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This week: Senegal’s mass prosecutions, Bolivia’s first same-sex marriage, a terrible ad in Texas, Wes Streeting, Tristan Schukraft, Perez Hilton, The Shards, UNGA and much more…
This update is provided by Fabrice Houdart, consider supporting his important work.
The thing about LGBTQ+ news in 2026 is that it’s tempting to disengage. Tell me about it — I’ve had the privilege of staring at it every week since 2022. The relentless pressure at the margins is exhausting, fragmented, and frankly numbing: bathroom battles on one end, hardening criminalization on the other. It’s hard to know which fight deserves our attention most — collapsing HIV funding, our mental health epidemic, the bans on trans youth care, global decriminalization, or the countless others in between like AI facial recognition in gay bars. The antidote, I think, is to step back and take in the whole picture. LGBTQ+ people are on a long journey toward liberation, and staying connected to that larger struggle is also a way of finding meaning at a time when LGBTQ+ lives often remain “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”.
Global News
Senegal: A Continuing Crackdown
Dakar prosecutors confirmed Friday that 71 of 99 men arrested since February on homosexuality-related charges will stand trial, while 28 had their cases dropped, including a French national. The prosecutions follow March legislation that raised the maximum penalty for “unnatural acts” to ten years, part of a broader hardening of Senegal’s anti-LGBTQ+ statute in the global human rights vacuum left by the West. Read more in Têtu.
United Kingdom: A Gay Defense Secretary
Speaking at the Edinburgh Fringe, Wes Streeting said he’s encountered an “unbelievable volume” of online homophobia since becoming Britain’s first openly gay Defense Secretary three weeks ago, attributing it to people who “cannot cope with the idea” of a gay man overseeing the Ministry of Defense. LGBTQ Nation responded with “UK politician who implemented transphobic policies now complains about homophobia”. Details in ITV News.
Bolivia: Country Recognizes Its First Same-Sex Marriage
After a nearly four-year legal battle, Fabiana Banzer and Scarlett Rocha became the first same-sex couple civilly married in Bolivia, even though the constitution still technically forbids it. Their case leaned on a 2018 Inter-American Court of Human Rights advisory opinion and could open the door for other couples. According to LGBTQ Nation.
France: Défenseur des Droits Buffet Is Illegitimate
Weeks after Parliament confirmed François-Noël Buffet — a senator with a record of opposing marriage equality and PMA — as France’s rights ombudsman, the group Mouv’Enfants staged an unauthorized action outside the Ministry of Fontenoy in Paris demanding his resignation. Critics argue his past positions are incompatible with a role tasked with fighting discrimination. I agree: first, there should be a price to pay for politicians who firmly rooted themselves on the wrong side of history, and second, this guy has no legitimacy defending rights. If he had any integrity, he would ot have taken the job. See in France 3 Régions.
France: New National Plan Against Anti-LGBTI+ Hate
France has unveiled a new 2026–2029 national action plan for LGBTI+ equality, setting out 74 measures across education, victim support, equal rights, health and social inclusion, and international advocacy. Coordinated by the government’s anti-discrimination agency DILCRAH, the plan includes expanded training for education officials, stronger support for victims of anti-LGBTI+ violence, efforts to reduce administrative barriers for trans people, and local action plans across the country. See here.
Netherlands: WorldPride Amsterdam Closes After Two-Week Run
WorldPride wrapped its first Netherlands edition on August 8 with a closing concert at Museumplein featuring Olly Alexander and The Blessed Madonna, capping a fortnight that included a Human Rights Conference at the Beurs van Berlage and roughly 300 events under the theme “Unity.“ PM Rob Jetten was definitely the center of attention at the festivities. Organizers used the milestone — 25 years since the Netherlands became the first country to legalize same-sex marriage — to underline how uneven progress remains elsewhere. From Fugues.
