Tag: LGBTQ

Beyond the Pandas, Chengdu Is China’s LGBTQ Capital and a Gastronomic Gem

Read more at CN Traveler.

I arrived at Chengdu East Station on a balmy spring night after taking the high-speed train from Hong Kong. The ride was roughly eight hours of idyllic countryside landscapes with brief station stops along the way. Pulling into the busy train station was my only reminder that Chengdu is a city of 21 million. Some 1,100 miles southwest of Beijing, the Sichuan provincial capital has long been considered one of China’s most livable metropolises, and after a chaotic itinerary, I was looking forward to the promise of a relaxed pace.

I found it everywhere: in teahouses where grandparents chatted as morning warmed to afternoon, in parks where friends took long strolls along the paths, and at streetside shops where people crouched over bowls of spicy noodles. Dubbed the queer capital of China, Chengdu is known as China’s most LGBTQ-friendly city, an extension of its broader temperament.

YuWei Tian, a Sichuan native and travel designer with WildChina, explains that “when we see a riverside, we don’t first think about how to develop it commercially—we imagine a teahouse, somewhere to sit, drink tea, and spend time with friends.”

That relaxed atmosphere and enjoyment of life is part of Chengdu’s culture, and in many ways a response to its past (Chengdu’s history includes generations of labor migration and the trauma of the 2008 earthquake—7.9 on the Richter scale—that devastated the entire region). The more I spoke to locals, the more I learned about this intentional way of living and saw it in action.

Read on for where to eat, stay, and spend your time in one of Asia’s most creative cities.

Where to stay in Chengdu

Chengdu’s best hotels are spread out across the city, in neighborhoods with distinct vibes. The Waldorf Astoria Chengdu rises 52 stories above the Financial City district in the High-Tech Zone, connecting to one of the city’s luxury shopping malls, in99. It’s also right by Jiaozi Park, the floating lotus park. Jinli Ancient Street, a tourist attraction, is a short drive away—more commercial than it once was, but still worth a visit for the architecture and street snacks. The hotel has all the luxuries associated with the Waldorf brand, including marble bathrooms, Aesop toiletries, and personal concierge staff. While there, visit the hotel’s 51st-floor bar, Limited Edition Sip, for craft beer and cocktails and an unbeatable view of the city. W Chengdu is also in the area.

Right by Taikoo Li, Upper House offers a different take on luxury. The property is built around a beautifully preserved Qing-era courtyard, with a century-old main building framed by contemporary glass towers and landscaping inspired by Sichuan’s rice terraces. Rooms overlook Taikoo Li, putting guests steps from Daci Temple and some of the city’s best shopping without compromising on tranquility. The standout experience is the signature bamboo massage at Mi Xun Spa, where warm bamboo canes are rolled and pressed across the body. Other great hotels in the Taikoo Li area include BuYuan Hotel, a visually appealing hotel with complimentary laundry and minimalistic design.

For a quieter part of the city, there’s Bliss Qintai Tibetan Boutique Hotel in Qingyang District. The family-run property is set in a preserved historic building, with traditional architecture, modern amenities, and complimentary butter tea in the mornings. Qingyang is one of Chengdu’s most historically rich neighborhoods, home to Wenshu Monastery and the kind of teahouse culture that Tian described.

What to do in Chengdu

No mention of Chengdu is complete without pandas and the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. Upon the recommendation of friends, I arrived early—the later it got, the more crowded the park became. The full circuit is about 7.5 miles of walking, and savvy visitors know the hop-on hop-off shuttle bus covers the highlights for about $5. Beyond the giant pandas, the base is home to red pandas, peacocks, and monkeys. For a more intimate encounter with fewer crowds, Tian recommends Dujiangyan Panda Base, about an hour outside the city, where smaller crowds mean closer access to the animals. The Jinsha Site Museum offers a deeper cultural window into the ancient Shu civilization and an archaeological dig dating back thousands of years. Currently undergoing renovation, the museum will reopen in 2027.

Part theater, part acrobatics, the Shufeng Yayun Theatre on Qintai Road stages nightly performances of Sichuan opera’s most celebrated tradition: face changing, or biànliǎn, in which performers swap elaborately painted masks in fractions of a second. The show also includes acrobatics and a captivating hand shadow puppet performance, and you can add on experiences like traditional face painting and ear cleaning.

For a sense of Chengdu’s creative presence, two districts are a must-visit. East District Memory (东郊记忆) is a converted industrial complex that has become a hub for the city’s younger generations. It’s a sprawling mix of live music venues, digital art museums, boutique fashion brands, and coffee shops that reflects Chengdu’s thriving music and arts scene. CPI, also known as Luxelakes Community (麓湖社区), expresses Chengdu’s creativity with stone steps across grassy plains—part open-air park, part retail village. It also skews younger and is family- and pet-friendly. With perfumeries, independent bookstores, bakeries, and restaurants woven through the grounds, you can linger all day, sprawled out on the grass.

