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Euronews
2 days ago
- Politics
- Euronews
Poland, Portugal mark pride month with LGBTQ+ parades
Both Poland and Portugal marked the beginning of pride month with parades held on Saturday afternoon. The month of June is celebrated as pride month across the world, with festivals, demonstrations, parades, and other events bringing light to LGBTQ+ issues. In Poland, Pride marches were held in the cities of Gdańsk and Wrocław, just one week after the election of conservative-nationalist Karol Nawrocki, who was endorsed by the Law and Justice party. This was the 17th Pride Parade in Wrocław, and the 10th to take place in Gdańsk. In Wrocław, demonstrators set of from Freedom Square at 14:00, while the "Tri-City Equality March" encompassing the coastal cities of Gdańsk, Gdynia, and Sopot took off at 16:00. Both marches aimed to showcase the cities as inclusive towards all of their residents. Several political leaders confirmed their participation in the marches, including Minister of Family, Labor and Social Policy Agnieszka Dziemianowicz-Bąk, Minister of Equality Katarzyna Kotula, Mayor of Gdańsk Agnieszka Dulkiewicz and Mayor of Sopot Magdalena Czarzyńska-Jachim. City councilor and president of the Tolerado Association for LGBTQ+ rights, Marta Magott said in an interview with the official website of Gdańsk that the annual march is a "reminder of freedom, solidarity, and equality". The event was significant in Poland, which still ranks as the second-worst country in the EU for LGBTQ+ people, after Romania, according to the advocacy group ILGA-Europe, which publishes an annual "Rainbow Map" ranking the countries based on political and social factors. Poland had occupied the top spot in the rankings for six years, and made marginal progress since the election of the coalition government in 2023, according to the organization. Portugal, on the other hand, is in 11th place. A Pride March will also take place on June 14 in Warsaw. At the 26th LGBTQI+ Pride March in Lisbon on Saturday, thousands of people lined the avenues of the capital's downtown to defend human rights, equality and non-discrimination. The march left Praça do Marquês de Pombal at 16:30 with one of this year's mottoes being "Resist and not just Exist", according to a joint manifesto published by one of the organising movements on social media. At a time when the far-right is closer to political power and institutions in Portugal and Europe, hate speech and discrimination against LGBTQ+ minorities are resurfacing in national society, after more than 50 years of achievements in Portugal for equality and non-discrimination rights. "The political forces that deny our rights are gaining institutional space, marching is reaffirming that we don't back down, that we exist, that we resist," says the Associação ILGA Portugal - Intervenção Lésbica, Gay, Bissexual, Trans e Intersexo (ILGA) on its Facebook account. "Hate speech is trying to become normalised," adds ILGA, and "we cannot ignore the fact that freedom and democracy are under attack," warns. The group recalled that during the 48 years of dictatorship, the fascist regime denied the existence of homosexuals and lesbians, who were persecuted. Portugal lived under a dictatorship for almost 48 years. Founded in 1995, ILGA Portugal is the oldest association defending LGBTQ+ people and their families against discrimination. It is part of ILGA World and the Platform for Fundamental Rights of the European Union Agency. "We are marching for the right to live with dignity, for all the people who came before us, for those who are here and for those who are yet to come." "This is a right that has been won over the years in Portugal, and today it is under threat," said Mariana Mortágua, coordinator of the Left Bloc party, participating in the parade. 'Nowadays, it's difficult to demonstrate for human rights without being threatened by extreme right-wing forces and without the government doing something about it', Mortágua added in statements to Portuguese national television, RTP. "We have to keep fighting for rights," said Hélder Bértolo of the March's organising committee, "it's important to be here, to raise our voices," he added regarding the threat of acquired rights being broken in the face of the rise of the radical right. Bértolo said these rights "have faded", especially in countries like Hungary. "Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and other European countries are also moving in this direction", the spokesperson told reporters. The 2025 edition also saw the participation of the Commission for Citizenship and Gender Equality (CIG), which joined the 18 associations and groups with political intervention in defence of the LGBTQ+ community.
