The annual Seoul Queer Culture Festival was held in the South Korean capital despite previous issues in securing a venue and protests against the LGBTQ+ community’s pride celebrations, Saltwire noted. “Our message to South Korean society at large this year is to affirm LGBTQ people,” said festival chief organizer Yang Sun-woo. Among various booths and activities at the queer festival was an event blessing for couples. The city authorities had previously denied requests from the organizers to use four locations. Moreover, a counterprotest took place against the event, as thousands of participants held blue flags and signs with phrases such as “No to Homosexuality Queer Festival.”
Former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo—a scientist who is part of outgoing President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s leftist Morena party—became the first woman elected president of Mexico, per The Washington Blade. She will also be Mexico’s first Jewish president. Before the election, Sheinbaum Pardo released a policy paper that reiterated her support for LGBTQ+ rights in Mexico. The platform, among other things, reiterated “absolute respect for diverse gender identities” and promised to create “public policies to [end impunity] and to eradicate hate crimes and violence against LGBTIQ+ communities because of gender and sexual orientation.”
It turned out that one of history’s fiercest combat units intentionally recruited only gay soldiers, according to MSN/The Washington Post. The ancient Greek city-state of Thebes had been under Spartan occupation for three years when a group of Theban exiles stormed the citadel in 379 B.C. and retook the city. Still, the Thebans knew they would need a revolutionary strategy to keep the Spartans out for good. The Thebans couldn’t compete with that scale of military training, so the commander Gorgidas suggested that they deploy a uniquely Theban strength against their enemies: male erotic love. Gorgidas recruited 150 couples skilled in martial combat for his elite corps; this Sacred Band, numbering 300, became Greece’s first professional standing army, housed and fed by the city. For a generation, Thebes was the dominant military force in Greece—until forces under Alexander the Great slaughtered the band.
The coalition of LGBTQ+ groups that were working together to guide the 2026 Gay Games in Valencia, Spain, has left the event to protest what it’s called a hijacking of the project by the city’s newly elected government, which includes a far-right anti-LGBTQ+ party, The Washington Blade noted. Spain’s third-largest city was chosen as the games’ host in November 2021, edging Munich, Germany and Guadalajara, Mexico. Originally, Valencia’s Gay Games organization was led by a coalition of local LGBTQ+ groups in partnership with the city council; however, that changed last year, when the center-right People’s Party and the far-right Vox party took over the city government. The LGBTQ+ groups have urged the Federation of Gay Games to withdraw from Valencia and award the 2026 games to another city.
Germany’s Lesbian and Gay Association (LSVD) has launched a new campaign to amend the country’s Basic Law to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation or identity, The Washington Blade noted. The German Basic Law was enacted 75 years ago, and was intended to protect freedoms from the evils the Nazi regime had inflicted. The statute’s Article 3.1 says that “all persons shall be equal before the law,” while Article 3.3 expands that to list specific criteria (“sex, parentage, race, language, homeland and origin, faith or religious or political opinions”) that cannot be used to discriminate between individuals. LSVD says the exclusion of sexual orientation and gender identity from that list exposes queer people to discrimination.
Also in Germany, airline Lufthansa is celebrating Pride Month 2024 by spoofing the company’s name with “Lovehansa” on several aircraft in its fleet, per The Washington Blade. On X (formerly Twitter), Lufthansa posted, ““It’s that time of the year where we highlight the importance of openness, tolerance, and equal love. We’ve been coloring the air with Lovehansa for the last two years and will continue to spread the love across borders and skies. Happy Pride Season!”
The leader of New South Wales (NSW)—Australia’s most populous state—apologized for the “unforgivable pain” caused by previous anti-LGBTQ+ laws, 40 years after gay sex was decriminalized there, the AP reported. “We are here to apologize for every life that was damaged or diminished or destroyed by these unjust laws,” Premier Chris Minns said in a June 6 speech to the state parliament. The state was the last in the country to issue a formal apology for laws that made gay sex acts illegal, following Victoria and South Australia in 2016 and the country’s other three states in 2017. Same-sex marriage became legal in Australia in 2017.
A new poll has found declining support for LGBTQ2 rights in Canada, per Global News. The Ipsos survey polled adults in 26 countries on metrics measuring support for the queer community. Canada, it found, was among the few countries where support for rights and visibility appeared to register “precipitous drops,” according to Ipsos Vice-President of Public Affairs Sanyam Sethi. General conclusions from the survey included that younger people are more likely to declare themselves LGBT+; and that support for same-sex couples having the same rights to adopt children as heterosexual couples varies between countries, ranging from 82% in Thailand to 29% in Turkey.
In Brazil, Sao Paulo held its huge annual Pride festival. According to NBC News, organizers made a special appeal for participants to wear green and yellow in a rebuke to far-right followers of former President Jair Bolsonaro, as those acolytes had appropriated Brazil’s national symbols for themselves. “We will march this afternoon to take back our flag and to show that Brazil will be better, it will be queer, butch, transvestite,” Erika Hilton—who, in 2022, became one of two openly transgender people elected to Brazil’s congress—told parade attendees. Although Brazil has pioneered LGBTQ+ rights in Latin America, as transphobia was made a crime in 2019, the country still has the largest number of trans and queer people murdered in the world.
