Ravensbrück concentration camp, Christmas Eve 1944: A female inmate is ordered to sing Christmas carols, when a voice calls out “Sing something from Madame Butterfly!” Hauntingly, the singer chooses “Un bel di”—the ultimate expression of longing and hope. So begins the long-hidden, extraordinary love story of two prisoners from the Resistance: professional mezzo soprano Nelly Mousset-Vos and Nadine Hwang, the opera-loving requester. From the bowels of hell itself, their relationship blossoms and transforms into a deepening love that sustains them through liberation of the camps, post-war separation, and finally to Caracas, Venezuela, where, far from the world they left behind, they begin to build a life together.
Now Nelly’s granddaughter Sylvie, keeper of the family archives and its secrets, delves into the past and uncovers a trove of writing, films, and photos that her family has ignored for decades. What she finds is a moving testimony to a relationship that transcended the Holocaust itself. Winner of the Teddy Jury Award at the 2022 Berlin International Film Festival, this moving documentary is a fascinating portrait of enduring love.
This film Screen at the Castro Theatre JUNE 19, 2022 4:00 PM — 5:36 PM
And online JUNE 24, 2022 12:01 AM — JUNE 30, 2022 11:59 PM
Police in Idaho arrested 31 people who had face coverings, white-supremacist insignia, shields and an “operations plan” to riot near an LGBTQ Pride event on Saturday afternoon. Police said they were affiliated with Patriot Front, a white-supremacist group whose founder was among those arrested.
Authorities received a tip about a “little army” loading into a U-Haul truck at a hotel Saturday afternoon, said Lee White, the police chief in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, a city of about 50,000 near the border with Washington. Local and state law enforcement pulled over the truck about 10 minutes later, White said at a news conference.
Many of those arrested were wearing logos representing Patriot Front, which rebranded after one of its members plowed his car into a crowd of people protesting a white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville in 2017, killing Heather Heyer and injuring dozens.
The men were standing inside the truck wearing khakis, navy blue shirts and beige hats with white balaclavas covering their faces when Coeur d’Alene police stopped the U-Haul and began arresting them on the side of the road.
“They came to riot downtown,” Coeur d’Alene Police Chief Lee White said at a news conference. All 31 were charged with conspiracy to riot, a misdemeanor, White said. The men were going through the booking process Saturday afternoon and are scheduled to be arraigned on Monday, he said.
Police led the men, one by one, to the front of patrol cars, took off their masks and then brought them to a police van. The group’s manifesto calls for the formation of a white ethnostate in the United States, the Southern Poverty Law Center said.
Right wingers and Trump cultists are flooding social media with their usual claims that Patriot Front is a secret FBI operation to make them look bad.
Patriot Front first appeared on JMG in February 2020 when over 150 members chanted “reclaim America” as they marched through Washington DC.
We heard from them again last summer when they were chased back to their U-Haul by counter-protesters in downtown Philadelphia.
They marched again in Washington DC in December 2021before crashing January 2022 anti-abortion rallies in Chicago and Washington DC.
Police are investigating an incident that occurred during a Drag Queen Story Hour at the San Lorenzo Library on Saturday afternoon after Panda Dulce, the San Francisco drag performer hosting the reading, said they were targeted by “a group of 8-10 Proud Boys” who stormed the room and shouted homophobic and transphobic threats at them, forcing them to leave the event with a security guard and hide in a back office.
The Alameda County Sheriff’s Office said that police responded to a report of a disturbance at the library at around 1:30 p.m. and discovered five men “described as members of the Proud Boys organization.” The men were “described as extremely aggressive with a threatening violent demeanor causing people to fear for their safety,” the sheriff’s office said. It is not clear whether they are members of the national Proud Boys organization or were simply representing themselves as such.
The sheriff’s office said an “active hate crime investigation is underway, as is an investigation into the annoying and harassing of children.”
In an Instagram post that was first reported by KQED, Dulce said the men also attempted to record them on their phones.
“They got right in our faces. They jeered. They attempted to escalate to violence,” Dulce wrote, adding that the confrontation “totally freaked out all of the kids.”
In a press release, the sheriff’s office said they escorted the men from the premises. But after they were out of the building, Dulce said the group of protestors then proceeded to form a line in an attempt to cut off the exit doors to the library. At this point, Dulce returned to the library and finished the reading, which was geared toward preschool-aged children in celebration of Pride Month.
“I eventually got out. I’m safe. I’ll be fine,” wrote Dulce. “Drag queen story hours have always seen protestors. And I’ve always received hate mail. But today hit different.”
Dulce was one of the first drag performers to lead a Drag Queen Story Hourwhen author Michelle Tea spearheaded the program in San Francisco in 2015. While the events quickly garnered positive feedback and are intended to encourage open-minded discussion of gender identity among children and their parents, they’ve been frequently targeted for harassment by anti-LGBTQ, far-right extremists, who have attempted to dox the participants and attendees.
