An unofficial Atlanta Pride party ended in tragedy as a man lost consciousness and died.
The man died while attending a party at BJ Roosters, a gay bar on Cheshire Bridge Road, that stretched into the early hours of Sunday morning (October 11).
He was pronounced dead 8am at Piedmont Hospital, Atlanta Police told theWXIA-TV network.
After consuming ecstasy, the man was found in the club’s basement unconscious. The force found no signs of foul play, but an investigation is ongoing.
While a party-goer told the Advocate that the event was “packed” and “overcapacity at times”, Atlanta Pride organisers sought to stress that the club night was not an official Pride event, and that it had only approved virtual events.
Witness laments ‘tragic’ death of man at unofficial Atlanta Pride party.
The industrial bar heaved with party-goers, footage of the event shared on social media showed, for Xion, a gay circuit party thrown by Ga Boy Events.
The group had organised a roster of unofficial events during the Atlanta Pride weekend, including one at a shopping mall and another at District Atlanta – a club which held a made headlines after an August event which saw similarly packed scenes.
A Xion attendee told the Advocate that pandemic guidelines were not enforced by business owners or staffers at the event. He claimed the victim – a Black man in his mid to late 30s – fell to the ground at around 6:30am.
There were no emergency medical technicians at Xion, the witness claimed, with it taking more than 30 minutes for first-responders to arrive to the scene. “And I’m being generous,” he said.
Bar staff seemed “unprepared” to handle the medical emergency and it took some time for the music to be switched off. “It was tragic,” the witness added.
“I’ve been to parties all over the world, I have never been to one without EMTs. In my opinion, this could have been avoided.”
The death of the victim, who has not yet been named, came as footage of the gathering prompted sharp criticism from social media users.
At least 13 member states if the United Nations still criminalise trans people, while others weaponise morality laws to persecute the community, a report published Wednesday (30 September) found.
Nigeria, Oman and Lebanon were ranked by LGBT+ rights group ILGA World as holding among the world’s most brutal transphobic legislation.
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“It is a difficult time for trans communities globally,” said ILGA World Trans Steering Committee chair Jabu Pereira in the Trans Legal Mapping Report, which assessed gender law across the 143 UN member states and 19 other jurisdictions.
The report warned: “In every region of the world where we have been documenting legal gender recognition, regressions have occurred.”
As many member states of the United Nations make leaps in trans rights, others continue to criminalise.
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The report’s authors reflected on the patchwork of progress the world has seen when it comes to trans rights.
As much as Britain and Hungary, among many more, have seen trans rights stalled or whittled away, others, such as Belgium and France, have seen leaps made. Particular leaps in non-binary rights were also recorded in the last two years.
While the following member states of the United Nations, they found, continue to criminalise trans people: Brunei, the Gambia, Indonesia, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Malawi, Malaysia, Nigeria, Oman, South Sudan, Tonga and the United Arab Emirates.
Moreover, researchers said that the criminalisation of trans people can happen through “seemingly innocuous laws, such as those related to public spaces”.
From laws over loitering to “public nuisances”, these policies police trans people and constrict how they can live their lives – “just as damaging”, the researchers said.
“Some of the more shining nations when it comes to legal gender recognition are based in the global south, such as Argentina,” Pereira said, referring to how the country introduced self-identification for trans people changing the gender markers on official documents in 2012.
‘Uncertainty, backlash and attacks’: The last two years of trans rights have been some of the hardest.
Since 2018, they stressed, trans rights have been “marked by uncertainty, backlash and attacks”.https://lockerdome.com/lad/13296932562903654?pubid=ld-5883-3439&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pinknews.co.uk&rid=www.pinknews.co.uk&width=572
“Gender ideology, in the form of conservative positioning around the fixity of ‘biological’ sex, the emergence [of] trans exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) and right-wing politicians positing LGBT rights against national identities, have all had detrimental effects on our communities.”
A great toll on trans rights indeed. Researchers contrasted trans rights organisations, many running on threadbare budgets, to well-funded and well-resourced anti-trans groups.
And the level of anti-trans vitriol in Britain, the researchers said, has even been “exhorted to many of the other Commonwealth countries”.
Across three years, Britain has seen proposed reforms to Gender Recognition Act – the bedrock of gender recognition law – dogged by transphobic media coverage and powerful lobbying groups.
As much as countless polls have shown such views do not represent Britons as a whole, the transphobic playbook of inflamed, freewheeling misinformation worked. The reforms were scrapped by ministers this month.
