World
Out in the World: LGBTQ news from Europe and Asia
Qatar has detained a man with HIV who is a dual British and Mexican citizen
AUSTRALIA

As the 46th Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras ended its two week long celebrations with the annual massive Mardi Gras parade on Oxford Street this past weekend, this year’s celebration marred by the murder of a gay couple that jarred the country’s entire LGBTQ community, the parade came to a halt on Saturday in a powerful act of remembrance for the couple, Jesse Baird and Luke Davies.
In its annual float, Qantas Airways paid tribute to Davies who worked for the carrier as a flight attendant. A Qantas spokesperson confirmed that Davies’ name was added prominently on the side of the Qantas float, and Executive Manager Crew Leeanne Langridge in a statement said that Davies “was a much-loved member of the Qantas cabin crew community in Brisbane and Sydney.
“He had a passion for travel, life, his family and friends and the customers that he served. He will be deeply missed. The whole team at Qantas are thinking of Luke and Jesse’s loved ones,” Lanridge said.
The Star Observer, the country’s largest queer news media outlet, reported that a New South Wales police officer, Beaumont Lamarre-Condon, who reportedly once dated Baird, a Network 10 reporter and a sports official who umpired in AFL matches in the Northern Football and Netball League, has been charged with their murders.

Lamarre-Condon is accused of shooting them dead with his police-issued sidearm at Baird’s home in Paddington, Sydney. The couple’s remains were found at a property at Bungonia, near Goulburn, around 115 miles south of Sydney on Feb. 27, 2024.
The murder of the couple caused the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras organizers to uninvite police from the iconic Mardi Gras parade the BBC reported.
The parade’s board said the decision to exclude police, who have taken part in the annual march for over two decades, was “not taken lightly” but that it was essential to create a safe environment “to protest, celebrate” and “honor and grieve those we’ve lost.”
Sydney’s Mardi Gras parade has a complex history of both LGBTQ activism and police brutality, after the first march in 1978 resulted in dozens of people being beaten and arrested by local officers, the BBC noted.
CHINA

A Chinese transgender activist is facing deportation back to mainland China as she is scheduled for release on Sunday from Siu Lam Psychiatric Center, a psychiatric detention institution where Hong Kong authorities usually hold trans detainees.
Lai Ke, also known as Xiran, was convicted of using “forged” documents to attempt to travel from China to Toronto via Hong Kong last year. Lai was detained at Hong Kong International Airport on May 3, 2023, while transferring to a flight to Toronto having begun her journey in Shanghai.
Lai was convicted in a Hong Kong court on June 16, 2023, and sentenced to 15 months in prison, which she served at the Siu Lam Psychiatric Center. A release notice from the Siu Lam Psychiatric Center seen by Amnesty International states that Lai is due to be released early for good behavior on March 2. As Lai is not a resident of Hong Kong, she is subject to being deported to mainland China under Section 19 of the Hong Kong Immigration Ordinance.
“Time is of the essence to prevent Lai Ke from being unlawfully deported to mainland China, where she would be at grave risk of serious human rights violations — including arbitrary detention, unfair trial, and even torture and other ill-treatment — due to both her transgender identity and her activism,” Sarah Brooks, the deputy regional director for Asia for Amnesty International said.
“To return her given these risks would be an abandonment of Hong Kong’s obligations under international law.”
Lai had been a vocal advocate for trans rights in China alongside her partner. According to her friends, her partner was imprisoned in China in June 2023 on account of her own activism and her trans identity.
While serving her sentence, Lai has been denied access to the medication she was taking as a part of her hormone replacement therapy and held in solitary confinement for complaining about the denial of her medical treatment, her friends added.
“There is a very real risk that Lai Ke will face persecution — including further imprisonment — if she is returned to mainland China,” said Brooks.
PHILIPPINES

A 33-year-old drag queen who had been incarcerated in a Manila jail last fall for allegedly violating the Catholic-majority country’s obscenity laws for his performance dressed as Jesus Christ, performing a rock version of the Lord’s Prayer in Tagalog, was arrested again this past week.
