French parliament votes to extend IVF rights to lesbians and single women
Under current law only heterosexal couples can access medically assisted reproduction methods
UN denounces Hungary legislation restricting youth exposure to LGBTQ identities
On Friday, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) decried a new law proposed by Hungary that would “deny trans and gender diverse people the right to legal recognition and self-determination.”
The legislation, which was passed by parliament on a 157 to one vote earlier this month, prohibits gay individuals from being featured in educational materials for children. The legislation also prohibits companies from producing advertisements that support the LGBTQ community, if the advertisements are considered to be targeting youth. Those who violate the law “could be fined or have their broadcasting suspended.”
Critics of the bill, including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, maintain that the law is discriminatory. Leaders of the European Union issued a joint letter in support of the LGBTQ community just prior to a scheduled conference in Brussels last week, emphasizing that “[EU members] are diverse and tolerant societies, committed to the unhindered development of the personality of each one of our citizens, including their sexual orientation and gender identity.”
Supporters of the legislation, including Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán’s ruling party, Fidesz, maintain that the law has been drafted to support children’s moral development as “there are contents which children under a certain age can misunderstand and which may have a detrimental effect on their development.”
According to the statement by UN human rights expert Victor Madrigal-Borloz:
Everyone has the right to recognition as a person before the law, including persons of diverse gender identities … [Hungary’s proposed] bill would negate the existence of trans and gender diverse people in [that country] and adversely impact them in almost every aspect of their daily life. A proposed change to the Hungarian Registry Act would replace the term “sex/gender” (nem) with “birth sex” (születési nem), defining it as “biological sex based on primary sex characteristics and chromosomes,” and establishes that this “birth sex” cannot be changed once recorded. Also, the legislation might invalidate existing government documents issued to trans and gender diverse people … Hungary must not target trans and gender diverse people under the guise of protecting health and should strictly limit the use of emergency power to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.
The legislation is linked to a bill that seeks to impose stricter penalties for pedophilia.
The post UN denounces Hungary legislation restricting youth exposure to LGBTQ identities appeared first on JURIST – News – Legal News & Commentary.
USA: Supreme Court declines to review transgender rights case
The US Supreme Court declined Monday to review a decision that allowed a transgender student to use the bathroom that corresponded to his gender identity.
Gloucester County School Board v. Grimm was originally filed in 2015 after Gavin Grimm, who was born as female but identifies as male, was denied the use of the boys’ restroom at a local public high school. Grimm argued that the school’s policy violated Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause. The US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit relied on Department of Education guidance in ordering the school board to allow Grimm to use the boys’ restroom.
In 2017, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. However, it sent the case back to the appeals court without hearing oral arguments after the Trump administration rescinded the Department of Education guidance. In 2020, the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit again ruled that it was unlawful for a Virginia school district to ban students from using restrooms that aligned with their gender identities.
The school board then appealed the decision to the Supreme Court. In an order released Monday, the Supreme Court denied certiorari to the case. The order noted that Justices Thomas and Alito would have granted the petition.
This decision leaves the appeals court’s ruling in place, in what is considered a victory for the LGBTQ community.
The post US Supreme Court declines to review transgender rights case appeared first on JURIST – News – Legal News & Commentary.
Turkish police fire tear gas to disperse Istanbul pride parade that had been banned since 2004
On Sunday, Turkish riot police used tear gas and rubber bullets to disrupt Istanbul’s annual pride parade after the Istanbul governor’s office refused to grant a permit for the parade. The police have also arrested dozens of marchers, including journalists who were covering the event.
The attack from the police force comes after a period of mounting hostilities against the nation’s LGBTIQ+ community. The pride parade has been held annually since 2003, despite being officially banned since 2014. Videos shared on social media show hundreds of people gathered on Istiklal Avenue, a popular tourist destination, chanting “rainbow is not a crime, discrimination is”.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who voiced support for the LGBTQ community prior to being elected, and senior members of his government have recently voiced strong anti-LGBTIQ+ sentiment in an effort to appeal to more conservative voters. In early 2021, President Erdogan was widely condemned for comments made in an address to members of his government where he claimed that “there was no such thing as LGBT” and labeled LGBT student protestors as “terrorists”.
While the government stands by the police action as a justified response in line with COVID-19 protocols, advocacy groups believe, in line with recent governmental behavior, it is another method of silencing the LGBTIQ+ community.
