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Global Pride events to renew demands for equality

Kyiv Pride to take place in Liverpool

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Final preparations for Tel Aviv Pride in Israel on June 7, 2023. (Photo courtesy of Marty Rouse)

Activists around the world are using Pride events to renew their demands for full equality.

This year’s Pride month coincides with the debate over marriage equality in Aruba.

The Joint Court of Justice of Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten and of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba that has jurisdiction over three constituent countries (Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten) and three special municipalities (Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba) within the Netherlands late last year ruled Aruba and Curaçao must extend marriage rights to same-sex couples.

Gay Aruban Sen. Miguel Mansur on Wednesday told the Washington Blade that he and activists on the island are “pushing to have” the marriage equality debate this month, but opponents in the Aruban Parliament have been trying to delay. Mansur further stressed this year’s Pride month events are an important way to counter those who oppose marriage equality and other LGBTQ rights.

“It’s especially important for representation because of the same-sex marriage law there was an onslaught of attacks by certain religious groups, an association of churches,” said Mansur. “Representation and visibility are more important than ever.”

Upwards of 30,000 people participated in the Jerusalem Pride and Tolerance Parade on June 2. Former Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, who now leads the country’s opposition, is among those who sharply criticized members of the current government over their opposition to LGBTQ rights. 

“Outside are standing, like every year, the wretched thugs of Lahava movement, demonstrating against us,” said Lapid. “Only this year these people are no longer just a ridiculous bunch of dark extremists — they are part of the government. Bezalel Smotrich, (Internal Security Minister) Itamar Ben-Gvir [and] Avi Maoz, are trying to push us all back into the closet, to the dark closet of their foreknowledge.

The Jerusalem Pride and Tolerance Parade took place in Jerusalem on June 1, 2023 (Photo courtesy of WDG)

Thai MP Pita Limjaroenrat, who is the frontrunner to become the country’s next prime minister, is among those who participated in Bangkok’s Pride parade that took place on June 4. Limjaroenrat told reporters that his government will support marriage equality and a transgender rights law once it forms.

“Love is love and love must win,” said Limjaroenrat in a Facebook post.

Hundreds of people on June 4 participated in a Pride march in the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo.

Rosanna Flamer-Caldera, executive director of Equal Ground, a Sri Lankan advocacy group, on Wednesday noted to the Blade that her organization will hold a queer film festival and other events throughout Pride month. Activists in Jaffna, a city in northern Sri Lanka, are also planning to hold a Pride march.

These events will take place roughly four months after the Sri Lankan government announced it supports a bill that would decriminalize consensual same-sex sexual relations in the country.

“We are really proud of the work that we have done around bringing Pride to Sri Lanka,” said Flamer-Caldera. “It was an alien concept 19 years ago when we first started. We have started a movement in Sri Lanka around Pride.”

Colombo Pride events will take place this month in Sri Lanka. (Image courtesy of Rosanna Flamer-Caldera)

São Paulo’s annual Pride parade, which is among the world’s biggest, will take place on the city’s Paulista Avenue on June 11.

São Paulo LGBT+ Parade Vice President Renato Viterbo notes participants and organizers seek to “draw the attention of government officials to what public policies should be for all citizens, regardless of their sexual orientation.” The Movement for Homosexual Integration and Liberation, the Chilean advocacy that organizes the annual Pride parade in Santiago, the country’s capital, says it plans to use the June 24 event as a way to demand President Gabriel Boric’s government to strengthen the country’s anti-discrimination law and to create what it describes as “an anti-discrimination institutionality.”

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni on May 29 signed his country’s Anti-Homosexuality Act with a death penalty provision for “aggravated homosexuality.” This year’s Pride events are also taking place against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine.

Anna Sharyhina, co-founder of the Sphere Women’s Association, a group that promotes LGBTQ and intersex rights in Ukraine, last September led a Pride march in a subway station in Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city that is less than 30 miles from the Russian border in eastern Ukraine.