Investigators from the Manila Police District, charged Amadeus Fernando Pagente, who performs under the stage/drag name Pura Luka Vega, for six counts of alleged violation of Article 201 including immoral doctrines, obscene publications and exhibitions and indecent shows. The arrest of the drag artist on Feb. 29 was due to a warrant issued by a court in Quezon City.
Supporters and fans raised the bail of 720,000 Philippine pesos, ($12,852.55) and Pagente was released on March 1. In a post on X, formerly Twitter, the drag artist thanked his benefactors writing: “The fight still goes on, life still goes on. I am very grateful to those who helped me with my bail. To my drag sisters who tirelessly helped me and organized fund raising for legal fees, thank you very much. Thank you.”
These latest charges stem from a complaint issued by the Kapisanan ng Social Media Broadcasters ng Pilipinas, a broadcast media organization, on behalf of Philippines for Jesus Movement.
This is the second time the Philippines for Jesus Movement, comprising Protestant church leaders, has registered a criminal complaint with prosecutors against the drag performer. He was accused of violating obscenity laws for his performance dressed as Jesus Christ, performing a rock version of the Lord’s Prayer in Tagalog last August. He was incarcerated and then later released.
At the time Pagente told Agence France-Presse: “The arrest shows the degree of homophobia” in the Philippines. “I understand that people call my performance blasphemous, offensive or regrettable. However, they shouldn’t tell me how I practice my faith or how I do my drag.”
Ryan Thoreson, a specialist at the Human Rights Watch’s LGBT rights program, also called for the charges against Pagente to be dropped. “Freedom of expression includes artistic expression that offends, satirizes or challenges religious beliefs,” Thoreson told the BBC.
UKRAINE

A Ukrainian army combat medic was stripped of honors awarded to his unit by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church after the church leadership was informed that he was gay.
Viktor Pylypenko, a medic with 1st mechanized battalion, 72nd Black Zaporozhians Brigade medical corps, along with his fellow servicemembers were awarded medals for “sacrifice and love to Ukraine” by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate’s Patriarch Filaret for their actions and deeds serving in the Donbas region against the Russian invaders.
Pylypenko who serves as an openly gay soldier together with the commander of the medical corps, Yurii Lytvynenko, arrived from Donbas to receive the medals from Filaret. The patriarch personally thanked Pylypenko for his service.
According to the Ukrainian news website obozrevatel.com, that after receiving the award, the soldier published a post on his Facebook page thanking Filaret for the award, thinking that in this way the UOC changed its attitude towards the LGBTQ community.
“I am sincerely glad that Patriarch Filaret took such a step and thanked me, an openly gay man and human rights activist, for the protection. He gave me a medal with his signature and seal. He and the Kyiv Patriarchate headed by him have radically changed their position on LGBTQ+ people and no longer consider us ‘sinful’ or the cause of the coronavirus,” Pylypenko wrote.
On Feb. 25 the church responded in its own Facebook post calling Pylypenko’s post a falsehood:
“Among the distinguished military personnel of the medical point was Victor Pylypenko. Unfortunately, on his social media pages, he posted false information about Patriarch Filaret awarding him a distinction as openly gay for human rights and that Patriarch Filaret and the Kyiv Patriarchate radically changed their negative position on LGBT.
This is an outright lie and manipulation.
Taking into account the efforts of the dark forces to distort the consistent position of the upc of the Kyiv Patriarchate, we want to officially state:
1. Soldier Victor Pilipenko received a thank you from the church, exclusively as a defender of Ukraine, not as an LGBT activist, at the submission of his fellow soldiers from the combat unit of the heroic 72nd Brigade of the Black Zaporozhye. Patriarch Filaret did not personally award the Pilipenkoví medal and did not know about his sinful tendencies.
2. Holy Patriarch Filaret and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate, based on the foundations of the Holy Scriptures, the thousand-year teaching of the Orthodox Church, invariably occupies a principled negative position on Sodom sin, condemns propaganda t. zv ‘same-sex marriages.’ Homosexual sex relationships are a false distortion of the God-given nature of man. As said in the Bible, the Lord Himself for the sins of people destroyed Sodom and Homorrah. The patriarch repeatedly stated it publicly and in court proved the legality of such his right.