The post Turkish police fire tear gas to disperse Istanbul pride parade appeared first on JURIST – News – Legal News & Commentary.
USA: President Joe Biden signed a bill Friday honoring the victims of the 2016 Pulse Nightclub shooting and designating the nightclub as the National Pulse Memorial.
In June 2016, a gunman killed 49 people and wounded 53 at the popular nightclub located in Orlando, Florida. The gunman used an AR-15-style rifle and a pistol. The mass shooting is one of the most lethal in the nation’s history. President Biden was vice president at the time of the shooting.
“A place of acceptance and joy became a place of unspeakable pain and loss,” Biden stated at the bill signing. Biden explained that the National Pulse Memorial represents “an absolute determination that that we’re going to deal with this every single solitary day and make sure that we’re not in a position to see this happen again.”
After signing the bill, Biden asserted that over half of states lack specific protections for LGBTQ+ people and their families. Biden urged Congress on Friday to pass laws protecting the civil rights of LGBTQ+ people.
The post Pulse Nightclub designated a national memorial appeared first on JURIST – News – Legal News & Commentary.
Canada House of Commons approves bill criminalizing conversion therapy
Canada’s House of Commons approved a bill on Tuesday that amends the Criminal Code to criminalize certain activities associated with LGBTQ+ conversion therapy in order to discourage and denounce it.
The lower house passed the bill by a vote of 263 to 63 and, it defines “conversion therapy” as “a practice, treatment or service designed to change a person’s sexual orientation to heterosexual, to change a person’s gender identity or gender expression to cisgender or to repress or reduce non-heterosexual attraction or sexual behaviour or non-cisgender gender expression.”
The bill prohibits anyone from forcing an adult to undergo conversion therapy without their consent. It also makes it illegal to force a child to undertake conversion therapy, as well as to remove a child from Canada to undergo conversion therapy elsewhere. Further, the bill criminalizes the administration of conversion therapy for receiving a material benefit. It also makes advertising conversion therapy services a criminal offense.
However, if no money or other material benefit is received in exchange for administering conversion therapy to a consenting adult, the bill does not make it illegal. Moreover, it does not prevent a consenting adult from seeking or receiving conversion therapy.
Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada David Lametti said, “the bill is about protecting the dignity and equality of rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and two-spirit individuals, by criminalizing conversion therapy-related conduct.”
The bill is now under consideration before the Senate.
The post Canada House of Commons approves bill criminalizing conversion therapy appeared first on JURIST – News – Legal News & Commentary.
The Holy See makes unprecedented protest of Italy anti-discrimination bill with regard to LGBTI persons
The Vatican [the Holy See] has delivered a protest to Italy’s embassy over a bill intended to combat homophobia, the Corriere della Sera confirmed Tuesday. The “Zan Bill,” named after Democratic legislator Alessandro Zan, is a response to rising homophobic crime that would criminalize discriminatory conduct on the basis of sex, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity.
The Vatican Secretariat of State wrote that such criminalization “would have the effect of negatively impacting the freedoms assured to the Catholic Church,” and in doing so violates the Lateran Pacts, which establish Vatican City as a sovereign state and provide religious freedoms in its relationship with Italy. In particular, the Vatican protests that the bill threatens its religious freedom to oppose adoptions by gay couples and refuse to conduct gay marriages or teach gender theory in Catholic schools in Italy.
One of the main sources of protest is the Vatican’s fear that gender theory calling for equal recognition of nonbinary and transgender people as part of the family will be incompatible with Catholic teachings. Roman Bishops in April protested that the bill’s aims of anti-discrimination “cannot seek that objective through intolerance and by questioning the reality of the difference between men and women.” Vatican officials informed Catholic newspaper Crux that legal protections for gender and sexual expressions reflect “ideological colonization.”
The unusual move by the Vatican to involve itself in Italy’s legislation has been praised by the far-right party in Italy’s Parliament and criticized by the Democratic party and human rights groups. Italian foreign ministry undersecretary Benedetto Della Vedova told the Washington Post that the letter constituted “heavy interference” and noted that the Vatican had not attempted to influence Italy’s legislation in the past.