The 600-year-old Shuijingfang Baijiu Distillery, whose distillation techniques are designated as National Intangible Cultural Heritage, offers guided tours and tastings of China’s most popular spirit, baijiu. Go in the morning to see production in full swing. A tasting of three different baijiu styles follows, and for those who want to go further, a blending experience can be booked separately.

To experience more of that unhurried Chengdu culture, Wangjiang Park offers mahjong tables, paths for long walks, and the unhurried rituals of a city that genuinely values its downtime. Walking down a Chengdu street, you might hear a metallic clinking sound. That’s the sound of Sichuan’s traditional ear-cleaning tongs, a tradition I didn’t have the courage to partake in, although the storefronts running highlight reels made a compelling case.

The bar scenes in the Yulin neighborhood and along Jiuyanqiao are equally worth your time. Bar Woody’s cocktails are built around unexpected wood flavor combinations, like a martini riff with sandalwood, grapefruit, and rhubarb. Papuwa leans into a funkier energy, my favorite being the Shy Pepper, a savory cocktail of vodka, chili, pomelo, and soy sauce. The Yulin area is also home to some of the city’s most inclusive spaces, among them Muchroom, a cocktail bar, and Junez, a feminist craft beer spot.

Where to eat in Chengdu

As the capital of Sichuan province and the first UNESCO City of Gastronomy in China, Chengdu has one of China’s strongest food cultures and its own Michelin Guide. Some of the most interesting meals here push well beyond the city’s reputation for heat and spice. Michelin Guide–recognized Infinite Luck, inside the Waldorf Astoria on the 50th floor, is worth a visit even if you’re not staying at the hotel. Executive chef Tony Yang, a Chengdu native with three decades of expertise in Sichuan cuisine, serves the full range of the region with beef Jell-O cubes, smoked pigeon, and Sichuan peppercorn–flavored rice crisps as highlights.

At Upper House, Mi Xun Teahouse has earned its Michelin star and Green star through a sustainability-forward vegetarian tasting menu drawing from culinary traditions across China’s regions, with tea pairings that include the kitchen’s own house-made kombucha. Because of its vegetarian menu, monks from a nearby monastery are said to dine here regularly.

You don’t have to dine at Michelin restaurants to experience Chengdu’s food culture, though. The city’s noodles alone are worth the trip, and dan dan noodles, the sesame-and-chili classic, appear on almost every corner, alongside chao shou, Sichuan’s version of wontons, and tian shui mian, sweet water noodles in a rich, subtly spiced sauce. Braised pig trotters and rabbit heads are also local staples to try. For neighborhood spots beyond the tourist trail, Dianping—China’s equivalent of Yelp—is the best tool for finding where locals are eating. And no trip to Sichuan is complete without trying hot pot in its birthplace; stop by Wuliguan Hotpot for a mouthwatering experience.

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Who really cares for trans lives in an ‘LGBTQ-friendly’ country?

Read more on The Loop.

Belgium often prides itself on being an LGBTQ-friendly country, yet anti-trans activists hide their transphobia behind superficial pro-trans statements. Rylan Verlooy explores how this paradox affects trans people’s activism. Here, they show how resistance takes the form of everyday acts of educating others, strengthening community spaces, and caring for trans lives

The myth of LGBTQ-friendliness

Belgium is often hailed as an ‘LGBTQ+ paradise‘ because of its comprehensive and inclusive legislation. In 2003, it was the second country worldwide to introduce marriage for registered same-sex couples and, since 2006, adoption rights. Since 2018, trans people have been able to legally change their binary sex marker based on self-determination. Still, Belgium’s LGBTQ-friendly image has been damaged by recent reports on transphobic violence, the persistent exclusion of non-binary people from state recognition, and the rising presence of anti-gender politics targeting trans people.

This poses a contradictory reality for trans people. On the one hand, the state provides some legal protection for some trans people. Trans people are part of Belgian narratives about the country’s LGBTQ-friendliness. On the other hand, transphobia is still widespread and invigorated by anti-gender politics. How can a country celebrate LGBTQ+ inclusion while simultaneously allowing for anti-trans politics?

Anti-trans politics in an ‘LGBTQ-friendly’ country

While the UK and the US are reversing trans rights and introducing anti-trans bills, Belgian anti-trans actors mostly employ a different strategy. Adapting to Belgium’s LGBTIQ-friendly image, they often claim to support trans rights and to empathise with trans people. But at the same time, they push pathologising anti-trans narratives and promote conversion therapy. They commonly describe trans women as ‘biological men’, and trans men as ‘girls with gender dysphoria’, or ‘victims of the woke craze’.

