This tiny country is the newest Equal Marriage state!
Australian city reverses gay book ban policy
🇱🇮 Liechtenstein: By a unanimous vote, parliament approved the same-sex marriage bill today, making Liechtenstein the 38th equal marriage country. Congratulations, Liechtensteiners! The microstate is the last German-speaking country to legalize it, leaving Italy, San Marino, and Monaco as the last countries in Western Europe without marriage equality.
I’ll have more on this story in this weekend’s Out In The World in the Los Angeles Blade.
🇦🇺 Australia: Cumberland City Council in the Sydney suburbs repealed a ban on books about same-sex parenting in local libraries that it had passed earlier this month, after an outcry from local residents and senior governments.
🇬🇪 Georgia: Parliament has passed a controversial “Foreign Agents Law” that requires organizations that receive foreign funding to report that information publicly, a move critics say undermine civil society, the media, democratic institutions, and LGBT organizations. The move has drawn weeks of massive protests. The President has vowed to veto the bill, but the governing party has the votes to override the veto.
Not losing any time, the Georgian government has announced it has completed work on an “LGBT propaganda” bill that it will soon submit to Parliament. The bill is also inspired by a similar Russian law and will crackdown on LGBT expression.
Georgia is an EU applicant, and both bills ought be huge obstacles to accession.
🇿🇼 Zimbabwe: Public consultations on ending the death penalty last week yielded broad support. If Zimbabwe repeals the penalty as expected, it would continue a wide trend across sub-Saharan Africa.
Meanwhile in the States…
👍 Delaware: The state house is considering a bill to repeal the state’s death penalty, and a bill to add an explicit ban to the state constitution. The state’s top court ruled it unconstitutional in 2016, but the provision still remains in law.
😡 Louisiana: The legislature advanced two anti-LGBT bills yesterday – one barring the use of students’ proposed name and pronoun without parental consent, and one limited classroom discussion of LGBT subjects. Both are now one final vote in the Senate from passing.
⌛ Minnesota: Legislators are running out of time to pass the Equal Rights Amendment and the gay panic defense ban, as the session must end on May 20. Republicans are demanding the Democrats drop the ERA before they approve several infrastructure bond measures (which require a 60% vote to pass, so they hold some leverage in the closely divided legislature). Neither bill appears on the schedule for tomorrow.