2024 LGBTQ Global Rights Progress - Western Europe
Some major victories, but a disturbing rise in the power of the far right
Happy New Year!
Today is part three of my look back at how the fight for global LGBTQ rights has evolved over the previous 12 months, focusing on Western and Central Europe.
You can also still read my previous entries on North America and Latin America & Caribbean.
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Ok, let’s dive in.
Central Europe
Liechtenstein: One of the biggest developments came from one of the smallest countries, as Liechtenstein finally fully legalized same-sex marriage – taking effect January 1. Liechtenstein is the last German-speaking country to legalize same-sex marriage, and depending on if you count Nepal, is either the 37th or 38th country to legalize it worldwide. Adoption was already legal.
Switzerland: Next door, the terminally slow legislative process did not yield any major advances at the national level, but the cantons of Valais and Vaud banned conversion therapy, bringing the total to three. Bans are also under consideration in Zurich and Geneva. A national ban was rejected by parliament, which wants the government to finish researching the issue before taking action.
The European Court of Human Rights rapped Switzerland for attempting to deport a gay Iranian refugee on the basis that he’d be safe as long as he was discreet/closeted.
Austria: The far right FPO came first in parliamentary elections, but all other parties refused to cooperate with them, so grand coalition talks are ongoing between the mainstream right and left groups. Progress on LGBT issues, like a proposed conversion therapy ban, is unlikely to advance in this environment.
Germany: The government passed a gender self-determination law in April, ending forced sterilization and medicalization of trans and nonbinary people.
Late in the year, the government fell, triggering early elections in February 2025. Polling currently suggests the right-wing CDU will win, with the far-right AfD coming in second.
Slovenia: In December, the Constitutional Court ruled that laws barring single women and lesbian couples from accessing assisted reproduction are unconstitutional and gave Parliament one year to fix them. The government welcomed the ruling, so this should be fixed early in 2025.
Western Europe
Italy: On the other hand, the far-right government of PM Georgia Meloni took steps to ban same-sex parenting in Italy. First, the government banned listing same-sex parents on birth certificates and forcibly withdrew birth certificates that had been issued by local authorities in some cities. Then, the government criminalized surrogacy, in a move that is widely perceived as targeting gay male couples. This comes even as support for same-sex marriage and adoption has hit record highs according to polls.
Italy, San Marino, and Monaco are now the only countries without equal marriage in Western Europe.
Meloni also allegedly demanded that references to LGBT rights be removed from this year’s G7 communique.
The region of Apulia (the heel of the boot) passed a local LGBT anti-discrimination law, bringing the total to 9/20 with similar measures.
Vatican City: The Pope taught us all a new word, frociaggine.
Malta: Parliament passed a law allowing non-binary options on government ID.
Netherlands: The biggest news here was the Kingdom’s Court of Cassation ruling that Aruba and Curacao were required to allow same-sex marriage. That leaves only Sint Maarten where equal marriage is not (yet) the law.
The government ended a deferral period for blood donations from men who have sex with men at the beginning of 2024.
A proposed ban on conversion therapy stalled this year, despite polls showing wide support for it. The government formed over the summer following last fall’s elections is a largely right-wing coalition that includes the far right, so don’t expect much progress over this term.
Belgium: Parliament passed first-in-the-world legislation granting sex workers real employment rights, including insurance, pensions, and maternity leave.
Luxembourg: The government’s own review of its progress on LGBT rights found that it needed to do more work on trans rights in particular. We’ll see if any progress turns up in 2025.
France: Gabriel Attal briefly became France’s first openly gay and youngest ever prime minister, but he resigned after his party lost snap parliamentary elections called after the far-right National Rally came first in EU elections. The elections turned quite nasty, with President Macron briefly wading into dealing in anti-trans nonsense. France’s parliament has been in chaos since, split in three factions that basically refuse to work with each other.
But earlier in the year, France amended its constitution to protect abortion rights. The lower house of parliament also passed a bill to compensate victims of historical anti-gay laws, but it hasn’t yet cleared the senate. Broadly, the senate wanted to apologize to victims but not compensate them.
The senate passed a bill that would ban medical gender care for trans minors, but the bill went nowhere in the lower house and is opposed by the government.
First lady Brigitte Macron was awarded €8,000 in damages after a court found two women guilty of slander for calling her trans on YouTube.
Monaco: The country’s top court upheld the state’s ban on recognition of foreign same-sex marriages, overturning two lower court decisions.
Shortly after, the country’s first LGBT advocacy group, Mon-Arc-en-Ciel, was formed specifically to push for advances on recognition of couple and family rights. The country’s human rights commissioner submitted several reports to the government calling on it to amend regulations to enhance LGBT couples’ rights in accordance with European case law, although she stopped short of calling for equal marriage or other legislative changes.
There appeared to be some indignation in the national press at Monaco’s consistently low ranking on ILGA Europe’s Rainbow Map. It appears at least one legislator is prepared to act, and she’s proposing some form of recognition of foreign marriages, and possibly inheritance rights.
