World
Out in the World: LGBTQ news from Europe and Asia
Sept. 16 marked a year since Mahsa Amini’s death in Iran
Iran
Shadi Amin, the executive director of Germany-based Iranian LGBTQ network 6rang (Iranian Lesbian and Transgender Network), grew up in Iran thinking she was “sick” because she’s queer. In a recent interview with PinkNewsUK, Amin reflected on the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini for allegedly not wearing a headscarf properly by Iran’s dreaded “morality police.”
The death of the young Iranian Kurdish woman on Sept. 16, 2022, touched off massive protests across the country, especially in its capital city of Tehran. But Amin points out that those protests over Amini’s death led to become a rally call to fight for the rights of women, LGBTQ folks and other marginalized groups in Iran.
“[LGBTQ+ people] are one of the most active and involved groups in these demonstrations and protests last year … We saw everywhere when there was a demonstration [there was] the rainbow flag, even if sometimes the people didn’t agree with that and they said go back,” Amin told PinkNewsUK.
“They tried to put us out of the demonstration, but I think our LGBTI youth community is really powerful and they try to bring their demands in this movement,” she added.
More than 22,000 people were arrested and hundreds killed, including some who were executed by the Iranian government in an effort to crush dissent through violence.
Read the entire interview here: [Link]
Serbia
Earlier this month several hundred LGBTQ people and the allies marched in the Serbian capital of Belgrade marking the celebration of a Pride march that was unmarred by violence in this religious conservative Balkan nation.
Radio Free Europe noted that in a similar event last year, at least 21 people were arrested in connection with attacks against police, with most of them suspected of being far-right hooligans protesting against the LGBTQ Pride march.
The government of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic reversed its decision to ban the international EuroPride parade event on Thursday, Serbian state media reported.
On Sept. 12, officials from EuroPride and Belgrade Pride, commemorated the start of EuroPride 2022 in Belgrade with a ceremonial flag raising. On Friday led by the Dutch Embassy, members of the European Union and other non-EU states issued a joint statement applauding the Serbian government’s roll-back of the ban.
United Kingdom
A 29-year-old man was arrested by Greater Manchester Police in connection with the vandalistic attacks on the Clonezone store on Sackville Street in the heart of Manchester Center. The store is the U.K.’s first and favorite Queer Superstore.
The suspect also being held on suspicion of 24 motor vehicle thefts and remains in custody for questioning.
Clonezone has been attacked five times this year, with the latest incident on Sept. 10 at approximately 2 p.m. Two men approached the shop on a bike on Sunday and attempted to smash the windows before throwing an object at the doors.
Chief Inspector Steve Wiggins, of GMP’s City Center Neighborhood Team, said: “This is the second arrest in connection with this series of disturbing incidents but the investigation is still very much ongoing.
The attacks are very specific with offenders arriving on bikes and causing significant damage.
We are keen to find out the motivations behind the attacks and believe that will help us trace those responsible and bring them to justice.
We have a dedicated team investigating these incidents, so if anybody knows anything about these attacks I would urge them to call police.”
Information can be passed on to police by calling 0161 856 3345 or via 101, or anonymously through Crimestoppers at 0800 555 111.
American fast food chain Chick-Fil-A announced its plans to open five new franchise stores around Britain in as yet to be disclosed locations, the BBC reported on Sept. 15.
Chick-fil-A had previously launched a pop-up store for a six month lease in the Oracle shopping center in Reading in 2019, but was met with severe opposition and its lease wasn’t renewed. British LGBTQ rights activists protested the College Park, Ga.,-based food chain’s donations to groups that have a record of being opposed to LGBTQ rights.
During the 2019 protests in Reading, the BBC noted that Reading Pride spokesperson Kirsten Bayes told protesters: “Companies like this have no place here in Reading and they have no place anywhere.
“We are standing in solidarity with campaigners across the United States … for justice and freedom for LGBT people.”
A local elected official, Reading Labor Councilor Sarah Hacker said: “We can make sure that they don’t spread their hatred across the U.K.”
