World
Out in the World: LGBTQ news from Europe and Asia
Labour Party trounced Conservatives in UK elections
UNITED KINGDOM
The UK Labour Party won an overwhelming majority in national elections July 4, ending 14 years of Conservative Party rule that have been characterized by a deteriorating human rights situation for LGBTQ Britons, particularly transgender people.
But the election of Kier Starmer as new prime minister seems to have queer people only cautiously optimistic at best.
While Starmer’s Labour Party manifesto pledged to improve the queer people’s rights and safety by banning conversion therapy, expanding hate crime laws, and simplifying the gender recognition process for trans people, Starmer has also spent a lot of time playing to the widespread anti-trans hysteria in Britain.
He has said that trans people should not be allowed in single-sex spaces and courted noted transphobic author J.K. Rowling.
That prompted a rebuke from Darren Styles, editor of Attitude Magazine, the UK’s leading LGBTQ lifestyle magazine.
Styles had offered Starmer the opportunity to write an open letter to his magazine’s readers ahead of the election, but in an editorial, he writes that he couldn’t publish it without adding his own commentary.
“But between his copy arriving, on 23rd June, and today’s publication the earth moved beneath our feet. Since then, the Labour leader has said that he’d be willing to meet with JK Rowling to discuss sex and gender, and ‘respects’ her views,” Styles wrote.
“Much of … Sir Keir’s missive is positive and indeed impressive, does offer hope of genuine change and will likely reverse, in part, the trend of decline in LGBTQ+ rights in the U.K. But, in our opinion and in light of events, it is equivocal in parts in that it makes no mention of the trans issues that have subsequently come to light,” he wrote.
PinkNews reports that 56 out LGBTQ people were elected to parliament on July 4, including 46 Labour MPs, about 11 percent of Labour’s total caucus. It’s possible they may be able to push Starmer to make progress on LGBT issues.
But the total number of out LGBTQ MPs fell from a pre-election record of 67, after dozens of out Conservative and Scottish National Party MPs lost their seats.
FRANCE
French voters rejected the far-right in a dramatic reversal of expectations in the second round of parliamentary elections Sunday, choosing a deeply divided legislature where the left-wing bloc of parties will control the most seats and President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party holding the second-largest number of seats and the balance of power.
In the wake of the results, openly gay Prime Minister Gabriel Attal from Macron’s Renaissance party announced he would tender his resignation Monday morning, however, Macron rejected his resignation, asking him to stay on for stability while a new government is formed. Attal has been prime minister since January 2024.
Macron called the snap election last month after the far-right National Rally party won the most seats in European Parliament elections, seeking a fresh mandate for his government.
Polls had widely predicted the National Rally would come out on top in the parliamentary election, but a flurry of cooperative deals between the left alliance and the Renaissance party after the first-round vote last weekend led to a consolidation of the anti-NR vote.
While LGBTQ issues had not played a great part in the election campaign, the National Rally had in the past campaigned on restricting access to IVF and surrogacy for same-sex couples, and even banning same-sex marriage.
Macron also turned to campaigning against trans rights, accusing the left-wing bloc of wanting to allow trans people to change their legal gender by simple declaration at a townhall, something he called “ludicrous.” Nevertheless, that is already legal in the France of which he is president.
NORWAY
The man who fired a machine gun at an Pride festival in Norway in 2022, killing two people and wounding 21 others in an Islamic State-inspired attack, was found guilty of terrorism and sentenced to 30 years in prison on July 4.
Zaniar Matapour, a 44-year-old Iranian-born Norwegian citizen, fired 10 rounds with a machine gun and eight with a handgun into a crowd in three locations, including outside the London Pub, a popular Oslo gay bar, on June 25, 2022. Civilians assisted police in detaining Matapour at the scene.
Norway’s Police Security Service told media at the time that Matapour had been known to them since at least 2015 and had grown concerned that he had become radicalized into an unspecified Islamist terrorist network. According to the service’s then-acting Chief Roger Berg, he had a “long history of violence and threats” and known mental health issues.
The Oslo District Court found that Matapour had sworn allegiance to ISIS, the terrorist organization that governed a large part of Iraq and Syria between 2014-2019 and which has claimed responsibility for terrorist attacks across the globe.
