News
UNITED, NOT UNIFORM: LESBIAN VISIBILITY WEEK STARTS ON MONDAY, APRIL 22ND WITH EVENTS UNFOLDING NATIONWIDE
Lesbian Visibility Week (#LVW24) kicks off on Monday, April 22nd with a private event at the London Stock Exchange USA headquarters in New York City. This exclusive gathering marks the beginning of a week-long celebration filled with virtual and in-person events happening across the nation, in addition to the unveiling of the highly anticipated 2024 Curve Power List, a popular who’s who that honors the achievements of LGBTQ+ women and nonbinary trailblazers, as nominated by the public.
This year’s Lesbian Visibility Week runs through Sunday, April 28th and focuses on the theme “United, Not Uniform,” a commitment to solidarity with all LGBTQ+ women and nonbinary people and designed to promote unity, uplift those who face the greatest marginalization within the community, and to celebrate the joy and strength of sisterhood by highlighting remarkable contributions across generations, disciplines, and nations worldwide.
“What began as a day of recognition in 2008 has blossomed into a full week of festivities, thanks to the visionary efforts of Linda Riley at DIVA Magazine in 2020, and bolstered by White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s pronouncements in 2023. Lesbian Visibility Week is a celebration of the diversity, resilience, and beauty of the Curve community — which includes all LGBTQ+ women and nonbinary people.” — Franco Stevens, founder of Curve Magazine and
co-founder of The Curve Foundation
Highlights from the week include the Netflix premiere of the award-winning documentary “AHEAD OF THE CURVE.” Directed by Jen Rainin and Rivkah Beth Medow, the film chronicles Stevens’ inspiring efforts to amplify the voices of LGBTQ+ women and nonbinary individuals over the 30-year run of Curve Magazine, the most successful lesbian magazine in the world.
Featuring popular cover stars such as Lea Delaria and Melissa Etheridge, AHEAD OF THE CURVE celebrates resilience, community, and the transformative power of lesbian visibility, showcasing the evolution of Curve from its humble beginnings to its profound impact on queer representation, through to today and the inception of The Curve Foundation.
Additional highlights from Lesbian Visibility Week include:
- Curve Magazine releases its Lesbian Visibility Week issue
- “Beyond the Rainbow” Two-Spirit Healing Water Ceremony and Panel Discussion
- “Beyond the Rainbow” Queer Women of Color Leaders Panel Discussion
- “Beyond the Rainbow” Archiving Our History Panel with Joan Nestle
- Lighting of San Francisco Hall (San Francisco, CA)
- Sapphic Saturday Music Festival (Indianapolis, IN)
- Full week of events in Provincetown, MA – visit https://lesbianvisibilityweekptown.com
The full Lesbian Visibility Week calendar is available at https://lesbianvisibilityweekusa.com. Organizations hosting their own #LVW24 events are invited to submit them for publication in the calendar and to access an activation pack of helpful materials and planning information.
ABOUT THE CURVE FOUNDATIONThe only national nonprofit championing LGBTQ+ women and nonbinary people’s culture and stories, The Curve Foundation works to empower and amplify the voices of the Curve Community – lesbians, queer women, trans women, and nonbinary people of all races, ages, and abilities. In addition to Lesbian Visibility Week and the Curve Power List, the Curve Foundation’s programming includes: the Curve Award for Emerging Journalists, created to recognize emerging journalists and raise the visibility of LGBTQ+ women and nonbinary people; and the Curve Archive, a permanent and searchable archive of 30 years of magazine issues.
For more information about the organization, visit https://thecurvefoundation.org.
Two military members denied promotions for having HIV just won their lawsuit
An Air Force cadet and a Navy midshipman have won their lawsuit after being denied promotions for being HIV-positive.
Former Navy midshipman Kevin Deese and former Air Force cadet John Doe (a pseudonym) filed the lawsuit against the Department of Defense in 2018 when they were denied commissions after graduating from their respective service academies simply because they are living with HIV.