Notably, Saturday’s event was amplified late last month by Libs of TikTok, an influential right-wing social media account that was suspended on Instagram and had some of its tweets removed earlier this week after posting the locations of drag-focused events for children taking place across the country.
A spokesperson for the Alameda County Library told SFGATE on Sunday afternoon that it would continue to celebrate Pride Month and offer similar programming.
“Libraries are open to all and are places that foster inclusion of all our communities. Attempts to intimidate and silence others are not tolerated in libraries,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement. ”We are grateful to Panda Dulce for showing bravery and resilience and finishing the Storytime event. …We appreciate the support that has poured in from communities throughout the Bay Area.”
Maybe Someday will have its first in-person screening at the Frameline Film Festival June 24th at the Castro Theatre. An LGBTQ feature film highlighting different aspects of love and heartbreak, Maybe Someday is a nostalgic and moving journey written and directed by Michelle Ehlen. The film is Ehlen’s fifth feature and first dramedy, her prior films most notably being the first lesbian comedy trilogy – Butch Jamie, Heterosexual Jill, and S&M Sally. Maybe Someday stars Ehlen along with Shaela Cook from Heterosexual Jill and S&M Sally, and Charlie Steers.
The story follows the character of Jay (Ehlen), a non-binary photographer in her 40s, battling a mixture of denial and depression as she attempts to move across the country in the midst of separating from her wife (Jeneen Robinson). Along the way, she takes a detour to stay with her high school best friend (Cook) who Jay used to be secretly in love with before she came out as a lesbian, and befriends a charismatic but complicated gay man (Steers) who has long given up on love. Struggling to move forward with the next chapter of her life, memories of the past resurface as Jay grapples with the inevitable cycles of love, loss, and letting go.
Ehlen’s past films have collectively screened at over 100 festivals around the world and have won 20 awards including Best Feature from the Chicago LGBTQ Film Festival, Best Director from the Connecticut LGBTQ Film Festival, and Best Actress from Outfest Los Angeles for her first starring role in Butch Jamie. The films have gone on to wide releases on Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon.
In addition to Frameline 46 hosting an in-person festival, this year there will be a virtual Streaming Encore, where Maybe Someday will be available to watch nationally June 24-30.
Gaysonoma’s Gary Carnivele interviewed Maybe Someday’s director Michelle Ehlen recently.
Gary Carnivele: Tell us a bit about your educational and professional background.
Michelle Ehlen: I studied acting and video production when I was younger and while at Smith College, then moved to Los Angeles after graduation to work as an editor. After a couple of years, I decided to go to the LA Film School to study writing and directing. Eventually I got a job at a production and distribution company where I learned how to produce along with everything that happens after you make a film – marketing, contracts, and distribution. So I have experience in all parts of the process, and I love to wear a lot of different hats when I make a film.
GC: What directors would you cite as heroes or as inspirational?
ME: Christopher Guest was a big inspiration to me when I was getting started. After I saw “Best in Show” 20 years ago, I was inspired to try comedy for the first time, leading to my first short film “Ballet Diesel”, which screened at Frameline in 2003. My first four features were all comedies as well, and I think it all traced back to watching “Best in Show” and feeling like I could approach comedy in a similar way, with a deadpan and grounded style of humor and quirky characters.
GC: Maybe Someday is your fifth feature film. Do you see your latest as an extension of your previous work or as a stand alone?
ME: I definitely see “Maybe Someday” as a standalone. It’s a lot more serious than the other films, which leads to a more nuanced and layered approach in the writing, directing, and cinematography. People love to say that comedy is harder than drama, but in my case, doing something dramatic was definitely more challenging. With a comedy, if you can keep people laughing then you feel like you’ve done your job, but for a film like this, you have to engage the audience emotionally in a deeper way. You want the character to elicit empathy but not be too pathetic, the plotto be realistic but not boring, the drama to be compelling but not over-the-top, and the themes clearly communicated but not trite. It’s also a lot easier to shoot a microbudget film as a comedy, as it’s generally quicker to shoot; we had twice as many shoot days as my last comedy feature,”S&M Sally”, and it still felt like we were rushed with having 17 days.
GC: Your ambitious lesbian comedy triology – Butch Jamie, Heterosexual Jill, and S&M Sally – was a success and a first. How tough was it for you to come up with a new idea for your next feature?
WE: The idea came to me over time, first as an idea of focusing on a friendship story between a gay man and a lesbian, and then branching out more to delve into heartbreak and unrequited love in both the past and present. The most challenging part was writing the script after I had the idea formulated, as I wanted to tell the story about a protagonist who was stuck in her life. It’s a very universal experience, of a relationship ending and trying to not only heal from the heartbreak but to decide where to go from here. However, it’s not something that’s often depicted in movies because it’s difficult to write a story about a character who’s stuck. So finding a way to keep the story moving forward while Jay was stuck in her own life was challenging. That’s where Tommy’s character comes in (Jay’s new gay best friend) – he ends up being the active voice for a lot of it.
