Earlier in this series – Part 1: North America | Part 2: Latin America & Caribbean | Part 3: Asia | Part 4: Africa and Oceania | Part 5: Europe

2023 saw the global LGBT rights movement make some great strides. Here are some of the overall trends we saw.

Equal Marriage

Legalized same-sex marriage: Estonia, Nepal, Choctaw Nation (USA)
Same-sex marriage laws came into effect: Andorra
Introduced same-sex marriage bills with strong likelihood of passing: Liechtenstein, Thailand, Greece
Same-sex marriage bill being debated, may not pass: Czechia, Navajo Nation (USA)
Same-sex marriage bills introduced, no likelihood of passing: Japan, South Korea, Peru
Same-sex marriage before the courts: Japan, Bermuda, Aruba, Curacao
Civil union bills being debated: Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine
Court ordered civil unions: Hong Kong

I was a little optimistic last year when I listed about a dozen states and territories that I thought were likely to legalize same-sex marriage in 2023 – and I didn’t see Estonia or Nepal coming at all!

I’m a little more cautious this year. I think we’re almost certain to see same-sex marriage bills become law in Liechtenstein and Thailand in early 2024. Greece will depend on how willing the prime minister is willing to defy conservatives in his own party, but I think it’s a strong possibility, too.

Czechia’s legislators may be too cautious to move ahead, unfortunately, and I just can’t really tell how the momentum is going in the Navajo Nation. Cyprus is a possible dark horse here – although no marriage bill has been introduced, it tends to move with Greece on LGBT issues, and its newly elected prime minister supports it.

I also think the court decision in Aruba and Curacao is very likely to go in favor or equal marriage this spring – and if it does, I can’t see how Sint Maarten doesn’t come next. I would be very surprised if court cases in Japan and Bermuda get resolved in 2024.

I think Poland is very likely to pass its civil union bill in the new year; the Presidential veto may be an obstacle, but he may also prefer to keep his powder dry, especially since the European Court has already directed Poland to introduce them. Lithuania seems like a difficult case. It’s only a few votes shy of passing final reading, and I think it’s possible some parties reach a compromise to get it out of the way before the election – or possibly after the fall election cycle is over. Finally, despite the court order for civil unions in Hong Kong, I don’t see local legislators rushing to pass a law, out of fear of angering Beijing. I think they’ll try to run the clock and see what the courts do when the deadline passes in 2025.

Decriminalizing Homosexuality

Sodomy Decriminalized: Mauritius, Cook Islands
Stiffer penalties imposed: Uganda
Activism banned: Russia, Uganda, Kyrgyzstan
Decriminalization cases before the courts: Dominica, Grenada, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Lucia, Jamaica, Tunisia, Kenya, Malawi, Namibia, Lebanon
Decriminalization under consideration: Sri Lanka, Morocco (maybe)
Considering criminalization: Iraq

I was also a little too optimistic last year in predicting the number of decriminalizations we’d win in 2023, as it’s turned out the courts are moving slower than we’d hoped. But in this case, no news hasn’t necessarily meant bad news. We did win in two countries this year, and while we lost initially in Jamaica, that case is being appealed to the highest court.

Heading into 2024, I feel fairly confident that we’ll get rulings from the four other Caribbean island countries soon – they all share the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court, which has already handed down two decriminalization rulings in the last two years. We don’t have dates for when the rulings will be handed down, but I would be surprised if they stretch beyond 2024.

We do have a date for Namibia’s ruling: May 17, 2024. This is probably the biggest slam dunk. The court appears to have chosen the International Day Against Homophobia to hand down its decision for a reason.

As for the four African cases, it’s an open question when these rulings will come down, and I’m not at all confident that any of them will go in our favor.

I would be surprised if Sri Lanka’s bill gets any momentum this year, but we can hope. There’s a presidential election, and a progressive candidate is currently leading in the polls — although I haven’t found anything on his stance on LGBT issues.

Still, the decriminalization movement is poised to make big gains in 2024. And in 2023, the gap between criminalizing states and equal marriage states narrowed quite a bit. I expect this gap to become much smaller in 2024.

Conversion Therapy

Banned Conversion Therapy: Iceland, Belgium, Poland, Norway, Spain, and Cyprus; US states of Minnesota and Michigan; Swiss canton Neuchatel; Mexican states Queretaro, Sinaloa, Morelos, Quintana Roo
Banned medical practice: Chile
Conversion therapy ban proposed: Mexico, Colombia, Netherlands, Finland, Switzerland, Ireland, UK; Australian states of New South Wales, Tasmania, Western Australia

The movement to ban conversion therapy has gained a lot of steam in the last couple of years, and if I had to guess, I’d say it’s because it’s a relatively low-cost way for governments to signal that they’re doing something for LGBT people, particularly if you’re running a country that’s already ticked most of the other major milestones.

Anyway, I think in the new year, we can expect a few more countries to move on this. Mexico, Ireland, Colombia, and Netherlands are probably the most likely. And I would expect those Australian states to finally get moving on their bills in the early part of the year. The UK depends on the timing of the next election. I don’t expect any US states to move on this in 2024; it’ll depend on Democrats winning new state legislatures and taking power in 2025.

Blood donation bans

Restrictions ended: Germany, USA

Restrictions reduced: Switzerland, Norway

Commonwealth of Nations

It’s been pointed out that many of the countries that have sodomy laws inherited them from their time under British colonial rule, which has led to a situation where a majority of members of the Commonwealth of Nations criminalize homosexuality.

But that ratio shifted slightly this year with Mauritius decriminalizing. Cook Islands isn’t a member directly but is represented at the Commonwealth by New Zealand, and has considered applying to join as a full member, along with Niue. All of the states most likely to decriminalize sodomy next year are also Commonwealth members, so look for this map to shift a bit in 2024. I’ve also made a dark horse prediction that Cyprus could legalize same-sex marriage in 2024.

The ratio of states with the death penalty also shifted slightly with Ghana repealing capital punishment for ordinary crimes this year. Zimbabwe has also proposed ending the death penalty — it’s not currently a member, but has applied to rejoin, although its prospects for being admitted look slim.

And that’s our year in review wrapped up!

Before we go, a programming note: I write this blog and maintain the @LGBTMarriage Twitter feed and Substack unpaid on the side of my freelance journalism work. This entails hundreds of hours of research and writing, as well as hundreds of dollars spent out of pocket to host and maintain this web site.

If you like the work I do here, please consider supporting it, either by sending me a tip through Venmo or Paypal, subscribing to the Substack, or by purchasing a copy of my book of plays, SMASHING YOUNG MAN. Any contribution helps me keep this vital work going. Thank you for all your support!

Read the whole series – Part 1: North America | Part 2: Latin America & Caribbean | Part 3: Asia | Part 4: Africa and Oceania | Part 5: Europe | Part 6: Global Trends

Somewhat like America, Europe continues to be divided between states that are rapidly advancing LGBT rights and those where queer rights are under threat. However, in Europe, it does appear like the long-term trend is that more and more states are joining the pro-LGBT side, even as there are warning signs we must remain vigilant of.

Before we dive in, a little note. I’ve been writing these posts for a decade now, and I know that many of my readers appreciate the context these posts provide. It’s important to understand that even in times when it appears that the world keeps dragging itself backward, the overall picture across the globe is one of tremendous progress, and 2023 has been no different. While we’ve seen major advances in LGBT rights in every corner of the globe, worrying trends have emerged that are putting real queer people in danger and should not be overlooked.

I do this every year unpaid on the side of my work as a freelance journalist. If you enjoy these articles and want to support what I do, please consider leaving a tip via Venmo or Paypal.

Another way to support my work is by subscribing to my Substack newsletter, where I post regular updates on the fight for LGBT equality around the world. Subscribing is free or by donation.

And now, 2023 in Europe.

Before we look at the the individual countries, we should spend some time talking about the European Union, which has been one of the most important organs for advancing LGBT rights not only on the continent but across the world. Despite many challenges, the process of European integration took some big steps in 2023. Croatia joined both the Schengen Area and the Eurozone, cementing its ties to the bloc. Bulgaria expects approval to join the Eurozone in the new year beginning in 2025, and both it and Romania will phase-in joining the Schengen Area from March 2024 for air and sea travel. And the EU voted to open accession negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova, and to grant candidate status to Georgia. All three will have to make progress on human rights and rule of law in order to actually join the bloc.

Finland officially joined NATO (which is not part of the EU, but is part of the overall trend of Euro-Atlantic integration), and Sweden is awaiting final approval from Hungary and Turkey to do the same.

The European Parliament voted to pass a law requiring all EU member states to recognize parent-child relationships that are established in any other member state. This has become particularly important as states that don’t recognize same-sex marriage, surrogacy, or same-sex couple adoption rights have made it difficult for same-sex parents to travel around the EU safely. The proposed law now goes to the European Council where the member states must unanimously agree to implement it – which may be a tall order given the strongly anti-LGBT governments in Hungary, Slovakia, Italy, Bulgaria, and Romania.

The European Union also ratified the Istanbul Convention on Domestic Violence, by a vote of its own Parliament. The Convention has proved surprisingly controversial in some countries, as extremists claim that its protections for women in all types of families and its mention of the social construction of gender imply that the convention will require members to legalize same-sex marriage and transgender rights. As of December 2023, five EU states remain outside the Istanbul Convention: Lithuania, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, and Bulgaria. Additionally, three Council of Europe states are outside it: Turkiye, Armenia, and Azerbaijan – Turkiye denounced the treaty in 2021, and Azerbaijan has never signed it. Finally, Kosovo, Belarus, and Russia are not eligible to sign, as non-members.

And the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR, which is not part of the EU) issued its strongest ruling ever finding that signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) must offer a form of relationship recognition to same-sex couples in Fedotova and Others v. Russia (although, since Russia is no longer party to the Convention, it doesn’t really apply there). The ruling is legally binding, but requires each country to actually implement it.

Western Europe

UK: The UK’s omnishambles governance continued unabated in 2023, and the only real question at this point is how long into 2024 Prime Minister Sunak is going to drag out his own misery before an election that sweeps a Labor government into office. A long-delayed conversion therapy ban bill never materialized and the government essentially kicked it into touch in an effort to appease a growing, vitriolic anti-trans hysteria sweeping conservatives in the UK.

Speaking of, after the devolved government of Scotland passed a contentious bill that expanded trans people’s right to gender self-identification, the UK government swiftly stepped in to disallow it, over concerns that people will abuse Scotland’s laxer standards for updating legal gender compared to the rest of the union. Scotland appealed to the courts, but lost. The UK government has since confusingly announced that they’re going to update the list of countries they accept ‘gender recognition certificates’ from, to bar any country that allows gender self-identification. It’s not clear how that works in practice, since these countries tend not to issue ‘gender recognition certificates’ – whatever the hell those are – but instead just update birth certificates and ID.

The Labour Party has pledged to ban conversion therapy and come up with some updated form of legal gender recognition when it takes office. There are also private member’s bills to ban conversion therapy in the House of Commons and the House of Lords, but it’s unlikely either will pass before the end of the term.

The Northern Ireland Assembly didn’t sit in 2023, so no progress was made on a conversion therapy bill there, either.

The Church of England (Anglican Church if you prefer) began blessing (but not performing) same-sex marriages in December. A Labour MP had earlier in the year submitted a private member’s bill to allow the Church of England to perform same-sex marriages – it is currently prohibited from doing so.

The government began offering pardons for women who were convicted for acts related to homosexuality in June; previously, pardons were only available to men convicted under sodomy laws which hadn’t applied to women.

Among the Crown Dependencies, the Isle of Man has proposed updates to its family law to recognize automatic parental rights for same-sex parents. We covered the British Overseas Territories in the section on the Americas.

Ireland: In June, the government announced plans to ‘disregard’ all historical convictions under anti-gay laws. A long-stalled conversion therapy ban bill has still not been tabled. Maybe next year?

Also in 2024, Ireland will hold a referendum on March 8 on amending the constitution to remove outdated language about a woman’s place being in the home, and adding language clarifying that the constitution protects all kinds of families. Seems nice and wholesome.

Sadly, a major outbreak in far-right, anti-immigrant violence has prompted the government to attempt to update its incitement to hatred laws, but the effort is proving controversial and has been punted to the new year.

Spain: In February, the national government passed a sweeping trans rights law that allowed gender self-identification from age 16 and with a judge’s permission from age 12, banned unnecessary surgeries on intersex children, banned conversion therapy, and also enshrined the right of single women and women in same-sex couples to access assisted reproduction (previously only covered by regulation).

But then right-wing parties swept local elections, and they’ve started to take action to roll back LGBT rights. The regional government of Madrid just passed a law repealing LGBT discrimination and hate crime protections, repealing a conversion therapy ban, and repealing the ability to change legal gender. For now, queer and trans people are still covered by the national laws protecting them, but this is part of a clear effort to chip away at rights, and a blueprint for what the right intends to do if they win the national government.

And they almost did! National elections in 2023 were inconclusive, as neither the right nor left-wing blocs won a majority of Parliament. Finally, the left-wing government was able to cling to power by forging an agreement with a Catalan separatist party.

Portugal: In December, Parliament passed a law banning conversion therapy.

Andorra: The same-sex marriage law passed last year came into effect on schedule. Per the law, civil unions are no longer available. In September, Prime Minister Xavier Zamora officially came out as gay.

Netherlands: Netherlands amended its constitution in February to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation. The government also took a stand against Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act by cutting relations. In November, a far-right populist party won the most seats in Parliament, although talks on government formation are still ongoing. The party is rabidly anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim, but is generally pro-LGBT (at least to the extent it enables anti-Muslim animus).

I discussed the Netherlands’ Caribbean territories in the Americas section.

Belgium: In July, Parliament passed a law banning conversion therapy. That same month, regulations on blood donation reduced the deferral period for men who have sex with men to four months of abstinence before donating.

Luxembourg: Openly gay Prime Minister Xavier Bettel’s party lost the 2023 election, although he continues to serve in government as Foreign Minister.

Germany: Cabinet approved a gender self-determination law, but it remains to be debated in Parliament. The government also removed the deferral period for blood donations from men who have sex with men.

Austria: A bill to ban conversion therapy appears to have stalled. Elections are due in the fall, but the far-right is currently leading in the polls.

Liechtenstein: Parliament passed a law allowing same-sex couples to adopt, in response to a Constitutional Court ruling, and eliminating the last objection of the Prince to same-sex marriage. Parliament duly began consulting on a same-sex marriage bill, and will likely publish its results in the early new year, ahead of the next session in March. It’s almost a certainty Liechtenstein will legalize same-sex marriage in 2024; Parliament previously voted 23-2 calling on the government to do so.

Switzerland: A bill to ban conversion therapy was proposed last December, but it will likely be years before it is passed in Switzerland’s notoriously slow legislative process. Meanwhile, the canton of Neuchatel passed its own conversion therapy ban.

The government also reduced the blood donation deferral period for men who have sex with men to four months of abstinence.

Italy: Italy’s far-right government continued its campaign of abuse against LGBT parents by enacting a regulation that blocks local authorities from registering the children of same-sex couples born abroad. The government even began removing parents from birth certificates that had already been registered. The policy drew condemnation by the European Parliament. The government also took aim at surrogacy, introducing a bill that would make it a crime to travel abroad to conceive a child via surrogacy — that bill has passed through the Chamber of Deputies and awaits debate in the Senate.

A court in Rome ruled against a school that fired a trans professor over her gender identity, another court allowed a lesbian couple to foster a child, and other court rulings found that a minor could do so with parental permission and a psychological assessment, and that a transwoman could change her gender identity without having any planned sex reassignment or hormone therapy (previous rulings established that trans people could update their name and gender, but in that case, surgery was already planned). None of these cases sets a binding precedent, however.

The Vatican: I actually have to include the Holy See this year, because of the Pope’s announcement that same-sex couples may be blessed by priests in the Catholic Church. The announcement has caused some deep confusion and dissent among bishops across the world, although some are welcoming the chance to bring queer people back into the church.

Northern Europe and Scandinavia

Estonia: Estonia’s new left-leaning coalition acted quickly to pass a same-sex marriage and adoption law, which goes into effect on January 1. It also finally enacted the implementing regulations for the civil union law that was passed in 2016.

The government also introduced a bill to regulate hate speech, after it was found to be not in compliance with EU law. The bill has proved controversial, and the government does not intend to advance it before the spring.

The minister of social protection has talked about introducing legislation for gender self-determination, including non-binary recognition.

Latvia: Latvia’s Parliament elected Edgars Rinkēvičs as President – the first openly gay man to hold that post in Latvia, or in any post-Soviet country. Parliament also passed a civil union law, codifying a court decision from 2020. Unfortunately, the law is on hold while opponents attempt to gather enough signatures by January 5 to force a referendum on it – thankfully, early reports indicate that the signature gathering is not going well at all.

Parliament also passed a law in June barring foreign same-sex couples from adopting Latvian children. After much debate, Parliament ratified the Istanbul Convention on Domestic Violence.

Lithuania: In January, the European Court of Human Rights fined the government over its LGBT censorship law, which forbids the depiction of non-traditional relationships to minors.

Then, the government fell and was replaced by a slightly more left-leaning one. For a time, it appeared the new coalition would make progress on LGBT issues, but this has sputtered out. A bill to repeal the censorship law failed in Parliament, and a bill to enact civil unions with limited rights for same-sex couples has had its final vote put on hold because the sponsor isn’t certain they’ll have enough votes to override a likely Presidential veto. The coalition partners don’t look ready to uphold their promise to pass it, and the opposition parties (even the left-leaning one) are withholding their votes to spite the government. They’re hoping they can bring it back in the new year as they continue negotiations. Elections are scheduled for the fall. The leftists in the coalition were also hoping to ratify the Istanbul Convention, but have not made progress – the Convention was sent to the Supreme Court for consideration instead.

Iceland: Parliament unanimously passed a ban on conversion therapy in June. A previous promise to reduce the gay blood donation deferral period to four months is yet to take effect.

Norway: Parliament passed a bill banning conversion therapy in December, and finally brought into force long-promised regulations allowing for automatic recognition of same-sex parents.

The Church of Norway also removed a ban on cohabiting couples being employees of the Church.

Sweden: The government has begun the process of removing the deferral period for blood donations from gay men.

Finland: The government enacted gender self-identification legislation this year.

