Europe Under Heat
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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Europe Under Heat
By Jude Jones, editor-in-chief
This week, Europe has oscillated between heatstroke and its new-Cold-War geopolitical headaches. Across France, Spain and Britain, temperatures climbed to levels more familiar to July than May, shattering records and prompting health warnings as scientists warned that extreme weather events are becoming both earlier and more frequent. In France alone, several heat-related deaths have already been reported. For a continent still struggling to adapt its infrastructure to a warming climate -- and even accelerating its demise as AI data centres still proliferate (what Pope Leo warned might be an existential threat we must “disarm”, in his first major teaching) -- the season of excuses is rapidly drawing to a close.
Meanwhile, Russia has once again found ways to make itself Europe’s problem. Following renewed threats against Kyiv and escalating rhetoric from Moscow, several European governments summoned Russian ambassadors in protest. Brussels accused the Kremlin of seeking to destabilise the continent beyond Ukraine’s borders, while NATO hushedly expanded its defensive posture in the Baltic region following a series of Russian airspace incursions from Latvia to Lithuania. More than four years into the invasion, the war remains both futile and endlessly inventive in its capacity to poison relations between Russia and the rest of Europe.
For queers, familiar battles continued. Britain is still digesting the consequences of the Supreme Court’s ruling on the legal definition of sex, a decision whose practical effects now ripple through schools, workplaces and public services as institutions attempt to redraw boundaries around trans participation. Hungary remains locked in its perpetual confrontation with Brussels over “child protection” laws that restrict LGBTQ+ visibility, while Slovakia’s governing coalition has renewed efforts to curtail trans healthcare and legal recognition. In Italy, Giorgia Meloni’s government continues challenging the parental rights of same-sex couples. A decade ago, Europe appeared to be converging on a liberal consensus. Today, governments from Westminster to Budapest seem increasingly convinced that queer people are a constitutional question rather than citizens.
In the United States, reporting continued to focus on the expanding restrictions on gender-affirming care in several states, with hospitals and providers scaling back services amid sustained legal and political pressure, while procedural challenges in places like Maine have slowed further attempts to restrict trans students’ rights via ballot initiatives. In Africa, Botswana’s same-sex marriage case edged forward toward upcoming constitutional hearings, keeping the country under close watch as a potential second mover on marriage equality on the continent after South Africa. In Asia, Thailand continued to adjust to the implementation phase of its landmark marriage equality law, while Japan’s long-running legal stalemate over same-sex marriage persisted, with courts increasingly scrutinising the ban but legislators offering no clear resolution.
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