GC: Just how personal is this film for you?
ME: The film is personal in that the main relationships that are depicted are based on real relationships I’ve had, but the plot itself is mostly fictional. When my partner and I separated many years ago, I also moved from the east coast to the west coast in an attempt to start a new life, but the ways that I was stuck following my separation and the ways that Jay is stuck looked very different. I was actually on the festival circuit that year with my first feature “Butch Jamie,” and so many wonderful things happened during what was otherwise one of the most difficult times of my life.Even though our underlying emotional experiences are similar, Jay’s journey is more clear, concise, and relatable on screen.
GC: Maybe Someday is a delightful and poignant dramady. Talk about your writing process
I’m glad you enjoyed it. It took a while to write, about three years off and on to really find the story. The film is supposed to take place somewhere in the middle of the country, partly in the fall. My family lives in southern Missouri, so when I was first starting to write the script, I’d go explore the area, road trip down to Arkansas by myself during the fall and call it my “autumn inspiration trip,” as a way to find inspiration for the story and to get a sense of the landscape and vibe. I also think exploring that area gave me a sense of passion and excitement for the film that I was able to maintain throughout the process.
Aside from that, I tried to tap in to a more emotional space when I wrote, so I played certain music that was nostalgic for me, or would write by candlelight. After I had a solid draft, I’d send it to colleagues for feedback, and toward the end of the process we did a couple of readings where we would discuss the script afterward as well.
GC: Your dialogue is always spot on. Tell us about the characters created and how you give them voice.
ME: That’s great to hear. I really enjoy writing dialogue and feel like it comes to me easier than many other parts of the writing process. In earlier drafts of the script, there was a lot of dialogue that I had to pare down because it was too “on the nose,” or patronizing, or tangential. When I start writing, oftentimes I’ll start with a theme – in this case, moving forward after heartbreak, and then come up with the characters and plot to help support that theme, and the dialogue flows from there. I sort of act out the characters in my head and feel their energy and way of speaking. For Jess’ role in the story, helping Jay move forward after heartbreak, she was supposed to be wise and kind, but not too patronizing. Tommy also helped Jay move forward but unknowingly, so he was brash and enthusiastic enough to coax Jay into his ideas and plans, helping her out of her shell and out of her head. Jay’s character was stuck and withdrawn, so her dialogue was shorter and to the point, but flowed more after her character opened up more. I think creating distinct personalities for each character not only creates a compelling story, but also lays the foundation for creating unique voices for each of their dialogue as well.
GC: During the writing process did surprises arise that you never saw coming?
ME: I didn’t foresee adding flashbacks to the script, which turned out to be some of the most important and rewarding scenes. The first draft of the script took place entirely in present day, and most of that draft focused on the unfolding friendship of Jay and Tommy and how Jay attempts to move forward after her separation with Lily. However, my producer commented that Jay’s relationship with Lily and her past with Jess were as equally important to the emotional life of the story, and suggested we flesh things out with flashbacks. And I’m so glad we did – it opened up the story tremendously, and it added a lot of emotional subtext to the present day scenes as well. When you take screenwriting classes, they constantly tell you not to use flashbacks which is a shame because many great movies do. It’s just that a lot of beginning writers use them as a crutch. So I avoided them for many years but in this case felt that they were done intentionally and for all the right reasons.
GC: Maybe Someday is full of wonderful performances – yours included, of course. Tell me about your cast and how as a director you elicit great performances.
ME: Thank you – I felt really lucky to find such a wonderful cast for this project. I worked with Shaela Cook, who played Jess, in a couple of my other films, and the other actors we all found through an open audition process, including my co-star Charlie Steers who played Tommy. Tommy was one of the more challenging roles to cast since he’s such a complex character, and we magically found someone who felt as though the part was written for him. In terms of getting great performances, I think the casting process is a big part of it, and prioritizing the acting first and foremost in an audition helps set us off on the right foot. Beyond that, I meet with the actors to discuss the scenes so they understand the character, backstory, and subtext, but I don’t like to over-rehearse the scenes themselves, so there’s still a freshness and spontaneity to it. On set, I’m generally open to spontaneity and even improvisation of some moments as well. For the two actors who played younger versions of Jay and Jess in the film, Eliza Blair and Cameron Norman, they had the added benefit of being able to watch some of the footage we had already shot with their older counterparts. People have told me they see so much of my mannerisms and facial expressions as Jay in Eliza’s performance – it was really remarkable how Eliza was able to incorporate all of that but still make the part their own. All in all, I think the cast as a whole found parts of themselves in the characters they were playing, and that always makes a big difference.
GC: How do you go about simultaneously acting in and directing a film?