Scotsman
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
LGBT Youth Scotland launches Pride campaign – It's Giving
This Pride season, LGBT Youth Scotland have launched a new campaign, It's Giving. Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... The phrase 'It's giving' originated in LGBTQ+ POC and drag communities, evolving from longer expressions like 'It's giving [something]' (e.g., 'It's giving diva' or 'It's giving drama'). It's a way to express that someone's vibe, look, or energy embodies a certain quality — often fabulous, bold, or iconic. In the queer community, 'It's giving' has become a playful, empowering way to affirm identity, celebrate style, and uplift self-expression. It's more than slang — it's part of a cultural language rooted in resilience, creativity, and joy. While playful, the campaign also has a serious message. Now more than ever, young people need safe, affirming spaces. In the current social and political climate, with the UK falling to 22nd place on the ILGA Europe Rainbow Europe index and increasingly hostile discussions about LGBTQ+ lives and experiences, the need for LGBT Scotland's services has never been greater. This campaign invites friends and allies to proudly rise to the challenge and ensure every young person gets the support they need and deserve. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad LGBT Youth Scotland is Scotland's only national charity for LGBTQ+ young people. LGBTQ+ young people face unique barriers to being safe, healthy and happy; their mission is to break these barriers down and promote equality so they can flourish and thrive. It's Giving Pride logo The charity provides specialised services for LGBTQ+ young people, creating safer spaces aimed at reducing isolation, improving wellbeing and supporting them to positive destinations. This is provided through youth groups, 1:1 coaching, outreach, participation opportunities, education and online support. Each year, they support over 1000 young people directly, and reach over 30,000 more through inclusivity programmes. The vital need for their work, and their success supporting young people was recently recognised at the Proud Scotland Awards 2025, where LGBT Youth Scotland won the award for best Charity. However, none of this work would be possible without support. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad LGBT Youth Scotland have put together a campaign pack full of ways to get involved, have fun, build community and support LGBTQ+ young people. From bake sales to film nights to sporting challenges, there's something for everybody. This pride season, what are you giving? For more information about LGBT Youth Scotland, visit
The Guardian
17-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Britain has dropped down Europe's LGBTQ+ rights rankings. Good – now we might have to face reality
It should surprise no one that the UK has dropped to its lowest ever position on the annual 'rainbow map' of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Intersex Association (ILGA), which ranks the best and worst European countries on the basis of laws and policies that affect LGBTQ+ people. The map assesses each country through seven categories, including equality and non-discrimination, legal gender recognition and asylum. The supreme court's ruling last month that a person's sex in the Equality Act 2010 refers only to 'biological sex' – a redefining of trans people's rights to their detriment, and a political and cultural victory for the gender critical movement – will have played a key role in the downgrading. Senior politicians immediately capitulated to the ruling, interpreting the implications of the verdict beyond the scope of the court, with the gay health secretary even renouncing his own support for the notion that 'trans women are women'. Meanwhile, the Scottish government has dropped plans to legislate for a ban on conversion therapy during this parliamentary session. At this rate of progress the ranking will be even lower next year, as it should be. While I despair at the UK's decline on LGBTQ+ rights, I do not despair at the ranking. In 2015, the year I turned 18 and began to live as an openly gay man, the UK was ranked first on the rainbow map. Times were different then. There was a sense that the coalition and later Conservative government was on the side of LGBTQ+ people. Same-sex marriage had been legalised in 2013, David Cameron called for action to tackle transphobic bullying, and in 2017 Theresa May would announce reform to the gender recognition act to allow people to change gender without medical checks. It is tempting to be wistful for those days, but I had always found there to be a grating smugness to Britain's celebration of its supposed progressiveness. Even the entire basis of the rainbow map, first published in 2009, felt suspect; I'm sure that it is innocently intended to provide analysis of LGBTQ+ rights in Europe, but so often metrics like this have been mobilised to present western, European countries as bastions of progress where countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Middle East represented a backwards order. But that backwardness has always been present in the UK, including when we topped the rainbow map