Some Belgian anti-trans actors often claim to support trans rights, but at the same time push anti-trans narratives and promote conversion therapy

Furthermore, they normalise misgendering in the media and in everyday interactions. Being misgendered is often a daily reality for trans people. However, in anti-trans politics, it is a consistent and intentional strategy to deny trans identities. This normalisation of misgendering also affects how friends and family speak about trans people in an increasingly negative way. Non-binary people in particular are the target of ridicule, making it harder for them to open up to families and friends.

The illusion of trans-inclusivity

Anti-trans actors sometimes preface statements with pretend support for some trans rights. Claims such as ‘we respect everyone, also people who transitioned’ allow anti-trans actors to gain legitimacy with a broader public. Indeed, it gives them an aura of trans-inclusivity. Furthermore, their affiliations with self-claimed ‘trans experts’ at universities, research institutes, and hospitals lead the media to present these actors as competent even when they have no professional experience working with trans people. Like other anti-gender actors, Belgian anti-trans actors create scientific-sounding discourse that serves their ideological agenda. Such discourse undermines trans rights – and disregards scientific rigour.

Together with parent organisations, self-declared ‘anti-woke’ academics, and Catholic groups, they form a well-connected network. This network promotes conversion therapy, the restriction or abolition of gender-affirming healthcare, and the exclusion of trans people in sports. However, the ostensible support for trans rights by these actors makes it harder to resist.

Care as radical resistance

Against the backdrop of anti-trans politics, everyday practices of resistance are increasingly important to trans communities. This includes educating others, but also practices of care to support each other and themselves.

Misinformation is a key strategy in anti-trans politics. Educating others on trans issues is therefore increasingly important for trans activists. There is a growing need for a ‘trans 101’; a simple introduction into trans issues and needs. However, many would rather educate people on intersecting injustices instead of constantly focusing on basic information about their trans lives.

Belgium may portray itself as LGBTQ-friendly, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that the country’s trans people are safe in public. Building and maintaining community spaces for trans people is therefore crucial

To care for one another, building and maintaining community spaces is crucial in a society that marginalises trans experiences. During interviews, more and more people reported the need for a welcoming space where trans people can simply exist. Activists want to unite trans people on the dancefloor, in talking groups, or in community kitchens. They emphasised that even though Belgium is seen as LGBTQ-friendly, that doesn’t necessarily mean trans people are safe in public, hence the importance of these trans-inclusive spaces.

Creating a liveable life

Other everyday activist practices include providing haircuts for trans people, cooking together, having movie nights, or acting as ‘queer mother’ offering emotional support to help trans youth navigate society. These everyday examples of care, along with the creation of community spaces, are crucial in sustaining trans people’s survival, and keeping alive the hope of a liveable life amid the lived consequences of anti-trans politics.

Everyday acts of care, such as providing haircuts for trans people or offering emotional support to trans youth, are crucial to keep alive the hope of a liveable life

These everyday practices of care are what Hil Malatino alludes to when he developed the concept of an ‘infrapolitics of care’ that ‘enables both political resistance and intracommunal survival and resistance’. These daily acts of care are a radical political act aimed at trans survival. Indeed, these instances of resistance are often unexpected and messy, but constitute a palpable way to practice solidarity when facing intricate strategies of marginalisation in a country that claims to be LGBTQ-friendly.

Caring for trans voices in research

While my research concentrates on the specific context of Belgium, its results echo the transnational dynamics of anti-trans politics, even in countries not considered LGBTQ-friendly. Trans voices disrupt this image of LGBTQ-friendliness and reveal how anti-trans rhetoric unfolds against the backdrop of a structural exclusion.

To further make sense of anti-trans politics across contexts, it is essential to attend to the voices of trans activists. Listening to their insights can lead to a more robust understanding of the issues at stake in anti-trans politics and the continuous structural transphobia. Their voices reveal the importance of everyday instances of resistance to anti-trans politics and transphobia, because these exclusionary currents affect trans people’s everyday lives.

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What states are the best for LGBTQ+ people? These are the top 15

Read more at the Advocate.

Legislative attacks on the LGBTQ+ community have been pushed everywhere from city councils to the White House — but there are still some areas that are safe.

Over 1,000 anti-LGBTQ+ laws have been proposed across every state legislature in the U.S. over the past two years, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, and 126 have passed into law. Less than two months into the 2025 legislative session, 390 laws targeting LGBTQ+ people have been proposed.

Still, marriage equality and anti-discrimination protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity are still guaranteed federally by U.S. Supreme Court rulings (for now). On top of that, at least 15 states have “shield laws” protecting access to gender-affirming care and abortion.

Based on laws surrounding marriage, family rights, health care, education, and youth collected by the Movement Advancement Project, here are the 15 best states for LGBTQ+ people.

The states include California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington. Honorable mentions go to Washington DC, Delaware, Hawaii, Michigan, New Mexico, and Virginia.

You can read about each state in more detail in the Advocate’s article.

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Over a million people petitioned Europe to ban conversion therapy. It just rejected the call.

Read more at LGBTQ Nation.

