World
French marriage bill receives final approval
“Mariage pour tous” bill passed by 331-225 vote margin
The French National Assembly on Tuesday gave final approval to a bill that would extend marriage and adoption rights to gay and lesbian couples.
The 331-225 vote took place less than two weeks after the country’s Senate approved the measure. The bill passed in the National Assembly in February by a 329-229 vote margin.
“In voting for this law, we want to offer it to the tens of thousands of children who want, after they leave school, the power to give their hand to their two dads or to their two moms,” Bernard Roman, a Socialist member of the National Assembly, said before lawmakers approved the bill as Le Monde reported.
Hervé Mariton, who is a member of the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP,) spoke against the proposal.
“In a few weeks, perhaps, friends, Diane and Françoise, will marry,” he said, according to Le Monde as he criticized his fellow legislators for not allowing a referendum on the issue. “Marriage, before being rights, are obligations.”
The measure’s supporters have become increasingly concerned in recent weeks with rhetoric against the bill they contend has sparked a spate of anti-gay violence across France. These include a librarian whom a group of men beat unconscious as he and his boyfriend walked to their Paris home on April 7 and a gay cabaret singer who was attacked early Saturday morning as he and his partner left a Nice nightclub.
National Assembly President Claude Bartolone on Monday received a letter that contained gunpowder. French police reportedly placed water canons outside the building to deter those who may have wanted to try and disrupt the vote.
Le Manif Pour Tous, which opposes the same-sex marriage and adoption bill, plans to protest the measure’s passage outside the National Assembly later today.
“The deputies in the majority stress ‘equality,'” it said in a Tweet just before the vote. “What equality is there for the new legal orphans create by this law?”
The bill’s opponents can prompt a constitutional review of the measure if their effort receives the support of 60 members of the Senate or the National Assembly. President François Hollande, who publicly backed the extension of marriage and adoption rights to same-sex couples during his 2012 presidential campaign, has already said lawmakers and not the constitution should decide issue.
“This is a historic moment that the world should celebrate,” All Out Executive Director Andre Banks said in a statement after the vote. “Once the constitutional court reviews the bill, and President Hollande signs the bill, loving and committed gay and lesbian couples will finally be able to marry in France.”
ILGA-Europe Executive Director Evelyne Paradis also welcomed the French gay marriage vote.
“We congratulate the French parliamentarians and the French nation for this historic step,” she said. “The country whose motto is liberté, égalité, fraternité has finally fully applied it to all citizens when it comes to marriage.”
France’s first same-sex marriage are expected to take place in Montpellier in mid-June.
Hungary
Hungarian authorities lift Budapest Pride ban
Country’s new government took office last month
Hungarian police on May 29 announced they will allow the annual Budapest Pride march to take place.
“The Budapest Metropolitan Police has approved the 2026 Budapest Pride Parade and also has issued restrictive orders in relation to three counter-demonstrations,” a Budapest Metropolitan Police spokesperson told Politico.
Budapest is Hungary’s capital and largest city.
Hungarian lawmakers last year passed a bill that banned Pride events and allowed authorities to use facial recognition technology to identify participants. MPs later amended the Hungarian constitution to ban public LGBTQ events.
More than 100,000 people defied the ban and participated in last year’s Budapest Pride parade. The event became one of the largest protests against then-Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his government since he took office in 2010.
Prime Minister Péter Magyar took office last month after his center-right Tisza party ousted Orbán’s Fidesz-KDNP coalition in elections that took place on April 12. The European Union’s top court, the EU Court of Justice, days after Orbán’s ouster struck down Hungary’s anti-LGBTQ propaganda law that MPs approved in 2021.
The EU on May 29 announced it will release more than €16 billion ($18.59 billion) in funds to Hungary that it withheld while Orbán was in office.
The Budapest Pride march will take place on June 27.
“We will march freely in fresh air for our rights, for the democratic Hungary,” said Budapest Pride on its Facebook page.
Colombia
Claudia López comes up short in Colombian presidential election
Former Bogotá mayor would have been country’s first lesbian head of government
Former Bogotá Mayor Claudia López on Sunday finished fifth in the first round of Colombia’s presidential election.
López, a centrist who ran as an independent, received 225,517 votes. This figure is .95 percent of the total votes cast.
López was the Colombian capital’s mayor from 2020-2023. She was a member of the Colombian Senate from 2014-2018. López, whose wife is outgoing Colombian Sen. Angélica Lozano, would have become the country’s first female and first lesbian president if she would have won the election.
The LGBTQ+ Victory Institute honored López in D.C. in 2024.
“We need to listen to each other again, we need to have a coffee with each other again, we need to touch each other’s skin,” she told the Washington Blade during an interview. She hadn’t yet declared her candidacy, and did not specifically discuss her plans to run.
Runoff to take place June 21
Abrelardo de la Espriella, a far-right lawyer who has praised U.S. President Donald Trump and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, on Sunday finished first with 43.74 percent of the vote. Senator Iván Cepeda, a member of outgoing President Gustavo Petro’s Historic Pact party, came in second with 40.9 percent of the vote.
Neither men received a majority of votes. A runoff between them will take place on June 21.
Ghana
Ghanaian lawmakers approve anti-LGBTQ bill
Measure that would criminalize allyship awaits president’s signature
Ghanaian lawmakers on Friday approved a bill that would, among other things, criminalize LGBTQ allyship.
Reuters reported MPs approved the Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill, 2025, in a voice vote after parliament’s Constitutional and Legal Affairs Committee backed it.
MPs in 2024 approved a similar bill, but it faced legal challenges and then-President Nana Akufo-Addo didn’t sign it. Lawmakers last year reintroduced the measure after President John Dramani Mahama took office.
The bill awaits his signature.
Rightify Ghana, a Ghanaian LGBTQ advocacy group, in a series of social media posts notes MPs passed the bill days before the 4th African Inter-Parliamentary Conference on Family Values and Sovereignty will take place in Accra, the country’s capital.
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