Connect with us

World

Blinken says Biden raised Russia’s LGBTQ rights record with Putin

Geneva summit between two presidents took place on June 16

Published

on

Secretary of State Antony Blinken (Photo public domain)

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday said President Biden raised the Kremlin’s LGBTQ rights record with Russian President Vladimir Putin during their recent summit.

“The president pushed human rights — including LGBTQI rights — with President Putin,” Blinken told Washington Post columnist, “PBS NewsHour” contributor and host of MSNBC’s “The Sunday Show” Jonathan Capehart during a virtual Pride month discussion the Atlantic Council hosted.

Biden met with Putin on June 16 in Geneva. Blinken was among those who participated in the summit.

The White House did not say whether Biden specifically raised Russia’s LGBTQ rights record with Putin. Biden told reporters after the summit that he stressed to Putin “that no president of the United States could keep faith with the American people if they did not speak out to defend our democratic values, to stand up for the universal rights and fundamental freedoms that all men and women have, in our view.”

“What he told President Putin is that as an American president — where for all of our challenges, many of which are manifest in recent months and recent years — this is something that is basically stamped in to our DNA and he would be abdicating his responsibility as president, as an American president, not to raise these issues,” Blinken told Capehart.

Capehart specifically asked Blinken about the case of two Chechen brothers who were arrested in Russia in February and returned to their homeland, even though they had fled Chechnya’s anti-LGBTQ crackdown.

“We didn’t get into specific cases in that meeting, but he made very clear to President Putin that this is fundamentally who we and who he is and what we’ll do and will continue to do going forward,” said Blinken.

Blinken also did not say how Putin specifically responded to Biden’s decision to raise his country’s LGBTQ rights record with him. Blinken, however, did say “there was at least an acknowledgment” the U.S. will raise human rights in such meetings.

“This is what an American president should do,” said Blinken. “This is who we are and this is what we represent to the world.”

Advertisement
FUND LGBTQ JOURNALISM
SIGN UP FOR E-BLAST

Hungary

Hungarian authorities lift Budapest Pride ban

Country’s new government took office last month

Published

on

Budapest Pride participants march over the Erzsebet Bridge in Budapest, Hungary, on June 28, 2025, despite an official ban. The country's new government will allow this year's Budapest Pride march to take place without restrictions. (Courtesy photo)

Hungarian police on May 29 announced they will allow the annual Budapest Pride march to take place.

“The Budapest Metropolitan Police has approved the 2026 Budapest Pride Parade and also has issued restrictive orders in relation to three counter-demonstrations,” a Budapest Metropolitan Police spokesperson told Politico.

Budapest is Hungary’s capital and largest city.

Hungarian lawmakers last year passed a bill that banned Pride events and allowed authorities to use facial recognition technology to identify participants. MPs later amended the Hungarian constitution to ban public LGBTQ events.

More than 100,000 people defied the ban and participated in last year’s Budapest Pride parade. The event became one of the largest protests against then-Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his government since he took office in 2010.

Prime Minister Péter Magyar took office last month after his center-right Tisza party ousted Orbán’s Fidesz-KDNP coalition in elections that took place on April 12. The European Union’s top court, the EU Court of Justice, days after Orbán’s ouster struck down Hungary’s anti-LGBTQ propaganda law that MPs approved in 2021.

The EU on May 29 announced it will release more than €16 billion ($18.59 billion) in funds to Hungary that it withheld while Orbán was in office.

The Budapest Pride march will take place on June 27.

“We will march freely in fresh air for our rights, for the democratic Hungary,” said Budapest Pride on its Facebook page.

Continue Reading

Colombia

Claudia López comes up short in Colombian presidential election

Former Bogotá mayor would have been country’s first lesbian head of government

Published

on

Former Bogotá Mayor Claudia López speaks at the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute's International LGBTQ Leaders Conference in D.C. on Dec. 7, 2024. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)

Former Bogotá Mayor Claudia López on Sunday finished fifth in the first round of Colombia’s presidential election.

López, a centrist who ran as an independent, received 225,517 votes. This figure is .95 percent of the total votes cast.

López was the Colombian capital’s mayor from 2020-2023. She was a member of the Colombian Senate from 2014-2018. López, whose wife is outgoing Colombian Sen. Angélica Lozano, would have become the country’s first female and first lesbian president if she would have won the election.

The LGBTQ+ Victory Institute honored López in D.C. in 2024.

“We need to listen to each other again, we need to have a coffee with each other again, we need to touch each other’s skin,” she told the Washington Blade during an interview. She hadn’t yet declared her candidacy, and did not specifically discuss her plans to run.

Runoff to take place June 21

Abrelardo de la Espriella, a far-right lawyer who has praised U.S. President Donald Trump and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, on Sunday finished first with 43.74 percent of the vote. Senator Iván Cepeda, a member of outgoing President Gustavo Petro’s Historic Pact party, came in second with 40.9 percent of the vote.

Neither men received a majority of votes. A runoff between them will take place on June 21.

Continue Reading

Ghana

Ghanaian lawmakers approve anti-LGBTQ bill

Measure that would criminalize allyship awaits president’s signature

Published

on

Ghanaian flag (Public domain photo from Pixabay)

Ghanaian lawmakers on Friday approved a bill that would, among other things, criminalize LGBTQ allyship.

Reuters reported MPs approved the Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill, 2025, in a voice vote after parliament’s Constitutional and Legal Affairs Committee backed it.

MPs in 2024 approved a similar bill, but it faced legal challenges and then-President Nana Akufo-Addo didn’t sign it. Lawmakers last year reintroduced the measure after President John Dramani Mahama took office.

The bill awaits his signature.

Rightify Ghana, a Ghanaian LGBTQ advocacy group, in a series of social media posts notes MPs passed the bill days before the 4th African Inter-Parliamentary Conference on Family Values and Sovereignty will take place in Accra, the country’s capital.

Continue Reading

Popular