A Moscow man was abducted and taken to Chechnya where he was interrogated for information on LGBT+ activists, the Russian LGBT Network reports.
On Wednesday (25 August), the group said that a Dagestan native named Ibragim Selimkhanov was approached by four Chechen-speaking men near a subway station in the city’s Novogireyevo District on 15 May.
The men, who were wearing civilian clothes, forced him into a car and took his passport, phone and apartment keys. He was driven to the airport and ordered onto a plane which took him to the Chechen capital of Grozny.
On arrival he was handed over to the local police, who reportedly threatened and exerted psychological pressure on him while seeking the information about the emergency assistance programme run by the Russian LGBT Network, Radio Free Europe said.
The group provides a vital lifeline to the LGBT+ community in the North Caucasus, a region notorious for persecuting queer people as part of a horrifying “gay purge”.
Chechen officials deny that any LGBT+ people exist there, let alone a gay purge; however, their claims are countered by dozens of harrowing reportsfrom refugees who have been imprisoned, beaten, tortured and seen others killed in gay concentration camps.
After a few days in custody Selimkhanov was freed by his captors and taken to his mother, who lives in Grozy.
He remained under permanent surveillance by Chechen authorities but managed to quietly leave the house and escape to Moscow, where he filed a complaint with police.
According to the Caucasian Knot, a news outlet that covers the Caucasus region, the Investigating Committee of the Russian Federation refused to investigate his complaint.
A similar ordeal was reported in May this year when officials detained and interrogated the family of two gay brothers who fled the region.
20 of the brothers’ relatives were held in the village of Komsomolskoye in the Urus-Martan district of Chechnya and were interrogated for hours about the whereabouts of the men and their parents, according to local media reports.
Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday met with two LGBTQ rights activists in Vietnam.
Harris’ office said Chu Thanh Hà Ngoc, a transgender activist, and Đoàn Thanh Tùng, an LGBTQ advocate, participated in a “roundtable discussion with the vice president and Vietnamese social advocacy organizations” that took place at the U.S. Chief of Mission’s home in Hanoi, the Vietnamese capital.
“It is critical that if we are to take on the challenges we face that we do it in a way that is collaborative, that we must empower leaders in every sector, including of course government but community leaders, business leaders, civic society if we are to maximize the resources we collectively have,” said Harris.
Harris specifically noted the Vietnamese Health Ministry “helped craft the draft — and draft — the (country’s) transgender rights law” that took effect in 2017.
“Transgender people deserve and need equal access to healthcare services,” she said. “This is an issue that we still face in the United States, and it is an issue here in Vietnam, I know. And we will work together and support you and the work you are doing in that regard.”
Ann Marie Yastishock, the U.S. Agency for International Development’s mission director in Vietnam, moderated the roundtable.
It took place on the last day of Harris’ trip to Southeast Asia that began on Sunday in Singapore, one of the dozens of countries in which consensual same-sex sexual relations remain criminalized. The trip also coincided with growing calls for the U.S. to evacuate LGBTQ Afghans from Afghanistan after the Taliban regained control of the country.
Ted Osius, who co-founded GLIFAA, an association of LGBTQ employees of Foreign Service agencies, was the U.S. ambassador to Vietnam from 2014-2017. The late-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2015 presided over the Hanoi ceremony during which Osius and his husband, Clayton Bond, renewed their wedding vows.
President Biden in February signed a memorandum that committed the U.S. to promoting LGBTQ rights abroad.
Visibles Executive Director Daniel Villatoro and Ingrid Gamboa of the Association of Garifuna Women Living with HIV/AIDS were among the members of Guatemalan civil society who participated in a roundtable with Harris in June when she was in Guatemala City. USAID Administrator Samantha Power also met with LGBTQ activists in Guatemala and El Salvador when she was in the countries at around the same time.
Chinese tech giant Tencent’s WeChat social media platform has deleted dozens of LGBTQ accounts run by university students, saying some had broken rules on information on the internet, sparking fear of a crackdown on gay content online.
Members of several LGBTQ groups told Reuters that access to their accounts was blocked late on Tuesday and they later discovered that all of their content had been deleted.
“Many of us suffered at the same time,” said the account manager of one group who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the issue.
“They censored us without any warning. All of us have been wiped out.”
