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LGBTQ aid workers reflect on a year in Gaza, working with queer Palestinians

‘The struggles of all marginalized communities are interconnected’

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Rain Dove Dubilewski’s ‘I am LGBT’ aid uniform.

Gaza was different. Over the past two years, Rain Dove Dubilewski has been on the ground helping evacuate conflict areas such as Ukraine, Uganda, and Venezuela. 

But still, nothing prepared them for what they would face in Palestine. “[It] is so much different than any other [conflict zone],” said Dubilewski, explaining that in other areas, there are places to flee and organizations in place to support refugees once they get there. Dubilewski and their team’s job was to facilitate movement and help set up refugees with existing services. This is nearly impossible both in Gaza and in Egypt where the small number of refugees able to evacuate have been able to flee.

“It became very apparent to me that everything we did was like pouring water into the desert. There was nothing we can offer that is lasting or stable for the Palestinian people,” said Dubilewski. “They need comprehensive, large aid.” 

After reaching fame as a gender-nonconforming model, the LGBTQ rights activist turned almost accidentally to refugee work. A fundraiser for LGBTQ Ukrainians Dubilewski hosted on their Instagram in 2022 blew up. A call for $5,000 snowballed into $500,000 and the direct support of thousands of people on the ground in Ukraine, including members of the LGBTQ community and Holocaust survivors

Their refugee work in Ukraine has been featured by the Organization for Refuge, Asylum & Migration and the International Organization for Migration Germany.

The Blade interviewed Dubilewski and two LGBTQ Safebow volunteers, in addition to reviewing hundreds of photos, videos, and messages from the ground in Gaza and Egypt. Several other LGBTQ volunteers introduced themselves but chose not to be interviewed. As a whole, the testimony and documentation paint a photo of mass suffering and transnational queer solidarity.

Over the past year, Safebow has facilitated the evacuation of more than 300 people out of Gaza, which was corroborated by documentation sent by Safebow.

They have distributed LifeStraws, prosthetics, toys, clothing, food, medication, and thousands of dollars of cash to Palestinian refugees. Throughout Dubilewski’s entire time on the ground, they wore a Pride pin and lanyard that said “I am LGBT” in both English and Arabic. Dubilewski said this only posed a problem once during their work. Numerous other volunteers were trans and queer as well.

Despite positive experiences, everyone emphasized serious risks, as the LGBTQ community faces varying risks of persecution in Egypt and Gaza. Safebow largely works through collaboration with a local team, many of whom are LGBT, and Safebow was particularly careful to protect them.

Alyssa Rani Nagpal, a volunteer who oversaw 37 evacuations, is a biracial queer woman. She remains close with two families she helped, speaking with them frequently on the phone. “They remind me, repeatedly, that I’ll always be part of their families and that our connection is one they actively care to maintain,” said Nagpal. They also often ask after Naghpal’s partner, a woman.  

Nagpal, who is launching her own non-profit, said that “being an aid worker was an obvious choice, a no-brainer.”

 “The struggles of all marginalized communities are interconnected,” she said, “This intersection was always painfully obvious to me as the first-generation gay daughter of a low-income immigrant family living in NYC.” Nagpal specifically points to pinkwashing – “a horrific way to excuse violence in our name”— as a way queer and Palestinian struggles are interconnected. 

Though she was able to help many, what Nagpal carries the most is those Safebow couldn’t help. “The moments that stuck out to me, and likely won’t leave my conscious and subconscious mind for a very long time… Their heartbreak and anguish expressed during those conversations still haunts me.”

Afeef Nessouli has spoken to numerous Palestinians who he knows will not be able to evacuate Gaza, let alone survive. This has become a major part of his life over the past year.

Nessouli is a reporter and producer whose work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, The Daily Show, CNN, and Slow Factory. As an openly queer, Muslim journalist from the Levant – Nessouli’s family is from Lebanon – he found himself in a unique situation as violence escalated in Gaza.

“Queer people from Gaza were getting in touch with me on Instagram,” he said. Being out and proud, “signals to other queer people who might be hiding [that] I exist, and I am here for you to reach out to,” says Nessouli. 

Suddenly, he was one of few who held the voices of LGBTQ Palestinians at a time when their very existence was being questioned. He has published sparingly, respecting the unique vulnerability of his sources. 

Nessouli emphasizes that there is a diversity of Palestinian queer experiences in Gaza. 

“There are some that have hooked up many times and found love and found excitement and surprise and queerness in all of the ways,” said Nessouli. “And then you have people who’ve never met another queer person at all in Gaza. You have people who are struggling with mental health challenges,” said Nessouli. 

“You have people who are very aware that they don’t identify as queer as their first identity, even if they do identify as queer, their first identity is Palestinian,” said Nessouli.

