Privacy Policy
Right now, Q Minnesota is a single page with one purpose: to let you sign up for our newsletter. If you give us your email address, we use it to send you the newsletter and nothing else.
We do not sell, rent, or trade your email address. Not to advertisers, not to other publications, not to anyone — and we will not start.
We treat our subscriber list as sensitive personal information, because for an LGBTQ+ publication it is. The longer version below explains exactly what we collect, who touches it, and what we will and won’t do with it.
If anything here is unclear, write to us at info@qminnesota.com. A privacy policy nobody can understand isn’t protecting anyone.
1 · Who we are
Q Minnesota is a magazine for Minnesota’s LGBTQ+ community, published by Gateway Media LLC, a Minnesota limited liability company.
Contact: info@qminnesota.com
Mail: PO Box 39, 216 Myrtle St, Stillwater, MN 55082-1008
This policy covers qminnesota.com. It does not cover our accounts on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, or Bluesky — those platforms collect your data under their own policies, which we don’t control and can’t change.
2 · What we collect
Your email address. That’s the only thing we ask for.
Our signup form is operated by Mirabel Marketing Manager, an email and audience platform we use to store the list and send the newsletter. Your address goes to them and to us.
We use double opt-in. After you enter your address, we send you a confirmation email, and you are not added to the list until you click the link. This means nobody can sign you up without your knowledge — which matters more here than it does on most websites.
If you send us a story idea through our Pitch Us form, we collect what you tell us: your name, how you’d like to be credited, your pronouns, your email address, where in Minnesota you are, which section and kind of piece you’re pitching, the pitch itself, writing samples (links or uploaded files), the topic areas you’d like to cover, whether you’re open to video or interviews for our social channels, anything you tell us about your safety or privacy, and any conflicts you disclose. Everything except your name and email is optional.
Some of what this form asks is more sensitive than a newsletter signup, on purpose. Two fields exist specifically so you can flag a concern before your name is anywhere near a byline: whether publishing under your legal name would put your job, housing, immigration status, family situation, or physical safety at risk, and whether you’re comfortable being photographed or filmed for our social channels. You don’t have to answer either one. If you do, only the people who need that information to make an assignment decision see it. We don’t out contributors, and we don’t out sources.
We use this information to evaluate your pitch and, if we commission it, to work with you on the piece. We don’t use it for marketing, and we don’t add you to the newsletter list because you pitched us — that only happens if you separately sign up for the newsletter.
Writing samples and other files you upload may carry their own metadata (an author name, an edit history) that’s separate from anything you typed into the form. If you’re pitching under a name other than the one on a file, tell us and we’ll ask before we open or share it.
Like the newsletter list, we don’t sell, rent, or trade pitch information, and we don’t publish, display, or make it searchable.
Server information. Like nearly every website, our host records basic technical information about requests: IP address, browser type, and the time of the visit.
Spam protection (Google reCAPTCHA). Our signup form uses Google reCAPTCHA to stop automated abuse. To do that, reCAPTCHA collects hardware and software information from your device and sends it to Google for analysis. This happens on this page whether or not you sign up. Google’s use of that information is governed by the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.
We are telling you this because it is true and because you deserve to know that a third party sees your visit — not because we are required to bury it in fine print.
Web fonts. Our typefaces are served by Adobe Fonts, which means your browser requests them from Adobe’s servers when the page loads.
We do not run advertising pixels, retargeting tags, or social media tracking pixels on this page. We do not ask for your race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, or HIV status on any form. We do not use cookies to profile you across other websites.
3 · Why we treat the subscriber list as sensitive
This is the part that makes our policy different from a generic one, so we want to be direct about it.
For many people in our community, appearing on the mailing list of an LGBTQ+ publication is not a neutral fact. Depending on someone’s family, employer, immigration status, religious community, or living situation, that information could put them at real risk. We treat the list accordingly:
- Access to the subscriber list is limited to the people who need it to send the newsletter.
- We do not publish, display, or make the list searchable, and we don’t disclose whether any particular person is on it.
- We do not append, enrich, or cross-reference subscriber emails against outside data sources.
- We do not use the list to build advertising audiences, and we do not upload it to any advertising platform.
4 · How we use your email address
Only to send you the Q Minnesota newsletter and information about the publication — and, before launch, to tell you when we publish.
We do not use it for anything else without asking you first.
5 · Who we share it with
We never sell, rent, or trade your information. Full stop.
We do share it with the vendors who make the newsletter work. They process it on our behalf, under our instructions, and are not permitted to use it for their own purposes:
| Vendor | What they do | Their policy |
|---|---|---|
| Mirabel Marketing Manager | Stores the subscriber list and sends the newsletter; also the forms platform behind the Pitch Us form | Mirabel Technologies Privacy Statement |
| SparkPost | Email delivery infrastructure used by Mirabel | Bird Privacy Policy |
| WordPress.com / Automattic | Hosts this website | Automattic Privacy Policy |
| Google (reCAPTCHA) | Spam protection on the signup form | Policy |
| Adobe (Fonts) | Serves our typefaces | Adobe Fonts Privacy |
| Microsoft 365 | Hosts our email | Microsoft Privacy Statement |
We may also disclose information if we are legally required to — see Section 9, which explains how we’d handle that.
6 · Your choices
Unsubscribe any time. Every newsletter has an unsubscribe link at the bottom, and it works immediately. You never have to explain why.
Ask us what we have. Email info@qminnesota.com and we’ll tell you what’s associated with your address.
Ask us to delete it. Email info@qminnesota.com and we will remove you from the list. We may keep a minimal record of the fact that you asked to be removed, so we don’t accidentally re-add you later.
You do not need to live in a particular state or invoke a particular law to make these requests. We’ll honor them for anyone who asks. This includes pitches: if you’d like us to delete a pitch and its attachments, email us and we will.
7 · Your rights under Minnesota law
The Minnesota Consumer Data Privacy Act took effect July 31, 2025. It applies to businesses that control or process the personal data of at least 100,000 Minnesota consumers, or that derive more than 25% of gross revenue from selling personal data while processing data of at least 25,000 Minnesota residents.
Q Minnesota is well below those thresholds, so the Act’s obligations do not currently apply to us. We are telling you this rather than implying a compliance status we don’t have.
That said, the rights the Act describes — to know, access, correct, and delete — are rights we extend to you voluntarily, as described in Section 6. And whatever the thresholds say, we do not sell your data, sensitive or otherwise.
8 · Data retention
We keep your email address for as long as you’re subscribed. If you unsubscribe or ask us to delete it, we remove you from the active list.
9 · Legal requests for subscriber information
If we receive a subpoena, court order, or other legal demand for subscriber information, we will review it carefully with legal counsel and will not hand over information simply because it was requested. Where the law permits us to notify the affected subscriber before responding, we intend to do so, so they have an opportunity to object. Where we are prohibited from notifying them, we will say so publicly to the extent we are permitted.
10 · Young readers
This page is not directed at children under 13, and we don’t knowingly collect information from them. If you believe a child under 13 has given us their email address, write to info@qminnesota.com and we’ll delete it.
11 · Security
We use reputable vendors and limit who can access the subscriber list. No system is perfectly secure, and we won’t claim otherwise. If a breach ever affects your information, we will tell you.
12 · Changes to this policy
This site is going to grow. When we add analytics, memberships, events, a directory, or advertising, this policy will change to describe them — before those features go live, not after.
When we make a significant change we’ll update the “Last updated” date at the top and note what changed. We won’t quietly rewrite it.
13 · Questions
If you have a concern about how we’ve handled your information and we haven’t resolved it, tell us and we’ll try again. We would rather hear it from you than not.