Attempts by Reuters to access some accounts were met with a notice from WeChat saying the groups “had violated regulations on the management of accounts offering public information service on the Chinese internet.”
Other accounts did not show up in search results.
WeChat did not immediately respond to emailed questions.
Homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder in China until 2001, when it became legal. However, this year, a court upheld a university’s description of homosexuality as a “psychological disorder.”
The LGBTQ community has repeatedly found itself falling foul of censors. The Cyberspace Administration of China recently pledged to clean up the internet to protect minors and crack down on social media groups deemed a “bad influence.”
“Authorities have been tightening the space available for LGBT advocacy and civil society generally. This is another turning of the screw,” said Darius Longarino, a senior fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai’s China Center, who focuses on LGBTQ rights and gender equality.
The loyalty of LGBTQ university groups to the government and Communist Party was discussed in meeting in May between student groups and university representatives of the Communist Youth League — a department in charge of student affairs run by the Chinese Communist Party, according to three sources with knowledge of the matter.
The sources declined to be identified or say at which universities the meetings took place but said LGBTQ student groups were asked if they were anti-Party or anti-China, and whether any of their funds had originated from abroad.
“We explained that our LGBT education work was within campus only,” one university student told Reuters. “After our meeting in May we were dismantled.”
LGBTQ student groups traditionally do not get the support of university authorities in their work to raise awareness of the community, even though they are not banned outright.
Karen Holden, LGBT+ lawyer and founder of A City Law Firm, writes for PinkNews about the legal leaps and bounds the UK has made in the last three decades.
It has been almost 54 years since the decriminalisation of homosexualitystarted, sparking the decades-long fight for LGBT+ equality under British law.
t all kicked off on 21 July 1967 with the Sexual Offences Act (the law that started to recognise LGBT+ rights). Since this monumental move, we have made some phenomenal steps forward.
In light of this upcoming anniversary, let’s celebrate some of the most game-changing laws that have transformed the lives of the community to date.
LGBT+ Brits have the right not to be discriminated
The 1998 Human Rights Act, one of the most important pieces of legislation in Britain, allowed for fundamental human rights – the right to be treated equally, with fairness, dignity and respect.
t, crucially, this includes the right not the be discriminated against for sexual orientation.
It was later used to also advance the rights of LGBT+ individuals for legal protection in a relationship.
Same-sex couples can legally adopt
Paving the way for queer couples to start a family, the Adoption and Children Act 2002 meant that for the first time same-sex couples were legally able to adopt.
This also allowed many the right to be considered not just as a person who helped care for their partner’s child but as their actual legal parent too.
The law that opened the door for civil partnerships
In what was a stepping stone towards marriage quality and a seismic leap in LGBT+ rights in Britain, the Civil Partnership Act 2004 marked a significant change in the legal standing for couples.
Trans people can legally change their gender for the first time
The 2004 Gender Recognition Act was the upshot of the European Court of Human Rights ruling in favour of trans woman Christine Goodwin, who was denied the right to marry in the UK.
It created for the first time a mechanism that allows trans people to be legally recognised by something other than their assigned gender at birth – this includes having the correct gender marker listed on their birth certificate.
For the first time, queer families could use surrogacy to start a family
Although surrogacy was permitted before, the parental order process, which makes the intended parent or parents the legal parents rather than the surrogate, was not available for same-sex male couples.
But the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 rectified this and even introduced the ability for same-sex female couples to be both named on the birth certificate as the legal parents of a child after using a known donor.
A single act that ensured stronger protections for all LGBT+ people
The landmark Equality Act 2010 added gender reassignment as a ‘protected characteristic’ and offered a vital tool to fight and promote protection against LGBT+ harassment, unfavourable treatment and discrimination.
Caselaw continued to evolve after this focal act against discrimination, perceived sexual orientation and those diagnosed with HIV and AIDS.
It was a drastic move to bridge the gap of there being separate laws to instead promote genuine equality for the LGBT+ community and many other minority groups collectively.
After rocky journey, marriage equality finally becomes reality
The road to marriage equality in Britain was a years-long uphill climb for tireless activists but by 2013, the first same-sex couple to legally wed in England became a reality.
As well as equalising marriage in name, the Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Act allowed same-sex couples to marry in both civil and religious ceremonies, where the religious organisation has ‘opted in’ to conduct such ceremonies and the minister of religion agrees.
