The first courageous annual Palapye Pride in Botswana

Queer Pride is Botswana Pride!

Pride is both a celebration and a political statement. It came about as a response to systemic oppression, particularly the criminalization and marginalization of LGBTIQ+ people globally, including in Botswana at some point. It is part of the recognition, equality, and assertion of human rights. It also reminds us that liberation and equality are not automatically universal, and continued activism is necessary. A reminder of the famous saying by Fannie Lou Hamer, “Nobody is free until everybody’s free.”

The 2023 Constitutional Review process made one thing evident, which is that Botswana still struggles to acknowledge the existence of LGBTIQ+ people as full citizens. Instead of creating a democratic space for every voice, the process sidelined and erased an entire community. In Bradley Fortuin’s analysis of the Constitutional review and its final report, he highlighted how this erasure directly contradicts past court decisions that explicitly affirmed the right of LGBTIQ+ people to participate fully and openly in civic life. When the state chooses to ignore court orders and ignore communities, it becomes clear that visibility must be reclaimed through alternative means. This is why AGANG Community Network embarked on Palapye Pride. It is a radical insistence on belonging, rooted in community and strengthened through intersectionality with families, friends, and allies who refuse to let our stories be erased.

Motho ke motho ka batho!

One of the most strategic decisions made by the AGANG Community Network was to engage parents, religious leaders, and local community members, recognizing their value in inclusion and support. Thus, their presence in the march was not symbolic, but it was intentional.

Funding for human rights and LGBTIQ+ advocacy has been negatively impacted since January 2025, and current funding is highly competitive, uneven and scarce, especially for grassroots organizations in Botswana. The Palapye Pride event was not funded, but community members still showed up and donated water, a sound system, and someone even printed materials. This event happened because individuals believed in its value and essence. It was a reminder that activism is not always measured in budgets but in willingness and that “motho ke motho ka batho!” (“A person is a person because of other people!”).

Freedom of association for all

In March 2016, in the the Attorney General of Botswana v. Rammoge and 19 Others case, also known as the LEGABIBO registration case, the Botswana Court of Appeal stated that “members of the gay, lesbian, and transgender community, although no doubt a small minority, and unacceptable to some on religious or other grounds, form part of the rich diversity of any nation and are fully entitled in Botswana, as in any other progressive state, to the constitutional protection of their dignity.” Freedom of association, assembly, and expression is a foundation for civic and democratic participation, as it allows all citizens to organize around shared interests, raise their collective voice, and influence societal and cultural change, as well as legislative reform.

The Botswana courts, shortly after in 2021, declared that criminalizing same-sex sexual relations is unconstitutional because they violated rights to privacy, liberty, dignity, equality, and nondiscrimination. Despite these legal wins, social stigma, cultural, and religious opposition continue to affect the daily lived experience of LGBTIQ+ people in Botswana.

The continuation of a declaration

AGANG Community Network is committed to continuing this work and creating safe and supportive spaces for LGBTIQ+ people, their families, friend, and allies. Pride is not just a day of fun. It is a movement, a declaration of queer existence and recognition of allyship. It is healing and reconciliation while amplifying queer joy.

November 6, 2025 0

“Catastrophic” potential as ‘Brit Card’ Digital IDs could out Trans+ people, campaigners warn

Implications of mandatory ID for LGBTQIA+ people

Keyne Walker, TransActual strategy director, tells QueerAF that even before the plans were announced anti-trans groups have already been lobbying ministers, civil servants and right-wing parliamentarians “to ensure that the single governmental record held lists trans people as their ‘birth sex'”.

Walker believes this scheme could easily be weaponised and hijacked by MPs who are already trying to push anti-trans policies through Parliament. “It could provide the answer to the fundamental unworkability of bathroom bans… you don’t need to ask people to show their birth certificate if instead they have to scan an ID card to take a pee.”

