World
Global Pride events in full swing
Activists plan to demand rights, protest inequalities
Pride events are in full swing around the world.
Thousands of people on June 5 attended Bangkok’s first official Pride parade in 16 years.
Openly gay Lithuanian MP Tomas Vytautas Raskevičius and U.S. Ambassador to Lithuania Bob Gilchrist are among those who participated in Baltic Pride 2022 that took place in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, on June 4. Jerusalem’s annual Pride parade occurred two days earlier against the backdrop of the arrest of a man in connection with death threats made against its organizers.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on June 1 helped raise the Progress Pride flag over his country’s Parliament. “This is a time to celebrate our differences and support one another and to make sure that ever day we are building a Canada where everyone is free to be who they are and love who they love,” he said in a video he posted to his Twitter page.
Today, we raised the Pride flag on Parliament Hill. The flag is a symbol of hope, solidarity, and diversity – and raising it is a symbol of our ongoing commitment to building a country where everyone can be who they are and love whom they love. Happy Pride season, everyone! 🏳️🌈 pic.twitter.com/lCjonmxw31
— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) June 2, 2022
Olena Shevchenko, chair of Insight, a Ukrainian LGBTQ rights group, told the Washington Blade that she and other activists from her war-torn country plan to attend Warsaw Pride in Poland on June 25.
This year marks London Pride’s 50th anniversary.
The British government was to have hosted a global LGBTQ rights conference in London from June 29-July 1, but it cancelled it in April after advocacy groups announced a boycott in response to Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s decision to support a bill to ban so-called conversion therapy without gender identity. The London Pride parade is scheduled to take place on July 2.
The Cayman LGBTQ Foundation in the Cayman Islands will hold its annual Pride parade on July 30. The event will take place less than five months after the Privy Council’s Judicial Committee in London ruled same-sex couples in the British territory don’t have a constitutional right to marry.
Jamaica is among the upwards of 70 countries in which consensual same-sex sexual relations remain criminalized. J-FLAG and other Jamaican LGBTQ rights groups will hold a series of Pride events during the first week of August, which coincides with the country’s Emancipation and Independence Days.
“It’s always been incident free,” J-FLAG Associate Director of Marketing and Communications and Engagement Elton Johnson told the Blade on Tuesday from Kingston, the Jamaican capital. “We get support from the police. We get support from many organizations, schools.”
African LGBTQ groups to continue decriminalization push
LGBTQ activists in Africa are also planning to commemorate Pride.
The government of Botswana in January said it will abide by a ruling that decriminalized homosexuality in the country. A plethora of other African countries still outlaw same-sex relations and those found guilty of homosexuality in places where Sharia law exists face the death penalty. Advocacy groups on the continent plan to use Pride to further push for decriminalization.
“The 2SLGBTQIA+ community has made dramatic strides in recent decades that absolutely should be celebrated, [but] there is still much more work to do to ensure intersectional equality and justice for all but as we prepare to commemorate the 2SLGBTQIA+ Pride, let us be cognizant that the discrimination of 2SLGBTQIA+ persons in the country is still rife,” said the Rock of Hope, an LGBTQ rights group in Eswatini. “These events or awareness activities should bring meaning and strengthen the movement such that one day we can reside in a country free of hate, stigmatization and discrimination of individuals based on their sexual orientation and gender identity expression.”
Beit el-Meem, an Egyptian LGBTQ rights group, echoed the Rock of Hope.
“The road is not easy, but not impossible, and what distinguishes us is that each individual of us excels with the power of love and acceptance, and with this energy we will give to everyone around us,” said Beit el-Meem.
LGBT+ Rights Ghana has been at the forefront of the campaign against a bill that would criminalize LGBTQ identity and allyship in the country.
The U.S. Embassy in Ghana on Tuesday tweeted a picture of President Biden speaking in support of LGBTQ rights. The tweet also said the U.S. “reaffirms that LGBTQI+ rights are human rights and that no group should be excluded from those protections, regardless of race, ethnicity, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, sex characteristics, disability status, age, religion or belief.”
