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CBS News
02-07-2025
- CBS News
Communities in Massachusetts upset after several anti-LGBTQ+ incidents
A series of anti-LGBTQ+ incidents across Massachusetts has left local communities outraged. In Provincetown, police are investigating a potential hate crime after a man was attacked on Monday morning. The victim described the attackers as three men in their 20s or 30s who used homophobic slurs during the assault. "Provincetown is a safe haven and safe space for the LGBT community, and we intend to keep it that way," said Provincetown Town manager Alex Morse. "I want to thank our police department, our residents. Obviously, people are a little bit on edge, but we are being vigilant. We will have additional officers out and about in the coming days." Morse said that Provincetown police are working around the clock to locate the suspects. In Jamaica Plain, a number of Pride flags have been torn down from homes in recent days. Residents have expressed anger and frustration at the vandalism. Anti-LGBTQ+ sign outside Medford church In Medford, controversy has erupted over a sign posted outside the New England Baptist Church that reads, "Homosexuality is an abomination." Residents said they were surprised to see the sign there. "I know it's a church and people can celebrate anything that they want, but that's not celebrating anything, that's creating more hate," said Erin, a Medford resident and a member of the LGBT community. "It's something we definitely don't need right now." The Modern Pastry owner next door said that when she saw the sign, she immediately painted a rainbow on their window. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) has been tracking anti-LGBT incidents across the country. From May 2024 to May 2025, over 900 incidents were recorded. Sarah Moore, a spokesperson for GLAAD, attributed the uptick to harmful political rhetoric. "When we allow harmful and defamatory tropes to be perpetuated through this political rhetoric. That same rhetoric is then being used as justification for these acts of violence against the community," Moore said. People in Medford said that the sign is not representative of the town's beliefs. Many consider the area an inclusive and welcoming part of town.
Yahoo
30-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Turkish police detain dozes at banned Pride march, says lawmaker
STORY: :: Turkish police detain dozens who tried to take part in a banned Pride march, a lawmaker says :: Istanbul, Turkey :: June 29, 2025 :: Kezban Konukcu, Lawmaker, People's Equality and Democracy Party "The palace regime (Turkish presidency) will not continue their rule by ignoring and demonizing the LGBT+ community." :: Police did not immediately respond to a request for comment Footage obtained by Reuters showed police scuffling with a group of activists holding rainbow flags in the city centre before rounding them up and loading them into police vans. Kezban Konukcu, a lawmaker from the pro-Kurdish DEM Party who attended the march, told Reuters that at least 30 people had been taken into custody. Police did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Istanbul governor's office had earlier deemed the march unlawful and said groups promoting the event were operating "illegally." Authorities have banned Pride marches in Turkey's largest city since 2015, citing public safety and security concerns. President Tayyip Erdogan's Islamist-rooted AK Party has adopted increasingly harsh rhetoric against the LGBTQ+ community over the past decade.
Reuters
14-06-2025
- Politics
- Reuters
Seoul's LGBT community gathers for annual festival after liberal president elected
SEOUL, June 14 (Reuters) - The annual Seoul Queer Culture Festival was held in the South Korean capital on Saturday after the country ushered in a new liberal president, though it faced concurrent protests against the LGBT community's pride celebrations. While the community has made some advances towards broader acceptance in Korean society, conservative religious groups still mount resistance to efforts to pass laws against discrimination, and there is no legal acknowledgement of LGBTQ+ partnerships. City authorities repeatedly denied venue clearance requests for last year's festival before eventually giving their approval. "The slogan for the 26th Seoul Queer Culture Festival is that we never stop," said its chief organiser Hwang Chae-yoo. "During the last ... administration, hate against homosexuality and LGBTQ+ became very strong, leading to government policies that often ignored LGBTQ+ people. That's why we expressed our will to never give up until the end, and make efforts to improve human rights," Hwang said. South Korea elected liberal President Lee Jae-myung earlier this month in a snap election, after conservative predecessor Yoon Suk Yeol was ousted following his impeachment. While Lee has not explicitly stated his positions on LGBT issues during the campaign, his election has led to optimism among some in the community that conditions could improve. Under blue skies and temperatures reaching 31 degrees Celsius (87.8 Fahrenheit), festival turnout was brisk with people, some carrying rainbow flags, milling about booths including those set up by LGBTQ+ organisations, embassies and university clubs. From 4:30 p.m. local time (0730 GMT), participants marched through the streets of Seoul, calling for improved human rights and self-esteem for LGBTQ+ people. The event's organisers said 30,000 people were taking part, though police put their estimate at around 7,000. A protest against the Queer Culture Festival was also held in a nearby location in central Seoul on Saturday. Participants held blue and pink signs with phrases such as "Homosexuality Stop" and "Destroys Families". There was no clash. "It's changed a lot compared to the old days, but most people are still like, 'we know you exist, but don't come out'," said 44-year-old festival participant Hong Il-pyo, who was dressed in drag. "I hope we can make a little progress and change to 'you exist, so let's live well together.'"
