World
Out in the World: LGBTQ news from Europe and Asia
Grindr location services disabled in Olympic Village
FRANCE
The European Court of Human Rights upheld a French law that criminalizes aspects of sex work, in what advocates are calling a “missed opportunity” that will continue to put sex workers’ lives in danger.
In a July 25 ruling, the court found that France’s 2016 law, which criminalizes the purchase of sex and other organizational aspects of sex work, like keeping a brothel, does not violate Section 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees freedom of privacy. The court refused to consider whether the law violated other sections of the convention that guarantee the right to life and freedom from torture.
The French law was based on the so-called “Nordic model” of criminalizing sex work, which was pioneered in Sweden and Norway in 1999 and 2009, respectively. The model was meant to discourage prostitution and human trafficking without criminalizing sex workers themselves, who are seen as vulnerable or victims of exploitation.
Advocacy groups have criticized the Nordic model for exposing sex workers to danger and have tended to call for full decriminalization of sex work.
The case was brought by 261 sex workers identified as men and women of various nationalities. The applicants argued that the law made the conditions of being a sex worker more dangerous by making clients wary of being arrested and by preventing sex workers from working together or hiring security. This forced sex workers to meet clients alone and far from the public eye, exposing them to potential violence and clients who refuse to use condoms. It also drove down the prices they could charge for their services.
Still, the court found that France should be given a “margin of appreciation” for its approach to regulate and abolish sex work without actually prohibiting it.
Human rights groups were quick to denounce the ruling.
“This does not change the evidence that the 261 sex workers – the majority of them migrants, women of color, and LGBT people – presented to the European Court of Human Rights,” said Erin Kilbride, LGBT rights director of Human Rights Watch. “Criminalization increases physical attacks, sexual violence, and police abuse of people who sell sex, while having no demonstrable effect on the eradication of human trafficking. The movement for sex workers’ rights is a strong one that will continue the fight to protect the rights and lives of all sex workers.”
Amnesty International, which intervened in the case in support of sex workers, has said the global experience suggests that the French law will endanger sex workers’ lives.
“Our research has highlighted that laws supposedly intended to protect sex workers are in fact putting them at higher risk of abuse and violence, including rape and physical attacks,” said Anna Błuś, Amnesty International’s women’s rights researcher.
“Today’s judgment is a blow to the courageous sex workers who brought this case. We continue to stand alongside sex workers as they demand protection for their human rights and seek justice for rights violations perpetrated against their community.”
GERMANY
The annual Christopher Street Day parade in Cologne saw a record turnout of 1.2 million people on July 21, as Pride events in the country took on new urgency with the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
Pride events in Germany are often called “Christopher Street Day” after the street in New York where the Stonewall Inn is found and where the 1969 Stonewall Riots are said to have kick-started the modern LGBTQ rights movement.
The Cologne Christopher Street Day Parade featured more than 60,000 participants and 90 floats, and was kicked off with speeches from prominent German politicians, including Bundestag President Bärbel Bas, Health Minister Karl Lauterbach, and Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth. Members of the German pop-rock band Tokio Hotel, including openly gay frontman Bill Kaulitz, also participated on one of the floats.
Despite the celebratory atmosphere, a group of 13 men attempted to disrupt the festivities by shouting right-wing extremist and homophobic remarks and tearing down rainbow flags. Cologne police quickly intervened and detained the men, some of whom were described as between ages 18 and 30, wearing black clothing, bare-chested, and with shaven heads. Police also investigated a threat made against the parade that was posted on the internet the day before but dismissed it as unserious.
The Christopher Street Day Parade in Berlin took place on Saturday and was themed on the organizers’ call for Germany’s Basic Law — its constitution — to be amended to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation. The Basic Law is already interpreted to ban discrimination based on gender identity.
The call for greater protections for LGBTQ rights comes as the AfD, which opposes LGBTQ rights and same-sex marriage, is riding high in opinion polls.
CANADA
The city of Edmonton, Alberta, is honoring its LGBTQ history with a new exhibit at Fort Edmonton Park that runs all summer and spotlights significant people and moments that often go overlooked in official histories.
Fort Edmonton Park is a city-owned living history museum that presents the history of the Edmonton area from the earliest Indigenous communities through the 1920s. Entitled “Regulating Morality,” the new exhibit was constructed by the Edmonton Queer History Project and features key historic events like the AIDS pandemic and the legal and political fights for equal rights and same-sex marriage. The new installation is part of an effort to broaden the type of history being preserved in the park beyond that of the white colonial Christian community.