China: For Lesbians, Freedom Can Still Mean Leaving Home
Nearly three decades after China decriminalized homosexuality, Le Monde follows four lesbian women first photographed as students at Xiamen University in 2014, showing how family expectations and social taboos continue to constrain their lives. One remained in China, secretly lived with a female partner for two years, and eventually married a man and had a child to satisfy her parents; the other three moved to Germany and the Netherlands, where they could live more openly. See here.
US News
US Administration To Restrict Funding for Trans Youth Care
The Trump administration has finalized a federal rule that would restrict Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program funding for gender-affirming care for transgender and nonbinary young people beginning in October. The Trevor Project condemned the move as an intrusion into decisions between patients, families, and doctors, while emphasizing that the rule does not amount to a nationwide ban on such care or prohibit hospitals from providing it. The organization points to research associating access to gender-affirming hormone therapy with lower rates of depression and suicide risk among trans and nonbinary youth and says it will work with partners to challenge the rule before it takes effect. See here.
Trans Sports Ruling Still Reverberating Six Weeks Later
Legal scholars are still parsing the fallout from the Court’s June 30 decision letting states ban transgender athletes from women’s sports, with new analysis noting the conservative majority pointedly avoided ruling on whether transgender people qualify for heightened constitutional scrutiny at all — leaving the door open, if narrowly, for future challenges. See in Queerty.
Texas: Paxton-Aligned PAC Runs AI “Daisy” Remake Against Talarico
A Super PAC backing Ken Paxton’s Senate bid resurrected LBJ’s 1964 nuclear-annihilation ad “Daisy,” swapping the mushroom cloud for an AI-generated girl on an operating table to falsely suggest Democratic nominee James Talarico supports gender-transition surgery for minors (see the ad here). Talarico’s campaign called the deepfake a lie; Talarico does not support such surgeries for minors. Details in Raw Story.
Trans Advocates Stage Bathroom-Ban Protest in Kansas
A group of trans men staged demonstrations in Kansas restrooms to highlight what they call the absurdity of the state’s anti-trans bathroom law, arguing that policing based on appearance rather than identity documents makes enforcement inherently arbitrary. See in LGBTQ Nation.
Another Anti-Gay Attack in Manhattan
Two men, ages 37 and 31, were reportedly punched and kicked in Manhattan after being subjected to homophobic slurs, in an incident police are investigating as a possible hate crime. Instinct places the assault within a broader rise in anti-LGBTQ+ hostility, citing GLAAD’s tally of 1,042 incidents nationwide in 2025. That comparison deserves some caution: GLAAD’s tracker includes everything from protests and propaganda to threats, vandalism, and physical violence, so it does not, by itself, demonstrate that anti-LGBTQ+ assaults are rising.
Queering the Boardroom
Most U.S. Companies Dropped Board Diversity Rules
ESGAUGE analysis for Bloomberg found that 61 of the S&P 100 have removed explicit diversity criteria for selecting directors since 2023—a remarkable reversal from three years ago, when nearly every major U.S. company said diversity should be considered in board recruitment. Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Starbucks, and Wells Fargo are among those that have eliminated such provisions, joining companies including Goldman Sachs, American Express, Johnson & Johnson, and Deere. The changes do not necessarily mean these companies will stop appointing diverse directors, but they do remove a formal commitment from the governance process. See in Fortune.
On the Calendar: the NACD Directors Summit
The Summit convenes October 11–14 in Washington, where the Association of LGBTQ+ Corporate Directors has historically hosted a side dinner (this year it will be on Tuesday). See here.
The Gay Business
Castro Bars Drop Facial-Recognition ID Scanners
San Francisco’s Badlands and Toad Hall paused their use of Patronscan, an AI-powered ID and facial-scanning system, after a boycott organized by Fight for the Future and privacy advocates warned that the data — names, addresses, gender markers, behavioral tracking — could be weaponized against LGBTQ+ patrons under the current administration’s rhetoric. See in LGBTQ Nation.
