A court found Japan’s refusal to legalize same-sex marriage was constitutional Friday in the last of six cases that are expected to be brought to the Supreme Court for a final and definitive ruling, possibly next year.
The Tokyo High Court said marriage under the law is largely expected to be a union between men and women in a decision that reversed a lower court ruling last year and was the first loss at high courts in the six cases brought by those seeking equal marriage rights.
Judge Ayumi Higashi said a legal definition of a family as a unit between a couple and their children is rational and that exclusion of same-sex marriage is valid. The court also dismissed damages of 1 million yen ($6,400) each sought by eight sexual minorities seeking equal marital rights.
Plaintiffs and their lawyers said the decision was unjust but they were determined to keep fighting through the Supreme Court.
“I’m so disappointed,” plaintiff Hiromi Hatogai told reporters outside the court. “Rather than sorrow, I’m outraged and appalled by the decision. Were the judges listening to us?”
“We only want to be able to marry and be happy, just like anyone else,” said another plaintiff, Rie Fukuda. “I believe the society is changing. We won’t give up.”
With all six high court cases done, the Supreme Court is expected to handle all appeals and make a decision.
Though discrimination still exists at school, work and elsewhere, public backing for legalizing same-sex marriage and support in the business community have rapidly increased in recent years.
Japan is the only member of the Group of Seven industrialized countries that does not recognize same-sex marriage or provide any other form of legally binding protection for LGBTQ+ couples.
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi ‘s conservative ruling Liberal Democratic Party is the main opponent of same-sex marital rights in Japan. The government has argued that marriage under civil law does not cover same-sex couples and places importance on natural reproduction.
More than 30 plaintiffs have joined the lawsuits on marriage equality filed across Japan since 2019. They argue that civil law provisions barring same-sex marriage violate the Constitutional right to equality and freedom of marriage.
Friday’s ruling was only the second that found the current government policy constitutional after the 2022 Osaka District Court decision.
The Colts Neck Township Schools Board of Education on Nov. 19 unanimously passed a “Parental Bill of Rights,” which among other things allows parents to obtain information surrounding their child’s gender identity and allows them to opt their child out of lessons they find morally objectionable.
The adoption of the policy for the preschool through eighth-grade school district was seen as a victory for parents who believe they should have a say in what their child is learning, but drew criticism from LGBTQ advocates who believe the policy is discriminatory and will hurt students who are sexual or gender minorities.
Lucas Manrique, a mental health professional who spoke during the public comment portion of the meeting before the vote took place, said the BOE’s policy would “operate in direct opposition” to New Jersey Department of Education Policy 5756, which provides guidance to schools on how to treat transgender and gender nonconforming students.
“It is my ethical responsibility as a therapist to provide testimony where I see the potential for harm,” said Manrique, who identified himself as a licensed associate counselor and a nationally certified counselor from Middlesex County.
“5756 was created to protect young people by preventing forced outing. Outing students without their consent is psychologically damaging, is discrimination, and is illegal in New Jersey. I implore you to recognize that as a body, it is your responsibility to protect every student and reinforce the rights protected by law,” he said.
However, Val Mendez of Marlboro said she strongly supports the policy. She said that she cares deeply about transparency and that schools should not be a replacement for parents.
“What I appreciate most about this … is that it’s not about politics; it’s about restoring trust, strengthening communication, and ensuring that parents and schools work together,” said Mendez, who emphasized she was speaking as a parent and not as a member of any board to which she belongs.
The policy contains eight articles and outlines parents’ and legal guardians’ rights in the school district. The parts of the policy that sparked the most controversy deal with sexuality and gender, including resources and curricula containing LGBTQ content.
Article 3.3 of the policy addresses the issue of gender identity. It says that the BOE affirms the rights of a child’s parents or legal guardians to ask staff members and receive from them “truthful and to the extent known information” about their child, including changes to their child’s gender identity, pronouns, and name. A child’s legal caretakers, according to the policy, are also entitled to know the sports teams and activities “organized by sex” in which their child is participating and what “sex-specific” facility, such as a bathroom or locker room, their child is using.