The settlement, announced Monday, will see that the two are commissioned as officers “in recognition of the status and military careers they qualified for and earned years ago,” according to a Lambda Legal press release.
“Joining my brave co-plaintiff in this case was, for me, about demonstrating the very leadership that inspired me to a military career. I follow the mantra of 2004 Naval Academy graduate Travis Manion — ‘If not me, then who?’” Deese said in a statement. “Now, 10 years after my Naval Academy graduation, future midshipmen and cadets living with HIV will be able to commission with their classmates upon graduation. And I could not be more proud to finally be commissioning.”
The DoD announced policy changes in June, 2022 that rescinded some of the military’s former restrictions discriminating against service members living with HIV. Now, those who are asymptomatic with undetectable viral load “will have no restrictions applied to their deployment or to their ability to commission … solely on the basis of their HIV-positive status.”
“We are gratified that our clients, who were denied officer commissions they had earned because of the U.S. military’s discriminatory policy of withholding career advancement opportunities from HIV-positive service members, will now be able to achieve their goals,” said Kara Ingelhart, senior attorney at Lambda Legal. “Service members living with HIV, once affected by an outdated, discriminatory policy, no longer face discharge, bans on commissioning, or bans on deployment simply because they are living with HIV.”
Trans and nonbinary migrants file complaint over treatment at ICE detention facility
Activists have filed a civil rights complaint with the Department of Homeland Security on behalf of five transgender and nonbinary migrants who say they were mistreated at an immigration detention center in Colorado.
They are currently detained at the Aurora Contract Detention Facility, a prison privately owned and operated by the GEO Group, where Immigration and Customs Enforcement incarcerates people who have pending or recently concluded immigration legal matters.
The complaint, filed Wednesday, says the five suffered medical neglect, inadequate access to necessary medical and mental health care, dehumanizing treatment, and more. It calls for major changes in ICE’s handling of transgenderand nonbinary migrants. The migrants are represented by the National Immigration Project, Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, and American Immigration Council.
“Our clients and medical experts reveal that ICE cannot safely and humanely incarcerate people who are transgender and nonbinary (‘TNB’),” the complaint states. “Immigration detention negatively impacts their mental health, impedes timely access to gender affirming care, and triggers prior trauma. … We call for an end to the practice of detaining people who are TNB in civil immigration detention. At a minimum, ICE must both implement new policies that provide more robust safeguards to TNB people in the agency’s custody as well as exert regular oversight to ensure that protective policies are followed in practice.”
Under President Barack Obama’s administration, DHS implemented policies aimed at mitigating some of the worst outcomes faced by trans people in ICE custody, “but the policies clearly failed to improve conditions of confinement,” the complaint says.
The migrants are identified by pseudonyms in the complaint to protect their privacy. One of them, Charlotte, sought transfer to the Aurora facility from an ICE detention center in Georgia and was told that she would have better access to gender-affirming care at Aurora, according to the complaint. But in Aurora, she and other trans women she is detained with are locked in their dorm for at least 23 hours a day, she says.
“I thought they’d take care of us, give us more freedom, recognize that we have suffered the most, we are the most vulnerable,” she says in the document. “We came from our countries being horribly treated and we get here and they treat us horribly.”
Another, Victoria, “who has been detained in ICE custody for more than two years, is on hormone replacement therapy but has faced months-long waits to see doctors about her hypertension,” the complaint says. “She recalls that on one occasion her ‘blood pressure was so high, [she] thought she was going to die.’”
“The traumatic experiences detailed in this complaint make clear that ICE is incapable of safely and humanely incarcerating transgender and nonbinary people,” Ann Garcia, staff attorney at the National Immigration Project, said in a press release. “As a result, we urge DHS to put an immediate and permanent end to ICE’s practice of detaining transgender and nonbinary people. Until that happens, at a minimum, ICE must immediately implement new policies to provide safeguards to transgender and nonbinary people in their custody while also implementing regular oversight practices to guarantee adherence to these protective policies. Ultimately, however, we know the abuse and mistreatment documented in this complaint are emblematic of a detention system that is inherently inhumane and flawed beyond repair, and we will continue fighting to end this cruel and harmful system.”
