This Gay Week 37: Global LGBTQ Rights

Karel Bouley is a history-making LGBTQ broadcaster, entertainer, author, singer, and activist. With his late partner Andrew Howard, he became part of the first openly gay radio talk-show duo on a major-market U.S. station when “Karel and Andrew” joined KFI AM 640 in Los Angeles in 1998. After Howard’s death, Bouley pursued a landmark California wrongful-death case that helped affirm domestic partners’ legal standing to sue retroactively. Karel rose to prominence on KFI AM 640 in Los Angeles and KGO AM 810 in San Francisco, later expanding his work through Free Speech TV, Karel.com, YouTube, and The Karel Cast podcast. His career spans journalism and commentary, including work associated with HuffPost, The Advocate, Billboard, CNN, MSNBC, and LGBTQ entertainment media. He has also released dance music, authored books including You Cannot Say That! and Shouting at Windmills, and remains active as a voting member of NARAS/The Recording Academy, GALECA, and SAG-AFTRA. Karel now lives and creates in Las Vegas.

Karel Bouley and Scott Douglas Jacobsen examine LGBTQ rights under pressure across Türkiye, Ukraine, Cyprus, Nordic territories, Guyana, and Australia. They discuss state crackdowns, Pride security, queer visibility, historical police abuses, sexual diversity, and civil liberties, while contrasting repression with legal reform, public support, institutional apologies, and resilience worldwide today.

Karel Bouley: Scott, very glad you are joining me. I hope you’re having a good week. It is Thursday, September 17th. I hope you’re having a good time, unless you’re Ed Sheeran, then you’re having a bad week. But if you’re Macklemore, you’re having a good week. I’m sure Scott probably doesn’t know what I’m talking about, whereas he’s over in Ukraine and they don’t get all the gossip over there, but pretty juicy stuff. We’ve got a lot to talk about today. We’re going to talk about Türkiye. We’re going to talk turkey, and I don’t mean the stuff you eat for Thanksgiving.

And then we’re going to look at all other stories from around the world, from Cyprus and everywhere else. What people are getting up to in the gay community or what the gay community is having done to it. Someone asked me and I want to address it. Someone asked me via email: Why have I started doing one of four shows a month completely dedicated to or mostly dedicated to LGBTQ issues?

First of all, I want to answer by saying, take a fucking look at who the host is. Okay, that’s the first thing. Second of all, I do this feature with Scott every week, whether or not we broadcast it, for his writing at the Good Men Project. So I always figure, why not just make a show of it? But more importantly, there are not too many shows under Donald Trump these days that are dedicated to LGBTQ issues.

There is one on Free Speech TV whose host is actually leaving. And then there’s people like Stephanie Miller, who is gay but doesn’t do gay topics like once a week. So I am one of the few openly gay hosts who actually still has decided that once a week we are going to look at LGBTQ issues because they don’t just affect gay people. And most of you have a gay person in your family.

So whether or not you know it, it hits home one way or another. And that’s why. And plus at KFI and KGO, I was never allowed to. They would not let me do an entire show of gay issues. They would not allow it. So it’s my show. I’m allowed to do it. I’m going to do it. We’ve got about two minutes left in this segment. So let’s go right to Scott. First, we’ll do a two shot, but then we’ve got a single shot for him. Now I set it up last week.

Get his big smile and face filling the screen. So Scott, let’s talk about Ukraine. We are getting the news over here very mixed. First of all, we got Trump trying to tell Ukraine not to attack Russian diesel infrastructure, and he’s trying to blame diesel prices in America primarily on the Ukraine war. But the Iran war and disruptions affecting the Strait of Hormuz have also contributed significantly to the global energy crisis, while Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries have further tightened diesel supplies.

But I watched BBC, and I guess there was a train a few days back carrying Boris Johnson and other European security officials. Their train passed through shortly before a Russian drone struck another train near the Ukraine-Poland border. Another train carrying former CIA Director David Petraeus was still at Yahodyn station when the drone struck. Ukrainian Railways said the diplomatic train may have been the intended target.

You are there. And over here on BBC, we’re hearing discussion about whether an attack like this could represent a serious escalation involving NATO countries. A strike inside Ukraine would not automatically invoke Article 5 simply because NATO-country officials were aboard, but an attack deliberately targeting senior officials from NATO states could create a major diplomatic and security crisis. And we’re hearing talks of an escalating global conflict. That sounds like newspeak for World War. So you are boots on the ground there in Kyiv. What are you guys hearing about escalation, NATO and Russia’s involvement in all of that?

Jacobsen: So it’s a couple of things with regards to global conflict. The world is at conflict, but it’s probably more relevant to say regional conflicts. So, with regards to, for instance, the Iranian situation, that was an American-Israeli operation ongoing against Iran. Iran has struck Israel and multiple countries in the region, including states hosting U.S. forces. So you could probably legitimately consider it an ongoing regional war. Is that global? No, but it’s definitely regional. If that regional conflict merges with another regional conflict, I think you probably can define it as either inter-regional, if not global, because things get really out of hand at that point. With regards to where I’m at, there are journalists who are in cities closer to the front lines more often than I am. I’m currently based in Kyiv, so it’s not really quite like Kharkiv or other cities more directly exposed to Russian attacks, such as Odesa, Mykolaiv, or Dnipro. But the general sense is that any of these peace talks are necessary, but people are largely skeptical of any successes that might come from these based on prior hard experience.

Bouley: Do you guys envision what we’re afraid of over here, that Russia is going to attack Ukraine and hit NATO allies or attack NATO allies who are helping Ukraine and then start an actual world war where China jumps in, North Korea jumps in, the United States would then get dragged into it, the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, all of that would get involved? If they had hit that train and killed German diplomats, Spanish diplomats, French diplomats, that could have created a major international crisis, although it would not automatically invoke NATO Article 5 simply because officials from NATO countries were attacked while inside Ukraine. It could have pulled individual countries more deeply into the war, which means suddenly it wouldn’t be Ukraine versus Russia. It could involve Ukraine and additional European states, possibly the United States, against Russia. Russia could seek greater support from China and North Korea, and it could become a larger international conflict. Are you guys hearing the same? Because Russia appears increasingly willing to test NATO countries and their security. Mr. Putin does seem to have another option.

