TONGA

A group of lawyers in the South Pacific nation of Tonga has called for the removal of newly appointed Chief Justice Malcolm Bishop because he is openly gay.

Bishop, a 71-year-old native of Wales, was appointed to the role last month. It is relatively common in small island nations for judges to be appointed from other Commonwealth countries, due to the scarcity of qualified jurists. 

Bishop has more than five decades of legal experience and has lived as an openly gay man through much of his career.

But a group of Tongan lawyers say Bishop should not serve on the bench because “his lifestyle conflicts with the law of Tonga,” and they’ve petitioned King Tupou VI to remove him. The group cites Tonga’s Criminal Offenses Act, which criminalizes sodomy with a penalty of up to 10 years in prison. 

But that opposition is not universal. The Tongan Law Society has dissociated itself from the petition.

Henry Aho, a lawyer and former president of Tonga’s Leitis Association, the country’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group, suggests a darker purpose behind the petition.

He says the group is trying “to bring to the fore that this law exists and that it ought to be used to prosecute consenting adults also.”

Neither Bishop nor King Tupou VI have responded publicly to the petition.

The sodomy law has never been enforced in Tonga, but the country’s largely Christian culture remains deeply conservative and opposed to LGBTQ rights. Efforts to lobby the government to repeal the sodomy law — a relic of the British colonial administration – have fallen on deaf ears, even as other South Pacific nations like Palau, Nauru, Fiji, and the Cook Islands have decriminalized sodomy in recent years.

The government has opposed LGBTQ rights so strongly that it is one of only five countries that has not signed or ratified the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, out of fear that it could lead to decriminalization of homosexuality and same-sex marriage. The other states are Iran, Sudan, Somalia, and the Vatican. The U.S. and Palau have signed but not ratified the convention. 

AUSTRALIA

Australia’s Labor government has spun itself in circles on LGBTQ issues in recent weeks, with its latest broken promise to the country’s LGBTQ community being new hate crime legislation that does not criminalize hate speech that vilifies minority groups.

The updated legislation strengthens some of the nation’s laws against urging hate-motivated violence and by adding specific provisions for hatred motivated by race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, intersex status, disability, nationality, national or ethnic origin or political opinion.

The government also introduced a separate bill that would criminalize “doxing,” which is the release of a person’s personal information with the intent to threaten, harm, or intimidate them. The law encompasses the release of a person’s private information about their sexual orientation or gender identity. Violators could get up to seven years in prison if their target is a member of a protected class.

But Labor had promised to criminalize the vilification of LGBTQ people, and that’s missing from the introduced legislation.

Attorney General Mark Dreyfus says the two laws “respond to the increasing prevalence of hate speech and hateful conduct in our society.”

Vilification laws already exist in several Australian states, but a national law would protect queer Australians in the states that don’t have them — Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria, and the Northern Territory.

This is the latest policy flip on LGBTQ issues from the Labor government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

Last month, the government caused controversy when it announced that it would not count LGBTQ people in the 2026 national Census, contrary to their election manifesto. The government eventually reversed its announcement, first saying it would ask a question about sexual orientation, then saying it would also add a question about gender identity.

Albanese’s government also came under fire earlier this year for walking back a promise to close an exception to discrimination law that allows religious schools to discriminate against LGBTQ students and teachers.

In a positive development, the government of South Australia state announced it would introduce a law to ban conversion therapy this week, modeled after legislation passed in several other states. After it passes, only Western Australia, Tasmania, and Northern Territory would lack laws against conversion therapy.

Western Australia’s government had announced plans to ban conversion therapy in 2022, but this week announced that they will not have time to pass a bill to ban it until after state elections next year.

JAPAN

Pressure is increasing on Japan’s government to recognize same-sex couples, as four more prefectures began same-sex partnership registries this month.

Fukushima, Yamaguchi, Niigata, and Shima, with a combined population of about 7 million people, bring the total number of prefectures issuing partnership certificates to same-sex couples to 30 out of Japan’s 46 prefectures. They’re home to more than 66 percent of Japan’s population of 125 million.

Partnership certificates help same-sex couples access local services, but otherwise hold no legal status and confer no rights or obligations on the parties. That’s made it difficult for same-sex couples to access national services or uphold their rights regarding inheritance, parenting, and taxation.

Even though polls suggest a majority of Japanese people support equal rights for same-sex couples, the deeply traditional national government has continued to oppose expanding marriage rights.

A series of court cases filed across the country have sought to have the ban on same-sex marriage declared unconstitutional. But while five out of six district courts that have heard the cases found the ban unconstitutional, they have all refused to allow same-sex marriage outright. 

Appeals to those cases are ongoing, with one appeal to be heard in the Tokyo High Court on Sept 26, a ruling in a separate Tokyo case expected to be handed down Oct. 30, a ruling from the Nagoya High Court expected on Nov. 5, and a ruling from the Fukuoka High Court expected on Dec. 13.

It’s likely the issue will ultimately be decided by Japan’s Supreme Court.

Japan is in the midst of selecting a new prime minister, after incumbent Fumio Kishida announced he was resigning as leader of the governing Liberal Democratic Party last month. None of the leading candidates for leadership has endorsed same-sex marriage except for Taro Kono, who is currently polling far behind other candidates. The leadership election is scheduled for Sept. 27. 

FINLAND

A citizen’s initiative to ban so-called conversion therapy in Finland appears to have the support of a clear majority of lawmakers but is still unlikely to pass into law due to opposition from two conservative parties that are part of the ruling coalition.

Last week, the chair of parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee, Juho Eerola, announced he was indefinitely suspending consideration of the initiative due to purported leaks to the media on the issue. Eerola comes from the far-right Finns Party, which opposes the initiative and LGBTQ rights generally.

The Finns are joined by the Christian Democrats in opposing the conversion therapy initiative. Leaders of both parties put out a statement saying the initiative would not pass during the life of the current parliament, which is expected to last until 2027.

The two parties are in a four-party coalition with the National Coalition Party and the Swedish People’s Party. While both of the latter parties support the conversion therapy ban, the coalition agreement does not mention it.

The left-leaning opposition Social Democrats, Left Alliance, and Green League all support banning conversion therapy as well. Together, those five parties have 125 votes out of 200 members of parliament — and several members of the Center Party are also supportive.

Under Finnish law, a citizen’s initiative must be considered by parliament if it gathers more than 50,000 signatures. Groups supporting a ban submitted 52,000 signatures in November 2023.