Eastern Europe

Poland: One of the most vicious anti-LGBT governments in the EU came to an end as a left-leaning coalition won elections and took power in December. Among the new government’s promises are a same-sex civil union law, hate crime laws, and liberalization of abortion, as well as a general restoration of democratic norms and rule of law. It remains to be seen how much of this agenda they’ll be able to get past the President, who remains from the outgoing Law and Justice Party and holds a veto power.

The European Court of Human Rights also ruled against Poland for not offering civil unions for same-sex couples, which adds impetus to the new government’s agenda. A Polish couple also appealed to domestic courts seeking a right to same-sex marriage.

Czechia: After Czech voters elected a President who supports same-sex marriage, Parliament spent a lot of time debating various bills that would legalize same-sex marriage or ban it in the constitution. While equal marriage is popular with the electorate, MPs are lukewarm to it at best, and it doesn’t appear that the current Parliament has the votes to pass it.

Instead, it appears that legislators may arrive at a shitty compromise: a broad expansion of the existing civil union law, to make unions legally equivalent to marriage in all but name, while Conservatives withdraw their constitutional amendment. Varying reports differ on if this will include adoption rights. LGBT activists and the public do not seem to be happy with the compromise at all. So, we’ll see what 2024 brings.

Progressives were also hoping to ratify the Istanbul Convention; Cabinet has approved it, and it’s believed Parliament will deal with it in early 2024, along with proposed reforms to domestic violence and children’s rights laws.

Slovakia: Parliament worked on a couple of anti-trans bills this year. One, which would criminalize gender change, failed. Another, which would restrict legal gender change to those whose gender was wrongly assigned at birth and proven by genetic testing, has advanced but not yet passed into law. Still, another bill was introduced to abolish the surgical requirement for gender change, but it is unlikely to pass, too.

The Minister of Health also published long-delayed standards of care for trans people – previously, the lack of regulations had made doctors wary of providing gender confirming care, but doctors are still reportedly nervous because of the political situation.

Elections returned a populist, pro-Russia, anti-LGBT PM Fico to power.

Russia: The situation in Russia continued to be dominated by the ongoing war in Ukraine and Putin’s increasingly authoritarian grip on power. In July, Putin signed a bill banning gender-affirming care, automatically annulling the marriages of trans people, banning legal gender change, and banning trans people from adopting, after it was passed unanimously in Parliament.

In November, the Supreme Court agreed with the Ministry of Justice that the “International LGBT Movement” is an extremist organization, effectively banning it in the country. The next day, police began to raid gay nightclubs, bars, and saunas across Moscow.

Sham elections are scheduled for 2024.

Belarus: Parliament began debate on a bill to criminalize promotion of homosexuality, mirroring Russia’s law.

Ukraine: Of course, the war has had an even more deleterious effect in Ukraine. Nevertheless, Ukraine is pinning its hopes on eventual accession to the EU, with membership negotiations beginning this year.

A bill was introduced in March to allow same-sex civil unions, and is being examined in committees after having received the support of the relevant ministries. In June, the ECtHR ruled that Ukraine violated the Convention by not having an option for same-sex couples to have their relationship legally recognized.

Moldova: Parliament passed a law banning discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. EU accession negotiations also began this year.

Hungary: The government passed a draconian law calling on citizens to report same-sex couples to the government, even if they’re not breaking any laws (in fact, Hungary recognizes same-sex civil unions). The law was vetoed by the President. Various EU states have taken Hungary to the European Court of Justice over its anti-gay laws and other infringements of democratic norms, and have upheld EU funding to Hungary over these issues. Hungary has responded by blackballing funding for Ukraine unless it gets EU funding, and has largely succeeded in getting EU funds for Hungary unfrozen. Hungarian PM Orban is increasingly revealing himself to be a shill for Russia inside the EU, and at some point, the rest of the union is going to have to do something about this rot at its core.

Southeastern Europe

Greece: After winning reelection, Greek Prime Minister Mitsotakis announced plans to legalize same-sex marriage and adoption during his term (so before 2027, but it’s expected he’ll introduce the bill in early 2024). The idea has sparked dissent within his own party, but much of the opposition supports it. The current opposition leader is an openly gay man who married his partner in New York.

Cyprus: Parliament banned conversion therapy. Newly elected president Christodoulides campaigned on legalizing same-sex marriage and possibly adoption, but that will depend on Parliament. I would expect this to happen after Greece, if at all. Meanwhile, prospects for reunification seem to have dwindled further, as Turkiye has continued to take a harder line on maintaining independence for North Cyrprus.

Slovenia: Parliament updated its Family Law in accordance with the Constitutional Court’s same-sex marriage ruling from last year. The new law does away with the old civil unions.

Croatia: Opposition parties introduced a slew of pro-LGBT bills in Parliament this year, including equalizing civil unions to marriage in all but name (restricted by the constitution), a hate crime bill, banning conversion therapy, and improving access to trans health care. Naturally, none of these has advanced.

Just this week, the Constitutional Court returned a verdict in a ten-year-old case that sought to have Croatia’s “life partnership agreements” (civil unions) declared unconstitutional. The Court denied the application, instead finding that the right to family life is guaranteed to all people regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity under both the Croatian Constitution and the European Convention. Croatia’s Constitution does, however, include a prohibition on same-sex marriage, which was added by citizen-initiated referendum in 2013. Life partnerships were introduced in 2014 and are legally exactly the same as marriage, with full adoption rights being granted by the courts in 2022.

Serbia: Serbia’s slide into authoritarianism continues. December elections that President Vucic’s party claimed to win in a landslide were marred by irregularities, and an opposition coalition is continuing to contest them. The upshot is that openly lesbian PM Ana Brnabic keeps her job for now.

Serbia and Kosovo spent much of the year in diplomatic and actual skirmishes, the upshot of which is that it doesn’t look like a settlement between the two is getting any closer, which means Kosovo will remain unrecognized by many states for a while yet, further hampering its integration into Euro-Atlantic structures. However, Kosovars were given the right to visa-free entry to the Schengen Area (Europe’s borderless free-travel zone) starting January 2024.

Romania: The ECtHR ruled that Romania was infringing same-sex couples’ rights by not offering civil unions, and the government has responded by saying “so what?” Officially, the government response is that Romania will not recognize same-sex couples because society is not ready.

Bulgaria: The ECtHR ruled that Bulgaria was infringing same-sex couples’ rights by not offering civil unions, but the government has taken no action. The government did pass a law imposing stiffer sentences on sexual orientation-based hate crimes.

In February, the Supreme Court ruled that sex is immutable and binary, and gender cannot be changed under the terms of Bulgarian law and the constitution.

There is growing concern that the left-wing parties in Bulgaria are taking a nationalist, pro-Russia turn, along with sitting President Radev.

Turkiye: Increasingly authoritarian strongman President Erdogan won reelection this year, in a significant blow for minority rights and democracy activists, as well as for those hoping for more peaceful relations within the region. Erdogan explicitly campaigned against LGBT rights, although his promised referendum on same-sex marriage did not actually happen.

Armenia and Azerbaijan: The human rights situation here was overwhelmingly impacted by the war over Nagorno-Karabach, which ended with Azerbaijan reasserting control over the territory, and the evacuation of its entire Armenian population. The unrecognized state of Artzakh which governed the territory no longer exists – for those keeping track, it didn’t have a great record on LGBT rights either.

One upshot of the war was something of a realignment, where Armenia seems to be realizing that Russia no longer has its back. While Armenia has kept ties with Russia so far, it did ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, putting it at odds with Russia. The ICC has a warrant out for Putin’s arrest over the Ukraine war.

Georgia: The situation continued to be tense in Georgia, even as the country was granted EU candidate status. Tbilisi Pride was cancelled again this year due to threats, and a proposed hate speech law has been criticized by foreign observers as a front for shutting down expression critical of the government.

Read the whole series – Part 1: North America | Part 2: Latin America & Caribbean | Part 3: Asia | Part 4: Africa and Oceania | Part 5: Europe | Part 6: Global Trends

 

Read the whole series – Part 1: North America | Part 2: Latin America & Caribbean | Part 3: Asia | Part 4: Africa and Oceania | Part 5: Europe | Part 6: Global Trends

It was an unusually busy year for LGBT news in Africa in 2023, with one country decriminalizing sodomy, one slowly opening the door to equal marriage, several non-discrimination rulings, and a bunch of countries continuing or extending harsh anti-LGBT crackdowns.

It was quite a bit quieter in Oceania, but we did also see one more country finally decriminalize sodomy there, too.

Before we dive in, a little note. I’ve been writing these posts for a decade now, and I know that many of my readers appreciate the context these posts provide. It’s important to understand that even in times when it appears that the world keeps dragging itself backward, the overall picture across the globe is one of tremendous progress, and 2023 has been no different. While we’ve seen major advances in LGBT rights in every corner of the globe, worrying trends have emerged that are putting real queer people in danger and should not be overlooked.

I do this every year unpaid on the side of my work as a freelance journalist. If you enjoy these articles and want to support what I do, please consider leaving a tip via Venmo or Paypal.

Another way to support my work is by subscribing to my Substack newsletter, where I post regular updates on the fight for LGBT equality around the world. Subscribing is free or by donation.

These were the big news stories of 2023.

Southern Africa

Mauritius: Our one big victory in 2023 was the Supreme Court of Mauritius finally delivering its ruling that the nation’s colonial-era sodomy laws are unconstitutional. Conforming to growing international jurisprudence, the Court found that discrimination based on sexual orientation was sex discrimination, and therefore banned by the constitution. The island state already had laws banning employment discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Namibia: The other big news on the continent came from Namibia, where the courts delivered a series of quite confusing rulings on LGBT rights. First, in May, the Court ruled that the government must recognize foreign same-sex marriages, albeit for immigration purposes only. The same ruling affirmed lower court rulings that the constitution bars discrimination based on sexual orientation. And yet, the limited scope of this ruling means that lots of anti-gay discrimination stands in law, including a general ban on same-sex marriage in Namibia.

Parliament responded by unanimously passing a bill to define marriage as exclusively heterosexual in law, which you’d think would not stand up to the Supreme Court’s ruling. Thus far, the President has refused to sign it, calling for more consultations, but who knows how far that will last?

But in another case, the Supreme Court denied citizenship by descent to the child a same-sex couple who had been born by surrogacy in South Africa. The decision seems to hinge on a technical catch-22 – because the birth wasn’t registered, the child can’t have citizenship. Huh?

Finally, the Supreme Court finally heard a challenge to the nation’s colonial-era sodomy laws, which aren’t even written into code – they’re predominantly based on common law. The Supreme Court has said they’ll deliver their judgement on May 17, 2024 – the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia. So, I wouldn’t fault you if you had an assumption about how they’re going to rule.

South Africa: Parliament gave final passage to a long-delayed hate speech and hate crimes bill that is LGBT-inclusive. It’s still awaiting the President’s signature.

The National Human Rights Commission also ordered schools to stop forcing students to wear school uniforms that don’t match their gender identity.

The government has also introduced a new uniform Marriage Bill, which would harmonize the different marriage laws in the country, fully making same-sex marriage equal, and ending the provision that currently requires a married person who gender transitions to divorce and remarry under the Civil Union Act (the confusingly named current same-sex marriage law). It is still under consultations.

Both Zambia and Lesotho barred LGBT performers from South Africa from entering their countries this year.

Botswana: The government introduced a bill to erase the defunct sodomy law from the Criminal Code, following decriminalization by the courts in 2019. The bill drew anti-LGBT protests, and the Minister of Justice withdrew it after LGBT activists and constitutional experts lobbied, explaining it would be inappropriate for MPs to debate whether to delete a law the courts had already struck down.

Eswatini: In June, the Eswatini Sexual and Gender Minorities won a victory when the Supreme Court ordered the government to reconsider allowing them to register as a corporation, but the government has still refused, saying that homosexuality is illegal in the tiny kingdom. They went back to court in December seeking redress.

Malawi: An ongoing Supreme Court case seeks to decriminalize sodomy. Actually, it’s two cases combined into one, which unfortunately makes for some bad optics, as one case involves a trans woman who was caught in the law’s ambit just by having consensual sex, and the other involves an alleged sex offender who is accused of assaulting several youths. The case has drawn protests from the usual crowd who do not want to see the law struck down.

Zimbabwe: The government introduced a bill to abolish the death penalty, part of a growing trend in Africa.

Central and Eastern Africa

Uganda: Uganda drew a lot of headlines this year due to the passage of the Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2023, a draconian bill that stiffens penalties for gay sex, including death for “aggravated homosexuality,” imposes restrictions on LGBT expression and association, imposes reporting requirements on citizens to tattle on LGBT people they know, and makes it illegal to rent homes or facilities to LGBT people. The bill is a response to the Constitutional Court having previously struck down a similar bill on procedural grounds, and it has already been subject to a Constitutional Court hearing. A ruling awaits, but even if the law is struck down, the original sodomy laws would likely remain.

In the meantime, the law has been strongly condemned by governments and international organizations around the world, including by the United States, which removed Uganda from a program that grants free trade access to the US market to African countries in exchange for upholding democratic and human rights standards.

Kenya: A copycat bill was introduced in Parliament to further criminalize homosexuality and criminalize LGBT expression. It awaits debate.

In February, the Supreme Court ordered the government to register the NGO National Gay and Lesbian Rights Commission, finding that discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender, or intersex status was forbidden by the constitution. The Court reaffirmed that ruling in September.

A case seeking decriminalization of sodomy was pending in the Court of Appeal – the High Court upheld the law in 2019.

Burundi: Yesterday, the President called for gay couples to be stoned.

Ethiopia: The government began a crackdown on bars, hotels, and restaurants that it alleged catered to homosexuals.

Equatorial Guinea: The government detained a journalist and LGBT activist upon her return from a conference in Europe. The country is a brutal dictatorship.

Gabon: The country was semi-suspended from the Commonwealth of Nations following a military coup.

Western Africa

Ghana: Parliament is still debating a copycat anti-LGBT bill inspired by Uganda, but it enjoys the support of the government and President.

In a rare bright spot, Parliament repealed the death penalty for all ordinary crimes, continuing the trend in Africa. Apparently, repealing the death penalty for treason requires a constitutional amendment.

Mali: People voted into effect a new Constitution that includes an explicit ban on same-sex marriage.

Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger turned increasingly into military dictatorships, and spurned longstanding ties with former colonial power France in favor of increasing ties with Russia in 2023. There have even been some talks of the three forming some kind of federation.

Nigeria: There was an increasing crackdown on LGBT gatherings that saw hundreds of people arrested for supposedly participating in same-sex weddings.

Senegal: In a horrific hate crime, a deceased gay man’s body was exhumed and set on fire, triggering some denunciations of the offenders, who were apprehended.

North Africa

Tunisia: A challenge to the country’s sodomy law was heard at a Court of Appeal in February, after two people were convicted under it by a lower court. I believe a similar challenge at the Court of Cassation heard in December 2021 is still awaiting a ruling.

Morocco: The Justice Minister spent some time considering decriminalizing extramarital sex, although the discussions didn’t seem to include decriminalizing sodomy. The discussions are still ongoing, and a bill has not yet been tabled.

Algeria: In August, the government temporarily suspended all programming on a local television station after it broadcast a same-sex wedding.

Oceania

Australia: The federal Labor government hasn’t really lived up to the hope some had that it would lead progressive legislation for LGBT rights, has it? In January, the law reform commission recommended that the Commonwealth reform discrimination laws to protect all students and teachers from sexual orientation, gender identity, or marital status discrimination, but the government hasn’t acted, citing the need to accommodate religious schools.

The Australian Capital Territory banned unnecessary surgeries on intersex children.

Queensland updated its hate speech laws to include protections for LGBTI people, and also removed the surgical requirement for a legal gender change.

New South Wales and Tasmania have announced plans to ban conversion therapy, but activists have been critical of the Tasmanian bill that was tabled this month.

Sydney hosted WorldPride, during which there was some focus on improving LGBT rights in the Pacific region.

New Zealand: Conservatives won elections this year, and it remains to be seen if they will roll back LGBT rights in the same way that they have planned to roll back Indigenous rights.

A private members’ bill to ban discrimination based on gender identity and sex characteristics did not pass before the election. A bill to reform surrogacy laws also failed to pass. Theoretically, both bills could still be brought forward, but the government has announced no plans in this regard.

Meanwhile, the Cook Islands, an independent country that is part of the Realm of New Zealand, finally passed its Crimes Act update, decriminalizing gay sex. Once again, with this solved, queer Cook Islanders are now making calls for other rights.

Gay sex remains illegal in Niue, the other country in the Realm. Neither Niue nor Cook Islands are UN member states, though there have been some pushes for both to have greater representation in international forums including the UN and Commonwealth. In September, President Biden announced that the USA was formally recognizing both as sovereign independent states.

Tuvalu: Tuvalu amended its constitution to ban discrimination based on sex. However, the evolving international jurisprudence is that sex discrimination includes sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination, so it’s entirely likely that anti-LGBT discrimination was just banned there. It will likely take some court challenge to firmly establish that. The new constitution also defines marriage and family in heterosexual terms, however, and the new constitution specifically shields marriage laws from review on discrimination grounds.

Papua New Guinea: The Prime Minister said he had no intention of decriminalizing gay sex.

Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands: As discussed in the section on the Americas, this US territory passed an LGBT-inclusive hate crime law.

Read the whole series – Part 1: North America | Part 2: Latin America & Caribbean | Part 3: Asia | Part 4: Africa and Oceania | Part 5: Europe | Part 6: Global Trends

Read the whole series – Part 1: North America | Part 2: Latin America & Caribbean | Part 3: Asia | Part 4: Africa and Oceania | Part 5: Europe | Part 6: Global Trends

2023 turned out be a big year for the advancement of queer rights in Asia, with same-sex marriage becoming legal in Nepal and on the cusp of becoming legal in Thailand, a growing movement for it in Japan, and adoption becoming legal in Taiwan and Israel.

Before we dive in, a little note. I’ve been writing these posts for a decade now, and I know that many of my readers appreciate the context these posts provide. It’s important to understand that even in times when it appears that the world keeps dragging itself backward, the overall picture across the globe is one of tremendous progress, and 2023 has been no different. While we’ve seen major advances in LGBT rights in every corner of the globe, worrying trends have emerged that are putting real queer people in danger and should not be overlooked.

I do this every year unpaid on the side of my work as a freelance journalist. If you enjoy these articles and want to support what I do, please consider leaving a tip via Venmo or Paypal.