For Nessouli, documentation is the biggest concern. “I think journalism is necessarily about documenting history,” he said. “God forbid something happens to them, I want to always be able to point and say we exist in droves, and we exist in multiplicity.” 

Not that Nessouli was going to sit passively waiting for something to happen. He quickly connected with Dubilewski through actor Sara Ramirez. “Rain’s reputation precedes them,” he said, speaking to their work across other war zones. 

Nessouli, who also has a J.D. in human rights law and a master’s in international relations, connected Dubilewski and the Safebow team with LGBTQ Palestinians living in Gaza. He also provided much-needed logistical support on the back end. “It was 1,000 conversations, hours upon hours of just logistics and also just venting, being comrades and bonding over the impossibility of just trying to help where we could help,” he said.

Nessouli recently went to Cairo to visit refugee families helped by Safebow and document their stories. Safebow documented the stories of every LGBTQ person they evacuated, which will not be published but will be available for preservation in archives and future museums, as agreed to by the refugees. 

“Importantly, a genocide has been happening for a year, and it’s important to record people’s stories because of the act of ethnic cleansing and the act of erasure has been upon us,” said Nessouli. “Journalism is aid work, in some ways. It’s not, but it’s heavily connected.”

At the directive of the Egyptian government, Safebow has to wrap up its work by the end of this year as part of a larger trend of not supporting refugees, says Dubilewski. Many volunteers continue the work through other initiatives, like Nagpal, whose non-profit is working to fill the education gap for Palestinian youth in Egypt who are ineligible for Egyptian public schools.

As Dubilewski works on the next steps, they reflect on the tenacity of their team. “I will forever be grateful to every single person group, they are some of the bravest, boldest, kindest, funniest, and just most dedicated people you’ll ever meet.”

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United Nations

Elise Stefanik nominated to become next UN ambassador

N.Y. Republican voted for Respect for Marriage Act in 2022

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U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) speaks at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on July 16, 2024. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

President-elect Donald Trump on Monday announced he will nominate U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) to become the next U.S. ambassador to the U.N.

“Elise is an incredibly strong, tough, and smart America First fighter,” Trump said in a statement that announced the nomination.

Stefanik, 40, has represented New York’s 21st Congressional District since 2015. She has chaired the House Republican Conference since 2021.

Stefanik in 2019 voted for the Equality Act, but she opposed it in 2021. Stefanik in 2022 is among the dozens of Republicans who voted for the Respect for Marriage Act that President Joe Biden signed.

Stefanik, among other things, has also been outspoken against anti-Semitism on college campuses. She would succeed U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield if the U.S. Senate confirms her.

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World

Out in the World: LGBTQ news from Asia, Europe, and the Middle East

Spanish government wants constitution to protect marriage equality, abortion rights

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(Los Angeles Blade graphic)

JAPAN

A coalition of 19 prefectures and more than 150 municipalities has created a Partnership System Municipal Cooperation Network, in which all member governments agree to recognize each other’s same-sex partnership registries. The new system should help same-sex couples ensure their partnerships remain valid if they move or maintain multiple residences.

Because same-sex marriage is not currently legal in Japan, 30 of Japan’s 47 prefectures and more than 400 municipalities have established “partnership oath systems,” in which same-sex couple can register their relationships to help them access local services that are restricted to couples, such as housing, insurance, and medical decision-making. However, these registries are not legally binding and confer no direct rights on the couples. 

Prior to the establishment of the PSMCN, couples who had registered in one municipality or prefecture could face difficulty having their relationship recognized in a different location. About one quarter of Japan lives in a place that does not recognize same-sex couples of any kind. 

Meanwhile, several cases seeking to establish a right to same-sex marriage continue to wind their way through the courts. 

Five out of six lower courts that heard equal marriage cases have issued rulings that the ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, as have both upper courts that have heard cases. This week, the Osaka High Court is set to hear an appeal of the lower court’s decision that the ban is constitutional. The Fukuoka High Court will hear an equal marriage case in December. All of these cases will likely eventually be heard by the Supreme Court. 

Most of the leading figures in Japan’s long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party have been deeply conservative on sexuality issues, which has stalled hope for progress on same-sex marriage at the legislative level. But last month’s snap elections returned a minority parliament in which a bare majority of legislatures have expressed support for same-sex marriage.

SPAIN

The governing Socialist Party announced it wants to amend the constitution to protect same-sex marriage and abortion rights, amid the rise of far right parties that have stated their goal of rolling back LGBTQ rights in Spain and across Europe.

The proposal is laid out in the party’s plan for the current national congress which was distributed to its provincial counterparts for debate this month. The document aims to include “the social achievements of the last decade” into the constitution, an effort which the document itself acknowledges may be “impossible,” but which the party wants to achieve.

Among other proposals are protections for social housing and setting a floor for the minimum wage at 60 percent of the average wage.

