Everyone’s heard of a .com site, but could .meow be in soon in the cards? A group of LGBTQ technology creators are hoping to make .meow a reality, but they need your help.

.Meow would become a new top-level domain, or TLD. For those who aren’t super techy, that’s the name for the ending part of the domain. For example, in NCRM’s URL, thenewcivilrightsmovement.com, “.com” is the top-level domain.

For a long time in the internet’s history, there have only been a few accepted ones: .com for companies, .org for organizations, .gov for government, .net for networks, .edu for schools and .mil for military organizations. (Real nerds will also point out .arpa, the very first top-level domain; it was intended for the original sites on the ARPANET, the precursor to the internet. Now it’s used just for infrastructure purposes.)

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In addition to those, top-level domains also included country codes, two-character codes that shared where a site was located. For example, English people are much more likely to go to Amazon.co.uk rather than Amazon.com. Oddly enough, country codes could be an economic boon to smaller countries. For example, Tuvalu frequently sold domains to television fans so they could have URLs ending in “.tv”.

But the world of domains has slowly been opening up with themed TLDs. In 2000, a few more were added like .biz for businesses who missed out on the .com version of their name and .museum for, well, museums. In 2012, that opened even wider to TLDs like .bike, and now there are about 1,200 TLDs available.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is the group that maintains all of these TLDs. ICANN is opening another round of applications for new TLDs next April, and the dotMeow Foundation wants to add .meow to the list as an explicitly queer TLD.

The dotMeow Foundation points out on its site that there are .lgbt and .gay already, but it plans to use all profits from .meow registrations to go to the queer community, with a specific focus on transgender issues.

“This all started as a joke — a ‘how hard could it be?’ over drinks. Now we’re deep in the ICANN process, with support secured to lower our costs,” the site says.

To fund its plans, dotMeow has turned to a new Kickstarter campaign. It’s seeking €80,000 (or $94,114), to help pay for the application and other costs. Though it usually costs $227,000 to apply for a new TLD, dotMeow has been accepted into ICANN’s support program which cuts the application cost to no more than $56,750, depending on how many other organizations are promised help. The €80,000 would cover the application, operational costs, Kickstarter’s fee and additional legal work, the foundation says.

As to why they’re looking for .meow in particular, the organization says that it has “broad appeal.” .Meow domains would be available to anyone who wants one.

“While ‘meow’ is a deliberate nod to the catgirls (and boys, and others) among us, it’s about more than that,” the Kickstarter campaign reads. “As the internet has become increasingly centralised, queer communities have increasingly been pushed to the margins, often out of a desire to be palatable to advertisers. Time and again we’ve been building community spaces online on borrowed infrastructure, at the mercy of platform owners and hosting costs.”

Though dotMeow says that it cannot guarantee that ICANN will accept its proposal, the foundation is offering concrete perks like digital wallpapers, stickers and t-shirts, that will be created and sent to backers regardless. That said, the main perk for contributing is vouchers for donors’ own .meow URLs and websites.

Image via Shutterstock

Disney shareholders rejected a proposal that would see the company cut ties with the Human Rights Commission, a LGBTQ rights organization.

The “Request to Cease CEI Participation” proposal, if enacted, would see Disney end participation in the HRC’s Corporate Equality Index, which rates companies on their friendliness towards the LGBTQ community. Ratings are determined via surveys submitted to the HRC. Companies are rated on nondiscrimination policies, benefits for LGBTQ workers, corporate culture and social responsibility. The Walt Disney Co. currently holds a perfect 100 score, and has since 2007.

The proposal was submitted by the National Center for Public Policy Research, through its Free Enterprise Project initiative, according to Variety.

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“The threat of a bad score is wielded against corporations to force them to do the political bidding of HRC and others (like GLSEN, the Trevor Project and GLAAD, which Disney also has paid partnerships with) that seek to sow gender confusion in children, encourage irreversible surgical procedures on confused teens, effectively eliminate girls’ and women’s sports and bathrooms, and roll back longstanding religious liberties,” the proposal read in part, according to Deadline.