Trans legal researcher, Jess O’Thomson, warns that the policy could have a “catastrophic” potential even just with the risk that it outs Trans+ people who haven’t yet got the legal recognition they need ahead of applying for a job:

“We know that anti-trans campaigning groups are looking for any opportunity to strip back trans people’s rights even further. I have no doubt that these groups will push for digital ID to record “biological sex”, forcibly outing trans people, and pushing them further out of public life.

“The real worry is that our government might go along with them, or else an amendment to the legislation could be forced through. These IDs could be catastrophic for the queer community.”

The UK’s history of ID cards

The UK hasn’t had a nationwide mandatory ID scheme since WWII, which ended after Lord Chief Justice Goddard said in a high court that the continuation of the wartime ID card scheme was an “annoyance” to much of the public and “tended to turn law-abiding subjects into law breakers”. Winston Churchill’s government scrapped them following the ruling and wider criticism over costs and police misuse – BBC

In more recent years, Tony Blair’s Labour government legislated for voluntary ID cards in the early 2000s, but the scheme was scrapped in 2011 by the Conservative-led coalition, which argued it was too costly and intrusive.

Analysis: Lists of queer people are incredibly vulnerable to being weaponised against us

“It is a big red flag when authoritarian governments that keep talking about putting people in camps start making lists of queer people,” Keyne Walker from Trans Actual remarked to QueerAF.

That, of course, is a big-picture view of this story – and we should be careful to see the news in its context at this stage, given there are scarce details on the scheme.

But the warnings from legal and privacy campaigners come amid a wider slide into authoritarian policies the UK has been adopting in recent years, including plans to make it possible to criminalise wearing a mask at Pride events.

Indeed, from reporting on queer news for the best part of a decade now, I know well that the privacy concerns about the danger lists of queer people can create, which we’re already hearing from campaigners are far from new.

Privacy campaigner and founding member of QueerAF Kyle Taylor, says on the surface, digital ID cards may seem innocuous enough – but you need only look to history to see how easily marginalised groups become victims of state-sponsored discrimination or violence:

“The last thing you want is for the government to know who you are and where you are when they decide to, for example, make conversion therapy mandatory. Make no mistake, privacy is power and this puts everyone at risk. Especially our community.”

There has always been a present danger of bad actors weaponising central lists; it’s one of the reasons the Covid Track and Trace app was eventually decentralised amid opposition to how it could create a list of disabled people.

This is a development we should watch carefully, especially amid a growing focus and battleground on the right to privacy amid potential segregation of Trans+ people in public life.

To beat misinformation we need a well resourced queer led newsroom that can cut through the noise and get to the facts.

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November 6, 2025 0

Children given ‘discriminatory and offensive’ anti-LGBTQ+ leaflets while trick or treating

“God designed marriage to be between one man and one woman”

Another leaflet including the statements: “God designed marriage to be between one man and one woman. And anyone who indulges in sex outside of marriage…. no such person will inherit the Kingdom of God. BE NOT DECEIVED!

“God isn’t being cruel in warning us. He shows us we’re in trouble so that we’ll realise how desperately we need his help to fix us.”

In Grace Fellowship Manchester’s Statement of Faith – which lists several pages of scripture from the Bible – whilst there are verses from Corinthians included, there is no direct citation from Corinthians 6:9-10.

The church says that its Statement of Faith was “written by the elders” of Grace Community Church in San Antonio, Texas, which does cite Corinthians 6:9-10 in its own Statement of Faith. A slightly differently worded version reads: “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, 10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.”

Grace Community Church’s views on LGBTQ+ issues are not particularly inclusive, stating that God only created male and female, “God intends for sexual intimacy to occur only between a man and a woman who are so married to one another” and the “only acceptable alternative to marriage between one man and one woman is the faithful single life of celibacy”.

“Discriminatory and offensive”

Speaking to the Reach PLC outlet, mum Victoria Loop said she was “angry” with the content of the leaflets, saying it is “just not appropriate for young children”.

” I am not against people expressing their opinions for the most part but when it becomes discriminatory and offensive it is just wrong,” Loop said.