Mexico: Guanajuato Should Legally Recognize Trans Identities
Trans people in the Mexican state of Guanajuato suffer economic, medical, and labor discrimination, as well as other onerous legal impediments, because the state has no process for issuing identity documents consistent with their gender, Human Rights Watch said in a documentaryreleased today. Guanajuato’s authorities should urgently create an administrative procedure to allow trans people to reflect their self-declared gender identity on official documents.
The Keys to My Freedom, produced in collaboration with Amicus DH, is released on the heels of International Transgender Day of Visibility. It follows the stories of two transgender women, Ivanna Tovar and Kassandra Mendoza, who have fought to have their gender and names legally recognized in Guanajuato. Eight additional trans people from the state also share brief experiences of discrimination and messages of hope.
“The documentary powerfully shows how trans people in Guanajuato are disadvantaged in work and education and weighed down with legal proceedings due to authorities’ undue delay in recognizing their gender identity,” said Cristian González Cabrera, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The governor and state congress should urgently establish a legal gender recognition procedure that will contribute to reducing discrimination.”
Each of Mexico’s 32 states has the authority to determine its laws and policies in civil, family, and registration matters in accordance with the constitution. It is up to the state legislature or state governor to pass a law or issue an administrative decree that enables legal gender recognition through a simple administrative procedure at a state-level civil registry. Twenty-one Mexican states already have such a procedure. Guanajuato does not.
“It has been difficult to find a job,” says Kassandra Mendoza in the documentary regarding her lack of documents reflecting her gender identity. “[Employers] see my documents, then they see me and say, ‘This doesn’t add up.’ I’ve been made fun of, I’ve even been insulted.”
Ivanna Tovar says in the documentary: “Without a gender identity reform, we [trans people] cannot work in a dignified manner because we are violated, because we are not called by the [legal] names that appear in our documents, and [dealing with that] is the state’s responsibility.” She described gender recognition as her “keys to [her] freedom.”
In October 2021, a state lawmaker, Dessire Ángel Rocha, introduced a legal gender recognition bill, but the bill has not advanced in the current legislature. Previous gender recognition bills presented in February 2019, October 2019, and April 2021 also did not advance.Until last month, the state congress was unwilling to consider bills relating to the rights of LGBT people. In February 2024, the state passed the Law for Persons of Sexual and Gender Diversity. It aims to establish coordination mechanisms between various authorities, as well as guiding principles, “to promote, protect and progressively guarantee” the rights of LGBT people. However, this reform did not address gender recognition for trans people.
Human Rights Watch and Amicus DH, together with the Trans Youth Network and Colmena 41, interviewed 31 trans people from Guanajuato state in April 2022 in the cities of León, Irapuato, and Guanajuato city, as well as remotely, to understand and document the harm related to a lack of legal gender recognition in the state. They found that the absence of a legal gender recognition procedure in Guanajuato leads to serious economic, legal, health, and other ramifications for trans people.
In states like Guanajuato without procedures for legal gender recognition, transgender people have to initiate an onerous legal proceeding to enjoin the state to recognize their gender identity on the basis of the Supreme Court rulings and international law. Federal judges generally grant the injunction, but it can be a lengthy and expensive process which requires hiring an experienced lawyer.
In a successful case, the judge orders the civil registry to permanently seal a trans person’s original birth certificate, meaning it is no longer readily accessible in its information systems, and to issue a corrected certificate. This new state birth certificate is necessary to request new nationally valid identification documents like a voter registration card, a tax number, or a passport.
In 2017, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued an advisory opinion saying that states must establish simple and efficient legal gender recognition procedures based on self-identification, without invasive and pathologizing requirements. The ruling is an authoritative interpretation of the American Convention on Human Rights, which Mexico has ratified.
