Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs issued two pro-LGBTQ executive orders on Tuesday, banning state support of so-called conversion therapy and allowing transgender state employees to receive gender-affirming health care under their insurance plan.
Hobbs made the announcement from the offices of a central Phoenix nonprofit that focuses on helping LGBTQ youth.
Under the executive actions, state agencies will be prohibited from using funds to promote or facilitate so-called conversion therapy, the scientifically discredited practice of using therapy to “convert” LGBTQ people to heterosexuality or traditional gender expectations.
Also, state employee health insurance plans can no longer list gender-affirming surgery as ineligible for coverage. A ban on such coverage was enacted in 2017.
The change will impact former and current state employees and public university workers.
That order effectively resolves an ongoing lawsuit brought in 2019 by Dr. Russell Toomey, a University of Arizona professor who is transgender and sought coverage for a “medically necessary” surgery. ACLU attorneys representing Toomey said Tuesday they will file a motion to settle the case.
Join Positive Images LGBTQIA+ Center, LandPaths and North Bay LGBTQI Families for a Social Saturday: Intergenerational Gathering on July 8th from 10am-3pm at ! (Grove of Old Trees is on Google Maps but if you’d like to Caravan at 10, please meet at the Occidental Community Center)
All LGBTQIA+ youth, families, adults, and elders are welcome at Social Saturdays, which are a recurring series of monthly events taking place throughout Sonoma County where we are seeking to bring together members of our community across generations, particularly gender expansive youth, teens, and adults.
At our July gathering, our guest facilitator Miranda (she/they) will lead us on a guided hike and then guide us through activities based on the nature that surrounds us!
Please bring with you a packed lunch, a blanket (or something else to sit on), and some water to hydrate yourself. There is no bathroom on site so plan to use the bathroom at the Occidental Community Center or somewhere in town.
For this event please RSVP by filling out this form 🙂 We’re excited to see you then!
We’re excited to see you then!
Image Description: An image graphic with “Social Saturday” with various trees in the center. The logos of the sponsoring organizations appear at the top of the graphic. Image 1 is in English, Image 2 is in Spanish.
********** Acompañe a Positive Images LGBTQIA + Center y North Bay LGBTQI Families para un sábado social: ¡Reunión intergeneracional el 8 de Julio de 10a-3p en Grove of Old Trees! Las direcciones de llegar al parque están en Google Maps. Si les gustaría llegar juntos con nosotros, por favor lleguen al Centro Comunal de Occidental a las 10a.
Todes les jóvenes, familias, adultes y ancianes LGBTQIA + son bienvenides en esta reunión, que es parte de una serie recurrente de eventos mensuales que se llevan a cabo en todo el condado de Sonoma, donde buscamos reunir a miembros de nuestra comunidad a través de generaciones, particularmente jóvenes, adolescentes y adultes con género expansivo.
En nuestra reunión de Julio, nuestre facilitador invitade será Miranda (Ella/Elle). Elle nos va guiar en una caminata y después nos enseñara unas actividades sobre la naturaleza que vemos.
Por favor traigan su comida empacada, una cobija (o algo para sentarse), y agua para mantenerse hidratado. No hay baño en el parque sino que lo usan en el centro comunal de Occidental o en el pueblo Occidental antes de llegar.
Para esta reunión por favor rellene la forma aqui! Estamos emocionades de verles ahí!
[Descripción de la imagen: Un gráfico de imagen con “Sábado Social” Descripción de la imagen: Un gráfico de imagen con “Sábado Social” y varios árboles en el centro de la imagen. Los logotipos de las organizaciones patrocinadoras aparecen en la parte superior del gráfico. [La imagen 1 está en inglés, la imagen 2 está en español.]
North America’s largest metropolis, Mexico City, also hosts the continent’s biggest Pride parade and festival. While the LGBTQ+ community is impossible to ignore in June, what about the other months of the year?
Visitors can see queer couples holding hands and kissing in shopping centers, streets, and parks. Another common site is murals and graffiti. But a closer look at the spray paint can reveal something about CDMX’strans community.
Te amo trans = I love trans people
Graffiti supporting women’s rights, specifically including trans women and lesbians, are common along Paseo de Reforma, one of the main avenues of the city. Over 90,000 women and girls marched down the street on International Women’s Day to the Zócalo, the capital’s central square.
