Mass layoffs across the US Department of Health (HHS) could have “dangerous” effects on the prevention of HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STIs), not-for-profit groups have warned.
More than 10,000 HHS positions have reportedly disappeared since Robert F Kennedy Jr, better-known as RFK Jr, became secretary of health. Among them are positions in the Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/Aids Policy, as well as at the world-famous Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Other key areas affected include jobs in STI and HIV response teams, the dismantling of the PrEP Implementation Branch, and cutbacks on HIV awareness campaigns.
RFK Jr is notorious for his conspiratorial views on healthcare and medical treatment, especially when it comes to LGBTQ+ care. The vaccine sceptic once claimed that chemicals in the atmosphere could be turning children trans.
His latest move, which comes as part of a series of firings and cuts to federal funding by the Trump administration, was branded “irresponsible” by experts and civil rights groups, who warned that it was likely to have dangerous effects.
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) urged the government to reconsider, arguing that the plans would have “devastating consequences” for public health, particularly in the LGBTQ+ community, which have been “historically side-lined” when it comes to healthcare.
The advocacy group warned that actions such as further dismantling PrEP distribution branches would reduce access to vital information and resources about the preventative drug, which, it claimed, could risk “higher HIV rates”.
The cuts to the CDC would potentially cause vital data on HIV treatment to disappear and significantly delay “access to newer, more-effective treatments, particularly for marginalised groups”.
Matthew Rose, a social-justice advocate at HRC, branded the HHS cutbacks “irresponsible and dangerous” and risked more than just people’s jobs.
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“[The layoffs] are a direct blow to the health and well-being of LGBTQ+ communities around the nation,” he said. “Without vital surveillance, prevention programmes that expand access to PrEP, and data collection, we risk undoing years of progress in the fight against HIV and STIs.”
US could lose ability to ‘prevent HIV cases’
Elsewhere, the HIV+ Hepatitis Policy Institute warned that the US risked losing its ability to prevent further cases “in just a couple days”.
The organisation’s executive director, Carl Schmid, told the Washington Blade: “The expertise of the staff, along with their decades of leadership, has now been destroyed and cannot be replaced. We will feel the impacts of these decisions for years to come and it will certainly translate into an increase in new HIV infections and higher medical costs.”
Analysis of international HIV aid cuts in the US, France, the UK, Germany and the Netherlands showed that global cases could increase by 10 million by 2030, while HIV-related deaths might rise by 2.9 million by the start of the next decade.
Researchers at the Burnet Institute, in Australia, have cautioned that global infection rates could rocket if further cuts are made.
Anne Aslett, the chief executive of the Elton John Aids Foundation, said that if HIV funding was cut further, “millions more people will get sick, and health budgets will simply not be able to cope.”
A first-of-its-kind gender euphoria scale study has found, just in time for Trans Day of Visibility (3 March), that an overwhelming majority of trans and non-binary people feel affirmed when allowed to be themselves.
The collaborative study, which helped to create the ground-breaking scale, found that, out of a survey of more than 700 trans and non-binary Australians aged between 16 and 79, 96.6 per cent felt gender euphoria in some capacity.
Researchers from the Swinburne University of Technology, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI), and the University of Melbourne, used the data to create the gender euphoria scale – an innovative way to measure a trans person’s affirmation with their gender identity.
Out of the participants, over 85 per cent of respondents said they feel moderate to strong gender dysphoria, while 62 per cent said they feel it on a weekly or daily basis.
Researchers say gender euphoria is ‘key’ to mental health support. (Getty)
Participants were selected by researchers as part of the TRANSform study – a research project by the Trans Health Research Group led by trans and non-binary researchers.
Using responses on a handful of questions around the experiences of the trans participants, the academic cohort created 26 items that measure a person’s gender euphoria based on three core themes – social affirmation, self-affirmation, and community connection.
Gender euphoria a ‘key component’ of mental health support
“The gender euphoria scale could be used to help clinicians focus on assisting clients to experience positive aspects of gender identity, rather than focusing on eliminating gender dysphoria,” Dr Simone Buzwell, researcher at Swinburne, said of the project.