In 2019, the Mexican Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling with clear guidelines on legal gender recognition. The court said that this must be an administrative process that “meets the standards of privacy, simplicity, expeditiousness, and adequate protection of gender identity” set by the Inter-American Court.
The Supreme Court ruling binds all lower federal courts. The court said that in order to comply with the constitution, state authorities should ensure that trans people can update their legal documents through an administrative process. In 2022, the court expanded the right to legal gender recognition to include adolescents and other children.
“The trans people who shared their stories in the documentary are just a few of the many trans people who are suffering under the state’s inaction on gender recognition,” González said. “Guanajuato should heed activists’ calls and Mexican law and join the majority of Mexican states that uphold the rights of their gender minorities by creating an administrative gender recognition procedure.”Community rallies for Minnesota’s oldest LGBTQ+ bar after devastating fire
Minneapolis’s LGBTQ+ community has rallied to support Minnesota’s oldest gay bar after a fire forced it to close last month.
On March 22, a garbage truck hit a utility pole near the beloved 19 Bar in the city’s Loring Park neighborhood, causing electrical wires to ignite the building’s gas supply, Minnesota Public Radio reported. While no one was hurt, damage from the blaze has caused the bar, which first opened in 1952, to close indefinitely.
The loss, which 19 Bar’s management has vowed will only be temporary, has nonetheless hit the local LGBTQ+ community hard.
“It’s just so weird not having that place to go to on the way home from work,” Bubba Thurn, the secretary of Citizens for a Loring Park Community (CLPC) and a 19 Bar regular, told CBS affiliate WCCO.
“As the years go on, we still have struggles, challenges in the community,” 19 Bar manager Craig Wilson said. “And the 19 Bar has always been a safe haven for people to come and be themselves and be okay.”
“It never changes,” Thurn told MPR of 19 Bar. “It doesn’t have the attitude of the regular clubs and gay bars. This one is more of a mix of the community — the neighborhood of Loring Park and the queer community as a whole.”
According to WCCO, the bar’s closure has left eight staff members without jobs. But the community has stepped up to help. Two GoFundMe campaigns have so far raised more than $31,000 combined to support the out-of-work staff. Another local gay bar, The Saloon, has also announced an April 7 fundraiser, with performers and bartenders donating their tips to benefit 19 Bar’s employees.
And last Thursday, the nearby Walker Arts Center hosted a free event honoring 19 Bar. One of the gallery’s current installations happens to be Oakland-based artist Sadie Barnette’s neon-soaked reimagining of San Francisco’s first Black-owned gay bar, the New Eagle Creek Saloon, which Barnette’s father owned from 1990 to 1993. With the artist’s blessing, Walker Arts Center welcomed the city’s LGBTQ+ community into the space to pay tribute to 19 Bar, as bartenders served drinks, a DJ played music, and photos submitted by patrons were projected on the gallery’s wall.
The Walker’s associate director of public relations, Rachel Joyce, said she hoped the evening would provide “a joyful moment to reminisce on good times at the 19 and a way to look toward the future.”
19 Bar manager Wilson is doing just that. “Yes, there’s some fire damage, water damage, but that’s cosmetic, that can be replaced,” he told WCCO, noting that a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, which hung in the bar as a nod to the fact that it opened the same year she ascended the throne, had survived the fire.
“The bones of the bar is still standing and strong,” Wilson said, “and that just goes to show we will come back, rebuild, new and improved.”
Rep. Kelly Cassidy helped make Illinois a haven for LGBTQ+ rights & says the impact is beyond words
Illinois state Rep. Kelly Cassidy (D) left Florida for Chicago when she was still a teenager, skipped college, went to work right away, had three kids in short order, and has been moving at the same lightning speed ever since.
Her first job was with the National Organization for Women, where she rose to legislative director. She joined the staff for Illinois Senate President John Cullerton, worked in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office as the director of programs and development, and was appointed to the state legislature in 2011 after playing a major role in the ouster of Speaker Mike Madigan, who was later indicted after ruling for more than 30 years as the top Democrat in the Illinois House.