Yahoo
01-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Stonewall veterans sound alarm over Trump's attempt to erase trans history
NEW YORK – Out of nowhere, through the open back door of the police van, came a rhinestone-studded high heel. The drag queen rocking the pump kicked an officer in the shoulder, knocking him to the ground and sending him skidding across the pavement. The growing crowd outside the Stonewall Inn howled as he got up, dusted himself off and charged into the back of the van with such ferocity that the door slammed behind him. Then ghastly noises exploded from inside the vehicle – 'bone against metal, flesh against metal, and a dreary, dreary liquid sound that shocked everybody, I mean, shocked us,' recalled Martin Boyce, a Stonewall regular who witnessed the events unfold in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969. The role of transgender people in the Stonewall riots – a monumental moment in the fight for LGBTQ+ equality – is undisputed and well documented. A police raid on the popular gay bar in New York's Greenwich Village, amid the tumultuous events of the late 1960s, touched off six days of rioting considered the spark that ignited the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement. The bar's patrons – a colorful cocktail of gay men, lesbians, trans people, bikers and street kids – had survived police harassment and similar raids many other times. By the time police barged into the bar that unusually hot summer morning, they'd had enough. They fought back, with the fists and fury of a people tired of being targeted and condemned for who they are. The Stonewall riots represent such a significant chapter in American history that President Barack Obama designated the bar's exterior, an adjacent park and the surrounding streets a national monument in 2016 so that what happened there, and the people involved, would never be forgotten. Less than a decade later, President Donald Trump wants Americans to remember only part of the story. In February, the National Park Service stripped references to transgender people from the monument's website. The move was part of Trump's broader campaign to recognize the existence of just two sexes – male and female – and combat what he calls 'gender ideology.' Trans people who battled police alongside gay men and lesbians at Stonewall have now been erased from the government's official history of that event. 'That's just wrong,' said Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, who participated in the riots and now lives in Little Rock, Arkansas. Miss Major, as she is known, is a transgender activist who has argued for years that trans Americans' involvement in Stonewall has never been fully acknowledged. Mark Segal, a gay rights activist from Philadelphia who was inside Stonewall the night of the raid, is appalled by Trump's attempt at trans-washing LGBTQ+ history. 'I am a witness to history, and my trans brothers and sisters were with me that night,' Segal said. 'I won't allow him to censor history. I want people to realize that when a government tries to erase a group of people, that's dangerous.' Segal was at the back of the bar, near the dance floor, where other young people hung out, when police came barreling through. It was 1:20 a.m., a Saturday. Segal, then 18, had been in New York for just six weeks. Growing up in Philadelphia, he had felt as if he were the only gay man in the world. Gay men were practically invisible in 1969. He had heard that Greenwich Village was a place where people could be themselves, so he headed to New York and found his way to Christopher Street in the heart of the city's gay scene. There, he found a circle of friends like himself. He found Stonewall. Fredd 'Tree' Sequoia had discovered Greenwich Village a few years earlier. He had heard about it from a friend. So one day, while he was a teenager, he snuck off from his home in Brooklyn and boarded a train to the city. He was so taken by the neighborhood's thriving mixture of clubs, coffee shops and easy sex that he moved there and never left. Stonewall opened in early 1967 and quickly became his main hangout. He was there, along with Segal and others, dancing at the back of the bar, when the police charged in. What happened next is legend, one that has been repeated and embellished so often that it can be hard to separate fact from fiction. About 200 people were inside the bar that morning. Some, like Sequoia, were dancing. Others were just standing around, talking to friends, openly flirting, something that could have gotten them arrested in an era where same-sex relations were considered deviant and criminal. Suddenly, the lights in the bar blinked on, and the music stopped. Sequoia heard a friend known as Gypsy scream at the top of his lungs, 'Don't touch me!' Then, pandemonium. A dozen or so police officers moved swiftly through the bar. They justified the raid by saying they were investigating the illegal sale of alcohol. Until 1966, New York had barred the sale of booze to known or suspected homosexuals. Gay bars like Stonewall had tried to get around that rule by operating as private clubs, but with homosexuality a crime, they were still easy targets and often subjected to police raids and brutality. Officers smashed bottles of liquor against the bar, shattered the jukebox and cigarette machine and shoved people up against the wall. 'I was scared out of my mind,' Segal said. 'I had never seen such violence in my life.' Police demanded to see IDs. Most patrons, including Segal and Sequoia, were eventually allowed to leave. Trans people were isolated in a back room so police could examine them to verify their gender. Some refused to cooperate. Lesbians in the front of the bar recoiled at what they considered unnecessary frisking. One reportedly punched a cop. Honoring the past: 10 great places where LGBTQ history was made Out on the street, rumors of the raid spread. A crowd gathered in front of the bar and watched as police officers yanked drag queens and trans people through the door, some kicking and screaming, and shoved them into the back of a waiting van. 