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Out in the World: LGBTQ news from Europe and Asia
Tbilisi Pride in Georgia has cancelled all physical Pride events this year
GEORGIA
The organization that holds Pride events in the Georgian capital Tbilisi has announced it is cancelling all physical Pride festivities this year, in light of an increasingly hostile environment promoted by the Georgian government ahead of elections this fall.
Tbilisi Pride says in a statement posted to Facebook that they will focus their efforts instead on reaching hearts and minds, with a hope of defeating the government and ending restrictive legislation in the October election.
“We anticipated that the summer before the 2024 parliamentary elections would be filled with physical violence encouraged by the government and rhetoric filled with hate and hostility,” the statement says.
“Now, after ‘Georgian Dream’ adopted the Russian-style law on ‘foreign agents’ and announced a hate-based anti-LGBTQ legislative package alongside constitutional changes, we are even more confident in our decision. We are demonstrating the highest civic responsibility and recognize that the fight for queer rights today is inseparable from the broader people’s struggle against the Russian-style regime. This fight will inevitably end in favor of the people on Oct. 26!
We will use the coming months to bring the message of queer people to more hearts than ever before! We will explain to everyone that homophobia is a Russian political weapon against Georgian society, against the statehood of Georgia! We are patriots of this country and will always and everywhere be where our homeland calls us!”
The U.S. government slapped visa restrictions on members of the Georgian government in response to actions taken to undermine democracy in the post-Soviet nation, just as the government announced a sweeping package of anti-LGBTQ legislation it intends to pass ahead of fall elections.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told a June 6 press conference in Washington that the government had slapped sanctions on “between two and three dozen” individuals who were “responsible for or complicit in undermining democracy in Georgia, such as by undermining freedoms of peaceful assembly and association, violently attacking peaceful protestors, intimidating civil society representatives, and deliberately spreading disinformation at the direction of the Georgian government.”
Citing U.S. privacy law, Miller refused to name any individuals who had been sanctioned. He added that this was considered a “first tranche” of sanctions.
Georgia has been rocked with protests for weeks in response to the “foreign agents” law, which requires media and civil society groups to registers as agents of a foreign power if they receive funding from abroad.
The law was passed by the ruling Georgian Dream Party, vetoed by the president who is a member of the opposition, and then passed with a veto override on May 28.
Modeled after a similar law in Russia, the law is meant to undermine the credibility and actions of bodies that are critical of the government and has drawn fierce criticism from Georgia’s allies in the U.S. and European Union.
Georgia was recognized as a candidate country from EU membership this year, but EU leaders have warned that the law undermines European values and threatens membership negotiations.
At the same time, the Georgian government has introduced a package of anti-LGBTQ legislation also modeled after Russian laws, which it is hoping will fire up its base and divide the opposition ahead of fall elections.
Under the package of laws, the state would be forbidden from recognizing any relationship other than heterosexual relationships, restrict adoption to married heterosexual couples and heterosexual individuals, ban any medical treatment to change a person’s gender and require that the government only recognize gender based on a person’s genetic information, and ban any expression or organization promoting same-sex relationships or gender change.
The bills are meant to be introduced in parliament before the end of the summer session in July, and the government plans to hold a vote on it ahead of elections scheduled for October.
POLAND AND LITHUANIA
Bitter fights are emerging over civil union legislation in the governing coalitions that run Poland and Lithuania, with left-leaning parties insisting on improving the legal rights of LGBTQ couples and families, while more conservative parties want to maintain the status quo.
In Poland, that’s led to protracted negotiations to get a draft civil unions bill introduced, long after Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s original promise to have the law in place within his first hundred days in office. Tusk was sworn in as prime minister in December.
Tusk’s coalition includes his own centrist Civic Platform party, as well as the left-leaning Left party, and the more conservative Poland 2050 and Polish People’s Party (PSL), the latter of which mostly opposes recognizing same-sex couples. The coalition agreement left out any mention of civil unions.
The ambitious civil union bill aims to be an “all-but-marriage” type of union, complete with adoption rights, which has drawn the ire of the PSL. Negotiations within the coalition have focused on finding a way to get the PSL on board but have so far proved fruitless.
The opposition parties are even more hostile to LGBTQ rights and are not expected to support the bill in any form.
Regardless, Equalities Minister Katarzyna Kotula, who comes from the Left party and has been spearheading the bill, has given the coalition a deadline of the end of June to come to agreement. Failing that, she says she’ll introduce the bill without government support, although that will likely doom it to fail.
A last-ditch negotiation among the coalition partners is expected to take place June 17.