Matapour has never denied carrying out the attack, but he pled innocent, claiming that he had been provoked to carry out the attack by an agent of Norway’s intelligence service posing as a high-ranking officer of ISIS.
Matapour will be eligible for parole in 20 years, but he can only be released if he is deemed not to be a danger. Four other people are suspected of having been involved in the attack, but they have not been charged.
SLOVAKIA
The Human Rights Institute has filed a criminal complaint against the country’s minister of culture for inciting hatred against immigrants and Jewish people, as well as LGBTQ people.
The nongovernmental organization filed the complaint on July 4, a day after Culture Minister Martina Šimkovičová gave an interview to the Topky network, in which she claimed that the low birthrate among white people in Europe was due to LGBTQ people.
“We heterosexuals are creating the future, because we make babies. Europe is dying out, babies are not being born because of the excessive number of LGBTQ+ [people]. And the strange thing is [that it’s happening] with the white race,” Šimkovičová said.
Homophobic hate speech is not a crime in Slovakia, but racist and anti-Semitic hate speech is.
Human Rights Institute Director Peter Weisenbacher drew a connection between Šimkovičová’s statements and the shocking murder of two gay men outside a Bratislava gay bar in 2022.
“It is shocking that it has not even been two years since the terrorist attack on Zámocká, in which two people died, and a member of the government is saying such things. Even the statements of public figures, which cannot be called anything other than spreading hatred, incite homophobia, racism and anti-Semitism,” Weisenbacher said in a statement.
Slovakia’s government has long been hostile to LGBTQ rights, including under current left-leaning populist Prime Minister Robert Fico, who was elected last year.
Before joining his government, Šimkovičová had worked as a journalist, until she was fired for promoting anti-migrant content on social media. She then became a darling of far-right media, promoting anti-vax, homophobic, and pro-Russian content on social media and hosting the YouTube show TV Slovan.
Her ministry also announced this week that it would cease all funding of LGBTQ-related content. Šimkovičová had called the policy a “return to normalcy” when the idea was announced in January.
INDIA
A year after the India’s Supreme Court dashed the hopes of the country’s queer community by ruling that there is no constitutional right to same-sex marriage, the court is set to reconsider its ruling at a hearing on Wednesday.
In October 2023, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Supriyo v. Union of India that same-sex marriage is for parliament to decide, not the courts. The court also ruled 3-2 against ordering the government to introduce civil unions.
However, the court accepted the government’s offer to set up a committee that would investigate other ways to give same-sex couples more rights around inheritance, medical decisions, and other issues, and the court reiterated that anti-LGBTQ discrimination is not allowed under the constitution.
Since the ruling, two of the five justices retired — one who had voted for same-sex civil unions, and one who wrote the majority opinion against it.
One of the petitioners in the same-sex marriage case filed a petition for a review of the decision, noting that the ruling acknowledges that LGBTQ people face unjust discrimination but fails to order any remedy for the injustice.
“The majority ruling is self-contradictory, facially erroneous and deeply unjust. The majority found that queer Indians endure severe discrimination at the hands of the State, declared that discrimination must be prohibited, and then did not take the logical next step of enjoining the discrimination,” Udit Sood said in his petition.
LGBTQ people have made major progress in legal rights in India in recent years, largely through the courts. In 2018, the Supreme Court struck down the colonial-era sodomy law that criminalized LGBTQ people, and the following year, the government passed a law banning discrimination against trans people.
Courts have also asserted that LGBTQ people have the right to autonomy and cohabitation, and that they cannot be subjected to conversion therapy.
If the Supreme Court does rule in favor of same-sex marriage, India would be by far the largest country in the world to legalize it.
Also this week, the Court of Cassation in The Hague, Netherlands, is expected to deliver a long-awaited ruling on same-sex marriage in the Caribbean countries of Aruba and Curaçao on Friday.
Honduras
Corte IDH reconoce a Thalía Rodríguez como familia social de Leonela Zelaya
Se construyeron una familia tras más de una década de convivencia
Por DORIS GONZÁLEZ * | TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — En la sentencia del caso Leonela Zelaya y otra vs Honduras emitida por la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos se estableció un hito jurisprudencial para las personas LGBTQ en Honduras, así como en la región en relación a las diversas conformaciones de familias existentes. La Corte IDH interpretó por primera vez el concepto de familia social, indicando que la construcción de familia no debe restringirse a la familia nuclear o a nociones tradicionales, bajo el entendido de que hay diferentes formas en las que se materializan los vínculos familiares.