Speaking to Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) News, Transcend Australia chair Tara Laursen described gender euphoria as the sense of joy and affirmation from feeling “right” about your gender identity.
She added that gender euphoria is a “key component” of mental and emotional health for trans and non-binary people – one that isn’t focused on enough.
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“Research has shown that experiencing gender euphoria is associated with lower levels of psychological distress and suicidal ideation,” she said. “When trans people are affirmed through their gender – whether through supportive relationships, healthcare, and/or self-expression – it fosters resilience, confidence, and a greater sense of belonging.”
Researchers also added that the study could help advocate for policies that help prolong gender euphoria for trans people, rather than just ensuring that the community survives.
Swinburne PhD student and MCRI trans health researcher Charlotte Blacklock said that it is vital for research like this to “broaden understandings of gender diversity” by focusing on the positives rather than the negatives.
Multiple LGBTQ+ choirs have performed in protest after the Kennedy Centre cancelled a performance of the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, DC and the National Symphony Orchestra.
The concert was scheduled for 21 May as part of WorldPride 2025, with the two organisations set to collaborate on a piece titled “A Peacock Among Pigeons” for a Pride concert. In a statement shared on social media last month, the Gay Men’s Chorus said it was “deeply disappointed” by the decision to cancel the event.
In response, eight LGBTQ+ choirs sang “Make Them Hear You” from the musical Ragtime in a defiant performance, which is dubbed as “the unofficial anthem of the Gay Men’s Chorus Washington, DC”.
The video was shared by Manchester Proud Chorus and Oxford Proud Voices last week and featured clips from the Hong Kong Gay Men’s Chorus in China, OutLoud Lincoln, Lincolnshire, QueerArts Rainbow Choir, York, Pink Singers, London, Barberfellas, London, Oxford Proud Voices, Oxfordshire, and Manchester Proud Chorus, Manchester.
The choir wrote: “When we found out the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington DC’s concert at the Kennedy Center was cancelled, without explanation.
“LGBTQ+ choirs around the world decided to join together, singing in solidarity with our friends,” it continued. “We will not be silenced.”
The Washington-based choir said in its February statement: “We believe in the power of music to educate and uplift, to foster love, understanding, and community, and we regret that this opportunity has been taken away.
“While we are saddened by the decision, we are committed to this work and to our mission of raising our voices for equality for all.
“We are grateful for those who have supported us,” the Gay Men’s Chorus continued, “and we will continue to seek spaces where our voices, our stories, and our music can be heard.”
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The Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, DC, will instead perform the pre-planned show during its upcoming Choral Festival as part of WorldPride 2025. “We will continue to advocate for artistic expression that reflects the depth and diversity of our community and country. We will continue to sing and raise our voices for equality,” the statement concluded.
A new study has shown that a number of terrorist groups are targeting LGBTQ+ communities.
The research, published in PS: Political Science & Politics, and led by extremism expert Dr Jared Dmello from the University of Adelaide’s School of Social Sciences, showed that extremist groups with contrasting ideologies overlapped in their hatred of LGBTQ+ people.
“We found a wide variety of extremist groups, which on the surface have nothing in common, are actually engaging in similar attacks on the same marginalised communities, Dmello was quoted as saying by Cosmos magazine.
“Both Islamic extremist groups and far-right terrorist groups actively target the queer community through propaganda and violence.
‘Similar tactics and propaganda used to justify attacks’
“It was quite surprising to me just how much the far-right and Islamic extremists are engaging in similar tactics, messaging and propaganda to justify their attacks against the LGBTQ+ community.
“Sadly, this reflects broader political movements around the world that also target the human rights of this increasingly vulnerable population.”
Talking about the study, he said: “The article even features propaganda created by the Russian government, claiming that NATO-trained mosquitoes in Ukrainian labs were designed to spread a ‘gay virus’ that would selectively infect only ethnic Russians.
“In response, some Russian supermarkets now sell a specialised mosquito repellent designed to protect against this so-called gay virus.”
In light of the findings, Dmello, who was aided in the research by professor Mia Bloom and Dr Sophia Moskalenko, called for further investigation into extremist narratives.