“We want every visitor that comes here to see themselves reflected in Edmonton’s history, and we can’t do that unless we are creating space to tell these narratives,” said Neil Cramer, public interpretation coordinator at Fort Edmonton Park.
Alberta has been at the center of many of the most important battles for LGBTQ rights in Canada.
Long heralded as the most conservative province of Canada, Alberta politicians bitterly resisted many advances in queer rights. In 1998, an Edmonton school teacher who was fired for being gay won a Supreme Court case that established that nondiscrimination laws must include protections for sexual orientation, after a legal struggle that spanned seven years.
More recently, the premier of Alberta has come under fire for transphobic policies that bar access to gender care for minors and require parental notification and consent if a student wishes to use an alternate name or pronoun in class.
“By knowing you have a past history, you can also imagine a future, and that’s really important in a time that is challenging and difficult right now,” said Kristopher Wells, founder of the Edmonton Queer History Project.
OLYMPICS
The gay cruising app Grindr has disabled location services and a host of other features in the Olympic Village in an effort to protect the privacy of athletes, the company announced in a blog post on July 24.
The move is a response to an incident at the 2016 Rio Olympics when the Daily Beast published an article by reporter Nico Hines about hookup culture among athletes, in which he described several athletes that he identified on Grindr, potentially outing them and exposing them to danger in their home countries where homosexuality is criminalized or not socially acceptable. Grindr took similar steps to protect athletes at the 2022 Beijing Olympics.
“If an athlete is not out or comes from a country where being LGBTQ+ is dangerous or illegal, using Grindr can put them at risk of being outed by curious individuals who may try to identify and expose them on the app,” the company said in a blog post.
Grindr users will not be able to use the “Explore” and “Roam” features within the Olympic Village, where the “show distance” feature will also be turned off by default. The app is also allowing users in the Village to send unlimited disappearing messages and unsend messages, disabling screenshots of profile images and chats, and disabling private videos.
“Our goal is to help athletes connect without worrying about unintentionally revealing their whereabouts or being recognized,” the company said.
According to the website Outsports, 175 openly LGBTQ athletes are competing at the Olympics, although only 20 of them are cisgender men.
IRELAND
The Irish government says it may not uphold its pledge to introduce a ban on conversion therapy, saying that the issue has become too complicated to legislate before the end of the government’s term, the Irish Times reports.
A conversion therapy ban was promised as part of the coalition agreement formed between Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, and the Green Party after the 2020 election. But consultations on the ban dragged on for years, and no bill has yet been introduced, despite the government repeatedly saying the bill was a priority during that time.
The next Irish election must be held by March 2025.
Equality and Children Minister Roderic O’Gorman said that legislating on the issue was “extremely complex” at an event at Trinity College in Dublin on July 12, where three professional associations representing psychiatrists, psychologists, and counselors committed their members not to engage in conversion therapy. The College of Psychiatrists of Ireland, the Irish Association for Counseling and Psychotherapy, and the Psychological Society of Ireland bans extend to both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, which is part of the U.K.
O’Gorman says crafting legislation that covers non-medical practices has proven difficult.
“I wanted to make sure it covered quasi-religious practices and quasi-therapeutic practices, and to ensure those very necessary conversations that take place when someone is exploring their gender identity or sexual orientation wouldn’t be impacted,” O’Gorman said.
Chile
Far-right José Antonio Kast elected Chile’s next president
Advocacy group declares ‘state of alert’ over president-elect’s opposition to LGBTQ rights
José Antonio Kast on Sunday won the second round of Chile’s presidential election.
Kast is the far-right leader of the Republican Party who was a member of the country’s House of Deputies from 2002-2018. He defeated Jeannette Jara, a member of the Communist Party of Chile who was former labor and social welfare minister in outgoing President Gabriel Boric’s government, by a 58.2-41.8 percent margin.
The election’s first round took place on Nov. 16.
Kast and Jara faced each other in the runoff after no candidate received at least 50 percent of the vote in the first round. Kast will take office on March 11.
“Under his leadership, we are confident Chile will advance shared priorities to include strengthening public security, ending illegal immigration, and revitalizing our commercial relationship,” said U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday in a statement. “The United States looks forward to working closely with his administration to deepen our partnership and promote shared prosperity in our hemisphere.”
The Washington Blade has previously reported Kast has expressed his opposition to gender-specific policies, comprehensive sex education, and reforms to Chile’s anti-discrimination laws. The president-elect has also publicly opposed the country’s marriage equality law that took effect in 2022.