ME: I think a lot of my acting prep happens simultaneously to the writing process, so I feel like I’m embodying the character as I’m creating the story, writing the dialogue, and deciding on the choices they’d make. So by the time we start shooting, the main thing for me as an actor, other than connecting with my scene partner, is maintaining focus and switching focus back and forth quickly from director mind to actor mind so they can complement each other but not undermine each other. We would sometimes watch playback on set, but that was more for me to see how the shot played out as opposed to assessing the performance, which is more of an intuitive process.
GC: What do you hope audiences take away from Maybe Someday?
ME: I hope they see how sometimes we prolong our own grief. That we need to be active participants in our healing process, and that moving on can be difficult and scary but refusing to do so delays the inevitable. The one thing I wish I would have learned many years ago – to let go sooner, and more gracefully.
GC: You’re practically a regular at Frameline. What does it feel like having your films shown as part of Frameline46?
ME: I love screening at Frameline. It was the first festival I attended with my first short film back in 2003, which screened in their Fun Shorts collection at the Castro, and the audience was so receptive that it encouraged me to keep going. When I screened there in 2008 with “Butch Jamie”, I had already spent a year touring around various festivals with it, but the Frameline screening of the film is still to date the best screening I’ve ever had in terms of how engaged the audience was. After that experience, I made a point to put Frameline toward the beginning of my festival run instead of toward the end. I find the audience there to be very enthusiastic and passionate about queer film, and it’s always a joy to attend.
GC: Will you be at the Frameline screening and how valuable it is to get quick feedback from an audience?
ME: Yes, I plan to be there with my producer David Au and co-producer Hayden Harris. It’ll be our first in-person screening, and the test screenings we did for feedback during the editing process were remote because of Covid, so I’m looking forward to seeing it with an audience. The feedback you get from a live audience is always really valuable – I love doing the Q&As and hearing their questions and comments, and the best parts are when they laugh or respond to something during the screening in a way you didn’t foresee. It allows you for a moment to experience vicariously what it’s like watching the movie for the first time. The funny thing about creating a film from the ground up is you never get to watch the final movie for the first time – it’s always in process and when it’s finished, there are no longer any surprises. It’s very elusive that way; you know the movie inside out except for that one crucial part – how it feels to discover it not over years, but over minutes.
GC: What are you working on now?
ME: Right now I’m in pre-production on a documentary with my partner Hayden Harris called “Queering the Binary,” which is a large-scale research project and docuseries about non-binary identities and experiences. Hayden and I are both non-binary and would love to see more content about the community, so we’re excited to start shooting in a couple of months.
GC: What advice would you offer budding filmmakers?
ME: Learn as much as you can, create something meaningful to you and not what you think people will want to see, make things happen for yourself instead of waiting for approval or permission, not burning yourself out should be one of your highest priorities, and question all advice you are given.
The Trading Post in Cloverdale is going to host a Pride Event on Sunday, June 19th from 4pm to 8pm. There will be dancing, schmoozing, and cruising. We’ll also be selling food, wine and cocktails.
Proceeds from the event will go to OutRight Action International’s Ukraine Fund, which supports LGBT refugees and organizations impacted by the war. The Fund has already raised close to $1 million since the war began.
Thanks to some generous sponsors all proceeds from food and beverages will benefit the Ukraine Fund. We have also generated more than $3,000 in contributions to the Fund before the party has even started! You can contribute here.
Please spread the news far and wide. Last year was a blast, and this year should be even more fun!
It happens every June. Well meaning folks supporting queer rights completely ignore the intersex community, people like myself who are born with sex characteristics (chromosomes, genitals, hormone levels and/or internal organs) that don’t align with typical notions of either “male” or “female” bodies. Although we make up nearly 2 percent of the population and have been speaking out about the human rights abuses based on our non-binary bodies for over three decades, we continue to be erased even by those in the rainbow community who share these experiences of oppression rooted in the same sexist, homophobic and transphobic stereotypes. Some intersex people identify as gay or trans, while many, like myself, do not. Nevertheless, we all experience similar harms largely based on other’s irrational fear of difference.
Traditional gender norms and non-scientific beliefs about binary sex are driving the most detrimental type of discrimination against the intersex community: Physical erasure through irreversible, nonconsensual and medically unnecessary procedures. These medical interventions often cause long term physical and emotional harms and have been deemed human rights abuses by the U.N. and other human rights bodies and organizations, yet continue to occur largely unregulated, around the world.
Much like the trans community, intersex people are also fighting for bodily autonomy. LGBT+ communities and their allies in the United States are well aware of the influx of hateful legislation denying trans youth the right to gender affirming healthcare. But nobody’s talking about the fact many of these bills include specific exclusions for intersex children expressly permitting doctors to irreverisbly surgically “fix” their healthy bodies without their consent. The same oppressive movement denying trans youth healthcare they want and need is promoting harmful unwanted intervention on intersex kids. And it seems to go unnoticed and without a peep from the queer community.