Cassidy, 55, won her first term representing District 14 on Chicago’s North Side in 2012. She’s running for a fourth term in 2024.
Her staff managed to clear a spot on the rep’s always busy schedule for a conversation from her district office in Chicago. It was a mild spring morning in the usually Windy City.
LGBTQ Nation: I’ve seen different numbers for how many LGBTQ+ members there are in the Illinois General Assembly. To your knowledge, how many are there, and do you have enough to start a caucus?
State Rep. Kelly Cassidy: Actually, from our high watermark of five members a few years ago, we are down to one in the House, me, and one in the Senate, Mike Simmons. We’ve had a relatively large exodus to the city council over the years, because, unlike anywhere else in the country, it’s common to move up from the Statehouse to the Chicago City Council. So no, we don’t have enough to form a caucus — just one in each chamber, and we do both sort of have the attitude that we represent the whole state.
One of your biggest legislative achievements was pushing through a bill that legalized adult-use Cannabis in Illinois, the first state to legalize through a legislature and not a ballot measure. What’s your philosophy at the heart of that effort, and do you partake?
Yes, I do partake.
And the philosophy at the heart of the measure was undoing the harms of the War on Drugs using an equity-focused model that remains a work in progress, frankly. Centering records restoration was really the driving force behind everything we did. We ended up expunging nearly three-quarters of a million records as a result of that legislation.
You were appointed to your seat in 2011 after your predecessor moved up — by Chicago standards, as you say — to the Chicago City Council. The next year you faced off against another lesbian, Paula Basta, who, like you, is an inductee to the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame. Describe the dynamic between two gay women, both activists, running for the same seat. What tipped the balance in your favor?
First of all, there were 25 people, I believe, that sought the appointment after we drove Speaker Madigan from office. There was an eight-and-a-half-hour public hearing where Paula was one of the people seeking the appointment. In Chicago, the party of the person leaving an office chooses their successor. It was narrowed down to three finalists — one of them was Paula — then they interviewed us and then interviewed us again, and I was unanimously chosen as the winner.
It was not a foregone conclusion. In the election, Paula raised a whole lot of money, showing her capacity to beat me, and I spent the first several months of the race, in spite of being the incumbent, being outraised and outspent pretty dramatically. What tipped the balance was old-fashioned retail politics. I was on the doors all day, every day. And at the end of the day, incumbency helps, obviously, because I had been doing the work for over a year before I won my first term.
It did remind me, superficially, of George Santos running against Robert Zimmerman in 2022, two gay men competing against each other, but that’s a different story.
(Laughing) That’s a different story. I would definitely not put Paula in the Santos category. But it’s not super unusual to have two gay candidates competing against each other where we live because it’s so incredibly queer here.
You chair the Restorative Justice Committee in the General Assembly, where you did a lot of work on your cannabis bill. What’s the most egregious miscarriage of justice you’ve seen in your work, and how was it resolved?
I’m a mother of many, many children. I love them all equally, so it’s difficult to choose just one. In the criminal justice arena, there are so many things that are still not quite right. But last year, I was finally able to pass a comprehensive bill that allows incarcerated survivors of gender-based violence, whose abuse was not contemplated in their original trial, to be offered an opportunity to seek resentencing.
There’s a woman who just got out this year. She was convicted of murdering her husband after months and months and months of abuse and being raped, before marital rape was a punishable offense, and that was something she couldn’t bring up at the time of her trial. She had been in prison for 35 years. She’s out now, and she’s figuring it all out. I was on a Zoom call with her, and her delight at figuring out Zoom was maybe one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. It was awesome.
You spearheaded a ban on “conversion therapy” in Illinois, helped guarantee trans individuals could access bathrooms and change their birth certificates to reflect their correct gender, and you’ve been an outspoken advocate for reproductive rights. Illinois is surrounded by states moving backward in all those areas you’ve addressed. How important is your state as a refuge for marginalized groups under attack from those and other red states?
