World
Colombia’s first openly gay congressman to seek re-election
Mauricio Toro elected in 2018
BOGOTÁ, Colombia — The first openly gay man elected to Colombia’s congress says he plans to run for a second term in 2022.
“I think that I will be re-elected to the House of Representatives,” Congressman Mauricio Toro told the Washington Blade on Sept. 21 during a Zoom interview from Bogotá, the Colombian capital.
Toro, 38, is a member of the Green Alliance, a center-left party known as “Alianza Verde” in Spanish.
Voters elected him in 2018. Colombian Sen. Angélica Lozano, a bisexual Colombian senator and Green Alliance member who is married to Bogotá Mayor Claudia López, is the only other openly LGBTQ person in the Congress.
Toro after his election told the Blade his agenda “is not only an agenda for the LGBTI community.” He reiterated that point on Sept. 21.
“The needs of the LGBTI community are not only the guarantee that we have the same rights as any other Colombian,” said Toro. “[They are] the right to a dignified and quality job, the right to financing of higher education, the right to a health care system that provides us with quality care, the right to social protest, the right to enjoy a healthy environment and the right today to have and to create a business and generate jobs.”
Toro told the Blade the main pillars of his platform remain entrepreneurship “as a model of economic development,” more funding for Colombia’s public education system, innovation and increased access to technology. Toro stressed LGBTQ Colombians — along with everyone else in the country — will benefit from this agenda.
“We started with those elements from the base,” he said. “We said well, as a community we also want the same as any Colombian in addition to reinforcing our rights.”
Congress not responsible for LGBTQ rights advances
Colombia is among the Latin American countries in which same-sex couples can legally marry. Transgender people are also able to legally change their name and gender on identification cards and other government documents without surgery.
Then-President Juan Manuel Santos and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia Commander Rodrigo “Timochenko” Londoño in 2016 signed a peace agreement that specifically acknowledged LGBTQ Colombians as victims of the decades-long conflict that killed more than 200,000 people and called for their participation in the country’s political process.
“Colombia is a country that leads Latin America in terms of the rights and guarantees that have been granted to the LGBTI community,” said Toro. “Today we have on paper all of the rights that a Colombian citizen who is heterosexual has.”
Colombia Diversa, a Colombian LGBTQ rights group, on Sept. 15 issued a report that notes 226 LGBTQ people were reported murdered in the country in 2020. This figure is more than twice the number of LGBTQ Colombians — 107 — who Colombia Diversa said were known to have been killed in 2019.
Sergio Urrego, 16, in 2014 died by suicide after administrators and a psychologist at his Roman Catholic high school in Bogotá bullied him because he was gay. A court in May sentenced Amanda Castillo, the school’s former principal, to more than eight years in prison.
Toro told the Blade that LGBTQ rights advances in Colombia have come from the country’s Constitutional Court, and not Congress.
“They have been given to us on paper. What’s the problem? It is the implementation of them because these rights have not been won through the Congress,” he said.
“A law is much more explicit because a law has defined chapters and articles and defines the mechanisms of how a right should be applied and the same government is assigned the duty of regulating each of these applications,” added Toro.
Toro specifically criticized President Iván Duque, noting he has asked for congressional hearings over what he described as his government’s failure to implement an LGBTQ public policy that Santos announced before he left office. Toro also noted he has introduced bills that would require political parties to have at least one openly LGBTQ representative and implement an economic development plan that specifically advances rights based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
The Green Alliance has also formed “Verdes a Colores,” a group that seeks to elect LGBTQ people to local councils, mayorships and other public offices across Colombia.
“Together with the alternative parties, we have been able to work together a lot to guarantee the protection of our community’s fundamental rights,” said Toro, specifically referring to his party.
“I am the only openly gay congressman in Colombia and I am very alone,” he added. “We are around 300 (in the Congress) … I am fighting for our community’s flag, but with the support and encouragement of members of other parties that understand that this is a fight for equality, even though they are heterosexual.”
Iran
Grenell: ‘Real hope’ for gay rights in Iran as result of nationwide protests
Former ambassador to Germany claimed he has sneaked ‘gays and lesbians out of’ country
Richard Grenell, the presidential envoy for special missions of the United States, said on X on Tuesday that he has helped “sneak gays and lesbians out of Iran” and is seeing a change in attitudes in the country.
The post, which now has more than 25,000 likes since its uploading, claims that attitudes toward gays and lesbians are shifting amid massive economic protests across the country.
