Two lower courts in Nepal have denied a couple recognition of their marriage, in defiance of the Supreme Court’s recent interim order to register same-sex marriages while legislative change is pending. The couple – Maya Gurung and Surendra Pandey – are considering seeking redress at the Supreme Court.
Gurung, a transgender woman who is legally recognized as male, and Pandey, a cisgender man, held a Hindu wedding ceremony in 2017, and first attempted to register their marriage in June at the Kathmandu District Court, following the Supreme Court’s order. When that court rejected their registration, saying it did not need to recognize a couple that was not one legal male and one legal female, they appealed to the Patan High Court.
In their ruling, the high court judges said that because the Supreme Court order named the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers, it was the responsibility of the federal government to change the law before the lower courts could register such marriages.
Nepal’s civil code currently only recognizes marriages between one man and one woman. The Supreme Court attempted to rectify that by ordering the creation of an interim registry for nontraditional marriages until parliament changes the law. The two lower courts are now reversing the logic by claiming that the national law must be changed first.
Nepal’s Supreme Court has a globally-recognized record of rulings upholding the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, although implementation has been piecemeal. In 2007, the court ordered the government to form a committee to study same-sex marriage. In 2015 that committee recommended the government “grant legal recognition to same-sex marriage on the basis of the principle of equality.” However, successive governments failed to bring legislation to the parliament, leading to further court rulings. Earlier this year the court ordered the government to recognize the marriage of a Nepali man who had married a German man.
In fifth grade, Stella Gage’s class watched a video about puberty. In ninth grade, a few sessions of her health class were dedicated to the risks of sexual behaviors.
That was the extent of her sex education in school. At no point was there any content that felt especially relevant to her identity as a queer teenager. To fill the gaps, she turned mostly to social media.
“My parents were mostly absent, my peers were not mature enough, and I didn’t have anyone else to turn to,” said Gage, who is now a sophomore at Wichita State University in Kansas.
Many LGBTQ students say they have not felt represented in sex education classes. To learn about their identities and how to build healthy, safe relationships, they often have had to look elsewhere.
New laws targeting LGBTQ people have been proliferating in GOP-led states. Some elected officials, including candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, have been pushing to remove LGBTQ content from classrooms.
Sex education curriculum varies widely. Some groups including Planned Parenthood have called for sex education to be inclusive of LGBTQ students, but some states outright forbid such an approach.
The penal code in Texas, for one, still says curriculum developed by the Department of State Health Services must say homosexuality is not acceptable and is a criminal offense, even though such language was deemed unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003. Attempts in the Legislature to remove that line from state law have failed.
In practice, LGBTQ students say they have looked elsewhere for sex education. Some described watching their peers turn to pornography, and others said they watched videos on YouTube about how to tell if someone is gay and how to flirt with people of the same sex.
Gage grew up in Oklahoma before her military family relocated and she spent her eighth and ninth grade years in a U.S. Department of Defense school in the Netherlands. She then finished high school in Kansas, where she began to recognize she wasn’t attracted only to men.
Not seeing a safe outlet at her high school to explore who she was, she went online to research for herself the history of the LGBTQ community in the U.S.
“I started to realize there is a huge portion of our history that is conveniently left out. But that history is important to queer youth,” she said. She never really questioned gender or social norms, she said, until she started to learn about discrimination others have faced throughout history. “We have such rigid boxes that we expect people to fit into. If you didn’t fit, you were called slurs. I wasn’t really aware that if you strayed from those norms that people would feel you were attacking their way of life.”
Still, the internet contains vast amounts of false information. Some advocates worry students turning to the internet to fill gaps in sex education will struggle to find their way through the morass.
“Any time you have a political controversy, there is a greater potential for a lot more disinformation to be generated,” said Peter Adams, senior vice president of research and design at the News Literacy Project.
