News
Spanish lawmakers reject transgender rights bill
Activists say prime minister’s party blocked measure
Lawmakers in Spain last week voted against a bill that would have allowed transgender people to legally change their gender without medical or psychological interventions.
The Congress of Deputies on May 18 by a 143-78 vote margin with 120 abstentions rejected the “Proposed Law for Real and Effective Equality of Transgender People,” which Human Rights Watch in a press release notes “would also have allowed non-binary and blank gender markers on identity documents, acknowledging the rights and dignity of people who do not identify with a rigid gender binary.”
Mané Fernández, vice president of Federación Estatal de Lesbianas, Gays, Transexuales y Bisexuales (FELGTB), a Spanish LGBTQ advocacy group, on Monday told the Washington Blade during a telephone interview from Gijón, a city in the Asturias region of northern Spain, said Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party and the governing coalition of which it is part promised to introduce the bill.
Trans activists have accused the PSOE of blocking it. The Associated Press in March reported Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo, who is a PSOE member, said the measure could undermine the rights of women and other groups.
Mar Cambrollé Jurado — a trans activist in Spain who is the president of Asociación Trans de Andalucía-Sylvia Rivera, president of Federación Plataforma Trans and RESPETTTRANS’ Europe spokesperson — on Monday noted trans activists began a hunger strike on March 11.
Human Rights Watch in its press release notes all PSOE members of the Congress of Deputies voted against the bill. Cambrollé told the Blade that “it seems to us that Spain, with the Socialist Party’s vote, has set LGBTI rights in Spain back 10 years.”
“It is inconceivable that a party that has a historical trajectory of defending LGBTI rights and social advances has voted against allowing us trans people to have a legal framework that guarantees us equality of opportunities to access basic rights like employment, education, sport,” said Cambrollé. “[It would also] regulate the issue of trans people in prison, protection of children, trans migrants, the recognition of non-binary trans people and specifically provide historic reparations to those trans people who were victims of the (Franco) dictatorship and today live in the utmost precariousness.”
“We are not only talking about the right to self-determination of gender,” Fernández told the Blade.
“We are talking about all that it makes up and about how it effects any person or any citizen in Spain, or children who have to get an education, occupational health and the judiciary,” added Fernández.
Argentina and Malta are among the countries in which trans people can legally change their gender without medical or psychological intervention. Fernández said FELGTB remains optimistic the bill “will be approved” during the current government.
Hungary
Hungarian authorities lift Budapest Pride ban
Country’s new government took office last month
Hungarian police on May 29 announced they will allow the annual Budapest Pride march to take place.
“The Budapest Metropolitan Police has approved the 2026 Budapest Pride Parade and also has issued restrictive orders in relation to three counter-demonstrations,” a Budapest Metropolitan Police spokesperson told Politico.
Budapest is Hungary’s capital and largest city.
Hungarian lawmakers last year passed a bill that banned Pride events and allowed authorities to use facial recognition technology to identify participants. MPs later amended the Hungarian constitution to ban public LGBTQ events.
More than 100,000 people defied the ban and participated in last year’s Budapest Pride parade. The event became one of the largest protests against then-Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his government since he took office in 2010.
Prime Minister Péter Magyar took office last month after his center-right Tisza party ousted Orbán’s Fidesz-KDNP coalition in elections that took place on April 12. The European Union’s top court, the EU Court of Justice, days after Orbán’s ouster struck down Hungary’s anti-LGBTQ propaganda law that MPs approved in 2021.
The EU on May 29 announced it will release more than €16 billion ($18.59 billion) in funds to Hungary that it withheld while Orbán was in office.
The Budapest Pride march will take place on June 27.
“We will march freely in fresh air for our rights, for the democratic Hungary,” said Budapest Pride on its Facebook page.
Colombia
Claudia López comes up short in Colombian presidential election
Former Bogotá mayor would have been country’s first lesbian head of government
Former Bogotá Mayor Claudia López on Sunday finished fifth in the first round of Colombia’s presidential election.
López, a centrist who ran as an independent, received 225,517 votes. This figure is .95 percent of the total votes cast.
López was the Colombian capital’s mayor from 2020-2023. She was a member of the Colombian Senate from 2014-2018. López, whose wife is outgoing Colombian Sen. Angélica Lozano, would have become the country’s first female and first lesbian president if she would have won the election.
The LGBTQ+ Victory Institute honored López in D.C. in 2024.
“We need to listen to each other again, we need to have a coffee with each other again, we need to touch each other’s skin,” she told the Washington Blade during an interview. She hadn’t yet declared her candidacy, and did not specifically discuss her plans to run.
Runoff to take place June 21
Abrelardo de la Espriella, a far-right lawyer who has praised U.S. President Donald Trump and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, on Sunday finished first with 43.74 percent of the vote. Senator Iván Cepeda, a member of outgoing President Gustavo Petro’s Historic Pact party, came in second with 40.9 percent of the vote.
Neither men received a majority of votes. A runoff between them will take place on June 21.
Ghana
Ghanaian lawmakers approve anti-LGBTQ bill
Measure that would criminalize allyship awaits president’s signature
Ghanaian lawmakers on Friday approved a bill that would, among other things, criminalize LGBTQ allyship.
Reuters reported MPs approved the Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill, 2025, in a voice vote after parliament’s Constitutional and Legal Affairs Committee backed it.
MPs in 2024 approved a similar bill, but it faced legal challenges and then-President Nana Akufo-Addo didn’t sign it. Lawmakers last year reintroduced the measure after President John Dramani Mahama took office.
The bill awaits his signature.
Rightify Ghana, a Ghanaian LGBTQ advocacy group, in a series of social media posts notes MPs passed the bill days before the 4th African Inter-Parliamentary Conference on Family Values and Sovereignty will take place in Accra, the country’s capital.
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