Canada's conservatives take anti-trans turn

Nigeria arrests 67 people at alleged same-sex wedding

Sorry for my absence over the past several days. I got back from the East Coast and promptly came down with the flu, and I’m writing this through alternating chills and sweats (though I do seem to finally be getting a little better).

My latest article for the Los Angeles Blade profiles a Canadian gay couple who won a lawsuit against the governing fascist party in Italy, after the fascists used their viral photo in an anti-same-sex-marriage campaign. The two men were awarded 10,000 euros each.

Still in Canada, the government of Ontario is the latest province to announce that parents must be notified if children wish to change their name or pronoun for use in school. The federal Conservative Party has also announced that trans issues will be debated at their upcoming policy conference, and all but two provinces in Canada are governed by a conservative party right now, so this issue isn’t going away. It’s still somewhat surprising, given that last year the Conservatives gave unanimous consent to the conversion therapy bill, and many conservatives supported the trans rights bill back in 2017. Nevertheless, federal Conservatives are riding high in the polls in Canada amid ongoing economic anxiety, and this seems like the kind of bozo culture war stuff that usually turns Canadian voters off them. Still, polling shows that parental notification requirements are very popular in Canada.

Police in Nigeria have arrested at least 67 people for allegedly participating in or witnessing a same-sex marriage in Delta state. Those arrested face up to ten years in prison under the country’s Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act.

The complainant in the unsuccessful court case to legalize same-sex marriage in Panama earlier this year has confirmed that his case is now before the Interamerican Court of Human Rights. As you’ll recall, the Panama Supreme Court had delayed issuing a ruling in the case for more that 6 years, only to deliver a sloppily argued decision that contravenes the Interamerican Court’s 2018 ruling that the Interamerican Convention on Human Rights, to which Panama is a signatory, requires legal same-sex marriage.

Colombia has begun issuing passports with a nonbinary gender option, following a court order from last year.