A Pride commemoration in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Sept. 25, 2022. (Photo courtesy of Sphere Women’s Association)

The Liverpool City Region Pride Foundation and Kyiv Pride on July 29 will hold a joint Pride event in the English city of Liverpool.

“Liverpool and Ukraine remain united by love,” tweeted Pride in Liverpool on June 1. “This year Liverpool will showcase Kyiv and Ukraine’s LGBT+ spirit as our annual March with Pride is held jointly with Kyiv Pride.”

The Baltic Pride March will take place in the Estonian capital of Tallinn on June 10. Reykjavík Pride will take place in the Icelandic capital from Aug. 8-13.

The importance of Reykjavík Pride is tremendous, and has always been tremendous, for both the queer community and the society around us. This is where we come together, fight for acceptance and celebrate our successes,” Reykjavík Pride Managing Director Inga Auðbjörg K. Straumland told the Blade. “However, the backlash is hitting us, like it’s hitting our siblings across the globe. We feel that the rights of our community are sliding backwards and we acknowledge that the fight is far from over.”

“This year it’s therefore very important that we come together, ready to continue to fight for our rights; especially for the rights of those that are most marginalized within our community,” added Straumland. “We do that by uniting. By talking, dancing, shouting, demanding, singing and painting the whole city in rainbow colors; showing the rest of the world that we’re going nowhere.”

Icelanders participate in Reykjavík Pride in the country’s capital in 2022. (Photos courtesy of Inga Straumland/Reykjavík Pride)

Brody Levesque and WDG, the Blade’s media partner in Israel, contributed to this story.

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Out in the World: LGBTQ news from Europe and Asia

Latvia’s civil unions law took effect Monday

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(Los Angeles Blade graphic)

LATVIA
Latvia’s law allowing same-sex couples to form civil unions came into effect Monday, and the first queer couples have already registered their unions in the Baltic nation.

Maksims Ringo and Janis Locs were the first same-sex couple to register their civil union. They did so in a ceremony at a legal office in the capital, Riga, where they exchanged silver rings, stating that they were saving gold rings for a date when Latvia legalizes same-sex marriage.

“I feel excited, kind of emotional about it as well because it is a really big step and not only for us, for the country itself. And being first, it’s all the publicity that comes with it as well. It kind of is a bit, I would say, a bit stressful, but at the same time I feel happy that we can finally do it,” Locs told Reuters.

Latvia amended its constitution to ban same-sex marriage in 2005, but in 2020, the Constitutional Court ruled that the state must give same-sex couples the same benefits that straight married couples have. In 2022, a deadline imposed by the court lapsed, and couples began applying to the courts to have their relationships recognized. 

Last year, the Latvian parliament finally passed a law formalizing same-sex civil unions, but the compromise legislation has frustrated some LGBTQ activists in the country as it leaves out key rights demanded by same-sex couples. Latvia’s civil unions do not allow couples to adopt children, nor do they get key inheritance rights, they’re concluded at a notary office instead of at the civil registry, and the government still will not recognize foreign same-sex marriages. 

The bill was also bitterly opposed by conservative, anti-LGBTQ groups. They attempted to force a referendum to block the bill but were unable to come up with the required signatures before the legal deadline.

With legal civil unions in Latvia, all but five EU countries recognize some form of same-sex union: Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania. 

In neighboring Lithuania, a civil union bill awaits a final vote in parliament but has stalled amid infighting between liberal and conservative factions of the coalition government. This week, the liberal faction threatened to block the appointment of a European commissioner unless the conservatives agreed to pass the bill.

In Poland, the governing coalition appears to have finally agreed to pass a civil union bill, albeit one that has been watered down significantly. The resulting bill will not allow any adoption rights, nor a common surname, and will be concluded by notaries and without a ceremony rather than civil registries. The government hopes to bring the bill forward this month.

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that all member states must provide some form of civil union to same-sex couples to be in compliance with the nondiscrimination and family rights guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights. 