Article 4.1 of the policy entitles parents or legal guardians to excuse their child from any “instructions in health, family life education or sex education” that conflict with their “conscience, or sincerely held moral or religious beliefs.”
Article 4.2 of the policy allows a child’s legal caretakers to prevent their child from exposure to a resource or curriculum content that they believe “substantially interferes” with their child’s religious development.
And Article 4.3 allows parents or legal guardians to prevent their child from participating in surveys, questionnaires, or research projects involving personal family information, beliefs, sexual behavior, mental health, or other “sensitive areas.”
Other school districts in the state have written similar policies that have been met with legal challenges. New Jersey Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin filed lawsuits alleging the policies violate the state’s Law Against Discrimination against at least three school districts. The attorney general’s office declined to comment on the matter in Colts Neck. A spokesperson for the LGBTQ civil rights organization Garden State Equality said the organization is “carefully considering any and all possibilities.” A spokesperson for the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey said the organization is looking into the policy.
Shawn Hyland, director of advocacy at the New Jersey Family Policy Center, which describes itself on its website as a “Christ-centered organization” and has offices in Trenton and Warren, thanked the board for considering what he called a “common-sense policy.”
“Thank you for recognizing that the parents in Colts Neck genuinely want what’s best for their children and that school policies should reflect that reality. Parents are not only taxpayers; they’re the primary stakeholder in public education. They nurture, protect, and guide their children every day, and they deserve transparency. Let me be clear: Parents are not the problem,” he said.
However, that is not always the case, according to Manrique, who said The Trevor Project, a national nonprofit organization focused on suicide prevention and crisis intervention for LGBTQ youth, found that in 2024, 40 percent of unhoused LGBTQ youth reported that they were kicked out of their parents’ home or were abandoned because of their LGBTQ identity. Also, 35 percent of homeless youth reported attempting suicide, Manrique said.
Still, Hyland said it is “deeply offensive” to suggest moms and dads should have no right to know what curriculum is being taught, to access student records, to be notified of health-related decisions, and to opt out of “intrusive surveys.”
“It is both unethical and dangerous to advocate for that extreme position, yet sadly some do.” Hyland said, adding that the BOE’s policy does not create rights; it simply recognizes the rights already protected under existing federal law. He added that “keeping secrets from parents” violates the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment.
Hyland said 77 percent of New Jersey adults believe parents should be fully informed about what’s happening in school. “This is not a fringe position; it’s a mainstream conviction,” he said.
However, Dr. Brian Kaufman, a psychologist with expertise in adolescent development and human sexuality from Asbury Park, told the board that outing students before they are prepared “could lead to the indelible stain of blood on your hands. You can always choose to introduce additional conversations and lessons, but you cannot undo the physical and emotional trauma that results from ignorance.”
Kaufman directs a nonprofit organization called “Rainbow Quest.” Its mission, stated on its website, is to distribute “affirming and educational resources to promote social and intercultural skills.” The organization offers training workshops for educators and therapists and “community-building” events that are intended to “reduce bullying, discrimination, and intolerance and help build and maintain healthy, safe communities, homes, schools, and workplaces.”
He said the organization also aims to educate about “historical and cross-cultural heroes who advanced humankind, LGBTQ role models.
“We rarely learn about these heroes’ sexual orientation or gender identities in school, but every election cycle, we can’t avoid being bombarded with angry, ignorant rhetoric that portrays LGBTQ+ community members as inferior, deviant, and less deserving of respect and love than their gender-conforming peers.”
The exclusion of positive content about LGBTQ people and their contributions to society “leaves the public with a one-sided, negative perception of our gender-diverse youth,” Kaufman said, adding that much more is known now about human sexuality and gender than in the past.
Larissa Garcia, community organizer for GSE, who also identified herself as a Middlesex County resident, read a statement to the board from GSE Senior Director of Advocacy and Organizing Lauren Albrecht.