Spain has seen its far-right Vox Party grow rapidly over the last decade winning seats in parliament and local and regional councils. In regional governments where Vox has formed coalition governments with the more mainstream conservative People’s Party, it has already rolled back LGBTQ rights progress. 

In the Madrid region, where PP and Vox govern together, they rolled back laws banning anti-LGBTQ discrimination and so-called conversion therapy, and ending recognition of transgender people, though the law was later stopped by the Constitutional Court.

It’s unlikely that the PSOE will be able to amend the constitution as that would require a three-fifths majority of both houses of parliament to pass, and PSOE only holds a minority of seats in both houses.

UNITED KINGDOM

The Conservative Party has elected as its new leader Kemi Badenoch, a legislator with a long history of espousing anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ viewpoints. Badenoch also makes history as the first Black woman to lead a major political party in the UK.

Badenoch was first elected to parliament in 2017 and previously served as the Minister for Women and Equalities in the Rishi Sunak government. She was confirmed as Conservative Party leader on Nov. 2, following an election among party members in which she won 56.5 percent of the vote. 

In office, she frequently railed against trans rights and met with the anti-trans group LGB Alliance. She called for the abolition of gender-neutral toilets and was caught on a leaked recording referring to trans women as “men.” 

This year, she supported her party’s platform of amending the Equalities Act to ensure that the ban on “sex” discrimination only applied to biological sex, thus allowing discrimination against trans people. 

She successfully killed a planned ban on conversion therapy by pushing the government to study it further and consider not banning conversion therapy aimed at trans people. 

She also used her office to push the Financial Conduct Authority to remove trans-inclusive workplace policies, and railed against “diversity, equity and inclusion” initiatives that she claimed “divide, rather than unify.”

In 2019, she abstained on the bill that extended same-sex marriage rights to Northern Ireland — then the only part of the UK where it wasn’t yet legal.

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

The World Surf League has named Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates as a stop of its 2025 Championship Tour and Longboard Tour, drawing protests from surfers and surf organizations over the potential for harm to LGBTQ athletes who attend a competition in a country where homosexuality is illegal. 

The World Surf League is the governing body for professional surfers, and it sanctions competitions and events around the world. The 2025 Tour features 12 stops, including events in Brazil, Fiji, Tahiti, South Africa, El Salvador, Australia, and the U.S. 

It’s the second stop, at Surf Abu Dhabi, UAE from Feb. 14-16 that’s raised eyebrows among surf athletes and fans.

Homosexuality and cross-dressing are illegal under both the Federal Crime and Punishment Law of UAE and the Abu Dhabi Penal Code, with a minimum sentence of six months and up to 14 years in prison.

Yvette Curtis, who runs the UK-based inclusive surf club Wave Wahines, has started a petition on Change.org calling on the World Surf League to drop the Abu Dhabi dates from the tour.

“The WSL have chosen to support a government that criminalizes LGBTQIA+ people and discriminates against women, and in doing so are choosing to place their athletes, support teams, and spectators at risk,” the petition states.

“By removing Abu Dhabi from its event calendar, the World Surf League would make a powerful statement: Human rights and the safety of its athletes and employees are paramount. Ignoring this issue would tacitly endorse discriminatory practices and betray the inclusive values at the heart of Olympic sports. Only through decisive action can we ensure that everyone, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, has an equal opportunity to compete in professional surfing.”

Curtis says the issue is personal to her, as the mother of a trans surfer.

“As a mother of three, the safety of my children is my utmost priority. My eldest child, who has bravely embraced their true self, is transgender. They also have a passion for surfing, but existing regulations in certain regions rob them of this joy and access to the waves. Abu Dhabi, named as a stop in World Surf League’s event calendar, presents a stark reality. My child, due to their identity, would be breaking laws by merely existing in such an environment,” she says. 

The petition, which has already drawn more than 1,600 signatures, has been endorsed by surf clubs all over the world, 

The controversy around the Abu Dhabi tour stop mirrors similar controversy over hosting the 2022 World Cup in Doha, Qatar, and the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, both countries with dismal records on LGBTQ rights.  

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World

Trump election sparks concern among activists around the world

Brazilian organization: Grassroots advocacy crucial to defending LGBTQ rights

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A poster in Santiago, Chile, in 2017 mocked then-President Donald Trump. Activists around the world with whom the Washington Blade has spoken this week expressed concern over a second Trump administration and its impact on LGBTQ rights around the world. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)

LGBTQ activists and advocacy groups around the world have expressed concern over President-elect Donald Trump’s election.

“I worry that Trump’s win means no protection for global LGBTQ+ human rights,” Sexual Minorities Uganda Executive Director Frank Mugisha told the Washington Blade.