When schools address sexuality, it is often in the context of disease prevention or anti-bullying programs. School can be a difficult place if your identity is seen only in such negative ways, said Tim’m West, a former teacher and now executive director of the LGBTQ Institute at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta. West can relate: He grew up in Arkansas as a queer Black kid and preacher’s son and was constantly made to feel ashamed.
“What if you are a boy in high school that knows you like boys, and you sit in a divided room and listen to a teacher explain how not to have sex with girls. You would be sitting there rolling your eyes, because that is not your issue. But you also haven’t been given any instructions on how to protect yourself should you experiment with a person of the same gender,” West said.
Students need more applicable sex education regardless of their gender identity or expression, said Gage, who volunteers with a youth justice advocacy group and is also president of the Planned Parenthood Generation Action Chapter at Wichita State.
“We all have to make large decisions for ourselves about our sexuality and reproductive health. Those decisions should be grounded in knowledge,” she said.
Growing up in Washington, D.C., Ashton Gerber had more sex education classes than most. But Gerber, who is transgender, said the lessons weren’t all that applicable to their experience.
“Even if you can have sex education every day of the year, there is always going to be something that gets left out,” said Gerber, who is a student at Tufts University in Massachusetts. Gerber said educators should point students to trusted online resources so they can do their own research.
Not knowing who you are is a horrible feeling many LGBTQ students wrestle with, Gage said. But equally horrible is not feeling accepted once you do understand your sexual identity.
“Had I known then what I know now, I would have felt safe and confident coming out sooner,” Gage said. “No one should feel like they don’t understand themselves because we are forced to conformity in a world that doesn’t care. We can all be inclusive.”
Today the European Commission services formally sent X a request for information under the Digital Services Act (DSA). This request follows indications received by the Commission services of the alleged spreading of illegal content and disinformation, in particular the spreading of terrorist and violent content and hate speech. The request addresses compliance with other provisions of the DSA as well.
Following its designation as Very Large Online Platform, X is required to comply with the full set of provisions introduced by the DSA since late August 2023, including the assessment and mitigation of risks related to the dissemination of illegal content, disinformation, gender-based violence, and any negative effects on the exercise of fundamental rights, rights of the child, public security and mental well-being.
In this particular case, the Commission services are investigating X’s compliance with the DSA, including with regard to its policies and actions regarding notices on illegal content, complaint handling, risk assessment and measures to mitigate the risks identified.
The Commission services are empowered to request further information to X in order to verify the correct implementation of the law.
X needs to provide the requested information to the Commission services by 18 October 2023 for questions related to the activation and functioning of X’s crisis response protocol and by 31 October 2023 on the rest.
Based on the assessment of X replies, the Commission will assess next steps. This could entail the formal opening of proceedings pursuant to Article 66 of the DSA.
Marina Machete became the first transgender woman to win Miss Portugal last week, making her one of two trans contestants so far to compete for Miss Universe later this year.
Machete, a 28-year-old flight attendant, thanked her supporters for the “positive and empowering” messages she has received since being crowned Thursday.
“To all of you watching, I just want to say that, just like the universe, your possibilities in life are limitless,” she said in a video shared on Instagram over the weekend. “So don’t limit yourself to any dream that you have.”
She added that she is excited to meet the other delegates at the 72nd Miss Universe pageant in El Salvador in November.
“Yes I’m trans and I want to share my story but I’m also Rikkie and that’s what matters to me,” she wrote in an Instagram post at the time. “I did this on my own strength and enjoyed every moment.”
“I thought we were really accepting … in the Netherlands, but the hate comments show the other side of our society. I hope that’s a wake-up call,” she told Reuters at the time. “For now, I fully ignore it. I focus on the good things coming my way.”
It appears that Machete and Kolle will be the only transgender contestants among the 90 women who will compete for the crown on Nov. 18. There are two more qualifying pageants — in Mongolia and China — before the Miss Universe pageant next month, and no local reporting has identified any trans contestants.
