Gay Ugandans are fleeing the country as the government’s Anti-Homosexuality Act moves closer to becoming law.
“The government and the people of Uganda are against our existence,” said Mbajjwe Nimiro Wilson, a 24-year-old refugee now living in a shelter in neighboring Kenya.
Safehouses are expected to be closed with passage of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill.
Before escaping with just a backpack of belongings, Wilson was cornered by a hostile crowd on the street as he tried to buy groceries.
“They kept saying, ‘We will hunt you. You gays should be killed. We will slaughter you,’” he told The New York Times. “There was no option but to leave.”
Uganda’s latest Kill the Gays law is having its intended effect.
“It is good that you rejected the pressure from the imperials,” Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said on Thursday, as he sent the country’s Anti-Homosexuality Act back to Parliament for additional consideration before he signs it.
The Biden administration calls the latest “Kill the Gays” bill “one of the most extreme” anti-LGBTQ+ measures anywhere in the world. The proposal mandates life in prison for anyone convicted of engaging in homosexual sex, among other draconian provisions.
Museveni congratulated lawmakers who stood up to “international pressure and shielded Uganda’s moral fabric during the passing of the bill.”
The president had in mind liberal Western influences whom he and others in the East African nation have accused of promoting homosexuality in the country and throughout Africa.
But while anti-LGBTQ+ allies have rejected pressure from the U.S., the European Parliament, and those condemning their latest attempt to erase homosexuality from the country, they have welcomed it from another Western power center.
Since 2009, conservative evangelical groups from the U.S. have been instrumental in promoting an anti-LGBTQ+ agenda in Uganda and other African nations, which have been the targets of religious indoctrination since the colonial era.
In a region where harsh penalties for homosexuality have been on the books since the British imposed them in the 19th century, conservative Christian and Muslim populations have been ripe for anti-LGBTQ+ proselytizing.
Family Watch International is an Arizona-based organization committed to spreading anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-abortion ideology around the world, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. The group was instrumental in crafting the original “Kill the Gays” bill in Uganda in 2009.
After the Uganda Supreme Court overturned that law on a technicality in 2013, Family Watch returned to help write revised legislation that would withstand judicial scrutiny, with willing partners publicly denouncing liberal Western influences, despite accepting close to a billion dollars annually in development aid from the U.S alone.
Last month, following passage of the Anti-Homosexuality Act through Uganda’s unicameral Parliament, Family Watch sponsored a conference in the country that drew lawmakers from more than a dozen African nations, all committed to passing or introducing copycat legislation to combat “the sin of homosexuality.”
One Family Watch partner is Kenya, where the country’s Supreme Court sparked controversy recently when it allowed gay rights groups to legally register.
Kenya’s president and other anti-LGBTQ politicians have condemned the ruling, including Parliament member George Peter Kaluma, who introduced a bill to criminalize homosexuality in the country, ban Kenyans from identifying as LGBTQ+, and grant citizens the power to arrest anyone they suspect of being gay.
“These people are perverts and I promise I will legislate to take every right they think they have,” Kaluma told the Times.
His bill would also return gay refugees like Wilson, still sheltering in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, to their home countries.
Laws like his, predicted Kaluma, will soon cover the continent.
LGBTQ+ refugees and asylum seekers in Kenya face the threat of deportation if proposed anti-homosexuality laws are passed in parliament.
Homosexuality is already illegal in Kenya, but the the Family Protection Bill 2023 would expand upon these laws, meaning LGBTQ+ people would face life sentences for simply identifying as themselves.
If passed, the bill would impose a jail term of no less than five years on people found guilty of assembling, picketing, promoting or supporting LGBTQ-specific activities.
This would be dire not only for Kenyans, but refugees as well. The proposed bill would also allow for “the expulsion of refugees and asylum seekers” who identify as LGBTQ+.
Kenya is home to half a million refugees in camps across the country from Kakuma and Dadaab, according to Washington Blade. Refugees and asylum seekers in Kenya are mainly from Burundi, Somalia, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, countries that have endured war, famine and economic instability.
Prior to this bill, Kenya was the only country in the region accepting refugee and asylum seekers without asking about their sexuality.
Recently, however, there have been increased attacks against LGBTQ+ people in the camps, especially in Kakuma, Kenya’s largest camp.
Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya. (Getty Images)
A report conducted by the Organisation for Refuge, Asylum and Migration (ORAM) found that 83 per cent of LGBTQ+ refugees at Kakuma experienced physical violence due to their sexual orientation, with 26 per cent reporting sexual assault.
