National
‘Day of Rage’ protests held over India sodomy ruling
Advocates gathered in Delhi, Mumbai, D.C., London
LGBT rights advocates in Bangalore, India, on Dec. 15, 2013, protest the Indian Supreme Court ruling that recriminalized homosexuality. (Photo courtesy of Neha Nambiar)
Thousands of LGBT rights advocates in India and around the world on Sunday took part in “Day of Rage” protests against last week’s India Supreme Court ruling that recriminalized homosexuality.
Activists and their supporters gathered in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkota and other Indian cities to express their outrage over the Dec. 11 decision. Protests also took place outside the Indian embassy on Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., in Northwest D.C. and in New York, London, Toronto and other cities.
“I was especially overwhelmed to see parents of individuals from the community standing up for their kids,” Neha Nambier told the Washington Blade after she took part in a protest against the decision in Bangalore in the southern Indian state of Karnataka.
Omkar, an engineer from Bangalore who did not provide his last name to the Blade, took part in the same protest.
“This verdict encroaches upon my freedom of living life, and it threatens to snatch my dignity,” he said. “Not just mine, but of everyone else too. Therefore, I feel, I must protest against this verdict and voice my concern.”
Mahesh Natarajan, a gay man who has lived with his partner for nearly a decade, also took part in the Bangalore protest.
“I felt betrayed, let down, outraged,” he told the Blade as he discussed the decision. :For me, it is the supreme court abdicating its responsibility and by throwing us back in the hands of the possibly homophobic majority.”
Nearly three dozen people took part in a candlelight vigil outside the Indian embassy near Dupont Circle on Dec. 13.
Members of KhushDC, a group for LGBT South Asians who live in the Washington metropolitan area, placed a rainbow flag in the hand of the Mahatma Gandhi statue near the intersections of 21st and Q Streets, N.W., and Massachusetts Avenue. An unidentified official with the Indian embassy asked the protesters to remove the flag from the monument before the vigil began.
Nearly two dozen people gathered outside the Indian embassy two days earlier to protest the ruling.
“We are together because we want to show the strength of our community and people have been upset by the incredibly intolerant decision of the Supreme Court of India,” said KhushDC President Sapna Pandya during the Dec. 13 vigil.
Vanlal Hruaia of Cheverly, Md., who is from the Northeastern Indian state of Mizoram between Bangladesh and Myanmar, held a sign written in Hindi script during the candlelight vigil that read “I have loved, not committed a crime.”
He described the 2009 Delhi High Court ruling that struck down the country’s colonial-era sodomy law as a “great baby step in moving forward and being open-minded.” Hruaia added he feels the Indian Supreme Court decision that reinstated it is a “Stonewall moment” for LGBT Indians.
“Gays have been marginalized like crazy since British rule came to India,” he said, noting Hinduism recognizes what he described as a third gender. “It’s only when the British came that they marginalized the third-gender people that they’ve been living on the edge of society. And we’ve somehow failed to move beyond that.”
India is now among the 41 U.K. commonwealth countries in which homosexuality remains criminalized.
Sonia Gandhi, president of the Indian National Congress, which is one of the country’s two main political parties, on Dec. 12 criticized the Indian Supreme Court’s ruling.
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay in a Dec. 11 statement described the decision as a “significant step backwards.” She also urged the Indian government to review the ruling.
U.S. State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki last week declined to say how the White House would pressure New Delhi to repeal the country’s colonial-era sodomy law in response to questions from the Blade and other media outlets.
Indian Law Minister Kapil Sibal said his government will consider ways to overturn the decision. It remains highly unlikely lawmakers will decriminalize homosexuality before next year’s elections because members of the socially conservative Bharatiya Janata Party, which observers have labeled as Hindu nationalist, and their political allies will likely block any such proposal.
“The judges seem to have decided that they were speaking for a ‘real India’ that finds all this distasteful or worse and against that view all the legal skill on our side was of no use,” Vikram Doctor of the Times of India newspaper told the Blade. “If anything it confirmed their feelings that this was all elite urban outrage.”
LGBT rights advocates are planning to ask the Indian Supreme Court to reconsider their decision. They are also scheduled to meet in New Delhi on Dec. 22.
“I don’t think this is going to be as easy to change as people are hoping,” said Doctor. “All the support we are seeing now is wonderful and heart-warming, but it remains to be seen how much difference it will make over time and when we are up against this ‘real India’ attitude which is quite widespread.”
