World
Out in the World: LGBTQ news from Europe, Australia, and Canada
Italian lawmakers have passed a bill to ban overseas surrogacy
ITALY
The Italian Senate gave final passage to Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s bill to ban criminalize the use of surrogacy overseas, in what LGBTQ activists are saying is a direct attack on same-sex parents.
Surrogacy is already illegal in Italy. The new law cracks down on parents who travel out of the country to obtain surrogacy services where it is legal, like the U.S. or Canada. Under the new law, such parents could be subject to fines of up to €1 million (approximately $1.1 million) or imprisonment for up to two years.
While the vast majority of Italians who engage in overseas surrogacy are heterosexual couples, activists fear the law will be used specifically to target male same-sex couples, who cannot simply pretend not to have used a surrogate.
That would fit with a pattern of attacking same-sex parents since Meloni took office in 2022. Last year, her government issued an order directing municipalities to delete non-biological same-sex parents from birth certificates that had already been issued to children. That decision was condemned by the European Parliament and other world leaders.
Protesters demonstrated in front of the Italian Senate during the debate, carrying signs that read “We are families, not crimes.”
Meloni has long argued for banning surrogacy as a women’s rights issue, claiming that surrogacy commodifies women’s bodies.
She called the law “a common-sense rule against the commodification of the female body and children. Human life has no price and is not a commodity,” in a post on X.
“The alleged defense of women, the vaunted interest in children, are just fig leaves behind which the homophobic obsession of this majority is hidden,” says Laura Boldrini, an opposition lawmaker.
In many places where surrogacy is legal, it is only legal for altruistic, rather than commercial reasons. Surrogates can be reimbursed for legitimate expenses but cannot be otherwise compensated. That’s how surrogacy works in Canada and Australia.
POLAND
The Polish government introduced its long-awaiting civil union legislation last week, revealing that the government has dropped plans to allow couples in civil unions to adopt children in a compromise meant to get the bills through parliament.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk had pledged to introduce same-sex civil unions within his first 100 days of taking office last year, but that pledge faced numerous roadblocks as the outgoing government initially refused to cede power, and then more conservative parts of his three-party coalition balked at expanding LGBTQ rights.
The bills would allow same-sex and opposite-sex couples to register their partnerships, giving partners rights to inheritance and medical decision-making.
But couples in civil unions would not be allowed to jointly adopt, nor would one partner be allowed to adopt the other’s biological children.
That was a key demand of the junior coalition partner, the Poland Peasants’ Party (PSL). The bills are unlikely to gain any support from the opposition Law and Justice Party or Confederation Party, both of which strongly oppose LGBTQ rights.
The bills may still face opposition from President Andrzej Duda, an ally of Law and Justice who has opposed LGBTQ rights in the past. He has not publicly commented on the bills.
Duda’s term expires next year, and all parties are attempting to position themselves in the election for his replacement, expected in May 2025.
CANADA
Provincial elections in British Columbia remained too close to call a day after polls closed on Oct 19, with the incumbent New Democratic Party leading or elected in 46 seats, while the rival BC Conservatives, who had campaigned on scrapping an anti-bullying program that promoted awareness of LGBTQ people in schools, were leading or elected in 45 seats. The BC Greens were elected in two seats.
Elections BC says it could be a week before results are finalized, due to a number of very close races and the number of mail-in and out-of-district ballots yet to be counted.
If the BC Conservatives lose, it would be the second loss of a provincial election in 2024 for a conservative party that had run on a platform of restricting sex education, discussion of LGBTQ issues, and inclusion of trans kids in schools, after the Manitoba Progressive Conservatives were booted from office in June.
Two more Canadian provinces are heading to the polls in the next week, and in both races, incumbent conservative parties are defending newly introduced policies that require schools to out trans students to their parents and require parental consent if a child wishes to use a different name or pronoun in school.
In New Brunswick, voters head to the polls today, and the incumbent Progressive Conservatives are facing a strong challenge from the New Brunswick Liberals. Liberal leader Susan Holt has promised to scrap the parental-notification policy and put safeguards in place for LGBTQ students if elected.
Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe has promised to double-down on anti-transgender policies if re-elected Oct 28. This week, he said his first order of business would be passing a policy restricting school change rooms based on sex assigned at birth.
Saskatchewan NDP leader Carla Beck slammed the proposal.
“People see this for what it is,” Beck told a press conference. “It’s the ugliest gutter politics. I think people are tired of it.”
