On Saturday (May 11), there was only one show on planet Earth that could boast more queer energy than the Eurovision Song Contest, and that was the 2024 GLAAD Media Awards in New York City at the Midtown Hilton Hotel.

And not unlike this year’s Eurovision in Malmö, Sweden, the event was not without protestors. A small group of protestors accusing Israel of genocide against the Palestinian people picketed outside the hotel’s entrance during the 35th annual GLAAD Media Awards; more notably, at the top of the show itself, one attendee interrupted the opening monologue by host Ross Matthews to repeatedly declare “GLAAD is complicit in genocide” before being escorted out.

“That was uncomfy for everybody,” Matthews said after a pause. “But you know what? We have to fight for everyone’s rights – and that’s one of them.”

While the Israel-Hamas War didn’t come up again that night, politics were still central to the GLAAD Media Awards, as always. New York Attorney General Letitia James made an appearance to celebrate LGBTQ New Yorkers and speak out for trans rights; GLAAD President Sarah Kate Ellis urged attendees to use their “platform and privilege” to ensure that the next U.S. president will be a human who values LGBTQ rights — and warned that the Supreme Court “will roll back our legal marriages like they rolled back Roe v. Wade” in a powerful, fiery speech; and one very famous Oscar winner took a couple of hilarious pot shots at a former U.S. vice president during the show.

Jennifer Lawrence (rocking a Veronica Lake haircut) appeared to celebrate “my favorite musician and good friend Orville Peck,” who was receiving the Vito Russo Award (named after the late activist and author of The Celluloid Closet) at the 2024 GLAAD Media Awards.

“I love seeing so many humans who can top their field while still being power bottoms,” Lawrence cracked. Talking about her love for the gay community, Lawrence said she once fell in love with a gay man, but soon realized her advances were for naught. “Conversion therapy doesn’t work,” she said. “Did you hear me, Mike Pence? I said conversion therapy is not real – even though you think it worked on you.”

Accepting the award, Peck talked about being a singer-songwriter in a genre that’s not always been the most open to the LGBTQ community. “I’m one of many of us here who have felt excluded or held back because of who we are,” Peck said, adding that queer people nevertheless manage to “turn tragedy into art, humor and culture.”

Peck also spoke on the “responsibility for visibility” when it comes to all minority communities and what it means to the next generation “to allow some kid in a small town who loves country music to see themselves in me or Mickey Guyton or T.J. Osborne.”

Earlier in the night, Jennifer Hudson – who already has an EGOT – added another award to her trophy room when she hit the stage to accept the GLAAD for outstanding variety or talk show episode, for an episode of The Jennifer Hudson Show in which she surprised HIV activist Ian Haddock (of the Normal Anomaly Initiative) with $10,000.

After a fundraising portion that raised more than $350,000, Loren Allred took the stage to perform an emotional version of “Never Enough” from The Greatest Showman, as well as the upbeat “Come Alive.” The latter was a duet, with Scott Hoying (of Pentatonix and Superfruit) joining her on the lightly funky vocal showcase.

Toward the end of the night, Billboard (and Billboard‘s Pride Editor Stephen Daw) were honored when GLAAD named Billboard‘s 2023 Pride Issue cover story the outstanding print article of the year. The (now award-winning) article, written by Daw, is a wide-ranging, in-depth interview with Maren Morris and four drag artists about the proliferation of drag bans in the United States. You can read it here.

Sean “Diddy” Combs on Friday (May 10) asked a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit alleging that he and two co-defendants raped a 17-year-old girl in a New York recording studio in 2003, saying it was a “false and hideous claim” that was filed too late under the law.

The legal move is the latest piece of pushback from the 54-year-old hip-hop mogul and his legal team after he was subjected to several similar lawsuits and a subsequent criminal sex-trafficking investigation.

“Mr. Combs and his companies categorically deny Plaintiff’s decades-old tale against them, which has caused incalculable damage to their reputations and business standing before any evidence has been presented,” says the filing, which also names Combs-owned corporations as defendants. “Plaintiff cannot allege what day or time of year the alleged incident occurred, but miraculously remembers other salacious details, despite her alleged incapacitated condition.”