Another way to support my work is by subscribing to my Substack newsletter, where I post regular updates on the fight for LGBT equality around the world. Subscribing is free or by donation.

These were the big news stories of 2023.

South Asia

Nepal: The biggest news from Asia this year came from the Himalayas, where a Supreme Court judge ordered the country to begin registering same-sex marriages. While it took months for the government to actually implement the order, eventually the first same-sex couple was able to register their marriage. As yet, there isn’t a lot of evidence that many couples have take up the ability to get married, but it is now the law of the land. This marks several firsts in the equal marriage movement. Nepal is the first UN member state in Asia (Taiwan is not a member), the first country in South Asia, and the first least-developed country to legalize same-sex marriage. Congratulations, Nepal!

India: The next-biggest news of the year was in India, where the Supreme Court took up an equal marriage case, but unfortunately, rejected the plaintiffs’ pleas to legalize it. The decision quite strangely acknowledged that the situation was unconstitutionally discriminatory but left it up to Parliament or the individual states to rectify. The judgement also included a number of orders for the government to act to otherwise protect queer Indians’ rights. In the wake of the decision, a regional court in Tamil Nadu has recommended the state implement some form of civil union, but no action has been taken as yet.

The government has been working on recompiling the various criminal laws to shed colonial elements. There was some concern that the new bills may recriminalize sodomy, which didn’t happen. However, it does appear that the bill that was brought forward out of consultations maintained rape as a specifically gendered crime, which would essentially leave male-on-male sexual assaults legal. I’m not sure this has gotten fixed, but it could still be addressed in the legislative process. The draft bill also did not reduce or eliminate the death penalty as had been hoped.

Other developments this year were that a court found that trans women were included in the Domestic Violence Act (if they have undergone sex reassignment surgery), and there are ongoing discussions on whether to allow trans people to serve in the military.

Sri Lanka: A bill to repeal the colonial-era sodomy law, which the courts have ruled is unenforceable but left to Parliament to repeal, has not made any progress in Parliament amid the country’s ongoing and long-running political and economic crises. The Supreme Court greenlit the bill in May.

Pakistan: The Shariat Court ruled the Transgender (Protection of Persons Act) 2019 was unconstitutional, but the ruling is stayed pending further appeals. Later in the year, a lower court in Lahore upheld the act, and ordered civil registries to offer trans people updated identification as the law requires.

East Asia

China: The most important developments on LGBT rights happened in Hong Kong, which is still technically semi-autonomous, despite an increasing crackdown from Beijing.

The local courts made the biggest moves for queer people in Hong Kong this year. In February, the Court of Final Appeal found that the requirement for sex reassignment surgery to change legal gender was unconstitutional; the government has not yet updated its policy, however.

In September, the Court of Final Appeal also found that the government was required to offer some kind of recognition of same-sex relationships, but gave the government two years to implement it.

Taiwan: The legislature updated adoption laws to allow same-sex couples full adoption rights this year.

Japan: 2023 saw a big expansion in the number of prefectures offering same-sex couple registries. Nine prefectures opened registries in 2023 – Shizuoka, Toyama, Nagano, Gifu, Kagawa, Shimane, Tottori, Fukui, Yamanashi. Eight more have announced that they will open registries in 2024 – Yamagata, Aichi, Tokushima, Niigata, Oita, Wakayama, Hyogo, and Shiga. That will bring the total to 27 out of Japan’s 47 prefectures with partnership systems, plus one more where every municipality in the prefecture has its own registry (Kanagawa) and one that recognizes municipal-level registrations (Iwate). Additionally, a total of 344 municipalities in Japan offer local registries (although some of these overlap with prefecture-level registries). These are home to more than 2/3 of the Japanese population.

District courts in Nagoya and Fukuoka ruled that the ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional, but left it to Parliament to fix. So far, of five district courts that have ruled on same-sex marriage, three found the ban unconstitutional, and two found it constitutional. The rulings are all being appealed, with new rulings expected in 2024, and a likely escalation to the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, two opposition parties submitted bills to legalize same-sex marriage in 2023, but neither is likely to pass. A Pew research poll found majority support for same-sex marriage in Japan.

In other legislative news, the government struggled to pass a non-discrimination bill ahead of hosting the G7 in June, and ended up with an anodyne “LGBT Understanding Act,” which doesn’t really ban discrimination at all.

Japan also revised its sex crime laws, raising the universal age of consent from 13 to 16 years.

Finally, the Japanese Supreme Court ruled that the sterilization requirement to update legal gender was unconstitutional.

South Korea: In a major setback, the Constitutional Court reversed a ruling of the Supreme Court that struck down the military’s gay sex ban last year. Since all Korean men must serve in the military, this is in some ways, a national criminalization of gay sex.

The Seoul High Court ruled that the National Health Insurance Service was required to provide coverage to same-sex spouses.

Seoul City Council also blocked the LGBT Pride Festival from taking place outside City Hall, instead giving its permit to a Christian Festival.

Southeast Asia

Thailand: A political consensus seems to have emerged around same-sex marriage, and Thailand looks likely to be the next country to legalize it, which would be a huge milestone for this part of the world.

Last year, Parliament began debate on equal marriage bills, but they failed to pass before elections in May. Those elections were won by the progressive Move Forward Party, but the military-controlled Senate block the party from forming government. The government that did eventually form promised to take up many of Move Forward’s progressive policies, including same-sex marriage. When it did finally introduce the equal marriage bill in December, it passed first reading in an incredibly lopsided 369-10 vote. It’s now in the committee stage, where legislators will compare four different marriage bills and bring a final bill to parliament, expected in early March.

Move Forward had also proposed legal gender change options and decriminalization of sex work; we’ll see if those priorities have survived in the new year.

Philippines: Congress continued to dawdle over a proposed sexual orientation and gender identity non-discrimination bill (the “SOGIE Bill”), as it has for the past twenty years. But last week, the President announced the creation of an LGBT consultation board that will allow queer people to participate directly in policy making.

The Quezon City government created a “Right to Care” card that allows same-sex partners the ability to make hospital visits and medical decisions on each other’s behalf, filling a legislative void. It’s a first for couple recognition in the country. Lapu-Lapu City became the latest to pass a local non-discrimination ordinance.

Singapore: In the wake of last year’s sodomy decriminalization, Singapore queers are gearing up for other rights battles, including gender change and eventually marriage equality. A Pew poll found opposition to same-sex marriage only had 51% support compared to 45% who supported it.

Malaysia: The government cracked down on LGBT expression in extremely stupid, headline-grabbing ways in 2023, like when they went to war with watchmakers Swatch over a set of rainbow-colored watch bands. English rock band The 1975 also generated controversy when lead singer Matty Healy criticized the country’s anti-LGBT laws while on stage in Kuala Lumpur.

Malaysia also took steps to drastically reduce use of the death penalty, by ending its mandatory use for certain crimes.

A federal court began hearing a challenge to several Sharia laws in the state of Kelantan, including the sodomy law. A federal court has struck down state-level sodomy laws before in Malaysia on separation-of-powers grounds. However, even if they do, Malaysia’s federal laws prohibit gay sex anyway. The upshot is that the federal government has been seen as less enthusiastic about enforcing sodomy laws than state police have.

Cambodia: LGBT activists are consulting with the government on marriage equality, and while the government appears open to the idea, they’re saying it will likely be a long process. Pew found majority support for same-sex marriage here.

Vietnam: Pew found majority support for same-sex marriage here. A proposal was introduced to standardize legal gender recognition.

Central Asia

Kyrgyzstan: The government passed a new law criminalizing speech that “denounces family and traditional societal values, promotes non-traditional sexual relations and initiates disrespect towards parents or other family members.”

Uzbekistan: The country ratified a new constitution that includes a section guaranteeing equality before the law, but it doesn’t specifically prohibit sexual orientation discrimination.

Middle East

The Middle East remained one of the most challenging regions not only for the global LGBT rights movement in 2023, but for the protection of human rights and democracy generally.

Much of the region was beset by intra- and inter-state war and governed by autocrats, including the ongoing civil wars in Syria and Yemen, and the conflict in Israel and Palestine. And that’s not even counting the nearby conflicts in Nagorno-Karabakh, Sudan, and the Horn of Africa. All of these conflicts have made life worse for queer people in the region.

Beyond that, there were a few stories to note.

Israel/Palestine: Obviously, we have to discuss the ongoing war. But before we get to that, Israel’s far-right government began the year by taking actions that would be deeply impactful to the LGBT community. Prime Minister Netanyahu introduced legislation that would critically weaken Israel’s Supreme Court, giving the legislature the power to overturn its rulings, limiting the court’s power of judicial review, and giving the government power over judicial appointments. This was deeply concerning to queer Israelis in particular, because much of Israel’s advancements on LGBT rights have come from the judiciary over the objections of the legislature, and the dominance of the far-right in Israeli politics made it seem like not only would further progress be impossible, but the government might begin to roll back hard-won rights. Indeed, some of Netanyahu’s coalition partners were pretty blunt that that’s their goal. This led to moths of massive protests across Israeli society, which some say contributed to the military’s unpreparedness for the Oct 7 attacks.

Netanyahu temporarily backed down, but then forced through part of the reform in July. The whole reform process was then backburnered by the outbreak of war in October, and then right before the end of the year, the Supreme Court blocked the reforms that had been pushed through.

Hamas’ Oct 7 attacks were horrific, brutal, and far beyond anything that is acceptable in war, even in the context of a national liberation struggle. Moreover, Hamas’ publicly stated indifference to the fate of the Palestinians who have now found themselves trapped in an open warzone is a serious abdication of responsibility to govern for its citizens. Even if they weren’t calling for repeats of Oct 7 until the entire Jewish population of Israel is liquidated, it’s hard to conceive of Hamas as any legitimate or rational government that can be negotiated with.

That said, Israel’s military response to the attack – and Egypt’s cooperation with maintaining the blockade on Gaza – has created an incredibly dire humanitarian situation for the 2 million Palestinians who remain there, and the occasional outbursts from Israeli government officials who reveal genocidal fantasies about the region don’t help Israel appear to be a trustworthy partner for a peaceful future, either.

So where does that leave us? Well, shortly into the war, the Israeli Knesset passed laws recognizing the same-sex partners of soldiers and victims of the Oct 7 attacks, quite a departure after Netanyahu’s government has fought tooth and nail against queer couples.

And Netanyahu’s approval ratings are in the toilet. If and when Israelis go to the polls – not likely until after the current war is over and it’s also possible that his coalition clings together until the next scheduled elections in 2026 – there’s a good chance for a realignment of Israeli politics that brings the left and moderates back to power. But then again, Netanyahu’s crawled back from political oblivion before, and voters might reward him if the war does eventually achieve its aims of dismantling Hamas.

A return to power for moderates would likely be a big victory for Israel’s queer community, but may finally improve the chances for peace in the region, and consequently improve Palestinians’ lives as well.

Finally, to end on a positive note, just this week, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled unanimously that same-sex couples have the right to adopt children under existing law.

Lebanon: In August, a district court of appeal found that consensual gay sex was not illegal under Lebanese law, following four similar judgements from lower courts beginning in 2007. The law remains on the books, but the direction of these rulings is encouraging. A group of nine MPs also introduced a bill to repeal the unnatural sex law.

Nevertheless, there have been reported anti-LGBT incidents from both Christian and Muslim communities in Lebanon this year, including the Secretary-General of Hezbollah calling for all gays to be murdered. A bill was also introduced in Parliament to ban the promotion of homosexuality.

Iraq: Parliament approved at first reading a bill that would impose the death penalty for gay sex. It remains in process. Bills were also introduced to punish acts of effeminacy and prohibit sex and gender changes.

Jordan: A new cybercrimes law makes the spread of “debauchery” on the internet a crime.

Bahrain: A bill was introduced to criminalize gay sex.

United Arab Emirates: The country grabbed headlines this year when it banned Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse for a blink-and-you-miss-it trans pride flag that appears in a shot. It also ordered Amazon to block search terms relating to LGBT items.

Qatar: Qatar deported an Indonesian employee of Qatar Airways because he had tinted moisturizer, as part of a renewed crackdown on LGBT people and suspected LGBT people following the World Cup.

Oman: A shopkeeper got in trouble for selling rainbow-colored stationery.

Iran: Months of protests against the regime and for women’s rights that began last year seem to have fizzled out this year, amid a harsh government crackdown against protesters.

Read the whole series – Part 1: North America | Part 2: Latin America & Caribbean | Part 3: Asia | Part 4: Africa and Oceania | Part 5: Europe | Part 6: Global Trends

Read the whole series – Part 1: North America | Part 2: Latin America & Caribbean | Part 3: Asia | Part 4: Africa and Oceania | Part 5: Europe | Part 6: Global Trends

Latin American and the Caribbean didn’t see quite the dynamic changes that came in 2022, when three countries decriminalized gay sex and one legalized same-sex marriage.

But there were many important smaller developments, and the region is poised to make some big gains for LGBT equality in 2024.

Caribbean

Jamaica: A case seeking to overturn the country’s sodomy laws ground to a halt when the Supreme Court ruled that the challenge was inadmissible as the laws are shielded from constitutional challenges by the “savings clause,” which protects pre-independence laws.

We thought that was the end of the fight, but last week, the plaintiff announced he will appeal that decision to the UK Privy Council, which is still Jamaica’s highest court. There’s no telling how the court will rule on this case, but the best case scenario is the court determines that the laws are not shielded (as the plaintiff contends, Jamaica has since amended the laws, rendering them new and not shielded). That would still leave the substance of the case to be tried in Jamaica. It’ll likely be years before the case is heard.

Court challenges to sodomy laws in Grenada, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Lucia, and Dominica are still pending decisions. Given that these cases are all more than a year old at this point, and that they share the same Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court that struck down sodomy laws in Antigua and Barbuda and Saint Kitts and Nevis last year, I expect positive decisions rather soon in 2024 from all of them.

Trinidad and Tobago: The 2018 court decision that decriminalized gay sex is being appealed by the government, so the fight isn’t over here either. As of December, the Court of Appeal has not yet issued its ruling in the case. However it rules, the government and the plaintiff have both vowed to pursue the case to the UK Privy Council, so it will be years before this case is resolved. The issues are ultimately similar to the Jamaican case, so the Privy Council’s decisions there may be a guide to how they might rule in this case — although the government’s case is quite a bit weaker here as the change to the buggery law was much bigger in Trinidad than it was in Jamaica. Basically, if the JCPC rules that Jamaica’s law is not saved by the Constitution, Trinidad’s Appeal is toast. But if it rules that Jamaica’s law is saved, there’s still scope to find that Trinidad’s is not saved.

Not holding back, the plaintiff at the center of the case says he plans to pursue challenges to all of the state’s homophobic laws, including the marriage law. Trinidad and Tobago also has a slew of discriminatory laws on the books, including an immigration law that supposedly bars “homosexuals” from entering the country.

Barbados: Last year’s decision decriminalizing sodomy was finally published in May, and in addition to ending the sodomy law, it made it clear that the court found that discrimination based on sexual orientation was prohibited under the constitution.

Cuba: Parliament updated the employment discrimination law to ban discrimination on the basis of gender identity.

UK Territories: While a case seeking the right to same-sex marriage is still before the Virgin Islands’ court, the Premier continued to insist that a bill to hold a referendum on same-sex marriage or civil unions would be forthcoming, but it hasn’t in the year and a half since he first floated the idea. Apparently, Cabinet has already discussed the referendum bill though.

Various UK legislators have floated the idea of passing a law that would require the remaining holdout overseas territories – all in the Western Hemisphere – to legalize same-sex marriage. They would be Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Anguilla, Turks and Caicos, and Montserrat. The territories very much do not like the idea, but the odds of such a bill passing are slim, particularly this year. If anything, perhaps an incoming Labor government might pass an Order-in-Council requiring civil unions in all remaining territories, as they did with decriminalizing sodomy in 2000. Bermuda and Cayman Islands both allow same-sex civil unions.

Meanwhile, the queer activists in Bermuda have decided that the Privy Council’s ruling against same-sex marriage last year is not the final word on the issue. They’re taking their case to the European Court of Human Rights, and the Court agreed to hear the case this year. The Court has previously ruled that the Convention did not protect the right to same-sex marriage, but the Court has also gradually been expanding relationship rights. It can’t be a coincidence that this is occurring as the proportion of equal marriage states that are party to the convention keeps increasing – of the 46 members, 21 allow same-sex marriage, and another 9 allow civil unions. Bermuda’s next election is scheduled for 2026; the opposition has come out softly in favor of equal marriage.

Dutch Territories: The Court of Cassation for the Kingdom of the Netherlands is expected to rule on May 31 on an appeal from Aruba and Curacao over a same-sex marriage ruling from their joint local court. The government of the Netherlands has already indicated its preference is for legal same-sex marriage throughout the Kingdom, and it’s possible – though unlikely – that these countries will legalize it in advance of the ruling. The ruling doesn’t directly affect Sint Maarten, the other Dutch country, but logically a constitutional ruling ought to bind it too.

Central America

El Salvador: Nothing new to report here. Legislators continued to ignore last year’s order by the Constitutional Court to pass a law allowing trans people to change their legal name and gender.

Guatemala: Nothing explicit to report here, although voters did elect a reformist to the presidency, and he’s pledged to help restore democracy and fight corruption. Naturally, the ruling elites are working to keep Arevalo from actually assuming power, so we’ll see if he actually takes office in an orderly transition on 14 January. Regardless, the overall political atmosphere in Guatemala remains conservative on LGBT issues.

Honduras: The UN criticized the lack of action to stop violence against LGBT people in Honduras in May. The National Congress passed a law on sex education, which President Castro vetoed because it was insufficiently comprehensive with regard to ways to prevent teenage pregnancies.

Panama: In February, the Supreme Court finally delivered a long-delayed ruling in the same-sex marriage case first filed in 2016. The decision, which is frankly legal gibberish, denied that there was any right to same-sex marriage, specifically denying previous rulings from the Interamerican Court of Human Rights establishing that member states are obligated to legalize same-sex marriage. The Organization of American States called on Panama to legalize same-sex marriage in the wake of the ruling.

Costa Rica: A bill was introduced to recognize trans, nonbinary, and intersex people, and to ban unnecessary surgeries on intersex children. It’s still under discussion.