Kudos to President Biden for recongizing the intersex community and including us in the recent White House statement in support of Pride month. It is time for the LGBTQ+ movement to finally join the fight for intersex rights and the celebration of intersex lives.
Surrounded by thousands of people wearing rainbow flags, glitter and sparkly outfits, Eddie Balčiūnaitė prepared to take part in one of the biggest marches the Baltic countries have ever seen.
The 21-year-old nonbinary Lithuanian grew up in a country that since 2009 has banned sharing information that “expresses contempt for family values (or) encourages … entry into a marriage and creation of a family other than stipulated in the Constitution.” Dubbed the “gay propaganda” law by its critics, the ban even preceded Russia’s 2013 infamous legislation.
“The first time I heard about queer people was in the church, so it wasn’t a very positive portrayal, as you can imagine,” Balčiūnaitė, who uses he/she/they pronouns, told NBC News. “You Google stuff, you talk to your friends, and hopefully you learn something about yourself — but not with the help of the school or your teacher.”
Eddie Balčiūnaitė.Enrique Anarte Lazo
Around 10,000 people, mostly young adults, flocked to the capital, Vilnius, from across Lithuania — a country of 2.8 million and the biggest Baltic country — and its neighbors Latvia and Estonia to join the annual Baltic Pride march Saturday.
“This is incredible,” said Juan Miguel, a Spaniard who studied abroad in Lithuania and arranged a reunion with his friends who are now spread across the continent. “Nine years ago, there were neo-Nazis at both sides and more police than participants.”
Since 2009, the annual event has rotated among the capitals of the three countries, gathering local activists and international allies. Vilnius hosted Baltic Pride for the first time in 2010. Back then, only 400 people marched.
“It wasn’t easy. People looked at us like they were in a zoo,” said Vladimir Simonko, executive director of LGL, Lithuania’s biggest LGBTQ group. “Our community is very brave to show up, and we have lots of allies that march with us.”
Big companies such as Google, Moody’s and the Nordic-Baltic bank Swedbank were among the participants and sponsors of this year’s march, as well as the embassies of countries such as the United States, Canada and Norway. The parents of Matthew Shepard, the American student brutally killed in Wyoming in 1998, also attended.
Under Soviet occupation from 1944 until 1991, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia all joined the European Union in 2004, together with other countries of the Eastern bloc, including Poland and Hungary. But unlike their Nordic neighbors — only a short plane trip away — their human rights records lag behind, particularly when it comes to sexual minorities.
In the E.U., only Poland, Romania and Bulgaria rank worse than Lithuania and Latvia for LGBTQ rights, according to the LGBTQ advocacy group ILGA-Europe. And Estonia, an economic success story in the region for its impressive digital transition, remains in the lower half of the ranking in legal protections for queer people. Estonia is, for example, the only Baltic country that has so far introduced civil unions for same-sex couples.
Yet, things are slowly changing. Both the Lithuanian and the Latvian parliaments are currently debating similar bills that would introduce civil partnerships for same-sex couples, granting them some — but not all — the rights of marriage.
“We didn’t pay enough attention to human rights in Lithuania before,” said Jurgita Sejonienė, a conservative member of parliament and sponsor of the bill. “We arrive too late with this legislation. They’re people; they deserve the same rights as everyone else”.
After several failed attempts and the bill being watered down — avoiding the term “family” in its wording, for example — she hopes to secure a parliamentary majority in favor of the measure in the next weeks or months. But same-sex marriage is still years away, she said: “When people realize that civil unions don’t affect them in any way, we will change the public opinion step by step. This could be the way of success in Lithuania.”
Mayor Colin Ratushniak of La Ronge, Saskatchewan, left, Vladimir Simonko and Tomas Raskevičius at the Baltic Pride march Sunday in Vilnius, Lithuania.Enrique Anarte Lazo
Tomas Raskevičius, Lithuania’s only openly gay member of parliament, said reluctance to grant LGBTQ people further legal recognition comes mostly from the deep influence of the Catholic Church, as well as the legacy of Soviet occupation. The USSR made same-sex relations a crime in 1933, and it wasn’t until 1993 that Lithuania, already an independent country, decriminalized homosexuality. Latvia and Estonia had done so a year earlier.
Raskevičius was a lawyer and LGBTQ activist who went into politics to create “systemic change,” he said as he prepared to meet a group of young Lithuanians at the parliament and listen to their concerns. He said he will vote for the civil union bill in the hope that it will help ignite more substantive change in the long term.
“I’m not happy with the bill, because it’s full of compromises,” he noted. “The reality of politics is tough. This is just the first step on the road toward equality.”
Latvia could take a similar step in the next days or weeks, with its civil union bill only a vote away from being approved, providing the president doesn’t veto it.