In 2021, Kataluna Enriquez became the first trans woman to compete in the Miss USA pageant after she was crowned Miss Nevada, though she did not go on to compete in that year’s Miss Universe pageant. In February, Daniela Arroyo González became the first trans woman to compete in Miss Universe Puerto Rico, where she finished within the top 10 finalists, according to her Instagram.
However, not all pageants have been open to including trans women.In July, more than 100 transgender men entered the Miss Italy pageant after the pageant’s organizer said Miss Italy wouldn’t allow trans women to compete.
Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday he did not “recognize LGBT” and vowed to combat “perverse” trends which he said aimed to destroy the institution of family in the country.
Turkey’s government, led by Erdogan and his Islamist-rooted AK Party, has toughened its stance on LGBTQ freedoms in recent months, particularly while campaigning for this year’s elections in May.
Homosexuality is not a crime in Turkey, but hostility to it is widespread, and police crackdowns on Pride parades have become tougher over the years.
Speaking at an AK Party congress in Ankara, Erdogan, who has frequently labeled members of the LGBTQ community as “deviants,” said neither his party, nor their nationalist MHP allies, recognized the LGBTQ community.
“We do not recognize LGBT. Whoever recognizes LGBT can go and march with them. We are members of a structure that holds the institution of family solid, that strongly embraces the family institution,” he said.
“We will dry the roots of sneaky acts aiming to destroy our family institution by supporting perverse political, social and individual trends,” he told tens of thousands of flag-waving and chanting supporters.
After the United Nations General Assembly in New York last month, Erdogan complained that he was uncomfortable with the use of what he described as “LGBT colors” at the U.N., which at the time was decorated with bright colors promoting the Sustainable Development Goals.
An LGBTQ+ youth center in Spokane, Washington was vandalized three nights in a row last week, after already experiencing vandalism of its Pride mural a month ago.
On Thursday night, the sign for the Odyssey Youth Movement (OYM), located in the South Perry neighborhood, was covered in paint, as was the nearby rainbow crosswalk. The following evening, the windows and doors were covered in anti-LGBTQ+ hate speech. And finally, on Saturday night, a black pick-up truck left rubber tire treads across the rainbow crosswalk.
This isn’t the first time that 4-H has faced trouble over LGBTQ+ issues.
“We’re all saddened to hear that someone continues to vandalize the new rainbow crosswalk and Odyssey Youth facility,” Michelle Weaver, president of the South Perry Neighborhood and Business Association, told local news outlet KHQ.
“Hate runs counter to our values here in the Perry District. Our diversity is one of the things that makes the Perry District such a great place to be,” Weaver added. “Unfortunately, people fear that which is different from themselves and it leads to hate. I’m hoping whoever did this can be open to the fact that we all work hard, contribute to our communities, pay taxes, raise families, and have dreams and aspirations just like they do, no matter who we love and how we identify.”
Ian Sullivan, OYM’s executive director, said the acts “are designed to make LGBTQ+ youth and young adults feel unwelcome and othered in their own community.”
Spokane Police are investigating the crimes.
“With stuff like this continuing, as it’s been here the entire time… the call is to our government,” said Spokane NAACP president Kurtis Robinson. “‘What are you doing about this’ besides saying you ‘don’t like it’ and ‘it’s bad’… Do some work. Put some protections up… It’s not a question of if it’s happened. It’s the question [of] when is this going to happen again.”
The NHL issued a sweeping ban against on-ice theme night gear, barring clubs from having players wear rainbow sweaters or use multicolored tape on sticks during Pride Night, for example, officials confirmed Tuesday.
Outsports called the NHL’s new directive “the most stifling, anti-LGBTQ policy any pro sports league in North America has ever issued.”
Representatives for the NHL and the players union did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
Deputy NHL Commissioner Bill Daly confirmed to The Associated Press on Tuesday that the league sent a memo to all 32 clubs with updated guidance barring any on-ice uniform or gear used in warmups from including any theme night celebrations.
Kurt Weaver, the chief operations officer of the You Can Play Project, told NBC News that the leaguewide memo went to clubs Thursday. You Can Play is a partner of the NHL and its “Hockey Is for Everyone” campaign, aimed at stomping out homophobia and spreading the game to underrepresented groups.