South America

Bolivia: The machinery of government took steps this year to formalize the existence of same-sex civil unions (or “free unions” as they’re called here), following a court ruling that opened them up last year 2022. By July, the government had amended regulations to allow them at all civil registry offices. The free unions are legally equivalent in all but name to marriage, including with regard to adoption and parenting.

Colombia: A bill to ban conversion therapy was approved at first reading this summer and remains waiting final approval. The government also introduced a bill to ban employment discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

Venezuela: LGBT activists staged a major demonstration calling for advancement on a number of key rights issues, but ultimately only secured one victory: the Supreme Electoral Tribunal ruled that the ban on gay sex in the military was unconstitutionally vague. The activists had also called for equal marriage and right to change legal gender.

Venezuela heads into an election this year, and there had been hopes that it would be free and fair. However, current dictator Nicolas Maduro has already jailed his main opposition on trumped-up charges and is fomenting war with neighboring Guyana. So….

Guyana: Guyana remains the only country in the Western Hemisphere that has a sodomy law that is not subject to an active court challenge. We’ll see if that changes – or if Guyana even continues to exist – in 2024. The major local LGBT advocacy group started a campaign this year to raise awareness of LGBT people and to pressure the government to repeal the law.

Suriname: In February, the Constitutional Court ruled against same-sex marriage, ruling that the ban on same-sex marriage did not violate the constitution or Suriname’s obligations under the Interamerican Convention. Again, the decision is just nonsense.

Peru: The Constitutional Court ordered the national registry to register a same-sex marriage that occurred in Argentina, although the decision was limited to just the one couple. A civil union bill was introduced in Parliament, but it hasn’t advanced. A court in Cuzco also granted a legal gender change without surgery.

Chile: The leftist government introduced a few important regulatory reforms this year, including equal access to parental leave for same-sex parents, a ban on unnecessary surgeries for intersex children, and a ban on medical professionals performing conversion therapy.

In December, Chilean voters rejected a new draft constitution prepared by a committee of conservative legislators, which critics said was too right-wing and would limit rights for women, minorities, and queer people.

Brazil: A court found that homophobic slurs were covered under existing hate speech laws this year. The federal government also announced that it would permit asylum claims based on persecution of LGBTQ people.

A bill to criminalize conversion therapy was introduced in the Brasilia district legislature, but has not advanced, as far as I can tell. Conversion therapy is already banned for medical professionals nationwide.

Amazonas’ state legislature passed a law prohibiting children and adolescents from participating in the annual LGBT Pride festival. Similar laws have been proposed in other states.

Argentina: The big development was the election of “anarcho-capitalist” Javier Milei as President in November. While Milei is not exactly LGBT-friendly, he’s so far seemed to regard the community with a malign indifference rather than hostility, but it’ll be worth keeping an eye on developments here.

Oddly, something worth keeping an eye on might be Argentina-UK relations. Milei is known to be a big fan of former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who is, shall we say, not particularly popular in Argentina, due to her government’s victory in the Falklands War. He’s floated trying to come to some settlement with the UK over the territories, but I wouldn’t hold my breath on it.

Read the whole series – Part 1: North America | Part 2: Latin America & Caribbean | Part 3: Asia | Part 4: Africa and Oceania | Part 5: Europe | Part 6: Global Trends

Read the whole series – Part 1: North America | Part 2: Latin America & Caribbean | Part 3: Asia | Part 4: Africa and Oceania | Part 5: Europe | Part 6: Global Trends

It’s the end of the year, and news has slowed to a trickle, which makes this a nice time to look back on the progress we’ve made and the challenges we’ve faced as a global queer community in 2023.

I’ve been writing these posts for a decade now over on my website, and I know that many of my readers appreciate the context these posts provide. It’s important to understand that even in times when it appears that the world keeps dragging itself backward, the overall picture across the globe is one of tremendous progress, and 2023 has been no different. While we’ve seen major advances in LGBT rights in every corner of the globe, worrying trends have emerged that are putting real queer people in danger and should not be overlooked.

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In today’s post, I’m going to look at developments in North America, which, although it’s only three countries, gets its own post because they’re all federations with lots of jurisdictions to keep track of.

Canada

Canada has already achieved most of the major 2SLGBTQI legal milestones that rights groups have been fighting for across the world, but that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t news to report here in 2023. And boy did I file a lot of reports about Canada this year for the Los Angeles Blade.

The most notable issue that’s arisen in Canada is a so-called “parents’ rights” movement, which is centered on the idea that school children cannot change the name or pronouns they use in schools, mirroring similar movements afoot south of the border. While this sounds reasonable on first blush, I’ve written about why it’s nonsense.

This started with a surprise policy announcement by the deeply unpopular conservative premier of New Brunswick, which led to resignations of two cabinet ministers. The policy was then mirrored by the conservative governments of Ontario and Saskatchewan, the latter of which actually passed a law that insulated the policy from challenges under the Charter of Rights. Manitoba conservatives attempted to turn it into an election issue and were resoundingly defeated. New Brunswick and Saskatchewan go to the polls in 2024 and may be able to test these policies on the hustings too.

Meanwhile, the federal Conservative Party started taking a harder turn against LGBT people in 2023, under new leader Pierre Poilievre, who’s attempted to make “parents rights” a central issue of his campaign, despite the fact that the federal government has absolutely no jurisdiction over education. The next scheduled federal election isn’t until 2025, but it’s possible the minority government falls before then.

And the governing federal Liberals have been somewhat feckless here. They’ve made basically zero response to an increasingly emboldened set of conservative provincial premiers attacking Charter rights, especially in Quebec, where the governing CAQ seems to just be violating the Constitution for sport at this point.

But it has to be noted that the federal government has made scant progress on the few promises it has made to 2SLGBTQI Canadians in 2023. A promised bill to ban medically unnecessary surgeries on Intersex children has not as yet materialized, and the federal government has also stood by while a deeply troubling internet censorship bill proposed by a conservative Senator is just a vote away from passing into law.

United States

LGBT issues continued to be deeply schizophrenic in the USA in 2023. Republicans in red states seemed to be competing to introduce and pass the most cruel and mean-spirited bills targeting queer Americans, but Democrats governing blue states went to work passing progressive legislation to improve queer Americans lives.

The biggest story in LGBT issues centered around trans rights in America, especially in red states. Republicans passed sweeping bills in red states that banned gender confirming health care for minors – with a clear plan to target all trans health care eventually. They passed bans on drag performance, many of which have been blocked by the courts for being unconstitutional. They passed laws banning legal gender change. They passed laws banning trans people from sex-segregated bathrooms, change rooms, and sports teams. They banned discussion of queer topics in classrooms or libraries – and again, these are subject to constitutional challenges across the country. They even censured a trans state representative in Montana over the most asinine reason – a tactic state Republicans have started using with abandon against minority Democratic legislators in a couple of states. Many of these bills were passed despite strong local objection, and over the vetoes of both Democratic and Republican governors. The sheer volume of anti-trans legislation has been hard to keep up with, to be honest. I recommend you follow @ErinInTheMorn on Twitter and Substack for regular updates on these laws across the country.

And this is all mirroring the disturbing trends coming from the courts. The Supreme Court punched an enormous hole through civil rights law with its 303 Creative decision, which essentially legalized discrimination in provision of goods and services in any business that calls itself a creative or expressive business. On the flip side, Biden managed to appoint dozens of judges to the federal bench, but this progress may stall if Democrats lose the Senate next year.

The flip side is what’s been going on in Democratic-governed states, where legislators and governors are pushing for greater and greater states rights. In many states, for example, they passed “shield laws” protecting queer people who migrate from red states to access trans health services or abortion services.

This trend was particularly evident in states where Democrats won trifectas (both state houses and the governor’s office) in 2022: Minnesota, Michigan, Massachusetts, and Maryland. In these states, we saw some key priorities advanced to enshrine queer rights. Minnesota and Maryland fully repealed their defunct sodomy, fornication, and adultery laws, while bills to do the same in Michigan and Massachusetts have been introduced and stand a good chance of passing next year (albeit that the Michigan bill appears to be flawed, in that it leaves a ban on oral sex in place). A bill to repeal Texas‘ sodomy law was introduced and looked promising for a minute when it was sponsored by a majority of the Texas House, but it was never brought to a vote. Twelve states in total still have sodomy laws on their books; the others are:  Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and South Carolina.

Minnesota and Michigan also banned conversion therapy, while the newly elected Democratic governor of Arizona banned the use of state funds for conversion therapy. The Republican-controlled legislature of Wisconsin used a procedural move to block the Democratic administration’s rule change that banned conversion therapy in the state. Meanwhile, Washington state’s conversion therapy ban withstood a court challenge, and the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal, which bizarrely leaves a circuit split on the issue (the 11^th Circuit Court has ruled conversion therapy bans to be unconstitutional, blocking them in Florida, Alabama, and Georgia).

Bans to the “gay/trans panic defense” were passed in Delaware and, surprisingly, New Hampshire, which is governed by Republicans. It’s about the only good news that came from a Republican-controlled state this year. A gay panic bill is also under consideration in Michigan.

Michigan also passed its first hate crime law that is inclusive of LGBT people – although this law is limited specifically to “institutional desecration.” A broader hate crime law is pending passage in the legislature. And in US Territories, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands enacted a hate crime law that includes protections for sexual orientation and gender identity.

Minnesota and Michigan updated their civil rights laws to fully include sexual orientation and gender identity as prohibited grounds of discrimination and to remove loopholes that allowed discrimination. Those states also fully repealed their abortion laws. Pennsylvania’s newly Democratic-controlled state house for the first time passed an LGBT non-discrimination bill, although it stalled in the Republican-controlled Senate. Dems are trying to win control of the Senate this year, but it may be a tough climb.

And that’s a good segue to the big story of 2024: Elections.

Most directly, LGBT rights will be on the ballot in at least two states. California will have a referendum on repealing Prop 8 – the defunct same-sex marriage ban – from its constitution, and New York will have a question on enshrining abortion and equality rights in the state constitution. Marriage ban repeals have also been proposed in Hawaii, Oregon, and Michigan. Hawaii’s is probably the most likely to end up on the ballot given the state’s lopsided Democratic control. Oregon Republicans blocked Democrats from passing a bill to put it on the ballot during this year’s session, and they may do so again in 2024. And it is extremely unlikely that Michigan Republicans will give Democrats the supermajority support in the state legislature required to put it on the ballot. Virginia Democrats, who recaptured the state legislature this year, are likely to try to restart the process for repealing its marriage ban with an eye on the 2026 elections at the earliest.

Minnesota Democrats are considering putting an abortion and equal rights question on their ballot in 2024 as well.

Of course, wherever Democrats win, they create a bulwark against further encroachment against LGBT rights by Republicans, and in that respect, look for Democrats to try to win control of state legislatures in Arizona, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Alaska, while trying to blunt Republican dominance or erase veto-proof majorities in Wisconsin, Kentucky, Kansas, North Carolina, Texas, and Florida, which may be bolstered in some cases by recent decisions undoing some of the most extreme Republican gerrymandering.

But federally, we’re headed for a very tight presidential election, likely re-running the 2020 Biden vs Trump matchup. Obviously, another Trump presidency would be another disaster. Democrats are also facing a slew of very tough races in the Senate, which they are likely to lose control of. However, they may be able to regain the House, thanks to recent redistricting decisions, which would help provide at least some bulwark against Republican excesses.

Other developments of note in 2023 include the US FDA finally ending the ban on blood donations from men who have sex with men, and the Pentagon beginning a review of the records of all people who were dishonorably discharged from the military for being gay.

Among Native American Tribal Jurisdictions, the Choctaw Nation legalizing same-sex marriage within its jurisdiction. A bill to legalize same-sex marriage in the Navajo Nation, the largest of the Native American Tribal jurisdictions, has been introduced but is currently being held up by some councilmembers who oppose it or want to hold a referendum on it. We’ll see how that develops in the new year.

Mexico

On paper, Mexico has advanced a lot of progressive legislation for queer people, especially over the last several years. However, in 2023, some of that momentum seems to have stalled.

A bill to ban conversion therapy has stalled in the federal Congress. It awaits a final vote that some legislators hope will come in February when Congress returns from break. Meanwhile, Queretaro, Sinaloa, Quintana Roo, and Morelos states passed local conversion therapy bans, bringing the total to 18/32 states that have such bans.

A rash of violence against LGBT people, especially trans women, has led to growing demands for hate crime laws. Last month, a federal legislator proposed the first nationwide hate crime law to protect queer people, but it awaits debate. Bills have also been proposed in several states, but none have passed yet. While researching this article, I found five states passed hate crime laws in 2021-2022 that I hadn’t included in previous years: Baja California, Campeche, Nuevo Leon, Oaxaca, and Quintana Roo. That brings the total to 22/32 states. A hate crime bill was also introduced in Durango, and one has stalled in Morelos state.

Durango became the latest state to update its laws to allow trans people to change their legal gender, bringing the total to 21. The federal government began allowing people to use an “X” gender marker on passports, as did the National Electoral Institute for voting cards. A bill to recognize non-binary gender was introduced in Mexico City.

Sinaloa state passed a law banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Federal law already prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender. Every state except for the State of Mexico has passed a law banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and either gender identity or gender.

I reported for Xtra this year on the persistence of laws that bar people living with HIV from being able to marry, despite a Supreme Court ruling that these laws are unconstitutional. They persist in nine states, although Puebla became the latest state to repeal its HIV marriage ban this year after a couple whose marriage license was denied made national headlines.

Although same-sex couples can marry in all Mexican states as of 2022, some had not codified this into their laws, particularly around adoption. None of these states did so this year.

Read the whole series – Part 1: North America | Part 2: Latin America & Caribbean | Part 3: Asia | Part 4: Africa and Oceania | Part 5: Europe | Part 6: Global Trends

Previous Posts: Introduction | Chapter 1: Lee/Kirby Era Part 1 | Chapter 2: Lee/Kirby Era Part 2 | Chapter 3: The Roy Thomas Era (1966-1968) | Chapter 4: The End of the Silver Age (1968-1970) | Chapter 5: Origins and Flashbacks Part 1 | Chapter 6: Silver Age Flashbacks Part 2 | Chapter 6.1: Voices of Pride | Chapter 7: X-Men: First Class Vol 1 | Chapter 8: X-Men: First Class Vol 2 Part 1 | Chapter 9: X-Men: First Class Vol 2 Part 2 | Chapter 10: The Hidden Years | Chapter 11: X-Men on Hiatus (1970-75) | Chapter 12: The Champions Part 1 (1975-76) | Chapter 13: The Champions Part 2 (1977-78) | Chapter 14: The College Years (1978-83) | Chapter 15: The New Defenders Part 1 (1983-84) | Chapter 16: The New Defenders Part 2 (1984-85) | Chapter 17: The End of the New Defenders (1985-86) | Chapter 18: X-Factor Part 1 (1986) | Chapter 19: X-Factor – Mutant Massacre (1987) | Chapter 20: X-Factor – Fall of the Mutants (1987) | Chapter 21: X-Factor – Inferno Prologue (1988) | Chapter 22: X-Factor: Inferno (1989) | Chapter 23: X-Factor – Judgment War (1989) | Chapter 24: X-Factor – X-Tinction Agenda (1990) | Chapter 25: X-Factor – Endgame (1991) | Chapter 26: X-Men: Blue and Gold (1991-92) | Chapter 27: X-Men: Dirty Thirty (1993) | Chapter 28: The End of the World (1994) | Chapter 29: Onslaught! (1995-96)

We’ve come to the end of the Scott Lobdell era of X-Men, and while this period featured some stories and characters that were frustratingly unresolved, Lobdell manages to bring his Iceman story to a pretty satisfying conclusion, as we’ll see.

But first…

DC/Marvel: All Access #1-4 (December 1996-March 1997)
Writer: Ron Marz
Artist: Jackson Guice

It’s the follow-up to the hugely successful DC vs. Marvel event of 1995! In that miniseries, the DC and Marvel Universes were briefly merged into the Amalgam Universe, which featured characters made of combinations of characters from the two publishers. The story ended with a new shared character called Access given the power to travel between universes and the responsibility to ensure they stay separate, because any incursions could lead to a new permanent amalgam. (Hey, that’s the plot of Hickman’s 2015 Secret Wars…)

Anyway, in this series, Access discovers that Marvel villains are turning up in the DCU while bringing Jubilee over to visit Robin, upon whom she developed a crush in the original mini. Access takes Batman to Dr. Strange to find the source of the incursions, and Jubilee brings an assortment of trigger-happy X-Men to defend Dr. Strange when Batman accuses him of being the cause. Access gets the JLA to defend Batman, and the two teams fight, until the real cause makes himself known – Dr. Strangefate, who survived the end of the Amalgam Universe and is trying to recreate it. After briefly merging the JLA and X-Men into the X-League, Dr. Strange and Access defeat Dr. Strangefate, and Dr. Strange creates a sort of mystical replacement home for the Amalgam characters, which will exist inside Access.

It’s not a particularly deep story, but it has some moments. Iceman is mostly just along with the X-Men to make up the numbers, but there’s a moment where his ice accidentally powers-up Aquaman, and later Dr. Strangefate merges him with Aquaman into King Ice.

Later in 1997, DC and Marvel do a second series of Amalgam Comics one-shots, which includes the debut of Iceman’s Amalgam Universe counterpart in JLX Unleashed #1. He’s merged with the Justice League’s Ice into the female character “Iceberg,” which is a fun bit of gender play with the character.

The Marvel Chronology project lists this story after the Graydon Creed story that runs through to Uncanny X-Men #340, but that doesn’t work as you’ll see when we get there.

And good luck finding this story! It’s not available on either Marvel Unlimited or DC Infinite, it’s never been republished in trades, and it’s unlikely ever to be.

Uncanny X-Men #338 (November 1996)
Writer: Scott Lobdell
Artist: Joe Madureira

In a subplot that will bubble under for the next few months, Iceman and Cannonball have gone undercover in anti-mutant presidential candidate Graydon Creed’s campaign team as Drake Roberts and Samson Guthry. I keep waffling between “this is so stupid” and “so stupid it’s great!”

Meanwhile in the main plot, Archangel’s giant death metal wings flake off revealing his natural wings underneath. Ozymandias shows up to hint that this is somehow part of Apocalypse’s plan. Angel flies off in a daze toward a church where Pyro is giving a confession that sounds like he’s trying to deliver a warning about the Brotherhood’s plan to assassinate Creed. Why he’d go to a church instead of calling the Avengers or X-Men, I can’t say. The X-Men arrive just as Pyro’s flame powers flare out of control due to the Legacy Virus, and Pyro’s boyfriend Avalanche spirits him away before he can confirm anything.