There isn’t a superlative big enough to describe the importance of what we’re doing here. I have had folks roll into town on fumes having spent their last dollar to get here from Florida because they were afraid of what was going to happen to them. You know, we’ve helped them find a way here, set them up with healthcare benefits, making sure they’re living somewhere safe, things like that. That happens pretty regularly all over the state. I talk to people at community centers in central and southern Illinois who are seeing it a lot, as well.
One of them I was talking to, in fact, described it as “an uncountable diaspora.” Because we start in a place of not having a good solid number of how many trans folks there are and how many queer folks, generally, there are. And then we’ve got people who are fleeing to access reproductive care or to provide reproductive care. We’ve got people fleeing to teach without being censored, so it’s a lot. The impact on folks can’t be overestimated.
When I moved here from Florida 30-some years ago, we spent a solid six months planning our move. And we had lots of help and support, and our families were supportive. One of us had most of the move paid for by an employer — a normal move, if you will.
I met a person who happened to be a constituent, it turns out, at an event at the White House. And when people were sharing, they explained that until November they had been living in Virginia with their wife. They work with an advocacy group for trans veterans, their wife was pregnant with their first child, and within the same span of a very short time, they were cut off from gender-affirming care and their wife was diagnosed with a fatal fetal abnormality. And within a week or two, they were living in my neighborhood. They made their home here now because they both needed care.
So it’s critically important. It’s why I’ve proposed a tax credit for folks who are coming in, fleeing these states, to be a bit of a warm hand-off. It’s certainly not much, not enough to make up for the trauma or the expense, but it’s something. It’s something more than anybody else has done for them.
In 2018, the Illinois legislature ratified the Equal Rights Amendment, enshrining protections for women in the Illinois Constitution. How would the stars have to align to revive and pass the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution?
There are those who say they just could, there are others who say other enabling pieces of legislation need to be passed. None of that is even possible to contemplate as long as we’re dealing with the hot mess that is the House GOP caucus.
What’s the next step after the Dobbs decision to guarantee a woman’s right to choose?
We need to win back Congress. We need to retain the White House. We need to pass the Right to Bodily Autonomy law. Easy peasy lemon squeezy, right? But that’s the reality.
The reality of states like Illinois, like Colorado, or New York and California, we can’t maintain the pace that we are having to in regard to patients, in particular with reproductive healthcare. In fact, it’s even harder to absorb gender-affirming care patients because there are already not enough providers for in-house folks. With abortion there was more of an infrastructure to scale. There were abortion funds. There were practical support networks. None of that exists in the gender-affirming care space. So it’s even more challenging there.
What’s the single most important thing the world can do to address the climate crisis?
Each of us needs to act, individually, to do our part in solving the climate crisis.
You have a novel feature on your website that I’ve never seen before, a “Bill Ideas” page where you solicit ideas for legislation from your constituents. What’s the smartest idea that’s been submitted, and what’s the craziest?
Actually, one idea was both, a bill to legalize human composting in Illinois, or what’s also known as natural organic reduction. It’s moving through the legislature now.
You live on the North Side of Chicago with your three sons and your wife, LGBTQ+ activist Candace Gingrich, who happens to be former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich’s half-sister. How and when did you meet, and who proposed to whom?
My former wife introduced us, actually, while we were still together. We both love baseball, so we became great friends over that. And we said jokingly if we were ever both available in the future maybe we should get together, and that’s how it turned out.
Your wife famously officiated on the landmark lesbian wedding episode of Friends back in the 1990s. Had you seen that episode of the show before you met, and have you watched it with her since you’ve been together — or on your own as “research”?
We actually watched it together when it first aired when we were friends. Then at our wedding, we surprised Candace when the officiant quoted her from the episode.
Have you spent any holidays with your Republican half-brother-in-law, and if so, do you leave politics at the door, or does someone have to apologize in the morning?
Our families’ schedules don’t always line up, so we don’t spend that many holidays together, but he’s very smart and charming and curious, and always interested in what I’m doing.
