World
Out in the World: LGBTQ news from Europe and Asia
Social media under pressure after a queer teenager’s died by suicide in India
Romania
In an interview on Nov. 23 with Europa FM, Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu, responding to a question regarding the recent European Court of Human Rights ruling that his nation was in violation of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights over the issue of same-sex marriages, said that it was his belief that his fellow citizens generally are not ready to uphold the rights of same-sex couples.
The ECHR ruled this past May Romania had failed to enforce the rights of same-sex couples by refusing to recognize their relationships, in a ruling which could eventually force policymakers to expand protections for the LGBTQ community, Reuters reported.
Ciolacu, who is the leader of the Social Democratic Party, told Europa FM that “… the Romanian society is not ready for a decision at the moment. It is not one of my priorities and … I don’t think Romania is ready.”
“I am not a closed-minded person, I … have friends in relationships with a man, I don’t have a problem with that, I am talking now from the point of view of a prime minister.”
ACCEPT, the non-governmental organization in Romania that defends and promotes LGBTQ rights, disagreed with the prime minister’s assessment of the mood of the country regarding LGBTQ rights. In a statement the NGO said:
“Romanian society has embraced European values regarding human rights and demonstrates that it is ready for the adoption and implementation of a set of laws to ensure the protection and legal recognition of LGBTI families. After the sociological research carried out by Accept in 2021, a new study comes to confirm this fact.
The results of the research carried out by the Ipsos initiative in 2023 show that 51 percent of Romanians would support some form of legal recognition of LGBTI families. Moreover, the Bucharest Pride March brought over 25,000 participants to the streets this year — a record number for Romania. The figures that place the march at the top of the street protests with the highest participation in our country are telling when it comes to the solidarity and empathy with which Romanians position themselves in favor of the protection and recognition of all families.”
The government of Romania has filed an appeal of the ECHR ruling, which ACCEPT denounced saying it was “completely reprehensible the Romanian government’s action to contest this ECHR decision.”
The Vatican
Awaiting Pope Francis after he finished his Sunday Angelus last week, guests gathered in the Paul VI Hall for a luncheon made up of the poor and their companions including a group of trans women, who all had a history of personally interacting the pontiff.
More than 1,200 people in all came for the lunch that transformed the hall into a large and unique restaurant for the customary annual lunch with Francis on the World Day of the Poor.
PinkNewsUK reported that the pontiff had invited the transgender women in order to offer them comfort and support, and ensured they received VIP treatment. In fact one of them, Claudia Vittoria Salas, a former sex worker, was seated at the table with Francis himself. Salas, who is a godparent to three of her nieces and nephews in her home country, Argentina, said she did sex work in order to put her children through school.
She told the Associated Press: “Being a godparent is a big responsibility; it’s taking the place of the mother or father. It’s not a game.”
Francis began the lunch with a blessing when he thanked the Lord for this “moment of friendship, all together,” for the meal, and for those who prepared it. The tables adorned with white and yellow flowers offered a colourful backdrop for images capturing an unforgettable moment of welcome, concern, care and love for all those who for the rest of the year live on the streets.
The Dicastery for the Service of Charity organized the event, while Hilton Hotels offered the lunch, dedicating special attention to the menu so that the meal could be enjoyed by people of various faith backgrounds present.
On the menu were cannelloni with Roman ricotta and spinach with a Parmigiano Reggiano sauce, sautéed white meatballs with a velouté of San Marzano tomatoes and basil with a cauliflower purée, followed by Tiramisu and small pastry desserts.”
Ireland
A 13-year-old trans teen from the east of Ireland, from the city of Wicklow located south of Dublin on the Irish Sea, was a keynote speaker at the 2023 Child Talks conference.
Bee Fennell, was one of six youth speakers at the Child Talks conference held at Dublin’s Helix Center for the Performing Arts, addressing the need for further education programs regarding to transgender issues facing Irish youth.