Portugal: A law banning conversion therapy, which was passed last year, came into effect in March. The country also ended a ban on trans people and people living with HIV serving in the military.
Spain: The constitutional court spiked a sweeping anti-LGBT law passed by the Madrid region’s right-wing/far-right coalition government. In response, the government introduced a new bill to “clarify” the law, by basically abandoning it.
The constitutional court also upheld the legality of local governments flying Pride flags from public buildings.
The current left-leaning national government proposed a series of constitutional amendments to guarantee abortion rights and LGBT rights, including same-sex marriage, but these are unlikely to gain the required supermajorities in parliament to pass.
UK: What a year it’s been in the UK.
Anti-trans hysteria has not abated and may have even become more mainstream in the wake of Labour’s landslide election victory that ended 14 years of disastrous Conservative Party rule.
Usually, we expect Labour to be more LGBTQ-friendly than the Conservatives, but one of their first initiatives on this file was to indefinitely extend a ban on hormonal treatments for youth gender care brought forward by the Conservatives in line with the controversial Cass Review that was released earlier in the year. They’ve promised that the ban is only meant to last through a scientific review of the treatments that they plan to initiate next year, but that’s not terribly promising.
Labour has promised to finally introduce a trans-inclusive conversion therapy ban that languished for years under the Conservatives. They launched consultations on the bill in July. The planned bill would apply across England, Scotland, and Wales. In Northern Ireland, the Assembly called on the executive to bring forward a conversion therapy ban bill, and when it didn’t, a legislator introduced a bill in December.
Before Labour took office, the Conservatives banned sex education in schools in England for children under 9.
The Church of England began performing same-sex marriages this year, following a vote last year.
In Scotland, a hate crime and hate speech law that was passed in 2021 came into effect in April.
Some developments in UK territories and dependencies:
The Isle of Man banned conversion therapy in March, as part of a new sexual offences law that was approved back in 2021.
Jersey passed a law that will provide for automatic parenting recognition for children of same-sex couples. It also announced it was considering a pardon and compensation scheme for men convicted under historic anti-gay laws and began drafting hate crime legislation.
Gibraltar codified the rights of same-sex couples to adopt – they’ve been legally able to since a 2013 court ruling, but even though the territory has equal marriage, the adoption law wasn’t amended. The government also announced it was considering adding “gender identity” as a protected category under hate crime legislation.
A new case on recognition of a foreign same-sex marriage is winding its way through Turks and Caicos’ courts. There was no update on a marriage case from Virgin Islands. See the Caribbean article for more.
There’s some chance that a Labour government may impose civil partnership or equal marriage laws on the holdout territories (the above, plus Montserrat and Anguilla for partnerships, and Bermuda and Cayman Islands for marriage).
The government came to an agreement with Mauritius to cede control of the British Indian Ocean Territory – an uninhabited archipelago that nevertheless has legal same-sex marriage by government order. The deal has been called into question by a new government in Mauritius, but if it goes through it could delete an equal marriage jurisdiction. More in the Africa section to follow.
Ireland: Parliament passed the country’s first hate crimes law but refused to make amendments to existing hate speech law to include protections for “gender identity.”
Openly gay Prime Minister Leo Varadkar resigned from office in April. He had been the highest or second-highest person in government since 2017.
Norway: A law banning conversion therapy came into effect Jan 1, 2024. The government had planned to end discrimination against gay and bi blood donors this year, but in February announced an indefinite deferral of the new policy.
Denmark: Denmark ended discrimination against gay/bi blood donors in July; now all donors are screened for risky sex practices without discriminating between gay and straight anal sex. The government also announced a suite of proposed legislative and policy changes to help LGBTQ people start families, including revisions to parenting and inheritance laws to recognize non-biological parents and facilitate assisted reproduction.
Greenland’s parliament passed a Law on Equal Treatment and Anti-Discrimination in May, prohibiting all discrimination on the basis of “sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, [and] gender characteristics.” The law also creates an Equal Treatment Board to manage discrimination complaints and an Equality Council to promote non-discrimination.
Sweden: In April, Sweden passed a controversial gender reform law. The new law lowers the age at which legal gender can be changed without a diagnosis of gender dysphoria from 18 to 16, though 16-17-year-olds must still have parental consent. The law still limits some forms of sex reassignment surgery to those 23 and older, but is seen as a liberalization of the gender change process, which was previously onerous and could take up to 7 years.
Sweden was finally able to join NATO this year, after a long blockade by Hungary and Türkiye was finally brought to an end.
Finland: A citizen’s initiative to ban conversion therapy has stalled in parliament, because half the governing coalition is made up of far-right parties opposed to LGBT rights. Earlier in the year, Finns voted for a conservative for president over his openly gay rival, 52-48.
That’s all for today. Tomorrow I’ll be back with a look at Eastern and Southeastern Europe.