Canada's largest Pride Parade marked another milestone July 3 as a sitting prime minister marched for the first time in a colorful celebration that was tempered by last month's shooting massacre in Orlando, Florida, The Huffington Post reported. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the Florida tragedy is a reminder that "we can't let hate go by.'' Trudeau drew a boisterous reaction from those who lined Yonge Street to watch the parade go by; he has taken part in the parade before, including last summer—but this is his first as prime minister.
On a related note, Trudeau said that Canada is exploring the use of gender-neutral options on identity cards, The Guardian reported. Trudeau, who participated in the downtown Toronto parade along with other politicians, did not give details, saying only the government was exploring the "best way" and studying other jurisdictions. Recently, the Canadian province of Ontario said it would allow the use of a third gender indicator, X, for driver's licenses.
India's supreme court has refused to hear a petition challenging a law criminalizing gay sex, The Guardian reported. A number of well-known lesbian, gay and bisexual Indians had argued that section 377 of India's penal code, which prohibits "carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal," undermined their fundamental rights by failing to protect their sexual orientation. India's chief justice is already hearing a separate case to strike down the ban, and India's top court has previously argued that only parliament has the power to change section 377.
Ted Osius, the U.S. ambassador to Vietnam, is advocating for gay rights abroad—and he has a personal interest in the matter, as he is married to his partner and they're raising two children together, ABC7News.com reported. Osius' husband, Clayton Bond, said, "It's about representing equality and it's about representing human rights and it's very much an official agenda. The agenda of this administration is to keep pressing the envelope on human rights and that includes the right to LGBT persons." In Vietnam, a ban on same-sex marriages was lifted shortly after they arrived nearly two years ago.
The Daily Mail columnist Dominic Lawson—brother of TV domestic goddess Nigella Lawson and son of former Conservative chancellor Lord Nigel Lawson—claims that Britain wouldn't be about to leave the European Union ( EU ) if David Cameron hadn't pushed through same-sex marriage, because it handed power to the right, Gay Star News reported. Cameron cited same-sex marriage equality as one of his great achievements in his resignation speech, following the UK referendum voting for Brexit. A Gay Star News straw poll suggests three-quarters of LGBTIs wanted the UK to remain in the EU.
The Paris Pride Parade's route was cut in half this year due to security concerns in the wake of the Orlando, Florida, mass shooting, LGBTQ Nation noted. The parade, known as la marche des fiertes in French, took place July 2. The route ran 2.5 kilometers ( just more than 1.5 miles ) along the River Seine from the Louvre to Bastille, instead of from Montparnasse to Bastille as planned. The LGBT community criticized the development, with LGBT-rights group Acthe saying, "Giving in to fear is letting terrorism win."
A German member of Parliament and gay-rights activist claims he was violently arrested by Turkish police while attending a protest rally at the close of Gay Pride Week, the UK Independent reported. Volker Beck, a prominent member of Germany's Green Party, says he was shoved by officers and had his passport taken while trying to prevent the arrest of a fellow activist in Istanbul. Police made 29 arrests in all, including Green party MEP Terry Reintke and speaker Felix Banaszak, who were briefly detained before being released.
Several gay men in the Ivory Coast say they were attacked after the U.S. embassy published a photo of them offering condolences to the 49 victims in the Orlando shooting at a gay nightclub, PBS reported. Six gay men signed a condolence book in honor of the Orlando victims on June 16, the same day Prime Minister Daniel Kablan Duncan had signed the book as well; the U.S. embassy published a photo of the six men with the caption, "LGBTI community signing the condolence book," to its website. Within days of the photo being posted, two of the men in the photo told the Associated Press that "an angry mob punched and kicked them while shouting anti-gay slurs."
Gay men convicted under Germany's anti-homosexuality laws may be pardoned—with the Bundestag ( parliament ) voting this week, Gay Star News noted. In May Heiko Maas, Germany's minister of justice, announced he would push for the rehabilitation of gay men sanctioned under the Nazi's paragraph 175. Originally established during the German Empire, Hitler's regime toughened the law to persecute gay men; the law's Nazi version was kept until its mitigation in 1969 and finally abolished in 1994.
Metropolitan Community Churches ( MCC ) is convening clergy and members from all over the world in Victoria, BC, Canada, July 4-8, to hear Cuba's Mariela Castro, Muslim Ani Zonderveld, trans activist Jennifer Finney Boylan and others as they reflect on the Orlando mass murders of LGBT people and elect their next global leader, according to a press release. Videos and live-streaming will be shown at emerge.mcchurch.org .
A judge in Spain ruled that a cardinal denouncing an attack against the Christian family by a "gay empire" was not, simply by virtue of using that language, committing a hate speech crime but exercising his right to freedom of expression, according to CruxNow.com . The criminal proceedings against Cardinal Antonio Canizares of Valencia were dismissed without further investigation because the magistrate saw no "criminal intent" nor an appeal to "hatred and violence" in the homily Canizares delivered May 13. A second process, started by the Valencian LGBT association Lambda together with 55 other organizations, has also been dismissed.
Filipina activist Ging Cristobal—author of a report that she is working with New York-based rights group OutRight Action International—is saying LGBT people in the Philippines face extortion, violence and rape when seeking help from the police and do not trust law enforcement officers to protect them, PostGuam.com reported. The report detailing police abuses against LGBT people says police officers often assume that gay men and transgender women are sex workers, and deny assistance to them. The report, among other things, called for the Philippines National Police to amend its operations handbook to include specific procedures for sensitive handling of LGBT people, particularly during body searches and detention.
Austrian people who are intersex may soon have the right to identify themselves outside the male-female binary with a third category on official government documents including passports, as a local court moves to rule on a potentially precedent-setting case, Telesur reported. The issue was brought to light by Alex Jurgen, an openly intersex Austrian citizen from the city of Steyr who made a request to list their sex as "X" or "Inter" on their passport; the request was rejected on legal grounds. The Austrian LGBTI-rights organization Rechtskomitees Lambda has called the case "historic" and "groundbreaking."
This year, Elle UK will print four different September covers—two of which will feature Amandla Stenberg, who recently came out as bisexual and nonbinary, and Hari Nef, the transgender actress and model featured in season two of Transparent, Mic.com noted. The magazine's Serbian counterpart featured its first trans woman, model Andreja Pejic, on its cover in 2013; Stenberg and Nef have joined the likes of Kristen Stewart and Zayn Malik for the prestigious September issue. "Well!" wrote Nef on Twitter, "I'm grateful and shook!"
The Daughters of Sacred Heart Institute—a Catholic school in Trento, northern Italy—was fined 25,000 euros ( roughly $28,500 ) for firing a lesbian teacher, World Religion News noted. The school, in addition to the above amount, was also instructed to pay 1,500 euros separately to a civil rights association and a labor union.
NYC & Company, New York City's official destination marketing organization, and the International Gay & Lesbian Travel Association ( IGLTA ) announced that New York City will host IGLTA's 2019 Annual Global Convention, according to a press release. In celebration of the milestone of what will be the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising, New York City will also be home to WorldPride 2019, an expanded two-month series of events and programs alongside NYC Pride's annual events.
