World
Fighting for LGBTQ rights in the Global South
Activists in Thailand and Lebanon forge ahead
The Global South presents unique challenges for LGBTQ activists and advocacy groups.
The Human Rights Campaign notes 29 countries have extended marriage rights to same-sex couples, and the majority of them are located in the Global North that comprises more developed countries in the Americas and Europe. Less than a handful of these countries — such as South Africa and Brazil — are in the Global South. Countries in the Global North, as a result, are more likely to harbor LGBTQ-friendly public sentiments compared to the Global South, which is rife with restrictive anti-LGBTQ laws.
This reality not only makes life tumultuous for both openly and closeted queer individuals in the Global South, the chances of encountering LGBTQ-friendly sentiments in these regions are also close to non-existent. Ensuring the fundamental human rights of the queer people who live in these regions are guaranteed is imperative for activists.
The Washington Blade recently spoke with activists from Thailand and Lebanon about their advocacy work and also how they celebrated Pride in countries where LGBTQ identity is not widely acknowledged.
Thailand
Midnight Poonkasetwattana is the executive director of the Asian Pacific Coalition on Male Sexual Health (APCOM), a non-profit organization located in Bangkok. The organization’s work centers on addressing sexual health-related issues by collecting data on gay men and men who have sex with men in 35 countries across Asia and the Pacific.
“What we do in general is empowering communities on the ground to be able to speak their truth, and also participate meaningfully in country, regional, and global fora so they can have their voices and actually articulate what is it the needs of communities on the ground are,” says Poonkasetwattana.
APCOM, by giving these communities the ability to articulate their concerns, creates and facilitates an environment where LGBTQ people’s sexual and mental health needs are met, even though discrimination remains a barrier to accessing these services.
APCOM’s work does not come without its challenges because of the prevalence of anti-LGBTQ laws in many Asian countries. Their work, however, usually continues undeterred because of their ability to work with local community organizations in the public health sector.
“There are some opportunities to work under public health, and we’ve been able to do that in certain places [like Afghanistan] where it’s still difficult to talk about equality,” says Poonkasetwattana. “When we talk about ensuring that those who are marginalized and most at risk to [contract] HIV are able to get prevention and treatment, [we focus on working] with community-based organizations.”
APCOM, as a result, has been able to facilitate important conversations around HIV/AIDS, with the specific information about the use of necessary and appropriate language in web programming that recognizes people’s different sexual identities and encourages direct conversations around drug use and sex work.
APCOM, in order to commemorate Asia’s LGBTQ community’s tenacity, began Pride month with a virtual discussion that the Australian Embassy in Thailand sponsored. The event, titled “Celebrating Pride Month 2021: LGBTQI Inclusion and the Effect of COVID-19,” had two sessions.
The first session, “Voices from Thai LGBTQI: Launch of Khormoon Report,” discussed COVID-19’s impact in Thailand. The second, “COVID-19 Recovery and LGBTQI Inclusion: A Perspective from the Business Sector,” focused on how Thailand’s business sector practiced inclusion and how it will further propel LGBTQ advocacy.
As APCOM prepares to ease back into normalcy as the pandemic wanes, Poonkasetwattana will begin to prepare for the organization’s HERO Awards (HIV, Equality and Rights), a fundraising gala that honors outstanding LGBTQ activists, HIV/AIDS service providers and allies from across Asia and the Pacific and also raises money for the HIV prevention and human rights work of APCOM.
Lebanon
Helem, whose executive director is Tarek Zeidan, is an LGBTQ advocacy organization in Beirut, Lebanon. Founded in 2001, this non-governmental entity works to improve the legal and social status of LGTBQ people in the Middle East and North Africa.
Lebanon is what Zeidan describes as a slightly safer place for queer people. Lebanon, compared to Egypt and Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Middle East, has emerged as a more inclusive and liberal place despite it being anything but a safe haven for queer people.
“When it comes to LGBTQ rights, Lebanon packs a punch way above its weight,” says Zeidan. “Because, in a region which is notorious for LGBTQ rights violations, Lebanon has enjoyed, and here I use the word enjoy very loosely, a relatively safer and more inclusive sort of experience.”
Helem in its many incarnations throughout its 21-year history has always had one main goal: React to whatever priorities and needs that queer people in the Middle East have.
Helem is structurally divided into three parts.
The first is the services department which does a lot of work to protect and assist LGBTQ people in crisis.
“We [offer] emergency intervention, case management, emergency cash, free mental health support, free medical aid, everything,” says Zeidan. “Food security [also] acts primarily as the hub in which we gather a lot of data, particularly data on the locale, density, and type of human rights violations, as well as demographic information.”
