Section
Rights, politics, health, and world news — told from the LGBTQ+ perspective. Factual. Balanced. Never boring.
After the Supreme Court struck down Colorado's 2019 conversion therapy ban, state lawmakers passed a new bill that targets the practice through a different legal door — and it now awaits the governor's signature.
Weeks after Botswana formally deleted colonial-era anti-gay provisions from its Penal Code, a same-sex couple's challenge to the Marriage Act heads to a full bench of the High Court in July.
EU institutions launched a synchronized pro-LGBTQ+ campaign ahead of Pride Month, promoting the new 2026-2030 Equality Strategy. Supporters and critics agree on one thing: it is unusually coordinated.
Japan's Supreme Court has consolidated six same-sex marriage appeals before its full Grand Bench. The decision, expected in 2027, will determine whether the last G7 holdout's marriage ban is constitutional.
The Bari Court of Appeal, in a ruling now final, has given a four-year-old boy three legal parents — two fathers and a co-mother. It is the first time an Italian court has done this, and it lands in the middle of Giorgia Meloni's war on rainbow families.
Two months after Portugal's parliament voted 151-79 to advance three sweeping anti-trans bills, the legislation is still in the Committee on Rights, Freedoms and Guarantees. The delay is not an accident — and it is not a win, either.
Warsaw's civil registry transcribed a same-sex marriage certificate on May 14, the first time in Polish history. Wrocław became the second city to do so days later. Both implement court orders that the Tusk government had, until recently, signaled it might ignore.
May 17 is here. The European Union has issued its annual IDAHOBIT statement, the Council of Europe is convening foreign ministers in Copenhagen, and the global theme — At the Heart of Democracy — is doing more work than usual. A day-of look at what is actually happening.
Spain just took ILGA-Europe's number-one spot for LGBTI rights, ending Malta's decade-long reign. In the same month, fresh data shows assaults on Spain's LGBTQ+ community tripled in two years. The gap between law and lived experience is the story of 2026.
One LGBTQ+ Colombian killed every 32 hours in 2025. A Kenyan rights group documents systematic police violence. Sixty-four countries still criminalize same-sex relations. As IDAHOBIT lands Sunday, the global picture is harder than the headlines.
On May 15, plaintiffs in the long-running passport case filed a motion asking the court to halt enforcement of the State Department's policy denying transgender Americans accurate sex markers. A ruling could come within weeks.
Brussels' long-awaited response to 1.2 million petition signatures landed on May 13. Ursula von der Leyen called the practice 'barbaric' and asked every member state to outlaw it. What she didn't do is propose a binding EU-wide ban.
Five years after parliament rebuilt the body that's supposed to protect LGBTQ+ people, religious minorities, and the disabled, new appointments are raising old fears that politics is about to gut it from the inside.
GLAAD's sixth annual scorecard rates the major social platforms on LGBTQ+ safety. With one exception, every platform got worse this year. Meta's policy changes from 2025 are now baked in, and the report says the consequences are showing up in users' inboxes.
TGEU's annual trans rights ranking arrived this week alongside ILGA-Europe's Rainbow Map. The headline: when European governments stand still or roll back protections, courts and movements are the ones moving the needle.
A conservative coalition is collecting signatures to repeal Albania's six-month-old gender equality law. The country's constitution may make that legally impossible — but the political damage is already happening.
ILGA-Europe's 2026 Rainbow Map went live on May 12. Spain takes the top spot for the first time, ending Malta's decade-long reign — but the more telling story is how much of Europe slid backward this year.
The 2026 Rainbow Map calls Turkey the country where conditions for LGBTI people deteriorated most visibly in the past year — dissolved organisations, blocked healthcare, and prosecutions targeting activists by name.
The CJEU's March 11 ruling told three EU member states they must offer legal gender recognition to nationals who have exercised free movement. Sixty days on, Sofia has reopened cases but passed no law. Budapest and Bratislava are openly defying the judgment.
Montenegro became the first Western Balkans country to recognize same-sex unions when its Life Partnership Law took effect in July 2021. As the five-year mark approaches, the law has held — but adoption rights are still locked out, and the political winds aren't getting easier.
On May 6 the Vatican made public a previously private 2024 doctrinal-office letter to Germany's bishops opposing formalized same-sex blessings. Three days later, an AP profile of Pope Leo XIV's first year crystallized what queer Catholics are reading: real openness to LGBTQ+ voices, a hard stop on doctrinal change.
