🇺🇬 Uganda: The Constitutional Court has refused to strike down the 2023 Anti-Homosexuality Act, in a ruling that cited the US Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, but it did void a few key provisions that it said violated fundamental rights to health and privacy. These include the section prohibiting leasing a premises where homosexual acts occur (basically forcing LGBTQ+ people to be homeless) and requiring people to report homosexuals to the government. One of the petitioners has said he will appeal.
🇬🇭 Ghana: A legislator points out that under Ghana’s new anti-LGBTQ law, two adult men having consensual sex face stiffer penalties than a grown adult who marries a female child.
🇭🇰 Hong Kong: The government has issued new guidelines for trans people to update their legal gender in response to last year’s Court of Final Appeal ruling, but LGBTQ+ activists are upset that the requirements include numerous medical tests that don’t seem to be necessary but create an additional barrier.
🇲🇽 Mexico: The Supreme Court has ruled against a polyamorous group seeking recognition of multi-partner marriage.
A court in Jalisco state recognized a lesbian couple’s co-parenthood of their daughter for the first time, while a state legislator in Baja California Sur is calling on the governor to take sensitivity training after he vetoed a bill to allow same-sex couples to adopt last month.
🇵🇦 Panama: All of the leading presidential candidates have refused to join a statement supporting LGBTQ+ rights. They’re also refusing to endorse same-sex marriage. The election is May 5.
🇧🇧 Barbados: The government has had to go back to the drawing board on two children’s rights bills over trumped up concerns that the government has a nefarious plan to use the new laws to make kids LGBT. Neither bill even mentions sexual orientation or gender identity.
🇬🇧 🏴 UK: Harry Potter creator JK Rowling is continuing her years-long anti-trans social media war, and daring the Scottish government to use its new hate speech law to come after her. The Scottish police are not biting, saying that her campaign of calling trans women “men” on Twitter does not rise to hate speech.
Meanwhile, Scotland’s consultation on a bill to ban conversion therapy has ended.
🇹🇨 Turks and Caicos Islands: I have heard that the government has appealed a lower court’s finding that the ban on same-sex marriage violates the constitution, and that the couple involved in the case have appealed the same court’s decision not to grant them relief. Appeals likely won’t be heard until May-June.
🇺🇳 The United Nations: Approved a resolution in support of Intersex rights, calling on states not to mutilate Intersex children.
Meanwhile, in the States…
👍Maryland: The General Assembly has passed a bill that will shield health records of people who seek gender care from legal actions out of the state.
👎Arizona: State Republicans have passed a bill that will erase gender from state law and replace it with biological sex, in an effort to erase trans people as a legal concept. It is certain to be vetoed by the Democratic governor.
👎Kansas: The state’s recently passed anti-porn law includes all depictions of “homosexuality” as “harmful to minors” and requiring age verification to be seen. Way to go, everyone.
👎New Hampshire: Republicans are rushing through a suite of anti-trans legislation over the objections of the state’s child advocate. Three bills advanced to the senate floor barring trans student athletes from sports that match their gender, requiring schools to out trans students to their parents, and barring trans people from using bathrooms appropriate to their gender.
👎North Dakota: State Republicans will be defining their election platform at a convention this weekend, and will be debating several anti-LGBT, anti-abortion, and anti-IVF resolutions to add to it, including affirming opposition to same-sex marriage, opposing adding LGBT people to discrimination law, and proposing forced conversion therapy for trans people.
👎Alabama: State Republicans are pushing a new bill that would criminalize librarians for having “sexual” content in their libraries.
👎Iowa: Republican Governor Reynolds signed a bill banning local boards and commissions from requiring gender balance in their makeup, conforming to a court ruling.