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.