Two days after the Supreme Court lifted the injunction blocking Trump's transgender military ban in Shilling v. Trump, the Pentagon has begun moving roughly 1,000 service members toward immediate separation under Hegseth's 30/60-day self-separation deadlines.
An ATF rule submitted in early May would require federal firearms forms to reflect 'biological sex' rather than legal gender — and citizens caught misstating it could face up to five years in prison. Civil rights groups are calling it a felony trap aimed at trans Americans.
Released May 5, the Holy See's synod study group report is the first official Vatican document to feature testimony from civilly married gay men and to describe reparative therapies as causing 'profound suffering.' It does not change doctrine — and that's the point.
ILGA-Europe's annual ranking of 49 countries on LGBTQ+ rights goes live in less than a week. With Hungary's anti-LGBTQ law just struck down, Czechia's enhanced partnerships completing their first year, and Albania's EU accession heating up, the 2026 edition will land in a different Europe than 2025's.
The Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights launched a Title IX investigation on May 4 into Smith's admissions policy, which has welcomed transgender women since 2015. The complaint was filed by a conservative legal group after the college honored Adm. Rachel Levine.
The Justice Department announced on May 1 that it is investigating whether dozens of Illinois public school districts taught what it calls 'sexual orientation and gender ideology' content without parental opt-outs. Governor JB Pritzker called it a 'sham investigation.'
On May 23, 2023, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Romania had violated the rights of 21 same-sex couples by refusing to give their relationships any legal status. Three years on, Romania still has no civil partnership law — and the Council of Europe is running out of patience.
Croatia is now the most legally protective country in the Western Balkans for LGBTQ+ people — but the road from constitutional ban to court-ordered adoption rights ran through 25 years of Pride marches, not parliamentary good will.
A man accused of two violent attacks on gay men at a Mallorca beach faces attempted-homicide and grievous-bodily-harm charges with a discrimination-based aggravator. The case is one of the most serious tests of Spain's hate-crime framework this year.
A preliminary injunction from a federal magistrate in Oregon directly conflicts with Trump's Day One executive order on prison housing — and could become a blueprint for state-level challenges.
If Brussels turns this week's parliamentary vote into a binding directive, six candidate countries will have to follow. Five of them have no ban on conversion practices at all.
MEPs voted on April 29 to endorse a citizen-led initiative calling for an EU-wide ban on conversion practices. The resolution is non-binding, but it puts the Commission on the clock — a formal response is expected May 18.
The International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia returns May 17 with a theme that links queer rights to democratic backsliding. Sixteen days out, here's what the day is, what's planned, and where the global picture sits.
The proposed rule, published April 28, replaces every reference to gender identity with a definition of sex pulled directly from Trump's executive order — and gives shelter operators new authority to demand 'evidence' of someone's sex.
Péter Magyar has named education researcher Judit Lannert to run a ministry that, under Fidesz, was the primary engine of Hungary's anti-LGBTQ+ school policies. The right-wing press is already calling her appointment a scandal.
Albania has cleared the interim benchmarks on rule of law and fundamental rights, accelerating EU negotiations. The country still has no legal recognition of same-sex couples, and the Discrimination Commissioner post sits vacant.
The Minnesota powerlifter and USA Powerlifting reached a settlement on April 28, six months after the state Supreme Court ruled the federation's trans-exclusion policy was illegal discrimination.
USAID's withdrawal pulled an estimated 10–20% of annual funding from North Macedonian civil society. For LGBTQ+ organizations already navigating the Western Balkans' weakest rights environment, the math is brutal.
The trans rights advocate who built D.C.'s trans Pride infrastructure from scratch in 2007 — and centered Black trans women in every room she walked into — passed away on April 24.
A draft decree from Madrid would force every autonomous community to fund gender-affirming surgery, voice therapy, and mental-health support — closing the patchwork that has long forced trans Spaniards to travel for care.
A 51-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of arson with intent to endanger life after fire tore through one of England's longest-running queer venues in the early hours of Sunday.
A federal appeals court upheld Minnesota's policy allowing transgender students to play on teams matching their gender identity, and made the broader point that Trump's anti-trans executive orders don't override state law.
Two newly elected French mayors removed rainbow flags and shut down planned Pride celebrations, including one set for April 25 in a Lille suburb. Organizers call it 'an attack on a symbol of unity.'