'They were just rude,' said Miss Major, who was in the crowd. 'They put their hand where it didn't belong. They shoved them and pushed them around and then they didn't help us when we had to go up the steps to the paddy wagon.' Boyce and a friend, Robert "Birdie" Rivera, were on their way to Stonewall when the raid happened. They were dressed in 'scare drag' – a looser gender-bending style that would later be popularized by the singer Boy George – instead of full drag, which could have gotten them thrown in jail. Police were known to arrest anyone who wasn't wearing at least three items of clothing that corresponded to their gender at birth. Losing the rainbow: National brands used to celebrate Pride Month. Then came the DEI backlash. All at once, Boyce, then 21, felt a surge of people behind him that seemed unusual, even for a weekend. He looked toward Stonewall and could see the police cars' red bubble lights, twirling and brightening up the night sky. The crowd was pushing toward the bar. Boyce and Rivera headed in that direction. By the time they got to Stonewall, the number of onlookers had grown and formed a semi-circle outside the bar's doors. Boyce watched as an officer dragged the skinny queen in the rhinestone-studded pumps out the door. The bystanders giggled as she fought back and the officer struggled to get her into the police van. They laughed harder when she kicked him to the pavement with her sparkly footwear. He got up and bolted into the vehicle. When the beating was over, he stepped back onto the sidewalk, jaws clenched, Boyce recalls, and barked at the crowd: 'You faggots! You saw what you came to see. Now get out of here!' Instead of scattering, the onlookers moved in his direction. Boyce could see the officer's anger rise as he commanded the crowd to disperse and ducked back inside the bar. Exactly what turned the resistance into a riot remains an open debate. By some accounts, the tipping point was the lesbian punching the officer. Boyce suggests it was the officer's menacing response after he was kicked to the ground. Whatever the cause, the crowd's frustration gave way to fury. 'People started throwing things at the door, whether it be coins from their pockets or a stone they picked up, or an empty can of soda,' Segal said. Segal saw drag queens, loud and boisterous, hurl anything that wasn't fastened to the street. 'Whoever assumes that a swishy queen can't fight should have seen them, makeup dripping and gowns askew, fighting for their home and fiercely proving that no one would take it away from them,' he would write in a memoir published in 2015. Sequoia observed rioters pull a parking meter out of the ground and use it to batter the doors of the bar, where the police had barricaded themselves. Others watched the rioting from the windows of nearby apartments and encouraged the queens to keep fighting back. 'You heard people in the buildings around there yelling out their windows at the girls beating the police up,' Miss Major said. 'Some people yelled out, 'Go get 'em, girls!' The fact that we were attacking the police was a big deal.' The rebellion spread to the surrounding streets. Police called in the riot squad for reinforcements. As they advanced in line formation, wearing riot helmets and holding shields, they were taunted by a group of young men who locked arms and formed a Rockette-style kick line, chanting to the melody of the vaudeville tune "Ta Ra Ra Boom-de-Ay": 'We are the Stonewall girls. "We wear our hair in curls ...' By 4:30 a.m., the rioting had died down. Thirteen people were arrested, including Stonewall employees and customers. At least two of those arrested were drag queens, according to an account provided by the Library of Congress. The next afternoon, Karla Jay, a feminist activist who lived nearby, heard about the uprising on the radio and headed over to check out the scene. Police barricades were stationed at each end of the street. Empty cans and debris were everywhere. Knots of people gathered along Christopher Street, furious about what had happened and insisting that something had to be done. Visibility: Portion of US adults identifying as LGBTQ has more than doubled in last 12 years For the next five days, spontaneous outbursts and demonstrations continued, involving several thousand people at times. Groups like the Gay Liberation Front formed, demanding an end to police brutality and equality for all. A month later, a small but boisterous group of protesters marched to Stonewall from nearby Washington Square Park, halting traffic and shouting 'gay power' and other slogans. 'We felt it was a great victory,' Jay recalled. 'We had walked that far, and nobody had attacked us. There we were, out in the daylight. It was very liberating.' That demonstration, on July 27, was New York's first openly gay pride march. A movement had been born. Today, June is celebrated as Pride Month in the United States and many other countries because of the trans, lesbian and gay activists who rose up at Stonewall. The history of the LGBTQ+ rights movement is often told in two parts: before and after Stonewall. The bar, still operating from the same Christopher Street location, is now a mecca for LGBTQ+ people from around the world and anyone concerned about equality. Next door, a visitors center occupies space that was once part of the bar. Tour guides include Stonewall among their stops at important New York City landmarks. Men and women too young to remember a time when same-sex relations were a crime pose for photos in front of the red-brick facade, with its arched doorway and neon sign in the window. 'This is the home to everybody who is gay,' said Sequoia, now 86, who works at the bar on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays as the host and resident storyteller. 