3. We thank warrior Victor Pilipenko (as well as all our defenders for defending our liberty and territorial integrity) for his military service, but we do not divide his sinful likeness and LGBT agitation. We inform that due to open propaganda of sinful ideology and the denial of the existence of God, consider the church award to Victor Pilipenko from 08.02.2024 Order no. 27468 — revoked.
The Apostle Paul in the first letter to the Corinthians warned: ‘he deceive yourself: Neither prostitutes, nor idolosuluzeliji, nor adulterous, nor malakí̈, nor mužoložcí, nor thieves, nor lehvari, nor drunkards, nor lihoslovci, nor predators — the kingdom of God will not inherit. And such were some of you; but washed, but sanctified, but justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God’ (1 Cor. 6, 9-11).
Based on the foundations of Christian evangelical love for all, sinners in particular, desiring them salvation, we urge everyone to repent of their personal sins.
Then the church’s press service said: “We would like to inform you that in view of the open propaganda of a sinful ideology and the denial of the existence of God, the church award to Viktor Pylypenko is hereby revoked.”
Pilipenko then accused the Kyiv Patriarchate of awarding the medals as a PR campaign:
“I wrote words of gratitude to Filaret, naively imagining that he deliberately awarded me and showed his colleagues a Christian, undoubtedly noble gesture, a signpost to reconciliation and mutual respect for gays, atheists, and people of other faiths. But everything turned out to be more prosaic: Filaret was just handing out his awards as a PR campaign for his denomination.”
Outrage from his fellow soldiers and others has been building regarding the Kyiv Patriarchate’s actions.
Ilia Krotenko, a fighter with the 72nd Black Zaporozhians Brigade, emphasized that the “trinkets” handed out by the church are worthless.
“In connection with the absolutely disgusting act of the UOC-Kyiv Patriarchate and Patriarch Filaret, who took away the award from war veteran Viktor Pylypenko only because he is openly gay, I also refuse a similar award of my own,” he wrote.
SLOVENIA

Activists from across Europe, including Slovenia, Spain, France and Poland formed an alliance to launch a petition to collect over 300,000 signatures as a first step towards laying the groundwork to ensure that in Europe, reproductive rights are safeguarded and accessible for each and every woman.
This event marks a pivotal moment where voices from diverse European nations unite to advocate for reproductive rights, underscoring the collective resolve to ensure the safety and accessibility of abortion services across the continent.
Nika Kovac, founding director of the 8th of March Research Institute, part of the new alliance, said, “The need to kick off the petition is driven by a deep concern over the erosion of reproductive rights, as witnessed in various parts of the world, including the United States and Poland. We are dedicated to creating a network of friends united by shared values of empathy and solidarity. The key to change is international solidarity.”
“The freedom to choose our body is a common value in every single country of Europe. We are here to demand that it also becomes a right that everyone has in practice,” she added.
Though a large majority of Europeans support abortion, the values of women’s bodily autonomy and their freedom to choose are not shared by all governments and state laws. In a significant number of EU countries, legal and access restrictions prove to be a considerable hurdle for those who need it the most. Slovenia has proven to be a significant outlier, being the only European country to enshrine the right to abortion in its constitution with France currently trying to do the same.
“Ban on abortion kills women, ban on abortion ruins lives and the lack of access to abortion kills women and ruins lives,” said Marta Lempart, founder of Polish Women’s Strike, who has been the loudest advocate for reproductive rights in the country.
“In my country, women die in state hospitals because they are denied abortions. Each time it happens, we cry and protest and say ‘not one more’ but today I am not here to cry and shout but to say that we can get through it. You will never walk alone.”
“In many countries, abortions are legal but not free, so, it’s only for rich people; Also, in many countries abortions are legal, but women are intimidated, and humiliated for accessing a health service. This should not be happening. We need solidarity as we need to protect women not only in Poland but across Europe.”
Alice Coffin, who leads permanent action against patriarchal structures that harm French society and is a member of the alliance, said, “While Poland is infamous for severely restricted access to abortion, populist far-right parties with the same agenda are emerging across the continent. Their anti-abortion agenda is rarely in the forefront of their public communication but it becomes an important policy point if they achieve power. However, there is widespread public opposition to these measures.”
