EU launches legal action over LGBTQ+ rights in Hungary and Poland

Ruling is part of ongoing fight for rule of law and freedom from discrimination in heart Europe

The EU executive has launched legal action against Hungary and Poland to defend LGBTQ+ rights in the latest battle over values with the two nationalist governments in central Europe.

The announcement that Hungary and Poland’s governments could end up in the EU’s highest court is part of an ongoing existential fight for the rule of law and freedom from discrimination in the heart of Europe.

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Arrested, abused and accused: wave of repression targets LGBT+ Ghanaians

Opening of community space in Accra, which was quickly shut, has been the trigger for new anti-LGBT+ action

“All I wanted to do was help vulnerable people,” said Shaun Apong, tears streaking down his face, from behind the bars of a squalid police cell in Ho City in eastern Ghana.

Apong was one of 21 people arrested in early June, charged with unlawful assembly and accused of spreading an LGBT+ agenda, amid a marked and sudden increase in sensitivities around the rights and advocacy of gay and queer people in the west African country.

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Georgian cameraman dies after attack by far-right, anti-LGBTQ mob

Government accused of ‘culpable passivity’ after dozens of journalists were attacked covering Pride protest

A Georgian TV cameraman has died after being badly beaten by far-right assailants during a protest against an LGBTQ Pride march, his station said on Sunday, as pressure mounts on authorities over attacks on journalists.

Alexander Lashkarava, a 37-year-old cameraman working for the independent station TV Pirveli, was found dead in his bed in the early hours on Sunday, the channel reported.

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EU parliament condemns Hungary’s anti-LGBT law

Resolution is passed to launch legal action, but Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán remains defiant

The European parliament has denounced a Hungarian law that bans gay people from appearing in educational materials or on primetime TV as “a clear breach” of its principles of equality.

In a resolution voted in Strasbourg on Thursday by a resounding majority, MEPs condemned “in the strongest possible terms” the Hungarian law as “a clear breach of the EU’s values, principles and law”, while urging the European Commission to launch a fast-track legal case against Viktor Orbán’s government.

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DJ-producer Sherelle: ‘I feed off people’s unexplained anger’

Black artists pioneered dance music, but the scene remains white-dominated. UK rising star Sherelle is dodging the trolls and trying to make change with her platform Beautiful

Wearing a fleece jacket covered in black and white acid smilies, Sherelle is a walking embodiment of dance music when I meet her. The 27-year-old north Londoner and self-professed “bocat” – a Jamaican slang term used in a derogatory manner to describe someone who enjoys giving cunnilingus, now proudly reappropriated by her on her T-shirts – is one of the UK’s most purely enjoyable new DJs. By blending various global forms of dance music, she is a catalyst for unrestrained raving who has stormed her way into the limelight at 160 beats per minute.

She grew up on dancehall booming out of her mum’s hi-fi system, and hip-hop and R&B music videos on cable TV. “In my house we had cable illegally, because we couldn’t afford to pay for it,” says Sherelle, whose younger self would cringe at her mother and older sister. “Whatever they were watching, they would dance to. I have a graphic image of Beenie Man’s Who Am I, around the time the tune came out, and my mum and sister having the greatest time. I was mortified.”

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The fight to save one of America’s last lesbian bars: ‘We’re like an endangered species’

There are only 21 lesbian bars remaining in the US – a vertiginous drop from 200 in the 1980s. The much-loved Cubbyhole is one of them

Everyone at the Cubbyhole has an origin story.

Mona Williams was 21, queer, and had been kicked out by their family when they first arrived at the quaint little lesbian bar on a street corner in New York’s West Village. They had Googled “lesbian bars in New York” and found themselves outside the bar a few hours later, alone and not knowing what to expect.

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EU urged to suspend funds to Hungary over ‘grave breaches of the rule of law’

Action follows Viktor Orbán passing law banning LGBT content in schools and mishandling of EU funds

Ursula von der Leyen is being urged to suspend EU funds to Hungary to force Viktor Orbán to address concerns over politicised courts and corruption.

MEPs who work on the European parliament’s budgetary control committee are calling on the European Commission president to use a newly created EU law to freeze payments to Hungary for “grave breaches of the rule of law”.

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Three arrested after gay man beaten to death in Galicia

Protests across Spain after 24-year-old nursing assistant Samuel Luiz dies following attack outside nightclub

Spanish police have arrested three people in connection with the killing of a young gay man whose death in a possible homophobic attack over the weekend shocked the country and sparked nationwide protests.

Samuel Luiz, a 24-year-old nursing assistant, was out with friends in the Galician city of A Coruña in the early hours of Saturday when an argument started outside a nightclub.

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Malawi Pride and press freedoms in Palestine: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Chile to Cambodia

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Feel Good’s Mae Martin: ‘If you put a teenage girl in any industry, people will take advantage’

The non-binary comedian’s hit TV show draws heavily on an often troubled life. They talk about addiction at 14, the loving parents who kicked them out, the older men who abused their trust – and the happiness they eventually found

At the beginning of the pandemic Mae Martin’s first TV series, Feel Good, was broadcast on Channel 4 to great acclaim. Just recently, the second series came out on Netflix to even greater acclaim. While most of us have disappeared in lockdown, Martin has become a star.

Feel Good is a disarmingly autobiographical love story. It tells the story of a character called Mae struggling with relationships, addiction, identity and life on the comedy circuit. Mae is attracted to men and women, but to women more, particularly women who identify as straight. The first series focuses on Mae’s relationship with Georgina, a teacher who had previously only slept with men and is reluctant to admit to her super-straight, super-posh friends that she and Mae are living together. Mae is a mix of streetwise and naive – reckless, precocious, promiscuous, self-absorbed and a bag of nerves.

