Heartstopper will say goodbye with a movie

Netflix has officially announced that the hit series Heartstopper, starring Kit Connor (Nick) and Joe Locke (Charlie), will conclude with a feature film, thus not returning for a full fourth season.

A release date has not been revealed for the Heartstopper movie finale, but filming will begin this summer 2025.

Heartstopper is about Charlie, an openly gay anxious boy, and Nick, a kind-hearted rugby player. They both go to the same school and when they meet, they immediately have a connection.

Before being a TV series, it was also a successful comic created by Alicce Oseman in 2016. After three years and 1 million books sold, there was talk of a television adaptation. After season 1, season 2 and season 3, Heartstopper will say goodbye with a movie. 

Thanks for this sensational story!!

Trans people will be part of Pope Francis' funeral

 

A group of transgender people will be among the roughly 40 individuals selected by the Vatican to offer a final send off to Pope Francis before he is interred in the Basilica Santa Maria Maggiore on Saturday.

According to organizers, the group will stand on the steps of the basilica, each holding a white rose, to pay homage to the late pope. In addition to representatives from the transgender community, the group will include migrants, prisoners and others representing communities close to the pope’s heart.

Bishop Benoni Ambarus said that the decision to include this group of people in the pope’s send off is symbolic of his concern for the most marginalized.

Pope Francis, who died on April 21, addressed LGBTQ issues in a manner that rattled many traditional Catholics and raised the expectations of progressives. 

In 2023, Francis became the first pope to officially back the repeal of legislation criminalizing homosexuality. More than 60 countries criminalize same-sex activity; the death penalty is the punishment in a dozen jurisdictions. Being homosexual is "not a crime," Francis told.

Rest in peace!

UK Supreme Court rules legal definition of man and woman is based on biological sex

The U.K. Supreme Court ruled that the legal definitions of “man” and “woman” are based on a person’s “biological sex” as assigned at birth. The Court issued its ruling with a unanimous 5-0 decision, and the anti-transgender activists hailed the decision.

For Women Scotland (FWS), an anti-trans advocacy group, challenged changes to Scotland’s Gender Recognition Act, arguing to the U.K.’s highest court that Scotland should not be allowed to include trans women who have gender recognition certificates (GRCs) as “women” for the purposes of meeting gender equity quotas on public boards. 

The five justices largely sided with FWS in their decision, writing that including cis and trans women in the same legal sex category “would cut across the definitions of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ and thus the protected characteristic of sex in an incoherent way.”

“The meaning of the terms 'sex', 'man', and 'woman' — as used in the U.K.’s Equality Act 2010, which bars discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, and gender reassignment — refer to biological sex, as any other interpretation would render the Equality Act 2010 incoherent and impracticable to operate,” the Court ruled.

The Court’s decision undercuts the central purpose of the Gender Recognition Act and goes against 20 years of equality law in the U.K.

Eismayer: a true story of a forbidden love in the army

 

In 2014, David Wagner stumbles across an article about Eismayer in an Austrian newspaper and is immediately captivated by the story: the most terrifying training officer in the Austrian Armed Forces falls in love with a recruit, eventually accepting his proposal and marrying him in full dress uniform in the barracks courtyard. What an idea for a movie.

Sergeant Major Eismayer (Gerhard Liebmann) is known and feared as the toughest training officer in the Austrian Armed Forces, ruthless with recruits and unwavering in his discipline, order and macho toughness. But when he starts to fall in love with Falak (Luka Dimić), a new recruit who unashamedly embraces his homosexuality, Eismayer’s closeted existence is shaken to the core. 

To a man like Eismayer, loving another man cannot be reconciled with the understanding of what a model soldier should be. Will he choose to protect his badass tough guy image over all else, or can he follow his heart and his true desire? 

The movie won the Grand Prize of the International Critics' Week, the autonomous and parallel section organised by the National Syndicate of Italian Film Critics during the 2022 Venice Film Festival.

Watch the trailer below:

Love Against The Odds: Age Gap

 

"You can take away our ages and we’re just two guys that fell in love.” Mike and Aaron are happily married, but they just happen to have a massive 37 year age difference. As society judges them, they use their YT Channel Queer Daze to show how proud they are of their love, but with end of life paper work being signed, is age just a number?

One episode of Love Against the Odds features Aaron, age 29, and Mike, age 66, and highlights the 37-year age gap in their relationship. 

The 10-minute episode featured below paints a picture of their relationship. How they met, how they fell in love, how their relationship progressed, their struggles, their triumphs and all the stupid questions they get asked on a weekly basis. Namely “is that your son?”

The true is simple. Aaron is married in his 20’s to Mike who’s in his 60’s. How lucky Mike must be to have found true love so young, and how lucky Aaron is to have finally found true love. Congratulations!!

Watch the episode below:

Two Afghan LGBT+ activists arrested by Taliban at risk of execution

 

The Taliban have arrested and imprisoned two leading underground Afghan LGBT+ activists, Maryam Ravish, a lesbian, and Abdul Ghafoor Sabery, a trans woman who goes by her chosen name Maeve Alcina Pieescu. Their lives are in grave danger and at risk of execution.

Mariam, 19, and Maeve, 23, were set to escape Kabul on a Mahan Airlines flight to Iran with Mariam’s same-gender partner, Parwen Hussaini, aged 20, on 20 March 2025, with the aid of Roshaniya, the Afghan LGBT+ network.

The Peter Tatchell Foundation in London publicises their plight and press for their release: “We ask all human rights organizations (especially Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International) and LGBT+ organizations (especially OutRight International, ILGA Asia, Stonewall, Rainbow Railroad, and Human Rights Campaign) to please help us spread the word about the arrest of Mariam and Maeve and pressure the Taliban regime to to release these two brave LGBT+ Afghan human rights defenders."

The Taliban returned to power following the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, instituting an immediate return to its interpretation of Sharia law. Under Taliban rule, homosexuality is forbidden and women are required to have a male chaperone if they wish to leave their homes.

Since then, LGBTQ+ Afghans have been tortured, stoned to death, sexually assaulted, and forced into heterosexual marriages, among other atrocities, while a large number of members of the LGBT community lost their lives due to suicide. 

The Taliban have also been slashing away at women’s rights since returning to power in Afghanistan in August 2021. The Taliban have issued more than 70 edicts, including limiting girls to primary-level education, banning women from most professions and prohibiting them from using parks, gyms and other public places. Among the rules, it is mandatory for a woman to veil her body at all times in public and that a face covering is essential to avoid temptation and tempting others. 

A 2022 report and video by Human Rights Watch ashowed the desperate situation of LGBTQ people in Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover in 2021.

Big protest in Budapest against Orbán's ban on Pride march

 

Thousands of Hungarians took to the streets of Budapest to signal their disdain for the government’s ban on Pride marches.

Hungay prime minister Orbán passed legislation banning pro-LGBTQ+ marches as part of his continued legislative campaign against the community.

Under the so-called “child protection” law, allows districts in Hungary to fine Pride organisations and attendees for hosting marches or LGBTQ+ events. 

Budapest Pride, one of the LGBTQ+ organisations affected by the bill, said in a statement that the move is “not child protection, this is fascism.” And they added "We will not let Hungary’s largest regular human rights demonstration be banned!!

This year, Budapest Pride is marking its 30th anniversary.