You offer an amazing museum pass through your office for constituents in your district that grants admission to 17 museums in Chicago and is good for two days. Has anyone ever tried to hit all 17, and would that make a good scavenger hunt for your kids, or a fun fundraiser?
Ha! That’s a great idea! Now you’ve got me thinking about doing a whole pass around that.
Here are some either/or questions about museums and other Chicago institutions:
Adler Planetarium or Shedd Aquarium?
Shedd Aquarium.
Museum of Contemporary Art or Museum of Science and Industry?
Museum of Science and Industry.
Chicago Botanic Garden or Chicago History Museum?
Botanic Garden.
Cubs or White Sox?
Cubs! Yesterday, today and tomorrow and forever and six ways to Sunday.
Is ketchup on a hot dog ever okay?
It’s always okay if that’s the way you like it.

LGBTQ+ Africans fled to a UN refugee camp to escape brutal persecution. It followed them there.
Isaac Smith has been on the run for years. He’s tired but still determined. Right now, he’s hoping an online fundraising campaign can help him and 19 other queer people make it safely from Kenya to South Sudan. There, they hope to find acceptance, and most importantly, they hope it will be the final leg of their journey.
Ten LGBTQ+ folks Smith knows have already made it across the border after leaving the Kakuma Refugee Camp, but he and the rest remain trapped in a nightmare.
Smith’s life on the run began in Uganda in 2021, when his world was shattered before his eyes with the murder of his partner of two years, Johny Wasswa, by a mob that broke into their home.
“It is one of those memories I never wish to remember again,” Smith told LGBTQ Nation. “His only crime was being queer.”
After rumors of the couple’s well-hidden relationship leaked, locals conspired to murder them both on account of their sexual orientation. Smith was not home at the time of the incident, so by chance, his life was spared.
“I continued to receive messages warning that I would be next unless I changed my sexual orientation,” he said. “I felt suffocated with no freedom at all. The simple act of stepping outside my home became a dangerous affair as news of my sexuality spread.”
According to Susan Dicklitch-Nelson, a professor of government at Franklin & Marshall College, homophobia in Uganda was not always this prevalent, but anti-gay sentiment influenced by Christian evangelists from the US has helped fuel a cultural war on homosexuality for the past two and half decades.
Hate speech against queer individuals became a frequently employed tactic by politicians and clergy to rally support, which resulted in an escalation of discrimination, arrests, and violence against the LGBTQ+ community.
Eric Ndawula, queer activist and the executive director of local advocacy group Lifeline Empower, expressed deep concern about the upsurge of violence towards the LGBTQ+ community across several African countries.
“Uganda, Nigeria, and Ghana are among the countries that have recently tightened their existing laws outlawing homosexuality. This move has broadly compromised the LGBTQ+ community, who are often targeted,” he told LGBTQ Nation.
Uganda – where an overwhelming majority of the population opposes homosexuality – passed its harshest anti-gay legislation in 2023, punishing same-sex relationships between consenting adults with life imprisonment and calling in some situations for the death penalty. In the same year, protests in Mombasa, Kenya led by religious leaders and civil society organizations pushed legislators to introduce the Family Protection bill, which seeks to outlawhomosexuality, same-sex unions, and LGBTQ+ activities and advocacy in the nation.
Inescapable Hate
On May 14, 2021, Smith decided to flee. Through a friend, he learned of Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya, one of the world’s largest camps, accommodating around 200,000 refugees and asylum seekers from across sub-Saharan Africa. Smith thought he would be safer there.
At Kakuma, he met other LGBTQ+ individuals also seeking asylum, and after two months of orientation, they were relocated to the main camp.
“Being at the camp gave me much relief and a sense of belonging,” he said. “We clustered ourselves as per our sexual orientation, and for a moment this felt like the home I have since longed to have.”
But this feeling would be short-lived.
While Smith and approximately 1,500 other LGBTQ+ individuals formed a tight-knit community within Kakuma, the camp’s general population did not bid them welcome.