“There were other leaflets amongst the other children’s treats however they were more appropriately worded and not on this level. My views on the matter is that there was quite some degree of misjudgement when deciding to include this particular leaflet in treats to young children.

She added: “I have many friends and family that this would hurt very deeply and I am angry on their behalf as much as for my daughter having to ask questions as why some people haven’t yet got the message in this age that homophobia, no matter how benign this may seem to some, is not acceptable. Let alone giving this opinion to children with no consideration of their innocence or family circumstance.

“I am aware that this may be an unpopular stance from many different religious groups, however the method of delivery of their rhetoric and beliefs in this case needs questioning and scrutinising. We have age restrictions on many things such as films and television and restrictions on products and publications for the protection of children.”

“Blatantly homophobic literature”

Local councillor Dylan Williams, who is a gay man that attends church, criticised the leaflets for both their homophobic and sexually explicit content.

“I believe most Christians will be upset by this blatantly homophobic literature and would condemn it. I am also concerned that people think it acceptable to give literature on it with adult words and sexually explicit language to Children as young as six,” Williams told Manchester Evening News.

“Homophobia seems to be becoming more and more prevalent leading some members of the community to feel unsafe and this is and should not be acceptable in our society. We must say no to hate.”

PinkNews has approached Grace Fellowship Manchester for comment.

November 6, 2025 0

This mom had no resources when her trans son came out. So she launched a global support network.

Letting go

“Parents can have a hard time when their child comes out and wants to transition to a different gender than the one they were assigned at birth,” Keith said.

“They struggle to let go of the child they thought they had and the dreams that they had, right? If a child was assigned female at birth, a parent might say, ‘I just imagined her walking down the aisle in the white dress,’ you know? And they grieve this child as if the child has died.”

“I never took that approach,” Keith said, “because I knew that my child was very much alive and that it was my job to make sure that he stayed that way. You know, it was my job to make sure that he was mentally well and that he got what he needed so he could thrive.”

For Hunter and his family, checking off those steps to transition wouldn’t come easily.

“There were no pediatric gender clinics who were seeing trans youth covered by our insurance. There were no therapists who we could find who were trained to see trans adolescents. There were no support groups. There were no parent groups. There was nothing for youth. Like, literally every phone call was a brick wall,” Keith said.

But Hunter wasn’t waiting on the details. He decided to come out on Facebook.

“My daughter came to me and said, ‘Did you see what Hunter posted?’ And I said, ‘No.’”

While Keith and her husband had talked to a few close friends about Hunter, the family hadn’t been sharing much “because it wasn’t our story to share — that was up to him.”

With Hunter’s announcement, “It was like the floodgates had opened,” Keith said.

The family agreed to tell their story.

They began speaking publicly about their experience. “And there was just like this swell of relief, I guess, and joy from families in the community who had been trying to manage this process with their kiddo and had no one to talk to. There was really nobody — medically, psychologically emotionally — just literally no one was there.”

“Families like mine, trans adults, multi-generational families, like, every member of the community were reaching out and saying, ‘Oh, my God, I could have uttered those words. Your son reminds me of my son.’”

Hunter’s story had inspired an outpouring of empathy and recognition, but the story he shared online didn’t address his lingering sense of isolation.

“Even my son said, ‘I don’t know anyone like me.’ And so as we started to meet families,” Keith said.

“I was literally arranging play dates for my 14-15-year-old. Like, I was inviting kids to come over and just hang out, and — fly on the wall — they talked about stupid stuff, like, ‘Oh, don’t you hate getting socks for Christmas presents?’ And it showed these kids that being trans didn’t mean that you weren’t like other kids. You know, you were just another teen.”

Those interactions became the heart of the mission that guides Stand with Trans today.

The rise of parents’ rights

The founding of Stand With Trans accompanied a rising awareness of gender diversity in the 2010s, but with that also came a conservative backlash wrought with anti-trans animus.

Before Hunter came out, “Nobody was talking about bathroom bills and trans girls in sports. Those conversations weren’t happening,” Keith said.

