. Jobriath finished while continuing to bill the label for expenses. After the tour and without plans for a third album, he moved into a rooftop apartment at the Chelsea Hotel in New York and worked as a cabaret singer and occasional prostitute.

Jobriath tragically died of AIDS in 1983. He may have been forgotten if not for, of all people, Morrissey of The Smiths, who was a big fan and only found out he’d died when he tried to book him as his opening act. Morrissey released a compilation album in 2004 and both Jobriath’s albums were remastered and released on CD in 2008.

Follow publisher Daniel J. Willis and tweet column ideas to him at Twitter.com/BayAreaData.