Weekly Queer Digest
November 5-12, 2021
State of the World…
This week was defined by bans and attacks against LGBTI+ people and rights throughout the world!
In China, an influential LGBT advocacy group that has spearheaded many of the legal cases pushing for greater rights halted its work amid growing restrictions on social activism. In Bulgaria, a group of people led by a far-right nationalist presidential candidate stormed the Rainbow Hub LGBT+ community centre during a trans community event. In Russia, authorities named a prominent LGBT rights group and several lawyers as foreign agents, continuing a months-long crackdown on activists, opposition supporters, and independent media. And in the United Kingdom, the BBC quit Stonewall’s LGBTQ diversity program over impartiality concerns.
In the United States, San Diego became the fifth U.S. city to ban the use of gendered pronouns in future city laws and policiess, the governor of Oklahoma ordered an end to nonbinary birth certificates, a trans teen sued Tennessee over its school sports ban, in Indiana trans boys sued their school district over its bathroom ban, and conservatives pushed for audits of school libraries as they labeled LGBT-inclusive library books sexually explicit material.
With this sobering news, we must reaffirm our innate human rights to non-discrimination, freedom from violence, and the right to an inclusive education. The Global Center stands united with you in the week ahead in our joint efforts of creating freedom!