Ugandan court upholds anti-LGBTQ law but says some rights infringed

KAMPALA, April 3 (Reuters) – Uganda’s constitutional court refused on Wednesday to annul or suspend an anti-LGBTQ law that includes the death penalty for certain same-sex acts, but voided some provisions that it said were inconsistent with certain fundamental human rights.

The legislation, adopted in May last year, is among the world’s harshest anti-gay laws and has drawn condemnation from rights campaigners and sanctions from Western nations.

More: https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/ugandas-constitutional-court-upholds-anti-homosexuality-law-2024-04-03/

USA: Wisconsin governor vetoes transgender student-athlete bill

Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers vetoed a bill that requires schools to separate sports based on sex assigned at birth. The bill was seen by Evers and members of the LGBTQ+ community as being targeted against trans student-athletes. It was largely supported by Republican state legislators.

In his signed veto message, Evers cited two main legal arguments for vetoing the bill. The first is that the bill “ignores a transgender student-athlete policy created by the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association in 2015.” Under that policy, it was up to the individual school districts, in consultation with students and medical professionals, to create a policy around the participation of transgender athletes in sports.

The second legal argument that Evers advanced is the idea that the law violates Title VII and Title IX of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Those provisions ban the government from discriminating on the basis of sex for purposes of federal employment or public education receiving federal funding. In the 2020 US Supreme Court case Bostock v. Clayton County, the court held that discrimination on the basis of sex was inclusive of discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender employees.

Lastly, Evers made a policy argument stating, “I believe this bill fails to comport with Wisconsin values. We expect our kids to treat each other with kindness, respect, empathy, and compassion and we should be able to expect adults to lead by example.”

In October 2023, the Wisconsin State Assembly passed Assembly Bill 377. The bill requires each school board, independent charter school and private school that operate or sponsor sports teams to designate the teams as all male, all female or coed. It also defines sex as “determined by a physician at birth and reflected on the birth certificate.”

Currently, 24 states have passed laws preventing transgender student-athletes from competing in the sports category that aligns with their gender identity.

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UK: Scotland’s controversial new hate crime law comes into effect

Scotland’s controversial Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 came into force on Monday. The law intends to unite existing hate crime laws, along with creating several new offenses, most notably criminalizing “threatening or abusive behaviour which is intended to stir up hatred.” Stirring up racial hatred has been an offense since 1986. However, this will apply to all protected characteristics, including disability, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity and varying sexual characteristics. This follows many concerns about its effects on freedom of speech and how it will be policed.

The act consolidates existing law on crimes “aggravated by prejudice” and racially aggravated harassment. It also abolishes the common law offense of blasphemy, which no one has been prosecuted in over 175 years. The maximum penalty is seven years imprisonment. First Minister Humza Yousaf has insisted that there is a “very high threshold” for prosecution, noting the act’s “triple lock” on freedom of expression: the Part 3(4) defence of reasonableness, compatibility with the ECHR and the requirement for explicitness.

Much initial criticism surrounded the act’s failure to criminalize hatred of women, with gender identities protected but sexual identities not. The Misogyny and Criminal Justice in Scotland Working Group fronted this, which recommended the introduction of a new act to combat misogyny. An amendment was proposed to add sex to the list of protected characteristics, but it was voted down. Former Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont argued that “the case for including women is indisputable,” as they “understand hate crime more than any other group does.”

Further criticism has surrounded the effect the act may have on the debate surrounding transgender issues. SNP MP Joanna Cherry has been a major critic, certain the act “will be weaponised by trans rights activists to try to silence, and worse still criminalise, women who do not share their beliefs.”

Victims and Community Safety Minister Siobhan Brown blamed a lot of “misinformation” about the legislation for the criticism before falsely claiming that it was “passed unanimously” in 2021. It was approved 82-32 with four abstentions. Scotland’s first minister, Humza Yousaf, also defended the act, saying “a lot of disinformation” about the act’s reach had been “spread on social media, through some inaccurate media reporting, and by political opponents.” He was justice secretary at the time and had supported the bill through parliament. He argued that including “an aggravation for ‘sex’ rather than ‘gender’ could exclude trans women i.e. if a trans woman was attacked because they were perceived to be a biological woman rather than because they were trans”.

