This blog originally appeared at LGBTQ Nation.

The conservative Greek government has garnered support for its same-sex marriage bill from liberal lawmakers.

Just days after hesitating on a timeline to introduce legislation to legalize gay marriage in Greece, the recently reelected center-right Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis received a significant boost for his campaign pledge with the endorsement of gay opposition leader Stefanos Kasselakis.

The legislation, revealed on Wednesday, faces strong opposition from a faction within Mitsotakis’ New Democracy party, other right-leaning lawmakers in the Greek Parliament, and the Greek Orthodox Church. However, support from the left-leaning Syriza party’s 38 members would secure its passage.

Kasselakis stated that he would overlook “imperfections” in the bill and would instruct his party to vote for the proposal, even though it maintains a prohibition on surrogacy for gay couples seeking parenthood. A prior draft legislation presented by Syriza earlier in the week would have granted this right to same-sex couples.

The leader of Syriza emphasized the “positive elements” of the legislation and criticized the right-wing New Democracy lawmakers opposing the bill for what he called their “political cowardice.”

Kasselakis rose to prominence in September after his unexpected election as the leader of the left-leaning opposition party. The 35-year-old former Goldman Sachs banker married his American husband, Tyler McBeth, in the U.S. in October.

“When this draft law comes to parliament,” Kasselakis told Star TV in Greece, “it will be approved thanks to Syriza.”

While surrogacy remains restricted for gay couples in the proposed bill, full parental rights would be extended to same-sex parents who already have children.

“We won’t change the law on assisted parenthood,” Prime Minister Mitsotakis declared, addressing the issue publicly for the first time on Wednesday evening. He emphasized that same-sex couples would still be able to adopt children.

The prime minister pointed to the challenges faced by the children of gay couples, who lack recognition under Greek law, as a driving force behind the proposed change. Greece legalized same-sex civil partnerships in 2015.

A recent poll indicates that 49% of Greeks are against legalizing same-sex unions, while 35% are in favor. A majority also opposes granting full parental rights to gay or lesbian couples. The Church’s objections to extending marriage rights to same-sex couples are centered around concerns about gay parents raising children.

This blog originally appeared at LGBTQ nation.

Firefighters in Decatur, Georgia have determined that an October fire at a local gender-affirming care clinic was intentionally set in a move one activist has labeled “terrorism.”

The fire in the city’s historic Blair Building was “contained to one office, and no injuries were reported,” according to a recent statement from the City of Decatur Fire Rescue Department.

The statement expressed that an investigation has determined the fire “to be incendiary in nature, indicating the fire was intentionally set.” No suspects have been identified.

The Blair building houses several medical providers, but a police report confirms that the target of the fire was QMed, which focuses on gender-affirming care, Decaturish reported.

“We won’t be intimidated,” QMed owner Dr. Izzy Lowell told Atlanta News First. “We will not stop providing life-saving care to our patients.” While the office is “completely destroyed,” Lowell said the clinic is seeing patients remotely. She also confirmed the FBI is investigating the arson attack as a hate crime.

Georgia passed a hate crime law in 2020. H.B. 426 became the first law in the state to specifically protect LGBTQ+ residents and give stronger punishments to those whose crimes target victims due to their LGBTQ+ identity, or due to other factors such as their race, religion, or national origin.

Trans activist Alejandra Caraballo wrote on X that the attack “is following the antiabortion playbook of destroying clinics to get them shut down.”

“This is terrorism,” she concluded.

The Movement Advancement Project gave Georgia 1 point out of a possible 44.5 for its LGBTQ+ policies, leaving it with an overall rating of “low.”

In March 2023, Gov. Brian Kemp (R) signed a ban on trans youth receiving gender-affirming health care. The law revokes the licenses of medical professionals who administer surgeries or hormone replacement therapy for transgender people under the age of 18. The law creates an exemption for cisgender youth; they are allowed gender-affirming care to conform to their sex assigned at birth.

Puberty blockers, however, are not banned under the legislation.

The American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics have all rejected claims that gender-affirming care harms transgender children or adults. Additionally, gender-affirming surgery is almost never performed on youth.

In a recent incident, an anonymous complaint regarding a frequently banned LGBTQ+ book prompted local police to conduct a search in a Massachusetts classroom, citing concerns about “obscene” and “pornographic” material. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has strongly criticized this incident.

“Police going into schools and searching for books is the sort of thing you hear about in communist China and Russia,” Ruth A. Bourquin, senior and managing attorney for the ACLU of Massachusetts, told The Berkshire Eagle this week. “What are we doing?”

The Great Barrington Police Department and the Berkshire District Attorney’s Office initiated an investigation to determine if Maia Kobabe’s “Gender Queer” contains pornographic material. The inquiry was prompted by a complaint received on December 8, asserting that the book was present in an eighth-grade classroom at W.E.B. Du Bois Regional Middle School.

Upon receiving notification of the investigation, Superintendent Peter Dillon was informed by the police. Principal Miles Wheat, accompanied by a plainclothes officer, conducted a search for the book in the classroom after school on December 8. The English teacher, reportedly unaware of the impending search, was present during the search. Despite the use of a body camera by the officer, the book was not found.

District Attorney Timothy Shugrue announced that Great Barrington Police had concluded their investigation, stating that the complaint did not involve criminal activity. Consequently, the matter was closed, and any further action was referred back to the Berkshire Hills Regional School District. The superintendent assured the District Attorney’s Office that the issue would be reviewed according to the school district’s policies, treating it as a school department matter.

Teachers, parents, and students in the community expressed outrage over the incident. More than 100 students at Monument Mountain Regional High School staged a walkout in protest. Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey (D) released a statement supporting the walkout, asserting that “book banning has no place” in the state.

In a Facebook post, the teacher whose classroom was searched wrote, “How on earth is a cop more qualified to decide what books are OK to be in an educational setting for teens?”

According to The Berkshire Eagle, the police argued they had a duty to investigate the complaint about Gender Queer. However, the ACLU of Massachusetts expressed deep concern about this notion.

“They say anytime someone could call they have an obligation to go marching into places wearing a body cam, and you know, interrogating people,” Bourquin said, adding that state laws are “pretty clear about police not having roles in this situation.” Obscenity laws, she explained, have been “carefully crafted to ensure not tromping on constitutional free speech rights.”

Bourquin informed the paper that the ACLU has requested the officer’s body camera footage and other records related to the investigation.

Justin Silverman, executive director of the New England First Amendment Coalition, explained that obscenity laws test whether a book has value beyond sexual arousal. This “very specific” requirement is not necessarily something the average person or police officer might understand.

Silverman said that he’s concerned about the precedent the Great Barrington Police may have set amid the national rise in book bans primarily targeting books by Black and LGBTQ+ authors. “While it might be rare now, it doesn’t mean that it will be rare in the future,” Silverman said. “I think the school and the police department have to come forth with a policy to make sure that this doesn’t happen again.”

In a statement, the Berkshire Hills Regional School Committee and Superintendent Peter Dillon apologized for the incident.

“The recent incident at the middle school has challenged and impacted our community,” the statement read. “Faced with an unprecedented police investigation of what should be a purely educational issue, we tried our best to serve the interests of students, families, teachers, and staff. In hindsight, we would have approached that moment differently. We are sorry. We can do better to refine and support our existing policies. We are committed to supporting all our students, particularly vulnerable populations.”