Canadian conservatives have been turning hard against trans people over the past couple of years, reflecting similar culture war divisions in the U.S. and the UK, despite a general consensus on equal rights for trans people that had developed over the previous decade. In fact, Scott Moe was a Cabinet minister in the Saskatchewan Party government that passed that province’s ban on gender identity discrimination.
Meanwhile, in neighboring Alberta, Premier Danielle Smith has proposed a package of legislation that would require parental notification and opt-in for any discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in classrooms, as well as severely restricting access to gender care for trans youth. The bills are expected to be debated in the upcoming fall session of the legislature.
AUSTRALIA
The New South Wales state legislature passed a bill meant to promote LGBTQ equality on Thursday, but only after it had been watered down in order to gain support from the governing Labor Party.
Independent lawmaker Alex Greenwich had originally proposed a comprehensive bill that would have addressed multiple areas of law that discriminate against queer people.
A key provision would have repealed a loophole in state anti-discrimination law that allows religious schools to discriminate against LGBTQ students and teachers. That provision was dropped.
Greenwich’s original bill also would have established an affirmative right to gender-affirming care and would have decriminalized sex work. Both provisions were also dropped.
Greenwich says his bill faced concerted opposition from religious organizations and he removed the provisions in order to get the bulk of the bill’s reforms passed.
“It’s heartbreaking that I’m in a position where I’m having to remove a reform that I have fought for my entire political career,” Greenwich told ABC News Australia. “There has been a concerted campaign, particularly by some religious organizations, and I’m not wanting to hold up some urgent reforms while we’re still working this through.”
The parts of the bill that have been salvaged are still important reforms for LGBTQ rights.
The bill will update domestic violence laws to apply to same-sex couples and recognize parenting rights for children born through surrogacy overseas. It will also allow trans people to update their legal gender on birth certificates without undergoing surgery — an important reform that is already the norm in the rest of Australia. Nonbinary or non-specified will also be options.
The bill also repeals offenses related to living off the earnings of a sex worker, makes it a criminal offense to threaten to out a person, and adds hate crime protections for trans people.
This year, New South Wales’s Labor government earned plaudits from LGBTQ activists for passing a bill banning conversion therapy, and issuing a historic apology to people persecuted under old anti-LGBTQ laws.
Earlier this year, Australia’s governing Labor Party dropped its promised reform to federal anti-discrimination laws to repeal a loophole allowing anti-LGBTQ discrimination in schools, following backlash from religious groups.
Kazakhstan
Kazakh lawmakers advance anti-LGBTQ propaganda bill
Measure likely to pass in country’s Senate
Lawmakers in Kazakhstan on Wednesday advanced a bill that would ban so-called LGBTQ propaganda in the country.
Reuters notes the measure, which members of the country’s lower house of parliament unanimously approved, would ban “‘LGBT propaganda’ online or in the media” with “fines for violators and up to 10 days in jail for repeat offenders.”
The bill now goes to the Kazakh Senate.
Reuters reported senators will likely support the measure. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has also indicated he would sign it.
Kazakhstan is a predominantly Muslim former Soviet republic in Central Asia that borders Russia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and China.
Consensual same-sex sexual relations are decriminalized in Kazakhstan, but the State Department’s 2023 human rights report notes human rights activists have “reported threats of violence and significant online and in-person verbal abuse towards LGBTQI+ individuals.” The document also indicates discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity remains commonplace in the country. (Jessica Stern, the former special U.S. envoy for the promotion of LGBTQ and intersex rights under the Biden-Harris administration who co-founded the Alliance for Diplomacy and Justice, in August condemned the current White House for the “deliberate erasure” of LGBTQ and intersex people from the State Department’s 2024 human rights report.)
Russia, Georgia, and Hungary are among the other countries with propaganda laws.
Turks and Caicos Islands
Turks and Caicos government ordered to recognize gay couple’s marriage
Richard Sankar and Tim Haymon legally married in Fla. in 2020
The Turks and Caicos Islands’ Court of Appeal has ruled the British territory’s government must recognize a same-sex couple’s marriage.
Richard Sankar, a realtor who has lived in the British territory for nearly three decades and is a Turks and Caicos citizen, married Tim Haymon in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in 2020.
Haymon, who is American, in August 2021 applied for a spousal exemption under the Turks and Caicos’ immigration law on the basis of his status as a spouse that would have allowed him to legally live and work in the territory.
The Turks and Caicos’ Director of Immigration initially denied the application because its definition of marriage used does not include same-sex couples.
Haymon and Sankar filed their lawsuit in October 2021. The Supreme Court heard the case in November 2022.