Also, the X-Men are trying to jog Joseph’s memory of being Magneto (we’ll learn later that he’s not) and Psylocke develops a new power to melt out of shadows.

 

X-Men #58 (November 1996)
Writer: Ralph Macchio and Scott Lobdell
Artists: Bernard Chang

Graydon Creed appears on Trish Tilby’s news talk show to defend himself from accusations that he’s a hate monger. At the time, I remember feeling like the entire Creed storyline was so over the top, and Creed so unbelievably stupid, that it couldn’t be taken seriously. But in the aftermath of two Donald Trump presidential campaigns, with literal Nazis proudly on the march in the United States, it now reads as oddly prescient.

The interview gets interrupted when Bobby’s father William Drake turns up in the audience to heckle Creed with accusations that his fascist agenda will eventually turn from mutants to anyone considered weak or different. In something of a refreshing turn, instead of the usual comparisons to race and religion (which might have read awkwardly given the racism arc Mr. Drake was in the middle of), he speculates that Creed will go after the sick, the elderly, and “welfare mothers” (a very 90s concern that was also frequently code for anti-Black racism). But… is Mr. Drake a secret socialist?

Meanwhile, it’s the anniversary of the Morlock massacre (again? We just did this in Uncanny X-Men #325) and Storm finds Gambit paying respects in the tunnels, which feels suspicious. This is of course leading up to the big reveal next year that Gambit recruited the Marauders for Mr. Sinister and led them to the tunnels at the beginning of the massacre. This all puts Gambit in a bad mood that explodes when he sees Joseph creeping outside Rogue’s bedroom window. They fight and Rogue calls them both pathetic. Not wrong.

 

Uncanny X-Men #339 (December 1996)
Writer: Scott Lobdell
Artists: Adam Kubert and Cedric Nocon

Mystique spots Iceman in the background of a TV report on Creed’s campaign, which she says, “changes everything.” This is the sort of thing that makes the X-Men’s plan here look incredibly stupid.

Meanwhile, Spider-Man (currently Ben Reilly, the Spider-Clone, but the X-Men don’t know that) drops by the mansion to warn the X-Men that Daily Bugle publisher J. Jonah Jameson is digging into Graydon Creed’s past – which, wouldn’t you expect that to be true? Wouldn’t every newspaper in America investigate a leading candidate for President?

No matter, the X-Men decide to tail Jameson to keep tabs on his investigation, and being in full idiot mode in this story, use the Beast to do it. Jameson spots him taking the same flight to London right away. It’s odd that the X-Men didn’t even consider leaking the truth to Jameson directly. It would at least be interesting to see the X-Men deal with the tricky politics of outing enemies. (Next issue, Cannonball dismisses the idea in a thought bubble as “fighting fear and loathing with more of the same”).

But before anyone can deal with this, Havok shows up and attacks the plane with his new Brotherhood (currently just one other member, the former Gene Nation member Ever) because, for some reason, he doesn’t want Jameson’s investigation to be seen helping mutants. Look, there’s a lot of stupidity in this issue, and frankly, the Brotherhood plot doesn’t actually get better over in X-Factor, where the creative team never seem to decide what Havok is trying to achieve.

And while all this is happening, Bastion executes the journalist Jameson was going to meet in London before he can reveal the secret of who Creed’s parents are.

 

X-Men #59 (December 1996)
Writer: Ralph Macchio and Scott Lobdell
Artists: Andy Kubert

We briefly check in with Bobby to confirm that William Drake refused to give his name upon being arrested for his outburst during the interview in the previous issue. I’m not sure what law Mr. Drake broke that would justify his arrest, but although Bobby is proud of the statements he’s given, he’s not rushing to his father’s aid either.

The rest of the issue is mainly filler as Cannonball has a chat with Creed, one of Creed’s assistants reveals she may have ties to the Askani somehow (this plot point is never resolved), and Hercules shows up to take Quicksilver away from the mansion. And Cyclops watches Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. It seems to cheer him up.

 

Uncanny X-Men #340 (January 1997)
Writer: Scott Lobdell
Artist: Joe Madureira

This is the classic Lobdell Iceman story that fans of the era remember.

After Bobby’s father stood up for mutants in X-Men #58, Creed has him beaten up as a show of force against Iceman, whom Creed has finally recognized was spying in his organization. While his father recovers in the hospital, Iceman decides to take a leave of absence from the X-Men.

After a rough few years of being portrayed as an unrepentant bigot, this story arc gets to complicate and humanize him a bit more by allowing him a moment of heroism. We get to see the old William Drake from the 60s who stood up for his son against bigots, and the moment is as moving for the readers as it is for Bobby.

Lobdell cleverly keeps Bobby and William from talking about their feelings to each other directly. Instead, Bobby talks about the distance he feels from his parents with Storm, who, as an orphan, has only been able to imagine what having parents in her life might have meant.

Meanwhile, William gets a brief moment with Gambit where he genuinely attempts to understand his son by asking what could possibly motivate him to put himself in danger when he could just pretend to be human and pass. Because Gambit doesn’t have the history with William that Bobby does, he’s able to actually engage with him without getting defensive, and they seem to make a genuine connection.

 

Also, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that it really does seem like William wants to set Remy up with Bobby here.

Meanwhile, Cannonball’s cover apparently hasn’t been blown and he has a meeting with Creed, but not before being accosted by his suspiciously large bodyguards, whom we’ll later learn are actually Omega Sentinels in disguise, planted by Operation: Zero Tolerance.

This story continues into X-Factor #130, which is an absolute mess of an issue that should just be avoided. There, Graydon Creed is killed by a mystery assassin, in what was supposed to kick off a thrilling mystery around who killed Graydon Creed. But with the lead story botched and Lobdell leaving the X-books, it basically goes nowhere until X-Men Forever reveals that it was a time-displaced Mystique.

The Marvel Chronology Project bizarrely places X-Men Annual ’96 here, but we covered it last time (and it really makes more sense there).

 

Wolverine #111 (January 1997)
Writer: Larry Hama
Artist: Anthony Winn

Wolverine returns to the mansion just in time for the Bobby’s going away party. Logan takes a moment to try to bond with him before he goes, much to Bobby’s annoyance. Logan acknowledges that their times at the mansion haven’t really overlapped, and that he didn’t go out of his way to get to know Bobby anyway. Nevertheless, Logan tells Bobby he respects him and will always be there for him.

It’s actually kind of a refreshing reminder that not all of these characters really get along. Bobby strongly disliked the “new” X-Men way back in Giant-Size X-Men #1, and unlike all the other original members, he never really came back to the team until X-Factor reconnected with them after “X-Tinction Agenda.” Even still, Bobby mostly stuck to his pals from the original team, and only really bonded with Rogue, Storm, and Colossus.

Storm also has a moment where she gives Bobby a rose grown in her greenhouse as a memento, and as something of a metaphor. She suggests that the X-Men, like the hothouse flower, can’t survive long outside a special environment – though the framing suggests she’s making the point more about Logan than Bobby.

There’s also some stuff here about Ogun, the inter-dimensional agency Landau, Luckman, and Lake, and Wolverine moving to an apartment in the city, none of which is particularly important, especially as Larry Hama’s run on the title is coming to an end.

This issue has never been reprinted in color and isn’t on Marvel Unlimited, but it will likely be in the Wolverine Epic Collection Vol 10 when it’s eventually published.

 

Marvel Holiday Special 1996 (December 1996)
Fifth Story “Humbug”
Writer: Tom DeFalco
Artists: Josh Hood

Wolverine mopes around the city monologuing about how he has never felt the Christmas spirit, while various X-Men do minor holiday deeds. Iceman stumbles across a pair of kids struggling to make a snowman with what little snow is one the ground, and makes them an ice sculpture of Santa and his reindeer. It’s, y’know, fine.

Marvel Chronology Project slips this one before Uncanny X-Men #339, but that doesn’t really make sense, given Iceman is in the middle of Creed’s campaign then. In any event, Creed’s election campaign would be well over by the time Christmas rolls around. Besides, It’s Christmas Eve in Uncanny X-Men #341, so it should logically be happening then.

The other stories in this anthology include a pretty good Kitty Pryde story that’s marred only by the fact the story turns on her favorite building in her hometown randomly being a Black church. Feels like a bit of a reach for one of Marvel’s most prominent Jewish characters to be honest, and it would’ve worked without that detail.

There’s also a short about the Rawhide Kid, a Marvel western character whom we would later find out is gay in the early 2000s. Before you ask, no, I’m not planning a Rawhide Kid reread.

This issue is not on Marvel Unlimited, but I’d wager on the Wolverine short being included in an eventual Wolverine Omnibus Vol 6, if not in Epic Vol 10. Maybe the Kitty short will end up in Excalibur Omnibus Vol 4, since its been left out of the Epic series.

 

X-Men Annual ‘97 (January 1997)
Writer: John Francis Moore
Artist: Steve Epting

(The Chronology Project lists this as coming before Wolverine #111, but Iceman clearly says he’s only visiting the X-Men in this story, so logically it should come after.)

Gamesmaster traps the X-Men in a fantasy world where all of their dreams come true until Jean frees them all. And if you’re thinking, “my, that sounds like the plot of an annual from just a couple years ago,” you’d be right!

In this version, Joseph is the sole X-Man who recognizes something is wrong, because for some reason, Gamesmaster can’t seem to effectively use his powers against Magneto or Joseph. That does have some precedence, since otherwise Gamesmaster would have known that Fabian Cortez didn’t actually kill Magneto back in X-Men #3 or that Joseph isn’t really Magneto.

Once again, oddly, Bobby’s fantasy appears at first to be that he made the cover of “Teenthrob Magazine,” and he’s constantly hounded by teenage girls. This is actually the first thing that sets Joseph’s alarm bells off that something’s wrong, so it seems like at least someone is aware of how odd it seems that Iceman is into girls.

Or is he?

It’s worth noting that the supposed fantasy involves strictly underage girls with whom Bobby would never be expected to consummate a relationship. Or, as Bobby responds to a girl who shouts, “I wanna have your baby,” at him:

“Whoa, let’s be realistic here.”

While Bobby’s away from the X-Men, Beast and Cannonball find Karma’s missing siblings in the Beast miniseries. Gambit, Bishop, Rogue, Joseph, Beast and Trish Tilby are sent to the Shi’Ar empire to stop a Phalanx invasion in Uncanny X-Men #341-347. The remaining X-Men fight Candra in X-Men #60-61, then team up with Shang-Chi to fight the Kingpin in Hong Kong in X-Men #62-64. X-Men Unlimited features a couple egregious filler stories, including one that’s actually an issue of Silver Surfer.

 

X-Men Unlimited #15 (January 1997)
Writer: Howard Mackie
Artist: Duncan Rouleau

When Chris Bradley – remember, he was the new mutant with the Legacy Virus that Iceman bonded with in X-Men Unlimited #8 – faces increased bullying and violence in his community, his mother calls Bobby at his parents’ house to ask for help. Unfortunately, by the time Bobby gets there, Chris has run away to meet up with Maverick, who is now in the advanced stages of the virus. Together, they dodge Iceman and a trio of humans who want them both dead as revenge for the time they foiled their plan to bomb a clinic that helps mutants with the virus (no I didn’t miss an issue; this all happened in flashback). Iceman calls in Wolverine for help, the baddies are stopped again, and Maverick agrees to take Chris under his wing.

This is all a trailer for the short-lived Maverick solo series, one of many concepts Marvel tried launching in 1997 to fill the void created by cancelling most of their legacy titles to launch “Heroes Reborn.” Although this period is little remembered, two of those properties have managed to continue off and on for 25+ years: Deadpool and Thunderbolts.

Anyway, despite art that is frankly hard to look at and some overwrought prose in the narration, this is actually a fun little story for Iceman, who gets to awkwardly attempt to slot into the mentor role that he really doesn’t see himself as built for. It’s also chock full of little queer Easter eggs if you’re looking for them.

First, the script misspells his name as the more feminine “Bobbie” twice – and both times on pages that also give the correct spelling, which is some ace copy editing. The opening narration really plays up how Bobby’s mutation led him to find a new family in the X-Men, driving him “further and further away from his birth family.”

When Bobby finds Chris about to destroy a Friends of Humanity storefront office – which is decorated with a cross, explicitly linking the group to conservative Christian fundamentalism, bringing the mutant-as-homosexual metaphor to the forefront – he attempts to talk him down with some wisdom that recalls what he learned from his own origin of being pursued by bullies and a torch-wielding mob. But Chris isn’t interested in hearing him, because he’s so disappointed in Bobby for not being there when he needed him.

And Chris has a point! As I said about his first appearance, it’s beyond callous that the X-Men just pack Chris off to go back to his small town, instead of inviting him to stay with the X-Men, or at least packing him off to the Generation X school. On the other hand, the fact that the Bradley’s have Bobby’s parents number indicates that he must’ve been in regular contact with them.

And in another little Easter egg, one of the assassins complains that he wants to get home to watch Xena: Warrior Princess, which was a popular lesbian action-fantasy series at the time.

Finally, Bobby does seem to act a little jealous when Chris chooses to go with Maverick rather than follow Iceman back to his parents.

Oddly, this issue has never been reprinted, thought it should have been in ­X-Men: The Trial of Gambit. Perhaps they’re waiting to do a Maverick Complete Collection.

 

X-Men #65-69
“Operation: Zero Tolerance”
Writer: Scott Lobdell, Steven Seagle
Artist: Carlos Pacheco, Salvador Larocca, Pascual Ferry

“Operation: Zero Tolerance” is one of those messy crossover stories where there isn’t a clear reading order, because the books are mostly just dealing with their own stories while fending off Bastian’s Prime Sentinels (very oddly, X-Factor skirts the whole crossover). It has a bit of a sour reputation, mostly for ending in what seems like an anti-climax – where the government just shuts the whole thing down after a debate that mostly takes place off-panel. That’s a fair criticism, but I’ve always had a soft spot for this story and for the ending. In particular, these chapters that spotlight Iceman are actually quite fun and memorable.

Bastian finally makes his move, launching the mutant-hunting program Operation: Zero Tolerance with the full support of the US government (and several other states that do not get specifically named). In his first move, he captures the X-Men on their way home from Asia – their story then picks up over in Wolverine. But when news breaks of the X-Men’s capture, Bobby feels a duty to act, and, in a fitting conclusion to their story, his father whole-heartedly supports him.

Okay, it’s not really a conclusion, because the 2015 Iceman series decides that Bobby’s parents are bigots again, but, alas. I choose to believe this is the real William Drake and the one in the Iceman series is a refugee from the Ultimate Universe post-Secret Wars.

Anyway, Bobby goes to find Bronx doctor Cecilia Reyes, a part of Xavier’s Mutant Underground that Bobby has been tasked with protecting in the event the mansion’s files are ever compromised (Bastian took the mansion over in Cable #45-47). He arrives at her hospital just as a group of Prime Sentinels out her to her colleagues and attempt to arrest her.

Reyes is a mutant who refused Xavier’s offer to join the X-Men “three years ago” (which I’m guessing would place it around the early days of the New Mutants, before Xavier goes to space), because she wanted to be a doctor and live a normal life. She spends a big chunk of the crossover complaining about how her life has been ruined because she’s now been outed as a mutant, in scenes that have obvious parallels. Bobby does his best to be sympathetic, but as he keeps acknowledging, leadership and mentorship don’t really come naturally to him. Lobdell gives Bobby and Cecilia somereally fun scenes throughout this story.

Bobby and Reyes eventually find themselves lured into a trap by Angel’s ex-girlfriend, NYPD Detective Charlotte Jones, who’s being coerced by O:ZT agents who’ve kidnapped her son. They get rescued by the unlikely pair of Israeli superhero Sabra – who has Mossad intel about Bastian’s origins and weakness – and Marrow, who editorial had decided was going to join the X-Men, despite the fact that she’s a serial murderer. Luckily, Bobby doesn’t know much of anything about her, and this is a problem for the new writing team to follow.

The four finally make it to the Connecticut home of Rose Gilberti, a woman whom Bastian identifies as a sort of mother figure, in a speech that rather obtusely hints at his origin (A year later, the Cable/Machine Man 1998 Annual will confirm that Bastian is a combination of Nimrod and Mastermold, born after they passed through the Siege Perilous in Uncanny X-Men #256).

Iceman heroically decides to face off against Bastian, one-on-one, while delivering a speech that hammers home the themes of Lobdell’s run – love over hate, freedom over revenge – which draws heavily on what Bobby learned from his story with his father. It’s pretty great.

I can sympathize with the criticism that the ending feels very deus ex machina, but on the other hand, especially in these chapters, Lobdell takes pains to showcase how many bystanders are not on board with O:ZT and are actually horrified by the existence of Prime Sentinels and their actions. It may have been more satisfying if the X-Men’s actions more directly played into the government’s decision to shut everything down, but in a weird way, this feels closer to the reality that oppressed people often feel with regard to hostile governments – buffeted about by their whims, until one day something changes, and then they’re not.

And if you treat this as an endpoint in Lobdell’s arc, there are seeds going back through to at least the beginning of “X-Cutioner’s Song” of the X-Men making broader appeals for public acceptance and even reaching détente with Senator Kelly.

“Operation: Zero Tolerance” has an epilogue in X-Men #70, but since that issue also serves as an intro to the Kelly/Seagle era, I’ll save it for next time.

 

And that’s the end of the Scott Lobdell era of X-Men – a particularly divisive era among fans, but one I’ve always cherished as it’s where I began collecting. In retrospect, Lobdell’s strongest bits have always been his smaller character stories, and his long Iceman arc is among his best.

Lobdell’s Iceman stories also probably contributed more to the “Iceman is gay” fan theories than any other writer’s, if only because these stories were more widely read than the any that came before and because they coincided with the rise of internet fandom that dissected every moment of these issues in ways that just didn’t exist when Champions, New Defenders or the original X-Men book were being published. It’s also worth noting that this coincided with growing visibility of gay and lesbian people in the early 1990s online and in media.