The fast food chain firm is run by the Cathy family, who have publicly stated their opposition to same-sex marriage and other LGBTQ issues. In 2020, the firm softened its stance and shifted its focus, hiring a diversity vice president. The BBC reported that the company changed its approach to charitable giving, focusing on education and hunger alleviation, moving away from donations directed at anti-LGBTQ organizations, including several of those listed as extremist hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
“From our earliest days, we’ve worked to positively influence the places we call home and this will be the same for our stores in the U.K.,” Joanna Symonds, Chick-Fil-A’s head of U.K. operations, told the BBC.
“We encourage our operators to partner with organizations which support and positively impact their local communities, delivering great food and wider benefits to those around them,” she added.
In announcing the new U.K. investment, the chain highlighted its current charitable work, which include a $25,000 one-off donation to a local non-profit organization when a Chick-fil-A restaurant is opened, and donations of surplus food to local shelters, soup kitchens and food charities. Those policies would apply to its U.K. branches too, it said.
Ireland
The apparent rebranding of a beloved LGBTQ bar and safe space in Cork and makeover provoked protests by the local queer community.
Irish LGBTQ publication GCN reported that in recent weeks, people began to notice a change in the appearance of Chambers Bar, no longer recognizable as an LGBTQ space. A new sign had been displayed above the doorway with the name “Sinners” in black and white, a stark contrast to the venue’s once vibrant appearance.
This name is nothing new to people in Cork, as Chambers Bar has been hosting student nights under this name for a number of years. Even so, this year was the first time that, in addition to hosting a student night for “Freshers” Week, all Pride flags, rainbow curtains and posters for upcoming drag shows were also taken down.
However, the catalyst for sparking an onslaught of backlash seems to have come from the cancellation of a weekly drag show. This was to be hosted by Cork drag queen Krystal Queer, who took to Instagram to express her disappointment in a video that now has over 300,000 views.
In stark contrast to the small group of anti-transgender protesters gathered in Dublin to hear anti-LGBTQ TERF Kellie-Jay Keen, a.k.a. Posie Parker, speak at her “Let Women Speak Rally” at Merrion Square, Trans and Intersex Pride Dublin had nearly a thousand supporters turn out to counter demonstrate.
The Irish Times reported that a large police presence was visible in and around the square and metal barriers were erected to create a space between the rival demonstrations.
The counter demo by Trans and Intersex Pride Dublin assembled outside the lower house of the Irish legislature on Kildare Street ahead of marching into Merrion Square.
Leading pro-trans activist Jenny Maguire told the crowd: “We as queer people are forced into a world that’s not meant for us.”
“We do everything we can to force a world that accepts us and that can love us all unapologetically, and it is them that wants to reverse any progress we’ve made so far and pull us back into the Dark Ages.”
Italy
Italy’s right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has demanded local councils only list biological parents on birth certificates, flinging hundreds of same-sex couples into a legal morass, France 24 News reported Thursday.
Journalist Lara Bullens reported that after same-sex civil unions were legalised in Italy in 2016, and in the absence of any clear legislation on parental rights for same-sex couples, a handful of city councils across the country started listing parents of the same gender on their children’s birth certificate.
This led to a situation of creating a host of “ghost parents.”
But in recent months, Italy’s right-wing government has been cracking down on city councils to stop listing same-sex parents on birth certificates, France 24 reported. Led by the hardline traditionalist Meloni, the ministry of interior issued a directive in January 2023 instructing Italian mayors to stop automatically registering the births of children conceived or born abroad through assisted reproductive methods.
It cited a case from December 2022, in which Italy’s top court ruled that a child of a gay couple who was conceived through surrogacy abroad shouldn’t have their birth certificate automatically transcribed in Italy.
Though the directive primarily concerned surrogacy, which is banned in Italy and now even a crime for those seeking surrogacy abroad, its interpretation by local councils has disproportionally affected LGBTQ families — including those who resort to other reproductive methods.