The European Union rejected a call to ban conversion therapy on Wednesday, even after over a million people petitioned for the ban in its 27 member states.

Last month, the European Parliament voted in favor of a ban on conversion therapy. The vote came after the European Citizens’ Initiative petitioned the European Parliament to take up the matter after 1.2 million people signed a petition.

The matter was then sent to the European Commission, the only body that can introduce binding legislation in the EU. But the European Commission has rejected the call, saying that the EU does not have the authority to force member states to ban the harmful practice.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that conversion therapy has “no place in our union” and that the EU will push each individual member state to ban the practice in a recommendation to be published next year. That recommendation will be non-binding.

The European Commission flew the rainbow flag outside its headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, yesterday, Le Monde reports.

The EU’s Agency for Fundamental Rights said in 2024 that one in four LGBTQ+ European citizens is the victim of conversion therapy practices, which have been linked to depression, low self-esteem, substance abuse issues, anxiety, suicidality, and other mental health issues. Ten of the 27 EU member states already ban the practice.

The group Against Conversion Therapy, which launched the original petition, called the decision a “missed opportunity” in a statement.

“In an international political context where the rise of reactionary ideas is affecting the entire world, it is urgent the European Union acts,” the group said.

European Commissioner for Equality Hadja Lahbib hailed the decision to encourage member states to ban the practice as “historic,” the LA Times reports.

“Conversion practices are built on a lie, the lie that LGBTQ+ people need to be fixed, that there is something wrong with who they are,” Lahbib said after listening to victim testimony. “And there is, of course, nothing to fix, there is nothing to cure, and there is no one to change.”

“You cannot torture away a person’s identity, and you cannot legislate it away. And yet these practices continue, unfortunately.”

Last month, the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) held a debate on conversion therapy before it voted to recommend that Europe ban the practice.

“These so-called conversion practices or therapies are not only harmful, they are a profound violation of human dignity and fundamental rights,” said EESC President Séamus Boland during the debate, according to an EESC release. “Let us be absolutely clear: there is nothing to fix or cure. What needs to change is not people, but the systems, attitudes, and structures that deny them their dignity.”

Graeme Reid, the United Nations independent expert on sexual orientation and gender identity, also spoke during the debate, saying that banning conversion therapy is key to the EU meeting its human rights obligations and that “every person has the right to live free from coercion, fear and shame.”

The United Nations has called for conversion therapy to be banned worldwide. Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that conversion therapy practices are protected by the First Amendment and can only be banned if states can meet the high legal requirements involved in curtailing religious free exercise.

Brussels is set to celebrate Pride this weekend.

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Texas Children’s Hospital must create country’s first “detransition clinic” under legal settlement with state

Read more at KSAT.

The Texas attorney general has secured an unusual settlement over child transgender care that compels Texas Children’s Hospital to create the nation’s first ever “detransition clinic” in addition to paying the state $10 million. 

According to Attorney General Ken Paxton, the multidisciplinary clinic would offer medical care to patients “who were subjected to ‘gender-transition’ procedures.” The care would be free to patients for the first five years of the clinic’s operation. The move follows an investigation that began in 2023 by the attorney general’s office into Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston. That same year, Gov. Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 14 that bars transgender children from receiving puberty blockers and hormone therapies.

Gender-affirming care is an umbrella term for the treatment of gender dysphoria, or the discomfort that comes when someone’s gender identity does not align with the sex they were assigned at birth. Gender-affirming care ranges from “socially transitioning” — using different pronouns or dressing differently — to puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgical interventions.

“Today is a monumental day in the fight to stop the radical transgender movement,” Paxton said in a statement issued Friday. “I applaud Texas Children’s Hospital for changing course and committing to being a part of the solution by agreeing to form a first-of-its kind Detransition Clinic that will help provide free care to those who have been victimized by twisted, morally bankrupt transgender ideology.”

Texas Children’s will fund all services provided through the “detransition clinic” for the first five years. 

The settlement also requires the hospital to pay $10 million for billing Texas Medicaid after the state accused the hospital of illegal ‘gender-transition’ interventions, including by using false diagnosis codes. It also required Texas Children’s to terminate and revoke the medical privileges of five physicians. Paxton and the hospital have not released the name of the physicians or a copy of the settlement. 

Texas Children’s, the nation’s largest pediatric hospital, said in a statement that it made the “difficult decision” to settle with the attorney general’s office to close a legal chapter that has been, “wrought with falsehoods and distractions.” 

The hospital said it spent three three years producing more than 5 million documents to both the state and the U.S. Department of Justice. 

“All reviews and investigations continue to support the facts – we have been compliant with all laws,” the hospital statement said. “To be clear – we are settling to protect our resources from endless and costly litigation … We stand proud knowing we will always put our purpose over politics and that we have and will continue to follow the law.”

The Texas Medical Association and Texas Hospital Association declined to answer questions for the story.