Jacobsen: Another part of this, there’s a lot of assumptions in that statement you gave, but in terms of a sufficient threshold for invoking Article 5, that’s a determination for the NATO allies, particularly the ally that has sustained the armed attack and requests or consents to collective action. There have been a lot of things that could be considered hybrid and informational warfare and other hostile acts.

By the Russian Federation against NATO member states, simply for the fact that they may remain below what NATO considers the threshold of an armed attack under Article 5. But NATO has also stated that significant cyberattacks and other hybrid attacks could, depending on their circumstances, amount to an armed attack. And there have been very provocative things done. There’s a lot of information warfare that’s done to mess around with social opinions, divide societies, individual acts of sabotage, hacking of systems, and things like these cable incidents.

Pipeline stuff is a little bit suspicious in a lot of cases. Getting proper determinations and attribution is another matter outside of just the fact that it happened.

Bouley: I heard something yesterday, and let me ask if you think this is a possibility. Someone said on the news, how do you think these two conflicts are going to stop? Meaning Russia-Ukraine and the United States-Iran conflict. And they had the same answer for both. They said, well, in Iran, Trump, being Trump, is going to say, “Okay, we won,” and just walk away, just stop everything. Like, “We won, we’re done,” that’s it, and just as he is prone to do.

And they said the same for Vladimir Putin. They said that Putin may just, depending on what happens in his country and the mood of his people, say, okay, we’ve made these gains, we’ve won, we’ve gotten our objective, the war is over. Is that plausible to you, to where both leaders, Trump and Putin, in the wars that they’re engaged in basically just say, “Okay, we’re done, we’ve won, let’s just move on?” Because there is no clear roadmap for Trump to get out of the conflict with Iran, and there is no clear roadmap for Vladimir Putin to get out of Ukraine without some negotiated settlement, withdrawal, or declaration that Russia has achieved its objectives.

Jacobsen: So the Russian case is much more substantial in the sunk costs for Mr. Putin than the Iranian case for Trump and his administration, although both are catastrophes.

In terms of escalation, I’m skeptical of escalation, although there are a lot of provocative actions being done both ways, by the way, because if you’re Iran and you’re striking several countries in the region, that’s a significant provocation, you could say.

Bouley: Yeah.

Jacobsen: For some reason, the United Arab Emirates. With regards to Russia, Mr. Putin is hugely in sunk-cost territory. A very large share of Russian government spending is going toward defence and the war, while debt-servicing costs are also rising. Defence-related spending has placed enormous pressure on the Russian budget and broader economy.

Bouley: That’s why they got out of Afghanistan, right? They just couldn’t afford to fight on that front anymore. Russia, they went broke and the Soviet Union fell. And that’s why they left Afghanistan.

Jacobsen: The economic and human costs of the Soviet war in Afghanistan were significant factors in Moscow’s decision to withdraw, but the withdrawal was not simply because the Soviet Union had gone broke. The war became increasingly costly and unpopular, failed to produce a decisive military outcome, and formed part of the broader political and economic pressures facing the Soviet Union under Gorbachev. The USSR itself dissolved almost three years after the final Soviet troops left Afghanistan in February 1989.

It’s also the taste for it in each society. Societies evolve, right? And so new demographics. So even the 9/11 session we recently did.

There are young adults several years into their young adulthood who don’t care much for 9/11. It’s not part of their life story, their direct life story. And similarly, I think, with the Russian case. They basically have a lot of markings of a consumer society, not capitalist necessarily, but a consumer society, in terms of long gas lines at the gas station and Wildberries, their rough Amazon equivalent, delaying deliveries or having warehouses and stock destroyed. That is a major stressor.

Bouley: You bring up a good point, and I know we’re going to talk gay things, but when I heard that Ukraine attacking Wildberries was a huge deal, I didn’t understand why. And now you just explained it. It’s their Amazon. So can you imagine in the United States if Iran took out major Amazon warehouses? Can you imagine that?

Jacobsen: Well, this is what I’m driving at. Americans would get on TikTok or social media in a similar way Russians have and be crying about long lineups and delayed deliveries.

Bouley: Yeah, I agree. So that’s a stress for them. Ukrainian case, what is Amazon in Ukraine? Do you guys have that kind of thing? Is it Wildberries or is it Amazon?

Jacobsen: Oh my gosh. No, it depends. They have a bunch of different things. People really rely on Nova Poshta, which is essentially a private parcel and express-delivery service rather than the national post office.

I remember my first year, I got my press vest and my combat helmet via Nova Poshta. I think I landed in Odesa and my friend mailed it. It was a very prominent person in Kyiv. Mailed it from Kyiv to Odesa. I said, thank you very much. And then me and my Romanian journalist friend went on our merry way to Mykolaiv from there.

And actually, there was the middle of winter, and they had a major snowstorm. The roads broke down. The trains weren’t working. The buses weren’t working. And we found some old guy with a van and a back hatch where you could put your luggage.

And we just paid him 500 hryvnias or something, which is less than $20 American, and he drove us through this road that was still being cleared. And as we were driving, cars were going off the road. And so we’d stop, get out, help push them back onto the road. And then off we went to Mykolaiv.

Bouley: Why you’re not making a documentary about all this, I have no idea, because I would certainly watch it.

Jacobsen: I have a really good story for you. I find this very amusing. When I was working, I was working at the horse farm and I was shoeing horses.

I’m driving a tractor and landscaping. I used that money to pay for my first trip here, but I couldn’t get time off because of the agriculture in my hometown. And so I had to get surgery, got a doctor’s note. And so then my friend Karen is in her mid-fifties and she drove me straight from surgery that morning directly to the airport. And then I flew to Chișinău, Moldova, and then I ended up in Odesa. And so I was on tons of painkillers while I was recovering from surgery, traveling through cities closer to the front lines.

