Brazil Supreme Court extends domestic violence law to LGBT couples
Same-sex marriage suffers setback in Japan Supreme Court
Over at the Los Angeles Blade, I wrote up a preview of Rogue Machine Theatre’s Bacon (pictured above), on stage now.
Brazil: The Supreme Court ruled that a domestic violence law originally meant only to protect women also applies to same-sex couples and trans victims.
Japan: The Supreme Court has denied a long-term residency visa to an American man who married his Japanese husband in the US. He will have to make do with his current visa, which does not allow him to work in Japan. While this doesn’t directly touch on whether same-sex marriage should be legal, this isn’t a great sign for the half-dozen equal marriage cases headed toward the court.
Mexico: A legislator has proposed a bill to recognize same-sex parents, adoption, and filiation in state law in the State of Mexico.
Germany: National elections on Sunday returned the conservative Christian Democrats to first place in the Bundestag, and they’ll likely seek to form a grand coalition with the outgoing Social Democrats. Two left-leaning parties failed to cross the 5% threshold necessary to enter parliament, a particularly bitter pill for the Freedom Party, which triggered the election by withdrawing from the government.
The far-right extremist AfD party won its largest vote share ever, with nearly 20%, but the other parties are maintaining a firewall against forming a coalition with them. The leader of the CDU, expected be the new Chancellor, gave a speech Sunday in which he noted a priority will be strengthening Europe so it can pull away from American foreign policy, noting that the Trump administration appears to have abandoned the continent.
Meanwhile, in the States
The Kennedy Center, now under the direct control of Trump, cancelled a performance by the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, D.C. that was scheduled as part of upcoming World Pride 2025 celebrations. The Chorus says they’re going to go ahead with the performance, along with the National Symphony Orchestra, in some other venue during Pride. The Center says it will program The Wizard of Oz in its place, which it claims is equally appropriate for Pride.
The Kennedy Center also announced the cancellation of a tour of a children’s musical Finn, about a shark that yearns to let out its inner fish. The Center denies that either cancellation has to do with the President’s anti-DEI policies and says the decisions were purely financial.
The Supreme Court will hear a case on Wednesday regarding the burden of proof straight people must meet to establish they’ve been discriminated against based on sexual orientation.
Hawaii: In addition to a constitutional amendment barring discrimination against LGBT people, the Aloha State is also considering a pair of amendments that would protect the right to abortion and contraception.
Wisconsin: The usual Republican malcontents are upset that Democratic Governor Evers has proposed a bill that replaces the world “woman” with “inseminated person” in state family law. This is bullshit. The bill simply updates language in some family law to account for same-sex couples and trans people, and specifically, doesn’t change “woman,” it changes the word “wife” to “person who is inseminated” in a section dealing with artificial insemination. The proposed language is obviously more precise.
West Virginia: State Republicans are advancing a slew of bills to restrict talking about LGBT issues in schools and require outing trans students to their parents. The bills failed during last year’s session.
Iowa: State Republicans are fast-tracking an omnibus anti-trans bill that would remove “gender identity” as a protected characteristic under state discrimination law, enshrine a “separate does not mean unequal” policy in law, ban gender changes on state ID, and expand a ban on mentioning “gender theory” in K-6 schools.