According to a 2023 report from Amnesty International, hate crimes are regularly committed in Kakuma against LGBTQ+ individuals, including brutal violence like rape, along with a slew of other serious human rights violations. The report said perpetrators of these crimes often act with complete impunity “enabled by inaction on the part of the authorities.”
Smith described how systemic marginalization within the camp results in homelessness and increasing vulnerability to sexual violence. Many survivors of violence, he stated, contract HIV and other STDs but lack access to life-saving treatment. Denied education and employment opportunities, most queer people are unable to afford basic necessities such as food and water, which plunges them deeper into poverty compared to the camp’s general population.
Breeze, a transgender person who chose to remain anonymous, recounted instances of physical and emotional assault at Kakuma. He recounted being aggressively asked by camp residents to reconsider his identity more than once, and often when he refused, he was beaten.
“It traumatized me,” he told LGBTQ Nation. “I needed psychological support, which wasn’t readily available to people at the camp.”
The Kakuma Queers
Driven by the horrors they face, members of the LGBTQ+ community within the camp have rallied together to form Kakuma Queers, a group comprising most of Kakuma’s queer community dedicated to advocating for LGBTQ+ rights and standing up against discrimination and violence.
With Smith serving as its spokesperson, the group utilizes social media to amplify their voices, frequently relaying scenes and stories of disparity to an audience largely unaware of their struggles.
Through Smith’s Instagram and X accounts and with the help of global allies, the group launched a crowdfunding campaign to appeal to the world’s LGBTQ+ community, soliciting donations for much-needed food, which many queer folks cannot afford within the confines of the camp.
“All this is happening because of our sexual orientation, gender identity, and expression,” Harden Martial, the Chairperson of Kakuma Queers, told LGBTQ Nation. “Such hate crimes are a criminal manifestation of the discrimination LGBTQ+ refugees and asylum seekers face.”
Martial recounts how their pleas for help to the local Kenyan authorities – which, he explains, control the camp along with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) – were hopeless, with the camp’s authority often asking them to “change” their sexual orientation for the sake of “peace” in Kakuma.
“We have had meetings with the government of Kenya, UNHCR in Kenya and its associate agencies about the plight of our situation as the queer community, and instead of giving us solutions, they intimidate us,” he stated.
LGBTQ Nation contacted officials from the Kenyan government and UNHCR Kenya but did not hear back.
But the worsening humanitarian situation and the rising violence against Smith and others in his group are pushing members of the group to escape Kakuma altogether and flee to South Sudan. Social discrimination is also widespread against LGBTQ+ people there, but according to Smith, it is a “safer” destination, as the UNHCR, rather than the state, has full control over the refugee camps there and, therefore, could protect them.
The recurring violations against Breeze encouraged him to escape the camp. When he arrived in South Sudan, he encouraged Smith and 19 members of their group to follow in his footsteps. Half the group managed to get to South Sudan, where they say the living conditions are better than in Kakuma. Smith is choosing not to leave until the rest of his group makes it out.
But he is not at all giving up, declaring, “I will do anything possible, as long as it helps us escape this horrible place.”
This article was published in collaboration with Egab.
Sonoma County Library Host ‘Santa Rosa Zine Fest” April 17-20
Calling all zine lovers: Santa Rosa Zine Fest (#SRZF2024) is back for its fourth year! Join the Sonoma County Library and the Santa Rosa Zine Collective April 17-20 for a celebration of zines, creativity, art, and community. From an intro to zines with Luminescent Squid and zine bingowith Jordan Sea at BREW, to live screen printing with P.O.P. (PRINT | ORGANIZE | PROTEST), Zine Fest invites all ages to explore a world of DIY and self-expression. The week tops off in an all-ages, outdoor festival at the Northwest Santa Rosa Library on Saturday, April 20, 1-5 pm, featuring hands-on workshops, tabling by local artists and organizations, and the Sonoma County Library’s BiblioBus! Find out more here. |