The report includes the horrific experience of a trans refugee living in the camps, who shared that they were forced to have sex with a woman.
“They forced me to have sex with the lady. They then lectured me on the need to get married and have children of my own. They left me traumatized. Two days later they asked the lady to come and stay with me as my wife.
“That is when I escaped from the block and moved to live with a friend in an area far from my allocated shelter. I did not report the incident since I was afraid the police would equally stigmatise me for who I am.”
There are currently 300 LGBTQ+ refugees in Kakuma who have started an online petition, pleading with the Kenyan government to stamp out discrimination and address the mistreatment they’ve been dealing with in the camps.
The petition reads: “As refugees who have sought safety and refuge from conflict and persecution, we should not have to endure further suffering and discrimination within the confines of the camp. Yet, this is the reality for many of us.
“We are subjected to brutal attacks and physical violence from fellow refugees who hold homophobic views, leaving us with deep wounds and scars that often result in physical disability. Some of our community members have even lost their lives in these attacks.”
The proposed bill will only worsen their lives and leave them with nowhere to go.
President of Kenya William Ruto, however, slammed this ruling and said: “It is not possible for our country Kenya to allow same-sex marriages … It will happen in other countries but not in Kenya.”
Anti-homosexuality laws have increased across the African continent as more countries introduce oppressive laws that target LGBTQ+ people.
The commissioner for The Council of Europe’s Human Rights is urging politicians in Slovakia to vote against proposed legislation that would effectively prevent trans people from having their gender legally recognised.
The bill, set to have its second reading next month, proposes only allowing someone to change their gender marking if they can prove, via genetic testing, it had been incorrectly determined.
In a letter to the Slovakia parliament, dated 19 April but released publically on 25 April, commissioner Dunja Mijatović said she was concerned that the bill would “effectively” mean trans men and women’s genders would not be legally recognised and “lead to human rights regression”.
She said it was “in conflict” with the Slovak Republic’s obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights.
It “should have triggered a process of addressing long-standing concerns about intolerance towards LGBTI people”, she said.
“However, I am disappointed that no discernible progress has been made, and that the human rights of LGBTI people in the Slovak Republic appear to be more, rather than less, at risk.”
Mijatović also used the letter to highlight issues relating to the rights of same-sex couples and hate incidents towards queer people.
Rights for same-sex couples in the Slovak Republic fell short of European Court of Human Rights case law, she said, noting, specifically, that the current legal framework did not grant same-sex couples “adequate recognition and protection of their relationship”.
She went further and urged that human rights of queer people be protected.
“These include ensuring that gender identity and sex characteristics are explicitly recognised as protected characteristics in hate-crime legislation, and included as aggravating circumstances when offences are committed on those grounds.”
Mijatović also recommended raising societal awareness and acceptance of sexual orientation and gender identity, noting parliamentarians had downplayed links between hate crimes and the wider Slovakia society and political sphere.
The Slovak Republic is not the only European country facing condemnation for its laws in relation to LGBTQ+ people.
Knowing your LGBTQ+ history is not only important, but it can provide great comfort and reassurance for members of the community. What’s more, it opens our eyes to the fact that, yes, queer really has always been here!
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In honor of Lesbian Visibility Week, we thought we’d educate you on some key moments in lesbian history, from the first arrest for lesbian activity to the first televised kiss between two women.
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The first conviction for lesbian activity
We’re starting off by throwing it all the way back to the 1600s.
In March 1649, there was the first known conviction for lesbian activity in North America.
Sarah White Norman and Mary Vincent Hammon were charged with “lewd behavior with each other upon a bed” in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
Hammon was under 16 and not prosecuted.
The first lesbian marriage
Public domainAnne Lister plaque in York
Same-sex marriage wasn’t legalized in the United States until 2015, but that didn’t doesn’t mean lesbian weddings only started happening then.
In fact, the very first marriage between two women actually happened in the 1800s.
Anne Lister (whose name you might recognize from the HBO series Gentleman Jack) was dubbed “the first modern lesbian,” and she married Ann Walker at Holy Trinity Church, Goodramgate, York in 1834.
Of course, their union was without legal recognition, given that same-sex marriage was only legalized in the U.K. in 2014. However, they took communion together on Easter Sunday and thereafter considered themselves married.
In years since, the church has been described as “an icon for what is interpreted as the site of the first lesbian marriage to be held in Britain,” and the building now hosts a commemorative blue plaque in their honor.
The word “lesbian” is used
The word “lesbian” is part of many people’s everyday vocabulary now, but do you know when it was first used?