The French National Assembly (Public domain photo)

FRANCE
Voters gave a big boost to the far-right National Rally party in Sunday’s first-round parliamentary elections, with the Rally taking 33 percent of the vote, while the left-wing New Popular Front took 28 percent, and President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Together bloc took 21 percent.

Parties are now jockeying for voter support in the second round, and NPF and Together have begun discussions at mutual endorsements to block the National Rally.

In France’s system, if no candidate in a given district wins 50 percent of the vote, the top two vote-getters, and any candidate who gets at least 12.5 percent of registered voters advances to the second round, which is decided by plurality vote. Because of higher-than-usual turnout of 67 percent, there are a large number of three-way races in the second round — over 300 according to official results, when the previous record was 76. 

The left-wing NPF has announced it will withdraw any candidates who advanced and placed third on the ballot, in order to create a “republican front” against the National Rally. While Macron has not made a formal statement on withdrawing third-place candidates, his prime minister, Gabriel Attal, has called on third-place candidates to step aside.

The National Rally has a long history of campaigning against LGBTQ rights but has not made that central to its program in this election, where it has focused on pocketbook issues and rejection of immigration. The National Rally has long opposed same-sex marriage, and its current leader has campaigned and voted against allowing lesbians to access IVF and supports a bill to ban gender care for minors.

Several reports have emerged of National Rally supporters committing homophobic attacks in France. 

A group of National Rally supporters allegedly attacked a gay teenager in Paris after the results of last month’s European Parliament elections were announced and National Rally was shown to win the largest number of sets. They were reported to have shouted “You’ll see when Bardella is in power and Hitler comes back!” and “In three weeks, we will be able to smash up f*gs as much as we like. I can’t wait.” The attackers were arrested.

GEORGIA
A package of extreme anti-LGBTQ bills sailed through first reading in the Georgian parliament on a 78-0 vote that was boycotted by most of the country’s opposition parties.

Georgia has been rocked by protests since the governing Georgian Dream party introduced a passed a “foreign agents” law, which requires any organization that receives funding from out of the country to register with the government as a foreign agent. The law was inspired by a similar law in Russia and was designed to undermine opposition groups, media, and nongovernmental organizations that are often critical of the government.

The anti-LGBTQ bills are an extreme package of legislation that was also inspired by Russia. The bills ban recognition of any same-sex relationships, forbid recognition of gender other than birth sex, forbid any medical treatment for gender change, and criminalize any advocacy for LGBTQ rights. The government says it hopes to pass the legislation by the fall ahead of national elections in October.

The bills are also designed to undermine the opposition, by forcing them to defend LGBTQ rights, which remain deeply controversial in the conservative Christian country. Opposition leaders have also made it clear that their boycott of the bill does not mean they support LGBTQ rights.

Both the anti-LGBTQ bills and the foreign agents bill have put the country on a collision course with the EU, which it has expressed a desire to join, and which granted it candidate status last year. 

EU accession is very popular among the Georgian public, but the Georgian Dream party is more closely aligned with Russia, and frequently demonizes the EU by equating its values with LGBTQ rights.

Last week, EU candidates Moldova and Ukraine opened formal negotiations to join the bloc, although it is expected that it will be many years before membership is granted.

Indian flag (Photo by Rahul Sapra via Bigstock)

INDIA
The high court of India’s Kerala state upheld the right of LGBTQ people to live autonomously, as it rejected a petition from the parents of a 23-year-old who sought to have their daughter committed to a mental institution to “treat her sexual orientation.”

The young woman had fled her family and was living with her partner, a transgender man. Her family members repeatedly attempted to violently abduct her from her new home.

The court ruled that the woman has a right to live her life on her own terms and that sexual orientation is an innate part of a person’s identity.

The court also directed the parents to hand over all of their daughter’s personal documents, which they had been withholding, in an attempt to force her to return to them, and the court warned the family against committing violence against her.

Same-sex relationships are not illegal in India, although last year the Indian Supreme Court ruled that the government does not have to recognize same-sex marriage, leaving that question to parliament.