Este análisis se trae a colación debido al contexto de discriminación, prejuicio y violencia que atravesamos las personas LGBTQ, el cual se puede manifestar incluso dentro de nuestras propias familias. Esta violencia se manifiesta a través de actos de odio como ser el desarraigo familiar, violencia física, psicológica, social, económica, expulsiones de los hogares, violaciones correctivas e incluso, culminando en muertes violentas. Esta violencia motivada por la orientación sexual, identidad y expresión de género de las personas imposibilita la convivencia familiar.
Ante esto, las personas LGBTQ construimos vínculos sociales fuera del vínculo familiar tradicional, los cuales a través de la convivencia, amistad, apoyo económico-social y construcción de vida en común constituyen familias, tal como ocurrió en este caso.
Tras el abandono de su familia biológica, Leonela Zelaya y Thalía Rodríguez construyeron una familia tras más de una década de convivencia, en los cuales se apoyaron mutuamente en diversas situaciones, viviendo como mujeres trans, portadoras de VIH, ejerciendo el trabajo sexual y en situación de pobreza, enfrentando constantes episodios de detenciones arbitrarias y violentas por parte de los órganos policiales.
Tras su asesinato, fue Thalía quien recogió el cuerpo de Leonela en la morgue de Tegucigalpa y quien gestionó el féretro a través de la Funeraria del Pueblo. Los servicios fúnebres de Leonela Zelaya fueron realizados en un bar por mujeres trans, trabajadoras sexuales, al cual no asistió ningún miembro de su familia biológica.
El asesinato de Leonela y la falta de esclarecimiento generaron a Thalía un sentimiento de inseguridad, frustración e impotencia. Por estas violaciones de derechos humanos, la Corte reconoció a Thalía Rodríguez, en calidad de familiar de Leonela, como víctima del caso, generando estándares aplicables a todas las personas LGBTQ.
A juicio de la Corte, esta situación lleva a que, en casos de muertes violentas de mujeres trans, las personas que integren las redes de apoyo de la persona fallecida puedan ser declaradas víctimas por la violación de sus derechos a la integridad psíquica o moral, siempre que se acredite la existencia de un vínculo estrecho con la víctima y una afectación a sus derechos, derivada, por ejemplo, de las gestiones realizadas para obtener justicia. Esta sentencia logra reconocer que las personas LGBTQ construimos familias sociales, familias elegidas, e indica que estas deben ser reconocidas y validadas.
* Abogada litigante del caso Leonela Zelaya y otra vs Honduras, Red Lésbica Cattrachas
Uganda
LGBTQ Ugandans targeted ahead of country’s elections
President Yoweri Museveni won 7th term in disputed Jan. 15 vote
Barely a week after Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni secured a 7th term in an election marred by state violence, intimidation, and allegations of fraud, the country’s queer community spoke about how the election environment impacted it.
The LGBTQ lobby groups who spoke with the Washington Blade noted that, besides government institutions’ failure to create a safe and inclusive environment for civic participation by all Ugandans, authorities weaponized the Anti-Homosexuality Act to silence dissent and discourage queer voter engagement.
The rights groups note that candidates aligned with Museveni’s ruling National Resistance Movement — including Parliament Speaker Anita Among — during the campaigns accused their rivals of “promoting homosexuality” to discredit them while wooing conservative voters.
Queer people and LGBTQ rights organizations as a result were largely excluded from the formal political processes for the election as voters, mobilizers, or civic actors due to fear of exposure, stigma, violence, and legal reprisals.
“This homophobic rhetoric fueled public hostility and emboldened vigilante violence, forcing many queer Ugandans into deeper hiding during the election period,” Uganda Minority Shelters Consortium Coordinator John Grace stated.
Some queer people had expressed an interest in running for local council seats, but none of them formally registered as candidates or campaigned openly because of safety concerns and local electoral bodies’ discriminatory vetting of candidates.
“UMSC documented at least three incidents of election-related violence or intimidation targeting LGBTQ+ individuals and activists,” Grace noted. “These included harassment, arbitrary detentions, extortions by state and non-state actors, digital cat-fishing, and threats of outing.”