Bouley: I feel anyone in Ukraine should be on multiple painkillers at the moment, but that’s just me.

Now, when we were discussing this Gay Week, one of the first things you said was, everything I searched was Türkiye, Türkiye, Türkiye, Türkiye. And that’s because one of the biggest LGBTQ international stories right now is Türkiye. So do you want to preface us on what’s going on there? And then I can comment because I already know what’s going on there, but you are very newsy and very matter of fact. I get emotional. So did you want to preface us on what Türkiye is doing?

Jacobsen: So it’s a centrally coordinated nationwide operation, not just simply a bunch of individual police cases. The Justice Minister, Akın Gürlek, called the operation Ailem Güvende, or in translation, My Family Is Safe. And it involved legal proceedings concerning 162 suspects, nine associations, and 13 businesses across 15 provinces, coordinated through prosecutors in Istanbul, Ankara, İzmir, Aydın, and Mersin.

And so the investigations were described by authorities as involving alleged prostitution-related offenses, obscenity, exposure of children to allegedly obscene material, drug offenses, and other suspected crimes. The important words there are alleged and suspected.

Now, with regards to human rights abuse, there’s a lot to talk about here, but this has been a significant state crackdown affecting LGBTQ organizations, activists, venues, and associated civil-society groups. Human-rights organizations have described it as discriminatory and as an effort to criminalize LGBTQ advocacy, while the Turkish government says the operation is aimed at protecting children, families, and public order.

And you have to wonder why now. A lot of these laws have been in effect for a while. It’s not like these are all brand new laws. Some of the broader family-policy initiatives are newer, and we’ve covered developments here on the show. You’ve got to wonder why now? Why is Türkiye so invested?

Bouley: My family is safe. There’s a lot of things to worry about in Türkiye when you have a family. Queers are not one of them. But these are the key words and the catchphrases that they use.

You spoke of human rights abuses. For you in the audience to liken this to something you can understand, this reminds me in some respects of immigration-enforcement sweeps in America, in the sense of coordinated raids and detentions. But the legal systems and grounds for enforcement are different, so it is not a direct equivalent.

We like to use the term these days, a witch hunt or a queen hunt or whatever you want to call it. And again, I just wonder why Türkiye is doing this. Is there an election coming up? Is the leader trying to curry favor with some extremist constituency, or why now they’re choosing to do this? Only the leadership can answer that. Neither Scott nor I are in charge of the country, but it is happening.

And so, first of all, if you’re gay and you’re thinking of traveling, look very carefully at the current situation in Türkiye before going.

Second of all, if you’re listening and you’re in Türkiye, stay safe. And I don’t know any other way to say this, make your light a little less bright. Dim your light a little. As a gay man and being so identifiably gay, I have learned that there is a time to wave your rainbow flag and be defiant. And then your literal safety, your life at times could depend on keeping it down a little, toning it down a little. Not saying deny who you are.

I’m saying don’t wear the Daisy Dukes out just to go shopping. It’s funny, Scott Jacobsen with The Good Men Project joining us from Kyiv. I was watching the commercial there for my song, You Have to Be Proud, and thinking of the lyrics, you have to be proud with hatred so loud, you have to be strong when fighting so long. So dance in the streets, go ahead, show your pride. It’s funny because while that is the ideal world in which I would like myself and other LGBTQ people to live, the reality is there are times where you cannot do that, where you can’t dance in the street and show your pride because you could be arrested or subjected to serious violence.

And it is hard for American gays, even though there’s violence going on here against us. We’ve had recent cases of violence against LGBTQ people. So while people are being attacked here, the legal and political conditions facing LGBTQ people in Türkiye and some of the other countries that we are about to cover can be substantially different.

So it’s a horrible thing to have to tell people that sometimes. Like when Andrew and I went to Blacksmith’s Corner, which later as a biker I would go to and be out, proud and gay and realize it was no problem. But when Andrew and I went in our car with our pink triangle on and we’re in a sea of 150, 200 motorcycles, we thought we were in danger. So we took the pink triangle off of our car because we were sitting there waiting for somebody and we didn’t think we needed everyone to know there were two gays in the car.

I now know that was a stupid thing to do because I’ve been to Blacksmith’s Corner as a biker and realized they’re the nicest, most wonderful, accepting, diverse group of people in the world. But at the time, all we saw was big burly Harley riders and thought, oh fuck, we’ve got to take this pink triangle off the car. So sometimes waving your flag, if you’re under attack and they’re tackling you to the ground, okay, wave your flag. They’re already tackling you. But if you can avoid it, avoid it.

So you sent a lot of great stories. You pick where you’d like to start.

Jacobsen: Cyprus, Queer Wave banners. So Accept LGBTI has urged Cyprus police to investigate the vandalism of Queer Wave film festival banners in Kaimakli, arguing that the act targeted queer visibility, freedom of expression and assembly, and equal access to public space. So just a petty story of vandalism against LGBTI-identifiable content.

Bouley: Well, and of course we have a lot of that going on in the United States, people tearing down Pride flags and all that sort of stuff. But what’s important here is, first of all, this was a film festival. It was a festival they were having to showcase LGBTQ films, which are very powerful. I don’t know if you have ever really watched gay films from other countries. Some of them just tend to be fluff, comedy or whatever.

But a lot of them deal with really complex issues. And this is how hearts and minds are changed, through cinema. And I’ve seen, I saw a great movie about a Jew, this is very relevant, a Jew on this side of the wall who was in love with a Palestinian on that side of the wall and how they made their romance work. And how do you introduce your Palestinian lover to your Jewish parents? And how do you introduce your Jewish lover to your Palestinian parents? It was a great, great movie.

