People investigated under discriminatory laws to get €500, while those convicted will get €3,000 or more, says justice minister
Austria has set aside millions of euros to compensate thousands of gay people who until two decades ago faced prosecution, its justice minister has said.
The country decriminalised homosexuality in 1971 but certain discriminatory provisions remained in force until the early 2000s.
Continue reading...Activists have secured a string of legal victories in Hong Kong but it is a very different story on the mainland
After months of pandemic-related delays, Asia’s first Gay Games was held in Hong Kong last week, with nearly 2,400 athletes competing. At the opening ceremony, Regina Ip, the convenor of Hong Kong’s executive council, said the competition represented the city’s commitment to “equal opportunity and non-discrimination”, and praised Hong Kong’s courts for the “numerous judgments” handed down in favour of the LGBTQ+ community in the past decade.
This was met with bemusement by activists and lawyers, who pointed out that Ip’s government has opposed each of those judgments, losing in nearly every single case. Since 2018, there have been at least seven cases relating to LGBTQ+ rights heard by Hong Kong’s courts, with many reaching the Court of Final Appeal, the city’s highest bench. “Why are they still wasting taxpayers’ money fighting these tooth-and-nail litigations when they’re recycling the same arguments and losing?” said Mark Daly, a human rights lawyer who has worked on a number of the cases.
Continue reading...Max Hightower stripped of role over policy that students must play characters aligning with gender identity assigned to them at birth
Weeks into his senior year of high school in Texas, Max Hightower earned the lead male role for his campus’s production of Oklahoma! the musical. But the trans teen’s principal has since stripped the teen of the part, citing a new policy requiring students to only portray characters who align with the gender identity assigned to them when they were born.
Hightower and his family are now appealing the administrator’s decision to the school board while the play is put on hold pending a review.
Continue reading...László Simon dismissed after National Museum allowed children to visit a World Press Photo show
The director of Budapest’s National Museum has been fired from his role over a contentious anti-LGBTQ+ law that he himself voted for when he was a member of parliament.
Hungary’s government on Monday dismissed director László Simon after his museum allowed under-18s to visit a World Press Photo exhibition featuring images of LGBTQ+ people, despite laws banning the “promotion of homosexuality” to minors.
Continue reading...Equalities minister says LGBTQ+ charity ‘overreached’ and ‘more extreme ideas’ about trans rights have been defeated
Kemi Badenoch has launched an attack on the LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall, describing it as an example of an organisation taken over by “leftist” ideas.
Speaking on stage at an international gathering of conservatives, the business secretary and minister for women and equalities, agreed with the suggestion that the “more extreme ideas” about the rights of trans people had been defeated.
Continue reading...Measure to ensure foreign artists ‘adhere to the local culture’ follows incident at gig by the 1975 in Kuala Lumpur
Concert organisers in Malaysia must now have a “kill switch” to cut short performances that break official guidelines, a minister has said.
The measure follows the controversy surrounding a performance in Kuala Lumpur by the 1975, whose frontman Matty Healy criticised Malaysia’s homophobic laws in a profanity-laden speech and kissed a male bandmate on stage. The incident in July led to the cancellation of the weekend festival at which the band was performing.
Continue reading...Prestigious show contains one set of images with LGBTQ+ theme, prompting a far-right lawmaker to file a complaint with the cultural ministry
People younger than 18 have been barred from visiting this year’s World Press Photo exhibition in Budapest after Hungary’s rightwing populist government decided that some of its photos violate a contentious law restricting LGBTQ+ content.
The prestigious exhibition, being shown at Hungary’s National Museum in Budapest, receives more than four million visitors from around the world every year. Showcasing outstanding photojournalism, its mission is to bring visual coverage of a range of important events to a global audience.
Continue reading...Community looks tentatively to future as party that sought to demonise them is unlikely to retain power
For the past eight years, fear and anxiety has threaded through much of Bart Staszewski’s daily life. As a gay man living in Poland, he found himself increasingly under attack by a government that had sought to depict the LGBTQ+ community as a threat to the nation and its children, fuelling prejudices and hate crimes across the country.
But since last month’s election pointed to a possible route to power for opposition parties, Staszewski has been gripped by a wave of relief. “It’s like I’m breathing fresh air for the first time in eight years,” he said. “After years of hate against people like me, the nightmare is over.”
Continue reading...Activists deplore ‘distressing setback for equality’ as court backs law against ‘indecent acts’ between military personnel
South Korea’s constitutional court has upheld two anti-LGBTQ+ laws including the country’s notorious military “sodomy law” for the fourth time, in a ruling activists are calling a setback for equality rights.
The court, in a five-to-four vote, ruled that article 92-6 of the military criminal act, which prescribes a maximum prison term of two years for “anal intercourse” and “any other indecent acts” between military personnel, even while on leave and consensual, was constitutional in response to several petitions challenging the law.
Continue reading...Judges reject requirement for trans people to remove reproductive organs for state-recognised gender change
Japan’s top court has ruled that a legal clause requiring people to undergo sterilisation surgery if they want to legally change their gender is unconstitutional.
