Curacao and Aruba: The Court of Cassation of the Kingdom of the Netherlands has pushed back the date for its final ruling in the same-sex marriage appeal from May 31 to June 12. I think it’s very likely that equality wins this case. It’s unclear if the case will also apply directly to Sint Maarten, the only other part of the Kingdom without marriage equality.
UK: Oh wait, that election call might not happen after all. UK Tories are scrambling to unseat prime minister Rishi Sunak before Parliament is dissolved, so their new leader can cancel the election call – or rather delay it until at most, January, when the next election must be called by law.
Kosovo: The government is still staying mum on when it plans to hold a vote on a proposed civil code that includes same-sex civil unions and opens the door to future legislation on equal marriage.
Senegal: Controversy erupted after a former French presidential candidate defended same-sex marriage while visiting the current Senegalese prime minister. The Senegalese PM gave a weird statement about homosexuality being tolerated in the country (it isn’t – it’s illegal) and that other countries have to respect its sovereignty on the matter. Then local politicians accused him of being gay and he had them arrested.
Canada: Health Canada has ended its blanket ban on sperm donation from men who have sex with men, changing it to a behavior-based screening as is done for blood donations. The move comes after the US FDA announced it will also remove its ban on gay sperm later this year. For context, Canada gets most of its sperm from the USA, where donors are paid, as paid donations are prohibited in Canada, constraining supply.
Germany: A national LGBTQ advocacy group is calling for a constitutional amendment to ban anti-LGBTIQ discrimination.
Poland: Conservative members of the government coalition are still effectively blocking the civil union bill. There’s speculation the government may try to push it through after next month’s European Parliament elections, when the party will have less at stake.
Meanwhile, in the States…
The National Park Service released a directive that its rangers may not attend Pride festivals in uniform this year. Seems… out of character for the Biden administration.
South Carolina: The Republican governor has signed one of the harshest anti-trans bills in the country – the law bans all gender therapy for trans youth; prohibits Medicaid funds from being used for gender care for people of any age; and requires schools to out gender nonconforming students to their parents. The law directly contradicts a recent federal court ruling requiring that bans on funding gender-affirming care are unconstitutionally discriminatory.
New Hampshire: The legislature sent one more anti-trans bill to the governor. This one rolls back nondiscrimination law to assert that sex-segregated facilities like bathrooms, prisons, and sports can exclude trans people from the gender-appropriate facility. New Hampshire ought to be a top target for Democrats in November.
Georgia: An anti-abortion candidate failed to unseat a Republican appointee in the state supreme court election Tuesday. The race did not end up being terribly close. Although the court is officially non-partisan, Republicans have appointed all but one currently sitting justice.
Alabama: A Trump-appointed judge is threatening to jail LGBTQ civil rights lawyers and demanding they turn over privileged information. But sure, another Trump presidency isn’t a threat at all.
And a small correction
A reader wrote in to correct my count of the states that have passed a ban on the “gay/trans panic defense” – it’s actually 19 states plus DC, not 18. The Wikipedia article on the subject didn’t have New Mexico on its map, and neither does the Movement Advancement Project map, but that state passed a ban in 2022. I’ve since updated the Wiki map.
Correction on the Georgia election: the candidate who failed that election was formerly anti-abortion, and campaigned openly on defending choice (and was threatened by the Judicial Qualifications Commission over his ads). The Republican appointee of Brian Kemp who won clerked for Clarence Thomas and is a Federalist Society member.