Delaware Bar Fined $15,000 for Anti-Trans Discrimination
The Hideout Arcade Bar & Grille in Rehoboth Beach — of all places — must pay $15,000 after Delaware’s Human and Civil Rights Commission found it banned a trans woman from the women’s restroom and selectively ID-scanned trans patrons at the door — the second such ruling against the venue in less than a year. Read more in LGBTQ Nation.
Semi-Cultural Desk
The Shards on Hulu
I have previously told you that I credit Bret Easton Ellis with my move to the US. I had American Psycho, Less Than Zero, Glamorama—in French, because I barely spoke English. I noticed that gay characters were depicted in a surprisingly positive way: they were having sex on campus, and they had real lives. And I thought, “You know what? I need to make my way to some American campus.” So I told my dad, “I need to learn English. I’m going to America,” and I ended up at American University 26 years ago — in August 2000. All that to tell you that Ryan Murphy’s new adaptation of Ellis’s 2023 novel The Shards (with Homer Gere) is now streaming on Disney+ is…silly, but I am still watching it.
Is Bret Easton Ellis Really Back in Vogue?
I am not the only one finding that the show is not particularly good. See this piece in The Independent, which claims BEE is enjoying an unlikely revival. It argues that after years in the wilderness—marked by disappointing books, political provocations, and interminable Twitter controversies—Ellis is finding a new audience as his spare, decadent portraits of sex, wealth, nihilism, and Los Angeles excess suddenly feel fashionable again. The critic claims it is a reminder that at his best, Ellis captured something enduring about the “dazzle and madness” of America—and the dangerous allure it can hold when you’re young.
“The Christophers” Brings McKellen and Coel to Screens Aug. 22
Ian McKellen plays a faded artist, and Michaela Coel plays the forger hired to complete his work in this Steven Soderbergh dark comedy. I liked the sweaters in the trailer. Watch trailer. See in Queerty.
“Adults” Returns for Season 2 on Hulu Aug. 27
The queer-inclusive roommate sitcom is back, with the will-they-won’t-they between Anton and Paul Baker continuing and new cast additions including Isaac Powell and Jake Shane. Watch the trailer here.
Jane Schoenbrun’s Trans Slasher Hits Theaters
“Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” the latest from “I Saw the TV Glow” director Jane Schoenbrun, premiered in theaters Aug. 7 as a gory, horny trans-and-sapphic riff on slasher conventions. Watch trailer. From Out.com.
Coming and Going
Daskalakis Reflects on Working Under Trump and RFK Jr.
Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who resigned from the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases in August 2025 in protest of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s handling of vaccine policy, spoke publicly this week about the experience for the first time in an extended interview. He now serves as chief medical officer at Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, New York’s LGBTQ+-focused clinic. See in Uncloseted Media.
Renée Richards’s Legacy
A new biography, Finding Renée Richards by Julie Kliegman, revisits the transgender tennis pioneer who successfully fought to compete in the 1977 U.S. Open. The fascinating complication is that Richards, now 91, has since said she regrets the lawsuit and believes athletes who have gone through male puberty should not compete in women’s sports — views that visibly challenge Kliegman, who is transgender and nonbinary. The book also reveals that Richards used a friend’s cheek swab for the chromosome test central to her case.
The Perez Hilton’s Debacle Aftermath
In case you missed my impassioned Saturday post, I’ve been sitting with what the Perez Hilton crisis says about this moment — and I’m not alone. The Atlantic and The New Yorker both ran pieces on it, with very different takes. As a side note, Perez had apparently informed friends, ‘He Was No Longer Gay,’ right before the episode. Nearly all of the coverage buries the gay angle: that this is a man who built an empire partly by outing closeted celebrities, spent two decades as gay media’s most visible bully, apologized and rebuilt himself as reformed — and is now unraveling in public inside the same attention economy he helped invent. Mainstream outlets seem far more comfortable writing him up as a universal “algorithms and mental health” story than as one with a strong gay angle.