Unclear what services clinic will provide

Texas Children’s, one of the world’s leading pediatric hospitals based in the heart of Houston’s medical center, did not say how it will roll out its clinic or what services it will provide, though the hospital said in the statement that the clinic will include “supportive, multidisciplinary services we already deliver to all patients who need our care.” 

Detransitioning is the stopping or reversal of transitioning care by social, medical or legal means, and it is rare for people to regret transitioning after taking hormone therapy and surgical interventions. 

On the clinical side, detransitioning could mean stopping hormone treatment or procedures to reverse previous surgeries. Similar to transitioning, detransitioning requires intensive mental health assessments to root out other factors that might be creating the desire to stop transitioning, according to research. Common reasons for destransitioning include lack of family support, financial barriers and social pressure. 

When someone chooses to detransition, “it is not normally because of healthcare complications,” said Andrea Segovia, senior field and policy director for the Transgender Education Network of Texas. 

Segovia is concerned that access to mental healthcare will not be woven into the clinic’s services. In March, Paxton released an opinion saying that mental health providers licensed by the state cannot provide gender-transitioning care to minors under state law. It’s not clear if Paxton believes state law bars detransitioning mental healthcare as well.

For those who do want to detransition, the resources already exist, said Kellan Baker, senior advisor for the Movement Advancement Project, a national think tank that focuses on LGBTQ policies. 

Detransitioning services, although they are rarely needed, can and have been offered properly when accompanied with mental health resources. But Baker said he’s not confident that this clinic, born out of a heated conflict between a hospital and the attorney general, has the best intentions for the transgender community. 

“Texas Children’s is not creating this clinic — the Texas attorney general is creating it,” Baker said. “A clinic created by a politician via legal intimidation is not in the best interests of any patient. Doctors should be the ones making decisions about how to provide medical care, not politicians.”

‘Resource that no one is asking for’

Brad Pritchett, CEO of Equality Texas, a nonprofit that advocates for the LGBTQ community, said in a statement that the attorney general is “blackmailing a hospital system into creating a resource that no one is asking for.” 

Pritchett said Texas’ politically-motivated detransition clinic “ignores the actual science and years of data about the overwhelming benefits of gender-affirming care.” 

Several medical associations including the American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and American Psychiatric Association, have supported evidence-based gender-transitioning care as appropriate and medically necessary for children.

Pritchett added that it is “embarrassing that a hospital once revered for its care has lost its integrity and put politics over patients.”

Dallas state Rep. Jessica González who chairs the Texas House LGBTQ Caucus said in a statement that the settlement is “shameful, and is the furthering of an agenda to eradicate transgender people from the eyes of society.” 

Transgender people make up about 1% of the population, which is why, Segovia said, it is “infuriating” that the state is creating the detransition clinic as access to other healthcare services are struggling — such as rural hospitals and reproductive care. 

Texas Children’s has to fully fund the clinic for five years, which will take away attention and limited resources from the hospital’s other departments such as care for children with cancer and infants with heart conditions, González said. 

“Using a settlement to compel a hospital to build an ideologically framed clinic opens the door to more state interference in medical practice, more dangerous stigmatization that truly harms

young Texans, and, sadly, more lives lost in our nation’s suicide epidemic,” said González, one of the few only queer representatives in Texas. 

Houston state Sen. Molly Cook, who is also openly queer, said Paxton is manufacturing a political spectacle because providers know how to help someone detransition and the state doesn’t need a clinic to train them on it. 

“This is an asinine waste of money that is typical of Texas’s out-of-touch statewide leadership,” Cook said in a statement. “Texas Children’s already provides care for patients who choose to change a course of treatment.”

The need for such a clinic in Texas is made even smaller by the fact that the state’s ban on gender-transitioning care for minors has resulted in very few Texas children receiving such care statewide. 

The five doctors that Paxton said Texas Children’s will need to fire adds to the four doctors he’s already sued to stop providing gender-affirming care. He’s also sued Children’s Health System of Texas, headquartered in Dallas, accusing them of violating SB 14. Some parts of Texas already suffer from a pediatric endocrinologist shortage in the wake of SB 14. 

Segovia with the Transgender Education Network of Texas said she’s worried that other states will follow Texas’ lead in forcing more of these clinics to open. 

“It’s terrifying what other states will take from this.”

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So many LGBTQ Texans are moving to this city, it may declare an ’emergency’

Read more at the Houston Chronicle.

Amid a glut of anti-LGBTQ+ laws passed by the state legislature over the past half-decade, many queer Texans have decided to pack up and move to greener, more supportive pastures. So many have chosen Seattle that the  Pacific Northwest city is now considering declaring an emergency.

As first reported by the Seattle Gay News, the City of Seattle is close to declaring a state of civil emergency in response to LGBTQ+ refugees from red states moving there. That comes after Seattle’s LGBTQ Commission, an advisory committee that counsels local leaders on matters related to Seattle’s queer community, reportedly sent a letter last month asking the city council to make an emergency declaration. The commission said that the city needed “an effective and empathetic response” to protect a “rapid influx of 2SLGBTQIA+ persons seeking refuge in Seattle.”