Weaver said league officials confirmed to him that teams will be barred from having players wear Pride sweaters or have rainbow tape on their sticks.
“When you start to take away what is our most visible representations, what carries the most weight in messaging, is those heroes that you see on the ice standing up for they believe and what they believe is right,” Weaver said. “And removing those from the ice is a tough one.”
Weaver praised years of efforts by the NHL, teams and players to fight homophobia but admitted that last week’s league memo was a bitter pill to swallow.
“It’s hard to reconcile that right now, with decisions like this. But I see too many great things that the clubs do, that hockey in general does. It’s success after success,” he said. “But that right now is clouded by a really poor decision that’s going to overtake all that good work.”
Jeff McLean, a spokesperson for Pride Tape, said the company is “extremely disappointed by the NHL’s decision” to ban its product from on-ice activities this season. The company is looking forward to better days ahead.
“We hope the league — and teams — will again show commitment to this important symbol of combating homophobia,” the company said. “Many of the players themselves have been exceptional advocates for the tape.”
The recent NHL communication to clubs also left the door open for players to object to being in “close proximity” to people or groups whom they might consider to be “associated” with causes they don’t support, Outsports reported.
“Players shall not be put in the position of having to demonstrate (or where they may be appearing to demonstrate) personal support for any Special Initiatives. A factor that may be considered in this regard includes, for example, whether a Player (or Players) is required to be in close proximity to any groups or individuals visibly or otherwise clearly associated with such Special Initiative(s),” the league allegedly told clubs, Outsports reported.
The potential “proximity” policy had Anaheim Ducks organist Lindsay Imber wondering out loud whether she could be, in theory, booted from her Honda Center nest over gender identity.
“At the executive level, we just don’t have representation, and if we don’t have representation up there, they don’t know us,” she said Tuesday. “So then the people formulating these decisions don’t have this perspective, which leads to policies that are exclusionary.”
The puck drops for the 2023-24 NHL regular season Tuesday with a trio of opening night games as the Nashville Predators visit the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Chicago Blackhawks go on the road to play the Pittsburgh Penguins, and the Seattle Kraken watch the Stanley Cup-champion Golden Knights hoist a championship banner in Las Vegas.
On the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington this summer, a few Black queer advocates spoke passionately before the main program about the ongoing struggle for LGBTQ rights. As some of them got up to speak, the crowd was still noticeably small.
Hope Giselle, a speaker who is Black and trans, said she felt the event’s programming echoed the historical marginalization and erasure of Black queer activists in the Civil Rights Movement. However, she was buoyed by the fact that prominent speakers drew attention to recent efforts to turn back the clock on LGBTQ rights, like the attacks on gender-affirming care for minors.
And despite valid concerns around the visibility of Black queer advocates in activist movements, progress is being made in elected office. This month, Sen. Laphonza Butler made history as the first Black and openly lesbian senator in Congress, when California Governor Gavin Newsom appointed her to fill the seat held by the late Dianne Feinstein.
Rectifying the erasure of Black queer civil rights giants requires a full-throated acknowledgment of their legacies, and an increase of Black LGBTQ representation in advocacy and politics, several activists and lawmakers told The Associated Press.
“One of the things that I need for people to understand is that the Black queer community is still Black,” and face anti-Black racism as well as homophobia and transphobia, said Giselle, communications director for the GSA Network, a nonprofit that helps students form gay-straight alliance clubs in schools.
“On top of being Black and queer, we have to also then distinguish what it means to be queer in a world that thinks that queerness is adjacent to whiteness — and that queerness saves you from racism. It does not,” she said.
In an interview with the AP, Butler said she hopes that her appointment points toward progress in the larger cause of representation.
“It’s too early to tell. But what I know is that history will be recorded in our National Archives, the representation that I bring to the United States Senate,” she said last week. “I am not shy or bashful about who I am and who my family is. So, my hope is that I have lived out loud enough to overcome the tactics of today.”
