Reuters

Chile’s Congress passed a law to legalize same-sex marriage on Tuesday, in a milestone for the conservative South American nation after a decade-long legal battle and with the country delicately poised ahead of a crossroads election this month. “Today is a historic day, our country has approved same-sex marriage, one more step forward in terms of justice, in terms of equality, recognizing that love is love,” Minister of Social Development Karla Rubilar said after the vote. Chile’s Senate and lower house of parliament both voted heavily in favor of the bill on Tuesday, which had previously been partially approved in […]

Hungary’s parliament passed a resolution on Tuesday which will empower the government to hold a referendum on LGBTQ issues, raising Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s anti-LGBTQ campaign to a new level as he heads into a tough election race next year. Orban, a nationalist who has been in power since 2010, this year proposed a referendum on ruling party legislation that limits schools’ teaching about homosexuality and transgender issues, stepping up a culture war with the European Union. Facing his first competitive election in more than a decade, nationalist Orban has sought to promote social policies that he says safeguard Christian […]

Same-sex couples can wed in Switzerland from July 1 next year, the government said on Wednesday, enacting the results of a groundbreaking referendum on the issue in September. Voters approved the “Marriage for All” initiative by a nearly two-thirds majority, making Switzerland one of the last countries in Western Europe to legalize gay marriage. In a two-stage process, same-sex couples who have married abroad will have their status recognized from the start of January. Previously, the couples were seen as a registered partnership in Switzerland. The new law will start six months later, which means couples will be allowed to […]

In the country that first legalized gay marriage, the Dutch crown princess has the right to marry a person of any gender without giving up her right to the throne, the prime minister said Tuesday. Crown Princess Catharina-Amalia, 17, has not made any comments on the matter, and little is known of her personal life. The question arose after recently published books argued that the country’s rules exclude the possibility of a same-sex royal couple. But Prime Minister Mark Rutte said times have changed since one of his predecessors last addressed the issue in 2000. “The government believes that the […]

Chinese tech giant Tencent’s WeChat social media platform has deleted dozens of LGBTQ accounts run by university students, saying some had broken rules on information on the internet, sparking fear of a crackdown on gay content online. Members of several LGBTQ groups told Reuters that access to their accounts was blocked late on Tuesday and they later discovered that all of their content had been deleted. “Many of us suffered at the same time,” said the account manager of one group who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the issue. “They censored us without any warning. All […]

Brazilian governor and potential major party presidential candidate Eduardo Leite, a prominent critic of President Jair Bolsonaro, came out as gay in a TV interview. Leite, governor of the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, would be the first openly gay presidential candidate in Brazil. Anti-gay rhetoric has been a staple of speeches by Bolsonaro, who once declared that if he had a gay son, he would rather he died in an accident. “I have never spoken about a subject related to my private life”, Leite told Brazilian journalist Pedro Bial in a TV interview on Thursday evening. “But […]

People took to the streets of Spain’s biggest cities on Monday evening to express their anger at the death of a man in a suspected homophobic attack at the weekend. Crowds filled a central Madrid square and activists marched down a major street in Barcelona, chanting slogans and waving placards and rainbow-colored flags. “The response to the wave of LGBT-phobic hatred that ended the life of Samuel in A Coruna is overwhelming,” the left-wing Podemos party that governs in coalition with the ruling Socialists wrote on Twitter. Samuel Luiz, a 24-year-old nursing assistant, was beaten near a nightclub in the […]