Only 7% of shareholders voted to approve the proposal, Deadline reported. The HRC celebrated the news.

“This vote gives us a clear statement of values from Disney’s shareholders. They know what we know – that despite all the noise, commitments to inclusion pay figurative dividends and help their literal bottom line,” Eric Bloem, Vice President of Corporate Citizenship at the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, said in a statement.

Proposals like this are part of a anti-DEI campaign against a number of large corporations. Right-wing activist Robby Starbuck has been a particularly loud campaigner in getting companies to cut ties with the HRC, according to LGBTQ Nation.

“This group, the HRC, fuels the wokeness in Corporate America via their CEI scoring system where companies bend over backwards to get a 100% score. Many even hire a special health care concierge for LGBTQ employees and fund transitions for children of employees in order to get their 100% CEI score,” Starbuck wrote on X (formerly Twitter) last year.

“To get their 100% score, they essentially have to worship at the altar of left wing policy. Over the coming months, with the help of some great whistleblowers, we will expose every element of these disgusting practices. Now is the time to name and shame every single company who associates with this open hatred of conservative consumers.”

Though Disney did not make a particular comment beyond saying that the proposal was “not approved,” Costco officials had harsh words when they were faced with a similar proposal brought before shareholders by the same group.

“The proponent professes concern about legal and financial risks to the Company and its shareholders associated with the diversity initiatives. The supporting statement demonstrates that it is the proponent and others that are responsible for inflicting burdens on companies with their challenges to longstanding diversity programs. The proponent’s broader agenda is not reducing risk for the Company but abolition of diversity initiatives,” Costco’s board of directors wrote in a statement urging shareholders to vote against the proposal.

Image by Eric Philbin via Wikimedia Commons, used under Creative Commons license.

Democratic vice presidential candidate and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz mocked the recent increase in anti-LGBTQ book bans during a speech for the Human Rights Campaign.

Delivering the keynote Saturday evening at the HRC’s National Dinner, Walz made fun of recent attempts to ban children’s books like And Tango Makes Three, according to LGBTQ Nation. That beloved kid’s book is based on the true story of two gay penguins in a zoo who raised a chick on their own.

“[In Minnesota], we banned banning books, especially banning LGBTQ books,” Walz said. “This is what these folks are focusing on, spending all their time. Like reading about two male penguins who love each other is somehow going to turn your children gay, and that’s what you should worry about.

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“But here’s what I’ll tell you, it’s a fact of life: Some people are gay. But you know what’s not a fact of life? That our children need to be be shot dead in schools. That’s not a fact of life. Folks are banning books, but they’re okay with weapons of war being in our schools.”

On Thursday, Ohio Senator JD Vance addressed the September 4 shooting at the Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia. Walz’s opponent in the vice presidential race was criticized for characterizing school shootings as a “fact of life.”

“I don’t like that this is a fact of life,” Vance said, according to the Associated Press. “But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets. And we have got to bolster security at our schools. We’ve got to bolster security so if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children they’re not able.”

Attempts to block children from accessing LGBTQ-themed children’s books have ramped up in the last few years. In July, a law went into effect in Idaho that bans “obscene materials” from being seen by people under 18. While that may sound on its face to be unobjectionable, the law defines the term broadly. One of the types of content flagged as “obscene” is portrayals of “homosexuality.” There is no additional clarification to determine if this means sex acts, or the mere existence of gay people. If a library violates this law, it is hit with a $250 mandatory fine. If a patron should sue, there is no cap to the amount of money a judge could award them in damages, according to LGBTQ Nation.

LGBTQ-themed books are also frequently challenged and banned. In 2022, over half of the top 13 most-challenged books had queer themes or characters, LGBTQ Nation reported.

Walz has not made a secret of his support for the LGBTQ community. When he was a teacher, he was the advisor to his school’s Gay-Straight Alliance, according to the New York Times.