Billionaire Tristan Schukraft In Below Deck
Queer hospitality entrepreneur and billionaire Tristan Schukraft, immune to Hilton’s cautionary tale, is heading to Bravo’s Below Deck with his unusually large romantic entourage: his fiancé of seven years, Melvin Alexander, and five boyfriends. Schukraft, founder of Tryst Hotels and the HIV telemedicine platform MISTR, says the seven men all live together, though the arrangement functions more like three overlapping throuples than one giant relationship. In the meantime, I cannot secure a date. Granted, my savings are not comparable. A trailer shows the Speedo-clad group aboard the yacht, with the episode promising a glimpse into a polyamorous family that has recently attracted plenty of attention. Schukraft proposed to Alexander at the South Pole in 2024, although he now calls him his “forever fiancé” and says they may never actually marry. See here.
Krishna Omkar Brings Brick to Amsterdam
During Amsterdam WorldPride, an original brick from the façade of New York’s Stonewall Inn was presented to Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten at his official residence, the Catshuis, in a moment orchestrated by my friend, LGBTQ+ advocate Krishna Omkar. Stonewall co-owners Kurt Kelly and Stacy Lentz made the presentation before a gathering that included Billy Porter, former Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, and actor Joe Locke. The brick, removed during the Stonewall Inn’s 2018–19 restoration, had been part of the building since the 1930s and witnessed the 1969 uprising that helped ignite the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement. See here.
Pete Buttigieg Is Already Looking a Lot Like a 2028 Candidate
Pete Buttigieg has yet to announce a 2028 presidential run, but The Independent notes that the former Transportation Secretary is already heading to New Hampshire, campaigning for Democrats in his new home state of Michigan, and emerging as one of the party’s most effective communicators. At 44, Buttigieg could pitch himself as a generational change for Democrats, but significant obstacles remain: he performed poorly with Black voters in the 2020 primaries, and South Carolina will now vote first in the Democratic contest. And, of course, there is still the question of whether America is ready to elect an openly gay president or whether Chasten is a better fit for the run.
The Gay Agenda
August 12–16: Tropical Heat, Key West — Multi-day, all-male circuit party across the island’s bars and venues. You don't have to go.
August 15–22: Provincetown Carnival Week — Ptown’s biggest annual celebration, culminating in the costumed Carnival parade.
August 22: Austin Pride — Central Texas’s largest Pride celebration.
August 31–September 7: Southern Decadence, New Orleans — The French Quarter’s Labor Day weekend LGBTQ+ institution.
September: Could the UN Take on Global LGBTQ+ Decriminalization? As discussions grow around possible action on LGBTQ+ decriminalization at the UN Human Rights Council, GIN-SSOGIE, Outright International, ILGA World, and the International Service for Human Rights are hosting a webinar on August 20 to ask what such an initiative should actually look like. The discussion will bring together activists from countries that still criminalize same-sex relations, regional advocates, and UN experts to examine what international action could accomplish—and, importantly, where it could backfire. That question is a bit moot IMHO: looking at the news, the backlash is already here, and the question is whether we accept it or try to take back control of the agenda. Register for the Webinar.
October 26: PRISM Annual Summit in NYC — The LGBTQ+ Corporate governance gathering.
December 3–5: LGBTQ+ Victory Institute International Leaders Conference, Washington, D.C. — Over 700 LGBTQ+ elected officials and leaders convene at the JW Marriott.
That’s it for this week. I know it was a bit disjointed—I blame August. On Sunday, after dropping the kids off at camp in Pennsylvania, I stopped in Milford to see my friend Sean Strub, the man with nine lives and a constant source of inspiration. We swam in the river, and for a moment I felt like Tom Sawyer—a pre-Bret Easton Ellis version of America that probably also shaped my journey here too.