In it, Albrecht criticized the BOE and its policy committee chairman, Robert Scales, saying she is “keenly aware” of the board’s “disingenuously named ‘Parental Bill of Rights.’” Albrecht said Scales previously told her when she contacted the district months ago about the policy to register a complaint about it that it was dishonest of her to do so without reading it.
“I knew what it would say due to my professional experience and knowledge, and that coupled with the fact that I field regularly occurring calls from families in your district who are concerned by your board’s actions, which is an unusual occurrence for community members from a specific school district to regularly reach out to us about your board’s words, your board’s votes, and what your board members post on social media, about the tone and the climate that has been created for LGBTQ students in your schools by these words and actions,” Albrecht’s statement said.
She continued by saying she has since seen the policy and said it was “verbatim” the same as other policies introduced around the country by “right-wing extremists.”
Albrecht said the policy begs the question: “‘What is the end game here?’ What is the message that Colts Neck is trying to send to LGBTQ students and the school staff who serve them? Parents have always had rights. That has not changed nor been altered. And LGBTQ students have the right to be safe and supported at school so that they can focus on learning and just being kids. Just because you can introduce a policy like this, and you can, because the law still stands, absolutely does not mean that you should.”
Before the vote was taken, BOE President Angelique Volpe read a statement that said the policy’s adoption makes the board’s position “unmistakably clear” that the rights of parents will stay at the forefront of every decision the board makes.
“Parents are the primary authority in their children’s education, and this district will never sideline that role,” Volpe said. “Every child in Colts Neck will be protected, respected, and treated equally without exception, and we will not permit any sexual content, ideology, or identity to take priority over the rights of our families or the educational mission of our schools. No group’s sexuality will override the values or rights of others. Period.
“This board stands firm, united and unwavering. Our commitment to academic excellence, child safety, and parental authority is absolute, and we will defend these principles without hesitation.”
The European Court of Justice has issued a ruling that all nations in the European Union (EU) must recognize lawful same-sex marriages that were performed in other EU countries. Previously, a country could refuse to recognize a marriage if it had taken place in another country and did not align with its own laws.
The court declared that EU citizens have a right to “a normal family life” regardless of borders. “When they create a family life in a host member state,” they said, “in particular by virtue of marriage, they must have the certainty to be able to pursue that family life upon returning to their member state of origin.”
Citizens of the European Union have the right to freedom of movement between the different nations within the union. The court suggested that this right, as well as the right to “respect for private and family life,” would be breached if one country could refuse to acknowledge a lawful marriage from another country.
The court added in a press release, “Member States are therefore required to recognize, for the purpose of the exercise of the rights conferred by EU law, the marital status lawfully acquired in another Member State.”
The case was brought to the Luxembourg-based court on behalf of a Polish couple who had been married in Berlin, Germany, where same-sex marriage is recognized. When, years later, they returned to their home country, they submitted their marriage certificate, which was in German, to the Polish government to be transcribed and recognized in the Polish civil register.
The Polish government denied their request, as the country does not recognize same-sex marriages. With this new ruling, they will no longer be able to refuse legally.
Of the 27 EU member states, only 18 have legalized same-sex marriage.
LGBTQ+ rights have taken some big hits in Poland in recent years. The far-right Law and Justice Party held power from 2015 to 2023 and enacted a range of anti-LGBTQ+ policies during that time. It was only in April of this year that the last “LGBT-free” zone created by the party was finally repealed.
Poland is currently led by a coalition government. The prime minister, Donald Tusk, campaigned on introducing same-sex civil unions and has pushed for such legislation to be passed. However, Poland’s president, Karol Nawrocki of the Law and Justice Party, has said that he would veto any legislation that would legalize same-sex marriage.
A far-right party in New Zealand that is hostile to trans rights preempted a government announcement on Wednesday that the country will indefinitely ban the use of puberty blockers by trans youth.
The New Zealand First party, a minority member of Parliament’s coalition government, made the announcement three hours ahead of the government’s own health ministry, declaring a victory in its “war on woke,” Erin in the Morning reports.
