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Out in the World: LGBTQ news from Europe and Asia
More than 180,000 people attended the annual Taiwan Pride parade on Oct. 28
Taiwan
The 21st annual Pride parade through the streets of the capital city this year marked a major milestone as over 180,000 people marched on Oct. 28 for Asia’s largest Pride parade.
Mixed in with drag queens and go-go dancers, Vice President Lai Ching-te became the highest-ranking official to join the throngs of people celebrating the occasion on the streets of downtown Taipei.
The theme of this year’s pride parade was “Stand with Diversity,” came months after adoption rights were extended to same-sex couples in the country and the recognition of Taiwanese same-sex spouses who were married in foreign countries.
Lai, the country’s vice president and a leading presidential candidate, who is running as the progressive party’s candidate in the Jan. 13, 2024, elections noted that Taiwan is at the forefront of LGBTQ rights in Asia in his remarks to reporters and Pride attendees.
“Love knows no boundaries; LGBTQ+ rights are human rights. Today, we celebrate love, courage and justice at the 21st Taiwan Pride parade. As the first Asian country to legalize same-sex marriage, we stand with diversity and remain committed to building a more inclusive society for all,” he told the crowd adding: “I want to explain to all my good friends that marriage equality is not the end but the starting point of Taiwan’s equal rights culture. In the future, I will stand with everyone and move forward together on the road of diversity. I will stand with all of you, firmly supporting you in being true to yourselves, [and] making Taiwan even more beautiful.”
China
A ruling by Hong Kong’s Court of Appeal on Oct. 17 is being called a partial victory for LGBTQ rights in Hong Kong. The High Court dismissed a government legal attempt to deny same-sex married couples the right to rent and own public housing saying that it was “discriminatory in nature” and a complete denial of their rights.
Court of Appeal Justices Jeremy Poon, Aarif Barma and Thomas Au said in their ruling that the authority’s treatment of gay married couples was “discriminatory in nature” and they should be afforded equal treatment.
“The differential treatment in the present cases is a more severe form of indirect discrimination than most cases because the criterion is one which same-sex couples can never meet,” the judges wrote.
LGBTQ rights group Hong Kong Marriage Equality released a statement saying that the decision had made clear “that discrimination and unequal treatment on the ground of sexual orientation has no place in public policy decisions.”
In September, same-sex couples won a partial victory in the Court of Final Appeal, Hong Kong’s highest court, when it ruled that the government must formulate an alternative framework for same-sex couples seeking legal recognition as the court refused to recognize same-sex marriages which are not currently allowed.
Australia
The 33rd annual Melbourne Queer film festival, the largest and oldest queer film festival in the country will take place from Nov. 9-19 with the festival’s theme of “rewind to fast forward.”
David Martin Harris, the festival’s CEO, speaking with Australia’s largest LGBTQ media outlet, the Star Observer, noted, “This year’s fabulous program will bring the community together to celebrate queer film, our diverse stories, and voices,” said Harris. “There are so many stories from across the globe that share important messages, whether that be heart-warming, uplifting, hilarious, or inspirational — the program will connect audiences for a celebration like no other.”
According to the Star Observer, staying true to its theme Rewind to Fast Forward, this year the festival celebrates queer classics including “La Cage Aux Folles,” “Glen or Glenda,” “Head On” and “Offside,” alongside a vibrant tapestry of fresh stories from around the world.
In an interview with the Guardian, Cerise Howard, the curator of the film festival, regarding the overarching theme said “We [LGBTQ people] have always been here so it’s vital we engage with our history.”
The language in some of the festival’s historic films “may be considered problematic today,” Howard told the Guardian, pointing to terms like “sex change operation” rather than gender affirmation surgery in 1953 drama “Glen or Glenda.” “But it’s important we are able to collectively not just enjoy but be educated by films of yesteryear.”
“We need to see our community in all its diversity, but we don’t need to see us all painted as saints — because we’re not,” she added. “We are complex, nuanced human beings capable of good and bad.
“We’d be doing audiences a disservice if we tried to paint a utopian vision of our lives — because no one could relate to that anyway. So the stories shouldn’t aim to be universal but particular — because in that particularity I think people can see themselves and engage more.”
Nationally prominent Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s journalist Patricia Karvelas recently has been the target of right wing homophobic and racist trolls for talking openly about her life as a now out proud lesbian and her wife and family.
In an interview with the network’s ABC Queer program, Karvelas said that she had to keep her sexuality a secret at the start of her career, especially from anti-LGBTQ politicians. Karvelas said that she was “paranoid” about being outed and did not want to lose out on opportunities because of her sexuality.
After she shared her personal story with the network’s ABC Queer, British right-wing tabloid publication Daily Mail reported on her interview, which then triggered online trolls that viciously targeted the award-winning journalist with vile homophobic abuse.
In an X, formerly Twitter, post, the veteran journalist responded with “Daily Mail writes story. Trolls target me for hours with vile stuff. My family is really proud of me thanks.”
ABC’s Director of News Justin Stevens released a statement on behalf the network defending her and taking aiming at the British tabloid publication without naming it noting “publicizing it and publishing personal photos to illustrate it is irresponsible and unjustified.”
