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Taliban using monkeypox as an ‘excuse’ to ’round up’ and arrest LGBTQ+ Afghans

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The Taliban is using monkeypox as an “excuse” to harass and detain LGBTQ+ people in Afghanistan. Two gay men who live in Kabul told PinkNews that the Taliban’s persecution of LGBTQ+ people has been ramping up ever since monkeypox started being detected in Europe. While not sexually transmitted, public health officials believe monkeypox is being transmitted in these networks through close contact during sex – though experts have also suggested the statistics may be skewed towards queen men because they are more conscious of their sexual health. Right now, Afghanistan has not officially recorded any cases of monkeypox – but that hasn’t stopped the […]

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Ohio Republicans pass bill requiring genital inspections for school sports

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Late Wednesday night, Ohio Republicans passed a bill requiring certain high school and college athletes competing in women’s sports to have their genitals inspected to ensure that they are not transgender. H.B. 61, known as the “Save Women’s Sports Act,” was intended to prevent transgender women and girls from participating in school athletics. Under the Ohio High School Athletics Association’s (OHSAA) current guidelines, transgender women and girls must have completed a minimum of one year of hormone treatment and/or demonstrate that they do not possess physical or physiological advantages over “genetic females of the same age group.” The new law would prohibit trans […]

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Jerusalem Pride marches defiantly on after death threats sent to organiser and politicians

Jerusalem Pride defied death threats and counterprotests to celebrate LGBTQ+ rights loudly and proudly. Around 7,000 people attended the Jerusalem Pride march on Thursday (2 June), with 2022 marking the event’s 20th anniversary. Knesset speaker Mickey Levy addressed the crowds, saying he was “shocked to the depths of my soul” by the threats. “So I came today to stand against this evil specter,” he said, per The Times of Israel. “You are entitled to love who you want, you are entitled to marry who you love, you are entitled to raise a family like anyone else. These are not privileges, these […]

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LGBTQ+ Ukrainians on their new reality and why help is needed now more than ever

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Franz is struggling to comprehend how it’s been 100 days since Russia invaded Ukraine, kicking off a war that has dragged on for months. “You know, I didn’t even realise it’s been 100 days already,” Franz, who is just 18 years old, tells PinkNews. “It doesn’t feel quite right that it’s already summer. Some part of me still expects to see snow outside the window each morning, as if it was all just February that never ended.” Right now, Franz is in Slovakia, where he’s studying at university. He spends his days wondering where time is going – why the days seem to be […]

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Georgia court rules against employers that deny transgender health coverage

A federal court in Georgia ruled Thursday that employers who categorically exclude gender-affirming medical care from health insurance coverage violate federal law.  Anna Lange, a transgender woman and sheriff’s deputy in Houston County, Georgia, sued in 2019 after she was denied coverage for a vaginoplasty in November 2018.  The Sheriff’s Office provides health care coverage to employees through the county plan, which, beginning in 1998, excluded coverage for talk therapy related to gender dysphoria, gender-affirming hormone therapy and gender-affirming surgeries, according to the opinion released Thursday.  Chief Judge Marc Treadwell, of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia, wrote […]

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Queer survivors of sexual abuse are frequently blamed for their own victimization

LGBTQ survivors of sexual abuse are often blamed for causing their own abuse or are subsequently accused of wanting to molest kids, a new report has found. The U.K.-based Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) — a non-governmental investigative organization that recommends policies to protect children — interviewed 31 LGBTQ survivors of child sexual abuse and 31 organizations that aid LGBTQ survivors to better understand their experiences. The IICSA report found that when queer people reported being sexually abused as kids, they received “poor responses” based on “stereotypical attitudes about sexual orientation.” Some victims and survivors were told that their […]

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Gaming giant EA tells staff it won’t defend trans rights or abortion rights

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Gaming giant EA has told staff that the company will not publicly defend trans rights or abortion rights at a company-wide meeting. The gaming publication Kotaku reported that it had seen and verified a transcript of the town hall meeting on Tuesday (24 May), which allowed employees to raise issues with senior management. Employees had called on EA, the gaming company behind FIFA and The Sims, to make a public statement on the leaked Supreme Court draft opinionwhich showed that the court is poised to strip constitutional abortion rights from US citizens, and on the wave of anti-trans legislation sweeping America,specifically legislation in […]

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LGBTQ history is repeating itself. That’s not necessarily a bad thing

Let’s face it, this year’s Pride comes at a time when many in our community are feeling a sense of doom. The passage of Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill this spring was a shock, not to mention the gut punch of the Supreme Court’s likely Roe vs. Wade decision and its deeply concerning implications for our rights and freedoms. So if you’re feeling threatened, there’s good reason — and it’s not just because of what happened in Florida. This year, over 230 anti-LGBTQ bills were introduced in state legislatures aimed at sports, libraries, and curricula, all with the aim of protecting children from […]

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“Little Women” author Louisa May Alcott very well might have been a transgender man

Louisa May Alcott: the name may as well be a synonym for “woman.” Her novel Little Women is a beloved, foundational text for girls the world over. An instant hit upon publication in 1868, the book has never gone out of print in the intervening 154 years. Countless women say that Little Women taught them how to be a woman, opening their eyes to the many paths their lives could take. And yet, Alcott longed to be a man. “Always believing she should have been born a boy,” writes John Matteson, in Eden’s Outcasts, his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Alcott, “she loved to participate vicariously in the […]

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Mexican LGBTQ group rallies support for beach ‘paradise’ battered by storm

When Hurricane Agatha battered a Mexican beach hamlet popular with LGBTQ residents and visitors earlier this week, members of the community sprang into action to help the town rebound. Zipolite, located on the enchanting southern Pacific coast of Oaxaca state, found itself directly in the path of the storm on Monday. The storm touched down only about six miles (10 kilometers) west of the town as a Category 2 hurricane, damaging buildings and filling the beach with debris.  By Thursday afternoon a GoFundMe campaign had already raised over $21,000 to be used “for the reconstruction of this paradise,” the GoFundMe […]

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