Thousands of queer men pardoned in law named after Alan Turing
The “Alan Turing Law”, part of the Policing and Crime Act 2017, serves as an amnesty law pardoning criminal convictions of men who were cautioned or convicted under historical legislation that outlawed homosexual acts.
Named after Alan Turing, the cryptographer who helped to break the German Enigma code who had previously been convicted of ‘gross indecency’ and was chemically castrated, who was granted a royal pardon.
The association of British Insurers Guide to minimum standards 2018
HIV discrimination was removed from the previous wording included the association of British Insurers Guide to minimum standards in 2018 for being highly judgemental and stigmatising.
The new guidance from the trade association made up of hundreds of insurers reflects the considerable progress that has been made for those living with HIV over the last thirty years.
In 2019, single parents could apply for parental rights after surrogacy
An adaption to the law came into force making parental orders (which give parenthood to the intended parents after the birth and extinguish the status of the surrogate) available to single parents as well as to couples.
All these changes helped LGBT+ families really flourish, providing the right to alternative family structures, from marriage equality to adoption and surrogacy for same-sex couples being made more accessible; the protection against discrimination both in and outside the workplace, against neighbours or providers, altering the way they approach members of the LGBT+ community.
Although we should celebrate how far LGBT+ rights have progressed there are still things left unaddressed and biases still restricting genuine equality.
Here are just some of the changes needed for greater equality:
Surveys and soft supervision by the EU will be lost on LGBT+ laws and rights so the UK need to put in place its own protections to ensure we are continually moving in the right direction.
Proposals to reform the Gender Recognition Act were effectively dropped, so transgender people still need a medical diagnosis to legally change gender. This is archaic and is unfair. It is our hope that these proposals for reform are brought back soon.
Although LGBT+ education in schools was made mandatory there continues to be resistance from some parents and religious campaign groups. This means that how this education is to be implemented remains uncertain. Laws around this, to provide a framework for this contentious area would be welcome.
Making surrogacy in the UK smoother with automatic parental rights.
We have come a very long way and things are slowly evolving, but there is still more to do and mindsets left to modify.
Russia discriminated against a trans woman and violated her right to family life by denying her any contact with her children, Europe’s leading human rights court has ruled.
In a landmark judgement released on Tuesday (6 July), the European Court of Human Rights unanimously ruled in favour of a divorced trans woman who was blocked by Russian domestic courts from seeing her two young children back in 2017.
It marks the first time the court has found a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights’ prohibition of discrimination (Article 14) on the basis of a person’s gender identity. Russia ratified the convention in 1998 and is therefore under the court’s jurisdiction.
“It was clear from the domestic decisions … that the influence of the applicant’s gender identity on the assessment of her claim had been a decisive factor leading to the decision to restrict her contact with her children,” the court said.
“The applicant had therefore been treated differently from other parents who also sought contact with their estranged children, but whose gender identity matched their sex assigned at birth.”
Reacting to the judgement, executive director of TGEU (Transgender Europe), Masen Davis, said: “The kids are alright – there is nothing wrong with being a trans parent! Today, we celebrate this important message together with all trans families.
Every fourth trans person in Europe is a parent. Today’s judgement gives legal security to many of them.
“We congratulate the applicant for having gone all the way to Strasbourg to defend her right to be the best possible parent to her children.”
The woman, identified only as AM, separated from her wife after seven years of marriage and gained legal gender recognition in 2015, according to court documents.
The following year AM’s wife denied her access to their children, born in 2009 and 2012, with a district court claiming her visits would have a “negative impact on the mental health and psychological development” of the children.
The European Court, however, noted that the domestic courts had failed to demonstrate that the restriction was justified and well-substantiated.
“Too often we are hearing the best interest of the child being abused as an argument to limit the rights of LGBTI people,” said Evelyne Paradis, Executive Director of ILGA-Europe.
“We are glad to see the Court clearly rejecting such an abusive argument, and instead naming very concrete responsibilities for state authorities in ensuring the best interest of the child. Spreading hatred, misinformation and splitting loving parents from their children is not in the best interest of children.”
Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán has claimed that his cruel law banning the “promotion” of LGBT+ lives to minors is “not about homosexuality”.