So gay and lesbian film, LGBTQ film, and if you ever want a place to just go watch a lot of it, it’s Here TV, which is an LGBTQ+ streaming service operated by Here Media. It’s important to the community.

And so Queer Wave was holding this film festival in Kaimakli, in Nicosia, Cyprus. Cyprus itself remains divided between the internationally recognized Republic of Cyprus in the south and the Turkish-controlled north. They were trying to expose people to works of queer cinema, and they put up posters and banners, and those were torn down. Accept LGBTI described it as an attack on queer visibility and public expression.

But given the world today and the shift to the right in many countries, which we have spoken about often, I think it’s par for the course, unfortunately. I think gay events are going to continue encountering things like Pride flags being torn down or posters being vandalized.

The organization called on Nicosia Municipality and the Kaimakli community to publicly confirm that the neighbourhood belongs to all residents, including LGBTI residents.

Really, what’s so striking is, please, let’s remind everyone that gay people are citizens too, shall we? It’s unfortunate that has to be done. But even in America, we have to remind Congress that gay people count, that we matter, that we pay taxes. We spoke last week about the lady that’s fighting for gay rights by saying, hey, I pay taxes. It’s sad that you have to remind non-gay people of that.

But I will go on record as saying it’s not just gay people. You’ve got to remind some people that Black people are citizens, that they share the space, or in any country, the ethnic or religious minorities that live there. If it’s a Muslim-majority country, you may have to remind people that Christians also live there. So I think wherever there are minorities, the majority sometimes has to be reminded that it’s a shared space.

Jacobsen: This is the big thing I come across and have for years in doing these interviews and other work, is basically individuals try to frame any of the coverage of this stuff as, I want to impose LGBTI+ on every society, where it’s no, reminding individuals these people, LGBTI people, are in every society because part of the human experience is having a significant minority of people who have different sexual orientations or gender identities than the majority.

Bouley: I watched an old bad movie last night called The Mothman Prophecies with Richard Gere, and when they were explaining the Mothman and what he was, the guy said to him, they’ve always been here. They’ve always existed. We just haven’t noticed them. They like it when we notice them.

And I know we’re going to break, but it’s sort of like gay people. They’ve always been here. I didn’t memorize the script. Well, actually, it freaks out my friends that I really can memorize a script by just watching a movie once. But basically what this guy was trying to explain to Richard Gere wasn’t about a gerbil, but it was about the Mothman and saying, he’s like, “Well, why can’t we see them? They must not be real. We can’t see them.”

And he says, “We can’t see electricity, but it’s real, and you can’t see sound, but it’s certainly real.” And so he was equating the Mothman to electricity, to air, to things that have always been a part of planet Earth and always been here that maybe we just didn’t notice or see, or maybe we saw but didn’t want to believe, that sort of thing. And when I heard that explanation, I said, doesn’t that just speak to gay people?

People now run around saying, it’s unnatural. It’s this, it’s that. When we know that same-sex sexual behavior is widespread in nature and has been documented across many animal species, including mammals, birds, reptiles, fish and invertebrates. It is not scientifically accurate, though, to map human sexual-orientation categories directly onto individual animals.

You have penguins and primates and many other species exhibiting same-sex sexual behavior. I mean, come on, look at a penguin. I mean, come on, that’s a gay little animal. And koalas, hello. But same-sex behavior has long existed in nature.

And so when these governments go on this, it’s unnatural, it’s immoral, it’s an aberration. It’s like, you stupid fucks, same-sex behavior has always existed. You just didn’t notice it.

And here in America, the numbers are shocking some people. Gallup’s latest data show that 23% of adults under 30 identify as LGBTQ+, while 10.4% of adults aged 30 to 49 do. Bisexual identity is the largest LGBTQ+ category, particularly among younger adults.

It used to be much lower overall. Gallup measured 3.5% of U.S. adults identifying as LGBTQ+ in 2012, compared with 9% in its 2025 data.

And some Republicans say, “Look, all these liberals, they’re creating more gays.” No, they’re not. Greater social acceptance and willingness to self-identify are among the plausible reasons more people openly identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or another LGBTQ+ identity. The survey data themselves establish the increase in identification, not a single cause for it.

All right, Scott, you did send the story from the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights about Türkiye, saying authorities should refrain from restricting the human rights of LGBTI civil society. Commissioner Michael O’Flaherty issued that statement on September 15, 2026, expressing concern about arrests, raids, and the blocking of websites and social-media accounts targeting LGBTI civil society and human-rights defenders.

And even the headline is about as absurd as it gets. Authorities should refrain from restricting the human rights of other humans. Yeah, you think? So we don’t have to beleaguer that point, because we’ve already talked about Türkiye, and I’ve got to use beleaguer twice in this show. But it is kind of dumb that the world has to remind Türkiye that gay people shouldn’t be harmed. That’s pretty bizarre.

Jacobsen: This is the whole thing. The job in fighting for this type of equality is very easy in one sense. A lot of the job is just reminder. They’re citizens. They have human rights. You don’t have to agree with what they do. It doesn’t mean you get to restrict their equality, which is what critics argue the state is doing here.

I wanted to put on two points really quick to the earlier part about things always being in other species, just as in our species. Let’s say Homo sapiens is roughly 300,000 years old. The United States is about 250 years old. Human sexual diversity therefore predates the United States by an enormous margin. Gay people are 1,200 times older.

Part two. Anyone who wants to think about where they sit on these things can read about the Kinsey scale.

Bouley: I’ve had the Kinsey discussion with men that I’ve had sex with. There’s no other way to put this. In the ’80s, before Andrew and everything, I had sex with a lot of straight men. And afterwards, they would feel a little awkward.

And I would say, don’t worry, honey, maybe you’re somewhere on the Kinsey scale. And they’re like, what do you mean? And I go, zero is exclusively heterosexual, six is exclusively homosexual, and the numbers in between describe varying mixtures of heterosexual and homosexual attraction or behavior. There’s also an X category in the original system for people who reported no socio-sexual contacts or reactions.

