Another Mexican state bans "conversion therapy"
Republicans try to kill global AIDS prevention funding
Mexico’s Sinaloa state congress passed a law banning “conversion therapy,” making it the 16th state to do so. A federal ban is expected to be voted on in the fall. The state also expanded its anti-discrimination law to cover gender discrimination.
Meanwhile, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed the state’s conversion therapy ban into law this week.
Israel’s far-right government pushed through reforms to its justice system that sparked massive protests by Israelis earlier this year. The changes allow the government to hand-pick judges and overrule decisions of the Supreme Court. At least part of the motivation behind the law is animus on the part of the governing coalition’s ultra-religious anti-LGBT bloc against the Supreme Court for many of its pro-LGBT rulings in the past few decades. More mass protests and strikes are expected even as multiple legal challenges are being filed against the law.
The US government has confirmed that Namibia will continue receiving AIDS funding through the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) even if the two anti-gay marriage bills are signed into law, even though the country recently announced funding would be cut to Uganda after it passed the Anti-Homosexuality Act. This is actually a big apples-to-oranges comparison. Uganda’s law was so draconian in its rules against promoting or advocating for LGBT rights and in its new obligation on health providers to report homosexuality to the government that it would actually make much of PEPFAR’s work illegal or unworkable in the country. In effect, PEPFAR was being pushed out by Uganda. While Namibia’s law is similarly unconstitutional and immoral, it shouldn’t hinder PEPFAR’s work to the same degree.
PEPFAR, by the way, is one of the few policy legacies of the George W. Bush administration that is near-universally praised for helping reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS. So of course, Republicans in congress are trying to kill it.
Jordan’s Parliament blocked consideration of an amendment to a cybercrimes bill that sought to ban the publishing of LGBT content on the internet. Jordan is one of the few countries in the Middle East where homosexuality is not illegal in itself, although vague morality laws are sometimes used to punish queer people or block publication of LGBT materials.
In Nepal, same-sex couples are still having trouble registering their marriages despite a June Supreme Court order. The Diplomat has an interesting explainer on what’s going on there, and how the country’s particular understanding of gender informs its circumstances.
30 of the 33 people arrested at a gay party in Venezuela have been released under a “submission regime,” and activists there are still fighting what they’re calling an anti-gay persecution.