In June, Orbán and his ruling party passed legislation restricting the portrayal of LGBT+ people on media, school materials and advertisements aimed at minors. It was quickly compared to Russia’s “gay propaganda bill” and Britain’s Section 28.
But faced with backlash from EU leaders, Orbán simply sidestepped their concerns with an astonishing claim at a European Council summit last week.
“It’s not about homosexuality,” he said, according to the Independent.
“It’s about the kids and the parents.
“I am defending the rights of homosexual guys but this law is not about them.”
Hungary’s oldest LGBT+ campaign group Háttér Society called his words blatant “lies”.
Despite Orbán telling EU officials that there is “no law about homosexuality”, the bill in question references homosexuality six times, the group said.
“The truth is that the law passed two weeks ago makes explicit references to homosexuality… in the context of declaring that it is ‘prohibited to make available to children under the age of 18 any (…) content [which] promotes or portrays deviation from the self-identity in line with the birth sex, gender reassignment, and homosexuality’.”
Háttér Society debunked Orbán’s claims that he “protects” the rights of “gay guys”, in particular, noting that his voting record says it all.
Orbán has voted against anti-discrimination laws and same-sex adoption rights, and in favour of abolishing the Equal Treatment Authority, the nation’s equality watchdog.
The group also pointed to a survey by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights which found that 95 per cent of LGBT+ Hungarians feel the government has not tackled anti-LGBT+ hate.
As EU officials consider choking Hungary’s funding as one way to squash the law, 17 of the bloc’s leaders have signed an open letter pledging to “continue fighting against discrimination towards the LGBTI community”.
“Respect and tolerance,” the letter stated, “are at the core of the European project.”
During last month’s European championship soccer match between Germany and Hungary, the rainbow was everywhere on the German side. The German goalie wore a rainbow armband; the team’s fans donned rainbow wigs and waved rainbow flags.
All of this was directed at the opposing side: The Germans were protesting a new Hungarian law banning LGBTQ sex education and media directed at minors — a measure that has sparked outrage in Europe and elsewhere against Hungary.
While this may look like a PR mess for Hungary’s ruling right-wing Fidesz party, it’s in keeping with the right-wing populist playbook that Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has turned to over and over again to shore up his authoritarian rule. In the past few years, demonizing queer and trans identities has become a central part of Orbán’s campaign for maintaining his grip on power.
The criticism from Europe, if anything, bolsters the strategy. It allows the Hungarian government to tout its core ideological argument: that it is the Hungarian Christian family’s champion against a godless, globalist European Union.
“Hungary asserts its role as ‘defender of traditional values’ while mostly West European states get to claim moral superiority with no one paying any price for it,” says Cas Mudde, a professor at the University of Georgia who studies far-right politics.
The new anti-LGBTQ rules — which were tacked on at the last minute to a bill increasing penalties for sex crimes against children — are part of a broader slate of legal attacks on the queer community that strengthen Orbán’s regime, the only non-democratic government in the European Union.
Demagoguery is at the heart of the Fidesz political strategy. A series of boogeymen — Muslim migrants, Jewish billionaire George Soros, and now LGBTQ activists — have been used to rally Orbán’s base to the ballot box and justify the expansion of authoritarian state powers.
In this, Orbán is not alone. The demonization of out-groups is a key ingredient in the right-wing authoritarian recipe, one used by factions the world over to win power and undermine democracy once they’ve acquired it. It’s a pattern Americans should pay attention to, especially during the current moment of right-wing panic about the purported corruption of our youth.
Hungary’s persecution of LGBTQ communities, explained
The new Hungarian regulations on LGBTQ expression are broad. Among other things, they prohibit sex educators from instructing students about LGBTQ sexuality and ban television stations from airing content “popularizing” LGBTQ identity outside the hours of 10 pm to 5 am. The regulations also prohibit films or advertisements from representing same-sex physical acts or gender-affirmation surgery in materials targeted at individuals under 18.
But what counts as “popularizing” LGBTQ identity, and what sorts of art count as being targeted at kids? According to local media and human rights groups, the bill isn’t especially clear on these points — raising fears about censorship. RTL Klub, the country’s largest television channel, warned that “series like Modern Family would be banned, as would some episodes of Friends.”
No less troubling: By declaring LGBTQ programming harmful for children, the law dehumanizes queer couples and individuals, legally codifying the notion that their very existence threatens Hungarian society.