The second part of the organization is its community department.
Helem runs the largest non-commercial queer space in the Arab world that serves as a community center. This space is where the Zeidan guides localization work, community building, power building work, capacity building and vocational training.
“That’s where we do our family support, youth outreach, and all of that sort of community building and integration time work,” says Zeidan.
The final leg is the advocacy part or “bureau” that anchors on policy work, procedure, cultural change, public awareness, and legislation. Helem’s advocacy work also focuses on criminalization that Zeidan describes as “getting more attention,” even though it is not a central focus.
“In addition, criminalization, which is something we always do gets a lot of attention, but it’s really not the central thing that we engage with,” says Zeidan. “There are multiple ways in which you can guarantee LGBTQ rights and inclusion that don’t necessarily pass through Parliament, or the Supreme Court, especially when those two are blocked. So in a nutshell, the central question that we ask is, what can we do in order to improve institutions to become LGBTQ inclusive? How do we improve the lives of LGBTQ people?”
Zeidan further mentions that this strategy makes way for avenues that are not necessarily within the traditional human rights view by extracting opportunities from both development and human rights frameworks.
When tackling the lack of employment within Arab LGBTQ communities, for example, Helem doesn’t approach corporations that are more likely to be LGBTQ-inclusive. It instead identifies the industries that target LGBTQ people.
“We are more interested in targeting small and medium enterprises as locales for employment rather than big banks, because that’s where most of the working class and low income queer people are, and that’s where they get most of their livelihoods,” says Zeidan.
Zeidan says he anticipates even more engagement with LGBTQ activism in the Middle East in the future.
“We’re really excited about deciphering the question: What does regional activism really look like in the Middle East,” says Zeidan. “This is a very complicated question.”
He further mentions this goal is complicated because the Middle East does not have a regional organization to which they can turn for advocacy. Africa, for example, has the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights, but the Middle East does not have such a body.
Helem’s modus operandi will therefore be engorged in trying to make sense of how to best liberate queer Arabs.
Hungary
New Hungarian prime minister takes office
Péter Magyar’s party defeated anti-LGBTQ Viktor Orbán last month
Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar took office on Saturday.
Magyar’s center-right Tisza party on April 12 defeated then-Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz-KDNP coalition. Vice President JD Vance less than a week before the election traveled to Budapest, the Hungarian capital, and urged Hungarians to support Orbán.
Orbán had been in office since 2010. He and his government faced widespread criticism over its anti-LGBTQ crackdown.
The European Commission in 2022 sued Hungary, which is a member of the EU, over the country’s anti-LGBTQ propaganda law. The European Union’s top court, the EU Court of Justice, on April 21 struck down the statute.
The EU while Orbán was office withheld upwards of €35 billion ($41.26) in funds to Hungary in response to concerns over corruption, rule of law, and other issues.
Hungarian lawmakers in March 2025 passed a bill that banned Pride events and allowed authorities to use facial recognition technology to identify those who participate in them. MPs later amended the Hungarian constitution to ban public LGBTQ events.
Upwards of 100,000 people last June defied the ban and marched in Budapest’s annual Pride parade.
“Congratulations to [Péter Magyar] on becoming prime minister of Hungary,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on X.
“This Europe Day, our hearts are in Budapest,” she added. “The hope and promise of renewal is a powerful signal in these challenging times.”
“We have important work ahead of us,” noted von der Leyen. “For Hungary and for Europe, we are moving forward together.”
The Vatican
New Vatican report acknowledges LGBTQ Catholics feel isolated in the church
Document contains testimonies of two gay married men
A report the Vatican released on Tuesday acknowledges LGBTQ Catholics have felt isolated within the church.
The report, which the Vatican’s General Secretariat of the Synod’s Study Group 9 released, includes testimony from two married gay Catholics from the U.S. and Portugal.
“Regarding the resistances — limiting ourselves to those emerging from the lived experiences shared with us — we wish to highlight the following: the solitude, anguish, and stigma that accompany persons with same-sex attractions and their families, not only in society but also within the church; this is often linked to the temptation to hide in a ‘double life,'” reads the report. “Within this problematic outlook lie the positions expressed in the pressure to undergo reparative therapies or, even more gravely, in the simplistic advice to enter the sacrament of marriage.”
“At the root of both the emerging openings and the persisting resistances, it seems possible to identify a difficulty in coordinating pastoral practice and the doctrinal approach. Other testimonies received by our study group from believers with same-sex attractions further confirm how arduous it is for individuals and Christian communities to reconcile “doctrinal firmness” with “pastoral welcome,'” it adds.