Recently, in Albania, friends cheered as lesbian couple Alba Ahmetaj and Edlira Mara stood out on the rooftop of the mayor’s office in central Tirana, kissed, exchanged rings and got married, according to Reuters. And even though Albanian law does not recognize same-sex civil unions, the ceremony has prompted outrage from the political right and the powerful religious community. Albania is known for its tolerance among Muslims, Catholics and Orthodox Christians—and these faiths are united in their opposition to same-sex marriage. “Our society is very patriarchal and homophobic,” Alba said before the wedding. “If you see comments on Facebook or Instagram … you will see how little tolerance we have as a nation.”
Pro-LGBTQ+ advocates say that the Japanese government should be “embarrassed” that its Canadian counterpart has recognized a local lesbian couple as refugees because of discrimination they faced in the Asian country, per The South China Morning Post. The two women were granted refugee status in Canada in September after undergoing interviews and submitting a 200-page document detailing the discrimination they experienced in their workplaces and daily lives in Japan. “I hope this helps more and more people understand the reality that women and LGBTQ people face in Japan,” Japan Alliance for LGBT Legislation (J-ALL) Deputy Secretary General Akira Nishiyama told This Week in Asia. “The reality is prejudice, discrimination and no legal protections.”
Ali Saad Muthyib—a non-binary influencer from Saudi Arabia—has been denied asylum in the UK because Home Office officials allegedly do not believe they are a member of the LGBTQ+ community, PinkNews reported. Muthyib, whose social media videos get millions of views, said they had to flee the Middle East kingdom after receiving death threats, being attacked and harassed by police as well as being fired. LGBTQ+ rights are practically non-existent in Saudi Arabia; same-sex sexual activity is criminalized and “crossdressing” is also illegal, with trans people facing prosecution for not adhering to the country’s strict dress codes.
In mid-May, the Swiss canton of Valais passed a law banning conversion therapy, per The Washington Blade. The vote was 106-21. The discredited practice has also been banned in the canton of Neuchatel since 2023. The conversion therapy ban was included in a new Health Act that all parties in the Valais parliament supported—except for the right-wing Swiss People’s Party.
The six people starring in Slaycation—an all-new unscripted series that follows queens from across the international Drag Race franchise as they vacation together at a Canadian winter retreat—were revealed, per a press release. The queens include BOA, Jada Shada Hudson, Kandy Muse, Kerri Colby, Lawrence Chaney and Luxx Noir London. The six-part series will premiere globally on WOW Presents Plus later this year, with a local airing on Crave in Canada. The teaser is at this link.
Out singer and former American Idol contestant Adam Lambert made a brief return to reality TV when he appeared as a guest competitor on the new season of the Chinese show Singer, Instinct noted. (Lambert sang his hit “Whataya Want from Me,” which has found renewed life in China, climbing three charts there recently.) The series has established artists—some who call China home while others are known internationally—compete for the title after weeks of singing unfiltered to a live studio audience. Currently, Lambert can be found touring with Queen, having taken over lead vocals from Paul Rodgers in 2011. Lambert’s last solo record, High Drama, was released in 2023; he has released two songs—“Lube” and “Wet Dream”—from his upcoming Afters EP, per Retropop.
The Boyfriend—Japan’s first gay romance reality series—is set to premiere on Netflix this summer, Out noted. “Located by the sea, the ‘Green Room’ beach house sets the stage for nine men to find love,” according to the official description. “For a month, they live together and take turns working shifts at a peppermint green coffee truck, forging deep friendships and learning about themselves along the way.” The Boyfriend premieres July 9 with new episodes dropping every Tuesday in four weekly installments.
Producers of the new documentary Norita announced that Academy Award-winning actress and activist Jane Fonda has joined the film’s team of executive producers, per a press release. The movie—with Jayson McNamara and Andrea Tortonese directing—is about the life of the Argentinian activist and feminist icon Norita Cortinas, who passed away on May 31 at age 94. The film chronicles Cortinas’ journey to seek justice for the past while inspiring the next generation of women’s rights activists. She has been held up as a symbol by the women’s movement dating back to the 1980s, and is seen as a fundamental fixture in the movement’s success during Argentina’s 2020 vote to legalize abortion.
Conservative British talk-show host Piers Morgan was ridiculed over his reaction to Donald Trump’s recent guilty verdict, The Independent noted. Morgan—who once competed on Trump’s show The Apprentice—posted on X, “This is a sad, shameful and ridiculous day for America. To drag a former President, who is running for President again, through criminal courts over something so trivial feels a massive overreach & an incredibly divisive and obviously politically partisan action.” Followers made fun of Morgan, with one person responding, “Are you serious?”