Trinidad blocks LGBT rights amendment to constitution
Australian census won't count queer people
🌍 Over at the Los Angeles Blade, my “Out in the World” column has a deeper look at stories from Australia, Nepal, Japan, and Bulgaria.
🇹🇹 Trinidad and Tobago: A committee proposing amendments to the country’s constitution has rejected calls to add protections against sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination.
Sodomy was decriminalized in the Caribbean nation in a 2018 court ruling that the government has appealed – no date yet on when that ruling is due.
🏴 🇬🇧 Scotland: One of the contenders for leadership of the Scottish Conservative Party says he still opposes same-sex marriage, ten years since it became legal in Scotland.
Meanwhile, the Scottish and UK governments are working together to ban conversion therapy across Britain.
🇦🇺 Australia: LGBTQI groups are upset that the 2026 census will not include questions on sexual orientation or intersex status, which they say will render them invisible.
🇲🇺 Mauritius: A trans woman has reached the final of the local Miss Universe competition.
And, a trans woman from Peru won the Miss International Queen competition, a beauty pageant for trans women.
🇺🇸 Meanwhile in the States
🏳️⚧️ There’s some ongoing commentary about the lack of discussion of trans issues during the primetime hours of last week’s Democratic National Convention, but the general sense appears to be, “no shit, trans issues will be better under Democratic government than under Republican government,” and we better be prepared to make Democrats as appealing as possible to the median voter to make that happen.
Democrats also scrubbed mention of opposition to the death penalty from the national platform. This is frustrating, but also unfortunately political realism. It’s probably not wise for Democrats to give ammunition via an issue that US public opinion is not terribly onside with (voters in deep blue California restored the death penalty in a 2016 referendum, for example).
🌽 Nebraska: Officials certified two questions on abortion for the November ballot on Friday – one enshrining the right to abortion in the constitution, and one barring abortion in the constitution. In the unlikely event both get majority support, only the one that gets the most total votes in favor will be added to the constitution. Eight other states will have abortion questions on the ballot this year: Nevada, Missouri, Maryland, New York, Florida, South Dakota, Montana, Arizona, and Colorado.
🗽However, a judge has denied an appeal seeking to have the word “abortion” clearly added to New York’s ballot information sheet – this is because New York’s question doesn’t actually say it protects abortion, but rather discrimination against pregnancy outcomes, which is confusing, and people are already arguing whether it actually protects abortion rights at all.