Tag Archives: LGBTQ rights

USA Today reports: San Francisco Pride Director Suzanne Ford feels both saddened and determined about this year’s plans for the city’s iconic Pride parade. The longtime LGBTQ organization is dealing with the potential loss of $300,000 in corporate sponsorship for its hugely popular annual parade, funding needed ahead of June’s Pride Month. Multiyear sponsors including Comcast, Anheuser-Busch and Diageo have …

The Washington Post reports: Under Hungary’s antigay “propaganda” law, bookstores were fined for selling LGBTQ+ themed tomes without sealed plastic wrappers and a museum director was fired for allowing minors into an exhibit with images of same-sex couples. But the autocratic government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban stopped short of targeting the community’s premier event: the annual Pride parade. Until …

Newsweek reports: Denmark and Finland have revised their travel guidance for transgender individuals planning to visit the United States. A new section has been added under Denmark’s visa rules for entry into the United States. It states that when applying for a U.S. visa, there are only two gender options available, male or female. Meanwhile in Finland, the advisory notes …

USA Today reports: Walt Disney shareholders overwhelmingly rejected a proposal calling for the entertainment giant to drop its participation in a benchmark index used to rank companies on how friendly their policies are to LGBTQ+ people. The investor proposal presented Thursday at Disney’s annual meeting by the National Center for Public Policy Research, which describes itself as a non-partisan independent …

Agence France-Presse reports: The EU’s commissioner for equality took aim Tuesday at a Hungarian bill aimed at banning Budapest’s annual pride march, asserting the “fundamental right” to peaceful assembly in the 27-nation bloc. The European Commission, 16 member states and the European Parliament have taken Budapest to court over a 2021 law banning the “promotion” of homosexuality to minors — …

Politico reports: The Trump administration is slashing the State Department’s annual human rights report — cutting sections about the rights of women, the disabled, the LGBTQ+ community and more. The goal appears to be a far thinner report that meets the minimum standards required by the law, according to documents obtained by POLITICO, as well as a current and a …

The Associated Press reports: A new anti-LGBTQ+ law banning Pride events and allowing authorities to use facial recognition software to identify those attending the festivities was passed in Hungary on Tuesday, leading to a large demonstration on the streets of Budapest. Several thousand protesters chanting anti-government slogans gathered after the vote outside Hungary’s parliament. They later staged a blockade of …

The Associated Press reports: Hungary’s ruling coalition continued its crackdown on the country’s LBGTQ+ community on Monday, as members submitted a bill to parliament that would ban the popular Budapest Pride event and allow authorities to use facial recognition software to identify attendees. The bill is almost certain to pass, as the ruling coalition has a two-thirds majority in parliament. …

Via press release from the ACLU: Doctors from Harvard Medical School today challenged the removal of their articles from the Patient Safety Network (PSNet), a government-run website for doctors and medical researchers to share information about medical errors, misdiagnoses, and patient outcomes. The papers were removed as part of a takedown of information that the government contends promotes “gender ideology,” …

Boston’s NBC affiliate reports: City councilors in Boston voted 12-1 Wednesday to make Boston a sanctuary city for members of the LGBTQ+ community. Councilor-at-Large Julia Mejia and District 9 Councilor Liz Breadon called on Boston to adopt the measure supporting transgender people, pointing to what they see as harmful rhetoric coming from President Donald Trump and the White House. “Boston …

The Associated Press reports: Two public school districts and several parents have sued the state in a bid to undo anti-discrimination protections for gay and transgender people in Pennsylvania, saying that the two-year-old regulation is illegal because it goes beyond what lawmakers intended or allowed. The lawsuit, filed in the statewide Commonwealth Court late Thursday, comes amid a debate in …

The Des Moines Register reports: Transgender and nonbinary Iowans will no longer be shielded by state law from discrimination in housing, employment, education and more after Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a law Friday removing gender identity as a protected class in the Iowa Civil Rights Act. The signing makes Iowa the first state in the country to take away civil …

The Middle East Eye reports: Draft legislation could see “biological sex” written into law in Turkey and the “promotion” of LGBTQ rights criminalised. The Turkish penal code would mandate that a “person who publicly encourages, praises or promotes attitudes and behaviours contrary to the biological sex at birth and public morality shall be sentenced to imprisonment of one year to …

The Washington Post reports: Openly transgender service members will be disqualified from serving in the U.S. military and will soon be removed from the ranks, according to a Pentagon memo that marks a significant shift from previous Defense Department policy that prohibited discrimination based on gender identity. The memo states that exceptions could be made for transgender service members who …

Bloomberg Government reports: A Department of Homeland Security unit eliminated policies prohibiting personnel from conducting intelligence activities based solely on a person’s gender identity or sexual orientation. The Office of Intelligence and Analysis posted an updated policy manual late last week that removes references to those characteristics in sections that set guardrails on gathering intelligence. The revisions follow President Donald …

The Guardian reports: Hungary’s Budapest Pride should be held in a “closed venue” this year rather than on a city centre avenue as in previous years, the prime minister Viktor Orbán’s chief of staff has said, citing child protection. The plan, announced on Wednesday, appeared to be part of Orbán’s restrictions on the activities of the LGBTQ+ community as the …

NBC News reports: The Supreme Court on Wednesday considers the novel legal question of whether a woman can pursue a workplace sex discrimination case over claims she was discriminated against because she is straight. The court’s ultimate ruling could lower the bar for people belonging to majority groups to bring so-called reverse discrimination claims. Marlean Ames brought a claim against the …

The Associated Press reports: An Islamic Shariah court in Indonesia’s conservative Aceh province on Monday sentenced two men to public caning for having gay sex. The couple, aged 24 and 18, were arrested on Nov. 7, after neighborhood vigilantes in the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, suspected them of being gay and broke into their rented room to catch them naked …

Metro UK reports: Russia has spent more than a year creating an electronic database of its LGBTQ+ citizens, independent Russian media has reported. The country’s top court declared the international LGBTQ+ rights movement ‘extremist’ in November 2023. In the months since, law enforcement officials have been building a register to track ‘extremist’ LGBTQ+ Russians, insiders told Meduza. The officials, members …

Phoenix’s NBC affiliate reports: A video shared online shows a scary encounter between a family and an unknown woman at a West Valley In-N-Out. The video is just over two minutes long and shows an unknown woman acting aggressively towards Barbara Hilleren, her wife, Terri Policy, and their 18 and 22-year-old Guatemalan adopted daughters. “She thought we were sex trafficking …