International

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President Biden Should Cement Rights in US Policy

US President-elect Joe Biden should work with global leaders who have sought to shore up a defense of human rights around the world, Human Rights Watch said today in releasing its World Report 2021. His administration should also look for ways to entrench respect for human rights in US policy that are more likely to survive the radical changes among administrations that have become a fixture of the US political landscape. “After four years of Trump’s indifference and often hostility to human rights, including his provoking a mob assault on democratic processes in the Capitol, the Biden presidency provides an opportunity […]

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LGBTQ History Groups in 22 Countries Outlines Best Practices, Supports Paris Archives Collective

Forty-five LGBTQ and feminist archives, museums and public history institutions from 22 countries have endorsed an open letter that outlines the best practices developed by such organizations over the past 50 years. The letter marks the first time a group of this size and geographical reach has put forward a basic charter for their work. The central point: The reconstitution of the lost and erased queer past must be entrusted to independent institutions conceived and directed by the LGBTQI community itself.  Published on Friday, January 8, in the national French newspaper Libération, the open letter calls on the French government to support the efforts […]

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Latvia Votes to put Anti-gay Hate at the Heart of its Constitution

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The Republic of Latvia has voted to define family solely as “a union of a male and female person”, excluding the country’s countless loving LGBT+ families. On Thursday (14 January) the Latvian parliament, or Saeima, voted 47-25 for an amendment to the constitution stipulating that a family unit consists of a marriage between a woman and a man. Section 110 of the constitution will now read: “The state protects and supports marriage – a union between a man and a woman, a family based on marriage, blood relation or adoption, the rights of parents and a child, including the right […]

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Israel Declassifies Being Trans as a Mental Disorder

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Two years after the World Health Organization and 11 years after France, Israel has finally agreed that being trans is not a mental disorder. New guidelines, drafted by Israel’s health ministry after three years of consulting with LGBT+ and trans organisations, set out how hospitals and healthcare facilities must treat transgender people. The guidance directs that hospitals and healthcare facilities must have at least one staff member trained in trans awareness, use a trans person’s correct pronouns regardless of the gender on their official documents, and to provide unisex facilities where possible while allowing trans people to use gendered spaces in accordance with their gender […]

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Czech Republic Rules Against Same-sex Couples Adopting

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The Czech Republic has ruled against adoptions from same-sex couples registered abroad as anti-LGBT+ rhetoric continues spreading across eastern Europe. On Monday (11 January) the Czech Constitutional Court rejected a regional court’s proposal to amend a law that prevents same-sex couples registered abroad from adopting Czech children. Same-sex couples are currently unable to adopt as adoption is restricted to married couples, and same-sex marriage isn’t legal in the Czech Republic.  So the Prague Regional Court proposed changes to the wording on private international law, allowing Czech courts to recognise same-sex partners registered overseas. This was rejected in the new ruling, which […]

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No Safe Haven for LGBT People in El Salvador

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Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele agreed on December 15 to implement an Asylum Cooperative Agreement with the US government. It allows US immigration authorities to transfer non-Salvadoran asylum seekers to El Salvador, instead of allowing them to seek asylum in the US. US President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to terminate the deeply flawed agreement, a deeply flawed deal that presupposes El Salvador can provide a full and fair asylum procedure and protect refugees. But for some groups, including lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, El Salvador provides no safe haven. Its own LGBT citizens lack protection from violence and discrimination.  A recent Human Rights […]

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Ontario Court Rules Trans Woman’s Kids Can be Moved to Another Country

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An Ontario, Canada, court has ruled that a trans woman must pay the travel costs for her two children to move in with their mother in Washington, US. Increasingly isolated from her family, the upshot of a legal custody battle has seen Darcy feel she is drifting from her children after her former spouse divorced her in 2017. Her ex is now remarried to a man who works for Microsoft, the Ottawa Sunreported. Darcy and her family were then plunged into a custody battle that sowed division and fear, she said, as her former partner wished to relocate to Washington as […]

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Greece Makes History with First Openly Gay Cabinet Minister

Nicholas Yatromanolakis has become the first ever openly gay cabinet minister in Greece after he was named deputy minister of culture on Monday (4 January). Yatromanolakis was promoted from his previous role of general secretary at the ministry as a part of prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ cabinet reshuffle. The prime minister left most key cabinet officials in place, with both the ministers for health and finance remaining in their positions, the Associated Press reports. Yatromanolakis and other ministers in the centre-right government will be sworn in on Tuesday, according to local media reports. The new deputy minister of culture has been a […]

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Number of LGB MPs in Britain Hits Record High

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Queer MPs such as Charlotte Nichols, Nadia Whittome and Olivia Blake reflect a Britain where young people feel comfortable with and empowered by expressing their identities. In December 2019, three more MPs in the House of Commons came out as lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual or queer, bringing the total number of out LGB MPs to a remarkable 56. Of course, Britain is still without its first transgender MP. The Labour MPs Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East), Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) and Olivia Blake (Sheffield Hallam) came out as queer and bisexual. At 24, 28 and 30 years of age, they represent a new Britain where […]

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“Kill Them, They Are Sodomites” Police Violence Against LGBT Folks in Tunisia

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On October 6, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) activists in Tunisia raised their voices and banners in the street, amid the hundreds of demonstrators who were peacefully protesting a draft law that would drastically limit criminal accountability for the use of force by the security forces. By a cruel irony, police attacked the demonstrators, including LGBT activists, and arbitrarily arrested them. The proposed law, if passed, would embolden security forces in their use of excessive force and send an alarming message to Tunisians, especially members of marginalized groups, already vulnerable to police misconduct, that they will not be protected from police violence. For LGBT people, who are often excluded […]

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