Well, the word “lesbianism” to describe erotic relationships between women had been documented way back in 1732.
The term was first used by William King in his book, The Toast, published in England, which meant women who loved women.
The book has become notable for providing proof that the term “lesbians” was used in a sexual sense as early as the 1700s, in exactly the same way that it is used today.
Before this, the word lesbian meant “of Lesbos”, such as “Lesbian wine” or “Lesbian culture.”
The term “lesbian” is used in a medical dictionary
Then, in 1890, the term lesbian was used in a medical dictionary as an adjective to describe tribadism (as “lesbian love”).
The terms lesbian, invert, and homosexual were then interchangeable with sapphist and sapphism around the turn of the 20th century.
Arrest for lesbian partying
WikipediaMa Rainey
Singer Ma Rainey – the so-called Mother of the Blues – was arrested in her house in Harlem for having a lesbian party in 1925.
Her protégé, Bessie Smith, bailed her out of jail the following morning.
Both Rainey and Smith were part of an extensive circle of lesbian and bisexual African‐American women in Harlem, and the Blues scene of the Harlem Renaissance provided Black women with a space to explore their sexuality and gender. It gave them the freedom to be themselves without the white supremacist gaze, which sexualized and criminalized Black women.
Rainey wrote about speculation regarding her sexuality three years later in the song “Prove it On Me Blues,” with lyrics including: “Ain’t nobody caught me, you sure got to prove it on me.”
Publication of a groundbreaking lesbian novel
In 1928, English author Radclyffe Hall published what many consider today a groundbreaking lesbian novel, The Well of Loneliness. It follows the life of Stephen Gordon, an Englishwoman from an upper-class family whose “sexual inversion” is apparent from an early age.
The book’s release caused the topic of homosexuality to be a topic of public conversation in both the United States and England.
The formation of the first known lesbian rights organization
In September 1955, the first known lesbian rights organization in the United States was formed in San Francisco.
Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) hosted private social functions until it was dissolved in 1995. It was conceived as a social alternative to lesbian bars and clubs, which were subject to raids and police harassment, as well as general discrimination.
Throughout its 14 years, Daughters of Bilitis became an educational resource for lesbians, gay men, researchers, and mental health professionals.
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While representation is well on its way now, there was a time when TV shows didn’t want to touch lesbianism with a bargepole, making the first on-screen kiss between two women all the more monumental.
Although it might surprise you to learn that it wasn’t until the nineties that two women first locked lips on American TV.
The kiss in question aired in a 1990 episode of 21 Jump Street, but the camera cut off their actual lips, meaning the actual kiss wasn’t really shown at all.
So, unofficially, the first lesbian kiss on TV is often attributed to a 1991 episode of legal drama L.A. Law, in which bisexual lawyer C.J. briefly kissed her female colleague Abby Perkins on the lips.
Sadly, romance never blossomed between the two characters, as Abby left the show and C.J ended up with a boyfriend, not to mention the network received major backlash for the scene.
Still, we’ve come a long way.
Audre Lorde is named State Poet of New York
A sign with an Audre Lorde quote at the 2017 Women’s March in Toronto
In 1991, self-described “Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” Audre Lorde became the State Poet of New York. She dedicated both her life and her creative talent to confronting and addressing various injustices, whether it be classism, homophobia, racism, or sexism.
The critically acclaimed novelist, poet, and essayist was also a co-founder of The Kitchen Table Women of Color Press, and an editor of the lesbian journal Chrysalis.
In April 1997, comedian Ellen DeGeneres came out as a lesbian on the cover of Timemagazine, stating: “Yep, I’m Gay.”
The cover coincided with the broadcast of “The Puppy Episode,” a two-part episode of the American situation comedy series Ellen.
The episode details lead character Ellen Morgan’s realization that she is a lesbian and her coming out, with the title initially used as a code name for Ellen’s coming out so as to keep the episode under wraps.
To say the moment was groundbreaking for lesbian history would probably be an understatement, as not only did it win multiple awards, Ellen became a cultural icon. DeGeneres’s career, though, suffered as the network stopped promoting her sitcom until it was ultimately canceled.
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First lesbian elected to Congress
Campaign photoSenator Tammy Baldwin
In 1998, aged 24, Tammy Baldwin became the first openly lesbian candidate ever elected to Congress, winning Wisconsin’s Second Congressional District seat over Josephine Musser.
The Democrat was also the first woman elected to either chamber in Wisconsin.
Then in 2012, she made history as the first LGBTQ+ person elected to the Senate.
