Georgia signs anti-LGBT law

Plus, Facebook loses in court over sexual orientation data, and a UK territory loses equal marriage

🇪🇺 Europe: The EU’s top court ruled that Facebook/Meta cannot use personal data about a person’s sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, or health status to target personalized ads.

🇬🇪 Georgia: The anti-LGBT bill has been signed into law over the President’s veto. The sweeping bill bans same-sex marriage and relationship recognition, gender care, gender change, LGBT organizations and expression, adoption by LGBT people, and more. It’s also the latest nail in the coffin of Georgia’s longshot bid to join the EU. Voters will weigh in on the current government Oct 26.

🇲🇩 Moldova: The country is holding a referendum on EU accession Oct 20 alongside national elections that are already essentially a referendum on the country’s pro-EU orientation, and the government is alleging that Russia sent bribes to 130,000 citizens to get them to vote against the EU.

🇱🇹 Lithuania: Prime Minister Simonyte says her biggest disappointment with her term is the failure to pass the civil union bill, which awaits a final vote. Voters go to the polls Oct 13 and 27.

Speaking of…

Elections Watch

It’s a busy month for elections. Coming up, we have:

• 🇰🇿🇹🇳 Oct 6: Kazakhstan holds a referendum on building a nuclear power plant – essentially to ease an energy crisis created by bitcoin miners. Tunisia holds what look like sham presidential elections – it’ll be interesting to see how the secularist opposition candidate does.

• 🇱🇹 Oct 13: Lithuania holds first-round parliamentary elections, which could shape whether a civil union bill and other pro-LGBT rights legislation pass in the future.

• 🇨🇦 Oct 19: British Columbia, Canada holds legislative elections. LGBT-inclusive sex ed is in the balance, and the BC Conservatives hold a lot of anti-LGBT and anti-trans views.

• 🇲🇩 Oct 20: Moldova holds presidential elections and a constitutional referendum on its EU ambitions.

• 🇨🇦 Oct 21: New Brunswick, Canada holds legislative elections. The government is defending its anti-trans education and health policies.

• 🇲🇸 Oct 24: UK territory Montserrat holds legislative elections. The territory has to figure out some way of recognizing same-sex unions.

• 🇬🇪 Oct 26: Georgia’s Parliamentary will determine the future of democracy, human rights, and its Western orientation.

• 🇧🇬🇯🇵🇱🇹 Oct 27: Bulgaria and Japan elect their new parliaments. Both countries are grappling with issues around LGBT rights, particularly recognition of same-sex unions. Lithuania will hold the second round of its parliamentary elections. There are also elections in Uruguay and Uzbekistan, but LGBT issues aren’t particularly forefront in either.

• 🇨🇦 Oct 28: Saskatchewan, Canada’s legislative elections again feature a conservative government trying to defend anti-trans school and health policies.

🇵🇼 And that’s all before the big day, Nov 5, when Palau holds presidential and parliamentary elections. Oh, and those pesky United States, too. 

Update your maps

🇮🇴 🇲🇺 The UK has agreed to hand over the British Indian Ocean Territory to Mauritius, resolving a longstanding diplomatic irritant and vestige of Britain’s colonial rule in Africa. Britain will retain its military presence on Diego Garcia atoll, though, so I’m not yet clear if this means the BIOT is formally dissolved, or if it continues as a legal framework for the UK presence on the now-Mauritian island.

And now the really academic LGBT side to this.

BIOT is one of the UK oversees territories where same-sex marriage is legal, having been provided for by an Order-in-Council in June 2014. As a part of Mauritius, it will no longer be legal there, although UK military staff might still be able to marry on the base at Diego Garcia anyway. However, under regulations, married staff cannot serve together at Diego Garcia, so at least one partner would be immediately reassigned. See what I mean about this being academic? It never really applied here anyway, because there wasn’t a permanent population.

(To be clear, there *was* an indigenous Chagos Islander population before the Brits arrived, grafted it onto their Mauritius colony, forcibly deported the Islanders to turn the territory into a naval base, then separated it from Mauritius when the UK granted that island independence. But there hasn’t been a permanent population since. Oh, and in case you were wondering, the Chagos Islanders do not appear to have been consulted about the handover either.)

Anyway, the status won’t change until the handover treaty is ratified by both countries, although both have said they will expedite the process. We’ll update the maps when they do.

BIOT is one of only a handful of territories that have lost same-sex marriage rights. The others are the UK territories Bermuda and Cayman Islands (although, I believe no one actually got married in the 13 days it was legal in Cayman). Slovenia and Maine both saw same-sex marriage laws passed by their legislatures repealed by voter referendum before they came into effect, but both have since relegalized it.

🇺🇸 Meanwhile, in the States

🎥 California: Governor Newsom signed a law banning bans of LGBTQ+ books in public libraries. [EDIT: An earlier version of this post contained a typo that said the law bans LGBTQ books. I apologize for the error.]

🤠 Texas: The state government looks to be preparing to revoke the driver’s licenses of any trans person who has updated their gender marker, in the latest escalation of the Republican Party’s war on trans people.