Of course, Marvel had a pretty strict “no homosexuals” policy during much of this time – despite Northstar coming out in an issue of Lobdell’s Alpha Flight in 1992, the 1994 Northstar miniseries reverted to only using innuendo despite the fact that the whole plot was that a homophobic general wanted to kill him because he’s gay. Of course, that only fueled fan speculation more, as fans sought to look for clues that writers placed in the books to indicate characters were gay without saying so outright. In other words, if you can’t say “gay” anywhere, readers start to find “gay” everywhere.

And the X-writers of this era certainly gave Iceman fans plenty to work with – not just Lobdell, but also Fabian Nicieza and Howard Mackie.

Next time: Going forward, Iceman’s appearances become a bit sporadic until the 2001 reboot, as the Kelly/Seagle era most focuses on new characters before getting shunted aside in another editorially-mandated reboot. But there’s still some key stories of interest in this era, particularly as Seagle does an original team reunion and then Alan Davis builds towards “The Twelve” story. If you want to read in advance, you’ll find most of the relevant issues in X-Men: Blue Vol 0 and X-Men vs. Apocalypse: The Twelve.

Where to find these issues: Unless noted, they’re all on Marvel Unlimited. The Uncanny X-Men and X-Men issues were reprinted in X-Men: Onslaught Aftermath and X-Men: Operation Zero Tolerance. The Wolverine issue will likely one day be reprinted in Wolverine Epic Collection Vol 10.

 

 

Earlier in this series – Part 1: North America | Part 2: Latin America and Caribbean | Part 3: Africa and Oceania | Part 4: Asia | Part 5: Europe

We’ve come to the end of the series!

Here, I’m going to discuss the progress LGBT people made in some key international organizations, summarize some of the trends around the world in 2022, and look ahead to developments we should watch for in 2023.

International Organizations

United Nations 

In July, the United Nations Human Rights Council voted 23-17-7 to renew the mandate of the Independent Expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity for an additional three years. The Independent Expert position was created in 2016, and must be renewed every three years. The vote is always controversial, as you can imagine, given the large number of UN members whose governments are hostile to LGBT rights.

The UN also provided retroactive pension benefits for same-sex spouses of its staffers this year.

In 2022, Denmark and Honduras were admitted to the UN LGBTI Core Group as a pair. The UN LGBTI Core Group is a regular meeting of countries that are committed to promoting rights for LGBTI people internationally. New members in the group are vetted to ensure that they actually uphold (or are trying to uphold) the values the group shares, and new members can only join in pairs – one from the “Global North” and one from the “Global South.”

There are several other “Global North” countries that we can imagine would like to join – primarily EU members and their neighbors, but they would need to find a “South” country to join with. There are some potential members among this group, depending on if their governments actually want to draw attention to developments on LGBT rights in their countries: India, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Fiji, Belize, Panama, Namibia, Seychelles, Mauritius, and any of the Caribbean states that decriminalized sodomy this year or are expected to do so next year.

The UN Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women ruled in a case against Sri Lanka that the country’s ban on lesbian sex is illegal discrimination against the CEDAW Convention. The UN Human Rights Committee had already ruled that sodomy laws violate the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCOR) way back in 1994. The CEDAW decision is particularly important because CEDAW has been ratified by far more countries than the ICCPR. CEDAW has between ratified by 189 states – every UN member except for the Iran, United States, Sudan, Somalia, Tonga, and Palau. That includes 15 states that criminalize sodomy but have not ratified the ICCPR (Brunei, Comoros, Kiribati, Malaysia, Myanmar, Oman, Saint Lucia, Saudi Arabia, Solomon Islands, South Sudan, Tonga, Tuvalu, UAE, Cook Islands and Niue). Although the ruling doesn’t have an immediate impact on member states, it’s another arrow in the quiver that can be used in domestic legal challenges to sodomy laws.

Commonwealth of Nations

Within the Commonwealth of Nations (sometimes erroneously called the British Commonwealth), the moves of four countries to decriminalize gay sex (Antigua & Barbuda, St. Kitts & Nevis, Barbados, and Singapore) and the addition of two Francophone African member states (Gabon and Togo) shifted the balance of countries where gay sex is legal vs illegal to 24-32 (not counting Cook Islands or Niue, which are not full members). If the four remaining Caribbean states with sodomy law challenges pending decriminalize it in 2023, that will bring the ratio to 28-28, tying these states for the first time. But because there are also proposals pending to decriminalize sodomy in Namibia and Sri Lanka, as well as a case before the Supreme Court of Mauritius, next year could be the first year that states where gay sex is legal outnumber the criminalizing states in the Commonwealth.

There are also long-standing proposals to add certain members, including Suriname, South Sudan, Burundi, Zimbabwe, and possibly Cook Islands, which is seeking UN membership, but no new members are likely to be added before the next Heads of Government meeting in Samoa in 2024.

Along with sodomy laws, another legacy of the British Empire is the death penalty in the criminal codes of many former colonies. In 2022, two Commonwealth members ended capital punishment: Zambia and Papua New Guinea. The two former French colonies that joined also do not have the death penalty. Malawi’s courts reinstated the death penalty in law, however a moratorium on its use is in place. On this issue, the balance is currently 32 member states have the death penalty (10 with a moratorium in place) to 24 without capital punishment. Ghana and Sri Lanka are considering ending the death penalty.

Organization of American States

The OAS emerged as a major locus of LGBT advocacy with twin rulings from the Interamerican Court in 2018 that found that the Interamerican Convention on Human Rights protects the right to same-sex marriage and legal gender change in a case from Costa Rica.  Nothing quite as earth-shattering as that happened this year, but the Interamerican Commission did applaud the rulings decriminalizing sodomy in St. Kitts & Nevis and Antigua & Barbuda this year. It seems the Court has never yet ruled on the legality of sodomy laws under the convention — most of the members that have sodomy laws still on the books have not accepted the jurisdiction of the court anyway. The Commission has, however, recommended that Jamaica repeal its sodomy laws, and has also taken on a case from Jamaica seeking equal marriage rights. You’d think this would be open and shut given the 2018 ruling, and yet.

European Union

The European Union has long been an advocate for LGBT rights, both in and out of the Union. The EU has been trying for years to push for at least recognition of legal same-sex marriages and parenthood across the Union, for the very obvious reason that if a family stops being a family when they move from Germany to Poland, that’s a real impediment to free movement, which is supposed to be one of the pillars of the EU. The European Court of Justice has actually ruled this way since 2018, but in practical terms, not all states are actually carrying out the ruling (hello, Romania). The European Commission is trying to push a firm law on this, but it appears that Poland, and possibly other Eastern European countries, will veto it.

The EU accepted three new candidate countries (Ukraine, Moldova, and Bosnia-Herzegovina), began negotiations with two more (Albania and North Macedonia), and has taken applications from two others (Kosovo and Georgia). We’re already seeing these states begin to make progress on LGBT rights in an attempt to bring themselves into alignment with the EU. Ukraine, for example, joined the Istanbul Convention on Domestic Violence, passed a law banning hate speech in broadcasting, and has begun talking about a civil union law. The Istanbul Convention is notable in that it includes a provision that the convention applies without discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, something that has become a lightning rod for conservatives in the holdout states who are seeking to block its ratification.

The EU also deepened its integration with existing members. Denmark dropped its defense policy opt-out (which was always silly, given it’s a tiny NATO member), while Croatia adopted the euro and joined the Schengen area on Jan 1, 2023. Bulgaria is set to join the euro in 2024, and both it and Romania may join Schengen later in 2023.

Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights

Distinct from the European Union is the Council of Europe, a body that’s meant to promote peace and human rights across the continent. In addition to the Istanbul Convention, the Council of Europe is responsible for the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights. And in 2022, some notable changes happened among its membership.

As discussed in the section on Europe, the Court found in 2015’s Oliari and Others v. Italy decision that the Convention does requires states to recognize same-sex civil unions, but several other decisions through 2016 confirmed that the Convention does not require recognition of same-sex marriage. But could that change?

With Russia being booted out of the Council of Europe and denouncing the Convention, the single largest state opposing same-sex marriage is no longer part of the Council. Moreover, with Slovenia, Switzerland, and Andorra legalizing same-sex marriage this year, the balance has shifted to 19 states out of 46 that endorse equal marriage. We may also see up to three more members legalize same-sex marriage in 2023, bringing it to just under a majority. Could this sway judges if a future case is brought to the court?

The Fight for Equal Marriage

Same-sex marriage took a giant leap forward in 2022, with it becoming legal in four countries: Chile, Switzerland, Slovenia, and Cuba, with legalization to come into effect in a fifth, Andorra, in early 2023. Also, Mexico‘s last seven states passed equal marriage laws, making it legal nationwide, drawing to a close a process that began in 2009. We also lost equal marriage in the UK territories of Bermuda and Cayman Islands, but got marriage recognition in American Samoa.

Civil unions are becoming less popular or acceptable as a half-step, but Latvia’s court has created a sort of civil union and several Japanese jurisdictions have started to create partnership registries.

This brings the total number of equal marriage states to 34, exactly half the current number of states that currently criminalize sodomy.

Looking ahead, there are a number of states that could legalize same-sex marriage in 2023. Liechtenstein’s Parliament seems to really want to pass a bill and is waiting on its government to draft one. Thailand could also pass a bill, but it seems like time is running out for it to happen before the next election.

India’s Supreme Court should rule on a same-sex marriage case next year too. We should also get a final resolution on the appeals of the same-sex marriage ruling from Aruba and Curacao, which could extend to Sint Maarten. There’s a court case pending from the UK Virgin Islands, as well as a referendum being proposed to block it. And we are also waiting on court cases from Panama and Namibia, though we have no idea when those decisions will come.

Czechia has a bill before Parliament that might get new urgency after Presidential elections this month. And if Greece’s opposition wins the next election, it has promised same-sex marriage, which could inspire Cyprus to pass it too.

Meanwhile, Lithuania has a civil union bill pending, and Ukraine has also promised one.

Decriminalizing Sodomy

In 2022, five states ended their laws criminalizing sodomy: Antigua & Barbuda, Saint Kitts & Nevis, Barbados, Singapore, and South Korea (military code only). Indonesia introduced a new law criminalizing extramarital sex, but it’s not clear if it applies to gay sex, and the country was also counted as a criminalizing state, because gay sex was already illegal in its autonomous Aceh province.

This brings the total number of states that criminalize LGBT people down to 68.

Looking ahead, we’re very likely to see several states decriminalize sodomy in 2023. Court challenges to sodomy laws are expected to net rulings in Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and we might even see a ruling come out of Mauritius. The parliament of Cook Islands is expected to pass a new Crimes Bill that decriminalizes sodomy in March, which it has been debating since 2017. A bill is also before the Sri Lanka parliament, and the government has said it doesn’t oppose it. Namibia’s government has also talked about decriminalizing sodomy but has not put forward a bill to do so.

If you’re looking at the trajectories of these numbers, it sure seems like we are heading toward a world where there are more countries that allow legal same-sex marriage than criminalize sodomy. If all of these countries we’re looking at in 2023 go our way, the ratio of equal marriage countries to criminalized sodomy countries will shift from 34:68 to 42:60. To reverse that balance, we’d need a total of 18 further countries to decriminalize sodomy or legalize same-sex marriage.

It’s not hard to imagine where we get those. Jamaica, Guyana, and Malaysia could all see successful decriminalization campaigns in the near term, and there has been a movement to help Pacific island states update their colonial criminal codes, which are a further seven possible states.

On the marriage front, we have to believe that equal marriage is going to become the norm across the EU by the end of the decade, which would put another ten states in play, as well as the other two microstates Monaco and San Marino, plus the nine candidate countries (Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Bosnia, Serbia, Albania, North Macedonia, Montenegro, and Kosovo). And same-sex marriage is also getting a big push from activists across Latin America, where Venezuela, Honduras, and Peru are probably the likeliest next states. That’s a total of 34 countries – and we’d only need to win in about half of them to flip the ratio.

Equal Marriage vs Sodomy Law States by Population

Another way to look at these numbers is by population. The 34 equal marriage countries have a combined population of around 1.34 billion. The 68 sodomy criminalizing countries have a combined population of around 2.08 billion (including all 275 million people who live in Indonesia, even though it’s only illegal in Aceh province, population 5.3 million). If India legalizes same-sex marriage next year, that alone will double the global equal marriage state population to around 2.7 billion, vastly outnumbering those who live in criminalizing states.

Another 9 million people live in one of three states that gives some recognition to foreign same-sex marriages (Israel, American Samoa, and Sint Maarten). Additionally, a further 120 million live in one of the 12 states bound by the IACHR to introduce same-sex marriage (Suriname, Barbados, Peru, Guatemala, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Paraguay, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, and Bolivia).

On top of that, 235 million live in a state where some form of same-sex civil union is available (including 12 million in Bolivia, also counted above). Another 234 million live in Council of Europe states obligated by the Oliari decision to introduce same-sex civil unions.

Banning Conversion Therapy

Conversion therapy banned in 2022: Canada, France, Greece, New Zealand, Paraguay, Vietnam, Israel, India, and the Mexican states Jalisco, Baja California, Hidalgo, Puebla, Sonora, and Nuevo Leon

Banning conversion therapy has become a new major thrust of LGBT activism. I’m not wholly convinced that this is as pervasive a problem as some activists seem to believe, but it is undeniable that horrible, fraudulent pseudoscientific practices exist that prey upon vulnerable queer people and their families.

Bans on conversion therapy take different forms around the world. Some places limit their bans to therapies performed by licensed medical professionals, while others extend their bans to all persons purporting to be able to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Some only ban offering services for minors, while others prohibit the practice on all people. In some states, the practice is explicitly criminalized, with sanctions ranging from fines to jail time. In others, it can be a mere administrative infraction enforced by the government, with sanctions that include fines and deregistering of organizations and their charitable statuses. And in others, the practice is regulated solely by professional associations, under threat of license revocations.

Gay Blood Donation Bans

Bans ended in 2022: Austria, Canada, Cyprus, France, Greece, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Malta, Slovenia

During the height of the AIDS epidemic, many countries instituted bans on blood donations from gay men and other men who have sex with men, and sometimes their female partners. LGBT activists have long called for these bans to be revised to orientation-neural, behavior-based deferral policies. For example, some call for anyone who is celibate or monogamous to be allowed to donate, while those who have had recent new sexual partners are deferred. More and more countries are moving to this sort of model.

Summary

These were the major highlights in 2022.

Decriminalized sodomy: Antigua & Barbuda, Saint Kitts & Nevis, Barbados, Singapore, South Korea (military), US state Idaho (codification)

Same-sex marriage passed: Mexico (the last seven states), Slovenia, Andorra, Cuba

Same-sex marriage came into effect: Chile, Switzerland

Recognition of foreign marriage: American Samoa

Same-sex marriage re-banned: Bermuda, Cayman Islands

Registered partnership: Latvia, numerous Japanese prefectures and municipalities

Same-sex couple adoption and parenting: Faroe Islands, Slovenia, Andorra, Cuba, Liechtenstein, Croatia, Chile, Switzerland, and the Mexican states Quintana Roo and Baja California Sur

Conversion therapy banned: Canada, France, Greece, New Zealand, Paraguay, Vietnam, Israel, India, and the Mexican states Jalisco, Baja California, Hidalgo, Puebla, Sonora, and Nuevo Leon

Anti-discrimination laws: Antigua & Barbuda, Spain, and the US states Nevada, Michigan, and Pennsylvania

Gays allowed in the military: Kazakhstan, South Korea

Legal gender change: Suriname, Lithuania, El Salvador, Venezuela, Andorra, Switzerland, Slovakia, Lithuania, and the Mexican states Sinaloa and Zacatecas

End of gay blood ban: Canada, Ireland, Austria, Liechtenstein, USA, France, Greece, Cyprus, Slovenia, Malta, Lithuania

Looking ahead to 2023….

Likely to decriminalize sodomy, in declining order of probability: Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent & the Grenadines, Dominica, Grenada, Cook Islands, Mauritius, Namibia, Sri Lanka. Plus the US states Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, and Minnesota are likely to strike their defunct laws from their books.

Likely to pass same-sex marriage, in declining order of probability: Aruba, Curacao, Sint Maarten, Liechtenstein, India, UK Virgin Islands, Thailand, Bolivia, Czechia, Panama, Namibia, Greece, Japan

Likely to pass civil unions: Ukraine, Lithuania, more Japanese prefectures, UK Virgin Islands, other UK territories. Possibly also Latvia, Thailand, Serbia, Barbados, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo

Likely to ban conversion therapy: Mexico, Spain, Ireland, Netherlands, Belgium, Colombia, Norway, Austria, Iceland, Sweden, Finland, UK, the Australian states of Western Australia and Tasmania, and the US states of Minnesota and Michigan

Likely to end their gay blood donation ban: Iceland, Switzerland, USA

And that’s it for my annual wrap-up of global same-sex marriage and LGBT rights progress! Thank you for reading! 

But before we go, a programming note:

I write this blog and maintain the @LGBTMarriage Twitter feed unpaid on the side of my freelance journalism work. This entails hundreds of hours of research and writing, as well as hundreds of dollars spent out of pocket to host and maintain this web site.

If you like the work I do here, please consider supporting it, either by sending me a tip through Venmo or Paypal, or by purchasing a copy of my book of plays, SMASHING YOUNG MAN. Any contribution helps me keep this vital work going. Thank you for all your support!

Earlier in this series – Part 1: North America | Part 2: Latin America and Caribbean | Part 3: Africa and Oceania | Part 4: Asia

Europe is traditionally where we see a lot of major progress on LGBT rights given its large number of democracies with generally tolerant attitudes. This year was no different, but the headline issue in 2022 was the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine that began in February. While the invasion has obviously had an incredible impact on LGBT people in both countries, it also had ripple effects across the continent.

Fear of Russian aggression largely drew European countries closer together, deepening and accelerating the process of European/EU integration. This is important, because the EU and its institutions themselves have been big drivers of LGBT rights progress. There’s also been a bit of an element of ‘compare-and-contrast’ against the Russian government’s deep antipathy toward LGBT people that has motivated some progress in Europe — and exposed potential fault lines among the allies.

We’ll get to Russia and Ukraine in due time, but first, we’ll start with the European country that took the biggest leap forward in LGBT rights this year.