The women demanded an end to violence against women – and trans women and lesbians were in the crowd. And as they marched, more graffiti appeared along the route.
Transfeminista = Trans feminists
While Mexico also has an issue with women who explicitly want to exclude trans women from the community, like in the United States, they’re a minority. Now and then, you can see “Rad Fem” graffiti, but you’re more likely to see a pro-trans statement or writing from a trans person about acceptance.
Las trans no borramos a nadie = Trans people don’t erase anyone
As you travel around the city, you’ll also see signs like the one from the boardgame Scrabble that cleverly uses the game’s tiles to make a statement: “Transgender. Cisgender. Same points. Same value.” But take a moment to stop and admire the graffiti too.
Today, the third annual Oakland Black Pride Festival kicks off with a fabulous benefit dinner spotlighting the culinary contributions of queer people of color. It’s the first in a five-day series of events — including workshops, a cookout, and a bar crawl—that Oakland Black Pride founder and CEO Olaywa K. Austin says are aimed at serving the particular needs of the San Francisco Bay Area’s Black queer community.
The festival has its roots in the summer of 2020, when Austin and friends began trying to figure out how to celebrate Pride amid the COVID-19 lockdowns.
“As we were quarantined and I was trying to figure out things to do and how to express my queerness, I was like, ‘How come all of these things can’t be done in festival style?’” Austin told LGBTQ Nation. “These were things I would love to see in a Pride celebration. I would love to see educational things; I would love to see the transgender community making friends with the unhoused community before you make them leave the streets because your parade is coming down the street.”
Austin began to envision a Pride celebration that was more community-focused, that centered the needs and contributions of Black and brown queer and trans people while bringing the community together both to celebrate and to develop solutions to the challenges facing them. Austin found themself drawing up bylaws for a nonprofit organization and in June 2021 launched the first Oakland Black Pride Festival.
The event has grown exponentially in just a few short years. As the festival enters its third year, LGBTQ Nation spoke to Austin about this unique and vital Pride celebration.
LGBTQ NATION: What sets Oakland Black Pride apart from other localized organizations and festivals?
OLAYWA K. AUSTIN: One of the biggest takeaways, obviously, is that it’s Black-led. But because it is a festival, we take five full days. We don’t just have a big weekend, we stretch it out over five days, and within those five days we throw a lot of educational stuff in there. We use Pride and the festival as our greatest opportunity to disseminate information to our community. So, we throw panels in there and we throw online workshops, therapy, mental wellness rooms, and things like that leading up to the big celebration. I’d like to say that we’re probably 70 percent educational, 30 percent party, which sets us apart from a lot of the Pride celebrations that I’ve seen of late—which is fine. Celebrate how we celebrate, I love that.
LGBTQ NATION:Was there a gap you were trying to fill or a need that other Pride celebrations weren’t meeting?
OA: Absolutely. The one thing that has always been my gripe, if you will, with Pride celebrations is that they don’t sort of acknowledge the roots of Pride, other than maybe saying Marsha P. Johnson’s name. But what she was about was so much more than a float, you know what I mean? So, I stopped going, because once you’ve been in a parade, you’ve been in a parade. It doesn’t really change.
There were so many things that just didn’t sit right with the way Pride [celebrations] were being run. And to be honest, I didn’t see a lot of myself in the celebrations. I didn’t see a lot of acknowledgment of the historians and the architects of Pride. I wanted to bring that back, the history and the contributions of African Americans, transgender and nonbinary Black people, their contribution to the gay Pride movement. I didn’t see enough of it. And we celebrate differently, especially Pride.
LGBTQ NATION:What do you mean by celebrate differently?
OA: We celebrate differently than being on a float because we’re celebrating something different. It’s an acknowledgment, the way we celebrate, and it’s a safe way we celebrate. We pull ourselves into spaces where we know we will be taken care of. A lot of times when we go into other Pride arenas, we don’t always feel safe. We want to be in a space where we don’t have to explain ourselves, you know? And we don’t sort of have to have one eye on the door, and those spaces are very, very few and far for us these days. As a community, we are under attack 365 days, so it is important that we do carve out safe spaces for ourselves so our celebrations can be as vast and as beautiful as we are as a community.