Publication of When We Were Outlaws: a Memoir of Love and Revolution
Written by Jeanne Cordova, When We Were Outlaws was published in 2011.
The radical lesbian activist and pioneer’s memoir offers a raw and intimate insight into the life of a young activist torn between conflicting personal longings and political goals, at a time when the fight for gay rights and liberation for women was still fresh.
Today, When Were Outlaws is still considered extraordinary.
Lesbian history is still in the making
Looking back at these groundbreaking moments in lesbian history, we can see how far the LGBTQ+ community has come in the fight for equality and acceptance. However, we must also acknowledge that lesbian history is still in the making.
There is still much work to be done in terms of combating discrimination and bigotry and ensuring that all members of the community are treated with dignity and respect.
Let us honor the brave pioneers who paved the way for us and continue to fight for a better future for all members of the LGBTQ+ community.
By subscribing to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter, we can stay informed and engaged with the ongoing struggle for LGBTQ+ rights and contribute to the ongoing progress towards a more just and equitable society.
Over the centuries, lesbians and other queer women have pushed the world forward, often challenging norms and defying the expectations of their times. From 1700s England to the contemporary shores of New York’s Fire Island, these women forged new paths and made a space for others to do the same.
Some of those on this list lived at a time when there was no language for queer identity as in the present time, and often could not come out due to societal restrictions and concerns for their own safety. Like much of LGBTQ history, identifying who someone was requires squinting through the haze of the past and reading between the lines of diaries, historical records and second-hand accounts.
What is certain, though, is that queer women have always been around, even if their circumstances forced them to obscure their full selves.
Anne Lister (1791-1840)
Anne Lister.Visual Arts Resource / Alamy Stock Photo
Anne Lister, who has been described as “the first modern lesbian,” was born in northern England and lived during the height of the Industrial Revolution. Educated, wealthy and masculine in appearance, she had relationships with women beginning at an early age and by all accounts was unabashedly queer and self-assured, navigating her way around polite society while excelling as a businesswoman. Her womanizing reputation earned her the nickname “Gentleman Jack,” the latter part being a slur for lesbian at the time, but the name was reclaimed on Lister’s behalf, thanks to the BBC-HBO series “Gentleman Jack,” which ran from 2019 to 2022.
Though she did not use the word “lesbian” to describe herself, she wrote in her diary in 1821, “I love and only love the fairer sex and thus beloved by them in turn, my heart revolts from any love but theirs.” Lister married her neighbor and fellow landowner, Ann Walker, in 1834 at a church in York, England, an event considered to be the first recorded lesbian wedding in the history of Britain. Though it is unclear exactly what transpired at the church, experts are in agreement that the pair made vows to each other and exchanged rings. There was no legal recognition of the marriage at the time, but a commemorative plaque adorns the church and celebrates their union.
Dr. Margaret ‘Mom’ Chung (1889-1959)
Margaret Chung in 1942. AP
Dr. Margaret Chung is best known as the first Chinese American woman to become a physician — and lesser known as a queer woman who attracted a clientele of lesbian couples and women seeking birth control.
Chung graduated from medical school in 1916 and was known to wear a dark suit and carry a parakeet around in a cage dangling from her wrist. During the 1930s and 1940s, she became known as “Mom Chung” for her support of U.S. troops, “adopting” hundreds of them, sending care packages and hosting soldiers for Sunday dinners at her home in San Francisco. Although Chung never came out, she did reportedly have intimate relationships with women, and rumors of her sexuality followed her throughout her life. A plaque hanging on Chicago’s Legacy Walk, which commemorates the contributions of LGBTQ people, celebrates her life.
Djuna Barnes (1892-1982)
Djuna Barnes in 1930.adoc-photos / Corbis via Getty Images
Djuna Barnes was an avant-garde writer best known for her 1936 title “Nightwood,” one of the earliest lesbian novels to be published by an American writer. Barnes’ other well-known works include “Ladies Almanack,” published in 1928 and described as “a gentle satire of literary lesbians,” and the 1958 play “The Antiphon,” which The Paris Review described as a work that “concerns the war of wills within a family, primarily between a middle-aged woman and her mother.”
Barnes was a journalist before she was a novelist, poet and playwright. Her reporting stood out for being sensationalist and immersive, and she often tackled the political issues of her day. For an assignment published in New York World Magazine in 1914, Barnes submitted to being force-fed in prison, something that was being used on suffragists as they carried out hunger strikes.