Tusk has struggled to introduce other promised social reforms since taking office. A promised hate crimes and hate speech bill has yet to be introduced. In March, the president, who comes from the conservative opposition Law and Justice Party, vetoed a bill to legalize the morning-after contraception pill.
Duda has not yet revealed if he will veto a civil union bill. The coalition does not have a three-fifths majority in parliament to override a veto.
In neighboring Lithuania, tensions over a long-stalled civil union bill erupted into a dispute between coalition partners this week.
The left-leaning Freedom Party has threatened not to support the nomination of Foreign Affairs Minister Gabrielias Landsbergis to the post of European commissioner, given his party’s lack of support for the civil union bill that awaits a third a final vote in parliament.
The dispute has spilled a lot of ink in Lithuanian press, with the coalition partners debating whether or not the threat was appropriate in the circumstances.
Lithuania heads to the polls in October for parliamentary elections.
GREECE
After his party took a drubbing in EU elections last weekend, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis says he is going to pause pushing forward new LGBTQ rights legislation, suggesting the new priority is changing minds rather than laws.
Mitsotakis announced his surprise support for same-sex marriage and adoption rights last year after clinching reelection, and his government passed a marriage bill in February.
But in last week’s EU elections, his party’s support dropped nearly five percentage points, while the more radical far-right Greek Solution and the anti-LGBTQ conservative NIKI party collectively gained about 10 percentage points.
Mitsotakis himself speculated to Bloomberg TV that the new same-sex marriage and adoption law passed this year alienated his party’s traditionally conservative base.
Greece is already one of the highest-scoring countries on ILGA-Europe’s Rainbow Map Index, thanks in large part to reforms that Mitsotakis himself ushered in. In addition to same-sex marriage and adoption, his government has banned conversion therapy, banned unnecessary surgeries on intersex children, and set up a National Strategy for the Equality of LGBTQI+ People.
Queer activists in Greece were still calling on the government to facilitate legal surrogacy and automatic parental recognition for same-sex couples, and a simplified process for transgender people to update their legal gender.
FRANCE
The far-right National Rally party is campaigning on restricting LGBTQ rights in snap parliamentary elections, with prime minister candidate Jordan Bardella supporting restrictions on surrogacy and IVF for same-sex couples.
French President Emmanuel Macron announced snap parliamentary elections after his party’s poor showing in the European Parliamentary elections last weekend. National Rally won the most votes in that election and is polling strongly ahead of the June 30 first-round vote. However, French elections are run in a two-round system, and National Rally often fails to win second-round votes as voters coalesce around a less unappealing compromise candidate to block them.
In the past, National Rally has campaigned strongly against LGBTQ rights, especially same-sex marriage, but they appear to have conceded that marriage equality is settled law.
While campaigning ahead of the EU elections, Bardella appeared on the French television show “Le Grand Oral”, where he reiterated his opposition to surrogacy.
Bardella also bitterly opposed Macron’s 2019 law which finally allowed lesbians to have access to in-vitro fertilization.
He told local television at the time, “There is no right to having children. Children have a right to have a father and a mother and this law creates children without fathers.”
National Rally’s opposition to same-sex parenting mirrors that of Italy’s far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, under whose watch the Italian government has stripped parental recognition from same-sex couples and imposed criminal penalties on Italians who conceive children via surrogacy.
The first week of the truncated election has taken a number of surprising turns. The mainstream right-wing party, the Republicans, has been in turmoil since its president announced his party would consider a coalition with the National Rally, which led party members to oust him and an embarrassing schism where he barricaded himself in the party headquarters and took over the party’s social media.
And in a bit of news that may be a little on-the-nose, the National Rally has nominated a man named Guillaume Bigot as their candidate in Belfort in northeastern France.
PAKISTAN
A Pakistani man was apparently committed to a mental hospital after he attempted to open a gay bar in Abbottabad, Pakistan, this month.
The man, whose identity has not been disclosed, had apparently hoped to open the country’s first gay bar in the city of 250,000 people, about 75 miles north of Islamabad.
Abbottabad is best known in the west as the city where Osama bin Laden was found and killed by U.S. Forces in 2011.
According to the Telegraph newspaper, the man had applied to open “Lorenzo Gay Club,” which he described in his application to civic authorities for a “No Objection Certificate” as a “great convenience and resource for many homosexual, bisexual and even some heterosexual people residing in Abbottabad in particular, and in other parts of the country in general.”
The application, dated May 8, also insisted that “there would be no gay (or non-gay) sex (other than kissing)” and that a notice would be posted on the wall to warn against “sex on premises.”
