Search Results for: homosexuality

Hundreds of people protested on Saturday in Botswana’s capital Gaborone against a bill seeking to make same-sex relations legal. Botswana’s parliament was forced to introduce the bill legalizing same-sex relations pursuant to a 2019 ruling of the High Court of Botswana, which held that laws criminalizing same-sex relations are unconstitutional. The case was brought by [...]

Natasha Kahungi is JURIST’s Africa Bureau Chief. She files this from Nairobi.  Many voices are being raised as Kenya braces for the anticipated introduction of an anti-LGBT bill in parliament, creating a cacophony of both support and opposition to the planned legislation. This vibrant outpouring of viewpoints highlights the complexity of this pressing social issue [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) warned Thursday of violence and discrimination against LGBTQ+ people in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. According to a new report, six of the twelve Anglophone countries in the Caribbean region continue to criminalize consensual same-sex intimacy, including Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. HRW called upon the country to repeal the colonial-era [...]

Multiple embassies and various cultural institutions from over 30 countries released a joint statement on Friday supporting the rights of LGBTQ+ people in Hungary, ahead of the 28th Budapest Pride Festival. Signatories to the statement included the US, the UK, Ukraine, France, Germany, Italy and others. The group emphasized the importance of revoking laws that [...]

The Parliament of Ghana passed an extreme anti-gay bill on Wednesday, which is set to tighten laws against members of the LGBTQ+ community. Ghana’s 275 members of Parliament unanimously passed the bill, known as the 2021 Promotion of Appropriate Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill. The bill is set to criminalize the promotion, advocacy, funding [...]

The Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal finished hearing submissions from parties on Thursday in a case involving the constitutionality of Hong Kong’s preclusion of same-sex marriage. This is the first time the top Hong Kong court dealing directly with the homosexual couples’ right to marry. The applicant, Jimmy Sham, also happens to be a [...]

Pakistan’s transgender community finds itself embroiled in an ongoing struggle for inclusion, facing a recent setback with a verdict from the Federal Shariat Court (FSC). Transgender activists in Pakistan have appealed the judgement of the Federal Shariat Court (“FSC”), which adjudicates based on the tenets of Islam, to the Supreme Court (“SC”). As many as [...]

The UK Home Office announced Tuesday an expansion to the Disregards and Pardon Scheme to include women who were convicted under laws prohibiting same-sex activity, which have since been repealed. Women can now apply to be pardoned for these offences and have their convictions erased. While the UK partially decriminalised gay sex in 1967, offences [...]

June 4 marks the centennial of Meyer v. Nebraska, in which the US Supreme Court commenced its modern role as the guardian of non-economic personal liberties by striking down laws in Nebraska, Iowa, and Ohio that prohibited the teaching of German to elementary school children. Meyer itself remains a vital cornerstone for the protection of [...]

A Japanese district court held Tuesday the government’s failure to recognize same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. Marriage for All Japan, a Japanese organization fighting for marriage equality, shared the Nagoya District Court in Japan’s opinion in a tweet. Article 24 of the Japanese Constitution states that “arriage shall be based only on the mutual consent of [...]