Slovakia's 2025 constitutional amendment locking in two-sex recognition and banning same-sex adoption is now exposed in a way it wasn't a week ago. The EU's Hungary ruling didn't just hit Budapest.
The Texas Supreme Court dismissed the temporary injunctions that had blocked the state from investigating families of transgender minors as child abusers. The ruling is procedural — but it leaves the underlying policy intact and the next case wide open.
Ghana's parliamentary committee held two days of public hearings on April 23 and 24 on the Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill — the legislation that would criminalize LGBTQ+ identity itself. Here's the state of play, with President Mahama now publicly ambivalent.
Returning from Africa on April 23, Pope Leo XIV told journalists that formalized same-sex blessings 'can cause more disunity than unity' and that doctrine on sexuality is not changing. LGBTQ+ Catholics are reading the pastoral hedging and the doctrinal hold-the-line at the same time.
The Supreme Court agreed on April 20 to hear St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy, which asks whether religious preschools can receive state funding while refusing to admit children of LGBTQ+ parents.
Two of the most established LGBTQ+ organizations still operating inside Russia were declared extremist on April 23, 2026 — a move that effectively criminalizes nearly two decades of community work and sexual health outreach.
Montenegro remains the only Western Balkans country to legally recognize same-sex couples. Six years after the law passed, the low number of registrations says more about safety than about demand.
Over 100 rights groups, including Amnesty International and Poland's Supreme Bar Council, signed an open letter demanding the government implement court orders to recognize same-sex marriages performed abroad — after the Interior Minister suggested it wouldn't.
The Women's Sports Union, led by former Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies and backed by US conservative group ADF International, is threatening to sue 10 UK and Irish sports bodies that let trans participants self-identify.
Hungary's incoming prime minister campaigned on vague promises of tolerance and almost no direct commitments on queer rights. The European Court of Justice has just forced the question onto his agenda.
A federal judge in Oregon permanently blocked the December 2025 HHS declaration that shut down gender-affirming care programs nationwide, ruling that Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had no authority to unilaterally rewrite medical standards of care.
From April 20, all Australian blood donors face the same screening questions regardless of sexual orientation or gender. The change ends a 1980s-era restriction that kept queer men and trans people from donating even while in monogamous relationships.
From Belgrade to Sarajevo, same-sex couples face illness, bereavement, and parenthood without the legal standing every married heterosexual couple takes for granted. A decade of Pride marches has not yet produced a single enforceable partnership law across most of the region.
A divided D.C. Circuit panel vacated the injunction that had kept incarcerated trans women in women's facilities, handing the Trump administration a significant win on one of its first-day executive orders.
The Court of Justice of the European Union found that Hungary's 2021 'propaganda' law violates core EU values — the first time the bloc has ruled a member state breached Article 2 of its founding treaty.
A new FELGTB+ report shows hate crimes, harassment, and physical assaults against LGBTQ+ people in Spain have more than doubled since 2024 — with transgender people bearing the worst of it.
The president put his signature to the Russian-style bill on April 15. Two days later, seven UN human rights experts issued a joint statement warning the law legitimizes persecution of an already marginalized community.
The Basic Court in Banja Luka has found that the former Republika Srpska president's 2023 statements about LGBTI Bosnians created 'a hostile and offensive environment.' It's one of the first rulings in the region to hold a top politician personally accountable for discriminatory speech.
On Tuesday, the European Court of Justice delivers its judgment in Commission v. Hungary, the first infringement case to rely on Article 2 TEU as a standalone basis. Here's what's at stake.
The former Wales rugby captain has teamed up with Grindr and UK charity You Are Loved to launch a chemsex awareness series. The numbers behind the campaign are worse than most people realize.
A regional Russian outlet was hit with an 'LGBT propaganda' fine over a review of the hockey drama Heated Rivalry — the clearest sign yet that Russia is policing cultural criticism, not just content.
As Albania prepares for the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia on May 17, the country sits in a curious position: stronger legal protections than most of the Western Balkans, real political momentum tied to EU accession, and a queer community still navigating deep social conservatism.
The Czech Republic's enhanced same-sex partnership law took effect on January 1, 2025 — granting registered partners almost every right of marriage except joint adoption. More than a year in, here's what's working, what isn't, and why couples are still fighting for full equality.
A series of Constitutional Court and Supreme Court rulings have steadily widened legal protections for LGBTQ+ families in Italy, putting the judiciary on a collision course with the Meloni government's anti-surrogacy and 'traditional family' agenda.