Mugisha added Trump “won’t or step in to support us” when “we are under attack with extreme anti-gay legislations.” (The Biden-Harris administration last year imposed visa restrictions on Ugandan officials and removed the country from a program that allows sub-Saharan African countries to trade duty-free with the U.S. after President Yoweri Museveni signed the Anti-Homosexuality Act.)

Esteban Paulón, a long-time LGBTQ activist in Argentina who won a seat in the country’s Congress in 2022, echoed this concern and Mugisha.

“My first reaction (to Trump’s election) is concern over how it is going to impact (LGBTQ) rights in the international sphere,” Paulón told the Blade.

Biden in 2021 signed a memo that committed the U.S. to promoting LGBTQ and intersex rights abroad as part of his administration’s overall foreign policy. The White House in the same year named Jessica Stern, who was previously the executive director of Outright International, as the next special U.S. envoy for the promotion of LGBTQ and intersex rights abroad.

Then-State Department spokesperson Ned Price during a 2021 interview with the Blade noted the decriminalization of consensual same-sex sexual relations was one of the Biden-Harris administration’s priorities in its efforts to promote LGBTQ and intersex rights abroad. Stern in 2022 told the Blade that support of marriage equality in countries where activists say such a thing is possible through legislation or the judicial process is “among a wider set of priorities.”

Trump during his first administration tapped then-U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell to lead an initiative that encouraged countries to decriminalize consensual same-sex sexual relations. Activists with whom the Blade has previously spoken questioned whether this effort had any tangible results.

Axios on Thursday reported Grenell is Trump’s top candidate to succeed Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Bru Pereira and Gui Mohallem are co-directors of VoteLGBT, a Brazilian organization established in 2014 with a mission to increase LGBTQ representation their country’s politics.

Pereira and Mohallem in a statement they sent to the Blade on Wednesday said the U.S. election outcomes, “especially as they reflect a divided political landscape, underscore an international trend we are observing — a growing divide between progressive movements and the resurgence of conservative, often authoritarian, political forces.”

Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was in office from 2018-2022. He faced sharp criticism because of his rhetoric against LGBTQ Brazilians, women, people of African and Indigenous descent and other groups. Thousands of Bolsonaro supporters on Jan. 8, 2023, stormed the Brazilian Congress, presidential palace, and Supreme Court.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office a week earlier.

Pereira and Mohallem in their statement said they are “witnessing how grassroots efforts, particularly from marginalized communities, are crucial in defending LGBTQ+ rights under right-wing governments.”

“For us, advancing and protecting LGBTQ+ rights in such a context involves fostering local leadership, as well as strengthening community resilience and alliances,” they said. “It’s about creating spaces where voices traditionally sidelined — especially those of trans, Black, and Indigenous LGBTQ+ individuals — can lead democratic change. Here, we see our role not just in advocacy but in shaping an intersectional approach to political transformation, one that insists on the inclusion and visibility of diverse identities.”

“Ultimately, we believe that the democratic health of any nation depends on its most vulnerable communities being empowered to speak up and lead,” added Pereira and Mohallem. “We’re committed to supporting this journey, even in times of political setbacks, through community solidarity and international collaboration.”

Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice Executive Director Joy Chia in an email to supporters on Wednesday largely echoed Pereira and Mohallem.

“As a funder of LGBTQI+ communities in all regions of the world, the Astraea Foundation is keenly aware of the far-reaching impacts that this election will have and has already had,” wrote Chia. “I also recognize that political repression is not new to LGBTQI+ activists and our communities. This isn’t our first time working in hostility and chaos, and we are ready to resist.”

“The Astraea Foundation will continue to work alongside grantees to build power and create sustainable change so that our communities can thrive. We will continue to push liberation forward, support our grantee partners, and hold true to our intersectional feminist values at every turn,” added Chia. “The work we do every day is vital, and this difficult moment only strengthens our resolve to keep the fight moving forward.”

Outright International Executive Director Maria Sjödin in an email to their group’s supporters said the U.S. election results “have raised deep concerns for many of us who care about fundamental human rights, freedoms, and democratic norms for LGBTIQ people and everyone else around the world.”

“As Outright International unites with you, our global community, we know that this outcome impacts not only the U.S. but also the global momentum toward justice and equality. Nationalism, authoritarianism, white supremacy, xenophobia, anti-queer, and anti-transness have been on stark display throughout the election campaign,” they wrote. “Such narratives risk eroding years of progress and scapegoat marginalized communities. Resulting policies could deny gender recognition, defund LGBTIQ-supportive programs internationally, and be a threat to international cooperation and multilateralism.” 

Sjödin added “moments like this also reveal the strength of our global solidarity.”

“The spirit of connection that fuels our shared movements is needed now more than ever,” they said. “From Argentina to Poland, Uganda to Ukraine, LGBTIQ communities are rising to this challenge. Together, we can and must resist discriminatory forces and protect and continue to advance the progress made. This isn’t just about policies — it’s about our lives and those of our global community.”

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