Four young gay Muslim men are facing two-year prison sentences in northern Cameroon because they were spotted watching gay movies—and they have already served six months without a trial, per Erasing 76 Crimes. An attorney for Project Not Alone and for Sol, Sabir, Yabby and Dom (pseudonyms of the imprisoned) said their arrest was primarily based on the word of the imam. He has negotiated a pre-trial settlement that would set them free if each of them pays 250,000 CFA francs (about US $436), which has led to Project Not Alone 2025 seeking U.S. tax-deductible contributions to help set free 12 LGBTQ+ prisoners in Cameroon and Nigeria.
Kenya—to the surprise of some—was one of the 29 countries and members of the United Nations Human Rights Council that voted in favor of extending the mandate of the UN’s Independent Expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI), per Erasing 76 Crimes. Fifteen countries voted against while three countries abstained from the vote held on July 7.
South Africa and Kenya were the only African countries to vote in favour of the renewal. The vote means that the expert Graeme Reid, who’s from South Africa, will continue assessing the implementation of international human-rights law, investigating violence and discrimination against queer and gender diverse persons, and advising states and UN agencies on LGBTQ+ issues for three more years. Kenya has been the site of recent anti-LGBTQ+-rights activities that top Kenyan politicians, including President William Ruto, have endorsed.
Canadian travelers applying for or renewing a Nexus card must now select either “male” or “female” as their gender due to policy changes driven by a recent executive order from the United States, Pax News noted. The update affects transgender and non-binary applicants, who previously had the option to identify with an “X” marker. The policy shift has sparked concern among immigration experts and queer-rights advocates, who say it may conflict with Canadian human-rights protections and could face legal scrutiny. Existing cardholders with an “X” designation will not be affected, as their cards remain valid until they expire.
In Sweden, Stockholm Pride took place July 30-Aug. 2 at Östermalms IP, per the event’s website. The Stockholm Pride Parade is the largest Pride parade in all of Scandinavia, with approximately 50,000 attendees; it started along Norr Mälarstrand, close to the city hall, and stretched about 2.7 miles to end at Östermalms IP, where Pride Park is also located. The festival consisted of Pride House, Pride Park, Pride Parade and Pride Young/Pride Family.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney surprised attendees at the Vancouver Pride Parade, CTV News noted. Earlier that day, he met with Vancouver Fraser Port Authority President/CEO Peter Xotta and DP World Canada Chief Operating Officer Joel Werner, but later marched along some of the parade’s route beginning outside B.C. Place Stadium. Carney said the Pride parade represents the “essence of Canada,” celebrating diversity in a “very positive way.” And the parade (which had hundreds of thousands of attendees) went on despite the loss of nearly half of the event’s corporate sponsors, per CBC. The Vancouver Pride Society said it has seen about $400,000 in sponsorships disappear this year, with major brands like Lululemon and Walmart backing out—resulting in a smaller but no less impactful event.
Also in Canada, the organizers of Montreal’s Pride Parade excluded two Jewish groups from participation, according to i24 News. The National Post noted that Fierté Montréal notified Ga’ava (Hebrew for “pride”) and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) that they would be banned from attending the event. Without mentioning either group, a statement from Fierté Montréal said that the festival’s board of directors had “made the decision to deny participation in the Pride Parade to organizations spreading hateful discourse.” In response, Ga’ava President Carlos A. Godoy L said that “this exclusion, based on flimsy, politically motivated reasons decided behind closed doors under pressure from groups that hate Jews, deny Israel’s existence, and whose members celebrated the atrocities of October 7, 2023, is a deeply discriminatory and undemocratic process.”
There’s nothing like a mother’s love. Two years after Uganda passed its controversial Anti-Homosexuality Act, a resistance is rising—mothers standing by their LGBTQ+ children, Erasing 76 Crimes noted. In a country where identifying as gay can result in life imprisonment and where “aggravated homosexuality” carries the death penalty, some parents are defying the law to stand by their queer children. “People say queerness is un-African, but I know that’s not true. I didn’t raise my child on foreign TV, where some claim he could’ve ‘learned’ to be gay,” a woman identified as Mama Joseph told DW. “He did not go to boarding school, where others think such things happen. I raised him right here, very African and he is very queer.”
Erasing 76 Crimes ran a profile of Chief Davis Mac-Iyalla—executive director of the Interfaith Diversity Network of West Africa (IDNOWA)—who symbolizes queer visibility in Africa. “I came out to the world the day I was born,” he told MambaOnline. “My concept of coming out is about speaking out, using your voice to challenge injustice.” Now, he is testifying before Ghana’s Parliament against the anti-LGBTQ+ bill and preaching inclusion from pulpits across West Africa. Two years ago, Mac-Iyalla was lifted onto a traditional palanquin (used to carry chiefs, kings and other important figures during ceremonies and festivals) and installed as Amankorehen (development chief) of Yamonransa. However, some rival chiefs tried to topple him; the palanquin collapsed and tabloids declared that “the gods had rejected” a gay chief, although Mac-Iyalla contended, “If homosexuality were truly a taboo, I would never have been allowed to sit on the stool.”