LGBTQ NATION:In the last few years, there seems to have been more pushback to the official Pride celebrations. New York has the Queer Liberation March in addition to NYC Pride’s parade. Is that something you’ve noticed as well beyond what you’ve done with Oakland Black Pride?
OA: Absolutely. I started noticing it in 2018 and 2019 when there was some disruption of the San Francisco Pride parade for the very reasons that we spoke of — the fact that they don’t make people of color feel safe, they don’t prioritize Black transgender safety, for the way they treat the unhoused leading up the parade, how they displace the unhoused and don’t really provide any solutions to that. New Orleans Black Pride has done something similar. I had folks from San Diego asking me questions about how to strategize and build on our model, and even in Phoenix, people reach out. So, there are more people looking to build more community-based, festival-style celebrations, things that make us feel more like a community and that speak to the marginalized within the community.
Bryon Malik/courtesy of 25SecondPRAttendees dancing at an Oakland Black Pride Festival event.
LGBTQ NATION:You mentioned the workshops that have been a part of Oakland Black Pride since the beginning. Why have they been such a big part of your festival?
OA: Part of our mission is to look for nuanced solutions to service the needs of the people in our community, and so a lot of times, systems make it difficult for us to get what we need and we have to figure out for ourselves how to come up with ways to get what we need. That’s the inspiration behind it. There are things that, our community at this intersection of Blackness and queerness — and Brownness and queerness — in the Bay area, that don’t affect white queerness. So, we have to seek solutions that speak to that intersection, and that’s really why the workshops exist, that’s something that you don’t normally see, and the Pride celebrations that you normally see are not catering to my demographic. So, when I’m serving my community, I have to think of ways to reach them, and so I ask questions.
And I serve myself too, because I need to. I had a lot of loss in 2021 and 2022. So, when we aligned ourselves with GetSomeJoy, our creative wellness partner, without me mentioning the grief that I was going through, [founder] Alex Hardy said, “You know, we have this workshop, ‘How to Navigate Grief and Loss Through Joy.’” As soon as we started developing the program, the community was like, “Thank you for this!”
LGBTQ NATION:I’ve been asking a lot of people about this lately. Given what feels like this resurgence of anti-LGBTQ+ political animus in the U.S., does Pride hit differently for you this year?
OA: It’s hit different every year since the pandemic, since 2020. Every year there’s something different about the approach. There’s something different about the air. But it never dampens the community organization. The people show up, and when they show up there’s always something looming over our celebrations, whether it’s a George Floyd situation or LGBTQ rights being under attack. And I think that fuels us.
Last year, we had the Proud Boys threaten to show up at our bar crawl. We have a pub crawl where we go around to different LGBTQ and Black-owned bars, and they said they were going to show up and that they had every right to show up. So, we had to tell our community that that was happening. We had to tell the city and the police that this could potentially be a thing. The community of Oakland showed up to our bar crawl in support, just to walk with us. So, yes, there’s always something that feels different about Pride, but whatever that is it always sort of brings us together a little deeper, it brings us a little closer.
LGBTQ NATION:I hate that we even have to think about that kind of thing, but are you anticipating anything like that again this year?
OA: We don’t anticipate it, but we always anticipate it. We’re dealing with a targeted community as it is. We vet our venues very closely and we work very closely with the city of Oakland and that ensures our safety. Last year when we had a verbalized threat, we communicated with our community. We try not to live in the shadows, but at the same time, sh*t’s real. People are getting harmed out here. I think we do a really good job of taking care of each other here.
LGBTQ NATION:Talk to me about curating this year’s festival. Were there any particular issues or themes you had in mind and wanted to highlight with the 2023 lineup?
OA: So, this is our third year. Because I was grieving, I did feel a need to offer my community a safe space to feel the same way. Because I see it. I often go to Facebook and Instagram and check the temperature of the collective, and a lot of folks are grieving and mourning. Particularly in my community. So, I felt it was necessary to allow us a space to do so. It’s a necessary part of life, and that was the precipice of the conversation with Alex from GetSomeJoy.