The court in March 2024 ruled the government’s refusal to issue a work permit exemption for Haymon violates the Turks and Caicos’ constitution that bans discrimination based on sexual orientation. The government appealed the decision, and the Court of Appeal heard it in January 2025.
The Court of Appeal in September dismissed the government’s appeal. It released its decision on Oct. 27.
Stanbrook Prudhoe, a law firm in the Turks and Caicos, represents Haymon and Sankar.
“Just like any other spouse coming to the Turks and Caicos Islands and marrying a Turks and Caicos islander, we’re just wanting the same rights,” Haymon told the Blade during a March 2024 interview.
Haymon told the Blade he has received his “spousal certificate that gives me residency and the right to work” in the British territory in the British territory. The government appealed a 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ordered it to give him the certificate, but the Court of Appeals denied it.
The Supreme Court ordered the Director of Immigration to grant Haymon a residence permit. He told the Blade he received it on Monday.
The Turks and Caicos are a group of islands that are located roughly 650 miles southeast of Miami.
Consensual same-sex sexual relations have been decriminalized in the British territory since 2001.
The constitution states “every unmarried man and woman of marriageable age (as determined by or under any law) has the right to marry a person of the opposite sex and found a family.” The constitution also says “every person in the islands is entitled to the fundamental rights and freedoms of the individual, that is to say, the right, without distinction of any kind, such as race, national or social origin, political or other opinion, color, religion, language, creed, association with a national minority, property, sex, sexual orientation, birth, or other status.”
Then-Cayman Islands Grand Court Chief Justice Anthony Smellie in 2019 ruled same-sex couples can legally marry in the Cayman Islands. The Caymanian Court of Appeal later overturned the decision, and the British territory’s Civil Partnership Law took effect in 2020.
Then-Bermuda Supreme Court Justice Charles-Etta Simmons in 2017 issued a ruling that paved the way for gays and lesbians to legally marry in the British territory. The Domestic Partnership Act — a law then-Gov. John Rankin signed that allows same-sex couples to enter into domestic partnerships as opposed to get married — took effect in 2018.
Bermuda’s top court later found the Domestic Partnership Act unconstitutional. The Privy Council, a British territories appellate court in London, upheld the law. It also ruled same-sex couples do not have the constitutional right to marry in the Cayman Islands.
The Turks and Caicos government has until Nov. 24 to appeal the Court of Appeals decision. It remains possible the Privy Council’s Judicial Committee could hear Haymon and Sankar’s case.
El Salvador
El Salvador: el costo del silencio oficial ante la violencia contra la comunidad LGBTQ
Entidades estatales son los agresores principales
En El Salvador, la violencia contra la población LGBTQ no ha disminuido: ha mutado. Lo que antes se expresaba en crímenes de odio, hoy se manifiesta en discriminación institucional, abandono y silencio estatal. Mientras el discurso oficial evita cualquier referencia a inclusión o diversidad, las cifras muestran un panorama alarmante.
Según el Informe 2025 sobre las vulneraciones de los derechos humanos de las personas LGBTQ en El Salvador, elaborado por el Observatorio de Derechos Humanos LGBTIQ+ de ASPIDH, con el apoyo de Hivos y Arcus Foundation, desde el 1 de enero al 22 de septiembre de 2025 se registraron 301 denuncias de vulneraciones de derechos.
El departamento de San Salvador concentra 155 de esas denuncias, reflejando la magnitud del problema en la capital.
Violencia institucionalizada: el Estado como principal agresor
El informe revela que las formas más recurrentes de violencia son la discriminación (57 por ciento), seguida de intimidaciones y amenazas (13 por ciento), y agresiones físicas (10 por ciento). Pero el dato más inquietante está en quiénes ejercen esa violencia.
Los cuerpos uniformados, encargados de proteger a la población, son los principales perpetradores:
- 31.1 por ciento corresponde a la Policía Nacional Civil (PNC),
- 26.67 por ciento al Cuerpo de Agentes Municipales (CAM),
- 12.22 por ciento a militares desplegados en las calles bajo el régimen de excepción.
A ello se suma un 21.11 por ciento de agresiones cometidas por personal de salud pública, especialmente por enfermeras, lo que demuestra que la discriminación alcanza incluso los espacios que deberían garantizar la vida y la dignidad.
Loidi Guardado, representante de ASPIDH, comparte con Washington Blade un caso que retrata la cotidianidad de estas violencias:
“Una enfermera en la clínica VICITS de San Miguel, en la primera visita me reconoció que la persona era hijo de un promotor de salud y fue amable. Pero luego de realizarle un hisopado cambió su actitud a algo despectiva y discriminativa. Esto le sucedió a un hombre gay.”