ranking. How could a country that had obliged LGBTQ+ asylum seekers to submit footage of 'highly personal sexual activity' to back up asylum claims ever be held up as the pinnacle of European social progress (unless it was determined that some LGBTQ+ people counted more than others). Even with such practices from the Home Office, the UK scored positively on asylum in 2015. In any case, the pretence has now dropped. Labour pledged a 'fully trans-inclusive ban' on conversion therapy in its 2024 manifesto. Starmer has not mentioned the issue once since the King's speech. LGBTQ+ people are no longer politically expedient – and trans people attract too much hostility, division and controversy – so advocacy for our collective rights no longer seems to be a priority. This is a disaster, but it is also instructive for future strategy: those activists who believed that legislative wins can secure true equality or progress, and that social progressivism was the natural order of history, are now seeing the consequences of such a delusion. One of the recommendations for how the UK can improve its standing in next year's rainbow map is to 'ensure timely and accessible trans healthcare, including addressing excessive waiting times and restoring access to puberty blockers for trans youth' – provision of which has been indefinitely banned following the Cass review of April 2024. Alice Litman, a 20-year-old transgender woman, died by suicide in 2022 after spending 1,023 days waiting for her first appointment with the now disbanded Gender Identity Development Service. I spoke to her sister, Kate, a university friend of mine, who, with her family, formed the Campaign for Alice. She told me that at Alice's inquest it was heard that, if processes continued at the current rate, those entering the waiting list today would face a more than 20-year wait before their first appointment. Such delays had made Alice's life 'intolerable', but added to that was 'the general atmosphere of hostility towards trans people and her anxiety and fear about participating in public life'. I have previously spoken with trans people who had come out and transitioned around the so-called transgender tipping point in the mid-2010s. Not all are convinced that they would do the same in the current political environment. As a lesbian woman, Kate feels further indignation that such regress has been presented as a 'victory for lesbians'. She says 'my identity is politicised and weaponised in a way that is antithetical to my beliefs.' So what is the roadmap for progress now? For the Campaign for Alice, some level of political will is needed to effect the 'simple changes' to trans healthcare, such as providing the funding and training to enable GPs to prescribe hormones that could prevent further tragedies. Such will has disappeared from senior politicians. That today's government would enact May's pledges to ease gender transition is unthinkable. Repealing the 2022 Nationality and Borders Act would facilitate LGBTQ+ asylum seekers to find safe residence with dignity, but Starmer's recent rhetoric indicates that this problem will only worsen. For now, what is most important is clarity over who is truly on the side of LGBTQ+ people and who or what we can rely on. Following the supreme court ruling, organisers of upcoming summer Pride events in London, Manchester, Birmingham and Brighton have banned political parties from participating. That feels like a welcome recognition of reality: solidarity is to be found within our communities, and not in the whims of politicians who seek to divide and exploit us. Jason Okundaye is an assistant newsletter editor and writer at the Guardian. He edits The Long Wave newsletter and is the author of Revolutionary Acts: Love & Brotherhood in Black Gay Britain
The Independent
18-02-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Openly gay Muslim imam killed in suspected hate crime
A prominent LGBTQ+ Muslim leader, Muhsin Hendricks, has been shot dead in South Africa. The killing has raised fears of a politically motivated assassination. Hendricks, widely regarded as the first openly gay Muslim imam, was ambushed on Saturday in Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth). Security footage shows a masked assailant jumping from a pickup truck and firing multiple shots through the car window where Hendricks was sitting. A driver accompanying Hendricks survived the attack. While official motives are still under investigation, political parties and LGBTQ+ advocacy groups suspect Hendricks was targeted for his progressive religious views. He founded an inclusive mosque in Cape Town specifically welcoming LGBTQ+ Muslims, challenging traditional Islamic teachings on homosexuality. South Africa's Justice Ministry has confirmed it is investigating the possibility of an assassination. Hendricks was known internationally and spoke at the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association's (ILGA) conference in South Africa in 2024. The ILGA family 'is in deep shock at the news of the murder of Muhsin Hendricks and calls on authorities to thoroughly investigate what we fear may be a hate crime', said Julia Ehrt, executive director of the association. 