The Vatican and far-right party argue that freedoms of religion and expression include the protection of traditional family values and sex differences, arguing that opposition on religious grounds should not be criminalized. The Bill seeks to make hate speech against LGBTQ+ people a crime and enact harsher penalties on those who commit violence for homophobic or sexist reasons. According to Rainbow Europe, Italy has some of the weakest laws and policies protecting LGBTQ+ rights in Europe and some of the highest instances of violence.
The bill has passed the Parliament’s Lower House and is currently being debated in a Senate committee.
The post Vatican makes unprecedented protest of Italy anti-discrimination bill appeared first on JURIST – News – Legal News & Commentary.
Read also (in Italian): https://www.corriere.it/cronache/21_giugno_22/vaticano-ddl-zan-legge-testo-b13294ba-d2d0-11eb-9207-8df97caf9553.shtml
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Lundi 23.08
Conférence inaugurale “Intersex critical studies”: Janik Bastien-Charlebois.
Table-ronde Vers une Histoire de l’intersexuation : Magali Le Mens, Anton Serdeczny, Muriel Salle.
Mardi 24.08
Table-ronde Vies intersexes : Carolane Parenteau-Labarre, Loé Petit, Sorgho Koutiangba Koukiyoani.
Atelier : Comment trouver un “terrain” quand on travaille sur l’intersexuation et/ou les variations du développement sexuel ?
Mercredi 25.08
Table-ronde Ethique et Droit de l’intersexuation : Benjamin Moron-Puech, Morgan Carpenter, Steph Lum.
Atelier : Quelles statistiques exploitables pour la recherche sur l’intersexuation ?
Jeudi 26.08
Table-ronde : Stratégies politiques et identités communautaires intersexes : Audrey Aegerter, Julius Kaggwa, Sean Saifa Wall.
Atelier : Visionnage Hermaphrodites Speak (35’02 min) et échanges.
Vendredi 27.08
Table-ronde : Médecine et enjeux intersexes : Janik Bastien-Charlebois, Deborah Abate , Anna Cominetti.
Atelier : Changer les pratiques aujourd’hui : quelles perspectives ?
Samedi 28.08
Atelier : Recommandations aux chercheurs-es pour une recherche sur l’intersexuation respectueuse des droits humains des personnes intersexes.
Table-ronde de clôture : Méthodologie de la recherche sur l’intersexuation et positionnalité : Gaëlle Larrieu, Mauro Cabral, Yessica Mestre.
Mot de clôture : Loé Petit
Contact: contact.efigies@gmail.com
When:
25 June 2021 – 23 August 2021, 08:11 am
Where:
Online
Themes:
Disciplines:
Canada passes historic bill to ban conversion therapy once and for all
LGBT Rights as Mega-politics: Litigating before the ECtHR
Laurence R. Helfer (Duke Univ. – Law; Univ. of Copenhagen – iCourts) & Clare Ryan (Louisiana State Univ. – Law) have posted LGBT Rights as Mega-politics: Litigating before the ECtHR (Law and Contemporary Problems, forthcoming). Here’s the abstract:
Contestations over LGBT rights are now occurring worldwide at multiple levels of governance. The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR or Strasbourg Court) has become a focal point for these contestations. This article, part of a symposium in Law and Contemporary Problems on International Courts and the Adjudication of Mega-Politics, analyzes the increase in LGBT rights cases before the ECtHR. We argue that two divergent forces are pushing these cases to Strasbourg. First, the Court has dynamically interpreted the European Convention on Human Rights to expand protections for gay men and lesbians by taking account of progressive trends in national laws and policies. Second, the ECtHR has received numerous complaints against Russia, Eastern European, and former Soviet states that routinely violate the bodily integrity and political rights of sexual minorities.
To understand these trends, we coded all ECtHR lesbian and gay rights cases. We divide the case law into three periods—1950 to 1998, 1999 to 2009, and 2010 to 2020—that mark the Court’s evolving approach to these rights. We identify the number of cases in each period, describe important doctrinal trends, and discuss watershed cases that mark shifts in ECtHR jurisprudence. We then pose three questions to investigate the explosion of LGBT legal issues before the ECtHR over the last decade: Why the increase? Why Strasbourg? And why LGBT rights? We conclude by considering the implications of our findings for the ECtHR as a forum for mega-political contestation.
International and Comparative SOGIESC Law - Professor Andreas R Ziegler 