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In 2023, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) warned that the LGBTQ+ community in the US would be at risk of attacks during the 2024 US presidential campaign.
An LGBTQ+ asylum-seeker has reportedly been deported from the US because of his tattoos.
Lindsay Toczylowski, the founder and president of Immigrant Defenders Law Centre (ImmDef), claimed that one of her clients, a Venezuelan tattoo artist, had been deported to El Salvador because of misconceptions regarding their body art, reports The Pride LA.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials reportedly used the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, a measure instigated to deport people threatening the country’s safety. It was last invoked to intern people of Japanese descent during World War II.
Immigration officers reportedly said the tattoos were related to Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan criminal organisation. Toczylowski says they were mistaken.
“Our client’s tattoos are not gang-related,” she said. “They are benign and reflect his work in the arts. ICE submitted photos of his tattoos as ‘evidence,’ despite there being no other proof of any criminal affiliation.”
The client reportedly fled Venezuela last year to escape persecution and made it to the US “seeking protection,” but was held in ICE prisons for months before being deported.
Toczylowski was “horrified” by the development, and worried about what “might happen to him now”.
ImmDef grew concerned after ICE did not bring the man to a court hearing. The government lawyer had no idea why he wasn’t there, it is claimed.
After contacting the Texas facility where her client had been held, Toczylowski was told that he was “no longer there” and had “disappeared from [the] online detainee locator”.
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What is the Alien Enemies Act?
The act grants the president full authority to detain or remove individuals from the U.S. based solely on their nationality or suspected ties to enemy organisations. The law does not require concrete evidence before deportation, raising concerns among legal experts and human rights organisations.
The Trump administration was ordered to stop using the 227-year-old law when district judge James Boasberg issued an emergency order.
Trump has claimed that Tren de Aragua was “perpetrating, attempting and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States.”
However, the judge ruled that the law did not offer a good basis for deportations, saying the terms “invasion” and “predatory incursion” relate to “hostile acts perpetrated by enemy nations”.
The matter is set to reach the Supreme Court, according to the BBC.
A Lesotho LGBTQ+ rights organisation says that it did not receive eight million dollars in funding from the US, despite Donald Trump’s recent claim.
During his presidential address to Congress on Tuesday (4 March) Trump made a claim about Lesotho’s main LGBTQ+ rights organisation, the People’s Matrix.
“Eight million dollars to promote LGBTQI+ in the African nation of Lesotho”, he said of the organisation, adding that “nobody has ever heard” of the country in Southern Africa.
‘We do not have such moneys’
In response, People’s Matrix spokesperson Tampose Mothopeng alleged that Trump’s claim was baseless. They told AFP: “We are literally not receiving grants from the US.
“We have no idea of the allocation of eight million dollars. We do not know who received or is going to receive that money.
“We do not have such moneys or a contract that would even reach a quarter of half of that money.”
As reported by the Daily Mail, the US government’s foreign assistance websiteindicated that around $120 million had been spent on “health and population” programmes in the country last year, including $43.5 million to tackle HIV/AIDS. The site does not list any financial support for LGBTQ+ rights in Lesotho.
Lesotho’s Foreign Affairs Minister Lejone Mpotjoane also weighed in on the president’s comments, saying it was “shocking” to hear the president “refer to another sovereign state in that manner.”
“To my surprise, ‘the country that nobody has heard of’ is the country where the U.S. has a permanent mission,” Mpotjoane told AFP. “Lesotho is a member of the UN and of a number of other international bodies. And the U.S. has an embassy here and [there are] a number of U.S. organizations we’ve accommodated here in Maseru.”
USAID has been under heavy attack since Trump’s inauguration. In February, Trump attacked the aid agency’s leadership saying they were a “bunch of radical lunatics.” Elon Musk also took to X to describe the agency as “evil” and a “viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America.”
Musk also tweeted a baseless claim that USAID “funded bioweapon research, including COVID-19, that killed millions of people.”