“Today, sanity won another battle in the war on woke,” the surprise announcement read. “After years of dangerous ideological experimentation pushed by radical activists and rubber-stamped by weak politicians, the New Zealand Government has officially banned puberty blockers for children. This is what happens when you back a party that actually delivers.”
“While other parties can’t even define what a woman is, we’ve stood up for families, for truth, and for children.”
The preemptive declaration was one more indication of the politicization of healthcare for trans youth in New Zealand and around the world, and a clue to the party’s intimate involvement in crafting the government’s policy. The change adds New Zealand to a growing list of countries and U.S. states banning gender-affirming care for trans youth.
The government’s own announcement described the decision as “a precautionary approach” to gender-affirming care for transgender youth.
There is a lack of “high-quality evidence that demonstrates the benefits or risks” of puberty-blocking drugs for trans youth, Health Minister Simeon Brown said.
113 patients in New Zealand were using puberty blockers in 2023, according to the health ministry.
While the policy announcement didn’t mention the widely criticized Cass Report, the controversial document claiming a lack of evidence supporting gender-affirming care for young people that was released in the UK last year, it’s the basis of the UK’s own indefinite ban on puberty blockers, which New Zealand is following.
Both countries say they’ll wait for the results of a UK government-sponsored clinical trial on the efficacy of puberty blockers for trans youth before making a final determination on their use. The prohibition won’t affect trans kids currently taking the drugs.
“By pinning the resumption of prescribing to a UK trial result expected in 2031, the Government has effectively sacrificed a generation of trans youth,” said New Zealand civil rights organization Rights Aotearoa. “They are demanding a level of evidence for trans healthcare that they do not demand for hundreds of other treatments routinely used in pediatrics.”
Both bans make an exception for children experiencing early-onset puberty and other conditions, raising equal protection questions.
“This will undoubtedly end up in court – very quickly as the subject of a Judicial Review,” Rights Aotearoa’s Paul Thistoll posted after news of the decision. He called it a “blatant violation” of New Zealand’s Human Rights Act.
Transgender youth in Pennsylvania and their families are celebrating a significant legal victory. A federal court in Philadelphia has rebuffed the Department of Justice’s sweeping attempt to obtain highly personal medical records from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia about children receiving gender-affirming care.
On Friday, federal district Judge Mark A. Kearney in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania issued an order quashing DOJ subpoena demands for names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, home addresses, and clinical notes covering minors treated since January 2020. The court found the government “lacks statutory authority for a rambling exploration of the Hospital’s files to learn the names and medical treatment of children.”
Families in Pennsylvania had filed separate motions to quash subpoenas issued by the Trump administration in July that alleged fraud in gender-affirming care. As The Advocatereported, the subpoenas demanded exhaustive data on minors, including “intake forms, consent paperwork, and parental authorizations for puberty blockers and hormone therapy.”
Kearney’s decision reaffirms that the records in question concern lawful medical treatment governed under Pennsylvania law, and that children’s and families’ constitutional privacy interests “far outweigh” the government’s asserted investigative needs. The ruling also criticizes the DOJ’s shifting justifications, noting that at one point the government “replaced” and reminding that “false statements may be subject to a perjury investigation.”
The ruling arrives amid a broader national crackdown on gender-affirming care by the Trump administration, which in July announced more than 20 subpoenas to clinics and hospitals across multiple states. The American Medical Association and other major professional organizations had already pushed back, affirming such treatments as evidence-based and lifesaving.
For advocates and legal counsel representing the children, the decision is a vindication of long-held concerns about governmental overreach. “This is a critical win for everyone who believes healthcare decisions should be made in doctors’ offices, not the White House,” Mimi McKenzie of the Public Interest Law Center said in a press release. Attorney Jill Steinberg of the law firm Ballard Spahr added that the decision signals to transgender youth and their families that they “do not have to fight these battles alone.”
The United States Supreme Court has ruled in favour of a group of parents seeking to exempt their children from public school instruction that conflicts with their religious beliefs, in a 6-3 decision that reinforces constitutional protections for religious freedom.
