At least 320 people detained for ‘acts against nature’ after law criminalising homosexuality toughened, HRW reports

Mass arrests, forced HIV testing and barriers to legal representation are part of an escalating crackdown against LGBTQ+ people in Senegal, according to a new report.

More than 320 individuals have been arrested and detained on allegations of “acts against nature” since February, according to HIV Justice Network, an organisation quoted in the Human Rights Watch (HRW) report. Among these, at least 84 were charged with “voluntary HIV transmission”, solely on the basis of their HIV status.

In 1977, Richards sued to play in the US Open after transitioning. Now she supports bans on trans athletes in women’s sports. A new biography explores a complex legacy

It was a story that dominated tennis headlines back in 1977: Dr Renée Richards, an ophthalmologist who excelled as a male amateur player before a sex-change operation, was suing for the right to play in the women’s draw of the US Open. Where did Richards go for legal assistance? None other than Roy Cohn.

Better known for prosecuting suspected communists during the red scare and mentoring Donald Trump, Cohn turned his attention to fighting for Richards’s inclusion. His firm successfully argued the case – part of the narrative of a new biography, Finding Renée Richards: The Groundbreaking Story of Tennis’s Trans Pioneer by Julie Kliegman.

Case of couple who wed legally in Austria exposes clash between EU court ruling and national restrictions

A same-sex couple are suing authorities in Slovakia for refusing to register their Austrian marriage, testing whether a landmark EU court ruling can turn recognition abroad into legal security at home.

Their fight exposes a clash between European obligations and national restrictions – and what that means for LGBTQ+ people living under Robert Fico’s populist-nationalist government.

The great Irish writer died, a broken man, at only 46. Imagining a second act for him is a great idea – but the results are sentimental and unconvincing

In 1895, four days after the opening of The Importance of Being Earnest, the Marquess of Queensberry left a card at Oscar Wilde’s club that publicly accused him of “posing as a somdomite”. Instead of instigating the libel case that led to his imprisonment and early death in a Paris hotel just five years later, what would have happened if Wilde had simply torn that card up? John Boyne’s new novel sets out to answer that intriguing question.

For starters, Boyne contrives a fate for Wilde’s beloved Lord Alfred Douglas which entertainingly redistributes the details of the real Wilde’s life before, during and after his time in Reading jail. This sets up the novel’s cat-and-mouse game with the history it is reimagining. Wilde himself, conveniently released from marriage by the early death of his wife, is then free to live not as a tortured, scandal-haunted genius, but as a randy, wisecracking, party-going queen. The upside of this is that Oscar gets to swap bons mots with a crowded cast list of celebrities; the downside is that he shows little sign of the troubled and radical mind that produced the real Wilde’s late journalism and fiction, never mind the subversive linguistic pyrotechnics of The Importance.

Dr Annie Andrews voices opposition to ‘biological men … in women’s sports’ in response to Republican attacks

Dr Annie Andrews, a Democratic Senate candidate in South Carolina, has responded to persistent efforts by Republicans to make trans athletes in women’s sports a wedge issue in the race.

In a restrained direct-to-camera statement, Andrews – a pediatrician – outlined her opposition to “biological men playing in women’s sports”, as her party pushes back against Republican attacks.

British screenwriting royalty Russell T Davies talks to Helen Pidd about his taboo-breaking career, from rebooting Doctor Who and broadcasting explicit sex scenes in Queer as Folk to casting a trans actor in a trans role in Banana. He also reveals why he turned down James Bond, and how his views on gay representation onscreen have evolved over the years

The Dr Who showrunner made his name with taboo-busting series such as Queer As Folk. He tells Helen Pidd about how he changed the way queer lives were depicted on British television

Even if you don’t know his name, you will almost certainly have watched one of his TV shows if you grew up in the UK. As well as rebooting Doctor Who, Russell T Davies been bringing stories of gay lives to our TV screens for the last 40 years.

It’s been his mission since he came of age as a young man in the 1980s, a time when LGBTQ people were unable to get married or serve in the armed forces, and when queer kids grew up in the shadow of section 28 and the Aids crisis. Stories about gay life back then, if shown at all, tended to be about shame, fear, and ruin.

The Queerest of Folk: A Life in Television by Russell T Davies, published on 8 October by Transworld at £25. To support the Guardian, order your copy from guardianbookshop.com

Broadcaster apologises after admitting claims against Benjamin Cohen and Anthony James were defamatory

The BBC has apologised and paid “substantial” compensation to the couple behind the PinkNews website, after conceding that stories accusing them of sexual misconduct were false and defamatory.

In a sweeping admission, the BBC accepted at the high court that a 2024 iPlayer documentary about the PinkNews founder Benjamin Cohen and his husband, Anthony James, called PinkNews: Behind Closed Doors, had made “a series of very serious, false, and defamatory allegations”.

Roman Manfredi took to the Neopolitan streets to photograph intimate portraits of locals who live outside binary gender expectations

He has shot everyone from Madonna to Rihanna, Kate Moss and Frank Ocean. Now Walker has turned his lens on the activists, artists, writers, models and everyday heroes of gay life

Six years ago, Tim Walker was walking in the Highbury Fields area of London when he came across a plaque on the side of a building. In 1970, at these now-converted public toilets, Louis Eakes, chairman of the Young Liberals, was arrested for importuning following a “pretty police” entrapment in which male officers posed as would-be sex partners.

It was here, the plaque told the photographer, that the first ever gay rights demonstration in Britain had taken place, organised by the Gay Liberation Front, in protest at Eakes’s arrest. But Walker was jolted by the date: 27 November 1970. It was the day he was born. So he wondered: “Who were those people out marching that day? Where are they now?”