LGBTQ rights journalist Rob Salerno, an editor for Erasing 76 Crimes, surveys the status of LGBTQ rights and marriage equality in this series. (Click here to subscribe to his LGBTQ Global newsletter.)
Costa Rica:Â The constitutional court recognized the right of same-sex couples to share maternity leave, just like heterosexual couples can.
The government has proposed a gender recognition bill, but the state Social Security Fund rejected a part of it that would require it to cover sex reassignment surgery. It’s still being debated.
The ministry of education announced it was eliminating sex education and policies around homophobic bullying in schools, and also eliminating the position of LGBTI commissioner.
Honduras: The country emerged as another locus of far-right drift after US President Trump intervened in the presidential election to declare his preferred candidate. The close election still hasn’t declared a winner nearly a month later. Whoever is ultimately declared winner will be further to the right of outgoing president Xiomara Castro, who had vocally supported LGBTQ rights (though didn’t accomplish much in the face of a hostile congress).
El Salvador: The country’s dictator has gotten cozy with Trump, hosting the CECOT detention and torture center where America is deporting its undesirable migrants.
St. Lucia: The biggest positive development in the region was the court ruling that decriminalized gay sex in Saint Lucia. This court case was part of a coordinated strategy by Caribbean LGBTQ activists who filed simultaneous cases in five states challenging their sodomy laws, and this was the fourth positive ruling. Unlike other rulings in this series, the court did not find that the constitution specifically bars sexual orientation discrimination. We’re still waiting on a ruling from Grenada, which could come any day now. Or a year from now. Look, the court operates on Caribbean time.
An unrelated sodomy case in St. Vincent and the Grenadines failed in 2024, and I have not heard anything about an appeal. And another unrelated case…
Trinidad & Tobago: And the shock negative development of 2025. In March, the court of appeal overturned a 2018 ruling that decriminalized sodomy in the country. Caribbean time is Caribbean time, but overturning a seven-year-old decision is crazy. The case is now headed to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London for a final ruling, and it’s really unclear how it’ll rule.
The case turns on the “savings clause” in the constitution, which insulates pre-independence laws from court scrutiny, and whether it applies. The plaintiff said it didn’t apply, since the legislature had repealed the pre-independence sodomy law with a stronger one in 1986 and 2000. The court found that the savings clause applied, but reverted the law to the pre-independence version, which sounds like pure legislating from the bench to me!
The Privy Council has been pretty strongly in favor of upholding savings clauses in the recent past, but this one is quite a pretzel. They ought to also be bound by international treaty obligations (of both the UK and Trinidad) to decriminalize sodomy. In all likelihood, we won’t see a ruling until 2027 or later, fully a decade after the original case was filed.
Cuba:Â The National Assembly passed a law allowing gender change by self-identification, and also recognized common-law marriage for the first time.
Dominican Republic: The biggest news was that the Constitutional Court struck down laws that criminalized police officers and military personnel who have gay sex. The ruling also clearly established for the first time that the Dominican constitution bans discrimination based on sexual orientation, both in government services and in employment. It’s likely that over time this will become a foundational ruling to assert further LGBTQ rights in the country.
This is also fortunate, because congress also passed a new penal code this year over the objections of civil society groups, because it failed to include prohibitions on discrimination and hate crimes, and didn’t decriminalize abortion.
The court ruling also prompted me to do a bit of a Wikipedia dive updating entries on LGBTQ rights in numerous Caribbean countries, to clarify or update that they no longer bar gay servicemembers in their laws.
Dutch Territories: Sint Maarten is the last Netherlands territory where same-sex marriage is not yet legal, after the constitutional court made it legal in Aruba and Curacao last year. It seems like all it will take is a court challenge to bring equal marriage to Sint Maarten, but I don’t believe one has been filed yet.