'They all know about it – all over the world. Even in countries where it's illegal to be homosexual, people know about Stonewall, and they come here to see it.' Inside, the dark-paneled walls are decorated with memorabilia reflecting the bar's history. A framed newspaper clipping from July 6, 1969, recounts the raid, beneath a derogatory headline from the New York Sunday News: 'Homo Nest Raided, Queen Bees Are Stinging Mad.' At the entrance hangs the placard that police placed on the front door following the events of that summer nearly six decades ago. 'THIS IS A RAIDED PREMISES,' it announces in all caps. Just across the street, black-and-white photos hanging on the wrought-iron fence surrounding Christopher Park show prominent figures and moments in the push for LGBTQ+ equality. At the center of the park, white-finished 'Gay Liberation' sculptures by the artist George Segal depict two men standing next to each other, the hand of one resting on the other's shoulder. Two other life-size figures are of women seated on a bench, one's hand resting on the other's lap. The park, with its brick paving and benches, is part of the Stonewall National Monument, a 7.7-acre site that includes the bar's exterior and the surrounding streets where much of the rioting happened. Keeping Stonewall's legacy alive and educating younger generations is important because 'if you don't know your past, you may not have a future,' said Stacy Lentz, one of the bar's current owners. Stonewall veterans, members of the community and Americans across the country are infuriated by the elimination of trans people from the National Park Service's website. The White House did not respond to a request for comment. But the Park Service said in a statement to USA TODAY that references to transgender people were removed to align with Trump's executive orders recognizing just two genders and targeting diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Lentz said she was stunned by the Trump administration's decision. 'In the days right after (the riots) and in terms of keeping the movement alive, when a lot of other gay and lesbian and bi people were more and more scared, a lot of trans folks were more vocal – maybe because they felt like they had nothing to lose.' In the decades since, they continue to face threats. Trans women, in particular, have remained easy targets for criminals and politicians. More than 2,800 hate crimes were recorded against LGBTQ+ people in 2023, according to a report by the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group. Of those, nearly 550 were committed against transgender people or people whose gender identity fell outside traditional gender norms and roles, the report said. In 2024, more than 500 anti-LGBTQ+ bills were introduced in state legislatures, and more than 40 became law in 14 states, the report said. The previous year, lawmakers approved more than 85 anti-LGBTQ+ laws. Most of them specifically targeted trans people, limiting their access to gender-affirming medical care, public restrooms and school sports. Study: LGBTQ youth, family relocate amid increasing anxiety over laws directed at them Stonewall is the only federal monument dedicated to LGBTQ+ history, which makes its preservation all the more meaningful, Segal said. 'If you want to feel proud of the civil rights movement that was led by numerous people throughout the years, you might go to the Pettus Bridge (in Alabama),' he said. 'You might come to Independence Hall (in Philadelphia) if you want to feel proud about patriotism in America. If you want to feel proud about the building of the LGBTQ community and where that started, you come to Stonewall.' That's why it's so important to tell the uncensored story of Stonewall, the movement it started, and the people involved, including those who are trans, Segal said. 'We had to fight back (at Stonewall), and we will continue to fight back now against this administration,' he said. He's confident that, just like on that hot summer morning in 1969, they will prevail. Follow Michael Collins on X @mcollinsNEWS. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Stonewall vets sound alarm over Trump attempt to erase trans history
Free Malaysia Today
10-05-2025
- Politics
- Free Malaysia Today
Fostering hatred for LGBT community a new low for Terengganu
From Rajesh Nagarajan The Terengganu government has sunk to a new low with its anti-LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) signboard. State executive councillor Wan Sukairi Wan Abdullah of PAS has stated: 'We want the public to hate homosexual acts. We want them to see it as filthy and wrong.' Wan Sukairi's hateful mindset is an affront to right-thinking members of society. Here we have a politician coming out in public and shamelessly advocating hate crimes in Malaysia. This would easily be defined as a crime in other countries, but not ours. We are tolerating politicians advocating hate against an entire community. There is no outcry from the ruling coalitions to affirm that everyone is equal irrespective of their sexual orientation. An undignified silence is all we have. A hate crime has been perpetrated and yet no action has been taken and can be taken. Thanks to the current and previous governments, we do not have laws against hate crimes. Malaysia has, to date, failed to ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. This would have enabled action to be taken to stop all forms of discrimination, including any discrimination against the LGBT community. This call for hate must stop. It is none of our business how our neighbours have sex or who they have sex with. It is a private right that should not be intruded upon and the state cannot and should not be interested in the sexual orientation of its rakyat. Rajesh Nagarajan is a lawyer and human rights advocate. The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.
