Simon Callow: Last News

Mike Johnson banning transgender women from using female-only bathrooms in Congress.McBride, the first openly transgender woman elected to Congress, made the announcement on Wednesday in a statement posted on social media commenting: "I'm not here to fight about bathrooms."Earlier on Wednesday, Johnson released a statement in which he said, "All single-sex facilities in the Capitol and House Office buildings—such as restrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms—are reserved for individuals of that biological sex."Transgender rights have become highly contentious across the U.S. in recent years, with a number of Republican-controlled states passing legislation banning transgender women from participating in women's sports or accessing female-only bathrooms.I'm not here to fight about bathrooms.

Actor Bilal Hasna on his latest role as a non-binary British-Palestinian drag queen in the brilliant Layla.  Actor Bilal Hasna has been incredibly hard to pin down. In the midst of press tours, auditions and a packed shooting schedule, we finally manage to find a time to chat over Zoom. As he flashes on screen, his first instinct is to apologise profusely at being unable to meet in person, telling me that he’d just come from an audition and would later be attending an event for the launch of The Agency, a new show in which he stars alongside Michael Fassbender, Richard Gere and Jodie-Turner Smith.

Nancy Mace has fired back at Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, saying she lives "rent-free" in the New York representative's head, after she accused the South Carolina congresswoman of "endangering women" with her transgender bathroom ban measure.A row has erupted on Capitol Hill over a bill proposed by Mace seeking to ban House members and staffers from "using single-sex facilities other than those corresponding to their biological sex."The measure covers bathrooms in the Capitol and House offices, charging the House sergeant-at-arms with enforcing the prohibition. It comes after the United States elected its first every transgender member of Congress, Sarah McBride, who will represent Delaware's at-large congressional district in the U.S.

When Amichai Lau-Lavie was ordained a rabbi, in 2016, he joined a family tradition that had been going on uninterrupted since the 11th century. And yet this had been a fraught process for Lau-Lavie, an Israel-born gay man who just a few years before entering New York’s Jewish Theological Seminary had been a pillar of a “God-optional” community. How he went from the Radical Faeries’ joyous, transgressive vision of queerness — which led to creating his drag alter ego, Rebbetzin Hadassah Gross — to embracing Conservative Judaism is the subject of Sandi DuBowski’s fascinating look at the act of questioning yourself and your family, your surroundings and your decisions.

On Wednesday, November 20, a man was jailed after pleading guilty to arson, violent disorder and criminal damage in connection to the Dublin riots. Declan Donaghey, of Williams Place Upper, appeared before the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, where he was jailed in connection to last year’s riots.