Queer joy, protest in New Delhi streets
On Sunday last week, with COVID restrictions lifted, thousands hit the streets of New Delhi to push for equal marriage rights, filling the air with flags, balloons, signs, and drumbeats for an hour as they marched to India's parliament.

"It's good, it's fabulous," said Vishal Rai, 23. "Because we are here to celebrate ourselves, after three years."

In 2018 the country's Supreme Court decriminalized Gay sex, and since then, it has also heard petitions for grantting same-sex marriage legal recognition. The existence of Bollywood films with with LGBTQ themes, and of openly Gay celebrities, like filmmaker and author Apurva Asrani and Lesbian stand-up comedian Vasu Primlani, could signal the beginning of a cultural shift as well as a legal one.

Meanwhile, Hindu nationalist leaders have trotted out the classic appeal to national culture and tradition, arguing that same-sex marriage goes against both. And overall, LGBTQ people still face significant discrimination in the country.

"Give it another 20 years," said volunteer Noor Enayat on the momentous progress since 2003. "It will be a very different world. So, I'm not going to be hopeless about it or say it's not happening. It's happening."

Drag fans in London baffled by US restrictions
RuPaul's DragCon UK returned to London last weekend after a three-year break. It reflected a very different political situation and national stance on the art form, compared to the United States' string of bills and protests restricting access to drag events.

Eleven-year-old Diggory Alberts, who took to the stage on the event's second day to show off his dance moves, told NBC News that the experience was "amazing," because there were "a bunch of other young kids who are here living their life and enjoying it."

Alberts reportedly struggled with the idea that American lawmakers would want to keep kids away from drag. "You can be whoever you want to be," he said.

RuPaul's Drag Race finalist Lady Camden emphasized the good drag could do for young Gay people.

"I wish I had let myself be Gayer and more feminine when I was a kid," she said. "I wish I could go back in time and just let myself play with Barbies and let myself wear pink, talk however I want to talk, love whoever I want to love."

Danielle Gostling of Kent, England, brought her daughter Dorothy, 6, to the convention.

"It's about fun and expression and love and equality, and that's very important for the children to know about," she said, adding that there's "nothing overtly graphic at all" about drag.