Italy’s Family Minister Eugenia Roccella told Italian newspaper Corriere della Serra: “In Italy, one becomes a parent in only two ways — either by biological relationship or by adoption,” and urged same-sex parents to follow the adoption procedure.
Currently the support for LGBTQ families on this issue is being provided by the LGBTQ rights organization, Famiglie Arcobaleno working alongside Rete Lenford, which is committed to advocacy for LGBTQ rights as an association of lawyers, lawyers, practitioners, scholars, students and people with experience in the issues surrounding LGBTQ rights.
Both Rete Lenford and Famiglie Arcobaleno, are representing hundreds of cases of the affected LGBTQ families in court.
Russia
(The following article is from Human Rights Watch)
Last week the European Court of Human Rights handed down a ruling in the case of Maxim Lapunov, the only victim of Chechnya’s vile 2017 anti-gay purge who dared seek justice for the torture he suffered at the hands of local law enforcement.
The court found Lapunov was “detained and subjected to ill-treatment by State agents,” which “amounted to torture” and was perpetrated “solely on account of his sexual orientation.”
Lapunov took his case to the European Court in May 2019 because the Russian authorities had failed to investigate his assault. Despite great personal risk, Lapunov had been eager to cooperate with Russia’s investigative authorities through the assistance of his persistent lawyers from the Committee Against Torture, a leading Russian human rights group.
Tanya Lokshina, the associate director, Europe and Central Asia Division for Human Rights Watch noted:
“I first met Lapunov nearly six years ago, when I moderated a news conference in Moscow at which he publicly told his story for the first time. Lapunov, then 30, described to a roomful of journalists how he had been rounded up and tortured along with dozens of others. His hands shook as he detailed the horrific experience. He stopped several times to regain composure but kept going.”
A Russian from Siberia who had traveled to Chechnya for work, Lapunov did not have to face what every Chechen man caught in the purge feared: Being targeted by his own relatives or exposing his entire family to overwhelming stigma because of his homosexuality. His captors threatened to kill him if he spoke out, but he refused to be silent. “We all have rights …,” he said at the news conference. “If we just let it be [in Chechnya], … we’ll never know whose son or daughter will be taken next.”
At the time, Russian authorities claimed they could not investigate the purge because no victims stepped up to testify. When Lapunov provided his staggering testimony, they still failed to investigate. In early 2019, Chechen police rounded up and tortured more men because of their presumed sexual orientation. Realizing they would never get the Russian authorities to do their job and investigate, Lapunov and his legal team filed their complaint with the European Court of Human Rights. Today, they won.
After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia lost its Council of Europe membership and there is no hope that the Russian authorities will implement this ruling anytime soon. Yet it sets the record straight. This, I hope, will serve to support all survivors of the purge.
Additional reporting from PinkNewsUK, BBC, Agence France-Presse, GCN Ireland, the Irish Times and Human Rights Watch.
India’s Income Tax Department has opposed a same-sex couple’s petition that challenges Section 56(2)(x) of the Income Tax Act.
The provision exempts gifts between spouses from tax. The couple seeks the same benefit for their relationship.
At the center of the challenge is the explanation to the fifth provision of Section 56(2)(x). According to the petition, the provision excludes same-sex partners from the definition of “spouse.” The petition describes that exclusion as unconstitutional.
The provision defines “relative” to include an individual’s spouse, siblings, the spouse’s siblings, parents’ siblings, and other blood relatives.
Paiyo Ashiho and another petitioner, Vivek Divan, asked the Bombay High Court to recognize same-sex couples presumed to be in a marriage as “spouses” under the fifth provision to Section 56(2)(x).
A similar challenge is pending before the Karnataka High Court.
Bengaluru-based engineers Anurag Kalia and Akhilesh Godi have sought similar relief. Kalia said he wanted to give Godi a gold bracelet worth more than ₹115,500 ($1213.44.). The case remains pending.
The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government rejected the petition in an affidavit filed last year. It argued the plea was not legally tenable because it challenged no action or order of the Income Tax Department. Calling the petition an “abuse of process of law,” the government said the relief sought fell outside the scope of the Income Tax Act, 1961.