And in my community, there’s a lot of talk about sex work and how it affects the queer Black community. I wanted to decriminalize and destigmatize sex work. Sex is just a taboo cross-culturally, but I think that gets us into trouble. You get shamed and so you hide, and when you hide, you’re not necessarily careful about what you’re doing. I feel like a lot of the health issues in our community, we can come to an understanding if we talk about some stuff that we wouldn’t normally be able to talk about. That’s why we have this educator-led kink workshop. We’re going to talk about interactive exploration. It offers us a safe space led by a person of color who’s educated in the sex world.
LGBTQ NATION: While there’s a growing call to bring Pride back to its roots as a protest, I think a lot of people still want it to be a time to celebrate the community. How do you balance those two impulses to make Pride both a protest and a party?
OA: Our slogan this year is, “Celebrating the Magic of We.” And we’re always reminded of how it started, and that’s a very simple thing to do within the Pride arena. Every Pride arena should start with how it started. That’s a great way to keep people grounded and aware of what we’re really out here for. Yes, we’re gonna have fun. It’s gonna be a blast. But let’s just be intentional about speaking to the very beginning, why we’re really here.
Vice President Kamala Harris made a surprise visit on Monday to the historic Stonewall Inn bar in Manhattan, where the 1969 uprising sparked the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement and Prideevents worldwide. In doing so, she became the first sitting vice president to make a stop there.
Harris first saw Christopher Park, which is part of the Stonewall National Monument established by former President Barack Obama in 2016. The park sits adjacent to the bar and has been repeatedly targeted by vandals in recent weeks. Harris visited the monument with National Park Service Superintendent Shirley McKinney, who briefed and gave her a tour.
One of the bar’s owners, Kurt Kelly, and out TV personality Andy Cohen welcomed Harris when she made it to the Stonewall Inn.
“Gay Pride was yesterday, so I’m like, woo,” Kelly joked after embracing Harris and welcoming her to the bar.
“I get it,” she replied. “The morning after.”
As a small scrum of reporters and photographers and many joyful customers listened intently, Cohen asked Harris to “tell us something that we can be optimistic about this Pride season.”
According to Harris, the Biden-Harris administration will continue to support the LGBTQ+ community in the face of attacks by GOP state legislators and right-wing extremists.
“I look at these young teachers in Florida who are in their twenties, and if they’re in a same-sex relationship, they are afraid to put up a photograph of themselves or their loved one for fear they might lose their job. It pains me, but it also reminds me that we can take nothing for granted in terms of progress. We have to be vigilant. That’s the nature of our fight for equality. And so we’re up for it. And we are not going to be overwhelmed. We are not going to be silenced. We are not going to be deterred. We are not going to tire, [and] we’re not going to throw up our hands; we’re going to roll up our sleeves.”
She emphasized, “That’s how I feel about it.”
Kelly added, “To me, Stonewall means strength in numbers. Every time you put a rock on that wall, we become stronger and stronger and stronger. And you put your rock here today.”
Harris posed for selfies with patrons once the press had been ushered out of the bar. She hung out behind the bar for a short time, chatting with people there.
Harris briefly spoke to reporters as she was leaving the Stonewall Inn.
“This place represents a real inflection moment in this movement, which is a movement that is about equality, a movement that is about freedom, a movement that is about safety,” Harris said, noting the anniversary of the raid. “I’m here because I also understand not only what we should celebrate in terms of those fighters who fought for fundamental freedoms, but understanding that this fight is not over.”
She continued, “When I look at the fact that in our country we’re looking at somewhere around 600 bills being proposed or passed — anti-LGBTQ bills — book bans, a policy approach that is ‘don’t say gay.’ People in fear for their life. People afraid to be. To be! These are fundamental issues that point to the need for us to all be vigilant [and] to stand together.”
The Stonewall Inn was raided by police in the early hours of Saturday, June 28, 1969, as part of a pattern of harassment against LGBTQ+ establishments. A fight broke out instead of the patrons and allies dispersing. Six days of protests and conflict followed the raid and subsequent riot outside the bar, along nearby streets, and in Christopher Park. As one of the most significant catalysts of the movement’s dramatic expansion of protected rights, the Stonewall Riots are widely regarded as one of the most critical events in the LGBTQ+ rights movement.