The Movement for Homosexual Integration and Liberation, a Chilean LGBTQ and intersex rights group known by the acronym Movilh, in a statement acknowledged the election result. Movilh also declared a “state of alert, given this leader’s (Kast’s) public and political trajectory, characterized for decades by systematic opposition to laws and policies aimed at equality and nondiscrimination of LGBTIQ+ individuals.”
“We urge the president-elect and far-right sectors that follow him to understand and internalize (the fact) that the rights of LGBTIQ+ people are inscribed in the universality of human rights, and they are not built upon an ideology or a political trend,” said Movilh in its statement. “This is not, and never has been, a left-wing or right-wing issue, although some on both sides have gone to great lengths to suggest otherwise, without any basis other than their own partisan or electoral aspirations.”
Organizado Trans Diversidades, a group that advocates on behalf of trans and nonbinary Chileans, on social media said it will “continue the fight for our community’s human rights.”
Egypt
Iran, Egypt object to playing in Seattle World Cup ‘Pride Match’
Game to take place on June 26
Iran and Egypt have objected to playing in a “Pride Match” that will take place in Seattle during the 2026 World Cup.
The Egyptian Football Association on Tuesday said it told FIFA Secretary General Mattias Grafström in a letter that “it categorically rejects holding any activities related to supporting (homosexuality) during the match between the Egyptian national team and Iran, scheduled to be held in Seattle, USA, on June 26, 2026, in the third round of the group stage of the 2026 World Cup.” Football Federation Islamic Republic of Iran President Mehdi Taj told ISNA, a semi-official Iranian news agency that both his country and Egypt “protested this issue.”
The 2026 World Cup will take place in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. The draw took place at the Kennedy Center on Dec. 5.
Iran is among the handful of countries in which consensual same-sex sexual relations remain punishable by death.
The State Department’s 2023 human rights report notes that while Egyptian law “did not explicitly criminalize consensual same-sex sexual activity, authorities regularly arrested and prosecuted LGBTQI+ persons on charges including ‘debauchery,’ prostitution, and ‘violating family values.’” Egyptian authorities “also reportedly prosecuted LGBTQI+ individuals for ‘misuse of social media.’”
“This resulted in de facto criminalization of same-sex conduct and identity,” notes the report.
The 2024 human rights report the State Department released earlier this year did not include LGBTQ-specific references.
Soccer has ‘unique power to unite people across borders, cultures, and beliefs’
The June 26 match between Iran and Egypt coincides with Seattle Pride. The Washington Post reported the Seattle FIFA World Cup 2026 Local Organizing Committee decided to hold the “Pride Match” before last week’s draw.
“As the Local Organizing Committee, SeattleFWC26’s role is to prepare our city to host the matches and manage the city experience outside of Seattle Stadium,” said SeattleFWC26 Vice President of Communications Hana Tadesse in a statement the committee sent to the Washington Blade on Wednesday. “SeattleFWC26 is moving forward as planned with our community programming outside the stadium during Pride weekend and throughout the tournament, partnering with LGBTQ+ leaders, artists, and business owners to elevate existing Pride celebrations across Washington.”
“Football has a unique power to unite people across borders, cultures, and beliefs,” added Tadeese. “The Pacific Northwest is home to one of the nation’s largest Iranian-American communities, a thriving Egyptian diaspora, and rich communities representing all nations we’re hosting in Seattle. We’re committed to ensuring all residents and visitors experience the warmth, respect, and dignity that defines our region.”
The 2034 World Cup will take place in Saudi Arabia.
Consensual same-sex sexual relations remain punishable by death in the country. The 2022 World Cup took place in neighboring Qatar, despite concerns over the country’s anti-LGBTQ rights record.
Spain
Victory Institute honors transgender Spanish senator in D.C.
Carla Antonelli describes Trump policies as ‘absolutely terrifying’
The LGBTQ+ Victory Institute on Dec. 5 inducted Spanish Sen. Carla Antonelli into its LGBTQ+ Political Hall of Fame.
Antonelli in 2011 became the first openly transgender woman elected to a regional legislative office in Spain when she won a seat in the Madrid Assembly.
She left Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s leftist Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party in 2022. Antonelli in 2023 became the first openly trans woman in the Spanish Senate when Más Madrid, a progressive regional party, named her Pablo Gómez Perpinyà’s successor in the chamber.
The Hall of Fame induction took place during the Victory Institute’s annual International LGBTQ+ Leaders Conference at the JW Marriott Hotel in downtown D.C. The Washington Blade spoke with Antonelli on Dec. 6.