The case was brought by Christian, Muslim, and Jewish parents in Montgomery County, Maryland, who objected to the use of LGBTQ-themed storybooks in elementary school classrooms, particularly books addressing same-sex marriage and gender identity.
Justice Samuel Alito, delivering the majority opinion, wrote that refusing to permit parents to opt their children out of such instruction “poses a very real threat of undermining their religious beliefs and practices” and violates the First Amendment’s guarantee of the free exercise of religion.
“The Montgomery County Board of Education’s introduction of the ‘LGBTQ+-inclusive’ storybooks, along with its decision to withhold opt outs, places an unconstitutional burden on the parents’ rights to the free exercise of their religion,” Alito wrote.
The justices found that the parents were likely to succeed in their legal challenge and should be granted a preliminary injunction while the case continues, meaning the school board must temporarily accommodate their request to be notified in advance of any related instruction and allow their children to be excused.
“In her dissent, Sotomayor accused the court of inventing a ‘constitutional right to avoid exposure to subtle themes contrary to the religious principles that parents wish to instill in their children.’” She was joined in dissent by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
The dispute stems from a 2022 policy change when the school district introduced several LGBTQ-themed books into its language arts curriculum and initially allowed parents to opt out. A year later, the board reversed that decision, arguing the opt-out system was unmanageable and conflicted with the district’s commitment to inclusion.
The parents argued that mandatory exposure to the material, without an option to decline, amounted to “government-led indoctrination about sensitive matters of sexuality.” School officials, however, maintained that the books are intended to introduce children to “diverse viewpoints and ideas.”
During oral arguments in April, the court’s conservative majority signaled strong support for parental rights in such cases, indicating that allowing families to opt out of instruction on sensitive subjects should be “common sense.”
The summer of 1985, I turned 16. In Belgium. While I lived primarily in rural, red Florida, summers sometimes had me staying with Dad’s family. At the time, my Army father was assigned to the American embassy in Brussels. With $100 in American Express “travelers’ cheques,” our go-to global currency of the time, it was a thrilling summer.
In Florida, I would’ve spent those months mopping floors or working the grill at a mall job. Instead, I had urban mass transit and could drink in bars. Granted, my Euro ’80s summer was more Depeche Mode than anything as explicit as Call Me By Your Name. Though virginal, at least I passed for something seedier one afternoon.
On a gray August Sunday, I was to meet my pal, Alex. Forget texting, as we didn’t even have email yet. Phone tag was possible, but nobody wanted to leave a message with somebody’s parents. We’d usually just make a vague plan in person. Probably, the previous Friday, it was, “Let’s meet by Rainbow Sunday round 4.” Ironic that a bar in 1985 could be called “Rainbow,” yet have no LGBTQ connection whatsoever. It was, loosely, an American-themed bar, popular with the small cohort of American teens in the city.
As I stood outside in whatever place of Brussels was near Rainbow, I did not know I was to be stood up. In what I thought was my coolest new piece of clothing, a plaid blue-and-white sport coat I’d bought in a cheap-chic bin in Italy, I waited. I checked my Swatch as the minutes passed. At least an hour went by before two Brussels police officers approached me. They wanted to see my “papers.” This was a new experience. The two suspicious policemen were asking me questions in French, which I did my best to translate. Was I meeting someone? Where did I live? How long had I been waiting? It seemed rather invasive, but they were cops, and I was 16.
Back home, my dad told me bluntly that the cops obviously thought I was a sex worker. I knew that new coat looked hot! Then again, the only attention I got was from the police. Ouch.
A few weeks later, I told this story to my mom. Her own upbringing took her from Baltimore to Switzerland to Brazil. With that background, she rather patriotically told me that being asked for your “papers” was relatively common outside of the U.S. We Americans, she opined, were used to a degree of anti-authoritarian freedom not found elsewhere. So, “land of the free” was more than jingoistic marketing? Great!
