The Ohio LGBTQ+ community protested a meeting of the Ohio State Board of Education delaying a vote on a “don’t say gay” bill; Israeli playwright Yochai Greenfeld’s autobiographical play about conversion therapy opened in Israel; there was a memorial on Chicago’s south side for several LGBTQ+ people killed by a hit-and-run driver; and murdered Palestinian Gay man Ahmad Abu Marhia’s body was found in Hebron in the West Bank, and a suspect has been arrested.
Rainbow Migration demanded the UK Prime Minister “end immigration detention for all LGBTQ+ people,” “scrap the Rwanda plan” and “reverse changes to the standard of proof for LGBTQ+ people’s asylum claims”; Twelve Republican-led states banned Transgender girls and women from competing in sports; and a long awaited center serving LGBTQ+ people opened on Chicago’s South Side.
The work of Guardians of Equality Movement (GEM), the LGBTQ+ rights organization in Syria; Greece joined 14 other nations in banning conversion therapy; a student at Kalama High School in the state of Washington organized a rally supporting a Transgender student who was beaten in the school; and an art exhibit “Our Blood Can Save” opened in Brooklyn’s Major R. Owens Health and Wellness Community Center.
Takes up: UK waffling on protecting LGBTQI+ people from so-called conversion therapy; reviewers are calling ‘Badhaai Do,’ Harshavardhan Kulkarni’s Indian dramedy film about Lesbians and Gay men, bold and refreshing; Gay man Venton Jones won the Democratic runoff primary for Texas’s 10th House district against queerphobe Sandra Crenshaw; and a teacher in Florida created a template letter that cleverly works around Gov. Ron DeSantis’ hate-filled Don’t Say Gay Bill, HB 1557.
LGBTQ+ students are protesting injustice in Kenya, Florida and Texas; the suspected suicide of Gay mayor Kevin Ward highlights suicide risks for gay men; Black Trans woman Ju’ Zema Goldring’s unjust arrest; and the banning of conversion therapy for people under 18 in New Zealand.
More Russian youth are accepting LGBTQ+ people because for years many have been coming out publicly; the Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya is demanding USAID and the UK redirect their aid–which has been funding conversion therapy in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda–to LGBTQ+-run organizations; and two businesses in Tennessee won an injunction against an anti-Trans law.
Readers’ Views takes up: Queer safety is a human right; fake green politics; women in India; women in the U.S.; shameless evictions; voices from behind bars.
Camila Falquez’s photo manifesto of Trans and Queer Black and Brown people; the arrest in Poland of Transgender rights activist Małgorzata Szutowicz, and the rally to support her; Mexico City’s outlawing of conversion therapy; and a remembrance in Allentown, Pa., for 20 Black, Transgender and Indigenous people murdered for being who they were.
International Transgender Day of Visibility; Puerto Rico bans gay reparative conversion therapy administered to minors; a Catholic hospital’s discrimination against Oliver Knight; and Chuck Kramer’s exhibit, “Faces Out & Proud.”