Since then, trans kids like Hunter have been buried under an avalanche of discriminatory legislation, from gender-affirming care bans to a trans-erasing, book-banning frenzy organized by groups like Moms for Liberty to an online hate campaign led by accounts like Libs of TikTok.

Adding fuel to the fire: the president’s obsession with “gender ideology” and his “us” vs “them” politics of division.

The right has hawked its anti-LGBTQ+ agenda under the same, one-sided banner: parents’ rights.

Keith said the phrase is self-serving.

“I don’t think that any government should be allowed to say what my child has or doesn’t have access to, because I’m the parent. They’re not in my home parenting my child, so they don’t know what they’re going through. How do you make that global statement?” she asked.

“It is up to me to make a decision about my child’s medical care,” Keith said. “And as far as my child goes, if he was denied the opportunity to go on testosterone and not medically transition, I think our conversation would be very different.”

Keith points to a perversion of theology as one basis of the far-right’s anti-trans animus.

“I’m not Christian. I was raised Jewish. But my understanding from my friends who are Christian and very affirming and very accepting, their response is, ‘The Jesus I know would open the door for everyone, and would welcome everyone to the table.’ There’s really a disconnect between saying you’re a Christian and then not being open to accepting people as they are, as they show up.”

“Far be it for me to tell anyone what they should believe,” Keith added, “but you don’t get to bring it into my home and tell me how to care for my child, because those aren’t my beliefs. That’s not what I understand, right? It’s a secular society.”

“Your belief system should not infringe on my rights.”

Seeing around the corner

Stand with Trans was born to help protect trans kids from the attacks by providing love, knowledge and support — and power over their own lives.

“Our mission is so simple,” Keith said. “It’s empowering and supporting trans youth and their loved ones. So that’s it. We know that if we educate and support the caregivers, the loved ones, the parents, that the young people are going to do better, and if we find ways to make life better and easier for them, they’re not only going to survive, but they’re going to thrive.

“I know with my own kid, they couldn’t see themselves having a future. I think it’s hard enough for young people who don’t see around the corners, right? It’s hard to even imagine, like, ‘What do I want to be when I grow up.’ But for trans kids, it’s even harder.

“So it’s really important for us to show these young people that they can do whatever they want to do,” Keith said.

“Being trans is one part of their identity. It doesn’t define who they are.”

November 5, 2025 0

These cities are stepping up to provide sanctuary to trans people

Jim Obergefell warns, ‘People should be concerned’ about Supreme Court considering marriage equality case

“A narrow case, shoehorning a broad agenda”

Rovenger explained what this case is and what it isn’t.

“This is a narrow case with a technical legal question,” he said, emphasizing that it concerns emotional-distress damages and qualified immunity, not marriage equality itself. “Attorneys who want to overturn Obergefell are trying to shoehorn that into a very narrow case.”

Davis, a former Rowan County clerk, was found liable for denying marriage licenses to same-sex couples in violation of clearly established law. A jury awarded damages to those couples, and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the decision. Davis’s petition now asks the Supreme Court to review that ruling, Rovinger explained. While she has framed the case as one about her religious freedom, Rovenger said the issue before the Court remains technical.

“The Supreme Court receives thousands of petitions a year,” he said. “It would really be anomalous for them to take a case with such a narrow fact pattern and use it to revisit Obergefell.”

Still, Rovenger acknowledged why people are uneasy.

“Given the rollback of rights we’ve seen in other areas, Dobbs being the most prominent, that fear makes sense,” he said. “But this case is not the vehicle for that kind of sweeping reversal.”

The limits of the Respect for Marriage Act

Part of the current confusion, Rovenger said, stems from uncertainty about how the Respect for Marriage Act interacts with the Obergefell decision. The 2022 law, signed by President Joe Biden, requires states and the federal government to recognize marriages performed in other states. However, it does not compel every state to issue marriage licenses if Obergefell were to be overturned.

“In a world where Obergefell didn’t exist,” he said, “a couple married in one state would still have their marriage recognized federally and by other states, but not necessarily be able to marry everywhere.”