Her motorcade then took Harris to the Upper East Side for the 24th Annual LGBTQ+ Leadership Council Gala, a campaign reception benefiting the Biden Victory Fund. In front of an enthusiastic crowd, actress Rosario Dawson introduced Harris.
Harris declared, “Pride is patriotism!”
She said, “There is nothing more patriotic than celebrating freedom, which includes the freedom to love who you love and be who you are.”
Harris then spoke about her earlier visit to the Stonewall Inn.
“I reflected on the determination and dedication of patriots like Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson,” she said.
She also paid tribute to the late Jim Rivaldo, a political consultant who served as her campaign manager during her successful 2004 bid for San Francisco district attorney. Rivaldo was instrumental in Harvey Milk’s election to the city council in 1978.
Harris acknowledged Jim Obergefell, who was in attendance, for bringing the case Obergefell vs. Hodges, which established marriage equality nationwide in 2015 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the plaintiff.
“That progress is not inevitable. It does not just happen. It takes steadfast determination and dedication,” Harris said, “the kind of determination and dedication possessed by people like Jim Obergefell.”
Additionally, Harris acknowledged Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, and gay California Rep. Robert Garcia, who were all in attendance. She also celebrated the election of two lesbian governors: Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey and Oregon Gov. Tina Kotec, who were not at the event.
She warned, however, of the current political climate and promised her and President Joe Biden’s support in the fight against the backsliding of LGBTQ+ rights nationwide.
“These extremists dare to ban books by LGBTQ+ authors or those that have LGBTQ+ characters. Book bans in this year of our Lord 2023,” she said, exasperated. “Imagine!”
Harris continued, “As we are clear-eyed about this moment, let us all see also the larger context in which this is happening because this fight is not only about teachers in Florida or young people in Tennessee. This fight is on all of us because when you attack the rights of any American, you attack the rights of all Americans.”
As the country approaches another presidential election in 2024, Harris outlined the Republican approach.
“Let’s be clear about where this is headed,” she said. “These extremists have a plan to push their agenda as far and as wide as they possibly can. Their blueprint is to attack hard-won rights and freedoms state by state: to attack the right to live as your authentic self, to attack the right to vote, to attack the rights of workers to organize, to attack the right to make decisions about one’s own body.”
Harris responded to those developments with one resounding message.
“Here’s the thing,” she said. “I have news for these extremists. We’re not having that!”
President Joe Biden on Friday warned that if Republicans win next year’s elections, they will go after the right to privacy that has provided the basis for legal protections for same-sex marriage and access to contraception.
“These guys are serious, man. I — I said it when the decision came out, and people looked at me like I was exaggerating,” he said. “But they’re not stopping here.”
Biden delivered the remarks during an event hosted by America’s largest pro-choice organizations in commemoration of the first anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Americans’ constitutional right to abortion.
Joining the president at the Mayflower Hotel in D.C. were his wife, First Lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and her husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff. Also in attendance were senior administration officials and House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who spoke before Biden took the stage.
Repeating his call for Congress to pass legislation restoring the reproductive freedoms that were erased with the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Biden also denounced the abortion restrictions that were since passed in red states.
“They’re not stopping here,” he said. “Make no mistake, this election is about freedom on the ballot.”
Representatives from the abortion rights groups hosting the event — Emily’s List, Planned Parenthood Action Fund and NARAL Pro-Choice America — endorsed Biden’s bid for re-election, likely a signal of his campaign’s confidence that reproductive rights will be a defining feature of the 2024 presidential race.
Also on Friday, the White House issued an Executive Order on Strengthening Access to Contraception along with a fact sheet providing an “update on the work of the Task Force on Reproductive Healthcare Access and the administration’s ongoing efforts to defend reproductive rights.”
The executive order delineates a series of actions including plans to improve access to affordable contraception for those with private health insurance; improve access to over-the-counter contraception; support family planning services and supplies across the Medicaid program; improve Medicare coverage of contraception; ensure “robust coverage” of contraception for service members, veterans and federal employees; increase contraception access for federally supported healthcare programs; improve access to affordable contraception provided by employer sponsored health plans and institutions of higher education; and support research documenting gaps and disparities in access to contraception.
The White House’s fact sheet, meanwhile, summarizes the Biden-Harris administration’s work fighting for reproductive rights in the wake of Dobbs. This has also included a series of actions contained in two executive orders along with those in Friday’s.