While I’d never been asked for my papers in my home country, I’m not sure I’d ever perceived it as free as my mother had. Sure, there were plenty of scary Soviet stories during the Cold War, the nightmare of the Khmer Rouge my father had seen firsthand…. But I was familiar with Reagan’s arguably racist drug war, kid-glove approach to Apartheid, and support for dictators like Augusto Pinochet and Ferdinand Marcos. At 16, I was definitely more cynical than my mother.
Sadly, today I have more reason than ever to be. Though I guess it’s not cynicism so much as disgust, anger, and resistance to our government’s new police state. A few years ago, I interviewed a man, Butch Merritt, who told tales of working clandestinely for Nixon’s citizen-surveillance machine. I was shocked when he recalled scooping up protest petitions and sign-up sheets from shops and venues around Dupont Circle, which he’d turn over to his FBI or police handlers.
The tools the federal government — along with several other governments around the world — is setting on America makes stealing a petition from Community Bookshop on P Street seem quaint. Hello, Facial-Recognition Technology.
Sure, so many of us use facial recognition to get into our phones and think nothing of it. It did not seem so innocent, however, when Hungary’s authoritarian government passed a law in March allowing it to use the tech to identify anyone who dared to show their face, literally, at Budapest Pride this year. At least Pride-goers threw that threat back in the horrible government’s face, with attendance hitting more than 100,000.
It is a very short line from Budapest to the “Ballroom,” considering the current regime of Viktor Orbán is celebrated in Trump World. The administration’s attacks on universities, media, and law firms reek of Orbán.
So, while I’m shocked to learn that ICE and its adjacent goons have rolled out handheld facial recognition tech across the country, to what is likely an unprecedented level, I’d be embarrassingly naive to be surprised.
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), a veteran of the civil rights movement and ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, last month told 404 Media, as reported by Common Dreams, “ICE using a mobile biometrics app in ways its developers at CBP never intended or tested is a frightening, repugnant, and unconstitutional attack on Americans’ rights and freedoms.” Amen.
Now that Trump has issued National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, we are all suspects. “There are common recurrent motivations and indicia uniting this pattern of violent and terroristic activities under the umbrella of self-described ‘anti-fascism,’” reads NSPM-7, in part. “Common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”
Are my views on gender “extreme”? Am I “hostile” toward systems that have long been used to oppress me? Are you? Who knows? Who defines these vague, subjective terms? I’m guessing it’s the folks who have decided to throw facial-recognition tech into the surveillance mix, with little, if any, legal restraint. The use of this technology is apparently new enough, that no one has bothered to set down laws to restrain it. Instead, we have protocols and suggestions as the only limits on an administration that delights in destroying whatever stands in its way.
COVID has waned, but this new Big Brother era may soon have us all masking up again for our personal safety, whether for Pride or protests.
A Texas A&M committee agreed that the university was wrong to fire a professor earlier this year after a controversy over a classroom video that showed a student objecting to a children’s literature lesson about gender identity.
The internal committee ruled that the university didn’t follow proper procedures and didn’t prove there was good cause to fire Melissa McCoul, who was a senior lecturer in the English department with over a decade of teaching experience. Republican lawmakers, including Gov. Greg Abbott, had called for her termination after seeing the video.
The committee unanimously voted earlier this week that “the summary dismissal of Dr. McCoul was not justified.”
The university said in a statement that interim President Tommy Williams has received the committee’s nonbinding recommendation and will make a decision in the coming days or weeks after reviewing it.
McCoul’s lawyer, Amanda Reichek, said this dispute seems destined to wind up in court because the university appears to plan to continue fighting and the interim president is facing the same political pressure.
“Dr. McCoul asserts that the flimsy reasons proffered by A&M for her termination are a pretext for the University’s true motivation: capitulation to Governor Abbott’s demands,” Reichek said in a statement.
The video showing a student questioning whether the class discussion was legal under President Trump’s executive order on gender roiled the campus and led to sharp criticism of university president Mark Welsh, who later resigned, but he didn’t offer a reason and never mentioned the video in his resignation announcement.