For some ex-Texans, Seattle has become a haven. Victoria Scott, a trans woman and freelance writer, lived in Houston working as a programmer at NASA after college in 2018. After coming out as transgender, she said that she found both Houston and Texas hostile. Scott moved around and lived briefly in Reno, Nevada, before settling in Seattle with her wife at the end of 2023. In Seattle, Scott found the foundation she had long needed.

“It’s done more for my day-to-day lived experience and mental health as a trans woman than basically any other thing I’ve ever done,” Scott told Chron.

For her, Seattle was everything Houston wasn’t. (For one, it isn’t nearly as hot.) Scott appreciates the city’s relatively decent cost of living and protective state and local laws for LGBTQ+ residents. But Scott also said that there were more queer and trans people out and about in Seattle, noting that she could form physical communities in a way she couldn’t in Texas. She attributed that to Seattle’s long, vibrant queer history.

“Trans people here are normalized to a degree they’re not elsewhere,” Scott said. “I get culture shock visiting other places now because I return pretty suddenly to people staring or murmuring about me … Here, I genuinely feel like just another woman.”

Seattle isn’t perfect, but Scott noted that many of the problems she encounters in the city have nothing to do with her being transgender, something she couldn’t say while living in the South. In addition to writing, she now works with a Washington state non-profit called TRACTION that serves transgender people throughout the state. The group’s Open Arms program helps transgender people across the nation resettle in supportive states and cities, mostly in Seattle. Scott says she’s seen plenty of queer and trans Seattle transplants both through her work and out in the community.

“It is very much an ongoing migration,” Scott said

In its letter, the Seattle LGBTQ Commission cited data from a 2025 survey by the non-profit Movement Advancement Project. That survey found that after the 2024 election, queer and trans people were moving from Republican-led states that have passed anti-LGBTQ legislation to Democratic-led states like Washington. Texas was noted as one such hostile state in the Seattle LGBTQ Commission’s letter.

“Many [internally displaced persons] have relocated from states such as Texas, Florida, Tennessee, Kansas, and Idaho due to anti-trans legislation, threats to personal safety, and barriers to healthcare and legal recognition,” the commission wrote. 

In response to a wave of anti-trans legislation in both Texas and in statehouses around the country, some transgender Americans have migrated out of red states like Texas and Florida and into large cities with established LGBTQ+ communities like Chicago, New York City and San Francisco. Minnesota, which has notably strong non-discrimination laws and protects gender-affirming care at the statewide level, has also become a hub for trans Americans looking for safety. Some have even sought shelter in Canada. 

Aspen Coyle, who manages the Open Arms program at TRACTION, told Chron via email that the group matches trans people in need with volunteers who help them through the process of moving. Coyle said that of the 533 people TRACTION has been in contact with, 117 have been from Texas, the highest of any state, followed by Florida and Ohio. That tracks, Coyle said, with a 2025 study by Plume, an online gender-affirming care provider, which found that Texas had the highest number of trans residents who fled their home state: nearly 20 percent. The top location trans respondents moved to in that Plume survey? Washington state. 

Coyle said Texas transplants she’s worked with have described trans people leaving the state as an “exodus,” and that many tell her “they’re the last trans people in their area.”

“It is absolutely dire. People are leaving because they can’t get healthcare, they can’t get a job, they might get arrested for going to the bathroom, they get harassed in public,” Coyle said. “The baseline hostility to their existence is unbearable.”

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Spain replaces Malta as #1 for LGBTQ rights in Europe

The ILGA Rainbow Map for 2026 was just released. Spain jumps ahead of Malta for the first time in a decade to lead Europe in LGBTQ legal rights. You can check out the map here and see the rankings below.

  1. Spain 89%
  2. Malta 88%
  3. Iceland 86%
  4. Belgium 85%
  5. Denmark 85%
  6. Finland  70%
  7. Germany 70%
  8. Norway 69%
  9. Sweden 68%
  10. Luxembourg 68%
  11. Greece  68%
  12. Portugal 67%
  13. Netherlands 64%
  14. Ireland 61%
  15. France 60%
  16. Austria  55%
  17. Slovenia 54%
  18. Montenegro 53%
  19. Croatia 51%
  20. Switzerland 50%
  21. Estonia  46%
  22. United Kingdom 44%
  23. Andorra 43%
  24. Albania  41%
  25. Moldova 38%
  26. Czechia 37%
  27. Bosnia & Herzegovina 37%
  28. Kosovo 35%
  29. Serbia 34%
  30. Cyprus 34%
  31. Liechtenstein 31%
  32. Latvia 30%
  33. North Macedonia 29%
  34. San Marino 29%
  35. Slovakia 25%
  36. Italy 24%
  37. Lithuania 24%
  38. Hungary 23%
  39. Poland 22%
  40. Bulgaria 20%
  41. Ukraine 19%
  42. Romania 19%
  43. Monaco 14%
  44. Georgia 12%
  45. Armenia 9%
  46. Belarus  7%
  47. Turkey 5%
  48. Azerbaijan 2%
  49. Russia 2%
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Poland’s leader promises to start recognizing foreign same-sex marriages, after EU court ruling

Read more at LGBTQ Nation.

Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Tuesday that his government would quickly work to follow recent court rulings requiring Poland to legally recognize same-sex marriages conducted in other European Union (EU) member nations.

Recent rulings by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and Poland’s Supreme Administrative Court (NSA) both require Poland to recognize foreign same-sex marriages, after a married same-sex couple (including a Polish citizen) weren’t allowed to have their 2018 German marriage certificate entered into the Polish civil registry.

The men challenged the denial at the NSA, which then referred the case to the CJEU. The CJEU ruled in November 2025 that the couple’s marriage was valid throughout the EU’s 27-member bloc, and that Poland could recognize their union without also altering its laws to start offering same-sex marriages.

Then, last March, the NSA ordered the government to transcribe the men’s same-sex marriage certificate into the Polish system, resulting in de facto government recognition of a same-sex couple’s marriage in the country; a historic first for Poland.

In comments to the media before a closed cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Tusk apologized for the “years of rejection and humiliation” that same-sex couples have experienced due to Poland not legally recognizing their marriages, Notes from Poland reported.

“[This is] a matter of human dignity: the right to happiness, the right to equal treatment by the state,” Tusk said. “I would like to apologize to all those who, for many, many years, felt rejected and humiliated. For many years, the [Polish] state has failed the test.”

Tusk also said that Poland currently “lacks statutory regulations” that would ensure that same-sex couples receive the same legal and social protections as different-sex couples.

However, he said, “We have committed to – and I will personally ensure this – abiding by the rulings as a priority,” adding that any changes must be conducted in compliance with existing Polish law. He also urged government members “to respect the dignity of every human being” while figuring out and implementing new policies, some of which may require parliamentary or executive approval.

Tusk also said any legal recognition is “no way a path to the possibility of adoption.”

Karolina Gierdal, a lawyer with the Polish LGBTQ+ advocacy organization Lambda Warszawa, told TVP World, “It is sad that the LGBT community is once again presented as a threat, as if society needs reassurance that adoption rights ‘won’t happen.’ The reality is that children are already being raised in same-sex families in Poland, and maintaining the current legal situation means reducing the level of legal protection available to those children.”

Separately, Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, who is a senior figure in Tusk’s Civic Platform party (Platforma Obywatelska, PO), announced that his city would begin legally recognizing foreign same-sex marriages immediately on a municipal level, long before the national government updates its own policies.

Last month, a group of over 100 non-governmental organizations urged Poland to take action to abide by the CJEU and NSA’s rulings. The groups noted that Tusk and his party were elected to power in 2023 on promises to restore Poland’s rule of law, after 10 years of corrupt, anti-democratic rule by the country’s far-right, anti-LGBTQ+ Law and Justice Party.

“Right-wing governments have distorted what we understand by the rule of law, treating it as an empty slogan rather than a real principle of state operation,” the groups wrote. “In a democratic state governed by the rule of law, the government has no authority to decide which judgments merit enforcement.”

So far, 18 countries in the EU offer legalized same-sex marriages, though all member countries are required to legally recognize them, even if they don’t offer them to their own citizens.

While Tusk’s political party promised to work to offer national same-sex civil partnerships, the initiative died due to opposition from Poland’s center-right Polish People’s Party (PSL). A parliamentary coalition considered offering some rights to same-sex couples and unmarried partners instead, but without actually offering civil unions nationwide.

However, neither proposal has come up for a parliamentary vote.

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Canadian doctors denied patients gender-affirming care, citing Trump’s executive order

Read more at LGBTQ Nation.

McGill University in Quebec has denied gender-affirming care to at least two trans American students since March, when the school adopted a preemptive policy denying hormone replacement therapy over fears the Trump administration would retaliate, two sources say.

The new policy is an embarrassment, said an American staffer for The Montreal Trans Patient Union (TPU), who spoke to CBC on the condition of anonymity.

“These are American laws. American laws don’t apply in Canada,” they said.

The staffer and another member of TPU, Emma Gimbert, were at a meeting at McGill’s Student Wellness Hub in March when doctors brought up the change in policy.

“They said they wouldn’t be prescribing HRT to American citizens who were under 19 because of the executive order that Donald Trump issued,” Gimbert said.

The student was referring to Trump’s executive order, Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation, issued a year ago in January, which directs federal agencies to carry out the American president’s crusade against transgender identity across the U.S. government.

“If you told me a month ago that a U.S. executive order would be influencing how doctors do their job across the border, I would have been like, no, that can’t be the case,” Gimbert said.