'He supported and mentored so many people in South Africa and around the world in their journey to reconcile with their faith.' The ILGA said Hendricks had spoken of how some people were calling for the closure of his mosque and had branded it the 'gay temple'. The Democratic Alliance, South Africa's second biggest political party, said 'the nature of the killing strongly suggests a professional hit'. Hendricks said in an interview with a South African newspaper in 2022 that he felt he was the target of a series of fatwas – rulings in Islamic law – issued by South Africa's Muslim Judicial Council that year. They reminded the country's Muslims that same-sex relationships were prohibited, although the council said gay Muslims who abstain from 'same-sex actions' should be welcomed at mosques. Hendricks was the subject of a documentary film released the same year called The Radical, in which he said that there had been threats against him but 'it just didn't bother me. The need to be authentic was greater than the fear to die'. The film also focused on young gay Muslims who said Hendricks provided somewhere they could pray and practise Islam while still being themselves. The Muslim Judicial Council of South Africa said in a statement Sunday that while it had consistently stated that Hendricks' position was incompatible with Islamic teachings, 'we unequivocally condemn his murder and any acts of violence targeting members of the LGBTQ community or any other community'. Hendricks grew up in a conservative Muslim family and married a woman. He ended the marriage and came out publicly as a gay imam in the mid-1990s and started a support network and later a mosque for gay Muslims. He advocated for their inclusion through his Al-Ghurbaah Foundation and referred to himself as 'the world's first openly queer imam'. 'When I was looking at the way queer Muslims were negotiating this dilemma between Islam and their sexual orientation and identity, I felt compelled to do something about it,' he said, explaining his beliefs. 'And I thought, for me to help would probably be for me to be authentic with myself and come out. I think it's possible to be queer and Muslim or queer and Christian.' In a message on its official Facebook page, the Al-Ghurbaah Foundation said Hendricks was 'a great father and a guardian of many. Continue resting with angels'.
Voice of America
17-02-2025
- Politics
- Voice of America
1st openly gay Muslim imam killed in South Africa; ‘hate crime' suspected
A man regarded as the first openly gay Muslim imam has been fatally shot while sitting in a car in South Africa in what many are calling an assassination because of his teachings. Muhsin Hendricks was killed Saturday in the southern city of Gqeberha after being ambushed by two men in a pick-up truck. Police said the men involved in the killing had their faces covered. A security video of the shooting shows one of them jumping out of their vehicle, running up to the car Hendricks was in and firing a pistol multiple times through a side window. Police have not established a motive for the killing, but political parties and LGBTQ+ organizations say Hendricks was targeted because he started a mosque in Cape Town for gay people and called for members of the LGBTQ+ community to be welcomed into Islam. Homosexuality is forbidden in the Islamic religion. South Africa's Justice Ministry said it was investigating claims that Hendricks was the target of an assassination. Hendricks was known internationally and spoke at the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association's conference in South Africa last year. The ILGA family 'is in deep shock at the news of the murder of Muhsin Hendricks and calls on authorities to thoroughly investigate what we fear may be a hate crime,' said Julia Ehrt, executive director of ILGA. 'He supported and mentored so many people in South Africa and around the world in their journey to reconcile with their faith.' The ILGA said Hendricks had spoken of how some people were calling for the closing of his mosque and had branded it the 'gay temple.' The Democratic Alliance, South Africa's second biggest political party, said 'the nature of the killing strongly suggests a professional hit.' Hendricks came out publicly as a gay imam in the mid-1990s and started a support network and later a mosque for gay Muslims. He advocated for their inclusion through his Al-Ghurbaab Foundation and referred to himself as "the world's first openly queer imam.' 'When I was looking at the way queer Muslims were negotiating this dilemma between Islam and their sexual orientation and identity, I felt compelled to do something about it,' he said, explaining his beliefs. 'And I thought, for me to help would probably be for me to be authentic with myself and come out. I think it's possible to be queer and Muslim or queer and Christian.' In a message on its official Facebook page, the Al-Ghurbaab Foundation said Hendricks was 'a great father and a guardian of many. Continue resting with angels.' The Muslim Judicial Council of South Africa said that while it had consistently stated that Hendricks' position was incompatible with Islamic teachings, "we unequivocally condemn his murder and any acts of violence targeting members of the LGBTQ community or any other community.'