During his two hour Congress address on Tuesday, Trump also stood by a series of anti-trans executive orders, ranted about “transgender mice,” and faced a protest staged by Democrats, who waved “Musk Steals” and “Save Medicaid” signs as he spoke before walking out mid-speech in a bid to protest his actions.
The killing of the ‘world’s first out gay imam’ Muhsin Hendricks has sent shockwaves across the world, particularly among LGBTQ+ Muslims.
Hendricks was killed in an execution-style hit in broad daylight on Saturday morning (15 February) after the car he was travelling in, near the coastal city of Gqeberha in the country’s Eastern Cape province, was ambushed. He was 57.
A hooded figure was captured on CCTV getting out of a pick-up truck that had blocked Hendricks’ vehicle before firing shots through the window.
There have been no arrests but deputy justice minister Andries Nel has said the authorities are “hot on the heels” of the suspects. While the exact motive for the killing remains unclear, the incident has left LGBTQ+ Muslims fearful.
Speaking to PinkNews about the killing of the South African imam, UK-based queer Muslim Al asked if someone like Hendricks, who was known around the world, can be killed out in the open, then “what about the rest of us?”
Al went on to say: “People have framed this as an issue that occurs in other spaces, not in the UK, [but] too often queer Muslims in the UK are suffering death threats, abuse, physical violence [and] torture at the hands of family and the greater community.
“Young queer Muslims grow up with this fear – and even as we grow into old age we still live with this fear – that one day something like this could happen to us. When it’s happened to the first openly queer Imam, it has been a realisation that it can happen to any of us.”
Imam Muhsin Hendricks was shot dead when the car he was travelling in was ambushed. (RODGER BOSCH/AFP via Getty Images)
A trailblazer in religiously conservative circles, Hendricks was dubbed the world’s first openly gay imam, after he came out in the 90s.
He went on to create The Inner Circle, later known as Al-Fitrah Foundation, which worked to support LGBTQ+ Muslims reconciling their faith and identities and sought to educate other imams, helping them develop an inclusive understanding of gender and sexuality in Islam.
“A lot of unlearning needs to be done [but] it is amazing what the imams come up with,” he said in 2020. “They bring research and context and match it with the religious text, and there are these ‘aha!’ moments.”
Al, a member of the team at Imaan, the UK’s leading LGBTQ+ Muslim charity, said Hendricks was a personal friend and his death had come as a “deep shock” to the community, leaving some feeling the “need to go back in the closet”.
He added: “[Members of the community] feel they need to conform. The trauma that comes with that is so problematic because the work of people like Muhsin Hendricks, in particular, [allowed] people to live [as] their authentic selves.
“Nobody should be left outside their family, community or faith group, and divinity should not be exclusive to one group. Everybody should have access to that, all across the UK and globally.”
“We feel silenced, our words are not doing justice to our feelings.”
In the wake of Hendricks’ death, Imaan is directly supporting the LGBTQ+ community by continuing its many services therapy sessions, in-person and online meet-ups and support groups.
Hendricks’ killing bore all the hallmarks of a hit. (Facebook/ Muhsin Hendricks)
Two leading Muslim organisations in South Africa, the Muslim Judicial Council (MJC) and the United Ulama Council of South Africa (UUCSA), condemned the killing but continue to denounce his teachings on gender and sexuality in Islam, reflecting the view held by many that the Quran prohibits same-sex relationships.
It was initially reported that Hendricks was shot after performing a lesbian wedding ceremony, but his Al-Ghurbaah Foundation released a statementrevealing that he was in Gqeberha to officiate two interfaith heterosexual marriages.
As the BBC’s Johannesburg-based reporter Khanyisile Ngcobo noted, traditional imams in South Africa rarely perform marriages between a Muslim and non-Muslim couple. It is another way Hendricks was at odds with more conservative religious leaders.
Al said the responses of the MJC and UUCSA were the “most hopeful” they have seen among a wave of hatred from within, and outside, the Muslim community. He noted that there had been no similar messages from Islamic organisations in the UK.
“I’d love to see the most major mosques and institutions here talking about this and really taking ownership of how queer Muslims are rejected and not accepted in those spaces, and what they’re going to do to make sure they stop alienating us,” Al said.