The lawsuit was filed in December and amended in March by the woman who now lives in Canada whose name wasn’t disclosed in the court filing. She said she was in 11th grade at a high school in a Detroit suburb in 2003, when Harve Pierre, then the president of Combs’ Bad Boy Entertainment record label, flew her to New York on a private jet and took her to a recording studio, where she was given drugs and alcohol until she was incapable of consenting to sex. Then, the lawsuit said, Pierre, Combs and a man she didn’t know took turns raping her.

The lawsuit included photographs of the woman sitting on Combs’ lap that she said were taken on the night in question.

The defense filing asks that the case be “dismissed now, with prejudice” — meaning it cannot be refiled — “to protect the Combs Defendants from further reputational injury and before more party and judicial resources are squandered.”

At this early stage in the lawsuit, the arguments are procedural rather than on the facts of the case.

Some of the lawsuits filed against Combs involve decades-old allegations and are among the more than 3,700 legal claims filed under New York’s Adult Survivors Act, which temporarily suspended certain legal deadlines to give sexual assault victims a last opportunity to sue over abuse that happened years or even decades ago.

The new deadlines established by that law expired, but the suit Combs filed the motion against Friday was brought under a different law, New York City’s Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law. That city law also allows accusers to file civil complaints involving sexual assault claims after the statute of limitations has run out.

But Combs’ motion argues that suit was filed too late, because the city law is preempted by the state law, whose provisions mean the lawsuit needed to be filed by August of 2021 to be timely.

“New York state law trumps New York City law, without exception,” the filing says.

The amended version of the lawsuit filed in March sought to address some of these issues, but Combs’ attorneys argue that it didn’t go far enough. The judge has ruled the woman will need to reveal her name if the lawsuit moves forward after this challenge.

The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused, unless they come forward publicly, as some of Combs’ accusers have done.

Friday’s defense filing also criticizes the suit for including “a bolded, legally irrelevant ‘trigger warning’ calculated to focus attention on its salacious and depraved allegations.”

The public airing of allegations against Combs began with a November lawsuit by the singer Cassie, his former protege and girlfriend, containing allegations of beatings, rape and other abuse between 2005 and 2018. The suit, filed by Douglas Wigdor, the same attorney who filed the suit being challenged Friday, was settled the day after it was filed. Combs denied the allegations through his lawyer before the settlement.

More lawsuits against Combs were filed in the following months. Then on March 25, Homeland Security Investigations served search warrants on his homes in Los Angeles and Miami in a sex-trafficking investigation. His lawyer called it “a gross use of military-level force.” The investigation is continuing. Combs has not been charged.

Last month, Combs filed a motion to dismiss a suit filed by Joi Dickerson, who said she was a 19-year-old college student when Combs drugged her and sexually assaulted her.

Wigdor did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the new filing. He said in a statement in December that the “depravity of these abhorrent acts has, not surprisingly, scarred our client for life.”

She’s got the eye of the tiger, and that’s why Katy Perry‘s “Roar” music video has skyrocketed to 4 billion YouTube views, marking the most of any female artist on the platform.

In the 2013 clip, Perry embarks on an animal-filled frolic through the jungle in which the pop star befriends a monkey, showers with the assistance of an elephant, brushes a crocodile’s teeth and “roars” a tiger into submission. “I got the eye of the tiger, a fighter/ Dancing through the fire/ ‘Cause I am a champion, and you’re gonna hear me roar,” she belts in the chorus of her empowering hit.

Upon its release in 2013, the song has been equally successful on the Billboard charts. Released in 2013 as a single from Prism, “Roar” spent two weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 — a feat Perry has accomplished nine times in her career. Prism, which featured additional hits “Dark Horse” and “Unconditionally,” itself also topped the Billboard 200 albums chart for one week in November 2013.

“I was really inspired by this little six-minute thing by Eckhart Tolle where he speaks about loss,” Perry told Billboard in a cover story at the time, referring to a video from the author of the best-selling self-help book, The Power of Now, as Perry was navigating her divorce from ex-husband Russell Brand. “When you lose something, all your foundations crumble-but that also leaves a big hole that’s open for something great to come through.”

In 2014, “Roar” was nominated for song of the year and best pop solo performance at the Grammy Awards. The song became certified Diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in 2017, making Perry the first artist to have three Diamond-certified singles in the country, following “Firework” and “Dark Horse.” 

Revisit Katy Perry’s “Roar” music video below.