“For the first time EVER, someone has said ‘I want to wait just a bit,” the former U.S. ambassador to Germany wrote. “There is real hope coming from the inside. I don’t think you can stop this now.”
Grenell has been a longtime supporter of the president.
“Richard Grenell is a fabulous person, A STAR,” Trump posted on Truth Social days before his official appointment to the ambassador role. “He will be someplace, high up! DJT”
Iran, which is experiencing demonstrations across all 31 provinces of the country — including in Tehran, the capital — started as a result of a financial crisis causing the collapse of its national currency. Time magazine credits this uprising after the U.N. re-imposed sanctions in September over the country’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.
As basic necessities like bread, rice, meat, and medical supplies become increasingly unaffordable to the majority of the more than 90 million people living there, citizens took to the streets to push back against Iran’s theocratic regime.
Grenell, who was made president and executive director of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts last year by Trump, believes that people in the majority Shiite Muslim country are also beginning to protest human rights abuses.
Iran is among only a handful of countries in which consensual same-sex sexual relations remain punishable by death, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Venezuela
AHF client in Venezuela welcomes Maduro’s ouster
‘This is truly something we’ve been waiting for’ for decades
An AIDS Healthcare Foundation client who lives in Venezuela told the Washington Blade he welcomes the ouster of his country’s former president.
The client, who asked the Blade to remain anonymous, on Thursday said he felt “joy” when he heard the news that American forces seized Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, at their home in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, during an overnight operation on Jan. 3.
“This is truly something we’ve been waiting for for 26 or 27 years,” the AHF client told the Blade.
Hugo Chávez became Venezuela’s president in 1999. Maduro succeeded him in 2013 after he died.
“I’ve always been in opposition,” said the AHF client, who stressed he was speaking to the Blade in his personal capacity and not as an AHF representative. “I’ve never agreed with the government. When I heard the news, well, you can imagine.”
He added he has “high hopes that this country will truly change, which is what it needed.”
“This means getting rid of this regime, so that American and foreign companies can invest here and Venezuela can become what it used to be, the Venezuela of the past,” he said.
The AHF client lives near the Colombia-Venezuela border. He is among the hundreds of Venezuelans who receive care at AHF’s clinic in Cúcuta, a Colombian city near the Táchira River that marks the border between the two countries.
The Simón Bolívar Bridge on the Colombia-Venezuela border on May 14, 2019. (Washington Blade video by Michael K. Lavers)
The AHF client praised U.S. President Donald Trump and reiterated his support for the Jan. 3 operation.
“It was the only way that they could go,” he said.
The Venezuelan National Assembly on Jan. 4 swore in Delcy Rodríguez, who was Maduro’s vice president, as the country’s acting president. The AHF client with whom the Blade spoke said he is “very optimistic” about Venezuela’s future, even though the regime remains in power.
“With Maduro leaving, the regime has a certain air about it,” he said. “I think this will be a huge improvement for everyone.”
“We’re watching,” he added. “The actions that the United States government is going to implement regarding Venezuela give us hope that things will change.”
Colombia
Colombians protest against Trump after he threatened country’s president
Tens of thousands protested the US president in Bogotá
BOGOTÁ, Colombia — Tens of thousands of people on Wednesday gathered in the Colombian capital to protest against President Donald Trump after he threatened Colombian President Gustavo Petro.
The protesters who gathered in Plaza Bolívar in Bogotá held signs that read, among other things, “Yankees go home” and “Petro is not alone.” Petro is among those who spoke.
The Bogotá protest took place four days after American forces seized now former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, at their home in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, during an overnight operation.
The Venezuelan National Assembly on Sunday swore in Delcy Rodríguez, who was Maduro’s vice president, as the country’s acting president. Maduro and Flores on Monday pleaded not guilty to federal drug charges in New York.
Trump on Sunday suggested the U.S. will target Petro, a former Bogotá mayor and senator who was once a member of the M-19 guerrilla movement that disbanded in the 1990s. Claudia López, a former senator who would become the country’s first female and first lesbian president if she wins Colombia’s presidential election that will take place later this year, is among those who criticized Trump’s comments.
The Bogotá protest is among hundreds against Trump that took place across Colombia on Wednesday.
Petro on Wednesday night said he and Trump spoke on the phone. Trump in a Truth Social post confirmed he and his Colombian counterpart had spoken.
“It was a great honor to speak with the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, who called to explain the situation of drugs and other disagreements that we have had,” wrote Trump. “I appreciated his call and tone, and look forward to meeting him in the near future. Arrangements are being made between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the foreign minister of Colombia. The meeting will take place in the White House in Washington, D.C.”
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