“But we don’t know yet what the tactics of erasure are for tomorrow,” Butler said.
Butler is a bellwether of increased visibility of queer communities in politics in recent years. In fact Black LGBTQ political representation has grown by 186% since 2019, according to a 2023 report by the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute. That included the election of now-former New York Representatives Mondaire Jones and Ritchie Torres, who were the first openly gay Black and Afro-Latino congressmen after the 2020 election, as well as former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot.
These leaders stand on the shoulders of civil rights heroes such as Bayard Rustin, Pauli Murray, and Audre Lorde. In accounts of their contributions to the Civil Rights and feminist movements, their Blackness is typically amplified while their queer identities are often minimized or even erased, said David Johns, executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition, a LGBTQ civil rights group.
Rustin, who was an adviser to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and a pivotal architect of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, is a glaring example. The march he helped lead tilled the ground for the passage of federal civil rights and voting rights legislation in the next few years.
But the fact that he was gay is often reduced to a footnote rather than treated as a key part of his involvement, Johns said.
“We need to teach our public school students history, herstory, our beautifully diverse ways of being, without censorship,” he said.
An upcoming biopic of Rustin’s life will undoubtedly help thrust the topic of Black LGBTQ political representation into the public conversation, said Shay Franco-Clausen, a commissioner of Alameda County in California.
“I didn’t even learn about those same leaders, Black leaders, Black queer leaders until I got to college,” she said.
The film, titled “Rustin,” debuts in select theaters Nov. 3 and Netflix on Nov. 17.
Some believe the erasure of Black LGBTQ leaders stems from respectability politics, a strategy in some marginalized communities of ostracizing or punishing members who don’t assimilate into the dominant culture.
White supremacist ideology in Christianity, which has been used more broadly to justify racism and systemic oppression, has also promoted the erasure of Black queer history. The Black Christian church was integral to the success of the Civil Rights Movement, but it is also “theologically hostile” to LGBTQ communities, said Don Abram, executive director of Pride in the Pews.
“I think it’s the co-optation of religious practices by white supremacists to actually subjugate Black, queer, and trans folk,” Abram said. “They are largely using moralistic language, theological language, religious language to justify them oppressing queer and trans folk.”
Not all queer advocacy communities have been welcoming to Black LGBTQ voices. Minneapolis City Council President Andrea Jenkins said she is just as intentional in amplifying queer visibility in Black spaces as she is amplifying Blackness in majority white, queer spaces.
“We need to have more Black, queer, transgender, nonconforming identified people in these political spaces to aid and bridge those gaps,” Jenkins said. “It’s important to be able to create the kinds of awareness on both sides of the issue that can bring people together and that can ensure that we do have full participation from our community.”
Black LGBTQ leaders are also using their platforms to create awareness about groundbreaking historical figures, especially Rustin. Maryland Delegate Gabriel Acevero and several LGBTQ advocates fought to get the only elementary school in his district named after Rustin in 2018. He has also urged Congress to pass legislation to create a U.S. Postal Service stamp depicting Rustin.
“Black queer folks have contributed to so many movements that we do not get acknowledgment for,” Acevero said. “And this is why we should not only ensure that our elders get their flowers, but we should push to have their names and statues built … so that they are not forgotten.”
President Joe Biden acknowledged the 25th anniversary of Matthew Shepard’s death on Thursday and condemned the nation’s recent uptick in anti-LGBTQ threats and acts of violence.
Shepard, a gay college freshman at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, was abducted, robbed and beaten into a coma on Oct. 6, 1998. The two men who attacked Shepard tied him to a fence in freezing weather. He was discovered 18 hours later by a bicyclist, who initially mistook him for a scarecrow. Shepard died in a Colorado hospital on Oct. 12, 1998, surrounded by family.