The U.S. reaffirms that LGBTQI+ rights are human rights and that no group should be excluded from those protections, regardless of race, ethnicity, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, sex characteristics, disability status, age, religion or belief. #Pride2022 pic.twitter.com/UTdh9cFWYE
— U.S. Embassy Ghana (@USEmbassyGhana) June 7, 2022
LGBT+ Rights Ghana said it plans to mark Pride with its virtual Color Dialogue conversations it holds every year.
“This year promises to be fun, hopeful and filled with lots of love,” said the group. “Join us everyday at 6 p.m. GMT on our Instagram page as we discuss the struggles, hopes and joy of the Ghanaian Queer community.”
Brazil presidential election overshadows São Paulo Pride
São Paulo’s annual Pride parade, which is one of the largest in the world, will take place on June 19.
Brazilian activists will mark Pride against the backdrop of their country’s presidential election campaign. HIV/AIDS service providers and LGBTQ activists with whom the Washington Blade spoke while on assignment in Brazil in March said they are afraid of what may happen in their country is President Jair Bolsonaro wins a second term later this year.
“He represents a danger to the environment,” Mariah Rafaela Silva, a transgender woman of indigenous descent who works with the Washington-based International Institute on Race, Equality and Human Rights, told the Blade on March 21 during an interview at a Rio de Janeiro restaurant. “He represents a danger to diversity. He represents a danger to Black people. He represents a danger to indigenous people.”
Activists in other South American countries plan to use Pride events to demand further rights.
Organizers of the annual Pride parade that will take place in Santiago, Chile, on June 25 plan to call for additional reforms to the country’s Penal Code and anti-discrimination law and demand an end of violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The event will take place less than a month after a trans woman, Yuridia Pizarro, was killed in Iquique, a city in northern Chile.
Pride parades are also scheduled to take place in the capitals of Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia respectively on June 25.
Somosgay, an LGBTQ rights group in Paraguay, is planning to hold a Pride march in Asunción, the country’s capital, on July 2. A Pride march dedicated to León Zuleta and Manuel Velandia, the founders of Colombia’s LGBTQ rights movement, will take place in Bogotá, the country’s capital, on the same day.
A Pride march is scheduled to take place in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas on July 3. Activists in Argentina and Uruguay will hold Pride marches later this year.
Bulgaria
Top Bulgarian court rules government must legally recognize trans people
Decision caps off decade-long legal fight
Bulgaria’s top court has ruled the country’s government must allow transgender people to legally change their name and gender on ID documents.
A trans woman from Bulgaria who moved to Italy, had tried to change her gender and name on her Bulgarian ID documents, but courts in the country denied her requests for nearly a decade.
The Bulgarian Supreme Court of Cassation in a 2023 ruling essentially banned trans people from legally changing their name and gender on ID documents.
The EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg, which is the European Union’s highest court, in March ruled in the “Shipova” case that member states must allow trans people to legally change their name and gender on ID documents. The lead plaintiff in the “Shipova” case is among the four litigants in the Bulgarian Supreme Court of Cassation case.
Two Bulgarian advocacy groups — Bilitis and Deystvie — along with TGEU – Trans Europe and Central Asia and ILGA-Europe in a joint statement they issued on Tuesday noted the Bulgarian Supreme Court of Cassation’s July 22 decision “aligns Bulgarian practice with the Court of Justice of the EU, enabling changes to gender markers, names, and personal identification numbers.”
“The judges also concluded that EU law requires Bulgaria to establish a legal procedure for legal gender recognition, which is necessary so that Bulgarian trans citizens can travel and reside freely inside the EU,” they added.
Bulgaria has been a member of the EU since 2007.
The country borders Romania, Serbia, North Macedonia, Greece, and Turkey.
“We are very glad to see that the judges of the Supreme Court clearly stated that it is actually a matter of rule of law for Bulgaria to respect the universal equality and the dignity of all human beings, including trans people for whom human rights-based legal gender recognition procedures are an indispensable element,” said Denitsa Lyubenova, co-chair of Deystvie who represented the four plaintiffs in the Bulgarian courts and the lead litigant in the “Shipova” case at the EU Court of Justice. “The government needs to act swiftly now to put in place an LGR procedure that is fully in line with European human rights case law, which means without any conditions requiring proof of medical, surgical or hormonal treatment.”
The groups also urged the Bulgarian government to codify the ruling into law.
