Fear in Italy's LGBTQ+ community after far-right election win
Following the election of the most right-wing government in Rome since Mussolini, Italian LGBTQ+ activists and political leaders are voicing their concerns.

"Unfortunately, there are very real fears," said Fabrizio Marrazzo, a member of the Gay Party, after the nationalist group Brothers of Italy swept the ballot. The Brothers of Italy's leader, Giorgia Meloni, presents herself as a champion of traditional Christian values and crusader against what she calls "gender ideology" and the "LGBT lobby," though she has denied that she would abolish existing Italian legislation on same-sex partnerships or abortion rights.

Homophobic march in Istanbul
Turkish translator and Trans drag performer Willie Ray and their mother watched with horror last Sunday as thousands of demonstrators marched in an anti-LGBTQ demonstration titled "The Big Family Gathering." Turkey's media supported the event, and ran a homophobic ad among a series of public service announcements.

Ray's and their mother's horror is warranted. The European branch of the International LGBTQI Association has ranked Turkey second to last in a recent legal equality index, citing the country's "countless hate crimes" against the community.

"I feel like I can be publicly lynched," Ray said. On New Year's Eve this year, they were harassed while leaving a nightclub in their makeup, and the demonstrations signal an alarming shift in Turkey's discourse — especially considering President Erdogan's pro-LGBTQ statements earlier in his career.

"And now, 20 years into [Erdogan's administration]," said Mine Eder, a political science professor at Bogazici University, "you have an entirely different president that seems to be mobilizing based on these dehumanizing, criminal approaches to the LGBTQ movement itself."