“Until now, politicians didn’t care about this, but things have been changing in the past couple of years,” said Kaspars Zālītis, board member at the Latvian LGBTQ group Mozaika. “We went over a long way for the recognition of families outside the concept of marriage.”
The Baltic Pride march Sunday in Vilnius, Lithuania. Enrique Anarte Lazo
Latvia is, however, the only country that still requires transgender people seeking to legally change their gender to undergo mandatory sterilization, according to the advocacy group Transgender Europe. In 2017, the European Court of Human Rights determined that a sterilization requirement breaches trans people’s right to bodily integrity.
“The wording of the law isn’t very clear, because it speaks about a permanent or semipermanent sex change, so some trans people can find their way around it,” Latvian activist Ana Metra said as she marched along the rainbow parade across Vilnius. “Trans issues are not even part of the public discussion, unlike same-sex civil unions. It feels like trans people have to wait in line until their turn comes.”
That trans rights aren’t even on the table is a view shared by activists across the region. Since 2002, Estonia has allowed trans people to change their legal gender without undergoing sex-reassignment surgery, sterilization or divorcing their partners.
“But if you want to change your legal gender marker, you have to start taking hormones and prove your gender identity to a medical committee,” said Anette Mäletjärv, an activist at the Estonian LGBT Association. Even though the Estonian language’s gender neutrality keeps people from having to come out in many situations — a bigger concern, for example, for many nonbinary Lithuanians, whose language is highly gendered — Mäletjärv said “people still don’t understand.”
In Europe, only a handful of countries, such as Iceland, Malta and Germany, have introduced some sort of nonbinary gender recognition.
“Many of the laws taken in the early years were influenced by the wish to enter the European Union in 2004,” Mäletjärv said. “But now we’re in a sort of pause; there doesn’t seem to be much movement.”
Yet, judging by the growing number of participants taking part in Pride events across the Baltics, civil society, particularly those in younger generations, seems to be slowly embracing LGBTQ rights.
“We are the first generation that did not grow up under Soviet occupation. We grew up in the European Union. We are free to do as we wish. It’s going to get better,” Balčiūnaitė said Saturday as the Pride march speakers on the floats played global queer anthems from Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl” to Gloria Gaynor’s legendary “I Will Survive.”
Russia-Ukraine war looms large
At this year’s Baltic Pride march, there was an additional flag next to the sea of colorful Pride symbols that flooded Vilnius. Protesters from all over the region brought Ukrainian flags and banners calling for an end to Russia’s invasion of its neighbor.
“We’re not surprised about what’s going on in Ukraine. Everybody understood that it was a question of time,” Lithuanian activist Simonko said.
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The Ukrainian bloc of protesters at the Baltic Pride march Sunday in Vilnius, Lithuania.Enrique Anarte Lazo
Mäletjärv agreed, adding, “Ukrainians are not only fighting for their freedom, but they’re also fighting for human rights and liberal values across Europe.”
Thousands of Ukrainians have fled to the Baltics, among them some LGBTQ people. Anna Dovgopol, a lesbian from Kyiv, said she is moved by the support: “This is very comforting, to feel part of the community.” Before the war, she had been a queer rights activist in her home country, but two months ago, she had to leave everything behind.
“This is an inspiration for me. I hope it gets as good as this in Ukraine once the war ends,” she said. A bloc of Ukrainian LGBTQ refugees and allies, as well as other migrants who have been living in Lithuania for longer, held banners calling for LGBTQ equality and peace in their mother tongue. An openly bisexual woman wore a traditional Ukrainian dress while she danced with a rainbow flag.
Anna Dovgopol.Enrique Anarte Lazo
Dovgopol, who plans to go back to Kyiv in the next few days if the situation doesn’t get worse, said she remains optimistic about the future of sexual minorities in her country after the war ends.
“It’s going to be a hard time, but I hope Ukraine takes a more ambitious stance on human rights,” she said.
In the meantime, though, LGBTQ people from the region fear they could be next.
“We know Russia better than many other countries. I was born in the Soviet Union, and lived there until I was 8,” the Latvian activist Zālītis said. All three Baltic countries share borders with Russia. Lithuania and Latvia also border Belarus, a supporter of Russia’s invasion.
“We understand word by word what Putin is saying. He’s out of his mind. No one can anymore predict what he’s going to do,” Zālītis said of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Tomas Raskevičius.Enrique Anarte Lazo
But the shadow of Russia in the Baltics goes far beyond the invasion of Ukraine.
“They have been using their soft power for a very long time”, Lithuanian MP Raskevičius said. “Russian-speaking Lithuanians consume the ‘dirt’ Russia is putting on us, and they have been exporting homophobia very actively in the region.”
All three countries have Russian-speaking minorities who consume news and information from Russian-based outlets.
“It happened the same with Covid-19, when they were spreading misinformation about the virus and the vaccines in the region,” MP Sejonienė said.