“[The] less educated [are] still mocking the cause and mocking his death. This is painful to us.”
Members of Imaan at a EuroPride parade. (Gideon Mendel/Corbis via Getty)
At the time, non-binary practising Muslim Ferhan Khan said the event challenged the idea that Islam was “inherently queer-phobic”, adding: “This is an assumption that’s not necessarily based on fact because if you read the parts of the Quran that supposedly condemn homosexuality, it’s not clear cut.
“For a lot of queer Muslims, this is a difficult one because they might want to retain their faith. They might want to simply be in a space where they are validated for being both queer and Muslim, and that’s what Imaan is doing: serving up a space where you can be… validated for that choice.”
Just over a decade ago, in 2014, TIME magazine declared on its front cover that we were at the “The Transgender Tipping Point“.
The cover itself was simple, a full body shot of actress Laverne Cox – who was then playing Sophia Burset on Netflix game-changer Orange Is the New Black – and a byline for writer Katy Steinmetz, who said in the piece that trans rights would be the next civil rights frontier.
“We are in a place now,” Cox told the magazine at the time, “where more and more trans people want to come forward and say, ‘This is who I am.’ And more trans people are willing to tell their stories. More of us are living visibly and pursuing our dreams visibly, so people can say, ‘Oh yeah, I know someone who is trans.’ When people have points of reference that are humanising, that demystifies difference.”
“The Transgender Tipping Point” was a phrase, Jude Ellison S. Doyle noted for Xtra Magazine on the cover’s 10th anniversary, that quickly became ubiquitous across the media, with – often more than not cis – academics and cultural commentators alike pointing to the piece as an example of a paradigm shift on trans visibility and representation in public life.
But, as many more have since pointed out, the catch-all-ness of the phrase is oversimplified and ignores the intersectional struggles and delicate nuances of trans people’s lives that go far beyond ‘being visible’. It also became somewhat of an ironic joke between trans folks who had to wake up the day after that edition of TIME hit the shelves go about their lives, this supposed-watershed moment of greater visibility not helping them pay their bills, access gender-affirming care or walk through the streets without fear.
“If trans people have ‘tipped’ in any direction, it’s backward,” Doyle wrote.
For activist Raquel Willis, co-founder of the Gender Liberation Movementalongside Eliel Cruz, the fight for trans rights and universal bodily autonomy has to move past the visibility era to be truly impactful.
“This idea of simply using visibility as a means to bring about the kind of culture and society that’s going to receive trans folks with the respects that we deserve is over,” she told PinkNews, “and so we have to be thinking in new ways about how to protect ourselves, our voices, our histories and our brilliance without relying on a lot of the institutions that have really pushed the visibility vehicle.”
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Speaking exclusively with PinkNews, Willis and Cruz discussed the organisation, intersectionality and the need for radical defiance in a second Trump presidency.
Activists with the Gender Liberation Movement protest in the House Cannon building, including Chelsea Manning (bottom right) and Racquel Willis (bottom left), on December 5, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Maansi Srivastava for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
The Gender Liberation Movement (GLM) describes itself as an “emergent and innovative grassroots and volunteer-run national collective that builds direct action, media, and policy interventions centering bodily autonomy, self-determination, the pursuit of fulfilment, and collectivism in the face of gender-based sociopolitical threats”.
Mace, a Republican representative from South Carolina, admitted her proposal to ban trans folks from spaces such as bathrooms and changing rooms on Capitol Hill which match their gender was put forth solely in response to Democrat Sarah McBride joining Congress as the first out trans person.
McBride condemned the move as a “blatant attempt from right-wing extremists to distract from the fact that they have no real solutions to what Americans are facing”.
“Half of us went in understanding that we were facing arrest in order to really send a message, particularly because some elected leaders, even some people potentially in the movement spaces, queer people, might see bathrooms as a side issue and not important,” Cruz said.
“But we see bathrooms as the inroad for a larger anti-trans project to eliminate trans people from public spaces and so this was important for us to say, ‘this is the line’ and we’re not allowing this to move forward without a response.”
