Australian states water down LGBT rights promises
Election results may spell trouble for Lithuania's civil union bill
Happy Thanksgiving Columbus Day Indigenous Peoples’ Day!
This week’s “Out in the World” column is up at the Los Angeles Blade, with stories from 🇰🇷 South Korea, 🇨🇾 Cyprus, 🇳🇱 Netherlands, 🇩🇪 Germany, and 🇭🇰 Hong Kong
🇦🇺 Australia: The Independent New South Wales lawmaker who introduced a comprehensive Equality Bill has watered down his own bill in hopes of getting key provisions passed. The bill no longer includes provisions repealing a loophole allowing anti-LGBT discrimination against students and teachers at religious schools, a right to gender-affirming care, and decriminalization of sex work. Still in the bill are domestic violence protections for LGBT couples, right to change legal gender without surgery, and parenting rights for children born through overseas surrogacy. The bill apparently still faces tepid support from the state’s Labor government.
ABC News also has a report on how Western Australia remains the only state where gay men are not allowed to access surrogacy, despite the fact the government has promised to reform the law since 2018, and the state is headed to elections in March. Last month, though, WA passed a reform of its gender recognition law, allowing non-binary identities and repealing the surgery requirement.
The consultation period has now closed on Victoria’s hate speech bill.
🇱🇹 Lithuania: The first-round parliamentary election saw the left-leaning Social Democrats take the largest share of the vote, with 20%. They say they’re going to try to form a majority coalition with two other “left” leaning parties, the Farmers and Greens Party and For Lithuania. Notably, both proposed coalition partners opposed the civil union bill in the previous parliament.
Everyone is continuing to be very disingenuous on the proposed civil union bill, with SD opposing it simply because it comes from the government, but refusing to propose a bill of their own. The incumbent prime minister is challenging them to introduce their bill and get it passed with government support before the new parliament takes office. The Freedom Party, which led the push for the civil union bill, did not meet the electoral threshold to join parliament, with only about 3% of the vote. The final makeup of parliament will be determined in two weeks, when the constituency seat runoffs are held.
🇸🇰 Slovakia: The Slovak National Theatre abruptly cancelled an upcoming gay-themed play by a visiting drama company from Prague, which was to be part of the Theatre’s “Drama Queer” festival. The Czech company is claiming homophobia is at the root of this, and they were easy targets because their contract hadn’t been signed (presumably it was too late to cancel the rest of the festival?). The culture minister is a noted anti-LGBT bigot within an already quite homophobic government, and she has openly targeted the theatre in the past.
🇩🇪 Germany: The government is planning an update to family law allowing lesbian couples to have co-maternity recognized from birth. The proposal does not allow male couples to have co-paternity, however.
🇪🇸 Spain: The right-wing government of Madrid’s autonomous community has submitted a bill to reform its anti-LGBT law that was spiked by the Constitutional Court earlier this year. Last year, the government tried to repeal various local laws banning conversion therapy and anti-LGBT discrimination. The new bill is meant to “clarify” that bill by, um, restoring the bans on conversion therapy and discrimination.
🇸🇨 Seychelles: The chairperson of LGBT Sey, the country’s main LGBT rights advocacy group, says the country should move forward with recognizing same-sex marriage. Seychelles recently passed a hate speech and hate crime law, and it has recently become a regional leader on LGBT rights in Africa, but marriage rights have not appeared on the government agenda.
🇦🇷 Argentina: A protest against anti-trans and anti-lesbian violence denounced the government’s increasingly homophobic and violent rhetoric against LGBT people for contributing to a culture of violence.
🇹🇹 Trinidad and Tobago: More than 28% of students are bullied because of their perceived sexual orientation or gender identity, and this columnist would like the government to take responsibility and action for decades of homophobic legislation. Not mentioned: The government is still pursuing an appeal to the UK Privy Council of the 2018 ruling that decriminalized sodomy.
🇺🇸 Meanwhile, in the States
🏔️ Colorado: Last week, the state supreme court threw out a case on procedural grounds against a bigot baker who refused to make a case celebrating a trans person’s gender transition. The decision means the court has not actually settled the question of whether a baker can be compelled to make a cake that expresses something against his core beliefs.
My take: Anti-discrimination laws are important, but we make an ass of them when they’re weaponized against bigots just to be punitive or vindictive, as the plaintiff in this case clearly did. She pointedly ordered the cake from this particular baker in a city of a million people on the day the US Supreme Court decided to hear a different discrimination challenge against him for refusing to bake a same-sex wedding cake. It’s hardly the case of someone who stumbled into discrimination and suffered for it.
Speaking of Colorado, yet another reminder that Coloradans are voting on removing the defunct ban on same-sex marriage from the state constitution in November. The amendment needs only a simple majority to pass. After it passes, the legislature will then have to repeal the statutory ban on same-sex marriage and update the state’s family laws to recognize it.
🌋🎥 Voters in Hawaii and California are also voting on amending their constitutions to protect same-sex marriage, too. Early voting is already happening in these states – don’t forget to vote!
🇵🇷 Puerto Rico: Gubernatorial candidates of the Popular Democratic Party and the Puerto Rico Independence Party both pledged to support LGBTQ rights if elected in November at a forum this week.
Puerto Ricans will also be voting on a non-binding statehood referendum. The referendum has been controversial because an option to continue the current territorial status is not on the ballot – it’s statehood, independence, or independence in free association. Statehood would only be granted by an act of Congress – and that’s only likely if the Democrats control congress, nuke the filibuster, and are actually united on the issue. They have not been, historically.