by Elise
Senegal’s President Bassirou Diamaye Faye signed a harsher anti-LGBTQ+ bill and the Senegalese LGBTQ+ community is feeling it. Now, the maximum prison term for anyone suspected of being Gay, Bisexual, Trans or Queer can be from five years to ten. “Promoting” or supporting Gay, Bisexual, Trans or Queer identity has been criminalized. Judges ignoring the guideline that limits judicial discretion can be fined up to 10 million CFA Francs ($17,705). Even before the new, more oppressive law was signed, the governmental and societal oppression and cruelty were so intense that many LGBTQ+ people asked for assistance from the African Human Rights Coalition (now shut down) to help with relocation. People are going underground or fleeing Senegal. World leaders, agencies and civil society are being urged to protect and provide pathways for LGBTQ+ Senegalese with diplomacy, funding, and emergency measures.
***
Galway Pride is now the longest continually running Pride celebration in Ireland. It began in 1989 with only 15 people in Eyre Square. This year’s Galway Pride theme was “Still We Rise” with the phoenix as its symbol. Pride events included a Lip Sync Battle, Trans Night, Queer Latinx Party, a Queer Studies Symposium, and it closed with their Pride Parade.
***
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer proclaimed August the first Transgender and Non-binary Pride and History Month. Michelle Fox-Phillips, on the boards of MiGen and Gender Identity Network Alliance, planned for years to have this come to fruition. She found an opening in 2025 when talking with Tracy Allen of Affirmations LGBTQ+ Community Center and Jay Kaplan of ACLU Michigan at the annual commemoration of the 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria Riot (before the Stonewall Riot). Transgender Michigan has held the Commemoration and a Pride event each August since late 1990. During the new Trans and Non-binary Pride festival there was a screening of the documentary film Screaming Queer: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria, a presentation about ongoing legal cases by the ACLU of Michigan, and a performance of an excerpt from the play Please Give Me Your Money So I Can Buy a Vagina by actress and playwright Julia Marsh.
***
St. Petersburg and Ft. Lauderdale, both in Florida, responded creatively to the new petty anti-LGBTQ+ law Governor Ron DeSantis signed outlawing rainbow crosswalks. The federal Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy got the ball rolling by directing all governors to make all non-freeway intersections and crosswalks “free from distractions.” St. Petersburg had their city hall’s steps painted the colors of the Progress Pride Flag. Fort Lauderdale installed a rainbow “circle of love” at the Selene Condominiums and rainbow-colored bike racks and blasted a 60-mile- long rainbow laser.