Since the war in Ukraine started, tens of Russian TV channels have been banned from broadcasting in the different Baltic countries.
“Some of the right-wing anti-LGBTQ+ abuse has the same wording as it does in Russia and Hungary, and sometimes in Poland, so you can do the math,” said Zālītis, who also blames U.S.-based evangelical groups for promoting homophobia and transphobia across the region.
Queer people in the Baltics worry the spread of anti-LGBTQ narratives could compromise what has been achieved so far, or even halt further progress.
‘We are the future’
Growing up under Lithuania’s “gay propaganda” law, Rimas Prokopovičius, 21, said he never heard a word about people like him.
“No one talked about it in schools. The only thing we heard was the f-word, that’s how I learned about LGBTQ+ people,” he said. “We did talk about LGBTQ+ people with our religion teachers though. Somehow that was OK, because they could just call it a sin.”
Rimas Prokopovičius.Enrique Anarte Lazo
In Vilnius, he can now be openly gay, but he’s reluctant to come out to his parents, who live in a smaller city, until he’s financially independent, he said. Lithuania has the highest rate of LGBTQ people in the E.U. who are “never open” about their sexuality (60 percent), according to a 2020 survey by the E.U.’s Fundamental Rights Agency.
Lithuania’s 2009 “gay propaganda” law hasn’t been implemented since 2014, but it remains on the books.
“If you don’t use it, you need to revoke it,” activist Simonko said. But unlike same-sex civil unions, this is an even tougher conversation, because it involves the kind of LGBTQ representation minors are exposed to, advocates say.
Yet, the “gay propaganda” law is being challenged at the European Court of Human Rights after a fairy-tale book featuring same-sex couples was sold with stickers saying it was not suitable for those younger than 14.
“Of course, the public discussion is going to be very sensitive, because it’s about minors, children,” Raskevičius said. “People still think that having LGBT people around their children will turn them gay.”
After the march, young people from the different Baltic nations gathered at what appeared to be a semi-abandoned industrial building outside Vilnius’ city center. The event branded itself as “queer-feminist,” and the words “WE ARE PROPAGANDA” were projected in rainbow colors onto a wall.
During the event, Sandra, a 21-year-old local, stopped dancing to answer a question about the future of LGBTQ rights in the Baltics.
“We are the future of this country, despite Russia, despite the church, despite all those who try to stop it,” she said.
Tennis legend and LGBTQ rights activist Billie Jean King received France’s highest civilian honor, the Legion of Honor, on Friday.
King, who is attending the French Open, received the award in recognition of her contributions to women’s sports, gender equality, and the rights of LGBTQ people in athletics. She was a part of a short ceremony at the presidential Elysee Palace where French President Emmanuel Macron was in attendance.
King returned to the main clay court at the Paris tennis complex that hosts the French Open for a ceremony celebrating the 50th anniversary of winning the 1972 tournament title.
In 1971, King risked her career to start the Virginia Slims Tour for professional women players. It led to the creation of the Women’s Tennis Association in 1973 as the organizing body for women’s professional tennis.
King has continued since then to be a champion of women, especially transgender women. It wasn’t that long ago that she showed her support for transgender athletes playing with members of their gender.
Back in 2020, King was one of 174 other female athletes who signed an amicus brief in support of transgender girls and women playing sports as their gender identity.
“As women and LGBTQ+ athletes,” says their brief, they “submit that all youth deserve an equal opportunity to participate in sports alongside their peers. Such equal opportunity benefits the entire sports community.”
The brief was filed in Hecox v. Little, a lawsuit brought against the state of Idaho, which passed a law this year banning transgender girls and women from competing in school sports as girls and women.
The law also allows for female student-athletes gender to be “challenged” and requires the athlete to undergo medical exams to “prove” it. A doctor, the law says, will have to examine the athlete’s genitalia, hormones, and DNA and make a determination of their gender, something that Democrats pointed out is not recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Boise State University athlete Lindsay Hecox, who is transgender, and the ACLU filed a federal lawsuit against Idaho Gov. Brad Little (R) to overturn the law.
“There is no place in any sport for discrimination of any kind. I am proud to support all transgender athletes who simply want the access and opportunity to compete in the sport they love,” wrote King. “The global athletic community grows stronger when we welcome and champion all athletes – including LGBTQI+ athletes.”
The UK public is most likely to have feelings of respect and admiration towards LGBTQ+ community, according to new research from Stonewall.
The research – published by the charity on the first day of Pride Month 2022, which also marks 50 years since the first Pride march in the UK – surveyed 2,000 adults across the UK to measure public sentiment towards LGBTQ+ people.
Given a choice of words to describe their feelings toward different sections of the community, the most commonly chosen word was “respect”, followed by “admiration”.
The proportion of respondents who chose the word “respect” was around a third across the board, although people were more likely to say they felt respect for lesbian and gay people (38 per cent and 37 per cent) than bi or trans people (32 per cent and 31 per cent).