She added, “The French Senate is due to vote on including abortion in its constitution on Wednesday, Feb. 28. The president of the Senate is opposed. The Vatican has expressed its anger. But we have every hope that it will come to pass. So, abortion is an issue that will be very much on the political and media agenda in France over the next few days.”
The petition will actively be distributed among various individuals across multiple countries to ensure wide reach and engagement with the aim of gathering an initial 300,000 signatures. With this petition, the coalition hopes to build momentum and support for the substantive changes they aim to achieve.
The initiative represents a powerful, united front of committed individuals and organizations, and was attended by prominent feminist activists including Nika Kovač who has been one of the initiators of the #MeToo movement in Slovenia; Lempart, activist, and founder of the Polish Women’s Strike, who has been the loudest advocate for reproductive rights in a country with an almost total ban on abortions and has organized the biggest pro reproductive rights protests in the history of Poland; Alice Coffin, renowned feminist and author from France; Silvia Casalino, activist from France, along with Dr. Imma Clarà, director of the Spanish organization L’Associació; LGBTQ activist and researcher Kika Fumero; feminist activist and journalist Cristina Fallarás who launched the Spanish #MeToo movement. #Cuéntalo (Spain) participated in the petition launch.
The coalition’s political stance stems from a fundamental disagreement with the reality that women in Europe still face life-threatening risks due to lack of access to safe abortion services.
The coalition’s overall goal is to safeguard and advance abortion rights across Europe, ensuring that all women have access to the safe, respectful and legal healthcare services they deserve.
QATAR

An HIV positive openly gay dual British and Mexican citizen is being held because of his sexuality in this peninsular Arab country bordering the Persian Gulf. Manuel Guerrero Aviña, 44-year-old Qatar Airways employee, has been imprisoned since Feb. 4 after responding to a false Grindr text.
PinkNewsUK reported according to his brother Enrique Aviña, who is leading the campaign QatarFreeManuel, his brother is being imprisoned because of his sexuality, and has been denied access to antiretroviral medicines.
“Qatar police used a false Grindr profile to contact Manuel and invite him to participate in a meeting with other people from the LGBT community in the city of Doha,” Enrique Aviña told British newspaper the Mirror.
“Manuel was supposed to meet a person he thought he had arranged an appointment with on the night of Feb. 4 but instead encountered police officers who were waiting to arrest him.”
“He has been denied the right to a lawyer and has been forced to sign documents in Arabic without a translator to assist him. Even worse, he has been prevented access to antiretroviral medicines he needs to be able to live with HIV, which constitutes an act of torture and puts his life at risk,” Enrique Aviña said.
PinkNewsUk also reported because Aviña registered as a British national when he was hired by Qatar Airlines and moved there to work, the Mexican Embassy in Qatar said, the British Embassy is dealing with his case, but Mexican consular officers been in contact with his family.
“With regards to the case of Manuel Guerrero Aviña, who has Mexican and British nationality and is currently under arrest in Doha, the Mexican Embassy in Qatar confirms it has been following developments since it was informed about the detention,” an embassy statement read.
“It has been in constant contact with his relatives and has confirmed Manuel has legal representation.”
A spokesperson for the UK Foreign Office told PinkNewsUK: “We are providing consular assistance to a British man who is detained in Qatar and are supporting his family.”
Additional reporting from the Star Observer, ABC News Australia, the BBC, Agence France-Presse, Obozrevatel.com, Kyiv Post and PinkNewsUK.
Netherlands
Tens of thousands take part in World Pride March
Event capped off two weeks of celebrations in Amsterdam.
AMSTERDAM — Tens of thousands of people on Saturday participated in the World Pride March in Amsterdam.
Outright International Executive Director Maria Sjödin and Paolo Rondelli, who in 2022 became the world’s first openly gay head of state when he became Captain Regent of San Marino, are among those who participated alongside Massachusetts state Rep. Jack Lewis and Olena Shevchenko, chair of Insight, an LGBTQ advocacy group in Ukraine, and others.
Members of D66, the centrist Dutch political party that Prime Minister Rob Jetten heads, also marched.