The opening of the video posted by state Rep. Brian Harrison showed a slide titled “Gender Unicorn” that highlighted different gender identities and expressions.
Students in the class told the Texas Tribune that they were discussing a book called “Jude Saves the World” about a middle schooler who is coming out as nonbinary. That was just one of several books included in the course that highlights LGBTQ+ issues.
After a brief back-and-forth discussion about the legality of teaching those lessons, McCoul asked the student to leave the class. Harrison posted other recordings of the student’s meeting with Welsh that show the university president defending McCoul’s teaching.
The Tribune reported that McCoul had taught the same course at A&M at least 12 times since 2018. University officials decided to end this particular summer class early after the confrontation, but McCoul returned to teach in the fall until after the videos were published online.
Welsh had said when McCoul was fired that he learned she had continued teaching content in a children’s literature course “that did not align with any reasonable expectation of standard curriculum for the course.” He also said that the course content was not matching its catalog descriptions. But her lawyer disputed that, and said McCoul was never instructed to change her course content in any way, shape or form.
Earlier this month, the Texas A&M Regents decided that professors now need to receive approval from the school president to discuss some race and gender topics.
The new policy states that no academic course “will advocate race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity” unless approved in advance by a campus president.
Various universities and their presidents around the country, including Harvard and Columbia have come under scrutiny from conservative critics and President Donald Trump administration over diversity, equity and inclusion practices and their responses to campus protests.
South Korea made a quiet but meaningful policy change in October. For the first time, the national census now allows same-sex couples living together to identify each other as “spouse” in official records.
While this adjustment does not confer any legal rights, it marks a symbolic step in recognizing LGBTQ+ households in the state’s demographic data.
But as same-sex couples slowly appear in national statistics, legal marriage still remains out of reach. And public support for it is not growing. In fact, it is recently shrinking.
Two major opinion surveys in 2025 have confirmed the trend. In a Hankook Research poll, 31 percent of South Koreans said they supported the legalization of same-sex marriage, down from 36 percent in 2021. In a separate survey by Gallup Korea, 34 percent backed legalization while 58 percent opposed it, a reversal that returns the numbers to where they stood nearly a decade ago.
Although many advocates have long assumed that rising visibility and generational change would drive progress, the latest data presents a different picture. The Korea Herald consulted two advocates who argue that it may be time to ask a different question: Does same-sex marriage need broad public support to move forward, or can the law lead the way?
Public may seem unsure until ‘law decides for them’
Yi Ho-rim, executive director of Marriage for All Korea, a leading local LGBTQ+ advocacy group, sees this moment as a reminder that legal change is not always a popularity contest. “The support for legalization has declined somewhat, but that doesn’t mean the conversation is stagnant,” Yi said.
“In fact, we see the current moment as a result of political polarization, not public apathy.”
Yi links the decline to the broader social climate. “Far-right mobilization earlier this year, combined with heightened political tension and increased online radicalization among young men, likely influenced the shift,” she noted. “When public discourse is overwhelmed by noise and fear, minority issues like same-sex marriage naturally become sidelined.”
Yi has argued that laws can reshape public perception. “In Taiwan, support for same-sex marriage was limited before legalization in 2019. But once the law passed, social attitudes evolved quickly. That pattern is not unique to Taiwan. We’ve seen similar changes in many countries.”
This pattern is not just anecdotal. Yi points to a notable case in South Korea’s own polling history. “There’s no way to prove causality,” she said, “but it’s hard to see it as a coincidence that Gallup Korea’s support numbers jumped by 10 percentage points between 2013 and 2014, exactly when countries like New Zealand, France and several US states made headlines by legalizing same-sex marriage.”
Park Dae-seung, a political philosopher at Seoul National University and director of the Institute for Inequality and Citizenship in Seoul, agrees. “Constitutional democracies are designed to protect minority rights, even when those rights are unpopular,” Park said.
“Laws that affirm dignity and equality are rarely embraced by a majority at first. But they send a powerful social signal. They tell people what is ‘normal’. In other words, it’s the law that decides for them what’s acceptable.”
