Lily Wakefield

A judge in Taiwan has ruled in favour of a gay man who wants to adopt his husband’s non-biological child, in a historic step for LGBT+ rights.

Currently Taiwan, which in 2019 became the very first country in Asia to legalise marriage equality, only allows same-sex couples to adopt when one partner is the biological parent of the child.

But on 25 December, a family court in Kaohsiung city ruled that 38-year-old Wang Chen-wei’s child, who he previously adopted, could also be adopted by his 34-year-old husband Chen Chun-ju.

However, the ruling only applies to their specific case, and has not legalised same-sex adoption across the country.

Chen-wei told AFP: “I am happy that my spouse is also legally recognised as the father of our child… but I can’t feel all that happy without amending the law.

“It’s really absurd that same-sex people can adopt a child when they are single but they can’t after they get married.”

According to Taipei Times, Chen-wei added on Facebook: “We will continue to fight. The key is having the law revised.

“If our family wants to adopt another child, will we have to go through the same process again and gamble on which judicial affairs officer we get? Or will the law have been amended so it won’t be so hard for everybody?”

The path forward for other same-sex couples who want to adopt is unclear.

The Act for Implementation of Judicial Yuan Interpretation No 748, which legalised same-sex marriage in Taiwan, does not expressly allow or forbid same-sex adoption of children who are not biologically related to either parent, and only mentions one spouse adopting “the genetic child of the other party”.

While the Kaohsiung ruled that it the child in question should not be discriminated against, and that it would be “inappropriate to give a negative or discriminatory interpretation of the provision”, the Taiwan Equality Campaign said that two other couples it supports had had their adoption requests rejected.

Jennifer Lu, executive director of the LGBT+ rights group, told AFP: “We hope the rulings serve as a reminder to government officials and lawmakers that the current unfair legal conditions need to be changed.”

Israel will allow surrogacy for same-sex couples, single men and trans people from next week after a decade-long legal battle.

Health minister Nitzan Horowitz announced on Tuesday (4 January) that new rules making surrogacy accessible to all families will come into effect on 11 January.

Currently, surrogacy in Israel is only legal for heterosexual, married couples and single women who ask a surrogate to carry their biological child. Same-sex couples and single men must currently go abroad if they wish to access surrogacy, making the process even more complex and expensive.

In July 2021, the Supreme Court of Israel ruled that denying surrogacy rights to same-sex couples was unlawful, and that the ban must be lifted.

According to the Times of Israel, while announcing the lifting of the ban, Horowitz said: “Today we put an end to injustice and discrimination. Everyone has the right to parenthood.”

Horowitz, who is Israel’s second openly gay Knesset member, said that the new surrogacy rules would include trans parents, and that they would enable “future fathers, gay couples and essentially every person in Israel equal access to surrogacy in Israel”.

“This is an exciting day for me, as a gay minister who is well aware of the exclusion and discrimination against us over the years,” he added. “It’s my personal struggle too.”

The 2021 court ruling on surrogacy came more than a decade after a petition was first filed at Israel’s top court in 2010 by gay couple Etai Pinkas Arad and Yoav Arad Pinkas.

Arad and Pinkas said in a statement that the announcement marked “a historic day”, and a “day of joy for Israeli society in general and in particular for the LGBT+ community, also due to the inclusion of the trans community in the amendment to the law”.

The Aguda – the Association for LGBTQ Equality in Israel said in a statement on social media: “After years of struggle – in the streets, in the courts, in the Knesset and in the government, we have succeeded and this is the achievement of us all.

“The right to be a parent is a basic right for every person and today we are taking a historic step in the struggle for equality.

“Along with the joy, we know that even today our struggle is still far from over. The road is still long and begins first of all with the most vulnerable populations in the LGBT+ community, and we are here to continue to fight for the rights of us all, everywhere.”

Gabriel Boric has won the Chile election, seeing off far-right anti-LGBT+ rival José Antonio Kast.

At just 35 years old, Gabriel Boric was elected Chile’s youngest-ever president on Sunday (19 December).

His far-right rival, Kast, conceded with 97 per cent of the vote counted, Boric having gained a 12 point lead with 55.8 per cent of the tallied votes.

The left-wing former student leader won the presidency after a fraught election which the LGBT+ community feared could turn the clock back on equality.

Same-sex marriage was finally legalised in Chile this month, and while Boric is committed to improving reproductive and LGBT+ rights as well as gender equality, Kast had decried the “gay lobby” and is viciously opposed to marriage equality and abortion.

Sunday’s (19 December) run-off came after an initial round of voting on 21 November saw Kast receiving 28 per cent of the vote and Boric receiving 26, with neither earning the 50 per cent required to win.

According to The Guardian, Gabriel Boric told a crowd of revellers after his win: “We are a generation that emerged in public life demanding our rights be respected as rights and not treated like consumer goods or a business.

“We no longer will permit that the poor keep paying the price of Chile’s inequality… The times ahead will not be easy.

“Only with social cohesion, re-finding ourselves and sharing common ground will we be able to advance towards truly sustainable development – which reaches every Chilean.”