“While lower courts are expected to follow this ruling directly, a court decision is not a substitute for law,” they said. “Bulgaria still needs a fast, transparent, and accessible legal gender recognition procedure written into legislation, not left to case-by-case court precedent. TGEU – Trans Europe and Central Asia, Bilitis, Deystvie, and ILGA-Europe call on the Bulgarian government to start that legislative process now, with meaningful involvement from civil society.”
France
Prominent French activist attacked outside Paris bar
Pierre Picavet hospitalized with internal bleeding, head injury
French prosecutors say a man shouted anti-gay slurs at a prominent activist before he attacked him in Paris on Saturday.
Media reports indicate Pierre Picavet, a police officer who is the president of FLAG!, a group within the French Justice and Interior Ministries that defends LGBTQ rights, was attacked as he left a bar in Paris’s Marais neighborhood.
The Marais since the 1980s has been center of the French capital’s LGBTQ community.
France 24 reported Picavet’s assailant struck him with a bottle. The attack left Picavet hospitalized with internal bleeding, a head wound, and other injuries.
“When I get better, when my wounds have healed, I will continue the fight,” Picavet told Radio France on Monday. “I am particularly shocked, but it tells me that there is still work to do.”
Paris Mayor Emmanuel Grégoire is among those who condemned the attack.
STOP Homophobia (STOP homophobie), a French group that fights against anti-LGBTQ violence, on its social media pages published a picture of Picavet in the hospital.
“As a long-standing partner of FLAG!, STOP Homophobia wishes to express its solidarity with Pierre Picavet, his loved ones, and the entire association,” said the group. “STOP Homophobia condemns this assault in the strongest possible terms and reiterates that anti-LGBT violence remains a reality — even in spaces where everyone should be able to move freely and live out their sexual orientation or gender identity without fear of attack.”
STOP Homophobia also praised a bystander who came to Picavet’s aid after the attack, and the first responders and law enforcement personnel who responded.
“STOP Homophobia extends its full support to Pierre, his family, his loved ones, and the entire FLAG! team, and wishes him a full recovery,” said the group.
Reports indicate the assailant, who was born in 2006, was scheduled to appear in a Paris court on Monday at 1:30 p.m. local time.
Poland
Poland begins to legally recognize same-sex marriages from other countries
‘This is an important milestone, but it should not be the final destination’
Poland has begun to recognize same-sex marriages legally performed outside the country.
TVP World, the country’s public broadcaster, reported civil registry offices began to “transcribe same-sex marriages legally” conducted outside of Poland on Aug. 22.
The EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg last November ruled in favor of a same-sex couple who challenged Poland’s refusal to recognize their German marriage. Poland’s Supreme Administrative Court in March reaffirmed the decision.
The couple, who lives in Poland, brought their case to Polish courts in 2019. The Supreme Administrative Court referred it to the EU Court of Justice.
The Polish government in May announced it will recognize same-sex marriages legally performed in other EU countries. Polish President Karol Nawrocki on July 17 vetoed bills that would have extended rights to same-sex couples.
Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal a few days later rejected the recognition of same-sex marriages legally performed in other EU countries. The Love Does Not Exclude Association, a Polish marriage equality advocacy group, in an Aug. 26 press release notes the ruling “does not prevent implementation of these new regulations” because the Constitutional Tribunal is “largely discredited” and the government considers it “to be improperly constituted.”
“This is an important milestone, but it should not be the final destination,” said Maja Heban of the Love Does Not Exclude Association. “No couple should have to cross a border to marry. Our goal is allowing loving, committed couples to marry in Poland in the first place. The law now increasingly recognizes these marriages once couples return to Poland in areas such as healthcare and social security, but significant gaps remain, mainly lack of recognition of same-sex parents which directly impacts security of their children.”
Germany, Belgium, France, Ireland, Spain, and Portugal are among the EU countries in which same-sex couples can legally marry. Andorra, whose prime minister, Xaviet Espot Zamora, is openly gay, and Switzerland are among the other European nations that have extended marriage rights to same-sex couples.
The Netherlands in 2001 became the first country in the world to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples. Activists who participated in this year’s World Pride that took place in Amsterdam earlier this summer marked this milestone.
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