Kinsey’s research challenged the idea that everyone fitted neatly into only two exclusive categories. The researchers found substantial variation in people’s reported sexual behavior, thoughts, and feelings, and that these did not always remain consistent across time.

It’s amazing when you actually think about that. Kinsey was onto something in showing that sexual behavior and attraction could vary rather than fitting into a simple binary. Nowadays people also talk about sexual fluidity, although that’s a broader modern concept and not simply another name for the Kinsey scale.

And by the way, I’ve slept with more women than probably Scott, and the ’80s were fun. And that’s really what we’re talking about when we discuss variation and, for some people, fluidity in sexuality. Kinsey’s work did not establish that almost nobody is exclusively heterosexual or exclusively homosexual, nor that removing social constraints would make everyone sexually fluid. What it did show was that human sexual behavior and attraction were more varied than a strict heterosexual-homosexual binary suggested.

I dated a kid named Devin and I still see him. He was just here last weekend. We don’t have sex anymore, but we had fabulous sex back in the day. And yet I told everyone he was straight and they’re all, he’s not that straight. He’s with you. And I said, no, he’s straight. It’s just at the end of the day, when all is said and done, he’ll end up with a woman. He’s having fun with me and we’re having a great time, but ultimately he’s heterosexual. And they were like, oh no, he’s bi. He’s this, he’s that. I go, no, he is straight. That’s how he identifies.

He might have fallen somewhere between exclusively heterosexual and exclusively homosexual on the Kinsey scale, but the scale itself does not determine someone’s sexual identity. It runs from zero to six, with zero representing exclusively heterosexual behavior or attraction and six representing exclusively homosexual behavior or attraction.

You sent a story that interested me so much because I’ve never even thought about it. So let’s talk about it. A new publication reveals unequal conditions for LGBTI people. They’ve used LGBTI here rather than LGBTQ. I didn’t get the memo. So whoever issues the gay memos should put me on their CC list.

But anyway, for people in parts of the Nordic region, specifically Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and Åland, I just don’t think of Greenlandic gays or Faroese gays. I just don’t picture gay people living there, but they do. They do live in these regions, as we have pointed out. They’re in every culture.

And so I was interested because I thought maybe Greenland would be very, very accepting of gays or these other Nordic territories would be more accepting since, hell, half the time they can’t even tell what’s under the parka anyway.

I really was interested in the article about how LGBTI people are treated in these parts of the Nordic region. The first thing that I took from it was that, as elsewhere, trans people are particularly vulnerable to gaps in services and protections. The report specifically found inadequate access to appropriate care for transgender people in Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and Åland, along with gaps in institutional structures and public services.

It seems that a lot of hostility that historically focused on gay men is now also being directed toward trans people in many places.

And women have historically been treated differently under laws criminalizing same-sex conduct. In many legal systems, prohibitions focused specifically on sexual acts between men, although that does not mean lesbians were socially accepted or free from discrimination.

But all the hatred that’s heaped on gay men is now kind of being transferred to the trans community, unfortunately, and it appears that trans people face particular vulnerabilities in these Nordic territories. But there are other challenges for LGBTI people there, and what they found was that conditions and legal frameworks vary considerably among Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and Åland.

Jacobsen: Yeah. And some of the legal reforms are relatively recent. The Faroe Islands introduced same-sex marriage in 2017 and equal parental rights for same-sex couples in 2021. Greenland introduced broader anti-discrimination protections covering sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, and sex characteristics in 2024. Åland has had an LGBTI action plan since 2019.

Bouley: Yeah. That was particularly surprising. I thought they were so far ahead on this. Canada and the United States legalized same-sex marriage nationwide earlier than the Faroe Islands, although the timing and legal pathways differed substantially.

By the way, you are Canadian. Congratulations. The European Commission president announced a proposal today for Canada to potentially become what she called the EU’s first “associate member.” But that category does not currently exist in EU law, and Canada has not actually been granted such a status. Any formal arrangement would still require substantial negotiation and agreement among EU member states.

And what that could eventually mean for you, Scott Douglas Jacobsen, if Canada were ever granted some form of EU associate status with mobility rights, is that you might have greater ability to live and work in Europe. But that status does not exist yet, and Canadians do not currently have an automatic right to live and work anywhere in the EU without the relevant immigration permissions.

Jacobsen: Without military media accreditation. You can just go. I’ve been screened by military forces and the Secret Service and labeled as…

Bouley: There’s more than a few things I’d like to be scanned by the military for, but some of those Ukrainian soldiers are hot as fuck. Can I just say?

Can I just go on record as saying Ukraine has some fucking hot soldiers? I’ve seen photos and whoo! And since I’m saying inappropriate things, my God, when I see some of these men in Gaza, I think I’ll go rescue you, honey. I mean, my God. Arab men.

Jacobsen: Air-drop me!

Bouley: Yeah, baby! I’ll bring humanitarian supplies.

It’s such a hot topic.

Jacobsen: Google Translate.

Bouley: Yeah, exactly.

We talked about Gaza yesterday on my show Wednesday quite a bit because of Ed Sheeran. You heard about the Ed Sheeran thing, right? Where he’s had some touring issues.

Well, Macklemore was opening for him. Macklemore said, “Free Palestine.” He has also spoken publicly about Congo.

Jacobsen: Macklemore and Ed Sheeran?

Bouley: Yeah, well, they’ve been friends for years.

Jacobsen: Really?

Bouley: Yeah, that’s why he was on tour. Ed invited him to join the tour.

Robert Kraft here in the U.S., who owns Gillette Stadium and is a prominent supporter of Israel and campaigns against antisemitism, objected to Macklemore performing there following Macklemore’s pro-Palestinian statements. Kraft barred Macklemore from performing at Gillette Stadium. Other venues also refused to host shows with Macklemore on the bill, according to the tour promoter.

Messina Touring Group, which was the promoter, then removed Macklemore from the remaining U.S. dates. Ed Sheeran said the decision was made by the promoter and that he had tried to mediate with the venues. Ultimately, as an artist, he still faced criticism over how the situation was handled.