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Brazilian presidential hopeful Eduardo Leite comes out as gay

But governor who hopes to challenge Jair Bolsonaro next year backed the far-right leader in 2018

One of Brazil’s leading politicians, the presidential hopeful Eduardo Leite, has announced he is gay – a rare move celebrated by many as a triumph over prejudice in a country whose president has declared himself a proud homophobe.

Leite, the 36-year-old governor of the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, made the announcement on Thursday night during an interview with the country’s top broadcaster, TV Globo.

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Major aid donors found to have funded ‘conversion therapy’ clinics in Africa

Investigation finds UK Aid and USAid money linked to centres where ‘condemned’ practice is routinely offered to LGBTQ+ people

The UK government is among major aid donors to have funded clinics in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania that offer so-called “conversion therapies”, which pressurise gay people to “quit” same-sex attraction, an investigation has found.

In a six-month undercover investigation of the centres, reporters from global news website openDemocracy were told being gay is “evil”, “for whites” and a mental health problem. Among them were facilities linked to some of the world’s biggest aid donors, including USAid and the British government’s fund, UK Aid, run by organisations such as UK-based MSI Reproductive Choices (formerly Marie Stopes International) and Swiss-based Global Fund.

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EU Commission urged to reject Hungary’s Covid recovery plan

Cross-party group writes to Ursula von der Leyen over fraud, corruption and LGBTQ+ rights concerns

The European Commission is being urged to reject a coronavirus recovery plan for Hungary over concerns about fraud, corruption and the country’s stance on LGBTQ+ rights.

A cross-party group of left and liberal MEPs have written to the Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, demanding she send the Hungarian government back to the drawing board over its spending plans for a €7.2bn (£6.19bn) coronavirus recovery grant.

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Miss Nevada to be first openly transgender Miss USA contestant

Kataluna Enriquez won the Miss Nevada USA pageant Sunday and will compete in Miss USA pageant in November

A transgender woman who won the Miss Nevada USA pageant will soon become the first openly transgender Miss USA contestant.

On Sunday, Kataluna Enriquez beat 21 other contestants to win the crown. The 27-year-old took to Instagram the next day to celebrate. “Huge thank you to everyone who supported me from day one,” she wrote. “My community, you are always in my heart. My win is our win. We just made history. Happy pride.”

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‘Iconic gay image’: history of sailors and sex explored in Barcelona exhibition

Catalan city is hosting new show looking at relationships between men who spend their lives at sea

A new exhibition at the Maritime Museum of Barcelona seeks to tell the story of the romantic and sexual reality of men who spend their lives at sea.

El desig és tan fluid com la mar (Desire Flows Like the Sea) aims to evoke the lives of men living in isolation but at close quarters and whose intimate lives were once clandestine out of necessity because homosexuality was and, and in many places still is, considered both a sin and a capital offence.

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Honduran state responsible for trans woman’s murder – court

Landmark ruling orders state to pay reparations, protect trans people and legalise gender change

In a landmark ruling for transgender rights, the Honduras government has been found responsible for the 2009 murder of the trans woman and activist Vicky Hernández. The ruling, at the inter-American court of human rights, was published on the 12th anniversary of Hernández’s death, and marks the first time the highest regional human rights court has held a state accountable for failing to prevent, investigate and prosecute the death of a trans person.

The court has ordered Honduras, which has the world’s highest rate of murders of trans people, to pay reparations to Hernández’s family and implement a sweeping range of measures designed to protect trans people, including anti-discrimination training for security forces and state collection of data on violence against LGBTQ+ people.

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Spain backs bill allowing teenagers to change official gender without medical checks

Equality minister says draft law marks ‘giant step forward for LGBTI rights, particularly trans people’

Spain’s government has approved a draft law that would allow anyone aged 14 and over to change their gender on official documents without the need for hormone treatment or a medical report, and which would also ban conversion practices and strengthen the rights of LGBTI people.

The proposed measures – which follow months of wrangling between the Spanish Socialist Worker’s party (PSOE) and its junior coalition partners in the far-left, anti-austerity Podemos party – would abolish existing legislation that requires people wishing to change their gender to obtain a diagnosis of gender dysphoria and undergo hormone treatment.

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‘You can’t cancel Pride’: the fight for LGBTQ+ rights amid the pandemic

Lockdown hit LGBTQ+ communities hard but even as Pride events are called off there is hope and a promise that the parades will return

This month, for the second year in a row, there was no Pride parade in San Francisco, arguably the city most laden with history and symbolism for the LGBTQ+ community.

It is a decision Fred Lopez, who took over as executive director of San Francisco Pride at the beginning of last year describes as “heartbreaking”.

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Obama says Trump violated ‘core tenet’ of democracy with election ‘hooey’ – as it happened

– Maanvi Singh and Vivian Ho

As the United States has become more diverse, it has also become more racially segregated, according to a new nationwide analysis from researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.

More than 80% of America’s large metropolitan areas were more racially segregated in 2019 than they were in 1990, the researchers found, even though explicit racial discrimination in housing has been outlawed for half a century. The levels of residential segregation appeared highest not in the American south, but in parts of the north-east and midwest: the most segregated metropolitan area in the US according to the study is New York City, followed by Chicago, Milwaukee and Detroit.

Related: ‘Where you live determines everything’: why segregation is growing in the US

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