Boric has vowed to transform Chile through higher taxes, increased public spending, and the dismantling of controversial private pension schemes. He is also determined to block mining initiatives that risk “destroying” the environment, and wants to empower women, indigenous communities, young people and other marginalised groups.

He will be sworn in on 11 March, 2022.

Chile’s outgoing president signed same-sex marriage into law on his way out

With just four months left of his presidency, Chile’s current leader signed same-sex marriage into law as one of his final acts.

President Sebastián Piñera signed the marriage equality bill into law on 9 December, after it was approved by congress.

The bill had been stuck in congress for four years, despite same-sex civil unions having been legalised in Chile in 2015, but earlier this year Piñera expedited it.

According to Reuters, Piñera said at the time: “All couples who so wish, regardless of their sexual orientation, will be able to live love, marry and form a family with all the dignity and legal protection they need and deserve.”

After four years of debate, New Zealand has unanimously passed a self-ID bill for trans people, voting “in favour of inclusivity and against discrimination”.

The self-ID bill was introduced in 2018, and was finally passed by New Zealand’s parliament on Thursday (9 December) after its third reading.

It will remove the requirement for medical intervention to change legal gender marker in favour of a “statutory declaration”.

The changes will come into force in 18 months time, allowing for consultation with the LGBT+ community on how the process should work, how young people can access correct gender markers, and how to be inclusive of non-binary people and different cultures.

According to the NZ Herald, Green Party MP Dr Elizabeth Kerekere, a cisgender lesbian and longtime trans ally, said: “This bill recognises that those who need to amend their birth certificate can do so, that the courts do not have the right to make that choice for them, that parents do not have that right, that cisgender people who don’t even know them or care about them do not have that right.”

“As a takatāpui, cis-lesbian fem ally to our takatāpui, trans and intersex non-binary whānau, I am very proud to commend this bill to the house,” she continued.

Internal affairs minister Jan Tinetti described the passing of the bill as “a proud day in Aotearoa’s history”, and added: “Parliament has voted in favour of inclusivity and against discrimination.”

She said that trans folk and those who supported the bill had been “hurt, mocked, belittled and discriminated against” during the course of the years-long debate, and continued: “A lot of discussion was aimed at trans women. As a cis woman I am proud to stand alongside my sisters.

“Trans misogyny is still misogyny… We are changing legislation that is truly a step closer to an inclusive Aotearoa New Zealand.

“Keep proudly being you.”

Lagging shamefully behind New Zealand, in the UK, self-ID for trans folk seems like a distant dream.

While the Tory government conducted research as far back as 2018 showing broad public support for reform of the gender recognition, under Boris Johnson, the government announced last year that it was scrapping plans for reform completely.

There has been an alarming surge in the number of homophobic and transphobic hate crimes recorded by UK police forces since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

According to new figures, after lockdown restrictions were eased this summer, anti-LGBT+ hate crime numbers soared to the highest level since the beginning of the pandemic.

Between January and August this year, at least 14,670 homophobic hate crimes were recorded in the UK. During the same period in 2020, there were 11,841, and the first six months of 2019 saw 10,817.

The third national lockdown began in January, 2021, and from January to April there were an average of 1,456 homophobic hate crimes reported per month, and 208 transphobic hate crimes.

As lockdown restrictions eased, this figure soared to 2,211 homophobic incidents per month from May to August, and 324 transphobic ones.

This year, reports of violent anti-LGBT+ hate crimes in the UK have felt endless.

Manchester and Liverpool have faced waves of homophobic attacks over the last year.

In Manchester, queer folk have been attacked with hammers and beaten and left with permanent scarring, while churches have been trashed for embracing same-sex marriage.

In Liverpool, LGBT+ people have been beaten and left “covered in blood”, shoved into canals, and had homophobes spit in their faces during a pandemic.

In the country’s capital this year, a gay man was murdered, his body found in a Tower Hamlets cemetery, while just last month a queer woman was left with a broken jaw following an attack in London’s West End.

Stonewall told LBC that even these shocking figures do not show the terrifying full picture of UK hate crimes because of under-reporting.

Stonewall’s associate director of policy and research, Eloise Stonborough, added: “LGBT+ people have struggled throughout the pandemic, with many not having access to vital support networks and spaces during lockdowns.

“It’s always worrying to see an increase in anti-LGBT+ hate crime, particularly at a time when our communities were more isolated than ever.”

Leni Morris, the chief executive of the LGBT anti-violence charity Galop, told The Guardian: “What we saw in the pandemic was LGBT+ people experiencing forms of abuse and violence that were either exacerbated by the pandemic itself or caused by it.

“We have some people who were victims of abuse and attacks because of being blamed for the pandemic itself, either because perpetrators thought the pandemic was an act of God – because of the existence of LGBT+ people – or because of the community’s association with the last major pandemic in people’s minds, and that’s the HIV/AIDS pandemic.”

The National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) has promised that police will “always pursue action against perpetrators of hate crime where there is the evidence to do so”, but admitted that as many hate crime offences move online, prosecution has become increasingly difficult.