A Queer Mix
Cuts through the week's noise.
In this week's newsletter: Jude Jones, editor-in-chief of GAY45, cuts through the week's noise exclusively for subscribers, plus our essential recommendations.
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A Queer Mix
By Jude Jones, editor-in-chief
For the second year in a row, Israel finishes second in Eurovision. Beat out by Bulgaria -- the most recent ascendant to the Eurozone, which at the start of the year witnessed Europe’s first “Gen-Z revolution” -- Israeli entrant Noam Betton competed to a cacophony of protests as Austrian television networks decided not to censor opposition. Five countries, including seven-time winners Ireland, boycotted. Meanwhile, through the festivities, the death toll in Israel’s invasion of Lebanon has surpassed 7,000. Three community kitchen workers were killed in an attack in the Gaza Strip, bringing the death toll since its signing of a ceasefire to 871. The EU lurches slowly closer to sanctions on Israeli settlers. Right-wing newspapers hailed Betton’s high finish as a victory against wokeism.
This week also saw ILGA-Europe release its annual index of LGBTQ+ equality in the continent. After a decade of dominance, Spain, which also boycotted Eurovision, dethroned Malta as the queer top dog. The UK, another former ranking leader, remained in 22nd place, though it now scores just 44 per cent on the index -- one point above the European average, and almost 10 below the EU average. This also makes it the lowest-scoring country in Western Europe and puts it on a similar par with Albania, Serbia and Czechia. Above it are countries such as Austria, Slovenia, Montenegro and Croatia. The retrograde, a spokesperson said, is due to the country’s ongoing legal hostility to trans life.
In Russia, which unsurprisingly came at the bottom of the IGLA rankings, a photographer has been sentenced to prison for writing LGBTQ+ fan fiction. Pussy Riot, who staged a protest outside Russia’s Venice Biennale Pavilion, were also declared terrorists. Its futile war also carries on. Belarus, swiftly devolving into a puppet nation, has just launched a joint nuclear venture with the northern power. The country put into place its own similar framework of suppression last month, forbidding information that ‘promotes’ same-sex relationships, healthcare for transgender people or abortion rights. It also ranked in ILGA’s lowest quartile, only above Turkey, Azerbaijan and Russia itself.
MUST READ OF GAY45
THE PULITZER
From the USA: The Conscience of the Year
M. Gessen takes the Pulitzer for Opinion as the prize confronts an authoritarianism that the prize itself can no longer politely ignore.
PHOTOGRAPHY
From the UK: The Story of a Love Image: Keith Collins with Derek Jarman
Keith Collins, who died of a brain tumour in 2018 at the age of fifty-four, spent the final eight years of Derek Jarman’s life as the filmmaker’s companion, carer, and—perhaps most significantly—the quiet architect of his late flowering. It was a relationship that defied easy categorisation: not lovers, though the photographer Bruce Webber called it “the greatest love story”; not merely professional, though Collins appeared in Jarman’s films under the name Kevin Collins; not simply caretaker and patient, though Collins believed his greatest achievement was keeping Jarman alive long enough to complete the film Blue in 1993.
EXHIBITION
From the USA: Donna Gottschalk and Hélène Giannecchini Documents Lesbian Life
Donna Gottschalk documents lesbian life in the 60s and 70s. ‘Because You Are Beautiful and I Never Want to Forget You’.
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