Conversion therapy ban advancing in Colombia
US Courts have diverging takes on trans rights cases
Colombia: Third reading debate in the senate on the bill to ban conversion therapy is scheduled to begin today. It was supposed to begin yesterday, but was delayed due to lack of quorum.
Dominican Republic: Constitutional lawyers assert that same-sex couples are legally allowed to form a contract to regulate their relationship and property rights, but they disagree on whether same-sex marriage is allowed, banned, or required as a right by the constitution.
Singapore: An Ipsos poll reveals a slight majority of Singaporeans support laws banning anti-LGBTQ discrimination, and support legal recognition of same-sex couples and adoption. A large number of respondents said they had no opinion, so the opposition is even more of a minority.
Two years ago, Singapore decriminalized gay sex, but also amended the constitution to require parliamentary approval for same-sex marriage. These poll numbers may indicate that eventual legalization could be possible.
Namibia: The High Court ruling on the sodomy decriminalization case has been pushed from June 14 to June 21.
South Africa: An LGBT group is raising alarms over the fact that the third largest party in the newly elected parliament wants to completely scrap the country’s very liberal constitution, which explicitly protects LGBT rights.
Zimbabwe: The headquarters of GALZ, the nation’s major LGBTQ+ rights organization, was vandalized over the weekend by a group of people claiming to represent Christian churches.
Also this week, Parliament is meant to begin debate on bills to eliminate the death penalty and raise the age of consent to 18 from 16.
Tanzania: The African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights is reigniting the debate on the death penalty in the country, after it ordered a new sentencing hearing for two men on death row for murder. The ACHPR has called on the government to scrap the death penalty altogether, in accordance with a 1999 resolution by the African Commission. The court has also ruled that the mandatory nature of Tanzania’s death penalty, and the use of hanging as prescribed by law, is against the African Charter. Tanzania actually hasn’t executed anyone in decades, although more than 600 are on death row.
The trend in Africa is strongly against the death penalty – 17 countries have abolished it altogether since 2000, and only 24 maintain it in law, of which 12 are in practice observing a moratorium on it.
Israel, Russia, Ukraine, and Utah: Yahoo! News has a story about how Russian and Ukrainian Jewish people have been able to flee the ongoing war to Israel and that interfaith same-sex couples have been able to make the trip because they’ve been able to take advantage of Utah’s internet marriages to get married in advance so that both partners qualify. It’s one of those “aw, a heartwarming workaround to several cascading structural failures” stories.
Elections Watch
France: The far-right National Rally is not campaigning on ending same-sex marriage in the upcoming parliamentary elections, but they are campaigning on banning surrogacy and IVF for same-sex couples. The NR placed first in the weekend’s EU elections in France, but it remains to be seen how they do in national elections, and whether they could form a governing coalition. The first round is on June 30.
Just four days later will be the UK election.
Meanwhile in the States…
Florida: A federal judge has tossed out the state’s laws banning or restricting gender care for minors and adults. Expect this to be appealed.
Texas: A federal judge has blocked the Biden administration’s rule extending a ban on sex discrimination in schools to LGBTQ students from going into effect in Texas. This will likely be appealed to the very conservative 5th Circuit, which is likely to uphold the ruling, before it goes to the Supreme Court – presuming that Biden is still in the White House by then. The Supreme Court has already ruled in Bostock that anti-LGBTQ discrimination is sex discrimination, so I don’t see how there’s any wiggle room here without wholly discarding Bostock.
Meanwhile, Texas and Montana are suing the Biden administration to block a federal rule that requires states to include gender care in Medicaid.
Alabama: And an update on the shenanigans where the state’s courts are seeming to go after lawyers working on trans rights cases on trumped-up charges.