“We are living in rather turbulent times, hence the importance and necessity of gatherings like this one … to unite in these times, come together, and develop common strategies and policies.”
Antonelli, 66, grew up in Güímar, a municipality on the island of Tenerife in Spain’s Canary Islands.
She said transphobia forced her to leave her hometown in 1977, and she turned to sex work to support herself. Antonelli’s political activism began that year when she joined the campaign against a 1970 law that criminalized consensual same-sex sexual acts and LGBTQ people.
General Francisco Franco, whose regime governed the country from 1936-1975, approved the Law on Social Danger and Rehabilitation. Spain in 1995 removed the statute’s remaining provisions from its penal code.
Antonelli in the 1980s became a well-known actress. She is also a former spokesperson for Federación Estatal de Lesbianas, Gays, Transexuales y Bisexuales, a Spanish LGBTQ advocacy group known by the acronym FELGTB.
‘We will not go back to the margins’
Antonelli in February gave an impassioned speech in support of trans rights on the Senate floor.
She specifically singled out members of Vox, a far-right political party, over their efforts to repeal a landmark 2023 law that allows people who are at least 16 to legally change their gender without medical intervention. Antonelli’s speech — and her proclamation that “we will not go back to the margins” — quickly went viral.
Antonelli told the Blade she received messages of support from people in Algeria, Australia, Turkey, Mauritius, and elsewhere around the world. She added her speech was “the conclusion of everything I can feel at any given moment, also the pride of having lived through all these historical processes.”
“For whatever reason, I was born in ’59, and I lived through the dictatorship in my country,” said Antonelli. “I lived through the dictator’s death and I lived through what Spain was like exactly 50 years ago. It began to walk in freedom, and so freedom must be defended.”
Antonelli feared US would not allow her into the country
The Victory Institute conference took place less than a year after the Trump-Vance administration took office.
Antonelli in June traveled to D.C. and participated in WorldPride 2025. She admitted the White House’s anti-trans policies left her wondering whether the U.S. would allow her into the country as a trans woman.
The White House only recognizes two genders: male and female.
President Donald Trump after he took office signed an executive order that bans the State Department from issuing passports with “X” gender markers. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in August announced it will ensure “male aliens seeking immigration benefits aren’t coming to the U.S. to participate in women’s sports.”
Spain is among the countries that have issued advisories for trans and nonbinary people who are planning to visit the U.S.
“This speaks volumes about the policies of intimidation and targeting they’re implementing, policies that have made trans people scapegoats for all of humanity’s ills,” Antonelli told the Blade.
“In the United States, now with Trump, it’s absolutely terrifying because we’re talking about not just taking away a right, they’re going against our lives, against our very existence,” she added.
Antonelli in June met U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Del.), the first openly trans woman elected to Congress. Antonelli told the Blade she “watched with sorrow” how U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) and other Republicans treated the Delaware Democrat after her historic 2024 election.
“The first thing some vengeful scoundrels, thirsty for evil, do is prohibit her from entering the women’s restrooms,” said Antonelli.
“It’s nothing more than a desire to humiliate, to degrade,” she added. “Behind many of these policies lies a desire to do harm. In other words, these are bad people, evil people whose principles aren’t an ideology. They revel in it. They enjoy thinking about how they are making other human beings suffer.”
Antonelli also stressed “visibility” is “freedom.”
“The more they try to erase us, the more we have to be visible,” she said. “They know perfectly well that visibility inevitably leads to normality, to normalization, which is nothing more than what is repeated daily, routinely. What’s normal is what you see every day, so they’re trying to prevent us from being visible in every way possible, because what they don’t want is for society to accept, to live with this truth.”
Antonelli also offered advice for trans people who want to run for office.
“Always be upfront,” she said. “Don’t hold back, but above all, don’t forget where you come from. Because you might be lucky enough to rise and become a representative of the people, but don’t forget your origins.”
Antonelli noted she is the Más Madrid spokesperson for health, equality, culture, and other issues, but added she “will never, never, never abandon my trans sisters and the LGBTQ+ community.”
“I never severed times with my roots,” Antonelli told the Blade. “My roots are a conservative family, a town I had to flee and to which I didn’t return until 32 years later. My future, my past, is a street corner. My past is being able to make that journey in a democracy and go from that street corner to a seat in the Madrid Assembly and then from there to a seat in the Senate. And that is precisely the greatness of democracy.”
She ended the interview by a quote she gave to El País, a Spanish newspaper.
“Those who used to call us faggots have to now call us ‘your honors,’” said Antonelli.
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