World
Global LGBTQ rights crackdown overshadows this year’s IDAHOBiT
WHO on May 17, 1990, declassified homosexuality as a mental illness
Activists around the world will mark the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia against the backdrop of efforts to curtail LGBTQ rights that are gaining traction in the U.S. and other countries.
The Trump-Vance administration since it took office in January has issued a number of executive orders that have specifically targeted transgender and nonbinary people. They include a declaration that the federal government will recognize “only two genders, male and female” and a directive that bans the State Department from issuing passports with an “X” gender marker.
ILGA-Europe on Wednesday released its annual update to its Rainbow Map, which documents LGBTQ rights in European countries.
The ILGA-Europe press release notes Hungary’s “prohibition of Pride events and criminalization of participants” and the U.K. Supreme Court ruling last month that restricts “the legal recognition of trans people.” The European advocacy group also highlighted a “sweeping ban on all forms of LGBTI representation and assembly” that Georgian lawmakers passed last fall.
“They are merely the most striking examples of a broader trend in which LGBTI human rights are being systematically dismantled under the guise of preserving public order,” said ILGA-Europe. “In reality, such measures pave the way for sweeping restrictions on fundamental freedoms, including the rights to protest and to political dissent.”
Argentine President Javier Milei in February issued a decree that restricts minors’ access to gender-affirming surgeries and hormone treatments. An appeals court in Trinidad and Tobago in March recriminalized consensual same-sex sexual relations in the Caribbean country.
The Trump-Vance administration’s decision to suspend most foreign aid has forced several LGBTQ rights groups and HIV/AIDS service organizations in South Africa, Kenya, and other African countries that received U.S. funding to curtail operations or shut down. Lawmakers in Vanuatu are considering an amendment to the country’s constitution that would recognize only two sexes: Male and female.
“This Pride season is different,” said Outright International, a global advocacy group, in an email it sent to supporters on Thursday. “From funding cuts and escalating violence to increases in anti-LGBTIQ legislation, the global backlash against our movement is growing.”
IDAHOBiT commemorates the World Health Organization’s declassification of homosexuality as a mental disorder on May 17, 1990. This year’s IDAHOBiT theme is “the power of communities.”
“This year, and always, LGBTQIA+ people around the world are with feminist, sexual reproductive health rights, and broader social justice movements,” said ILGA World, a global LGBTQ rights group, earlier this week in an email to supporters.
The Namibian High Court last June ruled Apartheid-era laws that criminalized consensual same-sex sexual relations in the country are unconstitutional. A law that extended marriage rights to same-sex couples in Thailand took effect on Jan. 23.
Cuba’s National Center for Sexual Education, an organization directed by Mariela Castro, the daughter of former Cuban President Raúl Castro who spearheads LGBTQ issues on the island, this month has organized a series of LGBTQ-specific events across the country.
Activists in Manningham, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia, on Tuesday marked IDAHOBiT. The first “Ringing the Bell for LGBTIQ+ Equality” ceremony that is part of a campaign to promote LGBTQ inclusion in the private sector took place at the Toronto Stock Exchange on the same day.
The U.N. LGBTI Core Group, a group of U.N. member states that have pledged to support LGBTQ and intersex rights, will hold an event on Friday at the U.N. in New York that will commemorate both IDAHOBiT and the International Day of Families. (The U.S. earlier this year withdrew from the Core Group after President Donald Trump took office.)
Fondation Émerge and Fierté Montréal will organize a march in Montréal on Saturday. Other IDAHOBiT events are scheduled to take place on that day in South Africa, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, the U.K., and elsewhere around the world on that day.
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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