In a bathroom that was located close to Mace’s office, the protesters held a banner that read “flush bathroom bigotry” and chanted “Speaker Johnson, Nancy Mace, our gender is no debate” and “Democrats, grow a spine! Trans rights are on the line!”, calling out the Dems lacklustre criticism of Mace’s proposal in the wake of their party’s defeat to Donald Trump’s MAGA 2.0 campaign.
“It was really disappointing to see the lack of fight that […] Sarah McBride put forth with these attacks – understanding that she is coming into a new role in a historic way – but also understanding at some point we have to get beyond this idea of career politicians saving us,” Willis said.
“Let’s just be clear, I know for me, I would never be able to – as a Black trans woman – simply say that bathroom access is a ‘distraction’. I come from folks who experienced acutely Jim Crow in the US South and so for me, all of these attacks on our access to public spaces and navigating societies is rooted in a long fight for collective liberation within this country.”
Willis added she was concerned by the lack of support McBride was given by leading Democrats and “what kind of signal that sends to trans youth who are already fearful of the incoming Trump administration”.
A transgender rights supporter takes part in a rally outside of the U.S. Supreme Court as the court hears arguments in the US v. Skrmetti a case about Tennessee’s law banning gender-affirming care for minors and if it violates the Constitution’s equal protection guarantee on December 04, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Prior to this moment of “radical defiance” – the phrase Willis uses to describe what is needed of protest and civil disobedience at this time – GLM had been fighting for the right to bodily autonomy for trans and cis folks alike; namely access to abortion and gender-affirming care. Having worked previously with those that organised the Brooklyn Liberation March and national Women’s March, in September the group led the first-ever Gender Liberation March in Washington D.C. and at the start of this year launched as an official national organisation to further its work.
Cruz said those involved were “collective” of “queer and trans creatives from nonprofit and advocacy world, as well as folks who are in the art world and fashion world”.
“We really started to think about what was needed in terms of bringing together a larger collective of folks fighting around bodily autonomy and self determination,” Willis said of formalising the organisation, “particularly thinking about the attacks on abortion access and the attacks on access to gender affirming care. That kind of led to this plan for our march in September and from there we realised that we needed this work to continue going on and needed to continue to be the glue between these various movements.”
For many, access to abortion and gender affirming care might be thought of as different social issues impacting distinctly different groups of people; things to campaign for separately but not together. This line of thinking is similar to how trans rights and women’s rights more widely are often framed by the right-wing press as in direct contrast with one another when instead they are not opposites sides of a coin but rather intricately intertwined.
New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez noted this in response to Mace’s bathroom ban, telling reporters in November that such restrictions endanger “all women and girls” because “people are going to want to check their private parts in suspecting who is trans and who is cis”.
“The idea that Nancy Mace wants little girls and women to drop trou in front of, who, an investigator, because she wants to suspect and point fingers at who she thinks is trans is disgusting. It is disgusting. And frankly, all it does is allow these Republicans to go around and bully any woman who isn’t wearing a skirt because they think she might not look woman enough,” AOC added.
The intersectionality between the two issues hence sits at the very core of the GLM’s mission because “many of the same forces and entities that are targeting access to abortion are also targeting access to gender affirming care”, Willis said.
Cruz explained: “In the United States, legal precedents are being used to try to pass one another. So these connections are already there in terms […] of those who are making these attacks and for us it was important to marry the different groups of people that people may not necessarily talk about in the same ways.
“Really bringing those connections together in a very intentional way.”
People gather outside the Lincoln Memorial for a People’s March rally in Washington, D.C., United States, on January 18, 2025. (Photo by Nathan Morris/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Ahead of Trump’s return to the White House, Cruz said GLM has been having a number of internal conversations about what form their work will take but it is about “being a little bit nimble and prepared for preparing for the worst, and doing some safety planning and contingency planning”.
Cruz went on to say whilst “Trump is awful” and “put us through it the first four years” the Democrats have “not been the best” either, noting the fact Roe vs Wade fell under a Dem administration and just before Christmas president Joe Biden signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025 which contained an anti-trans healthcare clause for children of members of the armed services.