Jetten in February became the Netherlands’ first openly gay prime minister. He participated in the opening of the World Pride Human Rights Conference on Aug. 5 and spoke on a panel with Rondelli, former Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, and other gay and lesbian current and former heads of government.
(Washington Blade video by Michael K. Lavers)
(Washington Blade video by Michael K. Lavers)
The march took place a week after hundreds of thousands of people lined Amsterdam’s canals for the city’s annual Amsterdam Pride Canal Parade.
A terrorist attack at Berlin’s Christopher Street Day on July 25 left one person dead and more than two dozen others injured.
The incident overshadowed World Pride, which began hours earlier and ended on Saturday.
Dutch authorities increased security measures in the aftermath of the July 25 attack. No incidents were reported during World Pride.
Netherlands
Dutch PM: More needs to be done to defend trans rights
Rob Jetten on Friday was on World Pride Human Rights Conference panel
Editor’s note: International News Editor Michael K. Lavers and Photo Editor Michael Key will be on assignment in Amsterdam until Aug. 10.
AMSTERDAM — Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten on Friday said more needs to be done to defend transgender people and their rights.
“Everywhere in the Western world, it’s definitely the group that’s the most vulnerable in the moment and it’s rather well-picked also by our advisories,” he said during a panel at the World Pride Human Rights Conference in Amsterdam that Ying Xin and Diego García Blum of Global LGBTQI+ Human Rights Program at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights Policy moderated. “They’ve chosen the smallest group within our broader community (trans people) to attack them, to ensure that we can strip their rights and if they’ve done with that, they’ll go after the next group within our community, so we shouldn’t be naïve about what’s behind it.”
“It’s very well-funded. It’s very well-organized and we have to organize as well to fight back and to win this fight,” added Jetten. “We also need to be more open in conversations that we are having within the community and also dive into it much deeper and maybe even have more difficult and annoying conversations.”
Jetten in February became the Netherlands’ first openly gay prime minister.
He appeared on the panel alongside former Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, who in 2017 became his country’s first openly gay head of government, and former San Marino Captain Regent Paolo Rondelli, who was his country’s ambassador to the U.S. from 2007-2016.
Several other current former heads of government who are gay or lesbian also participated in the panel. They include former Icelandic Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, former Luxembourgish Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, and Andorran Prime Minister Xavier Espot Zamora. California Congressman Mark Takano, who chairs the Congressional Equality Caucus, and LGBTQ+ Victory Fund CEO Evan Low were among those who attended.
Jetten in his remarks said he was “very surprised” to learn that “not only in the U.S. but also in some European countries that we’ve let them decide what the gay group looked like.” The Dutch prime minister further pointed out that conservatives began “to attack the debate on toilets or starting this debate about trans people in Olympic games.”
“That is, of course, a ridiculous debate to start, but we’ve got distracted because we were so busy having this debate on Olympians, and then we actually forgot the real fight was about access to healthcare, just being yourself, being able to enlist in the army, or being able to be a young trans boy or girl in school,” said Jetten. “We got distracted by some fresh meat that was thrown into the area by some very conservative people.”
“We have to open our eyes and have very in-depth conservations within our community, and come up with a much better strategy to win this fight and to protect all our trans brothers and sisters, dolls, whatever,” he added. “Because if we don’t win this fight for trans people, we’re going to lose the bigger fight for all LGBTQ people in the world.”
Varadkar noted Ireland in 2015 passed a law that allows people to legally change their gender without surgery or other medical interventions.
He conceded there was “a liberal wind blowing across the world at the time, and it was largely uncontested.”
“It would be harder now, quite frankly, to do that legislation,” said Varadkar.

Scottish lawmakers in 2022 passed the Gender Recognition Reform Bill, which lowered the age for anyone to legally change their gender without medical intervention from 18 to 16. Then-British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government later blocked the measure from taking effect.
The U.K. Supreme Court in 2025 ruled the legal definition of a woman under the country’s Equality Act is limited to “biological women.” Author J.K. Rowling is among those who praised the decision that stemmed from a case that challenged the Scottish government’s decision to include trans women in its definition of women when it sought to increase the number of women on government boards.