The government also argued the petitioners sought the benefits available to a “spouse” without legal recognition of their relationship. According to the affidavit, they had not placed on record any law recognizing their relationship as a marriage. It urged the court to dismiss the petition with costs.
The case returned to the spotlight on July 6, when the Bombay High Court heard the petition.
Justices B.P. Colabawalla and Firdosh P. Pooniwalla adjourned the matter after Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said he would appear on behalf of Modi’s government.
The petition comes nearly two years after the Indian Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling.
In 2023, a five-judge Constitution Bench, in a 3-2 verdict, declined to recognize the constitutional validity of same-sex marriage in India. The country’s top court said MPs must decide whether to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples.
During the 2023 marriage equality hearings, lawyer Abhishek Manu Singhvi told the Supreme Court that marriage is a source of social validation, dignity, self-respect, fulfillment, and security. He argued that it also carries legal and civil benefits, including those related to taxation, inheritance, and adoption. Lawyer Anand Grover, who also appeared for the petitioners, told the court that marriage remains fundamental to the functioning of society and is necessary to access several state benefits, including joint tax benefits and surrogacy rights.
Chief Justice Dhananjaya Y. Chandrachud, in his minority opinion, said the Income Tax Act provides numerous tax benefits for payments made on behalf of a spouse, including deductions for life and health insurance premiums. He also noted that marriage confers several financial benefits on a spouse, including eligibility for gratuity, funeral expenses, medical benefits, and provident fund claims as the dependent of a deceased spouse.
In the marriage equality ruling, the Supreme Court recognized queer people cannot be discriminated against. The court said denying queer couples the material benefits and services available to heterosexual couples violates their fundamental rights.
While issuing directions to the federal, state, and territory governments; Chandrachud said the government should ensure there was no discrimination in access to goods and services. He also directed governments to sensitize the public about queer rights, establish a hotline for the queer community, create safe houses for queer couples, and ensure intersex children were not forced to undergo medical operations.
The petition is awaiting its next hearing before the Bombay High Court.
India’s tax system relies on both direct and indirect taxes, although its direct tax base remains relatively narrow. Individuals pay income tax at progressive rates of up to 30 percent, while consumers pay taxes on most goods and services through the Goods and Services Tax. The Income Tax Act also provides exemptions, deductions, and other tax benefits for eligible taxpayers, including those linked to family relationships and legal marital status.
India’s LGBTQ community is estimated to comprise between 135 million and 140 million people, or nearly 10 percent of the country’s population. Collectively, it is estimated to have a purchasing power exceeding $168 billion. The World Bank estimated that exclusion based on sexual orientation and gender identity cost India between $1.9 billion and $30.8 billion in lost economic output annually, or up to 1.7 percent of its gross domestic product.
India imposed a separate Gift Tax Act in 1958 to tax certain transfers of property made without consideration. Parliament repealed the law in 1998 to simplify the tax system and encourage genuine gifting. However, concerns over tax avoidance later prompted the government to bring gifts back within the Income Tax Act. Today, specified gifts exceeding prescribed limits may be taxed under Section 56(2)(x), subject to exemptions that include gifts received from relatives.
Under the Income Tax Act, gifts received from non-relatives exceeding ₹50,000 ($525.30) in a financial year are generally treated as taxable income, unless they qualify for a statutory exemption. Gifts received from specified relatives, including a spouse, are exempt from tax regardless of their value.
Tarun Khaitan — a research director and professor of public law at the London School of Economics Law School, honorary professorial fellow at Melbourne Law School, and associate fellow of the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights at the University of Oxford — told the Washington Blade the guarantee of equality and non-discrimination under India’s constitution was deliberately framed in broad terms because its framers envisaged that the understanding of those principles would evolve over time. They did not intend to freeze their meaning in 1950, he said. Instead, older and newer statutes alike must be interpreted in light of the constitution’s contemporary understanding.