GCN, Ireland’s largest LGBTQ media outlet reported:
Among other issues discussed at the event, including STEM programs for girls and vaping, LGBTQ issues emerged as a serious concern for school-aged children through the country. Fennell used their time on stage at the Child Talks conference to discuss their experience coming out as a trans teen and the lack of resources available for trans youth in Wicklow.
“I wanted to take part in Child Talks 2023 because I wanted to share my story and hopefully encourage others to get the education to be a true ally to the community and to understand what it is like to be transgender,” said Fennell.
During their time on stage, Fennell described how they came out to their family and their school: “I was 12 when I officially came out to my parents and only a few months later, to the primary school that I was attending.”
“Coming out to my school was the biggest step, because it meant everyone knew, it wasn’t just in the house anymore. I remember that night so clearly, mam and I, sitting on the couch, typing an email that was going to change my life.
I talked about my name and gender change and explained what it meant. That email was sent around 7 p.m., outside school hours. We received a response 3.5 hours later, at 10:30 that night.”
Fennell, who uses they/them pronouns, went on to explain how their school set up a meeting to help the then 12-year-old come out to their classmates: “After a terrifying but amazing meeting with my school to discuss next steps, the day came when the teacher would tell the class about who I really was.
Me and two friends I had already come out to went to a separate room to avoid any negative reactions. After the most anxiety-filled half-hour of my life, I was walking up the steps to where my class awaited my arrival. A few friends immediately hugged and congratulated me.”
Unfortunately, as Fennell noted, not everyone’s reaction was so kind.
“Some others just stared. Shocked, confused, some even with disgusted impressions,” they said.
Thankfully, however, the vast majority of Fennell’s classmates were accepting and welcoming, leading the trans teen to report that “At that moment … I was more comfortable in my identity than I have ever been before. I was officially Bee, officially me.”
Bee went on to explain how the LGBTQ organization, BelongTo youth services, helped them discover the community that they’ve always been looking for.
“I had been alone in that fight until I walked into that [BelongTo] youth group. I always knew there was community, sure, it’s in the name. But I didn’t have anyone in my position, having gone through it. I didn’t have anyone who didn’t get confused when I simply introduced myself until I walked into that group,” Fennell concluded.
United Kingdom
An independent Regulatory Commission has imposed an action plan and significant fine on the Luton Town Football Club for misconduct in relation to crowd control at their game against Brighton and Hove Albion in the Premier League match that was held on Aug. 12.
The Football Association based at Wembley Stadium in London announced that the club has been fined £120,000 ($151,212) after homophobic chanting from fans took place during an away match against Brighton and Hove Albion.
According to the governing body, Luton Town admitted that they “failed to ensure their spectators and/or supporters (and anyone purporting to be supporters or followers) conduct themselves in an orderly fashion; and do not use words or otherwise behave in a way which is improper, offensive, abusive, indecent or insulting with either express or implied reference to sexual orientation.”
In an interview with the local newspaper, Luton Today, a spokesperson for the team said:
“As an inclusive, family-oriented club, Luton Town abhors abusive chanting such as this and has a zero-tolerance policy towards discrimination of all kinds. It is not acceptable towards anyone in football or wider society, either in person or online. Those involved were committing a criminal offense and anyone subsequently identified will be issued with a club ban and face potential police investigation.”
The club went on to note that it was working with supporters to help form the Rainbow Hatters supporters’ group for members of the LGBTQ community, who meet regularly to share their experiences of watching the Hatters.
“We will continue to promote the ‘Love Football. Protect The Game’ campaign, which this season has focused especially on fan behavior, and will work further with supporter groups to educate and inform on all forms of discriminatory acts to ensure that watching Luton Town is a safe and welcoming experience for everyone,” the club told Luton Today.
Russia
The Russian Justice Ministry has lodged an administrative legal claim with the Russian Supreme Court to recognize the global LGBTQ rights movement as extremist and ban its activity in Russia.
In a Justice Department press release, LGBTQ Russians were referred to as an “international social movement” by the Justice Minister Konstantin Chuychenko.