The applicant describes the club as “a matter of the basic human right of free association, as established in the constitution.”
Gay sex is illegal in Pakistan, which is an officially Islamic republic. A conviction would carry up to two years in prison, but the law is rarely applied as it is difficult for anyone to be openly gay in the strictly conservative country.
The application sparked considerable debate online, after a copy of the application was released to the local media. The application seen in the “Pakistan Observer” is signed by a Preetum Giani, but it is not clear if that is the applicant or a representative.
According to the Telegraph, the man was committed to the Sarhad Hospital for Psychiatric Diseases in Peshawar on May 9, and friends have been unable to reach him since. Friends who spoke to the newspaper say they are worried about his safety, but also worried for their own safety if they speak out.
The Telegraph also reports that far-right politicians in Pakistan had threatened violence and arson against the club if it had been allowed to open.
The applicant had previously told the paper that he believed it was important to stand for human rights, and that he would defend the right to open the club in the courts, in hopes that Pakistan’s courts would follow neighboring India’s lead, where gay sex was decriminalized in 2018.
SINGAPORE
A new Ipsos poll has revealed a slight majority of Singaporeans support laws banning anti-LGBTQ discrimination, and support legal recognition of same-sex couples and adoption.
The poll found that 54 percent of respondents agreed that same-sex couples should have the right to marry, and 57 percent agree they should have the right to adopt, compared to only 25 percent who oppose same-sex marriage and 30 percent who oppose same-sex couple adoption rights.
On both questions, a large number of respondents were unsure or had no opinion.
An even larger number of respondents supported anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people. Nearly three-quarters of respondents said that LGBTQ people should have discrimination protections in employment and housing, although only 40 percent supported legislation to that effect, while 20 percent opposed it, and another 40 percent were unsure.
There are no specific anti-discrimination laws protecting LGBTQ people in Singapore.
The poll found strongest support for LGBTQ rights among younger respondents as compared to older generations.
Two years ago, Singapore repealed a colonial-era law that criminalized gay sex. But at the same-time, parliament also amended the constitution to require parliamentary approval for same-sex marriage.
These poll numbers may indicate that eventual legalization could be possible.
China
China’s top court acknowledges anti-LGBTQ discrimination
Postgraduate student petitioned for legal clarification
China’s Supreme People’s Court on May 8 issued a rare response to a petition involving LGBTQ discrimination.
In a surprising response; it discussed sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression. The response also mentioned workplace discrimination, public humiliation, and school bullying, language considered uncommon from China’s legal system.
The response stemmed from a proposal submitted by a postgraduate student in Qingdao through China’s xinfang petition system on March 25, urging the court to establish clearer judicial standards against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Six weeks later, the Supreme People’s Court Research Office issued a written reply.
The Research Office is an internal legal and policy body within the Supreme People’s Court. It studies legal issues, drafts judicial guidance, and responds to legal inquiries submitted through official channels. Its responses do not carry the same legal weight as a judicial interpretation or court ruling.
“The opinions and suggestions you raised are of great value,” reads a translated version of the Supreme People’s Court Research Office response. “In order to thoroughly implement the Constitution, Civil Code, Employment Promotion Law and other legal provisions, and effectively protect citizens’ personality rights from infringement, the Supreme People’s Court has guided local courts at all levels to handle a number of related cases, and through typical cases and other forms has clarified adjudication rules.”
The response stated that courts may determine public insults, defamation and, discriminatory conduct targeting sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression as infringement of personality rights. It also said employers treating individuals differently in hiring, employment, transfer or dismissal based on those characteristics could face employment discrimination claims. Schools could also bear legal responsibility for improper discipline or bullying involving students based on sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression, according to the response.
“It’s not a systematic change from the authorities recognizing LGBTQ rights,” said Renn Hao, an LGBTQ activist in China. “However, it’s an informal statement from the Supreme Court. According to a scholar researching LGBTQ legal cases in China, courts are recognizing more cases involving LGBTQ discrimination and same-sex partners through their verdicts.”
China decriminalized consensual same-sex sexual relations in 1997 and removed homosexuality from the country’s list of mental disorders four years later. Chinese law, however, does not recognize same-sex relationships.
Public advocacy involving LGBTQ issues also remains tightly controlled. Authorities in recent years have continued restricting community organizing, public events, and online expression involving sexual minorities.
Discussions involving LGBTQ issues are also frequently censored on Chinese social media platforms.