There has been an emphasis on defenses, with an amendment from Scottish Conservative MP Adam Tomkins that restated ECHR Article 10, protecting freedom of expression and its protections for offending, shocking or disturbing. It appears that what constitutes a criminal offense will be left to Police Scotland to decide, as Siobhan Brown explained in reference to whether misgendering a person would be an offense. There have also been concerns about police training to deal with the rise of criminal activity on social media that is expected to follow this law.

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USA: 16 College Athletes Are Suing the NCAA For Allowing Lia Thomas to Swim

The plaintiffs are seeking punitive damages and relief for emotional distress and the removal of Thomas and other trans athletes from the official NCAA women’s record books.

More: https://www.them.us/story/ncaa-lawsuit-lia-thomas-trans-athletics

Interesting Article:Margalit A. Still a blind spot: The protection of LGBT persons during armed conflict and other situations of violence. International Review of the Red Cross. 2018;100(907-909):237-265. doi:10.1017/S1816383119000201

More: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-review-of-the-red-cross/article/abs/still-a-blind-spot-the-protection-of-lgbt-persons-during-armed-conflict-and-other-situations-of-violence/0C9FC5D1F2AFBED6186AC2D1AA8829E1

Interesting Article:Hannah Nieratzky, A Much-Needed Queer Look at International Humanitarian Law: An Obligation to Monitor the Situation of Prisoners of War with Diverse SOGI?, Völkerrechtsblog, 04.03.2024, doi: 10.17176/20240304-220143-0

More: https://voelkerrechtsblog.org/a-much-needed-queer-look-at-international-humanitarian-law/

Argentina court sentences 11 former officers to prison for crimes against transgender women

An Argentinian court sentenced 10 of 12 former officers on Tuesday to serve life in prison, and one to 25 years imprisonment, for crimes against humanity they committed during the country’s military dictatorship, spanning 1976 through 1983. Apart from one acquitted, the Argentina Federal Court No. 1 in La Plata convicted the rest of the defendants of the crimes committed in four clandestine detention centers of Buenos Aires, including killing, torture, kidnapping of children and sexual violence against transgender women. Local reports said that the grounds for the court’s decision will be known on July 5.

According to Argentina human rights organization Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, officers abducted and systematically tortured roughly 30,000 people suspected of opposing the military government in clandestine detention centers during the Dirty War. At that time, the military dictatorship—which held a Catholic belief—regarded LGBTQ+ Argentines as subversives of the society and imposed sexual violence upon transgender women.

In recent years, Argentina has continued to deal with crimes stemming from breaches of human rights committed during the former dictatorship. Since the Supreme Court ruled the amnesty laws shielding former officials was unconstitutional in 2005, courts have convicted over 1,000 people. In 2013, Seven retired military officers were previously sentenced to life in prison for various human rights abuses. Then, in 2017, 48 former Argentine officers, charged with the deaths of 789 victims, were sentenced for murder and torture.

In 2022, the Attorney General’s Office reported 3,631 people charged, 1,088 convicted, and 165 acquitted of crimes against humanity. However, Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo claims that the large number of victims, suspects, and cases makes it difficult for prosecutors and judges to bring those responsible to justice.

During trial, eight victims testified to their experiences in the Banfield Pit, one of Argenina’s largest clandestine detention centers. The court found that the defendants committed kidnapping, forced disappearance of politically persecuted people, homicide, torture, rape, child abduction, forced abortions and other crimes against transgender women. Also, the judge ordered “urgent” medical examinations for the defendants to decide whether to revoke the house arrest enjoyed by the majority of convicted defendants.

Argentina has made some progress in the protection of the LGBTQ+ rights. In 2012, government passed a Gender Identity Law respecting self-identification, which allows anyone to change their gender and name in their identity card and birth certificate through a simple administrative procedure. In September 2020, President Alberto Fernández also issued a decree establishing that at least one percent of employees in the federal government should be transgender people.