Este tipo de episodios reflejan un deterioro en la atención pública, impulsado por una postura gubernamental que rechaza abiertamente cualquier enfoque de inclusión, y tacha la educación de género como una “ideología” a combatir.
El discurso del Ejecutivo, que se opone a toda iniciativa con perspectiva de diversidad, ha tenido consecuencias directas: el retroceso en derechos humanos, el cierre de espacios de denuncia, y una mayor vulnerabilidad para quienes pertenecen a comunidades diversas.
El miedo, la desconfianza y el exilio silencioso
El estudio también señala que el 53.49 por ciento de las víctimas son mujeres trans, seguidas por hombres gays (26.58 por ciento). Sin embargo, la mayoría de las agresiones no llega a conocimiento de las autoridades.
“En todos los ámbitos de la vida —salud, trabajo, esparcimiento— las personas LGBT nos vemos intimidadas, violentadas por parte de muchas personas. Sin embargo, las amenazas y el miedo a la revictimización nos lleva a que no denunciemos. De los casos registrados en el observatorio, el 95.35 por ciento no denunció ante las autoridades competentes”, explica Guardado.
La organización ASPIDH atribuye esta falta de denuncia a varios factores: miedo a represalias, desconfianza en las autoridades, falta de sensibilidad institucional, barreras económicas y sociales, estigma y discriminación.
Además, la ausencia de acompañamiento agrava la situación, producto del cierre de numerosas organizaciones defensoras por falta de fondos y por las nuevas normativas que las obligan a registrarse como “agentes extranjeros”.
Varias de estas organizaciones —antes vitales para el acompañamiento psicológico, legal y educativo— han migrado hacia Guatemala y Costa Rica ante la imposibilidad de operar en territorio salvadoreño.
Educación negada, derechos anulados
Mónica Linares, directora ejecutiva de ASPIDH, lamenta el deterioro de los programas educativos que antes ofrecían una oportunidad de superación para las personas trans:
“Hubo un programa del ACNUR que lamentablemente, con todo el cierre de fondos que hubo a partir de las declaraciones del presidente Trump y del presidente Bukele, pues muchas de estas instancias cerraron por el retiro de fondos del USAID.”
Ese programa —añade— beneficiaba a personas LGBTQ desde la educación primaria hasta el nivel universitario, abriendo puertas que hoy permanecen cerradas.
Actualmente, muchas personas trans apenas logran completar la primaria o el bachillerato, en un sistema educativo donde la discriminación y el acoso escolar siguen siendo frecuentes.
Organizaciones en resistencia
Las pocas organizaciones que aún operan en el país han optado por trabajar en silencio, procurando no llamar la atención del gobierno. “Buscan pasar desapercibidas”, señala Linares, “para evitar conflictos con autoridades que las ven como si no fueran sujetas de derechos”.
Desde el Centro de Intercambio y Solidaridad (CIS), su cofundadora Leslie Schuld coincide. “Hay muchas organizaciones de derechos humanos y periodistas que están en el exilio. Felicito a las organizaciones que mantienen la lucha, la concientización. Porque hay que ver estrategias, porque se está siendo silenciado, nadie puede hablar; hay capturas injustas, no hay derechos.”
Schuld agrega que el CIS continuará apoyando con un programa de becas para personas trans, con el fin de fomentar su educación y autonomía económica. Sin embargo, admite que las oportunidades laborales en el país son escasas, y la exclusión estructural continúa.
Matar sin balas: la anulación de la existencia
“En efecto, no hay datos registrados de asesinatos a mujeres trans o personas LGBTIQ+ en general, pero ahora, con la vulneración de derechos que existe en El Salvador, se está matando a esta población con la anulación de esta.”, reflexiona Linares.
Esa “anulación” a la que se refiere Linares resume el panorama actual: una violencia que no siempre deja cuerpos, pero sí vacíos. La negación institucional, la falta de políticas públicas, y la exclusión social convierten la vida cotidiana en un acto de resistencia para miles de salvadoreños LGBTQ.
En un país donde el Ejecutivo ha transformado la narrativa de derechos en una supuesta “ideología”, la diversidad se ha convertido en una amenaza política, y los cuerpos diversos, en un campo de batalla. Mientras el gobierno exalta la “seguridad” como su mayor logro, la población LGBTQ vive una inseguridad constante, no solo física, sino también emocional y social.
El Salvador, dicen los activistas, no necesita más silencio. Necesita reconocer que la verdadera paz no se impone con fuerza de uniformados, sino con justicia, respeto y dignidad.
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