Defenders of the law are open about its hierarchical aims. An article in the Hungarian Conservative, a magazine supportive of the Orbán regime, denies that Friends specifically would be blocked by the new rules — but touts the bill’s efforts to “protect children’s natural and healthy sexual development” from the allegedly nefarious influence of gay propaganda.
“Protecting children does not end with stopping sex offenders, but should also include the protection from potentially harmful influences well until children are old enough to make the best decisions for themselves,” the article claims.
In recent years, the anti-LGBTQ campaign has intensified. In 2018, the government banned the teaching of gender studies in Hungarian universities. A government spokesperson told CNN at the time that they did it because “we do not consider it acceptable for us to talk about socially constructed genders, rather than biological sexes.” In May 2020, the government prohibited trans Hungarians from changing their gender on official government forms.
In December 2020, the government approved a constitutional reform package that strengthened the anti-LGBTQ constitutional provisions: It stated that the family is defined as being “based on marriage and the parent-child relation. The mother is a woman, the father a man.” The December legislative package also banned adoption by same-sex couples and abolished the Equal Treatment Authority, Hungary’s most important nondiscrimination agency covering LGBTQ rights.
The anti-LGBTQ policies of the past few years are not incidental to Fidesz’s ideology. A paper by Andrea Pető and Weronika Grzebalska, two scholars of gender and politics in Central Europe, identify the Hungarian government’s commitment to traditional gender norms as the “symbolic glue” that holds its overall ideology together, positioning social liberalism “as a symbol of everything that is wrong with the current state of politics.”
In the government’s narrative, the traditional Christian Hungarian family is under attack by nefarious globalist liberals who want to replace Hungarian mothers and fathers with immigrants. Defending the Hungarian nation means defending the family, defined exclusively as male-female pairings that produce more Hungarian children. The Orbán government is notoriously obsessed with the birthrate, passing tax and welfare policies specifically framed as incentives for native Hungarian women to have more kids.
The government attacks on LGBTQ identities flow directly from this conservative preoccupation with family and fertility, casting queer families as illegitimate, non-procreative entities.
“In a moral sense, there is no difference between pedophiles and those who demand [gay adoption],” László Kövér, the speaker of Hungary’s parliament, said in 2019. “Both objectify the child as a consumer good, and consider it a means of self-fulfillment.”
How social conservatism fuels Hungarian authoritarianism
Hungarians have long been more conservative than most other EU states. A 2019 Eurobarometer poll found that 61 percent opposed same-sex marriage and 72 percent opposed allowing trans individuals to alter government documents to match their gender identity. This fits a general European pattern, in which former communist states are on average more culturally right-wing than their Western European peers.
At the same time, there’s some evidence of recent movement in a more progressive direction. A 2021 Ipsos poll found that 59 percent of Hungarians today support same-sex couples’ adoption rights, compared to 42 percent in 2013. A plurality had even come to favor same-sex marriage (46 percent in favor versus 38 percent opposed).
These numbers suggest the recent anti-LGBTQ moves are less of a response to a public groundswell than a political play by the ruling party to elevate the issue — to wage a culture war against progressive ideas and activists as a means of activating the Fidesz base and solidifying Orban’s hold on power.
By definition, “populism” as a political style relies on a contrast between a virtuous people and a corrupt elite. In modern right-wing populism, both in Hungary and elsewhere, that corrupt elite is typically identified with minorities and socially liberal activists — groups positioned as subverting national traditions, attacking traditional morality, and destroying national character.
“Minority rights are rejected as threatening the majority’s rights to do what they please, and dignity and solidarity is only granted to those belonging to the restricted community of real patriots,” Pető and Grzebalska write in their article on the gender politics of right-wing populism. “The illiberal right is not so much trying to eliminate the progressive civil society but rather turn it into a bogeyman that governing elites can activate whenever they need to mobilize their supporters.”
“We are fighting an enemy that is different from us. Not open, but hiding; not straightforward but crafty; not honest but base; not national but international; does not believe in working but speculates with money; does not have its own homeland but feels it owns the whole world,” Orbán said in a 2018 speech.
Now, it’s important not to equate social conservatism with authoritarianism. Opposing equal rights for LGBTQ individuals, while certainly illiberal, could well be supported by an electoral majority in Hungary.