Through Britain’s trans rights remained stymied, the researchers shone a light on the array of countries and states which have, since 2017, moved to a de-medicalised self-ID model.
“Australia (more states), Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, France, Greece, Luxembourg, and Portugal,” they said. All of which, surprise surprise, are fairing far better for doing so.
A New Jersey man was charged for detonating an explosive device at a lesbian-owned gym long considered by locals as a “safe haven” for LGBT+ people.
Dwayne A Vandergrift Jr, 35, was charged by federal authorities on September 4 for not only causing devastating damage to the Gloucester City gym, but for unlawful possession of two destructive devices and unlawful possession of a short-barrelled rifle, according to a press release from the US Attorney’s Office for New Jersey.
At around 4am on August 26, Vandergrift tacked the explosive device on the front door of GCity Crossfit Gym, according to surveillance footage.
Sprinting off, the resulting explosion shattered the glass and desolated the door.
An LGBT+ Pride flag decorating it on lithely hanging on the hinges, prompting the gym’s owners as well as the local community to suspect the incident was a hate crime.
LGBT+ gym allegedly bombed by man who searched how to produce makeshift explosives only days before the attack.
Owned by Jenai Gonzales and her wife Ann Panarello, the gym is a “known safe-haven in the area for LGBT+ youth” and many of its personal trainers and staffers are queer, athletic apparel Lifting Culture owner Steven Vitale wrote on his website.
As much as the gym’s owners suspect the attack was motivated by queerphobia, the Attorney’s Office does not specify a motive.
Federal and local law enforcement officers combed Vandergrift’s home on 28 August, finding inside bomb-making materials as well as several weapons, tactical vests, ammunition and around 85 marijuana plants.
Investigators tapped his home computer to find that he had in recent days searched for ways to jerry-rig explosives, including pipe and pressure cooker bombs. He was arrested later that day and is presently in custody.
Vandergrift faces a total prison term of at 20 years as well as a maximum fine of $250,000.
Though the attack left the local LGBT+ community shaken, Vitale wrote: “G-City Crossfit had, and will continue to have, a large gay Pride flag displayed prominently in their front door.”
Andrew Gillum, former rising star of the Democratic Party, said he “cried every day” after being found in a Florida hotel room with a gay escort.
A former Tallahassee mayor who ran for Florida governor in 2018, Gillum’s political career plummeted in March when he was found in a Miami Beach hotel room with a sex worker who had reportedly overdosed on crystal meth.Read More
Now, Gillum and his wife are set to appear on chat show Tamron Hall for his first interview since coming out of rehab, one that the eponymous host said is “one of the most difficult” in her 27-year career as a journalist.
“Everybody believes the absolute worst about that day,” Gillum reflected in the pre-recorded interview, due to air Monday (14 September). “At this stage, I don’t have anything else to conceal.
“I literally got broken down to my most bare place, to the place where I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to live, not because of what I had done, but because of everything that was being said about me.”
Andrew Gillum interview was ‘heartbreaking’ says Tamron Hall.
Tamron Hall said her interview with Andrew Gillum interview was “intense, and at moments it was heartbreaking, upsetting and it was disorienting”.
“I’m only there because they’ve agreed, but I still felt like I was prying,” Hall, 49, told PEOPLE magazine.
“They agreed to talk with me, but as a journalist, there’s moments where you wonder: How far are we really supposed to go?”
An outpouring of first responders hit the Mondrian South Beach hotel midnight on March 13, where officers found Gillum “inebriated” and vomiting in the bathroom, according to a police report.
Paramedics treated a man found struggling to breathe, who police suspected had overdosed on crystal meth. He was later identified as Travis Dyson, an escort through the website Rent Men.
Gillium, 41, checked into rehab for alcoholism and depression two days after the incident – a stunning and swift fall for the promising politician once considered a potential kingmaker in the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, so sought after was his endorsement.
A trans sex worker was violently stabbed by her client in São Paulo, Brazil, last Wednesday (September 2) and her body carelessly thrown out of a 7th-floor balcony.
Chiara Duarte, 27, was found dead with multiple stab wounds in Rua Rangel Pestana in the downtown Sé neighbourhood in the early morning, police said.
The suspect, they said, met Duarte and invited her to his apartment. But the night curdled into violence after she asked for payment, sparking a heated argument in which he stabbed her several times with a knife, local mediareported. A merchant, Jeferson Pereira, 18, was arrested by authorities charged with manslaughter after being found with two knives.