UK Territories: Gays scored a surprise win in Turks and Caicos Islands, where a binational couple won a court of appeal ruling that the government must recognize overseas same-sex marriages for the purposes of immigration. The court explicitly did not rule on whether same-sex marriage mus
Costa Rica:Â The constitutional court recognized the right of same-sex couples to share maternity leave, just like heterosexual couples can.
The government has proposed a gender recognition bill, but the state Social Security Fund rejected a part of it that would require it to cover sex reassignment surgery. It’s still being debated.
The ministry of education announced it was eliminating sex education and policies around homophobic bullying in schools, and also eliminating the position of LGBTI commissioner.
Honduras: The country emerged as another locus of far-right drift after US President Trump intervened in the presidential election to declare his preferred candidate. The close election still hasn’t declared a winner nearly a month later. Whoever is ultimately declared winner will be further to the right of outgoing president Xiomara Castro, who had vocally supported LGBTQ rights (though didn’t accomplish much in the face of a hostile congress).
El Salvador: The country’s dictator has gotten cozy with Trump, hosting the CECOT detention and torture center where America is deporting its undesirable migrants.
St. Lucia: The biggest positive development in the region was the court ruling that decriminalized gay sex in Saint Lucia. This court case was part of a coordinated strategy by Caribbean LGBTQ activists who filed simultaneous cases in five states challenging their sodomy laws, and this was the fourth positive ruling. Unlike other rulings in this series, the court did not find that the constitution specifically bars sexual orientation discrimination. We’re still waiting on a ruling from Grenada, which could come any day now. Or a year from now. Look, the court operates on Caribbean time.
An unrelated sodomy case in St. Vincent and the Grenadines failed in 2024, and I have not heard anything about an appeal. And another unrelated case…
Trinidad & Tobago: And the shock negative development of 2025. In March, the court of appeal overturned a 2018 ruling that decriminalized sodomy in the country. Caribbean time is Caribbean time, but overturning a seven-year-old decision is crazy. The case is now headed to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London for a final ruling, and it’s really unclear how it’ll rule.
The case turns on the “savings clause” in the constitution, which insulates pre-independence laws from court scrutiny, and whether it applies. The plaintiff said it didn’t apply, since the legislature had repealed the pre-independence sodomy law with a stronger one in 1986 and 2000. The court found that the savings clause applied, but reverted the law to the pre-independence version, which sounds like pure legislating from the bench to me!
The Privy Council has been pretty strongly in favor of upholding savings clauses in the recent past, but this one is quite a pretzel. They ought to also be bound by international treaty obligations (of both the UK and Trinidad) to decriminalize sodomy. In all likelihood, we won’t see a ruling until 2027 or later, fully a decade after the original case was filed.
Cuba:Â The National Assembly passed a law allowing gender change by self-identification, and also recognized common-law marriage for the first time.
Dominican Republic: The biggest news was that the Constitutional Court struck down laws that criminalized police officers and military personnel who have gay sex. The ruling also clearly established for the first time that the Dominican constitution bans discrimination based on sexual orientation, both in government services and in employment. It’s likely that over time this will become a foundational ruling to assert further LGBTQ rights in the country.
This is also fortunate, because congress also passed a new penal code this year over the objections of civil society groups, because it failed to include prohibitions on discrimination and hate crimes, and didn’t decriminalize abortion.
The court ruling also prompted me to do a bit of a Wikipedia dive updating entries on LGBTQ rights in numerous Caribbean countries, to clarify or update that they no longer bar gay servicemembers in their laws.
Dutch Territories: Sint Maarten is the last Netherlands territory where same-sex marriage is not yet legal, after the constitutional court made it legal in Aruba and Curacao last year. It seems like all it will take is a court challenge to bring equal marriage to Sint Maarten, but I don’t believe one has been filed yet.
UK Territories: Gays scored a surprise win in Turks and Caicos Islands, where a binational couple won a court of appeal ruling that the government must recognize overseas same-sex marriages for the purposes of immigration. The court explicitly did not rule on whether same-sex marriage mus