But far-right governments like Orbán’s typically use populism in service of their authoritarianism: Attacks on minority groups are not merely electoral appeals but also justifications for power grabs that weaken democracy’s foundations.
Many of the anti-LGBTQ laws passed expand the state’s power to enforce ideological hegemony. In the name of fighting a phantom scourge, it has given itself new abilities to regulate education, media, and advertising — sometimes through vaguely worded provisions that could be enforced capriciously. In this sense, the anti-LGBTQ provisions aren’t merely cultural warfare but direct expansions of Orbán’s authoritarian reach.
This is not a uniquely Hungarian phenomenon: Authoritarian populists of both the right- and left-wing variety, in countries as diverse as Poland and Venezuela and Turkey, have used demonization of minorities and/or an allegedly corrupt elite to enact laws aimed at weakening their political opponents and revving up their base.
Closer to home, we’re seeing something similar afoot. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) recently signed a bill that would require professors at state-funded universities to fill out surveys describing the campus ideological climate, threatening budget funds if schools are deemed insufficiently open to right-wing ideas. Dozens of state legislatures have passed or proposed bills that regulate what can be taught in the classroom on similar grounds — a response to the allegedly corrosive threat of “critical race theory” on the US educational system.
These American bills are not directly inspired by Hungarian policies. But the affinities between right-wing populists in these countries are real, with many leading thinkers on the American right openly admiring Orbán’s willingness to wage culture wars, to the point where they’re willing to downplay his authoritarian abuses.
“What I see in Orbán is one of the few major politicians in the West who seems to understand the importance of Christianity, and the importance of culture, and who is willing to defend these things against a very rich and powerful international establishment,” Rod Dreher, a senior writer at the American Conservative who recently accepted a writing fellowship at the government-funded Danube Institute in Budapest, told me last year. “I find myself saying of Orbán what I hear conservatives say when they explain why they instinctively love Trump: because he fights. The thing about Orbán is that unlike Trump, he fights, and he wins, and his victories are substantive.”
This cultural affinity is effectively an intellectual shield for Orbán, with criticism of his anti-democratic tendencies portrayed by conservatives as a liberal smear.
“One suspects [allegations of authoritarianism are] just simple hatred of Christian conservatism, a fanatical projection of culture war antipathies to the near abroad,” Michael Brendan Dougherty writes in National Review, without a hint of irony.
The Hungarian government has assiduously courted the global intellectual right, setting up meetings between Orbán and prominent socially conservative thinkers from countries ranging from Canada to Israel. The goal is to construct an international traditionalist alliance, centering on Budapest, that aligns right-wing populist movements in Europe and beyond. The culture war is a useful tool for normalizing Hungarian authoritarianism globally, and for enlisting allies who are willing to overlook anti-democratic abuses when the right side of the culture war is perpetrating them.
It’s a strategy that, in many ways, has worked for Orbán — and shows just how vulnerable democracy is to far-right cultural demagoguery.
Major aid donors have said they will investigate and take action against anti-LGBT ‘conversion therapy’ practices at clinics run by groups they fund, in response to findings from an openDemocracy investigation
A new undercover investigation by the global news outlet openDemocracy reveals how health facilities in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda have provided, or provided referrals for, controversial anti-gay ‘conversion therapy’ to “quit” same-sex attraction
Undercover reporters were told by some staff at these facilities that being gay is “evil”, “for whites”,caused by peer pressure, and a mental health problem, and told to give a gay teenager a sleeping pill to prevent him from masturbating
Major aid donors mentioned in our investigation include USAID,The Global Fund and the US government programme PEPFAR. Another implicated clinic in Tanzania is run by MSI Reproductive Choices, a UK-based NGO
During a six-month investigation, our undercover reporters found staff at health centres across Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda who offered help to “quit” same-sex attraction – including at clinics run by aid-funded groups that specifically reach out to LGBT patients.
‘Conversion therapy’ describes a range of practices – from talk therapy to physical ‘treatments – that attempt to change or suppress a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. It is “ineffective” and “harmful,” according to human rights groups, and has been condemned by more than 60 associations of doctors, psychologists and counsellors worldwide.
In almost all cases, the ‘treatments’ identified by our undercover reporters consisted of ‘talk therapy’ counselling sessions. In Uganda, one counsellor also recommended “exposure therapy” with “a housemaid [he] can get attracted [to]’’, and told our undercover reporter to give a gay teenager a sleeping pill to prevent him from masturbating.