He called that distinction significant, not only for its practical consequences but for what it would signal about equality itself.

“A patchwork approach across states,” he said, “is fundamentally different from a nationwide right.”

Rovenger also pointed to the Supreme Court’s own language on “reliance interests” — the idea that people build their lives on the stability of established rights. Trump-appointed Justice Amy Coney Barrett, he noted, has recently said marriage equality has created such interests, making it less likely to be undone. Barrett had told the New York Times that Obergefell created “concrete reliance interests.”

“Those interests,” Rovinger said, “remain one of the critical factors the Court considers when deciding whether to revisit precedent.” According to Gallup, 68 percent of Americans support marriage equality.

Jim Obergefell: “Disgusted by this twisting of religious freedom”

For Jim Obergefell, the case is personal. He said he was “disgusted” that his fellow citizens would work against another group’s well-being and happiness, using religious liberty as an excuse.

“This modern version of religious freedom — this belief that one’s personal religion trumps everything else — is a twisting and perverting of what our founders intended,” he said.

Obergefell said Davis’s refusal to follow the law was emblematic of a broader problem: public officials placing private faith above civic duty.

“She swore an oath to serve all people,” he said. “And yet she used her government position to persecute others.”

His frustration extends to the justices themselves and their recent decisions, which have often ignored established understandings of the law. Justice Clarence Thomas recently said that past decisions “aren’t gospel.”

“Why should anyone feel secure about the right to marry,” he asked, “when this Court has proven it doesn’t believe in precedent?”

He pointed to Thomas’s concurrence in the ruling that overturned Roe v. WadeRoe v. Wade, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Thomas explicitly suggested revisiting Obergefell.

“One of those justices’ own marriage exists because of a Supreme Court decision,” Obergefell said, referring to Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 ruling that struck down bans on interracial marriage. Thomas is Black, and his wife, Ginny, is white. “If this Court overturns Obergefell, then what does that say about their own logic?” Obergefell added.

“People should be concerned”

Obergefell said that the LGBTQ+ community’s fear is warranted.

“Absolutely, people should be concerned. I’m concerned,” he said on Saturday. “Yesterday I officiated a wedding for a cousin who asked whether they should get married now instead of waiting. My answer was yes.”

He explained that even with the Respect for Marriage Act in place, states could still move swiftly to block new marriages if Obergefell were struck down.

“Ohio [where I live] still has a Defense of Marriage Act on the books,” he said. “If Obergefell is overturned, Ohio could immediately say, ‘no more marriage licenses for queer couples.’”

Obergefell warned that political forces aligned against LGBTQ+ rights have shown a willingness to manipulate electoral systems to maintain power.

“We have a political party that has turned its back on democracy,” he said. “They’re doing everything they can solely to remain in power — to punish and to be vindictive.”

A fragile majority, a durable principle

Despite deep pessimism about the Court, Obergefell said he still finds hope in younger generations.

“They don’t see difference the way older generations do,” he said. “There are millions of people out there who share my values, who believe in humanity, who believe every person deserves happiness and rights. That gives me hope.”

Rovenger echoed the sentiment, though his version is more procedural.

“We’re all watching closely,” he said. “We’ll keep an eye on whether the case gets relisted and on any separate statements that come out. But we’re not panicking. We’re prepared for all possibilities and ready to meet that moment if it comes.”

For now, the fate of Obergefell doesn’t hinge on oral arguments or public hearings but on what happens in a private conference room inside the marble halls of the Supreme Court. Whether the justices see the Davis case as a technical dispute or a cultural flashpoint will determine not only one woman’s liability but perhaps the trajectory of a right that has defined a generation.

If the Court declines to hear the case, the lower-court rulings stand, and marriage equality remains intact. If it grants review, the nation will enter another defining chapter in its legal history.

Either way, Obergefell’s warning lingers: “They’ve turned the idea of freedom on its head,” he said. “And unless we stand up for what it truly means, we risk losing more than marriage, and we risk losing the very promise of equality itself.”