“Constitutional values must inform the interpretation of all laws in India. It is well established in Indian jurisprudence that if a term can carry two meanings, the court will give it the meaning that complies with constitutional demands,” Khaitan said. “The term ‘spouse’ is not defined in the Income Tax Act, and unlike ‘husband’ or ‘wife’ is not a legal term of art in Indian family law. Its use by the Income Tax Act therefore is apt for judicial interpretation, which must be guided by the constitutional guarantees of equality and liberty.”
Asked how courts should balance respect for legislative choices with their constitutional responsibility to safeguard equality and dignity, Khaitan said he was not convinced that the legislature had made a clear choice in this case. He noted that the Income Tax Act uses the term “spouse” without defining it, adding that no other Indian law, to his knowledge, defines the term either. Its meaning has evolved over time, he said, pointing to the Oxford English Dictionary, which now defines a spouse as “a husband or wife, or a person joined to another in a comparable legally recognized union.”
Khaitan said the decision to restrict the meaning of “spouse” to different-sex married couples appeared to be the government’s interpretation rather than one expressly adopted by MPs. Even so, he said, courts have a duty to safeguard constitutional rights, although those rights are not absolute. The state, he said, must justify any restriction by demonstrating that it serves a sufficiently important public interest and that the limitation is proportionate to that objective.
“The extension of marriage would be a symbolic expression of equal acceptance of same-sex relations by law as well as a the extension of the bundle of material incidents that typically attach to it. Whether or not such extension happens, concerns such as inheritance, hospital visitation rights, decisions regarding end of life care, pensions etc affect the lives of same-sex couples as well as unmarried different-sex couples in a real, material sense,” Khaitan said. “There is no conceptual reason why the expressive salience of ‘marriage’ and the material incidents of a domestic partnership cannot be unbundled.”
Khaitan has had his scholarship cited by the Supreme Court in several constitutional cases, including Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India, which decriminalized consensual same-sex relations, and Lt. Col. Nitisha v. Union of India, a landmark judgment on indirect discrimination.
Netherlands
Tens of thousands take part in World Pride March
Event capped off two weeks of celebrations in Amsterdam.
AMSTERDAM — Tens of thousands of people on Saturday participated in the World Pride March in Amsterdam.
Outright International Executive Director Maria Sjödin and Paolo Rondelli, who in 2022 became the world’s first openly gay head of state when he became Captain Regent of San Marino, are among those who participated alongside Massachusetts state Rep. Jack Lewis and Olena Shevchenko, chair of Insight, an LGBTQ advocacy group in Ukraine, and others.
Members of D66, the centrist Dutch political party that Prime Minister Rob Jetten heads, also marched.
Jetten in February became the Netherlands’ first openly gay prime minister. He participated in the opening of the World Pride Human Rights Conference on Aug. 5 and spoke on a panel with Rondelli, former Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, and other gay and lesbian current and former heads of government.
(Washington Blade video by Michael K. Lavers)
(Washington Blade video by Michael K. Lavers)
The march took place a week after hundreds of thousands of people lined Amsterdam’s canals for the city’s annual Amsterdam Pride Canal Parade.
A terrorist attack at Berlin’s Christopher Street Day on July 25 left one person dead and more than two dozen others injured.
The incident overshadowed World Pride, which began hours earlier and ended on Saturday.
Dutch authorities increased security measures in the aftermath of the July 25 attack. No incidents were reported during World Pride.
Netherlands
Dutch PM: More needs to be done to defend trans rights
Rob Jetten on Friday was on World Pride Human Rights Conference panel
Editor’s note: International News Editor Michael K. Lavers and Photo Editor Michael Key will be on assignment in Amsterdam until Aug. 10.
AMSTERDAM — Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten on Friday said more needs to be done to defend transgender people and their rights.