Gluck (1895-1978)
Gluck in 1932.Fox Photos / Getty Images
An artist who defied the expectations of her day, Gluck was a British painter born Hannah Gluckstein in 1895. It is not clear how she would identify using the modern day’s vernacular, or if she would’ve considered herself a lesbian, but what is known is she had her short hair cut at a gentleman’s hairdresser, wore men’s suiting, kept a dagger hanging off her belt and was referred to as “Peter” among close friends, or as “Tim” by a female lover.
Gluck came from a wealthy family, and her privilege both insulated her and offered her the freedom to live a more open life. She had relationships with several women, including a playwright and society woman named Nesta Obermer. Gluck referred to Nesta as“my own darling wife,” and “my divine sweetheart, my love, my life.” She painted a portrait of them together, which later became the cover of “The Well of Loneliness,” a novel published by British author Radclyffe Hall in 1928 that is regarded as the first lesbian novel in the English language.
Gladys Bentley (1907-1960)
Gladys Bentley in 1930.Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images
Gladys Bentley was a singer, piano player and entertainer who performed in the 1920s and 1930s, in the era that came to be known as the Harlem Renaissance.
Bentley was a powerful performer, and she was known for her top hat, tailored white tuxedos and risque lyrics. She did not conceal her sexuality but celebrated it, flirting with women in the crowd and incorporating a more masculine identity into her performances. She became one of the best-known Black entertainers of the time, and at the height of her fame she moved from Harlem to Park Avenue and had a team of servants. Bentley left New York in the late 1930s and performed throughout California, most notably Mona’s 440 Club, the first lesbian bar in San Francisco.
Chavela Vargas (1919-2012)
Chavela Vargas in 1973. Gianni Ferrari / Getty Images
Born in Costa Rica in 1919, Chavela Vargas was 14 years old when she fled to Mexico with dreams of becoming a singer. She became one of Mexico’s best-known female singers, achieving dominance in the world of canción ranchera, a style that often includes broken hearts and unrequited love, mournful ballads traditionally told from a man’s perspective.
Vargas rose to fame in the 1960s and 1970s, and had a reputation for being macho and drinking hard. While rumors long swirled about her being a lesbian, she didn’t come out until she was 81 years old, in an interview from the 1990s included in the 2017 film “Chavela.”
“When you’re true to yourself, you win in the end,” Vargas said.
Rosalie ‘Rose’ Bamberger (1921-1990)
In the 1950s, Rosalie “Rose” Bamberger had the idea to form a secret society for lesbians. The bars were constantly being raided, and Bamberger was looking to give women a space to meet one another that would be safe and private. She also wanted to dance without being arrested.
The first meeting was at Bamberger’s house in 1955, which she shared with her partner Rosemary Sliepen. The private club became The Daughters of Bilitis and morphed into the first lesbian rights group in the United States — and one that would eventually be surveilled by the CIA and the FBI. Though the club was Bamberger’s idea, she only lasted as a member for about six months, after a disagreement on the direction of the organization concerning her own safety as a working class woman of color.
Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965)
Lorraine Hansberry in 1959. David Attie / Getty Images
Lorraine Hansberry is best known for her 1959 play “A Raisin in the Sun,” about racial segregation in Chicago. It became the first play written by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway, and Hansberry, at 29 years old, became the first Black playwright and youngest American to win a New York Critics’ Circle Award. Activism was central to her life, and issues of racial equality, feminism and queer identity were all themes in her work.
She lived in New York’s Greenwich Village, which enabled her to have a more expansive life than was typically possible for women in the 1960s. Hansberry did not publicly come out during her lifetime, and most of what we know about her sexuality comes from her diary entries and other personal writings.
In a journal entry in 1962, she wrote, “The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely.”
Barbara Gittings (1932-2007)
Barbara Gittings in 1972. Kay Tobin New York Public Library
Barbara Gittings, often referred to as the “mother of the LGBTQ civil rights movement,” began her activism in the late 1950s — about a decade before the first brick was thrown during the 1969 Stonewall uprising.
She founded the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis and edited The Ladder, the first nationally distributed lesbian publication in America.
In the 1960s, she marched in picket lines at the White House, the State Department and Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Later, she was key in the 1973 decision by the American Psychiatric Association to end its classification of homosexuality as a mental illness. An advocate of education and books as a necessity for freedom and representation, she joined the gay caucus of the American Library Association in the 1970s. An LGBTQ library collection is named in her honor at the Independence Branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia.