HONG KONG
Ten same-sex couples from Hong Kong were legally married in the U.S. over the internet this week, in a mass ceremony to celebrate Pride week.

The 10 couples took advantage of a program available through the state of Utah, which allows people to get married via an internet ceremony. 

Utah has become a go-to destination for same-sex couples seeking to get married even though they live in countries that don’t recognize same-sex marriage. Utah allows couples to get married even if they’re not physically present in the state, while most states require couples to at least be present, if not resident in the state.

Hong Kong does not currently allow same-sex marriage, although last year its Court of Final Appeal ruled that the local government should offer some form of relationship recognition to same-sex couples within two years. That deadline comes up next September.

“In Hong Kong, there’s not yet a way to go to a marriage registry to get married, but there’s still this way we can offer for them to realize their dreams of getting married,” wedding organizer Kurt Tung told the Associated Press.

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Toronto Pride parade cancelled after pro-Palestinian protesters disrupt it

Protest took place more than three hours after it began

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The 2024 Toronto Pride parade on June 30, 2024. (Screen capture via Johnny Strides/YouTube)

Toronto Pride parade organizers on Sunday cancelled the annual event after a group of pro-Palestinian protesters disrupted it.

Media reports indicate more than two dozen protesters blocked the parade near the intersection of Yonge and Wellesley Streets, and chanted “from the river to the sea” and “Pride was a riot.”

The Toronto Star reported the protesters disrupted the parade at around 5:30 p.m., more than three hours after it began. Toronto Pride around 45 minutes later announced the parade’s cancellation.

“Today, we made the decision to cancel the remainder of the Pride Parade out of our commitment to ensuring public safety,” they said in a statement. “While we deeply respect and uphold everyone’s right to peacefully protest, our foremost priority is the well-being of all participants and spectators.”

“We recognize the Pride parade as a highly anticipated event that many organizations and individuals eagerly prepare for,” it added. “We empathize with those who were looking forward to participating and regret any inconvenience caused by this decision.”

The Coalition Against Pinkwashing organized the protest.

Protesters disrupt NYC Pride parade

This year’s Pride Month took place eight months after Hamas launched its surprise attack against southern Israel.

The Israeli government says Hamas militants killed roughly 1,200 people on Oct. 7, 2023, including at least 260 partygoers and others at the Nova Music Festival. The Israeli government says upwards of 80 people who were taken hostage on Oct. 7 remain alive in the Gaza Strip.

The Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry says more than 35,000 people have died in the enclave since the war began. The National LGBTQ Task Force and Outright International are among the groups that have called for a ceasefire.

The New York Daily News reported the New York Police Department on Sunday arrested 10 pro-Palestinian protesters who disrupted the city’s annual Pride parade near the Stonewall Inn. The newspaper said those who the NYPD took into custody, among other things, threw red paint onto a pickup truck inside police barricades.

The Telegraph on Saturday reported London police arrested more than 30 pro-Palestinian activists to prevent them from disrupting the city’s annual Pride parade that took place on the same day.

A Wider Bridge, a group that “advocates for justice, counters LGBTQphobia, and fights antisemitism and other forms of hatred,” last month called upon Pride organizers to ensure Jewish can safely participate in their events.

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Africa

Lesbian South African MP named to country’s new Cabinet

Steve Letsike won a seat in the National Assembly on May 29

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Steve Letsike (Photo courtesy of Steve Letsike)

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Sunday appointed lesbian MP Steve Letsike to his Cabinet.

Letsike, founder of Access Chapter 2, a South African advocacy group who is a member of the African National Congress that Ramaphosa leads, will be the country’s deputy minister of women, youth, and people with disabilities.

Letsike won a seat in the South African National Assembly in national and provincial elections that took place on May 29.

The ANC lost its parliamentary majority that it had had since Nelson Mandela in 1994 won the South African presidency in the country’s first post-apartheid elections. Ramaphosa on Sunday announced Letsike and other new Cabinet members after the ANC and nine other parties agreed to form a National Unity Government.

The Washington Blade has reached out to Letsike for comment.

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