Uganda, already one of the world’s harshest anti-gay regimes, is introducing a new bill which would impose up to 10 years in prison for simply identifying as LGBTQ. In 2023 the Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni, signed into law the “Anti-Homosexuality Act” which brings the death penalty to anyone involved in “aggravated homosexuality”. Prior to that, […]
Despite the Netherlands electing its first openly gay prime minister (and its youngest yet) and the Church of Norway providing an apology for the harm and pain its caused LGBTQ+ folks in its history, not all of Europe is on the same page when it comes to protecting LGBTQ+ rights and freedoms. In late September […]
In the wake of the sensational Gisèle Pelicot gang-rape trial, the French Senate unanimously approved a bill, previously approved by the National Assembly, to redefine rape as any sexual act without consent, defined as “freely given, informed, specific, prior, and revocable.” This makes rape easier to prove than the previous standard, which required an expression […]
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is likely to introduce a new policy on trans athletes after its director of health, medicine, and science, Dr. Jane Thornton, gave a “science-based review” to its members showing permanent physical advantages to being born male. Thornton, a former Canadian rower, has referenced the use of SRY cheek-swab gene test […]
The Colorado Supreme Court has heard a case arguing that lifetime registration is “cruel and unusual punishment” due to the use of flawed and uncertain assessment tools to predict the likelihood of an individual re-offending and the generally low rate of re-offense in this population. The federal courts, including the Supreme Court in a 2003 […]
Conceiving of gender and sex as binary concepts is a stubborn means of categorization that has long limited human understanding of important aspects of identity and experience. In most cultures humans become binary subjects at birth in two major ways: 1) we are corralled into either male or female sexed body designations based on anatomical […]
The Hisba Board (religious police) in Kano, a mostly Muslim region in Northern Nigeria, have arrested 25 people attending the wedding of two men, accusing them of “organising same sex marriage.” The situation for LGBT people in Muslim countries continues to deteriorate, as we also see with new anti-LGBT legislation proposed by the government even […]
With support from Irish sex worker organizations, parliamentarian Ruth Coppinger has introduced a bill to repeal key provisions of Ireland’s Sexual Offenses Act 2017, which decriminalized the selling of sex, but outlawed its purchase or the keeping of brothels. Sex workers have argued that the bill has failed in its intent to reduce the prevalence […]
We have featured stories in the past where suspicions of sexual immorality are manipulated as excuses to apprehend immigrants. In one of the latest examples of this phenomenon, Customs and Border Patrol agents used trumped-up charges of possessing illegal images of minors to coerce 18 Filipino workers on a Carnival cruise ship, who had valid […]
No, this is not a headline from The Onion. In his crusade to find the causes of the autism “epidemic” (which is mostly a function of an expansive definition and willingness to diagnose the condition), Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has now identified a new culprit: male circumcision. This is based […]