“ABC journalist and presenter Patricia Karvelas is a fine, principled journalist and a courageous and generous human being,” the statement read adding:
“We’re proud she works for the ABC and grateful for her hard work and huge contribution to the national public broadcaster and audiences.
It is disturbing, saddening and angering that Patricia should find herself the target of online trolling and abuse, much of it sexualized, homophobic and racist, just for speaking publicly about her life.
For a major national media outlet to compound that abuse by publicizing it and publishing personal photos to illustrate it is irresponsible and unjustified.
As the eSafety Commissioner says: journalists are more likely to experience online abuse who are female, from diverse racial or social backgrounds, are younger, have a disability, or identify as LGBTIQ+. It can have devastating professional and personal impacts. It can lead to the silencing of journalists, with some self-censoring, retreating from covering certain topics or leaving the industry.
Media outlets should be combatting dangerous online abuse and gender-based and sexual bullying, and standing in solidarity with peers experiencing it, not disingenuously serving to amplify it.”
United Kingdom
The death of a 14-year-old trans boy by suicide on Oct. 12 created a need by his mother Rita Williams, to set up a GoFundMe fundraiser to cover her son’s funeral expenses. The family indicated that after the costs of a memorial headstone, grave plot, flowers and other associated funeral expenses were raised any remainder was to be donated to charities and the hospital that treated him.
On Nov. 3, Williams thanked contributors for raising £10,493 ($13001.19) raised of the £6,000 ($7434.21) goal. She had written that “after Corei has been laid to rest and the memorial paid for, we will give everything remaining to charity: 50 percent to Great Ormond Street Hospital as they looked after Corei and us so well in his last days, and 50 percent split equally three ways between the trans youth charities Think2Speak and Mermaids, and the youth mental health charity Young Minds, in the hope that young lives can be saved.”
In an X, formerly Twitter, post, Williams also shared a picture of a letter she received regarding her son’s organs. In the letter, it details that one of his kidneys and pancreas was provided to a lady in her 40s who had been on the organ donation waiting list for seven years, while the other kidney was given to a young girl who had been waiting for two years.
“As you may be aware, kidney disease is a very debilitating condition. It requires sufferers to have a special diet and for some dialysis in hospital, sometimes up to four times a week,” the letter reads.
“Corei has given this lady and young girl the chance of a life free from dialysis they were dependent on.”
The letter goes on to state that a teenage girl also received a lifesaving liver transplant because of the young man and now has the chance of a “healthier and brighter future.”
Finally, the “very precious and especially rare gift of a double lung transplant” was given to a man in his fifties.
In the GoFundMe post, Williams wrote of her son:
“Corei was a typical teenager who loved giraffes, doctor who and the color yellow. He loved all sorts of animals and adored his friends. He was open and accepting of everybody. He had wicked sense of humor and was full of sass, and he was also stubborn and a pain in the arse! He was so passionate about everything, whether that be bugs, sewing or his mates.
He was autistic and struggled with his mental health. Unfortunately he was also subjected to transphobic abuse. […] I’d like to share some words that he wrote in his last letter. Please take them to heart and act on them in his name.
Thank you all. You changed my life for the better, but it wasn’t enough. Everybody who was there however, is the reason I was able to last this long. I beg of you all, don’t miss me. I will hopefully be seen as a boy in my next life, so I’m happy, do not miss me.
You are all precious humans who deserve to be loved, cherished and have all your dreams come true. To anybody who misgendered/deadnamed me; I forgive you, I only hope this teaches you to think more carefully about your actions.
Protect trans youth, in my name. Take this as an opportunity; be thankful for your family and friends because they are still here, though I may not be.
I am a person filled with grudges and anger but I choose to let them all go. I will be happy as a boy with god so no need to worry about me. Thanks again to those people. – Corei”
Hungary
In a statement posted to his personal social media accounts on Monday, L Simon László, the director general of the Hungarian National Museum, announced that he was fired by Hungarian Cultural Minister János Csák for allowing the presentation of five photographs that portray elderly queer Filipinos caring for each other in a group home they’ve shared for decades at the prestigious World Press Photo exhibition.
The cultural minister said that public display of the photographs violated 2021 law that restricts minors under age 18’s access to content that depicts LGBTQ people, culture or history.
In his statement László wrote: “Minister János Csák informed me this morning that he terminated me from the position of director general of the Hungarian National Museum because in his opinion I sabotaged the Child Protection Act. I accept the decision, but I cannot accept it. The museum deliberately did not violate any legislation by presenting the pictures of the World Press Photo exhibition.
The ministry itself acknowledged this in its previous letter: ‘In my opinion, no circumstance suggesting intentional violation of the law on the part of the Hungarian National Museum … ‘ Contrary to what was stated in the ministry’s announcement, we followed the [Csák] instruction without delay and without delay, we introduced the under 18 years restriction and immediately notified the sustainer.
As a father and grandparent of four children, I strongly refuse that our children should be protected from me or the institution I manage.”
Reuters reported the museum stopped selling tickets for the photo exhibition for youngsters after the far-right Our Homeland party had initiated a government inquiry, the party said.
“Based on the initiative of Mi Hazank (Our Homeland), youngsters under 18 cannot visit the exhibition at the National Museum as it violates the child protection law,” the far-right party told state news agency MTI. The new rule was posted on the museum’s website.
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.
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