SOUTH KOREA
The South Korean Supreme Court delivered a victory for same-sex couples last week, upholding a lower court ruling that found same-sex couples must be given equal access to benefits under the country’s National Health Insurance Service.

The ruling is a landmark as the first legal recognition of same-sex couples in the East Asian nation.

The Supreme Court ruled that the NHIS refusal to provide spousal benefits to same-sex couples was unconstitutional discrimination. The ruling is final.

The case was filed by a gay couple, So Seong-wook and Kim Yong-min, in 2021 after the NHIS revoked So’s registration as a dependent of Kim and imposed a new premium. So and Kim had been a couple since 2017 and had held a marriage ceremony in 2019.

The NHIS allows married or common-law heterosexual couples to register as dependents in employer-backed insurance but had no policy recognizing same-sex couples.

The Seoul Administrative Court ruled for the NHIS in 2022, but the following year that decision was overturned by the Seoul High Court, which ruled for the couple that the denial was discriminatory.

“When I listened to the verdict, I was so moved that I couldn’t hold back my tears,” So told reporters outside the court. “It took four years to earn this dependent status. We need to fight harder to legalize same-sex marriage going forward.”

The advocacy group Marriage for All Korea said in a statement that the decision was just a first step.

“This decision brings hope to other same-sex couples living in Korean society and is a huge milestone toward marriage equality and equal citizenship for LGBTQ people. However, same-sex couples who are not legally recognized in their marriage still experience various forms of discrimination,” the statement says.

“The lengthy and arduous lawsuits that same-sex couples must endure to gain single rights as a spouse, as seen in this case, should no longer be necessary. Fundamentally, we will continue to push for a broader marriage equality movement to eliminate all institutional discrimination that hinders same-sex couples from legally marrying and fully enjoying their rights as spouses, and for LGBTQ people in Korea to enjoy equal citizenship.”

Several bills to recognize same-sex marriage or civil unions and to ban discrimination against LGBTQ people have been introduced by opposition members in South Korea’s parliament over the years, but none has progressed.

LITHUANIA
A final attempt to pass a long-stalled civil union bill before the end of the current session of Parliament came to an anticlimactic end on July 18, as the government withdrew the bill from the agenda before the final day session began.

The civil union bill had long been a bone of contention in the fractious governing coalition whose largest party is the conservative Homeland Union and includes the more progressive Freedom Party, which had made the bill a priority.

The bill passed through two readings in parliament in part with the support of leftist opposition parties, but when the opposition withdrew their support of the bill — in part to deny the government a win on the issue — the coalition no longer had enough votes to get it passed, as a segment of the Homeland Union opposed it.

Over the past month, the Freedom Party had attempted to strong-arm the Homeland Union holdouts into supporting the bill, by threatening to block Lithuania’s appointment of a European commissioner unless the party supported the bill.

In the last few days of parliament’s session before the legislature is dissolved for October elections, it seemed that the parties had come to an agreement, and the civil union bill was going to be put on the agenda for a final vote on the final day of the session.

But the opposition Social Democrats refused to play ball, once again preferring to deny the government a victory on the file, even though the Social Democrats had campaigned on supporting civil unions in the past. Without their votes, the bill would be doomed to fail.

The government withdrew the bill from the agenda rather than allow it to fail. This will allow the bill to be brought back by the new parliament in October, rather than starting the process over again.

Despite the bill’s withdrawal, anti-LGBTQ protesters met outside the parliament and burned rainbow flags. Vilnius police said they are investigating potential charges of incitement to hatred.

The two-round parliamentary election is scheduled for Oct. 13 and Oct. 27, and polling shows the Social Democrats currently hold a wide lead.

Lithuania is one of only five European Union countries that do not recognize same-sex unions. The others are Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, and Poland, the latter of which has proposed a civil union bill that its government hopes to pass in the fall.

UNITED KINGDOM
The newly elected Labour government under Prime Minister Keir Starmer included a ban on conversion therapy in the King’s Speech that opened parliament on July 17, indicating that the bill will be a priority item during the session.

The King’s Speech is a tradition in UK politics, where the monarch reads a speech prepared by the government outlining its priorities for the upcoming session of parliament, usually lasting about a year.

During the election campaign, Starmer had pledged to back a transgender-inclusive ban on the abusive practice of conversion therapy, an issue which has become a political lightning rod in the UK over the past decade as a wave of anti-trans hysteria has gripped the media and much of the political class.

The previous Conservative government had pledged to ban conversion therapy six years ago but failed to bring a bill forward after floating the idea that the bill would allow conversion therapy for trans youth.

The UK LGBTQ advocacy group Stonewall praised the commitment to a conversion therapy ban in a statement.

“We welcome the new government’s commitment to banning conversion practices. Each day that these abusive practices remain legal, our communities are put at risk,” the statement says. “The government needs to urgently publish a comprehensive bill to ban these abhorrent practices once and for all.”

But the new government’s approach to trans issues is not entirely praiseworthy.

Two weeks ago, new Labour Secretary of State for Health Wes Streeting announced that his government was defending and extending a ban on puberty blockers for trans youth that was put in place by the Conservatives. That action has been denounced by trans activists and legal experts.

JAPAN
A trans woman is suing for the right to change her legal gender without first divorcing her wife, in a challenge to the nation’s laws surrounding both same-sex marriage and gender recognition.

The woman, who has not been identified, is in her 50s and has been in a long-term marriage to her wife, who is in her 40s, and neither partner wants to divorce. While she has legally changed her name to a woman’s name, her identification still lists her as “male,” which forces her to have uncomfortable conversations outing her trans status whenever she needs to show official documents.

Since 2003, it has been possible for trans people to update their legal gender in Japan, but only if they are unmarried. That essentially forces any married trans person to divorce their partner if they want to update their gender.

In 2010, the Japanese Supreme Court upheld the requirement that trans people be unmarried to update their legal gender, calling the situation “reasonable” and saying it did not violate the constitution.

But the woman’s lawyers believe the legal situation has changed.

Since 2021, several district courts across Japan have found that the ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. While that has not yet legalized same-sex marriage, these cases will eventually be decided by the Supreme Court. If the court agrees with the lower courts that the ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, then it should also find the divorce requirement for trans people to be unconstitutional.

Yoko Mizutani, one of the woman’s lawyers, says this case may also contribute to legalizing same-sex marriage.

“Many of those concerned have resigned to the notion that if same-sex marriages are not recognized, the unmarried requirement of the act will not change. If we win this petition, it could also help resolve the issue of same-sex marriage.”

SPAIN
The Constitutional Court has provisionally blocked an anti-LGBTQ law passed by the government of the Madrid Community that stripped a number of legal protections from LGBTQ people; citing constitutional, discriminatory, and jurisdictional issues.

Last year, the local government, which is led by the right-wing People’s Party and supported by the far-right Vox party, passed a bill that stripped legal recognition of trans youth, stopped allowing legal gender change without a medical diagnosis, allowed anti-LGBTQ discrimination and authorized conversion therapy.

Despite these legal protections being stripped at the local level, national laws still afforded LGBTQ people all of these rights and protections.

The national government, which is currently led by the left-wing People’s Socialist Party, filed for the injunction against the law, which it called unconstitutional, which the Constitutional Court has accepted.