Estonia officially begins same-sex marriages
Plus, Lithuania's government goes to court to strike down an anti-gay law
Before we dive in, I want to take a moment to thank everyone who followed my Year in Review posts over the last week, especially everyone who contributed tips and subscriptions. Your support really helps me keep this project going! And also, let me say welcome to all the new subscribers who joined up last week! I maintain this newsletter for free to ensure that anyone can access it all over the world no matter their income. But if you enjoy my work and you’d like to support it, you can always choose to become a paid subscriber.
If you couldn’t get enough of my year-in-review series, I have an look back at LGBT rights advances and setbacks in the United States up today in the Los Angeles Blade, and a look ahead at the countries to watch for progress in 2024 up at Xtra Magazine (That image above is from the Xtra article. Nice designers they have there).
Estonia: Same-sex marriage and adoption officially became legal yesterday. Go get married, Estonia! Estonia is now officially the first post-Soviet country to legalize same-sex marriage.
Israel: On New Year’s Eve, the Supreme Court shot down the only element of Netanyahu’s controversial judicial reforms that had been enacted, hopefully putting an end to this dark chapter in the far-right’s power grab.
Lithuania: After the government failed to get Parliament to repeal the so-called “gay propaganda” law in November, it is preparing to ask the Constitutional Court to declare the law unconstitutional. The European Court of Human Rights has already ruled that the law violates the European Convention.
The Justice Minister also seems to be saying the prospects for passing the civil union law this year look slim. Elections for President and Parliament later this year could change that calculus.
Greece: The Prime Minister appears to be stalling for time on introducing a same-sex marriage bill, which he says will happen before 2027. Maybe Greek politics is just different, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense for the PM to float a really controversial idea and then let it sit for years before addressing it, so I have to believe he’ll want to introduce and dispose of the issue fairly soon, so that it’s not hanging over him.
Meanwhile, Cyprus’ archbishop says he’s opposed to same-sex marriage and adoption – surprise, surprise.
Mexico: An Aguascalientes state legislator says he hopes that when congress resumes in March, a number of bills he introduced for LGBT issues will be passed, including updating state laws for equal marriage/adoption, banning conversion therapy, legalizing gender change, and penalizing hate crimes.
Meanwhile, in the States…
A court has ruled Kim Davis, the Kentucky County Clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples way back in 2015, must pay $260,000 in legal fees, in addition to $100,000 already awarded to one of the couples she refused to serve. Ok, can we just be done with her now?