The ministry did not specify whether it was seeking the closure of any specific groups or organizations, or if the designation would apply more broadly to the LGBTQ community, causes and individuals, Agence France-Presse reported.
This latest action by the Russian government follows nearly 10 years of the Parliament, comprised of the State Duma, which is the lower house, and the Federation Council, which is the upper house, passing legislation attacking its LGBTQ citizens. In July of this year legislation that will effectively ban the existence of trans Russians was signed into law by President Vladimir Putin.
The law now bans Russians from changing their gender on official government identity documents including internal and external passports, driver’s licenses and birth certificates, although gender marker changes had been legal for 26 years since 1997.
Medical healthcare providers are now banned from “performing medical interventions designed to change the sex of a person,” including surgery and prescribing hormone therapy.
In December 2022, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin issued a decree on Christmas Eve expanding and amending Russia’s “gay propaganda” law signed by Putin. That law set fines for books or media that represented non-straight relationships.
The Justice Ministry in its statement accused the “LGBTQ movement operating on the territory of the Russian Federation” of “various signs and manifestations of extremism, including incitement to social and religious hatred.” If the court upholds the ban as passed, prosecutors will have the power to pursue “terrorism” cases against LGBTQ Russians, especially activists.
Speaking with Agence France-Presse, the head of the Sphere human rights group, which advocates for the Russian LGBTQ community, criticized the announcement.
“Russian authorities are once again forgetting that the LGBTQ+ community are human beings,” said Sphere head Dilya Gafurova, who has left Russia.
Authorities “don’t just want to erase us from the public field: They want to ban us as a social group,” Gafurova told AFP. “It’s a pretty typical move for repressive non-democratic regimes — the persecution of the most vulnerable. We will continue our fight,” he added.
The Supreme Court’s ruling is scheduled for Nov. 30.
A 33-year-old lesbian artist was sentenced by a Russian court to a term of seven years in a penal camp, after she was convicted of spreading disinformation about the Russian army.
Alexandra Skochilenko, who goes by Sasha, swapped supermarket price tags with slogans criticizing Putin’s war against Ukraine. An elderly shopper reported the swapped tags to the police.
Skochilenko is just the latest among thousands of Russians who have been detained, jailed or fined for speaking out against Putin’s large-scale military operation in Ukraine that has cost the lives of tens of thousands Russian, Ukrainian troops and civilians.
Her supporters in the courtroom shouted “shame” and “we’re with you Sasha” after the judge Oksana Demiasheva read out the verdict, an AFP journalist at the sentencing reported. Skochilenko wore a colorful T-shirt with a large red heart printed on it, and she made a heart shape with her hands and smiled to supporters during the hearing.
Addressing Demiasheva, Skochilenko said:
“Your Honor! Every court sentence is a certain message to the public. You may think of this information differently than my lawyers or I do, but you will agree that I have my moral principles and that I haven’t departed from them, not by an inch. You will probably agree that I have shown courage, resilience and fearlessness. In the slang of investigators, to put someone in jail is ‘to take them prisoner.’
And I have not given up under threats of being taken prisoner, of bullying, illness and the 8-year sentence that prosecution has asked for; I have not been hypocritical; I have been honest before myself and before the court.
If you choose to convict me, what message will you send to our fellow citizens? That you have to break if you’re taken prisoner? That you have to lie, be a hypocrite, change your convictions if you face some pressure? That you can’t have pity for our soldiers? That you can’t wish for peaceful skies above our heads? Is it really what you want to say to people in times of depression, instability, crisis, and stress?
My process is widely covered in Russia and in the world; news videos and documentary films are being made, and even books are being written about it. So regardless of the verdict you deliver, you will become part of history. Perhaps you will become part of history as the person who convicted me; perhaps as the person who acquitted me; perhaps as the person who made a neutral decision and gave me a fine, a conditional sentence, or a time that I have already served. It is all in your hands, but remember: Everybody knows, everybody sees that you’re not trying a terrorist in this court. You’re not trying an extremist. You’re not even trying a political activist. You’re trying a musician, an artist and a pacifist.”
