World Banks cuts funds to Uganda over anti-gay law
New crackdowns on gay people and expression in Lebanon, Iraq, and Malaysia
The World Bank has announced that it will not consider any new funding to the government of Uganda in the wake of the country’s recently passed Anti-Homosexuality Act. The World Bank said in a statement that it worried any projects it financed would discriminate against or exclude the LGBT community. Uganda’s president appears unconcerned.
Lebanon’s Culture Ministry has moved to ban the film Barbie for allegedly promoting homosexuality.
Meanwhile, Iraq has banned the use of the term “homosexuality” in the media, insisting that it instead be called sexual deviance.
Eight LGBT activists were arrested in Malaysia over their part in a peaceful protest against crackdowns on LGBT people.
The Diplomat has an op-ed criticizing the UN World Tourism Organization for holding its next two annual conferences in Uzbekistan and Saudi Arabia, both countries that criminalize gay people.
Thailand’s Move Forward Party, which won the most seats in the last parliamentary election, but appears to be shut out of the likely governing coalition to be voted on next week, has resubmitted bills on same-sex marriage and gender recognition. The previous bills were scheduled to lapse if Parliament didn’t take them up again by September, which still seems unlikely. Amid Thailand’s ongoing political crisis are rumors that the King’s son, who recently returned to the country from exile in America, may be positioned to inherit the throne after his half-sister has taken ill. The son is believed to be a progressive reformist.
Ohio voters rejected an attempted power grab by state Republicans, who sought to make it more difficult for citizens to organize referenda on constitutional amendments. The Republicans were trying to block a referendum on abortion rights that will happen in November.
The city council of York in Pennsylvania will consider an ordinance to ban conversion therapy next Tuesday.