World
Around the world, May 17 recognized as ‘gay day’
LGBT activists from Albania to Uganda prepare to mark day against bias
LGBT rights groups in Albania plan to commemorate IDAHO. (Photo courtesy of Amarildo Fecanji/PINK Embassy)
LGBT rights advocates in more than 100 countries around the world will commemorate the International Day Against Homophobia on May 17 with a series of marches, workshops, performances and other events.
Identoba, an LGBT advocacy group in Georgia, is planning a flash mob in front of the country’s old Parliament building in the country’s capital, Tbilisi, on May 17 during which participants will make a rainbow flag with their T-shirts. Botswanan playwright and activist Kalvin K. Kol-Kes is staging his play “BUTCHered” inspired by Mart Crowley’s “Boys in the Band” that focuses on a group of friends who are predominantly lesbian.
Cuba’s National Center for Sexual Education (CENESEX) has scheduled a series of events across Cuba to commemorate IDAHO. Nicaraguan advocacy groups will march through the streets of Managua, the country’s capital, on May 17 to demand respect and what organizers describe as “dignified treatment” for LGBT people.
Washington National Cathedral in D.C. on May 17 will host a screening of the film “God Loves Uganda” and a panel discussion on the state of LGBT rights in the East African country. Thousands of people are expected to take part in a march for LGBT rights in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on the same day.
Zaque, an LGBT youth group in the Australian city of Ballarat in the country’s Victoria state will hold a number of events to commemorate IDAHO. These include the launch of a new iPhone app.
“For the young people of Zaque, IDAHO is important because it is a day for them to stand up and be proud and say that homophobia is not OK,” Ballarat City Councilor Belinda Coates told the Washington Blade. “It’s a celebration of who they are and allows them to be leaders and educators within the community.”
The Albanian LGBT advocacy group PINK Embassy will hold its second annual diversity festival in Tirana, the country’s capital that will feature exhibits with messages and posters the group’s general manager, Amarildo Fecanji, described to the Blade as a “short resume of what has been achieved so far.”
Fecanji’s group will also host panels that will examine media coverage of LGBT-specific issues and how they factor into Albanian politics and gay youth. Pink Embassy and other human rights organizations will also stage a diversity fair in the center of Tirana.
“Slowly but steadily May 17 is coming to be recognized as the gay day,” Fecanji told the Blade when asked how he feels IDAHO bolsters his group’s advocacy efforts in the southeastern European country. “That for people is an opportunity for society to sort of come together.”
IDAHO first took place on May 17, 2005, to commemorate the World Health Organization’s decision to declassify homosexuality as a mental disorder. Organizers have subsequently added transphobia and biphobia to their mission.
This year’s IDAHO takes place against the backdrop of the recent extension of marriage rights to same-sex couples in France, New Zealand, Uruguay and several Brazilian states that include Rio de Janeiro. Gays and lesbians can also now legally tie the knot in nine U.S. states and D.C. and will soon be able to do so in Delaware and Rhode Island.
Canadian and Dutch lawmakers earlier this year approved a transgender rights bills, but anti-LGBT discrimination and violence remain pervasive throughout the world.
A report by the Latin American and Caribbean Network of Transgender Women (REDLACTRANS) released earlier this year notes 61 trans women in Colombia have been reported murdered between 2005-2011. Honduran advocate José Pepe Palacios told the Blade in February while he was in the United States that at least 89 LGBT people in the Central American country have been murdered since the 2009 coup that ousted José Manuel Zelaya.
The State Department in recent years has also spoken out against anti-LGBT violence in Jamaica, Uganda, Zimbabwe and other countries.
Identoba founder Irakli Vacharadze told the Blade violence against LGBT Georgians remains a serious concern. His group’s flash mob will last only 20 minutes because he said “it’s hard to guarantee” the security of those who will take part.
A group of men last week attacked a handful of people who protested the release of a video that showed men having sex with other men.
“This is the discourse in Georgia right now,” Vacharadze told the Blade from Tbilisi. “It’s so, so ugly that you can’t rationally, reasonably argue with that. It’s basically a fist coming in your face when you’re displaying your belongingness to the community.”
Vacharadze and other activists feel IDAHO only strengthens their advocacy efforts in spite of the threats they continue to face.
Kalvin K. Kol-Kes plans to stage a short play called “BUTCHered” to commemorate IDAHO in Botswana. (Photo courtesy of Kalvin K. Kol-Kes)
“I’m very happy with a day like May 17,” Kol-Kes told the Blade last Friday from the Botswanan capital of Gaborone. “It gives you a point when you can actively state something.”
Pedro Julio Serrano of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force noted the march in the Puerto Rican capital on May 17 will coincide with the debate over three bills that would extend adoption rights to gays and lesbians; add sexual orientation and gender identity and expression to the island’s domestic violence laws and ban anti-LGBT discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations.
A hearing on the adoption bill is scheduled to take place in the Puerto Rico Senate hours before the march.
“We are in a historic moment and this day will help in the education of our people about the need achieve equality,” Serrano said.
National
LGBTQ Catholic groups slam Trump over pope criticism
‘Moral truth and compassion always overcome ignorant hate’
LGBTQ Catholic groups have sharply criticized President Donald Trump over his criticisms of Pope Leo XIV.