“What is different about this trial is that for the first time in Argentina and in the world, crimes against humanity committed against trans women in the context of state terrorism are condemned,” prosecutor Ana Oberlín told reporters.

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Brutality on display : media coverage and the spectacle of anti-LGBTQ violence in the Colombian Civil War

During the Colombian Civil War, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people were targeted by armed actors for reasons related to ideology and strategy. Even with the generalised violence in Colombia during this time, there was significant public interest in this specific form of violence, as evidenced by its tabloid coverage. The nation’s main tabloid – El Espacio – covered this violence against LGBTQ people in graphic detail. Twenty years of coverage (1985–2005) includes a range of gory graphics and horrific headlines that show the pain of a persecuted community in a highly violent context. In this article, I focus on this media coverage of anti-LGBTQ violence, notable for its brutality and prejudice, to argue that its spectacle built on a stigma that reinforced the cleavage of its victims from the body politic through a legitimation of the violence. In doing so, the coverage of this violence became a weapon of war that depoliticised the subordination of an entire population in a society beset by an internal armed conflict.

See: RITHOLTZ, Samuel Max, Brutality on display : media coverage and the spectacle of anti-LGBTQ violence in the Colombian Civil War, Third world quarterly, 2024, OnlineFirst   – https://hdl.handle.net/1814/76724

Thailand moves closer to legalising same-sex marriage

Thailand’s lower house has passed a bill which gives legal recognition to same-sex marriage, nudging the country closer to becoming the first South East Asian nation to introduce marriage equality.

More: https://www.thepinknews.com/2024/03/27/thailand-same-sex-marriage-bill-passed/

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The Thai House of Representatives approved Wednesday an equal marriage bill, with 400 favouring votes out of 415 members of the house. The bill still requires approval from the Senate and endorsement from the king. If the Senate and the king approve the legislation, Thailand will become the third Asian country/region that recognises same-sex marriage, after Taiwan and Nepal.

To guarantee marriage equality, the bill substitutes gendered nouns with gender-neutral nouns in the current Thai Civil and Commercial Code. Under section 1448 of the code, a marriage can take place only when the man and woman have completed their seventeenth year of age. The bill will amend this section with gender-neutral nouns such as person, spouse and betrothed. In addition, the bill also guarantees the right for “people of all genders” to be engaged and married. Civil rights as fiancés or spouses, including medical decision-making, social security rights, civil servant benefits and spousal tax deductions will no longer be exclusive to heterosexual couples. The bill also sought to amend the minimum age for marriage from 17 to 18 to fulfill its obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin attributed the success to the societal consensus in Thailand as it is necessary for the whole country to work together to build an equal society free from discrimination. Thavisin also claimed that gender and family formation are basic human rights that the government should guarantee.

Previously in 2021, Thailand’s Constitutional Court upheld the constitutionality of section 1448 which provided for the exclusive legal recognition of heterosexual marriages, citing the maintenance of the existence of society and traditional customs as supporting grounds. The court nevertheless urged the Thai government to adopt appropriate measures to protect the rights of people with diverse sexualities.

The bill therefore serves as a huge step towards equality in Thailand. Nonetheless, rights advocates still maintain concerns about parental rights. LGBTQIA+ advocates wished to substitute “father” or “mother” with the term “parent,” a gender-neutral noun, in adoption legislation.

To come into effect, the bill still requires the Senate’s approval. However, the Senate has no power to veto a bill approved by the House of Representatives. According to section 137 and section 138 of Thailand’s Constitution, the Senate could only propose an amendment to the bill or return the bill in its entirety to the House of Representatives. After a 180-day limitation period, if the House still resolves to reaffirm the bill, the bill will be deemed to have the Senate’s approval.

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Yemen: Nine men sentenced to death by ‘crucifixion and stoning’ for alleged sodomy by Houthi court

Nine men were sentenced to death by a Houthi court in Yemen in a mass trial based on “dubious” charges of sodomy, a human rights organisation has said.

More: https://www.thepinknews.com/2024/03/27/houthi-yemen-death-sodomy-lgbtq/