Amid such a militarized and repressive election environment, Let’s Walk Uganda Executive Director Edward Mutebi noted queer-led and allied organizations engaged in the election process through restricted informal voter education, community discussions, and documenting human rights violations.
“Fear of backlash limited visibility and direct participation throughout the election cycle,” Mutebi said. “But despite the hostile environment of work, Let’s Walk Uganda was able to organize a successful transgender and gender diverse youth training on electoral security and safety.”
Museveni’s government escalated its repressive actions during the Jan. 15 elections by shutting down the internet and suspending nine civil society organizations, including Chapter Four Uganda and the National Coalition of Human Rights Defenders, for allegedly engaging in activities that are prejudicial to the security and laws of the country.
The suspension of the rights organizations remains in force, an action both Mutebi and Grace condemn. They say it prevents queer Ugandans from accessing urgent services from the affected groups.
“For the LGBTQ community, the impact has been immediate and deeply harmful. Many of the suspended organizations, like Chapter Four Uganda, were critical partners in providing legal representation, emergency response, and documentation of rights violations,” Grace said.
This has compelled UMSC and its other partners to handle increased caseloads with limited resources, while navigating heightened scrutiny and operational risk.
“The suspension has disrupted referral pathways, delayed urgent interventions, and weakened collective advocacy for marginalized groups and minority rights defenders, which calls for urgent international solidarity, flexible funding, and protection mechanisms to safeguard the work of grassroots organizations operating under threat,” Grace stated.
Mutebi warned that such repressive actions are tyrannical and are indicative of shrinking civic space, which undermines democratic accountability as the promotion and protection of human rights is ignored.
With Museveni, 81, extending his tenure at State House from a landslide win of 72 percent, UMSC and LWU consider a bleak future in the protection of rights for queer Ugandans and other minority groups.
“Without significant political and legal shifts, LGBTQ persons will face continued criminalization, reduced civic space, and heightened insecurity, making sustained advocacy and international solidarity more critical than ever,” Mutebi said. “ It is unimaginable how it feels to live in a country with no hope.”
Grace, however, affirmed the resistance by local queer lobby groups will continue through underground networks, regional solidarity, and digital organizing.
The duo noted that a win by Museveni’s main challenger and rapper, Bobi Wine, who only managed 24 percent of the total votes cast, could have enabled the opening up of civil space and human rights protections in Uganda.
Wine, for his part, spoke in favor of the respect for the rule of law and human rights during his campaign.
“While Bobi Wine’s past stance on LGBTQ rights was inconsistent, his recent shift toward more inclusive rhetoric and international engagement suggested a potential opening for dialogue,” Grace said. “A win might have created space for policy reform or at least reduced state-sponsored homophobia, though structural change would still require sustained pressure and coalition-building.”
Mutebi stated that a change in Uganda’s leadership to a youthful leader like Wine could have offered an opening, but not a guarantee for progress on inclusion and human rights. Mutebi added existing institutionalized and societal homophobia remain in place.
World
Companies participate in ‘Pride on the Promenade’ at World Economic Forum
GLAAD co-organized initiative
A dozen companies that are participating in the World Economic Forum on Wednesday lit up their venues on the Davos promenade in rainbow colors.
Amazon, Axios, Bloomberg, Circle, Cisco, Cloudflare, Edelman Trust House, Hub Culture, Salesforce, SAP, Snowflake, and Workday participated in the “Pride on the Promenade” that GLAAD, Open for Business, and the Partnership for Global LGBTIQ+ Equality organized. It is the fourth year the organizations have organized the initiative during the World Economic Forum.
The annual event is taking place this week in the Swiss ski resort town of Davos.
GLAAD CEO Sarah Kate Ellis on Wednesday moderated a panel in which Open for Business CEO Ken Janssens and Iris Bohnet, co-director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Women and Public Policy Program, among others, participated. President Donald Trump earlier in the day spoke at the World Economic Forum.
“World leaders, corporate executives, and global media are discussing new ways to evolve inclusion and social issues, but leaders in those institutions and our community as a whole need to do more to support LGBTQ people globally,” said Ellis in a statement that GLAAD sent to the Washington Blade on Thursday. “At a time when decades-old alliances are being challenged, the importance of this visible show of solidarity at the largest convening of global decision makers cannot be understated. Inclusion remains a necessary business practice and companies that demonstrate shared values of family and freedom know this helps grow the bottom line.”
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