Tushar Malik, a Human Rights Campaign fellow from New Delhi, told the Blade during the Dec. 13 vigil outside the Indian embassy in D.C. that a lot of “dissatisfaction with this decision” remains in India.
“It’s a shame to our democracy,” he said.
Harjant Gill, a D.C. anthropologist from Chandigarh in Northern India, said the outrage over the Indian Supreme Court’s decision he has seen on social media networks demonstrates his countrymen increasingly support LGBT rights. He told the Blade after he attended the D.C. vigil on Dec. 13 that most people with whom he has spoken in India since the judges announced their ruling described it as “incredibly stupid.”
“They don’t understand this is moving the country in the wrong direction,” said Gill. “A lot of people see gay rights as a human rights issue and the fact that the India Supreme Court did this says something about their commitment to human rights and that in fact they’re maybe not committed to human rights.”
“Queer Indians have always been a fractured lot across race, caste, religion, economic status, language, gender, sexuality, colour and everything else, and find it hard to come together,” added Natarajan. “This judgment has already brought us together to a larger degree than anything else so far. Every liberal Indian is coming out and speaking out. We got to build on this and make this our stonewall moment. There isn’t any other choice.”
Omkar had a similar message for the court.
“We are simply asking [it to] let consenting adults decide how they express feelings of mutual love and affection,” he told the Blade.
South Carolina
Man faces first S.C. ‘hate intimidation’ charge
Timothy Truett allegedly shot at gay club in Myrtle Beach on April 1
A South Carolina man remains in custody on a more than $300,000 bond after he allegedly opened fire at a Myrtle Beach nightclub on April 1, according to WMBF.
Reports say 37-year-old Timothy James Truett Jr., of Clover, S.C., was detained by the Myrtle Beach Police Department after the April 1 incident outside Pulse Ultra Club. He was later arrested and charged with possession of a weapon during a violent crime, discharging a firearm into a dwelling, discharging a firearm within city limits, malicious injury to real property valued over $5,000, and assault or intimidation due to political opinions or the exercise of civil rights.
At 10:57 a.m. on April 1, officers responded to a call about a possible shooting at Pulse Ultra Club, located in the 2700 block of South Kings Highway.
In an affidavit released later, the club’s owner, Ken Phillips, said he was doing paperwork that morning when he heard “five or six” gunshots. He went outside and found a window and the windshield of his SUV shattered by bullets. An SUV with blue plastic covering one window was left at the scene.
Police later reviewed footage that showed a silver vehicle stopping in the middle of the road. The video appeared to capture muzzle flashes coming from the passenger-side window.
According to the affidavit, an officer later pulled over a vehicle driven by Truett and found spent shell casings in the back seat, along with a gun.
Documents do not detail why Truett was ultimately charged under the state law covering assault or intimidation tied to political opinions or the exercise of civil rights.
As of April 1, records show Truett is being held in Horry County on a combined bond of more than $312,000.
WMBF spoke with Phillips after the incident and asked whether there was any prior conflict that might have led to the shooting.
“I don’t know if it’s personal, I don’t know if it’s related to being gay, I don’t know if it’s related to the bar issues,” Phillips told WMBF. “Anybody with a mindset of pulling out a weapon in broad daylight is not right.”
“My primary concern has and always will be the safety of my community and my customers,” he added. “It’s given me great concern … as to how far people will go.”
WMBF also spoke with Adam Hayes, vice chair of Myrtle Beach’s Human Rights Coalition, who was involved in pushing for the ordinance. He said that while the incident itself is troubling, it shows the policy is being put to use.
The ordinance is intended to deter “crimes that are motivated by bias or hate towards any person or persons, in whole or in part, because of the actual or perceived” identity, in the absence of a statewide hate crime law.
“It’s nice to see that something we put into policy is not just a piece of paper, that it’s actually being used,” said Hayes.
He said the shooting underscores the need for a statewide hate crime law in South Carolina and added that the incident has left the local LGBTQ community shaken.
South Carolina and Wyoming are the only two states in the U.S. without a comprehensive statewide hate crime law.
Truett remains in jail as of publication.
The White House
Trump budget would codify expanded global gag rule
Funding for LGBTQ health programs around the world would also be cut
The Trump-Vance administration’s fiscal year 2027 budget would codify the expanded global gag rule and eliminate funding for LGBTQ-specific programs in global health initiatives.
“The budget would ensure no funding supports abortion, unfettered access to birth control, and also eliminates funding for circumcision and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer services to better focus funds on life-saving assistance,” reads the proposed budget the White House released on April 3. “The United States should not pay for the world’s birth control and therapy.”