Several international organisations including the European court of human rights, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and UN had said the requirement was discriminatory and infringed on human rights.
Continue reading...Homosexuality was decriminalised in 2018 but the supreme court has declined to change marriage laws
Utkarsh Saxena had been secretly planning the proposal for weeks. He had secretly measured his boyfriend’s finger while he was sleeping and bought a pair of matching steel rings from a Delhi market. They had been together for 15 years, having fallen in love on the university debating team, and Saxena felt optimistic that this would be an auspicious moment to ask the love of his life to marry him – the same day that India’s supreme court ruled on whether same-sex couples would be allowed to get married.
Yet when the verdict came out on Tuesday, Saxena’s heart broke. Even as India’s chief justice, DY Chandrachud, spoke of India’s long history of LGBTQ+ people and their right to equality, he ruled that changing marriage laws was beyond the scope of the court and that marriage was not a fundamental right. It was the job of parliament, not judges, to make such decisions, Chandrachud said.
Continue reading...Judges say decision should be made by parliament but stress that such unions should not face discrimination
India’s top court has declined to grant legal recognition to same-sex marriages, saying it is beyond its scope and should be decided by parliament, but emphasising that queer relationships should not face discrimination by the state.
The marriage ruling will be a disappointment for LGBTQ+ people in India, who had hoped the supreme court judges would recognise their constitutional right to marriage equality.
Continue reading...Saskatchewan invokes clause to push through controversial bill requiring parental consent for children to change pronouns
The Canadian province of Saskatchewan has invoked a rare constitutional mechanism to shield controversial gender pronoun legislation from legal challenges – a decision critics say violates the rights of minors.
On Monday, Saskatchewan’s legislative assembly started debate on Bill 137, which outlines the rights parents have as the “primary decision-maker” in their child’s education. Among the most controversial is the provision requiring parental consent before school staff use a desired gender identity or gender-related preferred name if the student is under the age of 16. The bill also says that if obtaining parental permission could cause harm to the child, the principal will connect the student with support to develop a plan to come out to their parents.
Continue reading...Queer people of color are frequently overlooked in the fight for equality, but inroads into the corridors of power are being made
On the 60th anniversary of the 1963 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.
Continue reading...Attitude magazine celebrates TikTok star who collaborated with beer maker who left her high and dry after conservatives boycotted
After gaining Attitude magazine’s first-ever woman of the year award, US trans activist Dylan Mulvaney said receiving such recognition from the UK-based LGBTQ+ publication “means so much more” after a substantial transphobic backlash undermined her Bud Light advertisement.
“No matter how hard I try or what I wear, or what I say, or what surgeries I get, I will never reach an acceptable version of womanhood by those hateful people’s standards,” Mulvaney said in social media videos that showed her accepting the award this week. “But as long as I have the queer community that sees me for my truth – I’m gonna be OK.”
Continue reading...Suspected suicides of the five who were undergoing gender affirming processes to be examined starting next month
Emotional wellbeing support for transgender people will be investigated as part of a coronial inquiry into the suspected suicides of five people who were undergoing gender affirmation processes before their deaths.
The Victorian coroners will next month begin a four-day inquest into the deaths of five transgender and gender-diverse people between 2020 and 2021.
Continue reading...President says university student, 21, who died days after being tied to a fence and beaten, was murdered ‘simply for being himself’
Joe Biden has marked the 25th anniversary of the death of Matthew Shepard, a gay 21-year-old University of Wyoming student who died six days after he was beaten by two young men, tied to a fence, burned and abandoned in a remote part of the state.
Shepard’s death has long been memorialized as a hate crime that helped fuel the LGBTQ+ rights movement. Lamenting “a brutal act of hate and violence that shocked our nation and the world”, Biden, in a statement on Thursday, said Shepard was murdered “simply for being himself”.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Shannon Fentiman urges federal government to ‘expedite’ applying individual risk assessments to donors, in line with the UK, Canada and US
The Queensland health minister has called on the federal government to consider scrapping restrictions that prevent most gay and bisexual men from donating blood.
In Australia, sexually active gay men, bisexual men, transgender women and some non-binary people who have sex with men – including those in long-term relationships – are unable to donate blood unless they abstain from sex for three months.
Continue reading...Stefanos Kasselakis says he wanted to open up the subject of same-sex couples having children
Greece’s first openly gay political party leader says he was deliberately trying to “stir stagnant waters” and tackle the taboo subject of same-sex couples having children when he announced he and his partner planned to become parents through surrogacy.
Weeks after his unexpected election to the helm of the main opposition left-wing Syriza, Stefanos Kasselakis insisted his comments had aimed to give the issue visibility in a nation where LGBT rights were rarely publicly discussed.
Continue reading...LGBTQ groups laud fashion designer for speech in which she said ‘minority voices’ were under attack
Gay rights groups in Italy have praised Donatella Versace for speaking out against the government’s anti-gay policies in a heartfelt and personal speech while receiving a fashion award.
“Our government is trying to take away people’s rights to live as they wish,” Versace said on Sunday night, citing in particular a government policy that allows only the biological parent in same-sex couples to be officially recognised as the parent. “They are restricting our freedoms,” she said.
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