Taiwan court upholds medical diagnosis requirement for gender change
Russian lesbian freed in prisoner swap to marry partner in Germany
Over at the Los Angeles Blade, I have a preview of an upcoming play Happy Fall opening on Thursday (the original Saturday opening was rescheduled after this story was published.
There should also be this week’s “Out in the World” column with stories from Russia, Bulgaria, China, and Qatar up by the time you receive this.
🇷🇺 Russia: A Russian woman who was released from prison as part of the prisoner swap negotiated by President Biden is now home with her partner in Germany and they’re planning to get married. The woman had been imprisoned for speaking out against the war in Ukraine.
🇹🇼 Taiwan: A court has rejected a trans woman’s plea to have her legal gender updated without a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria.
🇧🇬 Bulgaria: President Radev has signed the “LGBT propaganda” law, as proponents and opponents continue to demonstrate in Sofia.
🇬🇷 Greece: The local orthodox church on Corfu has banned two politicians who voted for the same-sex marriage bill earlier this year from receiving services.
🇹🇭 Thailand: The supreme court ousted the prime minister on what appears to be trumped-up charges, throwing the country’s political scene into turmoil. This shouldn’t impact the legalization of same-sex marriage, which has already passed parliament, and the new PM Paetongtarn Shinawatra is from the same party and supports LGBT rights. We’ll see how proposed reforms to surrogacy and gender recognition pass through parliament.
That said, the government is still adamant that it supports LGBTQ rights as it bids to host WorldPride 2030.
🇳🇿 New Zealand: The new human rights commissioner Stephen Rainbow is ducking accusations of transphobia as a tweet from 2021 in which he warned followers about the “trans agenda” while debating the merits of a ban on conversion therapy.
🇳🇮 Nicaragua: I’m taking this report on a poll showing on 6.3% support for same-sex marriage with an extremely large grain of salt.
🇺🇸 Meanwhile, in the States
🏛️ The Supreme Court has denied the Biden administration’s request to stay lower court rulings that have halted implementation of its interpretation of Title IX to include protections for LGBT students in dozens of states while the courts continue to adjudicate it. This is not a final decision, and it’s not terribly surprising, though it’ll be hard to square upholding the decision with this court’s own decision in Bostock. Gorsuch, who wrote the Bostock decision, joined the liberals on the 5-4 ruling here, which seems to signal that the event final decision will turn on whether Roberts can be convinced to join as well.
🆗 Oklahoma: Republican state legislators have joined a Democratic effort to impeach the state’s superintendent of education. Ryan Walters has introduced a number of anti-LGBTQ policies, but the Republicans are mostly concerned with procedural, oversight, and spending complaints. About 30 more Republicans need to join the call for it to matter, though.