Trans people garnered the most admiration from the public (21 per cent), while 19 per cent said they admired gay and lesbian people, and 16 per cent said they admired bisexuals, “which may be related to biphobic stereotypes”, Stonewall noted.
Despite relentless fear-mongering in both the media and the UK governmentabout trans people and trans rights, just four per cent of respondents said they felt “fear” towards trans folk, the same proportion that felt fear towards the rest of the LGBTQ+ community.
Less than 10 per cent of the public chose the word “disgust” when thinking about queer people – nine per cent for gay people, eight per cent for trans and bi people, and just 7 per cent for lesbians – showing that homophobia, biphobia and transphobia are limited to a tiny minority of the UK population.
Veteran LGBTQ+ rights activist Peter Tatchell told PinkNews: “This is terrific news that debunks the bigoted agenda of government ministers, right-wing culture warriors and transphobes like the LGB Alliance.
“They are out of touch with public opinion. There is almost no support for the Conservatives’ regressive policies on LGBTQ+ issues.
“Boris Johnson is deluded. He thinks he can shore up his administration with the support of bigoted voters. But this poll shows his cynical strategy won’t work and may turn many voters against the Tories. It proves that our sustained efforts to educate against prejudice are paying off.
“These statistics confirm the long term trend that anti-LGBTQ+ attitudes are waning fast: down massively from two-thirds of the public in the late 1980s believing that homosexuality is ‘mostly’ or ‘always’ wrong.”
Stonewall CEO Nancy Kelley said in a statement: “Over the last 50 years, every battle for the rights of LGBTQ+ communities has been fought in the court of public opinion as well as in the corridors of power.
“This data reminds us to celebrate how far we’ve come, as well as focus on how far there is to go. Nobody should have to grow up and go through life worrying that the people around them feel disgusted by who they are.
“From the fight to decriminalise men who have sex with men, to the fight for trans people’s rights to be protected and respected, we’ve always relied on allies to stand alongside us.
“That’s why, as we enter Pride Month, we need people to do more than wear a rainbow pin – we need everyone to show they take pride in our community, by stepping up and fighting for a more equal world.”
The Defense Department has officially ended a 1980s-era policy that restricted HIV-positive service members from deploying overseas and being promoted into leadership and management positions.
The updated guidance officially took effect Monday, according to a memo addressed to military leadership from the office of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. A judge struck down the decades-old policy in early April.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema of Eastern Virginia found that the Pentagon’s classification of HIV as a chronic condition did not reflect modern scientific understandings of the virus.
In one of two orders, Brinkema banned the Pentagon from “separating or discharging” asymptomatic HIV-positive service members with undetectable viral loads solely because they have HIV.
The two cases involved three men who sued the military for discrimination based on their HIV statuses. One of the plaintiffs, Army National Guard Sgt. Nick Harrison, who was denied a promotion because of his HIV status, called the Pentagon’s reversal a “generally positive move,” but he said it came only after advocates were forced to resort to “kicking and screaming” in the court system.
“I would like to see them go further,” he said. “At this point, the decision is just basically doing what the judge told them to do. So there’s a lot more space for them to do more.”
Kara Ingelhart, a senior attorney at Lambda Legal, which represented the plaintiffs, said the move “makes perfect sense from a science-medical stigma standpoint but also a policy standpoint.”
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“The fact that the military, [which] is the largest employer in the world, not just the country, will no longer be able to treat, categorically, the service members living with HIV differently from others, it’s huge,” she said.
Since the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 passed, no employer other than the U.S. military has been legally permitted to discriminate against potential employees because they have HIV. But as noted in the memo Monday, the policy amendment does not change current Pentagon policy denying those with HIV from being able to enlist in the military.
According to the memo, current service members who display “laboratory evidence” of HIV infection will continue to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, including access to “appropriate treatment” and medical evaluations of “fitness for continued service in the same manner as a Service member with other chronic or progressive illnesses.”
They will not, however, be discharged solely based on their HIV statuses. Military leaders will convene a working group to “develop proposed standards” for case-by-case evaluations, which will consider how long service members must display undetectable viral loads and be symptom-free, the memo says.
The Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group, has long called for the policy reversal, which it listed among 85 recommendations it sent to the incoming Biden administration in November 2020.
“Research has shown for years now that antiretroviral therapy is highly effective in shrinking the risk of HIV transmission to essentially zero,” David Stacy, the campaign’s government affairs director, said in a news release. “To maintain a discriminatory policy against service members living with HIV without the backing of medical evidence was unsustainable, and we’re glad to see our military leaders recognize that.”
Stacy added that the campaign will continue to “push for the same policy to be applied to those who want to enlist.”
“This week’s announcement was a good first step, but as long as some people are still being discriminated against for no good reason, there’s still work to be done,” he said.
