27 h. ago ‘Harvey would say, we’re on the brink’: why conservatives are coming for a gay rights hero

Emboldened by Trump, the right is trying to chip away the legacy of the trailblazing politician Harvey Milk. Activists say it’s a sign of a wider assault on the LGBTQ+ communityAs San Francisco’s pride festivities came to a close last week, a cloud hung over the otherwise joyful celebrations as the city’s LGBTQ+ community learned that the US government had stripped a naval ship of its name honoring the gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk.Donald Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, claimed the action showed the administration’s commitment to “taking the politics” out of military naming conventions. San Francisco’s queer community saw things differently. Continue reading...

Politics

3 d. ago ‘Accelerated censorship’: advocates criticise US supreme court ruling on LGBTQ+ books

Opponents say the decision allowing parents to let their kids opt out of lessons featuring LGBTQ+ themes will hurt the US education systemKiernan, a 24-year-old transgender person from Colorado, feels drained from dealing with legislation that consistently limits the spaces and freedoms of people like him. Since he transitioned in 2016, it’s been the same – first bathroom bills, then censorship in the education system – routine attacks on LGBTQ+ rights that Kiernan feels have now just become part of living in the US.Now, in the wake of the Mahmoud v Taylor supreme court ruling, the stigmatization of these communities is likely to worsen. Continue reading...

Events

3 d. ago ‘Accelerated censorship’: advocates criticize US supreme court ruling on LGBTQ+ books

Opponents say the decision allowing parents to let their kids opt out of lessons featuring LGBTQ+ themes will hurt the US education systemKiernan, a 24-year-old transgender person from Colorado, feels drained from dealing with legislation that consistently limits the spaces and freedoms of people like him. Since he transitioned in 2016, it’s been the same – first bathroom bills, then censorship in the education system – routine attacks on LGBTQ+ rights that Kiernan feels have now just become part of living in the US.Now, in the wake of the Mahmoud v Taylor supreme court ruling, the stigmatization of these communities is likely to worsen. Continue reading...

Events

5 d. ago The success of Budapest Pride hurt Orbán – but be warned, Europe’s far right is coming for all of our rights | Gordon Cole

Huge crowds defied a ban to party on Saturday, yet authoritarians across the continent are targeting LGBTQ+ people to spread divisionAn animal is at its most dangerous when it is wounded, and the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, was already haemorrhaging supporters before a record number of people took to the streets on Saturday to support Budapest Pride, which his government had legally banned in March.The pulsating, international, love-fuelled parade, which stretched more than a mile through Budapest’s most prominent landmarks, was everything the Hungarian far right hates. And for Orbán and his nationalist party, Fidesz, the public defiance of Pride organisers, European diplomats and those of us who filled the streets in spite of threats of facial-recognition surveillance, arrests and fines has dented his strongman reputation. Continue reading...

Events

1 week ago I’m a queer Palestinian. Stop using my identity as cover for the destruction of Gaza | Jad Salfiti

Rightwingers in Israel and the US claim they are defending LGBTQ+ rights while Gaza’s people are killed. Don’t dare do this in our namePride has never been apolitical, but in recent years, particularly after the Israeli occupation’s onslaught on the Gaza Strip after 7 October 2023, the coalition of queer rights in the west has felt increasingly fractured.In Berlin, the city I call home, Pride events have splintered along political lines as Palestine has been a recurring point of contention. According to organisers of Internationalist Queer Pride Berlin (IQP Berlin), a split between two major alternative Pride events followed an incident in which the initial organisers called police to the event after participants expressed solidarity by chanting “free Palestine”. Meanwhile, at Berlin’s official Pride parade, attenders have previously waved rainbow and Israeli flags as they marched through Berlin alongside an Israeli embassy float.Jad Salfiti is a British-Palestinian video producer a...

Politics

3 w. ago How 'Take Me Out to the Ball Game' seeded a music nonprofit supporting the songwriters of tomorrow

“Take Me out to the Ball Game” is more than just a song sung every summer in baseball stadiums around the United States

Culture

3 w. ago Trump is going after LGBTQ rights and big companies have responded by shunning Pride Month

After years of showy tributes and accusations of ‘rainbow-washing’, US companies are shrinking back for fear of Donald Trump, Io Dodds reports

Politics

4 w. ago International Pride Orchestra plays outside DC in rebuff to Trump snub at Kennedy Center

LGBTQ+ ensemble was to appear at performing arts center but moved to Maryland after president reorganized venueAn event by the International Pride Orchestra this week swung from classical Gershwin favorites to choral patriotism to high drag in a rebuff to Donald Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center and its subsequent snub of the LBGTQ+ ensemble.The spirited celebration of WorldPride, the peripatetic biennial international festival in support of LGBTQ+ rights which kicks off this month and is taking place in Washington DC, was staged instead at the Strathmore Music Center in Maryland, just north of the capital. Continue reading...

Politics

last month Lambda Legal, a nonprofit supporting LGBTQ+ rights, exceeded fundraising goal by $105M

The legal aid group Lambda Legal has raised $285 million at a time when attacks on the rights of gay, intersex and transgender people have again intensified

Economics