The Trump-Vance administration on Jan. 20, 2025, the first day it was in office, issued a sweeping executive order that, among other things, declared the federal government would only recognize two genders: male and female. The White House earlier this year in its counterterrorism strategy said it “will also prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.”
“We have to stay united,” said Rondelli. “The strategy was, since the beginning, was a Nazi strategy to create groups, target groups, and to create maximum distractions to avoid discussion about some sort of policies.”
“Trans people are the target at the moment,” he added. “But after them it will probably be some others, so we have to stay united.”

Boris Dittrich, the Dutch Senate’s First Vice President and a member of Jetten’s D66 party who was previously global advocacy director for Human Rights Watch’s LGBTQ Rights Program, at the end of the panel asked about protecting intersex babies from what advocates maintain are unnecessary surgeries.
Netherlands
Dutch prime minister opens World Pride Human Rights Conference
Rob Jetten is country’s first openly gay head of government
Editor’s note: International News Editor Michael K. Lavers and Photo Editor Michael Key are on assignment in Amsterdam through Aug. 10.
AMSTERDAM — Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten on Wednesday opened the World Pride Human Rights Conference in Amsterdam.
Jetten — who in February became the country’s first openly gay prime minister — began his remarks with an acknowledgment that the July 25 terrorist attack at Berlin’s Christopher Street Day that left one person dead and more than two dozen others injured “filled me with anger and sorrow.”
He started to speak after a group of activists began to shout at him over his government’s position on Palestine — the International Criminal Court, which is based in The Hague, has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leaders in connection with crimes against humanity it says they committed in the Gaza Strip and Israel after Oct. 7.
Jetten stood silently and allowed them to protest before security personnel removed them from the room.
View on Threads
Jetten in his speech acknowledged this year marks 25 years since the Netherlands became the first country to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples. He also pointed out 2025 marks Amsterdam Pride’s Canal Parade‘s 30th year.
“More and more in recent years, we’ve seen hard won progress being eroded,” conceded Jetten. “We’ve seen countries backsliding in equal rights legislation. We’ve seen homophobic hate speech becoming more overt and aggressive, and not only out in the real world, but online as well.”
Jetten pointed out “online hatred is one of the biggest threats facing the LGBTQIA+ people today.”
“All around the world … misinformation and disinformation can be spread in the blink of an eye with a single mouse click, reaching much further and much faster than NGOs, youth workers and health organizations can,” he said. “This is always how hatred takes hold. First in the shadows, outside the spotlight of society, underestimated by everyone, until, having grown into a many headed monster, it crawls out of the darkness.”
Jetten said his government this fall will launch “a social dialog on online discrimination and offering specific guidance on action to take.” This will include “training courses for municipalities and civil society organizations to help them deal with online hate speech.”
His government over the next three years will invest €7.5 million each year “in improving the safety of the queer community in our cities with an alliance of organizations committed to safety, both in the public space and in the workspace for LGBTQI+ people, and with a public information campaign to combat discrimination and disinformation.” Jetten also said the government will promote a campaign in Dutch schools that encourages students and teachers to wear purple as a way to show their support for the LGBTQ community.
’Equal rights are not a Western agenda’
Jetten in his speech also singled out “conservative forces” in Uganda, Senegal, and in other countries who are framing LGBTQ rights “developments as a neocolonial Western agenda.”
“Under the pretense of resisting so-called Western moral decadence, horrendous laws are enacted and promoted, laws that put the rights of free people under severe pressure,” he said. “But in reality, many communities in these countries have a long history of diversity and freedom, and the laws that impose the restrictions were in fact put in place by the colonial powers.”
“No matter how hard those conservative forces try to pull the wool over people’s eyes, queer communities around the world know that equal rights are not a Western agenda,” added Jetten. “They are first and foremost a human agenda.”
Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema and Nayyab Ali, co-chair of the Ending Violence Against Women and Girls Alliance Pakistan, are among those who also spoke on Wednesday. Lady Phyll, co-founder of UK Black Pride, and Camiel Welling, supervisor of the Amsterdam Trans Clinic, are co-hosting the conference that ends Friday.