Western Europe

Andorra: The tiny principality between France and Spain finally passed its reformed Family Code, which includes a number of legal advances for LGBT people. The headline is that the law allows same-sex civil marriage for the first time, although there was a strange terminology question involved. The bill referred to those marriages as “casament civil,” while religious marriages were called “matrimoni,” but also clarified that “casament” is a form of “matrimoni.” To make things more confusing, both words translate from Catalan to English as “marriage.” The opposition parties held up the bill for more than a year over this issue, and after it passed, they took the law to court to ask a judge to erase the distinction. That case was resolved in December when the Constitutional Court ruled the distinction illegal, so now all couples can access “matrimoni.”

The new Family Code also gives trans people the right to change their legal name and gender, and allows single women and lesbian couples to access IVF. All of these should help the country bounce a few pegs up the ILGA Rainbow Europe scoreboard. What won’t help is that the new code eliminates “civil unions” as a concept in law – for some reason, ILGA-Europe wants countries to have both options, and weights them both equally, so Andorra gets no extra points for moving from civil unions to full equal marriage.

Spain: The national government passed a law that bans anti-LGBT discrimination in employment and provision of goods and services. Prior to this, only sexual orientation employment discrimination was prohibited nationally, however all of Spain’s autonomous communities had also banned gender identity employment discrimination except for Castille & Leon and Asturias. Earlier this year, the communities of Castilla La Mancha and La Rioja banned gender identity employment discrimination.

A broader LGBTI rights law, dubbed the “Trans Law,” is still under consideration by the Senate, having cleared the lower house just before Christmas. The main focus of debate was on how the law greatly expands gender self-determination for trans people, but it was subject to great debate over the cut-off age below which a judge must be involved – 16, 14, 12? Once again, most autonomous communities already have gender identity self-determination, with the exceptions being Castille & Leon and Asturias, which have no legal gender change, and Galicia, where a medical diagnosis is required. La Rioja and Castilla La Mancha passed their gender identity laws this year too. Beyond the gender issues, the bill also bans conversion therapy, bans cosmetic genital surgery on intersex babies, and gives lesbians and single women access to IVF (previously banned). When all of this passes, Spain will rocket up the Rainbow Map chart — though probably not until the 2024 edition, because ILGA-Europe stops counting laws passed after Dec 31.

The government also began work on a new family law recognizing and equating a wide scope of different family types for social benefits, including those headed by same-sex couples (“homoparental” families). I don’t know if this makes any functional difference for LGBT families.

France: The National Assembly passed a bill to ban conversion therapy. The government also ended its ban on blood donations from men who have sex with men. A court found that a transgender woman should be recognized as a “mother” to her child, conceived pre-transition. And the French people managed to keep the far-right out of the presidency in national elections.

Italy: Parliament failed to pass its bill banning anti-LGBT hate crimes and discrimination ahead of elections, which put a coalition of far-right homophobic parties firmly in power. Expect no progress on LGBT initiatives from Italy for the next four years – unless the coalition somehow collapses first. During the election, both the large opposition parties, the Democrats and the 5 Stars, came out in favor of same-sex marriage. Despite losing the election, the left-wing parties got the larger share of the vote, but failed because they could not come to an electoral coalition agreement.

The courts have already slapped down one policy created by members of this new government. A new requirement that a child’s identity documents list a “mother” and “father” was ruled to be false and discriminatory. The policy remains standing, however, and same-sex couples will have to sue to obtain documents that don’t misgender them.

Malta: The government ended the MSM blood donation ban.

Belgium: Cabinet proposed a bill to ban conversion therapy, but contrary to some reports, Parliament hasn’t even debated it yet, let alone passed it. Also during the year, it was reported that certain Catholic churches in Belgium were blessing same-sex marriages, in defiance of the Vatican.

Netherlands: The lower house passed a bill that would add sexual orientation and disability as prohibited grounds of discrimination under the constitution – it now needs to be ratified by a 2/3 majority of the Senate.

As discussed in the section on the Americas, the Dutch constituent countries Aruba and Curacao were subject to a court ruling requiring them to allow same-sex marriage, but the decision is currently stayed pending a possible appeal. If it stands, it is likely that the remaining country, Sint-Maarten, with have its ban challenged as well.

Luxembourg: The grand duchy didn’t record any legislative progress on key issues for the LGBT community, which is seeking a ban on cosmetic surgeries on intersex children, and automatic parental recognition for same-sex parents.

United Kingdom: The UK lurched from crisis to crisis this year and got very little accomplished under three separate Prime Ministers and two monarchs. In January, the government announced a plan to purge all historical anti-gay convictions, but nothing has been heard of it since. No progress was made on a long-promised ban on conversion therapy, after the Boris Johnson government flip-flopped for months on whether it would include protection for trans people – his successors have been mum on the subject.

In small victories, the government ratified the Istanbul Convention on Domestic Violence, which includes inclusive language for LGBT families, and Wales added compulsory, inclusive sex education to its school systems. Northern Ireland’s government received a report calling for reforms to its gender recognition laws, but it also failed to have a government for most of 2022, largely because the anti-LGBT DUP refused to join an executive after it lost the May elections, and the province requires the largest unionist and republican parties to share the executive to function. The UK government has been trying to force the parties together, but may instead call new elections in April.

Scotland’s parliament passed a law allowing trans people to self-determine their legal gender right before Christmas, but the UK government has announced it may block it from receiving Royal Assent.  Scotland is also working toward its own comprehensive conversion therapy ban.

Among the Crown Dependencies, the Isle of Man announced that it was working on ending the MSM blood donation ban, with a target of 2023 to revise its systems. Last year, Jersey and Guernsey said the same thing, but I can’t find any information indicating they did so.

As discussed in the section on the Americas, the Privy Council ruled against same-sex marriage in the UK territories of Bermuda and Cayman Islands, a separate same-sex marriage case is winding through the Virgin Islands courts, and a UK Lord has proposed a bill that legalize same-sex marriage in all six remaining UK territories (the others are Anguilla, Montserrat and Turks & Caicos Islands.) All UK territories are bound by the European Convention on Human Rights to implement at least some form of relationship recognition for same-sex couples.

Ireland: The government eliminated the blanket ban on blood donation from men who have sex with men. Cabinet approved adding protections for transgender people into hate crime laws, but the bill must still be passed by Parliament. A long-proposed conversion therapy bill remained stalled in Parliament.  

Central Europe

Slovenia: In July, the Constitutional Court ruled that excluding same-sex couples from marriage and adoption was unconstitutional, with immediate effect. The government welcomed the decision and codified it into law by October. This was a partial reversal of the 2015 referendum that overturned the government’s previous attempt to legalize same-sex marriage. This time, the court ruled that a referendum proposed by anti-LGBT groups seeking to overturn the decision and the law could not go ahead.

Also this year, the ban on blood donation from gay men was lifted, following a report from the equal opportunities ombudsman last year.

Croatia: The High Administrative Court rejected the government’s appeal of a 2021 decision that same-sex couples have a right to joint adoption. Croatia also deepened its ties to the EU – it will adopt the euro currency and join the Schengen free-travel area on January 1.

Switzerland: The law allowing same-sex marriage, adoption, and IVF came into effect in July, following last year’s referendum. Also coming into effect in January 2022 was a new law allowing gender identity self-determination. The federal parliament began discussion on a proposed conversion therapy ban and the government began discussions on ending the MSM blood donation ban.

Liechtenstein: Last year, the State Court gave the government one year to amend the law to allow same-sex couples in registered partnerships to adopt. The government presented a bill that would allow same-sex couples stepchild adoption only, but Parliament rejected it, meaning that full joint adoption became technically legal in July. The government accepted Parliament’s decision and eventually presented a bill to codify the court’s ruling into law in December. I believe the bill also grants access to reproductive medicine (eg., IVF) for same-sex couples. It will likely be debated and passed early next year.

Previously, the main obstacle to same-sex marriage was the Prince’s stated opposition to allowing same-sex couples to adopt, but this was now moot, so LGBT activists took advantage of the moment to push for full equal marriage. It obviously helped that all the other German-speaking countries have already legalized it. In November, Parliament passed a motion calling on the government to introduce a same-sex marriage bill. If the timelines sticks to recent patterns, I would expect to see a bill sometime in the spring, followed by a few months of debate and consultation ahead of a vote, and then possibly up to a year before the law takes effect sometime in 2024.

The government also approved a report that noted that the current language of the registered partnership law is gender-neutral, meaning it is technically already open for heterosexual couples, though none is known to have availed themselves of it.

As discussed below, the blood donation ban was scrapped by Austria, which manages Liechtenstein’s system, this year.

Austria: The government ended the ban on blood donation from gay men. Since they share a blood system, the end of the ban also applied to neighboring Liechtenstein. The government shelved proposals to allow automatic parenting recognition for same-sex couples and to broaden sex education, and has failed to introduce a long-proposed conversion therapy ban.

Germany: The new government created a Commissioner for Acceptance of Sexual and Gender Diversity and launched plans to make it easier for trans people to change their legal name and gender, and to allow a nonbinary option for anyone (currently restricted to intersex people).

Eastern Europe and Southern Balkans

Czechia: No progress was made on same-sex marriage under the new Parliament elected last October. A same-sex marriage bill was submitted with support from a cross-Parliament group of five parties, but although four of those parties are part of the governing coalition, it didn’t enjoy support from the government itself (which includes Christian Democrats, who are generally opposed).

In addition, the President threatened to veto same-sex marriage if it came to his desk, but that isn’t much of an issue because veto can be overridden with a simple majority vote of MPs, and the President’s term ends in early 2023. The first round of the Presidential election is Jan 13-14, and all three leading contenders have expressed support for same-sex marriage and adoption rights.

Equal marriage has long held majority support in polls in Czechia, and even enjoyed government support under previous PM Babis, who is now running for President. And yet, that support has rarely motivated legislators to act.

Could 2023 finally be the year that changes things? If so, it would be the second Slavic and post-communist country to legalize same-sex marriage after Slovenia did this year, and the first post-Warsaw Pact country to do so (yes, we’re really splitting hairs here!).

Slovakia: A teenage gunman murdered two gay men outside a Bratislava gay bar before turning the gun on himself in a hate crime that shook the nation and made headlines around the world. Unfortunately, it did not seem to move many politicians, who voted down a bill to create very limited registered partnerships for same-sex couples, only a few days later.

It should be noted again here that nearly every country in Europe (except Belarus and Russia) is obligated to create some form of relationship recognition under the European Convention on Human Rights, as determined by the 2015 ECHR ruling in Oliari and Others v. Italy.

The government introduced and then quickly revoked standards of medical care for transgender patients. Consequently, there were no longer any standards for legal gender change, and health care providers have been reluctant to treat trans patients seeking gender-related care. The Supreme Court later stepped in to rule that surgery and castration is no longer required for legal gender change.

Hungary: Democracy activists suffered a major defeat as autocratic and homophobic Prime Minister Orban won reelection in April, defeating a broad coalition of parties that had agreed to a progressive agenda just to get rid of Orban. A referendum to endorse the government’s strict law against “promotion of homosexuality” held at the same time failed due to low voter turnout.

The law, and Hungary’s general antipathy toward rule of law, democracy, and financial transparency, have been a major source of friction between Hungary and the rest of the EU. The EU has withheld much-needed financial assistance from Hungary, and Hungary has responded by vetoing EU programs, including most recently, holding up aid for Ukraine. Hungary reached an agreement to unlock those funds, only for the EU to block an even larger amount of regular funding to Hungary (€22 Billion) right before Christmas over those same concerns. To put that in perspective, that’s about €2,200 per Hungarian, or about 13% of the country’s GDP. Hungary has also withheld ratification of Sweden and Finland’s accession to NATO and refused to allow arms to flow to Ukraine through its territory — expect Hungary to try to trade the NATO vote to unlock those funds.

If anything is giving EU states hesitation about expansion, it’s Hungary’s deep democratic backsliding and intransigence over the past decade. None of the other members want to see the union held hostage by a half-dozen Orbans in a decade.

Poland: At the end of the year, the Polish government announced it would veto proposed EU regulations that would require all states to recognize parental relationships established in other states, including same-sex parents. It’s unclear how this will all shake out in the end.

Polish opposition leader Donald Tusk, who is gaining in opinion polls ahead of next year’s election, has promised to introduce same-sex civil unions and legal abortion as part of a campaign to modernize Poland if elected.

Also this year, the top appeals court ordered that four so-called “LGBT-Free Zones” be scrapped, the president twice vetoed a proposed education law that opponents said was designed to give the government power to exclude LGBT issues from schools, and Warsaw hosted KyivPride, due to the war in Ukraine.

Oh, and remember those “LGBT-free zones” from a few years ago? Some activists have made an updated “Atlas of Hate” marking where they are, including those that have been repealed, and areas facing continued lobbying from anti-LGBT activists to initiate them.

Romania: The Senate passed a “gay propaganda” law that would ban information about LGBT people and sex education for minors. It would also forbid minors from changing their legal gender. It awaits a vote in the Parliament’s lower house.

Bulgaria: Little happened here, as the government was mired in a political crisis for much of the year. Bulgaria formalized its plan to join the Eurozone, which it is expected to do on Jan 1, 2024.

Romania and Bulgaria were both blocked from joining the Schengen Area by Austria and Netherlands, but both believe they will be approved to join Schengen later in 2023.

Greece: Opposition leader and former Prime Minister Alexis Tsirpas came out in support of same-sex marriage and joint adoption and submitted a bill to legalize it in Parliament. He stands a decent change of leading the government again after July 2023 elections.

Meanwhile, the current government banned unnecessary surgery on intersex children, banned conversion therapy, and ended the MSM blood donation ban.

Cyprus: A conversion therapy ban was debated in Parliament shortly after Greece passed its own ban. It is still in progress. Look for same-sex marriage to become a live issue here if Greece legalizes it next year.

The government also eliminated a ban on blood donation from gay men and Parliament voted 39-4 to introduce mandatory, LGBT-inclusive sex education in schools.

The dispute with Turkey over Northern Cyprus remained a key flashpoint of conflict in the region. In one sign of peace and progress, the first Intercommunal Pride parade was held, in which marches from the North and the Republic met in the UN Buffer Zone between them.

Turkey: The increasingly authoritarian government in Turkey continued its crackdown on LGBT rights, banning Istanbul Pride for the eighth consecutive year. Marchers showed up anyway.

Despite being a NATO ally, Turkey spent much of the year attempting to play both sides in the Ukraine conflict,  refusing to join sanctions against Russia, holding up Sweden and Finland’s accession to NATO, and directly threatening to invade its neighbors – EU members Greece and Cyprus, as well as Syria. After all, Erdogan and Putin have a lot in common, as quasi theocratic autocrats who hate queer people. The difference is that Erdogan faces a competitive election next year.

Erdogan is trying to galvanize support by ginning up opposition to queers. He plans to put a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage on the ballot during the next election. It’s not entirely clear that this will generate much of an advantage for him, as the opposition doesn’t seem to be taking the bait to oppose the amendment. At time of writing, Parliament has not yet agreed to the referendum.

Scandinavia and Baltics

Denmark: Denmark joined the LGBTI Core Group at the United Nations. It also deepened its Euro-integration this year, by abolishing its previous opt-out of the common defense policy.

The Faroe Islands, one of its constituent countries, passed a law last December to grant equal parenting recognition for LGBT couples – including automatic parentage, parental leave, and inheritance. I assume it was ratified by Denmark early this year. Local elections this December returned a progressive majority for the first time in ages, leading some to hope that a comprehensive LGBT anti-discrimination law might finally be passed in the new year.

Sweden: The government proposed to reform the gender identity law, but no progress has been made on it. Both Sweden and its neighbor Finland abandoned neutrality and deepened Euro-Atlantic integration by applying to NATO, which they expect to join in the new year (after holdouts Hungary and Turkey ratify).

Both countries also have proposals to ban conversion therapy, but neither has advanced. In Finland’s case, it came from a popular petition to Parliament last year.

Norway: On the 50^th anniversary of the repeal of anti-gay laws, the government delivered a formal apology to all victims of the law.

Iceland: Parliament approved a resolution to reduce or eliminate the gay blood donation ban, but the actual ban is still in place. The government plans to announce a new policy and launch it in the new year.

An opposition MP also introduced a bill to ban conversion therapy, but it hasn’t advanced. The current government is dominated by conservatives.

Parliament passed a detailed LGBTI Action Plan for 2022-2025 in June, but it mostly refers to studies and training for government workers. It does set as a goal making Iceland one of the top states in ILGA-Europe’s Rainbow Map (it’s currently 11th with a score of 61%, just behind Montenegro). The main legislative commitments it includes are amending hate speech legislation to explicitly include intersex people (under the category “sex characteristics”), introducing a hate crime law, enacting regulations around trans health care, and ending the blood donor ban.

Estonia: The government continued to fail to introduce the laws that would make the 2016 civil union law effective. This leaves couples in limbo.

Lithuania: The government allowed gender and name change without surgery, but still requires a medical diagnosis of transgenderism. The government also issued the first standards of care for treating gender dysphoria. The government also ended the MSM blood donor ban.

The country’s laws restricting LGBT materials for youth were challenged in a case heard at the European Court of Human Rights. A decision has not yet been made.

Parliament also made progress on passing a limited civil union bill, which awaits a final vote, likely next year.

Latvia: A proposed civil union bill died when Parliament was dissolved ahead of elections. The elections shut out some progressive parties that just missed the threshold, putting a conservative bloc in power. An attempt to bring the bill back in the new Parliament failed.

Nevertheless, a 2020 Constitutional Court ruling ordering some form of recognition for same-sex couples stood, and Parliament missed its June 1, 2022 deadline. Since that date, same-sex couples have been able to register their relationships at court – and at least 16 couples have – although it’s not clear what rights accrue to these couples. It’s likely that will be the subject of additional litigation, unless Parliament steps up and passes a formal law.

Western Balkans EU Aspirants

Bosnia & Herzegovina: A proposed civil union bill in the federation half of the country has not advanced.  Bosnia was also accepted as an EU candidate country, though its barely functional national government remains an obstacle to accession.

Kosovo: A draft civil code that included same-sex civil unions was rejected by Parliament.

Kosovo has made little progress on resolving its bilateral conflict with Serbia, as both sides took turns needling each other all year. Kosovo formally submitted an application to join the EU this year, but the organization has not made a decision to grant it candidate status yet. Five EU member states do not even recognize Kosovo as a state (Spain, Slovakia, Greece, Cyprus, and Romania). The EU did advance a proposal to allow Kosovars visa-free travel to the Schengen Area starting January 2024 at the latest.