Esther Newton (Born 1940)
Esther Newton attends the screening of “Esther Newton Made Me Gay” on June 5, 2022, in New York.John Lamparski / Getty Images file
Esther Newton is an anthropologist whose 1968 dissertation was titled “The Drag Queens: A Study in Urban Anthropology,” a work that foreshadowed her career as a trailblazer questioning and challenging societal expectations of gender, sexuality and anthropological methods. Newton’s dissertation became her first book, “Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America,” which examined the world of drag bars in the Midwest in the 1960s. It was the first anthropological study of a queer community in the U.S., and that study would lead to a lifetime of work that provided a foundation for countless LGBTQ activists and scholars.
Hungary’s president rejected a bill that would enable citizens to report anonymously same-sex families to authorities, a rare rebuke from an otherwise loyal ally of Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
The draft law approved by parliament earlier this month would allow people to report those who contest the “constitutionally recognized role of marriage and the family” and those who deny children’s rights “to an identity appropriate to their sex at birth.”
President Katalin Novak sent the bill back to parliament for reconsideration, saying that it weakens rather than strengthens constitutional protections. While lawmakers can still override Novak’s veto, her letter contains unusually sharp criticism from a member of Orban’s self-styled “illiberal” leadership.
Orbán has been clamping down on LGBTQ+ rights for more than a decade. A year after he came to power, in 2010, his party passed a new constitution that bans same-sex marriage. Later, the document was amended to bar same-sex couples from adopting children.
This has pit Budapest against Brussels, with the European Commission taking Hungary to the bloc’s highest courts for passing a law that the EU executive believes discriminates against people on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender identity.
The European Parliament and European Commission, along with more than a dozen European countries, have joined the lawsuit against the law.
It’s worth noting that after being elected, last year Novak appeared on Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network to boast about her anti-abortion and “anti-radical gender ideology” positions.
Luxembourg’s openly gay prime minister Xavier Bettel has taking aim at the leader of Hungary for the country’s anti-LGBTQ+ legislation.
Hungary passed its most notable anti-LGBTQ+ law, the Child Protection Act, in June 2021. The legislation bans the discussion of LGBTQ+ people in schools and in the media.
The country has been taken to the European Union Court of Justice by the European Commission over the act, signed into law by prime minister Viktor Orbán, on the basis that it “discriminates against people on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender identity”.
Speaking at the European Parliament on Wednesday (19 April), Luxembourg’s Xavier Bettel said: “I’m ashamed to see that some of my colleagues want to win votes at the expense of minorities.”
According to Euronews, he added that anyone in the parliament who “thinks you become homosexual by watching TV… by listening to a song, then you prove you have understood nothing.
“The most difficult [thing] for a homosexual is to accept himself.”
Bettel said LGBTQ+ people didn’t demand pity, solidarity or compassion – just respect, Euronews reported.
To stigmatise queer people and “tell them that it is the fault of education, culture, and the audio-visual [sector]” was contrary to the European way and “its open tolerance”, he said.
After the Child Protection Act passed, he was quoted as saying that he did not just wake up one day after watching some advertising or Modern Family and suddenly become gay.
“It is not something I chose,” he said in 2021.
“Accepting yourself is already very hard, being stigmatised is… very far-reaching.”
Hungary has made it clear that it intends to defend the law, which has been widely condemned, with a number of European nations supporting the legal action.
However, last month, justice minister Judit Varga filed a counter claim with the court.
At the time, she said: “Hungary will not surrender” and claimed there were “cases that have come to light” that “clearly” showed the need for the law “as well as further measures”.
Earlier this month, Hungarian lawmakers voted in favour of a bill that would allow its citizens to report same-sex families with children to local authorities. Orbán is expected to sign it into law.
Almost half of LGBTQ+ young adults the UK are estranged from at least one relative, with many feeling their family won’t accept them if they come out, a study has revealed.
The survey of 3,695 adults, aged between 18 and 25, found that 46 per cent of them are estranged from at least one family member, while 31 per cent said they weren’t confident their parent or guardian will accept them as they are.
Further findings, according to research conducted by LGBT+ young people’s charity, Just Like Us, revealed that 14 per cent of young LGBT+ adults said they weren’t close to their immediate family members, compared with six per cent of their straight peers. That figure jumped to 19 per cent for trans respondents and 23 per cent of non-binary participants.
The survey also discovered that lesbians were the most confident (72 per cent) that their parents or carers would accept them if they came out, followed by gay men at 68 per cent, while transgender and non-binary young people were equally the least likely to feel confident.
Amy Ashenden, the interim chief executive of Just Like Us, said the findings were “heartbreaking”.
“It’s sadly a common myth that being LGBT+ is easier today, when in fact many LGBT+ young adults remain fearful of their parents not accepting them, with almost half estranged from at least one family member,” she said.