Duarte, who both lived at and volunteered with Casa Florescer II, a shelter for trans people, was remembered by her loved ones as simply someone who wanted to be “happy”.
“It was prejudice, it was a hate crime, transphobia,” her brother, Luan, toldGlobo News.
Mother of slain trans woman mourns of the loss of her ‘beautiful’ daughter.
Fala Mãe Londrina, a grassroots network for the mothers of LGBT+ people in Londrina, explained in a Facebook statement published September 4 that Duarte’s mother, who was unnamed, phoned up the shelter after learning of her daughter’s death.
“I want to make a wish for my daughter,” she told the shelter staffers, “my daughter is leaving with lipstick.
“She’s wearing a pink onesie and skirt. She looks beautiful. Needs lipstick, though.”
During Duarte’s funeral at São Luis Cemetery, the statement said, the victim’s mother reflected: “She looks beautiful, right?
“Look girl how beautiful she looks. Isn’t my daughter beautiful?”
Officers from Brazil’s state police agency Polícia Militar arrested Pereira after a witness said they saw him enter the apartment complex at the time of the killing.
In a nation now seemingly inured to homophobia, anti-LGBT+ violence has increased in Brazil in recent years, LGBT+ watchdogs warn. Last year, Brazil was found to be the deadliest country for trans people, with some tallies suggesting that a trans person dies almost every day in a nation of 200 million.
For the attendees of a circuit party in Georgia, coronavirus was the last thing on their minds.
Across digital flyers and social media posts, the organisers of Peach Party Atlanta 2020 urged attendees to come wearing face coverings and practice social distancing.
Yet, as much as the four-day festival was billed as a dialled-down affair, video footage taken at the sold-out circuit parties showed a vastly different story.
At the August 28 “Peach Party Tea Dance” held at Atanta LGBT+ club Heretic, scores of partygoers stuffed into the 1,000 square foot-wide space across three patios, fans occasionally dotting the dancefloor.
Despite signs instructing partygoers to maintain a distance as well as wear masks, the dance area was rammed with countless men pressed up against one another, and barely anyone was wearing a mask.
Similar scenes took place at a second Peach Party event held in Heretic the following night, as well as another event at District Atlanta on August 30, according to social media videos uploaded by attendees.
Just one event was held outdoors – the other six were in nightclubs, spaces considered by health experts as petri dishes for the coronavirus.
Scenes of shirtless, maskless men at gay circuit party spark fury online.
For nine years, Peach Party has been a highlight of the Georgia circuit party calendar and a crucial way for the city’s LGBT+ community to blow off steam.
The beloved festival, typically held in June, was thrown into jeopardy as the coronavirus began to gnaw on nearly every facet of modern life and was delayed earlier this year.
Peach Party announced it would be running in August, with its website saying it has “scaled all events back to a small group instead of the normal party”, and noted that masks were “required”.
Heretic’s general manager Alan Collins beamed with pride in an August 13 Facebook post as he showed off a revamped patio space outside the club, now splashed with the colours of the Pride flag, prepping for the outdoor party.
He urged club-goers to come wearing masks and said that staffers could provide free masks as needed.
Moreover, Collins said, Heretic would operate at 35 per cent capacity and had installed hand sanitiser stations, in line with the Georgia Department of Health’s guidelines for bars operating amid the pandemic.
The code states that bars must “prevent activities that enable close human contact”, and that, for temporary outdoor events in which more than 50 people are attending, social distancing must be enforced.
“If you are sick or think you may have been exposed to COVID-19, PLEASE STAY HOME,” Collins added.
As images of the Peach Party crowds radiated online, some Facebook users branded those in attendance as “reckless”, while others simply resigned to saying: “No one cares anymore.”
At the time of writing, there have been at least 256,544 cases and 5,604 deaths in Georgia since the beginning of the pandemic, according to a New York Times database. More than 187,000 people have died across the US.
PinkNews contacted Peach Party Atlanta, Heretic and District for comment.
The bodies of two trans women and their partner were found in two wells in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu on Friday morning (August 21), their murders having taken place “a few weeks ago”.
In the Palayankottai neighbourhood of Tirunelveli, the bodies of Anushka, 35, Bhavani, 34 and their partner Murugan, 38, were found packed into bags and stuffed into two wells near a bypass, police said.
The three lived in Narasinganallur near Suthamalli, according to friends who knew the trio well. They were part of a thriving trans community in the area and hoped to adopt a child.
Police have arrested three people, naming one suspect as Rishikesh, a Salem local who lives with a trans woman in Tirunelveli and knew Anushka personally.