It’s very troubling that venue owners can exert that kind of pressure over who appears on a major tour because of political speech. So that was the drama going on there with all of that.

So, lawyers have said private messages were cited as obscenity evidence against detained LGBTI+ people. This is an alarming story that you sent. It’s from Bianet. It is credited to the BIA News Desk.

Sixteen people detained in İzmir, Türkiye, during the nationwide raids were formally arrested on charges related to obscenity and prostitution. According to lawyer Ahmet Rodi Polat, police obtained detainees’ phone passwords without a court order, searched their phones, and added private messages and photographs to the investigation file as evidence. These are allegations made by the defence lawyer, not judicial findings.

Basically, let me put this in a context for you all here. It’s as if the government went into their personal DMs.

Bouley: Or text messages to gather evidence against them. So they invaded their very private space to look at the messages and see if they were queer messages, gay messages or whatever.

Jacobsen: According to their lawyer, police obtained their phone passwords without a court order and searched their phones. Messages and photos were then added to the investigation file as evidence. Those are allegations from the defence lawyer, not findings by a court.

Bouley: And that, I mean, the alleged illegality of that is just stellar. It says the LGBTQ community is being criminalized in Türkiye because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

The İzmir detentions were part of sweeping raids conducted in the cities that we spoke of. Detention orders were issued for 162 people, and Bianet reported that most were taken into custody. According to the lawyer, police obtained passwords without a court order and went through private messages and photographs to gather evidence.

And that’s just really sad. So again, it erodes the confidence level between gays and authorities. The authorities who are supposed to protect gays as well as everybody else.

I don’t trust cops. I’ve, as a gay man, I’ve been stopped, targeted, harassed, pulled over when leaving a gay bar countless times, detained for hours for no reason whatsoever and never arrested. And in Garden Grove, California, police were accused of taking flash photographs of patrons entering and leaving Mac’s Landing, a gay bar, and parking a police car outside for long periods. The owners sued the city and officers. A federal jury initially awarded them $110,000, although a judge later ordered a new trial.

Jacobsen: Young white Slavic men. The ones who, I’m assuming, they wanted to fill those condoms with poo years ago and throw them at the Pride march. As far as I can tell or was told, during Pride marches, some opponents would take photos of participants and then share those images on Telegram, and if people could later be identified, the concern was that they could be harassed afterward.

Bouley: Well, that’s why nowadays, and I hate to say this, I can’t believe I’m saying this in 2026. Oh yes, I can actually. If you’re queer nowadays, you’ve got to be careful on social media. You do. And we covered that story last week. Remember it said, don’t give too much away on social media. Don’t necessarily give your location away. If you’re gay now, you’ve got to be careful on social media because people can use photos and location information to identify and target people. So you don’t want to give too much away.

Jacobsen: And this is known. The question is not only who they’re targeting, it’s who is doing the targeting. And I think women are much more aware of this too. Younger women on social media are often more careful and alert to this stuff because they can also be targets of harassment and violence.

Bouley: Gay men need to start behaving like straight white women. I assume that Kharkiv is in Ukraine, correct?

Jacobsen: Yes, eastern Ukraine and very close to the front.

Bouley: So in a frontline eastern city, several dozen people got together and held a gay Pride event.

Jacobsen: Yeah, and the report comes from the Union of Orthodox Journalists. They’re not exactly a progressive group, but they were reporting on this. The event took place in the Kharkiv metro around Universitet and Derzhprom stations. Several dozen participants carried rainbow flags under National Guard protection. A counter-protest by Prava Molod took place nearby, and police kept the groups separated. The event ended without reported violence. Which is fine. That is a legal right.

Bouley: There was no violence as far as I’m aware. Yeah, but you have to love how the gays started. They were like mole people. They started underground at the metro station and then they emerged. And it even says, participants then came to the surface. It’s so funny, the verbiage.

Jacobsen: You go down the escalator for a couple of minutes and then you take the metro. It’s deep underground.

Bouley: So we’re not understanding here exactly how far underground it is. It’s not like the New York subway where you’re relatively close to street level.

But I love the verbiage from the Union of Orthodox Journalists. The event began underground and then participants came to the surface. It’s like we’re cicadas after 17 years emerging.

Jacobsen: Yeah, that’s exactly it. It’s like The Time Machine, that movie where they come out of the ground and they drag people down.

Bouley: I love that movie. That was better than The Mothman Prophecies. I should have watched that. The Time Machine, fantastic movie. Still great. I love the moon splitting. Everything about that movie was great. I absolutely love that movie.

Jacobsen: It was fundamentally a philosophical movie, I think.

Bouley: Yes, actually. A lot of science fiction is, however.

Nearby activists from Prava Molod held a protest against the Pride march. The two groups were separated by substantial police cordons, with dozens of police buses deployed at the scene. The standoff ended without incident.

It might be interesting to note there appeared to be a very large police presence relative to the number of Pride participants.

Jacobsen: So I should have gone. I mean, it’s a half-day trip, maybe.

Bouley: Yes, you should have and marched with the gays and covered it and been there with a camera.

A high-ranking Russian official at the IAEA was suspended over a book containing attacks on the LGBTQ community. Now, the IAEA is the International Atomic Energy Agency, and it suspended Mikhail Chudakov, a deputy director general who heads the Department of Nuclear Energy and is one of the most senior Russian officials in the UN system, amid an ethics investigation stemming from a book he wrote under a pseudonym.

The book in question is a 76-page Treatise on Life, more of an extended essay really, published in 2025 under the pseudonym Valentin Voyutin.

In the book, according to reporting on the ethics investigation, he refers to feminists as “hysterical fanatics” and uses derogatory terms for gay men and lesbians. He describes same-sex relationships as “sinful deviations” and their influence on young people as “poison.”