Ashenden added that the LGBTQ+ community should know “that their identities are valid and deserve to be celebrated”, and that the charity hoped more parents and teachers will show them that this is the case.
“When there is silence, there is shame, so we must talk about these topics in school and at home, to ensure LGBT+ young people no longer live in fear of rejection.”
The research was carried out independently by market researchers Cibyl in January and will form part of Just Like Us’ Positive Futures report, covering a range of experiences of young LGBT+ adults in the UK, due to be published on 1 June.
Another study, published in the Annals of Epidemiology, revealed that LGBTQ+ youth in the US are spending significantly more time on their mobile phones than straight young people.
The study’s author, Jason Nagata, suggested that this could be down to higher levels of LGBTQ+ youth being excluded from school activities by their peers.
On a riotous Instagram profile featuring pole-dancing, cross-dressing and fierce makeup, a picture of Ivan Honzyk in high heels and stockings next to an image of him in military uniform has gotten the most likes by far.
The junior sergeant’s posts are a bold statement in socially conservative Ukraine, where pride parades were often attacked before the war and swaths of the country are occupied by forces loyal to Russia, one of the world’s most conspicuously homophobic states.
But as more members of the LGTBQ community fight on the front lines, the greater visibility of gay and lesbian military personnel appears to be a catalyst for acceptance in wider society, and opinion polls show attitudes are changing.
Honzyk, 27, said his uncompromising self-expression, combined with his work in places like Bakhmut — the city in eastern Ukraine that has seen some of the bloodiest battles of the war, while serving as a potent symbol of the country’s defiance — is helping to further the cause of LGBTQ rights in the country faster than any pride marches could.
“My fellow soldiers are really impressed with what I’ve done in Bakhmut, the massive scale of work that I did there, and after that they just don’t care about who I sleep with,” Honzyk, whose medical unit evacuates wounded soldiers and provides emergency first aid, said in a hip café in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, while on leave from the front line.
Plenty of other gay and lesbian soldiers have also posted photos and videos of themselves online, some sporting unicorn insignia on their uniform, the mythical creature an ironic riposte to the idea that there are no LGBTQ people in the military.
In the U.S., lesbian, gay and bisexual people were allowed to serve openly in the military only in late 2011. Ukraine’s armed forces did not have rules preventing the LGTBQ community from serving, but homophobia was rife in the ranks, reflecting a more widespread societal attitude.
Honzyk said gay and lesbian soldiers were helping change homophobic attitudes in the socially conservative country. Mo Abbas / NBC News
But in apparent recognition of their services, Ukrainian lawmakers recently tabled draft legislation that would recognize same-sex relationships and address the lack of inheritance, medical and other rights for the partners of LGTBQ soldiers killed or wounded fighting pro-Moscow forces.
“The parades and pride events were not enough,” said Honzyk, who has served for four years. “The better way to change attitudes is what we’re doing now. We entered the military and we’re showing that we’re worthy. We’re not hiding somewhere at the back. We’re doing real missions, dangerous missions.”
LGBTQ ‘propaganda’
Across the border, President Vladimir Putin has maintained that he launched the invasion in February 2022 to protect Russian-speaking people in Ukraine’s east, while attempting to frame what he calls the “special military operation” as a defense of morality against un-Russian liberal values promoted by the West.
Putin has frequently espoused “traditional values” in his speeches and framed gender-transition surgery and same-sex parenting as morally degenerate Western imports. In December he signed a law expanding Russia’s restrictions on promoting what it calls “gay propaganda,” in effective outlawing any public expression of LGBTQ behavior in Russia.
Any action considered an attempt to promote homosexuality in public; online; or in films, books or advertising could incur a heavy fine.
Activists like Edward Reese, 37, a nonbinary communications officer with KyivPride, said Russia’s invasion had sharpened Ukraine’s sense of its own distinct identity and caused many of his countrymen to show more empathy toward their LGBTQ compatriots.
“People see that homophobia, transphobia, sexism, racism are Russian values,” he said. “People understand that they don’t want to have anything in common with Russia. So that’s why they start to rethink their own homophobia here in Ukraine.”
KyivPride Communications Coordinator Edward Reese.Mo Abbas / NBC News
Reese said he had a tough upbringing and was sent for so-called conversion therapy by religious parents who followed the Ukrainian branch of the Russian Orthodox Church.
The church has been outspoken against LGBTQ people, and last year its leader, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, said the “sin” of gay pride parades justified the war in Ukraine.