Montenegro: The big news here was Montenegro’s fantastic placement in ILGA-Europe’s annual ranking of countries based on how they treat LGBT rights. The country scored 8^th out of Europe’s 49 countries, beating out notable hell holes for queer people like Germany, Netherlands, Spain, the UK, and Ireland. If you think this is surprising, you may join the other half-million Montenegrins. For a little perspective, there isn’t a single gay bar in the entire country. This, to me, indicates that there’s either something wrong with ILGA-Europe’s research or their metrics (or probably, both).

There were no notable legislative advancements for LGBT rights in 2022. Montenegro continues slowly on its path to accession in the EU, though no tangible progress was charted this year either.

North Macedonia and Albania: Both countries were allowed to begin EU accession negotiations after Bulgaria lifted its veto over North Macedonia in the summer. A possible obstacle to North Macedonia’s accession is that the deal with Bulgaria requires constitutional amendments recognizing a Bulgarian minority and culture, and the government may not have the supermajority of votes to pass it next year. The deal also requires North Macedonia to introduce a hate speech law (to prevent speech hateful of Bulgarians), which could possibly be extended upon introduction to protect LGBT people.

Serbia: A long-proposed civil union law never materialized.

Eastern EU Aspirants

Ukraine: Obviously, the government’s main focus this year has been mere survival in the face of a genocidal army. However, the ongoing war has led to some social progress to be proud of.

Ukraine got off the fence and sought membership in the EU, surely motivated by the fact that its survival as an independent state is currently in jeopardy without allies. The EU has accepted Ukraine’s candidacy, but no one believes it will be admitted soon, even after the war ends. However, it puts it on a path toward stability, democracy, and rule of law. In a bid to show off its bona fides, Ukraine took some initiatives like ratifying the Istanbul Convention on Domestic Violence (this may also have been motivated by the highly disturbing number of reports of sexual assaults committed by the invaders). Ukraine’s parliament also unanimously passed a new Broadcasting Law, which includes a ban on incitement to hatred of LGBT people — also a requirement of EU membership. It sure seems like Ukraine is taking its bid for EU membership more seriously than some of the Western Balkans countries that have been recognized candidates for a decade.

Ukraine has also made a bid for NATO membership, but no invitation has been made yet – NATO is unlikely to invite a member with an ongoing war against Russia.

There are anecdotal reports of greater tolerance for LGBT people in Ukraine these days, in the wake of many stories of queer soldiers fighting on the front lines. Many have chosen to identify themselves with unicorn badges, making them highly visible. Many people became sympathetic to soldiers who knew that their partners might not be notified or be able to retrieve their bodies if they are injured or killed in action, because there is no recognition of their relationship. Millions of Ukrainians being displaced in Western countries that have more visible gay communities may be helping as well. And polls are showing the dramatic change in attitude, with one poll suggesting antipathy toward LGBT people has dropped from 60% to 38%, while support for civil unions or equal marriage is also growing (though still not in majority territory).

In July, a formal petition was launched seeking same-sex marriage in Ukraine, and it gathered 28,000 signatures, forcing a response from President Zelenskyy. In August, he said that he supported same-sex marriage but could not amend the constitution to allow it under the state of emergency. He proposed legalizing civil partnerships and directed his government to draft a bill, but thus far nothing has materialized.

Due to the war, KyivPride was held in Warsaw this year.

Georgia: Georgia applied for EU membership, but the union decided to defer accepting it as a candidate.

Moldova: Pushed by the conflict in neighboring Ukraine, Moldova applied for EU membership and received candidate status. No one thinks it will be admitted soon, but it puts the small country clearly on a path toward liberalization.

The conflict has also, possibly, opened up the possibility of future rapprochement with the breakaway Transnistria region. Russia had been hoping to sweep through Ukraine and absorb the breakaway republic, but the halt and reversal of Russia’s advance, and the frequent cuts to Russian gas exports to the territory, have left it in a precarious position. Another possibility that had been discussed by analysts this year was that Ukraine might invade Transnistria to deny Russia an ally that would encircle it, but that does not seem to be a priority for Ukraine. EU investment in the region might help woo it back, but the territory is a basic thugocracy that the EU doesn’t seem interested in working with for good reasons.

And of course…

Russia

Russia accelerated its campaign of brutalizing its LGBT citizens – and those of other countries. It greatly expanded its “LGBT propaganda” law, banning basically all discussion or presentation of LGBT people or issues in public. This is all of a pattern with Russia’s general crackdown on opposition, pro-democracy, and anti-war voices across the country. This has included blocking or dismantling social media outlets that had previously allowed activists to amplify messages.

Of course, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine means that Russia is brutalizing the queer people of Ukraine as well – both in the territories it has illegally annexed (this blog does not recognize the annexations of Ukrainian territory) and in the territories it has been bombing since February.

The West has finally woken up to Russia’s nonsense, and sanctions against Russia have helped reduce the spread of Russian propaganda and disinformation around the world – at least through official channels like Russia’s state propaganda channel RT, which previously had licenses around the world. Russia has continued to use social media to spread anti-LGBT hate around the world, often on official embassy channels and directed at western politicians. The irony that they can do this in the west while they block Facebook, Instagram and Twitter domestically is apparently lost.

Another consequence of the invasion is that Russia was finally booted from the Council of Europe, an organization distinct from the European Union which includes all European states (except Belarus and now Russia) which is dedicated to promoting pan-continental peace and human rights, principally through the European Convention on Human Rights and its Court. Russia has also denounced the Convention. As a consequence of either action, Russian citizens can no longer bring human rights complaints to the court (a key reason why certain Western nations were hesitant to take this step previously), but to be quite blunt, Russia wasn’t following the rulings of the court anyway — notably for our purposes, it rejected ECHR findings against its gay propaganda law and its banning of Moscow Pride. Meanwhile, cases from Russia created a huge workload for the court (reportedly 25% of all cases in 2008), which backlogged cases from other countries. Russia’s denunciation of the treaty also means it is not obligated under the the Court’s 2015 ruling in Oliari and Others v. Italy to establish civil unions for same-sex couples (though again, it was extremely unlikely that Russia would ever implement the ruling).

And that covers all the countries of the world! On Monday, we’ll take a look at a few key International Organizations and do a global wrap up and look forward.

But before we go, a programming note:

I write this blog and maintain the @LGBTMarriage Twitter feed unpaid on the side of my freelance journalism work. This entails hundreds of hours of research and writing, as well as hundreds of dollars spent out of pocket to host and maintain this web site.

If you like the work I do here, please consider supporting it, either by sending me a tip through Venmo or Paypal, or by purchasing a copy of my book of plays, SMASHING YOUNG MAN. Any contribution helps me keep this vital work going. Thank you!

Earlier in this series – Part 1: North America | Part 2: Latin America and Caribbean | Part 3: Africa and Oceania

Earth’s largest continent has been emerging as a region where LGBT rights are taking rapid advances forward — as is befitting, since most of the world’s queer people live here.

We’re also continuing to see great repression against LGBT people and expression in several parts of the region, and some worrying trends that we should keep an eye on in 2023.

West Asia

Israel: A court ruling allowing same-sex couples to use surrogacy went into effect in January, and the health ministry banned conversion therapy the following month. Unfortunately, the coalition government collapsed shortly thereafter and the Netanyahu-led bloc of right-wing parties regained power in the following election. This time, the coalition is held together with even more far-right nationalist wingnuts who openly oppose LGBT rights and rights for the Arab minority and want to roll back Israel’s limited protections and ban pride parades. Netanyahu is not likely to give in to their most extreme demands, and has even been forced to denounce recent statements and proposals from his own new coalition partners, but queer Israelis must be vigilant and shouldn’t expect any legislative progress for the next four years (or until this coalition collapses too).

Same-sex marriage is not currently legal in Israel, but the government recognizes marriages performed overseas, including marriages performed over Zoom with an officiant in Utah. It’s still unclear exactly what this recognition entails, i.e., is a same-sex marriage conducted in Utah considered legal in Israel for all purposes?

Lebanon: The Interior Minister attempted to ban Pride events this year. Meanwhile, the Lebanese Psychiatric Association reiterated its position that homosexuality is not a disease that can be cured.

The legal status of same-sex intercourse remains murky in Lebanon. Several courts have ruled that homosexuality is not covered under the law banning sexual relations “contradicting the laws of nature,” but the law has not been repealed. Police and judges are generally not enforcing the law, per reports.

Qatar: The eyes of the world were on Qatar for the FIFA World Cup, and despite promises that LGBT fans would be welcome, there were multiple reports that fans wearing rainbow flags or otherwise appearing gay were turned away or harassed by officials. And quite frankly, what were those fans thinking? That they should have benefited from a special exemption for foreigners while the country continues to brutalize its domestic LGBT population (not to mention its foreign laborers)? In any event, the World Cup was a debacle for human rights and everyone involved with the selection of Qatar as host should be ashamed.

United Arab Emirates: Censors took aim at the Disney movie Lightyear for its marginal lesbian character. The UAE was one of several markets where the film was banned. The UAE government also successfully pressured Amazon to drop sales of LGBT-themed products in the country.

A new Penal Code decriminalizing extramarital sex came into effect in January, but it apparently maintains its criminal prohibition on sodomy.

Iraq: The Iraqi Parliament considered a law that would explicitly criminalize gay sex, although the Penal Code already contains several provisions that are used to target LGBT people, making it a de facto criminalizing country. The autonomous Kurdistan region also considered legislation criminalizing LGBT rights advocacy. LGBT activists were routinely targeted for harassment and violence nationwide.

Kuwait: The Constitutional Court struck down a law that criminalizes “imitation of the opposite sex.” A similar laws is still on the books in Oman.

Iran: The government continued executing LGBT people in 2022. But the story of the year is probably the long-running massive protests calling for regime change sparked by the death of a woman after she was arrested by the state’s morality police. As of time of writing, the protests were ongoing.

Central Asia

Kazakhstan: The government clarified that there is no prohibition on queer people serving in the country’s military.

Uzbekistan: An activist received a three-year sentence for “libel and public insult” when he criticized the country’s sodomy law.

Afghanistan: The return of Taliban rule after the US and NATO pullout has put LGBT people, women, and non-Muslims in a more precarious position. The Taliban has restored and increased the use of the death penalty, and public floggings for homosexuality have been reported.

South Asia

India: The Supreme Court began hearings seeking the right to same-sex marriage under the Special Marriage Act (the country’s secular marriage law) in November and demanded the government to respond by end of December. A ruling is expected in the new year. The case consolidates a number of lower court cases, however, there are also cases in lower courts seeking same-sex marriage under the country’s Hindu Marriage Act and Foreign Marriage Act. Analysts are widely expecting the Supreme Court to rule in favor, citing a number of recent rulings in favor of privacy, LGBT, and family rights, and the recent appointment of an LGBT ally as Chief Justice.

One of those recent judgements this year ordered the government to consider a wide definition of family that is inclusive of LGBT families. Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court ruled that unmarried couples, including same-sex couples, must be granted equal rights by the government. This is effectively a legalized form of cohabitation. It is not yet clear how this will work in practice.

An opposition MP also introduced a private member’s bill to legalize same-sex marriage under the Special Marriage Act, but it has not progressed.

Obviously, if India legalizes same-sex marriage, it would be the largest nation to do so by population. In fact, it would double the global population living in an equal marriage state. It would also likely be the first UN member state in Asia to do so.

Meanwhile, the National Medical Commission banned the practice of conversion therapy.

The courts also ordered Tamil Nadu state to prepare an action plan to promote LGBT rights.

India also expanded the use of the death penalty, by applying it to maritime piracy for the first time.

Sri Lanka: The UN Committee for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women issued a sweeping ruling against laws criminalizing lesbian sex, saying they were inconsistent with Sri Lanka’s international obligations, particularly under CEDAW. Not only is this a sweeping victory for Sri Lankan queers, but it paves the way for future challenges to sodomy laws in other countries that are CEDAW signatories.

The ruling doesn’t actually repeal the law but calls on the government to do so. A private members bill has been introduced to repeal it, and the government has said it is not opposed to the repeal, but it hasn’t taken any action on it either. In part, this is because of Sri Lanka’s ongoing political and financial crisis, which does not seem to be resolving soon.

Bhutan: Following decriminalization last year, the small LGBT community has become increasingly vocal and understood. There have been calls for anti-discrimination laws and same-sex marriage.

Nepal: The Supreme Court ordered the government to recognize a trans woman as a woman, rather than as “third gender,” which is a common way trans people are classified in South Asian countries.

Pakistan: Some anti-LGBT activists have called for repeal of the country’s Transgender Person (Protection of Rights Act) 2018, which banned anti-trans discrimination. Sodomy remains illegal in Pakistan.

The government eliminated the death penalty for drug smuggling, but maintained it for several other offences.

Southeast Asia

Singapore: Singapore’s Parliament voted to repeal the law criminalizing gay sex in November, following a court ruling that found the law unenforceable as long as the government’s announced policy of not pursuing prosecutions under it remained unchanged. At the same time, Parliament passed a constitutional amendment proposed by the government to establish that only Parliament has the right to define marriage, effectively closing off any potential appeal to the courts to legalize same-sex marriage.

As I wrote for 76crimes at the time, this still a clear huge win for LGBT activists. Given the reluctance of the courts to decriminalize sodomy, they were unlikely to ever rule for same-sex marriage. Decriminalizing gay sex gives LGBT activists in Singapore the breathing room and freedom to push for greater reforms through the democratic process.

Thailand: Although the military-backed government approved a same-sex civil union bill that granted limited rights to LGBT couples, Parliament decided to advance two bills that would legalize equal marriage as well. The bills are all being studied in committee, which is expected to harmonize them somehow. Parliament will then decide which of the bills it wants to approve, possibly sometime next year. However, it’s possible it won’t get to a vote before Parliament is dissolved for the May elections.

Vietnam: The government banned conversion therapy as a medical treatment.

Indonesia: Parliament passed a new Criminal Code in December that criminalizes sex and cohabitation between unmarried people. It is not entirely clear if this includes gay sex (since same-sex marriage is impossible in Indonesia). But Parliament deliberately excluded a separate clause on same-sex relations from the final draft. It appears this will be up to the courts and prosecutors to decide, which is not the best of circumstances either. The bill will come into force in three years. Gay sex will remain illegal in the autonomous Aceh province, which has a shariah-inspired legal system.

The sex provisions are fiercely opposed by many in Indonesia, including in the business community, who see it threatening tourism, investment, and talent retention.

Also in December, it emerged that two male soldiers had been jailed for having sex, despite there being no clear law against gay sex in the military code. They were convicted under the crime of “inappropriate behavior,” kicked out of the military, and sentenced to seven months.

Malaysia: The main news this year was the election of new Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, an opposition figure who was twice jailed on (possibly trumped-up?) charges of sodomy. He is, I believe, the first world leader elected after being convicted for sodomy. Despite this, Ibrahim supports “Islamic democracy” and has, as recently as December, sued someone for defamation who called him an LGBT supporter. He has, however, in the past, called for “reform” of sodomy laws short of legalizing homosexuality (ie, setting a higher threshold for conviction, banning homosexual conduct in public, etc.). In another possible sign of good news, Ibrahim has appointed a woman who some in the gay community claim as ‘one of their own’ as minister of law and institutional reform.

I have seen a report that prior to the election, the outgoing government passed a law that criminalizes cross-dressing, and that the new government wants to extend it somehow, but I have few details.

Malaysia debated dramatically curtailing the use of the death penalty and ending its mandatory application, and the new government has said it plans to table several bills to do so in February.

Philippines: Bills seeking same-sex civil unions, marriage, and banning anti-LGBT discrimination continue to languish in Congress. In the meantime, Albay became the 8^th (of 82) provinces to pass an anti-discrimination law.

East Asia

Japan: Courts continued to disagree over same-sex marriage. While last year, the Sapporo court found the ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional, this year, an Osaka court found it constitutional, and then a Tokyo court found it constitutional but said the government had to give same-sex couples an alternative, equal form of recognition. The couple involved is appealing the Tokyo decision. Two more regional courts are set to decide on the issue in May and June of next year, and it’s likely to end up at the Constitutional Court. Japan is the only G7 country that does not recognize same-sex unions.

The national government has refused to pass any recognition of same-sex unions. However, local governments have stepped up. Aomori, Akita, Fukuoka, Tochigi, and Tokyo Metropolis became the latest prefectures to enact partnership registries, while registries will come into force in Shizuoka, Nagano, and Toyama prefectures next year, bringing the total to 13/47, representing more than 1/3 of the population. In December, three more prefecture governments began debate on bills to introduce partnership registries: Iwate, Shimane, and Tokushima. Additionally, 260 municipalities have their own partnership registries (although some of them overlap with the prefectures).

In December, the government proposed a reproductive services bill that explicitly limits IVF to heterosexual married couples. The government continued to resist calls to pass a nondiscrimination bill, but Akita became the third prefecture (of 47) to pass a local nondiscrimination bill.

In other news, the national elections in July took an ugly turn when it emerged that the ruling LDP had issued a booklet claiming that homosexuality is a disease.

South Korea: The Constitutional Court scrapped a section of the military code that forbade gay sex, ruling it cannot be applied to consensual acts that occur off-duty and off-base. The law affected all gay men in South Korea, as all men are required to serve in the military.

A court also refused to grant health insurance to a same-sex spouse, ruling that only an opposite-sex spouse is eligible.

Taiwan: A court granted a same-sex couple the right to jointly adopt a child in January. The legislature has not yet codified the decision into law (the current law only allows step-child adoption and only if the step-child is biologically related to the partner).

China: Crackdowns on LGBT expression continued. One noticeable event: Grindr was removed from app stores ahead of the Beijing Olympics. China continues to have a “legal guardianship” system open to any two adults, which has been used by some same-sex couples to sort out their legal affairs and rights, even if it doesn’t really form the basis of a family or relationship recognition.

Tomorrow, we’ll take a look at Europe, which was home to some incredible progress as well as alarming trends this year. 

I write this blog and maintain the @LGBTMarriage Twitter feed unpaid on the side of my freelance journalism work. This entails hundreds of hours of research and writing, as well as hundreds of dollars spent out of pocket to host and maintain this web site.

If you like the work I do here, please consider supporting it, either by sending me a tip through Venmo or Paypal, or by purchasing a copy of my book of plays, SMASHING YOUNG MAN. Any contribution helps me keep this vital work going. Thank you!