It caught the agency’s attention after Chudakov promoted the book at a meeting involving the Young Nuclear Generation in Vienna. Representatives of the youth group subsequently gave the book to the IAEA ethics office, after which Chudakov was placed on administrative leave while the matter was investigated.

In the book, the author also opposes feminist movements and argues that women have gained excessive rights. According to reporting on the investigation, IAEA staff are expected to comply with standards concerning nondiscrimination, professionalism, workplace conduct and the independence expected of international civil servants.

Former U.S. Ambassador to the IAEA Laura Holgate called the publication and distribution highly inappropriate, emphasizing that its content was inconsistent with the professional standards expected of a senior international official. Holgate served twice as the U.S. representative to the IAEA and other international organizations in Vienna.

Can I just say this group would have had a fit if they ever listened to Rush Limbaugh. Do you know who Rush Limbaugh is?

Jacobsen: I remember when he died, and I don’t think there was a lot of mourning in the gay community.

Bouley: No. Rush Limbaugh used to do an “AIDS Update” segment in which he mocked people who had died of AIDS, including reading names of people who had died while using music and sound effects. He later said he regretted doing the segment.

Yeah, Rush Limbaugh was on the same radio station as Andrew and I. He was nine to noon. Dr. Laura was noon to three, and then the gay guys in the afternoon. So Bill Handel in the morning, Rush Limbaugh nine to noon, Dr. Laura noon to three, and then two queers that were married in afternoon drive.

I will say that Rush sent me flowers when Andrew died. And so did Dr. Laura. I put them on the toilet for the guests to pee and look at the flowers.

And I will say that when I met Rush, I came away believing a lot of it was shtick. That was my impression of him. I did not excuse him for it. When I met him, I told him what a despicable human being I thought he was and that I hoped he choked on his cigar. We had quite an impassioned debate about his tactics on air and his treatment of gay people and people with AIDS.

When you’re sitting there with your partner who has HIV, yeah, it was a problem.

So I’m just saying that in reference to this story, what that guy wrote is tame compared to some of what Rush Limbaugh was allowed to say on commercial radio in this country. But he wasn’t a senior official at an international nuclear agency. He was a talk-radio host.

Guyana Together campaign marks three years of efforts to reduce stigma and prejudice against the LGBT community in Guyana. So far the movement has secured support from 250 organizational endorsers who have pledged support for the campaign. They call themselves Guyanese, by the way.

And the Guyanese Organisation of Indigenous Peoples also shared that reaching 250 organizations endorsing Guyana Together shows that people from every part of Guyana can stand together for a fairer country. The campaign was launched in September 2023 by the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Black Entrepreneurs Association, the Guyana Press Association, and SASOD Guyana.

Bouley: Can stand together for a fairer country. Encouraging story, is it not?

Jacobsen: Nationally encouraging story. That’s a one-off. This is great.

Bouley: It is great. And the story goes on to talk about how there is broad support across Guyanese society, with the latest poll showing 53.9% of Guyanese support repealing the colonial-era law criminalizing same-sex intimacy, and 72% support workplace protections for LGBT people.

Interesting word there, colonization. A lot of the countries we talk about with anti-gay laws inherited criminal prohibitions on same-sex intimacy from British colonial legal systems. Some of those laws remained in force after independence.

So it’s very interesting that British colonial law still has consequences for gay people in parts of the world. And now Britain has extensive legal protections for LGBTQ people, although debates and policy disputes continue there as they do elsewhere. So it’s striking that laws exported during the colonial era still shape some countries today.

Jacobsen: Yeah, and I think this is great. It’s another indication, just a reminder, that we can always do better. These are very simple asks.

Bouley: I always say that to every person. I’m like, y’all think that gays want special rights. We don’t want any special rights. I don’t want a whole separate rule book for gays. Just put me in the same tent as y’all. Give me the same rights as everybody else. Let me buy a cake wherever I want to buy a cake.

Let me check into a hotel and sleep with my partner. Because you realize when Andrew and I used to travel across the country, some hotels would insist on giving us two double beds. They would not give us just one bed. And I’m not making that up.

It’s just little fuckery like that. It ruins even the most subtle, private moments of the most important parts of life, which have to do with love.

And by the way, he would try to sleep in the other bed because he would say, well, I might as well have more room. And I’d be, fuck that, you come over here, we are a couple. And he goes, well, there’s an empty bed over there. And I’m like, I don’t care.

Jacobsen: Well, the fact that you had a sense of humor about it was nice. But for some other people, I’m sure it was more painful.

Bouley: A couple of times we pushed the beds together if they moved. So we made a king-size bed.

Jacobsen: Oh, that’s good, actually.

Bouley: Yeah, yeah. So we would make a king-size bed.

All right, in Australia, they’re doing something similar to what other governments and institutions have done, which is they’re saying, we are so fucking sorry.

It’s amazing how much apology, so there should be a gay apology tour. The world needs to apologize to the gays, starting with the Catholics.

Australian police say sorry for harsh treatment of gay and lesbian Mardi Gras participants in 1978. Sydney’s first Mardi Gras took place in 1978 as a demonstration for gay and lesbian rights. Police broke up the march, arrested 53 people, and many participants were beaten. Their names, addresses, and occupations were subsequently published in the press, causing serious personal consequences for some of them.

New South Wales Police formally apologized to the original participants, known as the 78ers, in 2016, acknowledging the pain and harm caused by police actions during that first Mardi Gras.

It’s world-renowned now, by the way, and Sydney welcomes it. The people of Australia welcome it, they love the gay Mardi Gras. Kylie Minogue, you know, performs at it. It’s a big deal. She just did a new album. The gays love Kylie. She just did a song with Madonna. Hello! And that was weird. Every gay man fell down and wet their pants when they released the Kylie-Madonna collaboration.