Canadians have been overwhelmingly critical of Trump and his trolling threats to their sovereignty since the start of his second term. McGill’s decision, from fiercely independent Quebec, no less, would seem antithetical to the rest of Canada’s posture facing Trump.

About 1000 Americans are currently enrolled at McGill, a public research university in Montreal known as “the Harvard of Canada.” Among nearly 40,000 students, a high proportion are from abroad.

Adding to the absurdity of a Canadian university bowing down to an American president, the decision may have been based in part on a clerical error.

The TPU staffer explained.

“The doctors said the reason for this was specifically the fact that the form the U.S. released had provisions for targeting Canadian doctors and taking down their information.”

The document in question was a snitch form issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to report health professionals administering gender-affirming care to minors in the U.S.

The drop-down menu, like many forms online, included the word “province” along with “state.”

Panicked administrators at McGill apparently thought that word put a target on Canadian medical professionals’ backs. HHS had even removed it by the time McGill denied the HRT to their American students.

McGill would neither confirm nor deny the existence of a policy barring Americans from gender-affirming care for fear of retaliation by Trump.

“Access to gender-affirming care is available to McGill students, including international students,” the university said in a statement.

“The medical aspects of this care are provided by licensed physicians. These decisions are not made by the university,” the school added, in a probably doomed effort to evade accountability from Canadians incensed at McGill’s failure to defend their independence.

“I think it’s definitely important for them to acknowledge what’s been going on because the way they’re currently treating this, it’s kind of covert,” Gimbert said. 

“We know this is something that they’re aware of. It’s just not something that they’re publicly talking about.”

Added the American TPU staffer: “I mean, we don’t say that 18-year-old Americans can’t buy alcohol here because the drinking age in the U.S. is 21.”

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Colorado passes new conversion therapy bill just after Supreme Court ruled against its ban

Read more at LGBTQ Nation.

Colorado’s legislature has just passed a bill to curtail conversion therapy in the state. It now goes to Gov. Jared Polis‘ (D) desk. Polis is gay, has been supportive of LGBTQ+ rights in the past, and is expected to sign it.

The bill, H.B. 26-1322, or the Civil Actions for Conversion Therapy Survivors Act, would allow conversion therapy survivors to sue therapists for damages if they tried to change their sexual orientation or gender identity.

The bill defines conversion therapy as treatment provided by a licensed mental health professional with the “predetermined outcome” of changing someone’s gender identity or sexual orientation. This effectively keeps the bill from applying to members of the clergy or lay ministries – most conversion therapy in the U.S. is performed by religious organizations, not licensed therapists – and creates an exemption for discussions of LGBTQ+ identities that come up in therapy, a matter of contention in a recent Supreme Court case.

The legislation passed the state senate last week in a party-line vote after already passing the Colorado House of Representatives. The state senate amended the bill so it had to pass the state house again, which happened late last week, the Colorado Daily Camera reports.

The bill was introduced as the Supreme Court considered a challenge to Colorado’s previous ban on conversion therapy, passed in 2019. That ban on conversion therapy has never been enforced in the state, but a Christian therapist sued, saying that it violated her freedom of speech. She argued that it would ban her from even discussing LGBTQ+ identities with her clients, even though the state said repeatedly that it would not.

The Court ultimately ruled against the ban in Chiles v. Salazar, saying that it violated therapists’ First Amendment rights, and sent the case back to a lower court to reevaluate the law under a higher legal standard. Experts believe this means that Colorado’s 2019 conversion therapy ban – and bans like it passed in 26 other states and hundreds of municipalities – will likely eventually be overturned by courts.

The new bill is an attempt to circumvent the Court’s decision by treating it as a civil matter. The bill was introduced by state Reps. Alex Valdez (D) and Karen McCormick (D), and in the Colorado Senate by state Sens. Lisa Cutter (D) and Kyle Mullica (D).

LGBTQ+ rights advocates supported the bill, including trans National Center for LGBTQ Rights Legal Director Shannon Minter, who referred to the Supreme Court’s decision in Chiles as “specific guidance about how to amend conversion therapy laws to be viewpoint-neutral.”

“Given the urgency of this issue and the danger that conversion therapy poses to youth, Colorado moved swiftly,” he said. “Today this legislation is moving to the desk of Governor Polis and will protect Colorado’s youth and families from this discredited practice.”

“Colorado’s story is still being written, and today we took another step toward becoming a state where LGBTQIA+ people can live openly, safely, and fully as themselves,” said One Colorado executive director Nadine Bridges in a statement. “This victory belongs to the survivors, advocates, and community members who refused to let this issue be forgotten.”

Conversion therapy is a harmful practice based on the idea that LGBTQ+ identities are the result of trauma and that LGBTQ+ people need to fundamentally change who they are in order to be a good person. The practice has been linked to several harmful results, including anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and suicidality.

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