“Korean politicians routinely cite ‘lack of public consensus’ as a reason to delay bills like the Life Partnership Act or Marriage Equality Act, both of which remain stalled in the National Assembly for years,” he added. “But it’s an excuse.”
While younger South Koreans have historically been more supportive of LGBTQ+ rights, the generational divide is showing unexpected shifts. The latest Gallup Korea poll revealed that support for same-sex marriage among people in their 20s dropped by 15 percentage points between 2023 and 2025. At the same time, support among those over 70 nearly doubled, from 10 percent to 19 percent.
Yi sees this as a sign that older generations are not immovable. “These are people who still get most of their information from legacy media. When the 2024 Supreme Court ruling recognized same-sex cohabiting partners as eligible for health insurance benefits, it was widely reported. That may have helped normalize the issue.”
Groups like the Coalition Against Homosexuality and Same-Sex Marriage, backed by conservative Christian organizations, have actively resisted even symbolic shifts. In October, the group filed a criminal complaint against government officials who authorized same-sex partner recognition in the 2025 census. They claimed it violated the law by creating “false public records” and warned of a wider moral collapse.
Yi has contended that public discomfort should not be used to delay basic rights. “Many of these objections rely on the idea that LGBTQ+ people do not value love, care or long-term commitment,” she said.
“But that is only because most people have never met a same-sex couple in their daily lives. We are still largely invisible, and the numbers show it. In the 2025 Hankook Research survey, people who personally know an LGBTQ+ person were nearly twice as likely to support same-sex marriage. Visibility alone makes a real difference.”
The Dominican Republic’s Constitutional Court recently struck down provisions that criminalized consensual same-sex conduct by officers in the country’s National Police and Armed Forces.
Codes of Justice for the two security forces previously punished same-sex “sodomy” by officers with up to two years in prison. No equivalent penalties existed for heterosexual sexual acts.
The court ruled that those references to sodomy are “not in accordance with the Constitution,” and ordered their removal.
The court emphasized that the criminalization of same-sex conduct in the security forces lacked “a legitimate constitutional interest or aims to strengthen and improve institutional efficiency.”
“No regulation issued by state authorities or private individuals may diminish or restrict in any way a person’s rights based on their sexual orientation, an essential aspect of personal privacy and the free development of personality,” the court said in a resounding affirmation of the personal rights and freedoms of LGBTQ+ people in the Dominican Republic.
“For decades, these provisions forced LGBT officers to live in fear of punishment simply for who they are,” said Cristian González Cabrera, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch, which filed an amicus brief in the case last year.
“This ruling is a resounding affirmation that a more inclusive future is both possible and required under Dominican law.,” Cabrera added.
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) called the ruling, made public on Tuesday, “a landmark victory for equality, ending a regime of state-sanctioned discrimination that violated the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender officers.”
“This positive outcome represents the first case of general applicability advancing equality and dignity for LGBTI people in the Dominican Republic,” said Anderson Javiel Dirocie De León, one of the lawyers who brought the legal challenge against the policy. “There is still a long way to go, but it sets a historic precedent in the fight against discrimination based on sexual orientation.”
The Dominican Republic lags behind other island nations in the Caribbean on the issue of LGBTQ+ rights. The country doesn’t recognize same-sex unions, lacks discrimination protections, has outlawed adoption by gay couples, and doesn’t recognize nonbinary citizens. There are, however, no LGBTQ+ censorship laws in the country, and gender-affirming care remains legal there.
In the Caribbean region, five Anglophone countries — Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago — still have laws on the books that criminalize consensual same-sex conduct, a relic of British colonialism. Similar laws are widespread in Africa as well.
“President Luis Abinader and Congress should use the momentum of this landmark ruling to advance long-overdue protections for LGBT people,” said HRC’s González. “By moving forward with laws addressing discrimination and violence, the Dominican Republic can align itself with progress in Latin America and demonstrate a genuine commitment to equality and dignity for all.”
fleeredstates.blog 
You must be logged in to post a comment.