“There’s a lot of catastrophising that we can think about under Trump and without remembering that we’ve kind of already been dealing with a lot, even underneath the Dem administration,” Cruz said.
“We really to lean on our history and our elders. We have been through really horrific eras before and we have gone through it. Our community knows how to build together and come together and keep each other safe.
“So [we] can look at the reality of what’s to come and also remember who we are and our roots and our background, and know that we will get through it together whatever may come.”
Willis echoed this, noting that “before you could simply be as open about who who you are and your identity” leaning on mutual aid networks was a vital resource.
“We have always had organisations, particularly on the grassroots local level, that have fed and housed and closed and safeguarded our people,” she explained.
“Somewhere along the way, we forgot that those entities are the lifeblood of our movement.
“So, it’s remembering that and also being willing to heal some of those past fissures between various parts of our movements and communities and embrace the fact that we’re going to need unlikely accomplices moving forward so we have to be letting go of some of this capitalistic ego around what work a group may own versus another.
France is set to introduce lessons in gender equality and consent into the curriculum for children as young as four years old in both public and private schools.
French Education Minister Elisabeth Borne is launching a new plan to transform the sex education syllabus in schools in a bid to tackle sexual violence and violence against women and girls.
The former prime minister told broadcaster France Inter: “Education about love, about relationships and sexuality is absolutely essential.”
The new syllabus is set to be rolled out after the summer holidays and will implement three sex education sessions per year for primary, middle and secondary schools.
It will include age-appropriate discussions around gender identity and biological sex for children as young as four, as per Hear Her Stories. The outlet reports that four-year-olds will be learning “the scientific terms for genitalia and explore concepts of equality and consent”.
Borne confirmed that the programme’s content would be “adjusted to the age and maturity of pupils” though, as they will include “role-play scenarios, such as asking, ‘Can I hold your hand?’ to teach that it’s acceptable to say ‘no’.”
“The programme is very careful to provide quality information that is adapted to a pupil’s age,” Borne added.
For children aged 13, they will be introduced to the “distinctions between biological sex, gender, and sexual orientation,” to develop a greater understanding of such concepts.
By age 14, students will explore “the complex reality of sexuality, discussing its facets of pleasure, love and reproduction”. By 16 years of age, lessons will be held around “biological differences between men and women” and how that doesn’t affect the self-expression, behaviour and roles people take.
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The new programme mentions that sex education in school will not “take the place of pupils’ parents and families”, and has been submitted for approval to France’s Higher Education Council.
A memorial for LGBTQ+ veterans is to be built at the National Arboretum in Staffordshire, 25 years after the ban on queer service personnel was lifted in the UK.
The UK’s first memorial dedicated to LGBTQ+ veterans, which looks like a crumpled letter made of bronze, is created from words taken from evidence from military service members who were affected by the ban.
The memorial is being funded by a £350,000 ($428,000) grant from the Office for Veterans’ Affairs within the Ministry of Defence, with the construction overseen by LGBTQ+ military charity Fighting With Pride.
Ed Hall, the non-executive chairman of Fighting With Pride, said: “The trustees are delighted that we have such a strong winner for the LGBT+ armed forces community memorial.
“It’s been incredibly important to all of us at Fighting With Pride that we held a rigorous creative process to find the right design that will provide a place of peace and reflection for the LGBT+ armed forces family.”
Minister for veterans’ affairs Alistair Carns denounced the defunct ban as shameful.
“When I joined the Royal Marines in 1999, this abhorrent ban on homosexuality was still in place,” he said. “A quarter of a century later, we turn a page on that shameful chapter in our national story.”
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The National Arboretum in Staffordshire. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)
LGBTQ+ veterans who were dismissed or discharged because of their sexual orientation or gender identity will receive £50,000 ($61,000). Those who endured harassment or ill-treatment in addition will get an extra £20,000 (close to $25,000).
When the compensation was announced, defence secretary John Healey said: “The historic treatment of LGBT veterans was a moral stain on our nation. Our government is determined to right the wrongs of the past and recognise the hurt that too many endured.”