Leo on April 13 told reporters while traveling to Algeria that he had “no fear of the Trump administration” after the president described him as “weak on crime” and “terrible for foreign policy” in response to his opposition to the Iran war. (Trump on the same day posted to Truth Social an image that appeared to show him as Jesus Christ. He removed it on April 13 amid backlash from religious leaders.)
Vice President JD Vance, who is Catholic, during a Fox News Channel interview on the same day said “in some cases, it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality, to stick to matters of what’s going on with the Catholic church, and let the president of the United States stick to dictating American public policy.” Vance on April 14 once again discussed Leo during an appearance at a Turning Point USA event in Athens, Ga., saying he should “be careful when he talks about matters of theology.”
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni; former U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican Miguel Díaz; and Oklahoma City Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, are among those who have criticized Trump over his comments. The president, for his part, has said he will not apologize to Leo.
“The world is being ravaged by a handful of tyrants,” said Leo on Thursday at a cathedral in Bamenda, Cameroon.
Francis DeBernardo is the executive director of New Ways Ministry, a Maryland-based LGBTQ Catholic organization. He told the Washington Blade on Thursday that Trump’s comments about Leo “are one more example of the ridiculous hubris of this leader (Trump) whose entire record shows that he is nothing more than a middle-school bully.”
“LGBTQ+ adults were often bullied as children, and they have learned the lesson that bullies act when they feel frightened or threatened,” said DeBernardo. “But secular power does not threaten the Vicar of Christ, and Pope Leo’s response illustrates this truth perfectly.”
DeBernardo added Trump “is obviously frightened that Pope Leo, an American, has more power and influence than the president on the world stage.”
“Like most Trumpian bullying, this strategy will backfire,” DeBernardo told the Blade. “Moral truth and compassion always overcome ignorant hate. Trump’s actions are not an example of his power, but of his impotence.”
Marianne Duddy-Burke, executive director of DignityUSA, an LGBTQ Catholic organization, echoed DeBernardo.
“He [Trump] has demonstrated throughout both presidencies that he doesn’t understand the basic concepts of any faith system that is founded on the dignity of human beings, the importance of common good,” Duddy-Burke told the Blade on Thursday during a telephone interview. “It’s just appalling.”
Duddy-Burke praised Leo and the American cardinals who have publicly criticized Trump.
“The pope’s popularity — given how much more respect Pope Leo has than the man sitting in the White House — is a blow to his ego,” Duddy-Burke told the Blade. “That seems to be a sore sport for him.”
“It’s such an imperialistic world view,” she added.
Leo ‘is the real peacemaker’
The College of Cardinals last May elected Leo to succeed Pope Francis after his death.
Leo, who was born in Chicago, is the first American pope. He was the bishop of the Diocese of Chiclayo in Peru from 2015-2023.
Francis made him a cardinal in 2023.
Juan Carlos Cruz — a gay Chilean man and clergy sex abuse survivor who Francis appointed to the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors — has traveled to Ukraine several times with Dominican Sister Lucía Caram since Russia launched its war against the country in 2022. Cruz on Thursday responded to Trump’s criticism of Leo in a text message he sent to the Blade from Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital.
“I am in Ukraine under many attacks,” said Cruz. “Trump is an asshole and has zero right to criticize the Pope who is the real peacemaker.”
Belarus
Belarusian president signs bill to allow LGBTQ rights crackdown
Alexander Lukashenko known as ‘Europe’s last dictator’
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Wednesday signed a bill that will allow his government to crack down on LGBTQ advocacy.
The measure that Lukashenko, who is known as “Europe’s last dictator” and is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, signed would punish anyone found guilty of “propaganda of homosexual relations, gender change, refusal to have children, and pedophilia” with fines, community labor, and 15 days in jail.
The House of Representatives, the lower house of the Belarusian National Assembly, last month approved the bill. The Council of the Republic, which is the parliament’s upper chamber, passed it on April 2.
Belarus borders Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
Kazakhstan is among the countries that have enacted Russian-style anti-LGBTQ propaganda laws in recent years.
The European Commission in 2022 sued Hungary, which is a member of the EU, over its anti-LGBTQ propaganda law. Hungarian voters on April 12 ousted Viktor Orbán, a Putin ally who had been their country’s prime minister since 2010.
Senegal
Senegalese court issues first conviction under new anti-LGBTQ law
Man sentenced to six years in prison on April 10
A Senegalese court has issued the first conviction under a new law that further criminalizes consensual same-sex sexual relations.
The Associated Press notes the court in Pikine-Guédiawaye, a suburb of Dakar, the Senegalese capital, on April 10 convicted a 24-year-old man of committing “acts against nature and public indecency” and sentenced him to six years in prison.
Authorities arrested the man, who Senegalese media reports identified as Mbaye Diouf, earlier this month. The court also fined him 2 million CFA ($3,591.04).
Lawmakers in the African country on March 11 nearly unanimously passed the measure that increases the penalty for anyone convicted of engaging in consensual same-sex sexual relations from one to five years in prison to five to 10 years. The bill that Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko introduced also prohibits the “promotion” or “financing” of homosexuality in Senegal.
MassResistance, an anti-LGBTQ group based in the U.S., reportedly worked with Senegalese groups to advance the bill that President Bassirou Diomaye Faye signed on March 31.
“This prison sentence is unlawful under international law,” said Human Rights Watch on Wednesday. “Senegal is bound by treaty obligations that protect every person’s right to dignity, privacy, and equality.”
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