National
Thousands attend Puerto Rico LGBT rights march
San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz unfurled Pride flag at City Hall
Marchers carry a Pride flag and crosses with “they discriminate” written on them through Old San Juan on May 17. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – Thousands marched through the streets of the Puerto Rican capital on Friday in support of LGBT rights.
San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz and Sen. Ramón Nieves Pérez, who sponsored the sweeping anti-LGBT non-discrimination bill the Senate on Thursday passed by a 15-11 vote margin, unfurled an LGBT Pride flag from the balcony of City Hall as marchers passed. She stood with members of Butterflies Trans Association, a trans advocacy group, while wearing a white hand band with the word “equity” on it as she spoke from the steps of the Puerto Rican capitol at the end of the march.
“I say from the bottom of my heart to those who are listening to us — all of Puerto Rico; we are all equal,” Yulín said.
Alicia Burgos, the mother of Pedro Julio Serrano of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and his father spoke to marchers from the back of a pick-up truck that stopped near Plaza de Colón in Old San Juan.
“We are marching against homophobia,” she said.
The march, which was one of dozens around the world that commemorated the annual International Day Against Homophobia, took place hours after a Puerto Rican Senate committee held a hearing on a bill that would extend second parent adoption rights to gays and lesbians.
The Puerto Rico Supreme Court in February narrowly upheld the island’s ban on gay second parent adoptions in response to the case of Dr. Ángeles Acosta Rodríguez who sought to adopt the child her partner of 25 years, Dr. Carmen Milagros Vélez Vega, conceived through in vitro fertilization. Vélez received a standing ovation from the adoption measure’s supporters who attended the hearing after she finished her testimony with her partner and their 12-year-old daughter by her side.
A third bill that three representatives introduced earlier this year would add sexual orientation and gender identity and expression to the island’s anti-domestic violence laws.
Advocates continue to point to the three aforementioned bills as significant movement in support of rights for LGBT Puerto Ricans since Gov. Alejandro García Padilla and Yulín, who issued two LGBT-specific executive orders on Monday, took their respective offices in January. In spite of this progress, they maintain anti-LGBT discrimination and violence remain rampant throughout the island.
Yulín and others who spoke during the march referenced Jorge Steven López Mercado; a gay teenager whose decapitated, dismembered and partially burned body was found dumped along a remote roadside near Cayey in 2009. One march participant even pretended he was dead on the sidewalk in front of the Puerto Rican Capitol as others outlined his body with masking tape and placed evidence markers above rocks with anti-gay slurs written onto them.
A group from the Puerto Rican city of Ponce takes part in a march for LGBT rights in San Juan on May 17. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)
“I, as the mother of a gay individual, say I am proud to be here,” one member of the Butterflies Trans Association said as she spoke to the crowd from the steps of the Puerto Rican Capitol. “We are fighting as a movement to tell (lawmakers) that we are in search of a place where [LGBT Puerto Ricans] can be successful, a place where we can take care of our people.”
Eduardo, who traveled to San Juan from Ponce with a group of 150 people, agreed as he spoke to the Blade near Plaza de Colón.
“We are here because we want equality,” he said. “We want the same equality that everybody else has.”
U.S. Federal Courts
Federal judge scraps trans-inclusive workplace discrimination protections
Ruling appears to contradict US Supreme Court precedent
Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas has struck down guidelines by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission designed to protect against workplace harassment based on gender identity and sexual orientation.
The EEOC in April 2024 updated its guidelines to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), which determined that discrimination against transgender people constituted sex-based discrimination as proscribed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
To ensure compliance with the law, the agency recommended that employers honor their employees’ preferred pronouns while granting them access to bathrooms and allowing them to wear dress code-compliant clothing that aligns with their gender identities.
While the the guidelines are not legally binding, Kacsmaryk ruled that their issuance created “mandatory standards” exceeding the EEOC’s statutory authority that were “inconsistent with the text, history, and tradition of Title VII and recent Supreme Court precedent.”
“Title VII does not require employers or courts to blind themselves to the biological differences between men and women,” he wrote in the opinion.
The case, which was brought by the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, presents the greatest setback for LGBTQ inclusive workplace protections since President Donald Trump’s issuance of an executive order on the first day of his second term directing U.S. federal agencies to recognize only two genders as determined by birth sex.
Last month, top Democrats from both chambers of Congress reintroduced the Equality Act, which would codify LGBTQ-inclusive protections against discrimination into federal law, covering employment as well as areas like housing and jury service.
The White House
Trump travels to Middle East countries with death penalty for homosexuality
President traveled to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and United Arab Emirates
Homosexuality remains punishable by death in two of the three Middle East countries that President Donald Trump visited last week.