Among other moves, the administration has worked to ensure access to medication abortion, protect the freedom to travel across state lines for medical care, safeguard the privacy of health information and partner with statewide abortion rights advocates.
On Saturday, the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy organization, the Human Rights Campaign, issued a press release committing the organization to fighting on behalf of reproductive freedom.
“LGBTQ+ people are disproportionately affected by abortion bans,” according to the press release. “Even prior to the Dobbs decision, lesbian, bisexual, and queer cisgender women reported higher rates of unwanted or mistimed pregnancies relative to heterosexual women, often due to the discrimination that they face in healthcare settings.”
More than 60 people have been detained at Istanbul Pride where thousands turned up to march amid targeted celebration bans.
On Sunday (25 June), LGBTQ+ activists and allies took to the streets of Istanbul’s Şişli district in defiance of obstacles.
English Bianet reported that the Istanbul Pride Week Committee said over 60 were detained by authorities.
In Türkiye, since 2015, Pride events have been systematically banned in the country, with events such as picnics and film screenings even being targeted with bans during Pride Month.
Despite the ban, a group of activists marched in Şişli district on June 25, 2023 in Istanbul, Türkiye. (Hakan Akgun/ dia images via Getty Images)
“Nils Muižnieks, Amnesty International’s Europe director, said: “As thousands take to the streets of Istanbul and Izmir in defiance, they risk facing tear gas and rubber bullets.
“The authorities should allow LGBTI Pride Marches in Türkiye to go ahead safely and without interference.”
On Twitter, participants of the Pride event spoke out about attending the march in the face of oppression.
“The governor of Istanbul said that ‘any activity that threatens the institution of the family’ would not be allowed, and the police closed Taksim. But LGBTI+s found a way around and did not give up on the march!” one posted.
“Despite all the pressure, thousands of queers marched in Istanbul today. This victory is enough for us. I can cry of happiness,” another tweet read.
A third read: “Our stories of honour are different from each other, but they are also the same. My heart and soul are in Istanbul today. We were, we are, we will be.”
Prior to the arrests, activists gathered in Mıstık Park in Nişantaşı and hung a huge rainbow flag on a multi-storey carpark opposite the green. Passionate speeches were made demanding equality for LGBTQ+ people in the country.
“We carry the anger of the queers who have been subjected to torture by the state and its law enforcement agencies, and we declare that our anger will burn you,” one activist read. “We will not leave our spaces; you will get used to us.”
LGBTQ community members and supporters hold rainbow flags and shout slogans during the unauthorised Pride March in Istanbul, on June 25, 2023. (YASIN AKGUL/AFP via Getty Images)
The speech went on to condemn President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s victory speech following his re-election in May, in which he stated: “LGBTI is a poison injected into the institution of the family. It is not possible for us to accept that poison.
“No one can speak against the family.”
Protestors at Istanbul Pride responded by “rejecting” Erdoğan’s anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric.
“We reject this politics of hatred and denial,” the activist told those gathered. “Despite all the prohibitions, criminalisations, pressures, and attempts to suppress us, we will continue to advocate for a humane life for everyone and persist in democratic living.”
Istanbul Pride has been celebrated since 2003, but from 2015, it has been banned by Turkish authorities. Despite this, activists in different cities across the country – including Mersin, Adana, Ankara and Eskisehir – plan to go ahead with Pride events.
Austrian police have foiled a potential terror attack at Vienna Pride after arresting three suspects with alleged links to Islamic extremism.
Omar Haijawi-Pirchner, from Austria’s State Protection and Intelligence Directorate (DSN), told journalists on Sunday (18 June) that three suspects were arrested on suspicion of plotting a terror attack at the event, according to CNN.
The suspects, aged 14, 17 and 20, are Austrian nationals of Bosnian and Chechen origin and were arrested by Austria’s Cobra special forces ahead of the parade on Saturday.
Vienna Pride, which ran from 1 June to 18, was attended by about 300,000 people this year.
Haijawi-Pirchner said the trio had become radicalised online, developing views in line with ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria). He did not give details about the planned attack.
The domestic intelligence chief added that police carried out searches on properties in Vienna and lower Austria where they seized illegal weapons.