The Lesbian Action Group's third attempt to secure a legal exemption allowing it to ban trans women from public events scored a procedural win in Federal Court — but the fight over what 'lesbian space' means is far from settled.
After being banned from women's eight-ball competitions and losing her initial discrimination claim, Harriet Haynes has been granted a High Court appeal that could reshape how the UK's landmark sex definition ruling applies to sport.
Rob Jetten, 38, became the Netherlands' first openly gay prime minister in February — a milestone that felt less like a revolution and more like an inevitability.
Trans and nonbinary youth make up a disproportionate share of America's foster care system — and new federal and state policies are making an already dire situation worse.
Péter Magyar's landslide victory ends 16 years of Fidesz rule and Europe's most aggressive anti-LGBTQ+ government. But the new prime minister's record on queer rights is cautious at best.
A court in a Dakar suburb sentenced a young man to six years in prison for 'acts against nature' — the first ruling since Senegal doubled the maximum penalty for same-sex relations in January.
The White House's 2027 budget request proposes a $166 million counterterrorism increase and a new NSPM-7 Joint Mission Center tasked with targeting 'extremism' on gender, race, and opposition to 'traditional American views.'
From Senegal's doubled penalties to Ghana's revived criminalization bill, a worsening climate for LGBTQ+ Africans has deep roots in US evangelical influence — now turbocharged by the Trump administration.
After Governor Brad Little signed a bill fining cities for flying Pride flags, Boise responded by wrapping its City Hall flagpoles in rainbow vinyl, lighting windows in trans flag colors, and putting up signs reading 'A city for everyone.' The flag ban says nothing about flagpoles.
A cantonal court has upheld the conviction of a former MP who called for LGBTQ+ people to be 'isolated and kept away from children.' It took 13 years for Bosnia's anti-discrimination law to produce its first verdict on sexual orientation — and now that verdict has survived appeal.
In a landmark 340-141 vote, the European Parliament passed a resolution affirming the full recognition of trans women as women — a symbolic but significant rebuke to the global anti-trans backlash.
The Trump administration agreed to restore and permanently maintain the rainbow Pride flag at the Stonewall National Monument after a federal lawsuit challenged its removal.
Just two years after legalizing same-sex marriage, Greece is moving to restrict surrogacy access exclusively to women — a rollback that legal experts say likely violates European human rights law.
Prime Minister Kurti pledged to legalize same-sex civil unions by May 2024. The deadline passed, an election came and went, and Kosovo's LGBTQ+ community is still waiting.
Over 30 volunteers spent 10 days sewing an 800-square-metre trans pride flag, then unfurled it in a Brisbane park to demand Queensland reinstate gender-affirming care for trans youth.
A groundbreaking qualitative study reveals how family rejection, institutional failure, and legal invisibility create a pipeline from marginalization to exploitation for LGBTQ+ Albanians.
What started as a quiet protest at the University of Virginia in 1996 is now the largest student-led action for LGBTQ+ school safety in America. Thirty years later, the need for it has only grown.
Albania and Serbia are racing toward EU membership. The price of admission includes reforms on anti-discrimination, hate crimes, and LGBTQ+ protections — and the effects are already visible.
From forcing Poland to recognize same-sex marriages to challenging Hungary's anti-LGBTQ law, the European Court of Justice is stepping in where elected officials won't.
Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony faces criminal charges for co-organizing last summer's banned Pride march. Meanwhile, Hungary is gearing up to use biometric surveillance against future attendees — a move the EU says may violate its own AI Act.
The 2026 report documents a continent-wide rollback: 'propaganda' laws, Pride bans, forced closures of NGOs, and constitutional amendments designed to erase trans people from public life.
A proposed broadcasting bill would ban all LGBTQ+ content from social media, streaming platforms, and online video — affecting 265 million internet users in the world's fourth most populous country.
New research shows that religious exemption laws targeting LGBTQ+ people are linked to a 28% drop in first-time HIV testing. The health consequences of legal discrimination are becoming measurable.
Wendy and Diana spent nearly two months in detention after neighbors reported them for sharing a kiss. They're free on bail — but still face life in prison under Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Act.
Poland's Supreme Administrative Court ruled that civil registries must record same-sex marriages from other EU states — a landmark shift for a country where marriage equality remains constitutionally banned.