According to officials, he had offered to help the trio adopt a child for 500,000 rupees (£5,000).
“After receiving the money, Rishikesh started avoiding [Muragan],” a police spokesperson said.
Desperation quickly mingled with paranoia, as Murugan began messaging Rishikesh as well Rishikesh’s sister on social media. The situation was intensified when Anushka demanded the money back, according to The New Indian Express.
Alarms were raised by friends after attempts to contact Anushka and Bhavani were met with silence.
Police said Rishikesh murdered Anushka first.
“With the help of [two] friends, Rishikesh dumped her body in a well near Palayamkottai,” they explained.
He later killed Bhavani and Murugan following a dispute over a friend of Rishikesh’s, police alleged.
“He put their bodies in sacks and dumped them in a nearby well, the murders occurred a few weeks ago.”
The bodies of the three victims were sent to the Tirunelveli Medical College hospital for postmortem examination on Friday. All three victims showed signs of strangulation, authorities said.
Footage which has alarmed LGBT+ activists in northern Belgium shows a group of boys barricading a street in broad daylight before pinning their victim down, hurling homophobic insults and violently punching them.
A week on since the video, of an attack in Leuven, went viral on Twitter, an investigation by Het Laatste Nieuws found that the perpetrators are tied to a gang called “Criminal Justice” who “hunt” queer people while proudly broadcasting their attacks onto social media.
Via Telegram, the group reportedly chat to around 600 other members who revel in seeing LGBT+ people being pummelled live on camera, chat logs seen by the outlet showed, with the 12 August clip being just one of a horrid array of incidents of violence.
Victim of anti-LGBT+ Belgium gang: ‘I had to get on my knees and apologise.’
Reporters found that the Telegram group is clogged with messages glorifying violently attacking LGBT+ people, while others actively search online for new victims. One message read: “Gays must be slaughtered.”
Around 400 photographs and video recordings are on the chat, the outlet said, including the Leuven attack, and allegedly include incidents in Blankenberge, Antwerp and Roeselare.
Attackers said they were willing to use knives and firearms, the chat logs showed, while testimonies from victims have described the Criminal Justice playbook as once of humiliation and psychological abuse.
One victim told HetLaatste Nieuws that in Groenplaats, Antwerp, he and a friend were targeted by the group. “A little further down the road from us, two men were playing loud music,” he said.
“When we left, they suddenly started to chase us. And a little later I was threatened via Instagram.
“I agreed to talk to them, which I shouldn’t have done. They threatened me badly.
“I had to get on my knees and apologise. What if I hadn’t? Then I would have been beaten badly.”
More chat records show that those involved in the Leuven attack – where the perpetrators shouted the Moroccon anti-gay slur “zemmel” at the victim – believed the victims involved were gay.
Trans prisoners in a New York county were delivered a stunning victory Wednesday (August 5) when a roster of LGBT+ activist organisations secured them a vital but simple right: To be incarcerated as the correct gender.
The landmark legal settlement was described by activists as having secured some of the most “robust policies in the country” to better protect trans folk in custody in the western Steuben County.
The case was brought forward after 43-year-old trans military veteran Jena Faith was sentenced to a month in Steuben County Jail in 2019. While initially kept in the women’s division of the jail, she was later transferred to the men’s where she experienced weeks of verbal and physical humiliation and abuse from inmates and guards alike.
Trans woman tossed in men’s jail: ‘No one should ever be subjected to the cruelty and harassment I endured.’
Faith filed a lawsuit with the TLDEF after her rattling experience in a men’s facility. Trapped in the tight, cramped cells with male prisoners, she detailed in a report to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) how inmates harassed her, guards misgendered her, and told of how she was denied hormone therapy.
As a result of the settlement, the county will now commit itself to a package of policy changes designed to treat trans, non-binary, gender non-conforming and intersex folk with dignity and respect.
These range from housing inmates in line with their gender identities and training prison staff to respect inmates’ pronouns to giving access to clothing, toiletry and grooming products and appropriate medical care.
Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund (TLDEF) and the New York Civil Liberties Union hope that the new policies will offer a blueprint for other prisons across the state and the US.
“No one should ever be subjected to the cruelty and harassment I endured.
“Everyone housed in detention facilities deserves to be treated with dignity and respect, including transgender people. I hope my case will help others, not only in Steuben County, but also across New York and beyond.”
Efforts by the Obama administration to ensure trans convicts were protected from sexual abuse and assault were unwound by president Donald Trump in 2018.