So back in 1978, when the first Sydney Mardi Gras happened, police broke up the demonstration. They arrested protesters and some were beaten. But we are at the end of the show. This was kind of like their Stonewall in terms of its importance to the Australian gay-rights movement. Fifty-three people were arrested. There were violent clashes between activists and police. So our Stonewall was in 1969. Their first Mardi Gras confrontation was nine years later, in 1978. It was a Saturday night, June 24, 1978.

At that time, consensual homosexual acts between men were illegal in New South Wales, where they remained criminalized until 1984.

So the New South Wales Parliament and NSW Police later issued formal apologies for what happened in 1978. And I say better late than never.

Jacobsen: And there are three really key issues everyone can ask and therefore put pressure on their local police force or their state on this. One, is it legal? The exact law depends on the jurisdiction, but is it a lawful action by representatives of the state, the police for instance?

Secondly, is it necessary? In cases involving alleged human-rights abuses, you can ask whether the restriction or police action was actually necessary.

And the third one is proportionality. So even if some enforcement action is lawful and necessary, is the force or restriction proportional to the legitimate aim being pursued? And a lot of these cases raise questions about legality, necessity, and proportionality.

You just described the Gaza crisis right there. I mean, you…

Jacobsen: Yeah. Well, there’s a lot of cases.

Bouley: “We are diverse and we are proud of that diversity. We apologize for the actions of our department during the 1978 Mardi Gras, and we will use it as an example to continue to be better.”

The formal police apology came in 2016. It followed an apology from Fairfax Media, publisher of The Sydney Morning Herald, which acknowledged that in 1978 the newspaper had published the names, addresses, and professions of people arrested during the protests.

The Sydney Morning Herald, after the arrests were made in 1978, published the names, addresses, and occupations of those arrested. Some people subsequently lost jobs or housing, were outed to their families and communities, or suffered other discrimination and harassment.

Members of both houses of the New South Wales Parliament also formally apologized to the 78ers in February 2016 for the harm, distress, discrimination, and persecution associated with the events of 1978.

More than 500 people had assembled for the original demonstration, and the crowd later grew to more than 2,000 as the march proceeded through Sydney. Many of the original participants, known as the 78ers, were still alive to receive those apologies decades later.

When asked, many described the apologies as meaningful recognition of what had happened and as an important step after decades of advocacy.

But they did a lot of irreparable damage, and we need to make sure it never happens again.

I can’t even… Points are both extremely valid. You know they used to do that here in America. If you got arrested in a tearoom, do you know what a tearoom is?

Jacobsen: No.

Bouley: A public bathroom used as a meeting place for anonymous sex between men. There’s a famous sociological book about tearooms and their role in gay male sexual culture, Tearoom Trade by Laud Humphreys, published in 1970. Public restrooms became meeting places partly because gay men historically had fewer safe or openly available places to meet.

Jacobsen: Is this where the phrase “spill the tea” comes from as well?

Bouley: No. “Spill the tea” has a different history. “Tea,” or “T,” meaning truth or gossip, is generally traced to Black LGBTQ+ and drag culture and later became widespread in popular culture. It isn’t derived from sexual activity in tearooms.

Tearooms were very significant historically. There are books and studies about how they fit into gay male culture. There were periods when openly gay social spaces were scarce or heavily policed, so some men met in bathrooms in public parks and other public places.

And back in the day, particularly during the mid-20th century, men arrested for homosexual solicitation or public sexual conduct could face consequences far beyond the criminal charge itself, including exposure, employment problems, and public stigma. There were also documented controversies involving undercover policing and entrapment claims. California courts eventually placed limits on how public-lewdness laws could be enforced.

Laud Humphreys’ research also found that men participating in tearoom encounters did not fit neatly into a single sexual-identity category. Many lived publicly heterosexual lives, while others identified or behaved in ways that Humphreys classified as bisexual or homosexual. His study does not support saying that 80% of men arrested in tearooms identified as heterosexual.

Like George Michael. When George Michael was arrested at Will Rogers Memorial Park in Beverly Hills in 1998, he later said publicly that the undercover officer had exposed himself and masturbated in front of him and that he believed he had been entrapped. The officer disputed Michael’s characterization, and Michael ultimately pleaded no contest to disorderly conduct.

George talked about it openly afterward and turned the whole thing into satire with “Outside.”

All right. That brings us to the end of this Gay Week. You’re going to stay safe in Ukraine because we need you.

The world is a better place with you in it, so please stay that way. We will be back next week with more stories, not all of them bad, even like this week. Not all of them bad. We ended on two great stories where Guyanese people are showing increasing support for LGBT rights and where Australian institutions are apologizing for past mistreatment. So those are good things to end with.

Thank you, as always, Scott, for joining us this week on This Gay Week. I am Karel. Be who you want to be, so long as you don’t hurt anybody. We will see you on Monday. I am off on Fridays. Have an absolutely great weekend.

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Scott Douglas Jacobsen is a Writer and Editor for The Good Men Project with more than 2,000 publications on the platform. He is the Founder and Publisher of In-Sight Publishing (ISBN: 978-1-0692343; 978-1-0673505) and Editor-in-Chief of In-Sight: Interviews (ISSN: 2369-6885). He writes for International Policy Digest (ISSN: 2332–9416), The Humanist (Print: ISSN, 0018-7399; Online: ISSN, 2163-3576), Basic Income Earth Network (UK Registered Charity 1177066), Humanist Perspectives (ISSN: 1719-6337), A Further Inquiry (SubStack), Vocal, Medium, The New Enlightenment Project, The Washington Outsider, rabble.ca, and other media. His bibliography index can be found via the Jacobsen Bank at In-Sight Publishing comprised of more than 10,000 articles, interviews, and republications, in more than 200 outlets. He has served in national and international leadership roles within humanist and media organizations, held several academic, media, and research institution fellowships, and currently serves on numerous international boards. He is a member in good standing in numerous media organizations, including the Canadian Association of Journalists, PEN Canada (CRA: 88916 2541 RR0001), and Reporters Without Borders (SIREN: 343 684 221/SIRET: 343 684 221 00041/EIN: 20-0708028), and others.