‘Conversion therapy’ is banned in some countries, including Brazil, Ecuador and Malta. President Biden has pledged to end these practices within the US; a proposed ban in the UK was included in the Queen’s speech this year; and Canada’s lower house has just passed a bill banning it, which is now waiting for approval in the senate.
Facilities where our investigation found support for these practices include:
Uganda:
An HIV clinic at Kampala’s Mulago Hospital – Uganda’s largest public hospital – run by the Most At Risk Populations Initiative (MARPI), which received a $420,000 USAID grant in 2019, ending in September. (It is unclear if any money went to this specific clinic). The Swiss-based Global Fund, which combats AIDS, TB and malaria, funds both Uganda’s health ministry and a local NGO, which in turn fund the Mulago clinic
Three hospitals in the Uganda Catholic Medical Bureau (UCMB) network. This network received more than $1m from USAID between 2019 and this April (it is unclear whether the specific hospitals identified in our investigation received any of this money)
Tanzania:
A clinic in Mwenge, Dar es Salaam that is run by MSI Reproductive Choices (formerly Marie Stopes International), a UK-based NGO that provides sexual and reproductive healthcare services around the world. In its latest annual report (2019) the organisation reported more than £1.4m in income from UK aid for projects in Tanzania.
Kenya:
A clinic inside the main office in Nairobi of LVCT Health, an HIV and AIDS care organisation, which currently has an $8m grant (which began in 2016 and ends in September) from the US government programme PEPFAR, for work with marginalised communities of sex workers, gay men and trans people in Kenya
In response to this investigation:
Kaajal Ramjathan-Keogh, Africa director at the International Commission of Jurists human rights organisation said that such efforts to ‘cure’ homosexuality are “inherently degrading and discriminatory”
Yvee Oduor of the Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya said that aid donors should “redirect funding […] We already have clinics and health centres run by LGBTQI+ people all over the country. Why not fund these community initiatives?”
A spokesperson for MSI Reproductive Choices said: “We have launched an investigation and will take immediate action against anyone found to be involved in this abhorrent practice”
A US embassy spokesperson in Uganda, Anthony Kujawa, said: “USAID does not fund or promote anti-LGBTQI ‘conversion therapy’ and will investigate any report that a USAID funded partner is doing so”
A spokesperson for the Global Fund said that the organisation “takes seriously the matters raised” by our investigation’s findings and that it “will look into them”
An LVCT Health spokesperson said “we are investigating the matter and will address it conclusively”, including “urgent retraining and sensitisation of our staff”
PEPFAR, MARPI and UCMB did not respond to openDemocracy requests for comment
Notes to editors:
openDemocracy is a global news outlet based in London, UK, with reporters and editors internationally including in East Africa
Representatives from Northern Ireland’s six biggest political parties have committed to outlawing conversion therapy and improving access to trans healthcare.
Political figures convened virtually on Thursday evening (1 July) for the PinkNewsVirtual Summer Reception in Belfast, which was hosted in partnership with Citi and The Rainbow Project.
Leaders from across the political spectrum were questioned on their commitment to LGBT+ rights at the event by John O’Doherty, director of The Rainbow Project.
Kicking off the discussion, O’Doherty asked political leaders how much longer trans people in Northern Ireland will have to wait to access healthcare at home, referencing ongoing issues with the Brackenburn Clinic in Belfast.
Naomi Long, leader of the Alliance Party, said the trans community needs a service “that actually meets their needs, and that currently isn’t the case”.
Doug Beattie, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), drew attention to the high rates of depression and suicidal ideation experienced by trans people – but he pointed out that much of these issues are caused by lack of access to vital healthcare.
He also acknowledged that an ongoing review of trans healthcare in the region is taking too long.
“The trans community need to see light at the end of the tunnel,” he said, adding that he will encourage health minister Robin Swann to accelerate work on introducing a “fit for service” healthcare system.
Cllr Malachai O’Hara, deputy leader of the Green Party Northern Ireland, said trans youth are spending so long on waiting lists that they often become adults in the interim, meaning they then have to join a new waiting list.