The report appears to criticize so-called conversion therapy. It also states “every person, first and foremost, is singular, irreducible, irreplaceable, and original” and “this is the meaning of the Biblical-theological theme of the human being, male and female, created in the image and likeness of God.”
The National Catholic Reporter notes “a group of theologians, including bishops, priests, a sister and a layperson” the Vatican commissioned “to study ‘controversial’ issues that Pope Francis’s Synod on Synodality raised wrote the report.
Francis in 2023 launched the multi-year synod to examine on ways to reform the church.
The Argentine-born pontiff died in April 2025. Pope Leo XIV, who was born in Chicago, succeeded him.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday met with Leo at the Vatican. The meeting took place against the backdrop of increased tensions between the U.S. and the Holy See over the Iran war.
LGBTQ Catholic groups largely welcome report
LGBTQ Catholic groups welcomed the report; even though it will not change church teachings on homosexuality, marriage, and gender identity.
“It was a really bold choice to make LGBTQ issues — or homosexuality — one of the case studies,” Brian Flanagan, a senior fellow at New Ways Ministry, a Maryland-based LGBTQ Catholic organization, told the Washington Blade on Wednesday during a telephone interview.
Flanagan is also the John Cardinal Cody Chair of Catholic Theology at Loyola University in Chicago.
“They (the study group) could have punted and said something easier,” he said. “Instead, they’re putting what was frankly one of the hottest issues leading up to and after the Synod and addressing it more head on.”
New Ways Ministry Executive Director Francis DeBernardo in a statement described the report as a “breath of refreshing air, the first acknowledgment that LGBTQ+ issues were taken seriously by the three-year global consultation of all levels of the church.”
“By establishing mechanisms and recommendations to continue dialoguing with LGBTQ+ people, the report is a significant step forward in the church’s process to become a more welcoming place for its LGBTQ+ members,” he said.
Marianne Duddy-Burke, executive director of DignityUSA, an LGBTQ Catholic organization, in her own statement said the report “demonstrates a welcome humility and openness to learning from the People of God about people’s lives and faith journeys.”
“It is clear that the study group members understand that the doctrines of the church undermine the deep relationship with God that many LGBTQ+ people have, or try to have, and that this needs to be corrected,” she said. “Church officials have decades of testimony from people who have found their sexual orientation or gender identity to be a blessing and a gift, and their relationships to be sacred. To see this reality reflected and respected in this document is a long-awaited positive step.”
Duddy-Burke added the report largely ignores “the experiences of transgender and nonbinary people.” She further notes it “provides few concrete recommendations and proposes no doctrinal changes.”
“Rather, it calls for dialogue, encounter, and communal theological reflection to shape how the Catholic Church moves forward in addressing doctrine and pastoral practice,” said Duddy-Burke. “The paradigm shift repeatedly called for in this report is a significant and very welcome change. Experience, especially of those most impacted, must be key to developing dogma.”
Ukraine
Ukrainian MPs advance new Civil Code without protections for same-sex couples
Advocacy groups say proposal would ‘contradict European standards’
Ukrainian lawmakers have advanced a proposed new Civil Code that does not contain legal protections for same-sex couples.
The Kyiv Independent reported the proposal passed on its first reading on April 28 by a 254-2 vote margin.
The newspaper notes more than two dozen advocacy groups in a statement said some of the proposed Civil Code’s provisions “contradict European standards” and “violate Ukraine’s commitments under its EU accession process.”
“The most worrying provisions are those that make it impossible for a court to recognize the existence of a family relationship between people of the same sex,” the statement reads. “This overturns the already established case law on this issue, and closes the only legal avenue that allows partners to somehow protect their rights in individual cases.”
“Moreover, the draft completely ignores the obligations that Ukraine should have already fulfilled as part of its accession to the EU, as it lacks provisions that would allow people of the same sex to register their relationships,” it adds.
“The provisions also stipulate that all marriages concluded by people who have changed their gender automatically become invalid,” the statement further notes. “This is not just stagnation in the field of human rights or lack of progress on the path to European integration, but an actual setback in the legal sphere.”
Olena Shevchenko, chair of Insight, a Ukrainian LGBTQ advocacy group, in an April 28 Facebook post said the new Civil Code “is a step back on upholding the rights of women and the LGBT+ community in Ukraine.”
The Ukrainian constitution defines marriage as between a man and a woman.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in 2022 publicly backed civil partnerships for same-sex couples.
The Ukrainian Supreme Court on Feb. 25 recognized Zoryan Kis and Tymur Levchuk — a gay couple who has lived together since 2013 and married in the U.S. in 2021 — as a family. Ukraine the day before marked four years since Russia began its war against the country.
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