“In our democratic society, hate and terror have no place,” he said.
State police president Gerhard Pürstl told journalists: “For the LGBTQ community, many Islamic, as well as right-wing, extremists represent an intense enemy, which is clear from the violent crimes that have been committed during events in the past across the world.”
Austria’s Interior Ministry confirmed investigations by the DSN had revealed a number of people were planning an attack.
“The suspects were subsequently tracked down and taken into custody in a co-ordinated attack,” the security agency said, adding that those attending Pride were in no danger.
Austrian chancellor Karl Nehammer tweeted his thanks to investigators for preventing “a possible Islamist attack in Vienna”.
He added: “We must never give in in the fight against radicals and extremists. They are a threat to our democracy and security and must be dealt with severely.”
Vienna’s mayor Michael Ludwig told Austria’s APA news agency that there “was no place for hate and exclusion in Vienna. Our city is colourful and cosmopolitan”.
LGBTQ+ people in Malaysia are under sustained attack from the government, but the next generation is giving hope, says one non-binary person.
Malaysia’s government is cracking down on the LGBTQ+ community. Queer people have faced arrests and forced conversion therapy in what officials term an attempt to stem the “spread of LGBTQ+ culture in society”.
Growing up in the country, Shaf, the musician also known as moreofthem, grew up experiencing a “lot of internalised homophobia” and gender dysphoria.
“I didn’t really feel masculine, I didn’t really feel all that feminine at the same time and I was kind of bouncing back and forth,” Shaf explains.
“And at the time obviously when you’re in that environment like a very strict religious environment, you don’t know how to navigate it, and you don’t really know who to turn to.”
Before moving to the UK for the first time in 2016, 2017, Shaf kind of knew the “idea of being transgender”, but there wasn’t a “lot on display back home”.
The predominantly Muslim country criminalises consensual same-sex sexual intimacy, with punishments ranging from corporal punishment to imprisonment under Sharia Law and British colonial-era civil laws.
The Malaysian government relies on the force of the law to prohibit expression and conduct that it deems outside of heterosexual, cisgender norms. It is one of 13 countries worldwide that explicitly criminalises the gender expression of trans people.
In 2021, Nur Sajat, trans businesswoman and social media personality, was charged with insulting Islam after she attended a religious event three years earlier wearing clothing traditionally considered female attire. This offence can be punishable by imprisonment in Malaysia.
Sajat fled persecution in Malaysia and was arrested in Thailand before she found refuge in Australia.
Shaf says younger generations of people are ‘getting more open and bit more accepting’ of LGBTQ+ identities despite the government denouncing the queer community. (Ben Ashurst)
At the start of the year, Shaf visited Malaysia to see family and friends.
“There are cases where you have to be careful, and yeah, raids can happen,” they say.
However, they were pleased to see that there is a a growing acceptance of queerness among younger generations.
“I’ve seen a lot of people with trans identities, and I have a few friends that are non-binary in Malaysia, and they’re able to navigate Malaysia quite safely for the most part.”
They add: “But they do lack the resources in the sense there’s not a lot of LGBT-friendly clinics back in Malaysia.
“You kind of have to play it safe, and you have to be a bit hush hush about it, which is a shame. That was kind of my experience.”
When Shaf was home with family they “had to be really, really careful” about expressing their identity.
“But with friends for the most part – there are some bad apples with people my age – but for the most part, a lot of people that I encountered that have been the same age and maybe younger, they seem to be getting more open and bit more accepting.
“So I can see that there is some form of progress in Malaysia. I don’t think we’re anywhere close, but I think we are hopefully getting to a stage of working towards it.”
Being from Malaysia, Shaf wants to use their platform, music and identity to “help champion others and give them a voice”. After all, they know the power of visibility first-hand.
Shaf says their eyes were opened when a “really good friend” began transitioning.
It took them until “maybe 2020, 2021” to become comfortable with their own identity.
“I was kind of going back and forth, and I had many discussions with friends.
“I would say to them, ‘I don’t really feel like a man. I don’t really feel like this either. I don’t know what I’m going to do at this moment.’ But then I had a friend that came out at non-binary, and they gave me this strength to kind of breathe.
“I went to basically all the meetings with him and was there for him when no one else was and that was kind of my way of learning about it all.”