The proposed budget includes four examples of “eliminated activities.”
- In the last administration, PEPFAR funded health workers who performed over 21 abortions in Mozambique
- Promoting reproductive health education and access to birth control and other harmful programs couched under ‘family planning’ in Ghana
- A supply chain “control tower” to provide a “holistic commercial of the shelf solution” on the Office of Population and Reproductive Health (PRH)
- Promoting health equity and providing condoms and contraception in Kenya.
President Ronald Reagan in 1985 implemented the global gag rule, also known as the “Mexico City” policy, which bans U.S. foreign aid for groups that support abortion and/or offer abortion-related services.
Trump reinstated the rule during his first administration. The Biden-Harris administration shortly after it took office in January 2021 rescinded it.
The Trump-Vance White House earlier this year expanded the global gag rule to ban U.S. foreign aid for groups that promote “gender ideology.” The expansion took effect on Feb. 26.
US funding cuts have devastated global LGBTQ rights movement
The Trump-Vance administration after it took office in January 2025 moved to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, which funded LGBTQ and intersex rights groups around the world. USAID officially shut down on July 1, 2025.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio in March 2025 announced the State Department would administer the 17 percent of USAID contracts that had not been cancelled. Rubio issued a waiver that allowed PEPFAR and other “life-saving humanitarian assistance” programs to continue to operate during the U.S. foreign aid freeze the White House announced shortly after it took office.
The global LGBTQ and intersex rights movement has lost more than an estimated $50 million in funding because of these cuts. The Washington Blade has previously reported PEPFAR-funded programs in Kenya and other African countries have been forced to suspend services and even shut down.
The Trump-Vance administration has signed healthcare-specific agreements with Kenya, Uganda, and other African countries through its American First Global Health Strategy. Advocacy groups with whom the Blade has spoken have expressed concern these partnerships will result in further exclusion and government-sanctioned discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
The proposed fiscal year 2027 budget includes $5.1 billion for “global health to end the previous administration’s abuse of these programs and to execute (the State Department’s) newly released America First Global Health Strategy.” This figure represents a $4.3 billion cut from the previous year.
“The president’s new vision of bilateral health assistance eliminates bloated Beltway Bandit contracts, does more with fewer dollars, and transitions recipient countries to self-reliance,” reads the proposed budget. “The budget would also eliminate disease-specific accounts and provide the department crucial agility to address the actual needs of each recipient country — across HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, and polio — to strengthen global health security and protect Americans from disease.”
“The budget would focus on new compacts that unify funding, achieving economies of scale in both implementation and oversight,” it adds. “Under the prior administration, only about 40 percent of PEPFAR funds supported actual service delivery, including medications, testing, commodities, and health workers, with the remaining 60 percent wasted on duplicative administrative costs, unwieldy supply chains, and layers of endless bureaucracy. The new AFGHS (America First Global Health Strategy) compacts would improve efficiency, cut red tape, and dismantle the bloated ecosystem of foreign assistance profiteers.”
The Council for Global Equality on April 3 reiterated its criticism of the expanded global gag rule, and urged Congress to reject the proposed budget.
“We won’t mince words: people are dying because of this policy,” said the Council for Global Equality in a statement. “Making this policy permanent will only ensure that U.S. foreign assistance discriminates against those who need services the most, all while forcing people around the world to adhere to the Trump administration’s extremist, ideological agenda that denies the very existence of transgender, nonbinary, and intersex persons.”
“We will not be silent as Trump threatens to upend decades of bipartisan foreign assistance programs to appease his extremist base,” added the group. “We call on Congress to immediately reject this budget and block implementation of the expanded global gag rules.”
Vice President JD Vance and his wife, second lady Usha Vance, will visit Hungary next week.
An announcement the White House released on Thursday said the Vances will be in Budapest, the Hungarian capital, from April 7-8.
JD Vance “will hold bilateral meetings with” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. The announcement further indicates the vice president “will also deliver remarks on the rich partnership between the United States and Hungary.”
The Vances will travel to Hungary less than a week before the country’s parliamentary elections take place on April 12.
Orbán, who has been in office since 2010, and his Fidesz-KDNP coalition government have faced widespread criticism over its anti-LGBTQ crackdown.
The Associated Press notes polls indicate Orbán is trailing Péter Magyar and his center-right Tisza party.
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Man faces first S.C. ‘hate intimidation’ charge
Trump budget would codify expanded global gag rule
JD Vance to travel to Hungary next week
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