California-born Ryan Castellucci, a non-binary individual who now lives in London, is set to take the UK government to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), PinkNews reported. Castellucci claimed they were denied acknowledgement of their identity in 2022 after applying to have a non-binary gender marker on their official documents. They gained recognition of their gender in the United States, which currently recognizes gender-neutral “X” markers—something the UK does not. Castellucci’s legal team plans to file a challenge at the ECHR under Article Eight of the European Convention of Human Rights, which the UK is legally obliged to follow, claiming that a refusal to acknowledge Castellucci’s identity constitutes a violation of their right to respect for private and family life.
In Colombia, that country’s Constitutional Court ruled in favor of a gay teen (Identified only by the alias Rubén) who was expelled from an evangelical school, ordering the institution to apologize and implement sweeping anti-discrimination reforms, Colombia1 noted. Queer-rights activists lauded the ruling, calling it a major step forward for LGBTQ+ rights in a country where tensions between religious conservatism and individual freedoms remain strong. Rubén filed the case after being expelled from school in 2024 for defending LGBTQ+ classmates and later acknowledging his own sexuality. The school’s appeal of an earlier ruling was dismissed in July, making the court’s decision final.
SchwuZ—a spot that’s been declared the “oldest, biggest” queer nightclub in Germany—has declared bankruptcy, per Attitude. Management troubles and dating apps are among the reasons cited with putting SchwuZ at risk since last year. The 50-year-old dance institution was founded in Kreuzberg in 1977; located in Neukölln, it has space for more than 1,000 partygoers. In 1978, staff at SchwuZ helped launch the Christopher Street Day parade in the capital of Germany, as well as the LGBTQ+ publication Siegessäule. Posting on Instagram, SchwuZ reps reportedly said in a statement: “SchwuZ has filed for insolvency. But we don’t want to give up!”
Add darts to the sports and activities that have banned trans females from competing in women’s matches. According to The Advocate, Dutch transgender darts champion Noa-Lynn van Leuven criticized the World Darts Federation’s (WDF’s) recently instituted ban. She acknowledged the organization’s new gender eligibility policy in a statement posted to Instagram, noting that “this decision does affect me personally—though, thankfully, not too severely at this point in time. But still, it hurts.” The WDF officially released the new policy in July, creating a “female” category designated “for those participants recorded female at birth, and within definition of female under this policy, which includes females who wish to transition to men, but not undergoing hormone treatment.” van Leuven has actually been prohibited from competing in WDF events since September, when the federation’s members first voted to implement the ban; she spoke out then, saying that she and other trans athletes were being “cancelled.”
Chappell Roan’s new lesbian break-up ballad “The Subway” was on course to hit number one on the UK’s charts, per PinkNews. Roan was set to knock HUNTR/X’s “Golden,” from Netflix’s animated Kpop musical fantasy film Demon Hunters, off the top spot. “Pink Pony Club” spent two weeks atop the UK charts earlier this year, despite being released back in 2020. Last year, “Good Luck, Babe!” peaked at number two, where it stayed non-consecutively for six weeks.
Bend It Like Beckham is getting a sequel—two decades after the Parminder Nagra/Keira Knightley film boosted British women’s soccer and entertained audiences, per Yahoo! Entertainment. The film’s director and co-writer, Gurinder Chadha, confirmed that a second installment is officially in the works. Chadha was in Basel, Switzerland when Deadline broke the news, for the Women’s European Championship final, where the England women’s soccer team won gold. The London filmmaker said her desire to helm a second Beckham film installment was influenced, in part, by the increased interest in women’s soccer across the globe. Chadha also said that Nagra, Knightley, Archie Panjabi, Juliet Stevenson and other members of the original cast “are aware that a sequel is being developed,” but they’ll want to see a script before they actually commit.
Rod Stewart received backlash for his concert’s tribute to fellow British musician Ozzy Osbourne, which shows an AI graphic of the late musician taking selfies with dead stars in heaven, per The Independent. The 80-year-old “Maggie May” singer has been dedicating his 1988 song “Forever Young” to the Black Sabbath singer, who died last month at age 76 of a heart attack. Those featured in the video included Prince, Tina Turner, Bob Marley, Tupac Shakur, Aaliyah, Michael Jackson, Freddie Mercury, Kurt Cobain, George Michael, XXXTentacion, Whitney Houston and Amy Winehouse. The video—viewed more than 3 million times on X/Twitter alone—has been called tasteless and offensive.