But his influence and that of his church has plummeted in recent years in Ukraine. In 2019 the Orthodox Church of Ukraine split from its Russian counterpart.
Kyiv has since accused Russian Orthodox priests of spying for Moscow, charges they deny.
“Ukrainian civil society is trying to kick out the Russian Orthodox Church, and they are the most anti-gay people in Ukraine,” said LGBTQ activist Maksim Mishkin, 40, speaking at KyivPride’s offices.
“Today most religious people in Ukraine are either positive or neutral towards us.”
Somebody to hate
Away from the battlefield, LGBTQ groups in Ukraine and abroad have helped evacuate and house people displaced by the fighting and raise money for the military.
Mishkin said he had held fundraisers to send care packages to serving personnel, the appreciative soldiers sending back photos of themselves brandishing coffee mugs and other items featuring LGBTQ-affiliated logos.
Such efforts may have contributed to growing acceptance in Ukraine.
Ukrainian LGBTQ activist Maksim Mishkin at KyivPride’s offices.Mo Abbas / NBC News
A January survey by the U.S.-based National Democratic Institute, a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization that works to increase the effectiveness of democratic institutions in developing countries, found that 58% of Ukrainian respondents agreed that LGBTQ “people should have the same rights as others.”
That contrasts with a 2016 survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology that showed 60.4% of respondents viewed LGBTQ people negatively. Last year a similar poll found that percentage had shrunk to 38.2%.
Ukrainian politician Inna Sovsun hopes to harness the positive momentum to pass a draft bill she introduced in parliament last month recognizing same-sex relationships.
“When a person in uniform says, ‘Look, I have a loved one. If I am killed in action protecting this country, protecting every single one of you, my partner will not be able to make decisions about where to bury me because there is no legal connection between us,’ that is something that society cannot say no to, because they are in uniform and risking their lives every single minute for us,” she said.
“Right now it’s not just the right thing to do, it’s also the politically smart thing to do, because the majority of Ukrainians actually support it,” she added.
However, she cautioned that the level of support for LGBTQ rights in Ukraine can be overstated.
Outside of the country’s main metropolitan centers, life for LGBTQ people can be difficult, she said, adding that not all LGBTQ military personnel were accepted by their peers and some had been bullied.
For Honzyk, life’s too short to worry about the haters before he heads back to the front line.
“If you accept yourself, then the world will accept you too. You need to remember a lot of people are wearing masks, but you shouldn’t do that because you have only one life, and any day a missile may kill you,” he said.
“Don’t care about what other people say, because they’ll always find somebody to hate.”
A politician in France has become the first female minister to come out as gay in the country after revealing her sexuality in an interview.
Democratic Movement politician and youngest serving minister Sarah El Haïry revealed that she is queer and is currently dating someone.
The 33-year-old state secretary for youth at the Ministry of National Education casually mentioned her partner while discussing whether she uses Twitter.
In the interview with Forbes, she responded to the question by saying that she only ever reads Twitter when it affects her family or her girlfriend.
The casual mention of her partner cemented El Haïry in the history books, becoming the first female minister in France to identify as queer.
Since being appointed youth secretary of state, the country’s youngest government minister has been outspoken regarding both women’s and LGBTQ+ rights.
She has previously called out discrimination against LGBTQ+ groups in France, saying that promoting LGBTQ+ rights is a “daily fight”.
El Haïry’s announcement, which Forbes described as “discreet”, came shortly after a similar reveal from former National Assembly of France member Olivier Dussopt.
In an interview with French magazine Têtu on 24 March, Dussopt said that his sexuality was “neither a secret, nor a subject” while condemning homophobic attacks in France.
“Being homosexual is never neutral,” he said during the interview. “But one has the right to defend causes, to militate, to participate in the debate without making one’s personal situation a political element in itself.”
He added that, while this was his first time coming out, he has been outspoken for same-sex marriage and LGBTQ+ autonomy in the past.
Despite the country’s current government being supportive of LGBTQ+ rights, the rise of the far-right in France following 2022’s presidential election has caused concern.
Emmanual Macron defeated far-right rival Marine Le Pen in the 2022 presidential race, gaining a slim 58 per cent of the vote compared to Le Pen’s 41.46 per cent.
The win saw LGBTQ+ people in France spared from what would have been a dire scenariofor queer rights.
Despite this, anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment is still an issue in Macron’s France, with homophobic attacks still worryingly prevalent and Le Monde reporting a 27.6 per cent increase in reports of offences committed ‘because of sexual orientation or gender identity’ in 2021, compared to 2020.