“Everywhere in the Western world, it’s definitely the group that’s the most vulnerable in the moment and it’s rather well-picked also by our advisories,” he said during a panel at the World Pride Human Rights Conference in Amsterdam that Ying Xin and Diego García Blum of Global LGBTQI+ Human Rights Program at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights Policy moderated. “They’ve chosen the smallest group within our broader community (trans people) to attack them, to ensure that we can strip their rights and if they’ve done with that, they’ll go after the next group within our community, so we shouldn’t be naïve about what’s behind it.”
“It’s very well-funded. It’s very well-organized and we have to organize as well to fight back and to win this fight,” added Jetten. “We also need to be more open in conversations that we are having within the community and also dive into it much deeper and maybe even have more difficult and annoying conversations.”
Jetten in February became the Netherlands’ first openly gay prime minister.
He appeared on the panel alongside former Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, who in 2017 became his country’s first openly gay head of government, and former San Marino Captain Regent Paolo Rondelli, who was his country’s ambassador to the U.S. from 2007-2016.
Several other current former heads of government who are gay or lesbian also participated in the panel. They include former Icelandic Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, former Luxembourgish Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, and Andorran Prime Minister Xavier Espot Zamora. California Congressman Mark Takano, who chairs the Congressional Equality Caucus, and LGBTQ+ Victory Fund CEO Evan Low were among those who attended.
Jetten in his remarks said he was “very surprised” to learn that “not only in the U.S. but also in some European countries that we’ve let them decide what the gay group looked like.” The Dutch prime minister further pointed out that conservatives began “to attack the debate on toilets or starting this debate about trans people in Olympic games.”
“That is, of course, a ridiculous debate to start, but we’ve got distracted because we were so busy having this debate on Olympians, and then we actually forgot the real fight was about access to healthcare, just being yourself, being able to enlist in the army, or being able to be a young trans boy or girl in school,” said Jetten. “We got distracted by some fresh meat that was thrown into the area by some very conservative people.”
“We have to open our eyes and have very in-depth conservations within our community, and come up with a much better strategy to win this fight and to protect all our trans brothers and sisters, dolls, whatever,” he added. “Because if we don’t win this fight for trans people, we’re going to lose the bigger fight for all LGBTQ people in the world.”
Varadkar noted Ireland in 2015 passed a law that allows people to legally change their gender without surgery or other medical interventions.
He conceded there was “a liberal wind blowing across the world at the time, and it was largely uncontested.”
“It would be harder now, quite frankly, to do that legislation,” said Varadkar.
Scottish lawmakers in 2022 passed the Gender Recognition Reform Bill, which lowered the age for anyone to legally change their gender without medical intervention from 18 to 16. Then-British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government later blocked the measure from taking effect.
The U.K. Supreme Court in 2025 ruled the legal definition of a woman under the country’s Equality Act is limited to “biological women.” Author J.K. Rowling is among those who praised the decision that stemmed from a case that challenged the Scottish government’s decision to include trans women in its definition of women when it sought to increase the number of women on government boards.
The Trump-Vance administration on Jan. 20, 2025, the first day it was in office, issued a sweeping executive order that, among other things, declared the federal government would only recognize two genders: male and female. The White House earlier this year in its counterterrorism strategy said it “will also prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.”
“We have to stay united,” said Rondelli. “The strategy was, since the beginning, was a Nazi strategy to create groups, target groups, and to create maximum distractions to avoid discussion about some sort of policies.”
“Trans people are the target at the moment,” he added. “But after them it will probably be some others, so we have to stay united.”
Boris Dittrich, the Dutch Senate’s First Vice President and a member of Jetten’s D66 party who was previously global advocacy director for Human Rights Watch’s LGBTQ Rights Program, at the end of the panel asked about protecting intersex babies from what advocates maintain are unnecessary surgeries.
2 former NBA players launch cheap anti-trans stunt to exploit WNBA rules
Same-sex couples challenges India income tax law
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Todd Blanche’s record on LGBTQ issues comes under scrutiny as he takes over DOJ
Don’t miss summer productions at Clear Space in Rehoboth Beach
Calendar: August 7-13
Greg Araki still wants your sex
Insured on paper, excluded in practice
Mr. Henry’s to host 60th anniversary party