“Every person in this room wants only one thing: Peace. Why fight?” she added in her closing statement.
According to the Russian language media outlet Mediazona, federal prosecutor Alexander Gladyshev told the court: “Skochilenko compares the Russian Federation with a fascist state, they [prosecution expert witnesses] explained that in the Russian Federation now there are no elements of a fascist state. The words that Russia attacked Ukraine are false; the purpose of the SVO [special military operation] was to protect the citizens of Donbas from aggression,” Gladyshev said.
Skochilenko’s mother says her daughter suffers from health issues, including celiac disease and a congenital heart defect, adding that a long prison term would be a “catastrophe.”
India
The death of a queer teenager by suicide in the ancient city of Ujjain beside the Kshipra River in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh has LGBTQ advocacy groups calling on social media giant Meta to address what one group, Yes, We Exist, to label as “mass bullying on Instagram.
According to the local media outlet Ujjain News, Pranshu Yadav, 16, whose Instagram account has 14,000 followers and more than 300 posts was found hanging in their bedroom on Nov. 21 by their mother who rushed the adolescent to hospital where they later died. Local police are now investigating.
Yes, We Exist highlighted how Yadav, who was attempting to build a career as a professional makeup artist, received more than 4,000 comments on a current Instagram reel, many of which were homophobic.
In the reel they were attacked for wearing a saree in a reel they posted celebrating Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights earlier this month. A saree (also spelled sari) is a an outer garment, mainly worn by women from the Indian subcontinent, that is made of about six yards long fabric. A saree, worn with a blouse or choli, is wrapped around the waist over a petticoat with the left end made to hang over the head or shoulder. A saree comes in various types of fabric, color, design and styles.
In India’s culture of toxic masculinity where LGBTQ people are still ill regarded and full equality is years away, the reaction to the queer teen’s Instagram post was almost predictable an India activist told the Washington Blade via a Telegram exchange.
Yes, We Exist now calling on Instagram, which is owned by Meta, to invest in its non-English languages and ensure cyber bullying is tackled.
“We have ourselves reported queerphobic content several times and most often no action is taken. On the contrary, when people call out bullies, they get penalized by Meta,” Jeet, the founder of Yes, We Exist, told PinkNewsUK.
Jeet added that the “tragic loss” Pranshu it is a “devastating reminder of the real-world consequences of online bullying.”
“The LGBTQIA+ community in India mourns not only the individual but also the systemic challenges we routinely face.
The call for greater accountability from platforms like Instagram and from Indian lawmakers who have not prioritized offline and online safety of our community, is urgent to ensure the well-being of young queer individuals like Pranshu.”
Thailand
The Thailand Cabinet approved an amendment to the country’s civil code to allow same-sex marriage, with an expectation for the draft to be submitted to the National Assembly in December, the Associated Press reported.
Deputy government spokesman Karom Polpornklang said the amendment bill proposed by the Justice Ministry seeks to allow same-sex marriage with full legal rights. It will also allow members of the LGBTQ community to build families and ensure both spouses have equal rights.
Karom said the bill’s main principle is to remove the terms “men,” “women,” “wives” and “husbands” from the civil code.
The terms will be changed to “persons,” “fiancées,” “engaged couples” and “married couples,” so men can marry men and women can marry women and have the same rights as male-female unions.
The deputy spokesman said the Cabinet has also called on the Council of State to amend other laws accordingly, so the surviving spouse in a same-sex marriage is entitled to receive the inheritance left behind by their partner.
The Council of State has also been tasked with scrutinizing the same-sex marriage bill, and once that is done it will be submitted to the House, Karom said.
Thai government spokesman Chai Wacharonke said the amendment bill would be different from the Life Partnership Act that was enacted by the last government.
He said this act simply endorses the rights for same-sex couples to spend their lives together but does not provide full legal marital rights.
Additional reporting from Europa FM, PinkNewsUK, The Associated Press, Vatican Press, Mediazona, Agence France-Presse, Luton Today, GCN Ireland and Ujjain News.
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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