He said the provision of trans healthcare in Northern Ireland has “gotten worse” in recent years and said the current service is “not fit for purpose”. O’Hara went on to criticise the parties in Northern Ireland’s Executive, saying they have given “years of platitudes” on trans healthcare but there has been “very little action”.
O’Hara went on to note that there are trans and non-binary people who are no longer alive because of a “failure to act” on healthcare.
Paula Bradley, deputy leader of the DUP, said the issue of trans healthcare comes up “time and time again”, but admitted that the problem has only “steadily gotten worse”.
The night of 9 September, 1982 started off like any other evening for Declan Flynn.
He went to Belton’s Pub in Donnycarney, Dublin with a friend – an establishment that was just a short walk from his home.
At 11.45pm that night, Flynn left the pub and set off on his walk home through Dublin’s Fairview Park, a well-known meeting spot for gay men. He stopped off at the Fairview Grill on his way home where he met with a male friend. Before continuing his journey, his friend kissed him on the cheek.
Shortly afterwards, he was violently beaten to within an inch of his life by a group of “vigilante” teenage boys who wanted to remove queer people from the park.
At around 1.45am, a badly-beaten Flynn was discovered in the park, with paramedics arriving on the scene just minutes later. He died shortly afterwards in Blanchardstown Hospital.
He was just 31-years-old.
Flynn’s death sent shockwaves through Ireland’s LGBT+ community – but anger reached a crescendo when the boys responsible for his death went before the courts.
One of the boys admitted that they went to the park as part of a “queer bashing” mission, boasting about having “battered about 20 steamers”.
“We used to grab them. If they hit back we gave it to them,” said Robert Alan Armstrong, then aged 18.
Despite this, all five boys walked free, with Mr Justice Seán Gannon telling them that Flynn’s killing “could never be regarded as murder”.
Gannon told the court: “One thing that has come to my mind is that there is no element of correction that is required. All of you come from good homes and experienced care and affection.”
Heartbreak in Ireland’s LGBT+ community quickly turned to fury – a rage that was compounded when the teenage killers held a “victory march” in Dublin after walking away with suspended sentences.
Flynn’s death galvanised the modern Pride movement in Ireland as LGBT+ people rose up and demanded that Irish society treat them with the respect they deserved. Between 400 and 800 queer people took to the streets shortly after the boys were given suspended sentences, marching from Liberty Hall through the city to Fairview Park in protest.
“When the judge let them off with suspended manslaughter sentences, essentially what it said to us was that a gay man’s life had no value,” Tonie Walsh, curator of the Irish Queer Archive, told drag queen Panti Bliss on her radio show Pantisocracy.
That march, Walsh said, was “the first large-scale massing of lesbians and gay men in Ireland”.
“We were angry and fearful at the same time. And the only good thing that came out of all that misery was we funnelled all that anger into Ireland’s first proper Pride parade three months later, when 150 of us walked down newly pedestrianised Grafton Street.”
On 25 June, 1983, protesters marched through the streets from Stephen’s Green to the General Post Office (GPO), where Cathal Ó Ciarragáin, Tonie Walsh and Joni Crone addressed the crowd.
In her speech, Crone delivered a satirical queer re-working of the 1916 proclamation of independence, written by Irish revolutionaries and read in the same spot many years before.
It was a moment of protest, anger and visibility — and it marked a radical shift in queer activism in Ireland.
In an interview with Una Mullally for her book In the Name of Love: The Movement for Marriage Equality in Ireland, LGBT+ rights campaigner Izzy Kamikaze said: “We were the people who organised the Fairview Park march after the killing, which is the thing that people say was ‘The Irish Stonewall’. It was.”
Ireland at the time was a staunchly Catholic country and it was a cold, unrelentingly cruel place for queer people to exist.
Since then, things have changed drastically. Gay sex was finally decriminalised in 1993. In 2015, marriage equality was legalised and the Gender Recognition Act was finally passed, giving some trans people legal recognition for the first time.
None of those changes would have happened without the tireless, painstaking work done by LGBT+ activists who spent years marching through the streets, demanding change.
When marriage equality finally became a reality in 2015, activists decorated a footbridge in Fairview Park in memory of Declan Flynn, showing that the legacy of his shocking death will never be forgotten.
Almost 40 years on, Flynn remains a vital figure in Ireland’s Pride movement – even if he never lived to see LGBT+ equality.