A Romanian court ruled that the state must issue a new birth certificate to Arian Mirzarafie-Ahi, a trans man who transitioned in the UK — setting a binding precedent for all 27 EU member states.
The board members of Genç LGBTİ+, a youth rights organization in İzmir, face up to three years in prison for posting illustrations during online Pride events. The first hearing was held on April 8.
Following an ombudsperson ruling on discrimination, Montenegro removes a Ministry of Health restriction that blocked queer women from accessing medically assisted insemination.
President Faye signs sweeping anti-LGBTQ+ legislation that doubles maximum sentences to 10 years and criminalizes advocacy, drawing international condemnation.
Spain's new workplace equality rules require companies to actively protect LGBTQ+ employees — and businesses say implementation has been surprisingly easy.
Albania's new gender equality law includes protections for sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression — a landmark for the Balkans. But the fight to keep inclusive language in the law was anything but smooth.
In a 340-to-141 vote, the European Parliament adopted a recommendation calling for 'the full recognition of trans women as women' — a striking statement amid a global wave of anti-trans legislation.
One year after becoming the first country in Southeast Asia to legalize same-sex marriage, Thailand has seen over 26,000 couples tie the knot — roughly 10% of all marriages registered nationwide.
Across the Western Balkans, a coordinated anti-gender movement is using online disinformation to silence LGBTQ+ advocates and feminists. We're watching it from Tirana — and it's working.
The Belarusian parliament approved a sweeping anti-LGBTQ+ bill this week, copying Russia's playbook. Advocates say it criminalizes existence — not just expression.
The International Olympic Committee's new eligibility policy uses genetic testing to exclude transgender women from female events starting at the 2028 Games. Advocates say it's unscientific, invasive, and harmful — and solves a problem that barely exists.
Ghana's parliament is advancing the Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill, which would make it a crime to identify as LGBTQ+, to advocate for equal rights, or to attend a same-sex wedding. President Mahama has said he'll sign it.
The European Commission has launched its second LGBTIQ+ Equality Strategy, a five-year roadmap targeting hate speech, conversion practices, employment discrimination, and legal gender recognition across all 27 member states.
In a striking reversal, Georgia's 2026 legislative session ended without a single anti-LGBTQ bill becoming law. Community organizing, coalition-building, and direct advocacy at the Capitol made the difference.
Idaho's governor signed HB 752 into law on April 1, 2026 — a bill that makes it a misdemeanor, and then a felony, for trans people to use bathrooms that align with their gender identity.
President Murmu signed the Transgender Persons Amendment Bill 2026, which introduces medical board approval requirements and criminalizes 'compelling' someone to present as transgender — drawing condemnation from Amnesty International and India's own courts.
Led by INEND and GALCK+, Kenyan queer rights organizations are registering voters and building political power ahead of the August 2027 general elections, insisting their rights are 'fundamentally Kenyan issues.'
After a landmark constitutional court ruling and one couple's fight through the courts, Lithuania is now debating a civil partnership bill — but its passage is far from certain.
Three bills that would dismantle Portugal's pioneering trans rights protections passed a first parliamentary reading in March 2026, backed by the ruling coalition and far-right Chega party.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Colorado's ban on conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ minors violates the First Amendment, a decision that could jeopardize similar laws in more than 20 states.
India's parliament passes an amendment to the Transgender Persons Act that removes self-perceived gender identity from the law and requires medical certification — a move critics say contradicts the Supreme Court and erases the community it claims to protect.
Kansas becomes the first US state to retroactively invalidate transgender residents' driver's licenses under a sweeping new law that also restricts restroom access and creates a private right to sue.
The Transgender Persons Amendment Bill 2026, now signed by India's president, replaces self-identification with medical certification and narrows the legal definition of who counts as transgender. Human rights groups are calling it a massive step backward.
In an 8-1 ruling in Chiles v. Salazar, the Supreme Court struck down Colorado's conversion therapy ban on First Amendment grounds — and more than 20 states with similar laws are now in the crosshairs.
From the trans military ban to erasing federal protections for 100,000 workers, here's a factual accounting of what's changed for LGBTQ+ Americans since January 2025 — and where things stand now.
The Balkans are changing fast — but unevenly. Montenegro has legal civil unions. Serbia blocks progress despite 80% public support. Kosovo's PM is pushing for change. Bosnia's Ministry of Health is actively obstructing a partnership bill. Here's the full picture.