Saudi Arabia and Qatar are among the handful of countries in which anyone found guilty of engaging in consensual same-sex sexual relations could face the death penalty.
Trump was in Saudi Arabia from May 13-14. He traveled to Qatar on May 14.
“The law prohibited consensual same-sex sexual conduct between men but did not explicitly prohibit same-sex sexual relations between women,” notes the State Department’s 2023 human rights report, referring specifically to Qatar’s criminalization law. “The law was not systematically enforced. A man convicted of having consensual same-sex sexual relations could receive a sentence of seven years in prison. Under sharia, homosexuality was punishable by death; there were no reports of executions for this reason.”
Trump on May 15 arrived in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
The State Department’s 2023 human rights report notes the “penalty for individuals who engaged in ‘consensual sodomy with a man'” in the country “was a minimum prison sentence of six months if the individual’s partner or guardian filed a complaint.”
“There were no known reports of arrests or prosecutions for consensual same-sex sexual conduct. LGBTQI+ identity, real or perceived, could be deemed an act against ‘decency or public morality,’ but there were no reports during the year of persons prosecuted under these provisions,” reads the report.
The report notes Emirati law also criminalizes “men who dressed as women or entered a place designated for women while ‘disguised’ as a woman.” Anyone found guilty could face up to a year in prison and a fine of up to 10,000 dirhams ($2,722.60.)
Trump returned to the U.S. on May 16.
The White House notes Trump during the trip secured more than $2 trillion “in investment agreements with Middle Eastern nations ($200 billion with the United Arab Emirates, $600 billion with Saudi Arabia, and $1.2 trillion with Qatar) for a more safe and prosperous future.”
Former President Joe Biden traveled to Saudi Arabia in 2022.
Saudi Arabia is scheduled to host the 2034 World Cup. The 2022 World Cup took place in Qatar.
State Department
Rubio mum on Hungary’s Pride ban
Lawmakers on April 30 urged secretary of state to condemn anti-LGBTQ bill, constitutional amendment
More than 20 members of Congress have urged Secretary of State Marco Rubio to publicly condemn a Hungarian law that bans Pride events.
California Congressman Mark Takano, a Democrat who co-chairs the Congressional Equality Caucus, and U.S. Rep. Bill Keating (D-Mass.), who is the ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Europe Subcommittee, spearheaded the letter that lawmakers sent to Rubio on April 30.
Hungarian lawmakers in March passed a bill that bans Pride events and allow authorities to use facial recognition technology to identify those who participate in them. MPs last month amended the Hungarian constitution to ban public LGBTQ events.
“As a NATO ally which hosts U.S. service members, we expect the Hungarian government to abide by certain values which underpin the historic U.S.-Hungary bilateral relationship,” reads the letter. “Unfortunately, this new legislation and constitutional amendment disproportionately and arbitrarily target sexual and gender minorities.”
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government over the last decade has moved to curtail LGBTQ and intersex rights in Hungary.
A law that bans legal recognition of transgender and intersex people took effect in 2020. Hungarian MPs that year also effectively banned same-sex couples from adopting children and defined marriage in the constitution as between a man and a woman.
An anti-LGBTQ propaganda law took effect in 2021. The European Commission sued Hungary, which is a member of the European Union, over it.
MPs in 2023 approved the “snitch on your gay neighbor” bill that would have allowed Hungarians to anonymously report same-sex couples who are raising children. The Budapest Metropolitan Government Office in 2023 fined Lira Konyv, the country’s second-largest bookstore chain, 12 million forints ($33,733.67), for selling copies of British author Alice Oseman’s “Heartstopper.”
Former U.S. Ambassador to Hungary David Pressman, who is gay, participated in the Budapest Pride march in 2024 and 2023. Pressman was also a vocal critic of Hungary’s anti-LGBTQ crackdown.
“Along with years of democratic backsliding in Hungary, it flies in the face of those values and the passage of this legislation deserves quick and decisive criticism and action in response by the Department of State,” reads the letter, referring to the Pride ban and constitutional amendment against public LGBTQ events. “Therefore, we strongly urge you to publicly condemn this legislation and constitutional change which targets the LGBTQ community and undermines the rights of Hungarians to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.”
U.S. Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Sarah McBride (D-Del.), Jim Costa (D-Calif.), James McGovern (D-Mass.), Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), Summer Lee (D-Pa.), Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), Julie Johnson (D-Texas), Ami Bera (D-Calif.), Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), Becca Balint (D-Vt.), Gabe Amo (D-R.I.), Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), Dina Titus (D-Nev.), Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) and Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) signed the letter alongside Takano and Keating.
A State Department spokesperson on Wednesday declined to comment.
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Calendar: May 16-22