“Matthew’s tragic and senseless murder shook the conscience of the American people,” Biden said in a statement. “And his courageous parents, Judy and Dennis Shepard, turned Matthew’s memory into a movement, galvanizing millions of people to combat the scourge of anti-LGBTQI+ hate and violence in America.”
The two assailants, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, were sentenced to life in prison for first-degree murder, but they were not charged with hate crimes. At the time, attacks motivated by a victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity did not qualify as hate crimes under Wyoming law. Wyoming is currently one of just two states, along with South Carolina, that does not have a law allowing additional penalties in hate-motivated crimes.
In 2009, the Obama administration enacted the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. The law extended federal hate crimes laws to cover sexual orientation, gender identity and disabilities and was named after Shepard and a Texas Black man who was murdered by white supremacists the same year of Shepard’s killing.
Biden, who was vice president at the time, lauded the 2009 law on Thursday and vowed to “continue the fight against hate, against violence, and against bigotry in all its forms.”
“Today, as threats and violence targeting the LGBTQI+ community continue to rise, our work is far from finished,” he said. “No American should face hate or violence for who they are or who they love.”
Anti-LGBTQ demonstrations have spiked over the past year, in addition to several high-profile acts of violence allegedly incited by anti-LGBTQ sentiments.
In August, a teenager was arrested for stabbing a 28-year-old gay professional dancer, O’Shae Sibley, to death at a gas station in Brooklyn, New York, in what police later said was a hate crime. That same month, Laura Ann Carleto, a California business owner and mother of nine, was shot and killed over a Pride flag displayed in her clothing store.
From June 2022 to May, there was an average of 39 anti-LGBTQ protests per month in the U.S. compared with just three a month from January 2017 through May 2022, according to a recent reportby the Crowd Counting Consortium, a research group that tracks political protests.
In his statement Thursday, Biden also again called for Congress to pass the Equality Act, legislation that would amend the 1969 Civil Rights Act to include anti-discrimination protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The legislation passed in the then-Democratic-controlled House in 2021 — with support of three Republicans — but has since stalled in the Senate.
Polish opposition leader Robert Biedroń symbolically wed his partner, Krysztof Śmiszek, during a theatrical performance to protest the country’s lack of marriage equality. The two men, politicians from The Left (Lewica) party, have been together for 23 years.
Poland is considered the worst country in Europe for LGBTQ+ rights.
The video features some of Poland’s biggest and most visible LGBTQ politicians, celebrities and activists.
“I performed hundreds of weddings as mayor of Słupsk, but this is the first time I’ve stood on the other side,” Biedroń said during the ceremony. “It’s a beautiful feeling that needs to be shared. That’s why we should do everything so that two adults can experience a wedding whenever they want. Because love is love.”
The ceremony was part of a play, Spartacus: Love in the Time of Cholera, that looks at the difficult situation queer people in the country face. Each performance ends with the wedding of a non-heterosexual couple.
The actress who performs the ceremony uses all the language used in a traditional wedding, but alters the end, saying instead, “I declare that contrary to the regulations in force in the Republic of Poland, the marriage of [the couple’s names] has been concluded.”
Many couples invited to participate treat the ceremony seriously, inviting their friends to witness their union.
Biedroń’s party supports marriage equality. Queer people regularly protest the country’s anti-LGBTQ+ laws in creative and impactful ways to build support for civil rights laws.
In 2020, a Polish gay couple went to self-declared “LGBT-free zones” in their country to hand out rainbow face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic, hoping to promote tolerance.
“What a wedding!” Śmieszek tweeted after the event.. “There were nerves and emotions. But there was also anger that in 2023, in the middle of Europe, two people who love each other are not recognized by their country…That instead of respect and dignity, hundreds of thousands of people in Poland receive contempt.”
“We can change this on 15 October!” he declared, referring to the upcoming parliamentary elections. “Let’s vote for respect, dignity, and equality. I won’t rest until we achieve this normality!”
Śmieszek’s party is the second-largest opposition group. The biggest, the centrist Civic Platform, supports civil unions for LGBTQ+ people.