Activists and advocacy groups say Chinese authorities in recent years have removed online content, shut down LGBTQ student group accounts and restricted public discussion involving sexual minority issues. After the Supreme People’s Court response began circulating online, related posts and articles were also removed from some Chinese platforms.
“It may still be too early to fully assess the long-term impact, as this development has only just happened and the situation is still unfolding,” said Xiaogang Wei, a Beijing-based LGBTQ rights activist, filmmaker, and founder of the China Rainbow Collective Foundation. “Although the reply is not legally binding, it represents a rare form of institutional acknowledgment of SOGIE-related discrimination in China. For Chinese LGBTQ people and advocates, this could become a meaningful reference point for future legal advocacy, public communication, and community awareness.”
Wei said the rapid removal of related posts and articles limited the development’s broader public impact and underscored how fragile LGBTQ visibility remains in China.
“This is why we believe it is important to continue sharing verified information and ensuring that this development is not erased from public understanding,” Wei said.
Chinese courts in recent years have also heard a number of LGBTQ-related employment discrimination cases, despite the absence of explicit nationwide protections based on sexual orientation or gender identity. In one notable case, the Supreme People’s Court in 2018 formally recognized “equal employment rights disputes” as a legal cause of action, allowing some discrimination-related cases to proceed through the courts.
Chinese courts have previously handled several LGBTQ-related disputes involving employment discrimination, custody, and so-called conversion therapy. In 2024, a Beijing court drew attention after recognizing visitation rights for a child involving a same sex couple, a decision activists described as a milestone for LGBTQ families in China.
Kenya
Kenyan High Court issues landmark transgender rights ruling
Government ordered to allow trans people to amend ID documents
Kenya’s High Court has ruled the country’s government cannot refuse requests to amend gender markers on birth certificates and other ID documents.
Audrey Mbugua, a prominent transgender activist, and two other people in 2020 sued Attorney General Dorcas Oduor, the Registrar of Births and Deaths, the National Registration Bureau, and Immigration Services Director General Evelyn Cheluget after they did not receive amended birth certificates.
The Washington Blade previously reported the three plaintiffs argued documents that do not correspond with their gender identity “has denied them opportunities and rights.” Oduor, for her part, in response to the plaintiffs’ claims argued “a person’s gender is based on fact — not feelings — and the plaintiffs at birth were registered and named based on their gender status.”
High Court Justice Bahati Mwamuye ruled on May 20.
“The silence and delay cannot defeat rights,” ruled the court, according to the Daily Nation, a Kenyan newspaper. “Constitutional rights cannot be delayed over administrative convenience.”
The court in 2014 ordered the Kenya National Examinations Council to change Mbugua’s name on her academic diplomas and to remove the male gender marker from them.
Kenya’s intersex rights law took effect in 2022. The government in February 2025 announced intersex people can receive birth certificates with an “I” gender marker.
The Daily Nation notes Mwamuye ordered the Registrar of Deaths and Births and other government agencies to “begin receiving and considering applications for gender-marker changes within” 60 days.
“Access to legal identity documentation is not just a human rights issue; it is a foundational pillar of socio-economic inclusion,” said the Initiative for Equality and Non-Discrimination, a Kenyan advocacy group, in response to the ruling. Without accurate IDs or passports, individuals face severe barriers to employment, financial systems, global business travel, and participation in governance and democratic processes.”
“This ruling marks a critical step forward in reducing administrative discrimination and fostering an inclusive environment where every Kenyan citizen’s legal identity aligns with their dignity,” added INEND.
Outright International, a New York-based global LGBTQ and intersex advocacy group, in a statement described Mwamuye’s ruling as “a meaningful shift towards aligning Kenya’s legal framework with constitutional guarantees of equality, privacy, and human dignity. Outright International also applauded Mbugua and other activists who fought for this change.
“Today, we celebrate a milestone — one achieved through resilience, solidarity, and an unwavering belief in justice,” said the group. “Outright International stands with transgender and intersex Kenyans in honoring this victory and reaffirming our commitment to advancing rights, recognition, and equality for all.”
Cuba
When impunity meets history
Raúl Castro indicted for alleged role in shooting down Brothers to the Rescue aircraft
The scene would have seemed impossible only a few years ago.
The name of Raúl Castro Ruz appearing formally inside a United States federal criminal indictment. Cuba’s former general of the Army, for decades one of the most powerful figures inside the Havana regime, accused in connection with the shootdown of the Brothers to the Rescue aircraft and the deaths of American citizens in 1996. And all of it unfolding in Miami, inside the Freedom Tower, on May 20.
That detail matters.
