The Maltese government has declined the Nationalist Party’s (NP) proposed amendments to the Marriage Equality Bill which wanted to retain the terms ‘mother’, ‘father’, ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ in Maltese law while inserting the terms ‘parent’ and ‘spouse’. Malta’s Equality minister said that such modifications “implicitly undermine the concept of equality and create distinctions between different […]

German MPs voted to legalise same-sex marriage by 393 to 226 votes at the German parliament Bundestag. The vote had four abstentions and was followed by debates reflecting age-old arguments over marriage equality. Since 2001, same-sex couples in Germany have been able to enter into civil unions, but were not allowed to marry. The new […]

The Criminal Records (Expungement of Convictions for Historical Homosexual Offences) Bill was introduced in the Parliament. If passed, this law will permit men convicted of consensual homosexual conduct, or the families of such men who have since died, to seek the deletion of their conviction from official records. Further decision will be taken on a […]

Nayarit became the third state after Michoacan and Mexico City to allow changes in birth certificates due to gender identity reasons. The law reform will allow transgender people to request and initiate changes in their birth certificates at civil registry and municipal offices. The new law also specifies that no civil registry judge will be […]

A public notary in Medellín has authorized the union between three men, declaring that the three of them constitute a family and are each others’ legal partners. Colombia’s constitutional court approved marriage equality in 2016, and had in 2015 granted same-sex couples the same adoption rights as heterosexuals. However, such moves have invited a backlash […]

The Chilean Constitutional Tribunal upheld women’s rights when it ruled that a new law which seeks to end complete criminalisation of abortion in Chileis constitutionalChile’s abortion law was amended in August, 2017 to decriminalize abortion in the limited circumstances of life of risk to the life of the pregnant woman or girl; pregnancy resulting from […]

The Parliament of the Dominican Republic has rejected an amendment to the Penal Code, which sought to criminalise all abortions under any circumstances, except to save the life of the pregnant woman after all efforts to save both her and the foetus have failed. The President had earlier vetoed this amendment on the ground that […]

The Haiti senate has voted to not only criminalise gay marriage, but also any public demonstration of support for homosexuality. The approved bill, which is yet to be signed into law, states that parties, co-parties and accomplices of a homosexual marriage can be punished by three years in prison and a fine of about USD […]

The Rhode Island legislature passed a bill which protects minors from ‘conversion therapy’- sometimes referred to as “sexual orientation change efforts” or “reparative therapy” that seek to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity and expression. These practices are based on the false understanding that being LGBTQ is a psychological illness that needs to […]

The US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has lifted a court order against a ‘religious freedom’ law in Mississippi that will facilitate extensive anti-LGBT discriminatory practices, citing the technical issue of lack of standing for plaintiffs. The Court issued a verdict allowing for the implementation of HB 1523 which had been blocked as a result […]