Because this indictment arrives at one of the most fragile and politically tense moments in recent relations between Washington and Havana. It comes as Cuba faces deep economic collapse, growing political exhaustion, mass migration, blackouts, and increasing public frustration both inside and outside the island. It also arrives on a date carrying enormous symbolic weight for Cuban exiles — the anniversary of the founding of the Cuban Republic in 1902.
But the true significance of this moment goes far beyond symbolism.
What happened in Miami represents something much larger: the collapse of the idea that certain men would never face accountability.
For decades, Raúl Castro embodied the permanence of revolutionary power in Cuba. Defense minister. Military strategist. The man who oversaw the armed forces for generations. One of the central architects of the Cuban political and security apparatus built alongside Fidel Castro. A figure many believed would leave this world untouched by any court, shielded forever by power, time, and history itself.
Today the image is very different.
Today his name appears inside the language of American criminal prosecution.
And that changes the historical dimension of this case completely.
Because this is no longer simply a political accusation voiced by the Cuban exile community. It is now a formal federal criminal indictment publicly announced by the United States government against one of the highest-ranking figures in the history of the Cuban regime.
The setting itself carried enormous meaning.
The Freedom Tower is not just another building in Miami. For generations of Cuban exiles it represents memory, displacement, survival, and the beginning of a new life after fleeing Cuba. Thousands of Cubans passed through those doors after escaping the revolution. Families arrived carrying fear, uncertainty, grief, and hope all at once. Announcing these charges from that location transformed the moment into something far deeper than a legal proceeding.
And the people witnessing it were not only members of the exile community.
Among those present were relatives of the young men killed nearly 30 years ago. Families who spent decades waiting to hear words they feared might never come. Families who carried the weight of loss while believing the men responsible would never be formally accused by any court.
That emotional weight still surrounds this case.
On Feb. 24, 1996, two civilian aircraft operated by Brothers to the Rescue were shot down over the Florida Straits by Cuban military jets. Armando Alejandre Jr., Carlos Costa, Mario de la Peña, and Pablo Morales were killed. The flights were connected to humanitarian rescue efforts searching for Cubans attempting to flee the island during the migration crisis of the 1990s.
Those aircraft were not military bombers.
They were not attacking Cuba.
They were civilian planes associated with rescue operations involving Cubans risking their lives at sea.
That reality has always shaped how this tragedy lives inside the memory of the Cuban exile community.
For many, this was never viewed simply as a geopolitical conflict between hostile governments. It was seen as the use of military force against civilians connected to humanitarian missions during one of the darkest chapters in modern Cuban migration history.
But for many Cubans, the indictment reaches far beyond the Brothers to the Rescue case itself.
It touches decades of unresolved pain tied to one of the central figures behind Cuba’s military and political system.
It reaches mothers who buried sons lost in compulsory military service or in distant wars they never chose to fight. Families who spent years believing promises that were never fulfilled. Political prisoners who disappeared into silence. Relatives who watched loved ones die trying to flee the island.
And for many LGBTQ Cubans, the moment carries another layer of historical weight.
Long before official campaigns promoting tolerance and inclusion emerged from within the Cuban government, there were years of persecution, fear, forced silence, and humiliation carried out under the revolutionary system itself.
The UMAP labor camps remain one of the deepest scars in modern Cuban history. Gay men, pastors, religious believers, artists, and others considered incompatible with the revolutionary ideal were sent away under the language of “re-education” and forced labor.
In recent decades, public gestures toward LGBTQ inclusion promoted by figures close to the Cuban leadership attempted to project an image of progress and openness to the international community. But for many survivors, and for many Cuban LGBTQ people, those gestures never erased the trauma or the historical responsibility tied to the same structures of power that once persecuted them.
For many, acknowledgment without accountability still feels painfully incomplete.
That is why this indictment resonates so deeply today.
Because it arrives while Cuba once again faces profound national crisis. The island is losing entire generations through migration. Public frustration continues to grow. Economic collapse shapes daily life. And the revolutionary narrative that once projected permanence and control appears increasingly eroded by reality itself.
Against that backdrop, the image emerging from Miami becomes even more striking.
A man once viewed as untouchable by history now formally accused by the United States government and legally transformed into a fugitive wanted by American justice.
History moves slowly until suddenly it does not.
And for many Cubans, both on the island and throughout the diaspora, what happened today inside the Freedom Tower felt like witnessing something they once believed they would never live long enough to see.
As a Cuban, as an immigrant, and as someone who has lived close to that pain, one thought keeps returning tonight:
Justice takes time.
But when it finally arrives, it arrives with history behind it.
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