Earlier in this series – Part 1: North America | Part 2: Latin America and Caribbean

And now we come to the parts of the world where there typically isn’t enough content for a single blog entry, so I awkwardly mash them together. Here’s what happened in Africa and Oceania this year.

Africa

Signs of progress were few and far between, but LGBT people are increasingly claiming space and asserting their rights on this continent of a billion people.

Right now, South Africa remains the only independent country where same-sex marriage is legal, and sodomy is criminalized in 33 of the 55 independent states in Africa.

Namibia: A lower court ruled that it could not legalize same-sex marriage, as the Supreme Court had previously ruled against it. The judges explicitly called on the Supreme Court to change its previous ruling on appeal, however, I haven’t actually heard anything about the plaintiffs pursuing the case further.

Several cases related to same-sex parents grabbed attention this year, particularly one case that nearly left twin newborn girls stateless because Namibia refused to recognize the children as being related to a Namibian without a DNA test. The government eventually relented. The Supreme Court also issued a narrow ruling ordering the government to reconsider its decision to deny residency to a Mexican national who is the same-sex spouse of a Namibian. The only certainty is that these cases will continue through the new year.

Meanwhile, the government began a reform of its marriage legislation this year, but failed to include LGBT people in consultations.

The President at one point hinted at plans to repeal the colonial-era common law sodomy offence but has not tabled legislation to do so – and it wasn’t included in another bill that repealed several other pieces of outdated colonial legislation.

Kenya: Parliament passed a the Children Act, which includes broad protections for intersex people, including a ban on cosmetic genital surgeries on intersex children, allows intersex people to select an “I” gender marker, and guarantees equal access to education, medical care, and other services.

Mauritius: A lawsuit seeking to strike down the country’s sodomy laws has been ongoing since 2020. The Supreme Court last held a hearing on it in June.

Mauritius is one of those bizarre countries where sodomy is illegal, but so is discrimination based on sexual orientation (It’s the green and orange dot on the map above).

Seychelles: The president met with LGBT activists to discuss trans issues, equal marriage, and adoption rights. Activists also launched a media campaign to promote equality.

Eswatini: The High Court issued a bizarre ruling affirming the government’s decision to deny registration to an LGBT organization while simultaneously affirming the constitutional rights of LGBT people to association, privacy, and expression. What? Eswatini also maintains a sodomy law in its books.

Ghana: Parliament continued debating a draconian anti-LGBT bill, but it hasn’t passed (as of yet).

Nigeria: Lawmakers had proposed a bill to ban cross-dressing as part of an ongoing moral panic, but withdrew it in December, after the Speaker noted that it didn’t adequately address the country’s multicultural nature, where some cultures wear clothing that might be considered cross-gender in other cultures.

Later in December, reports emerged of a mass arrest at an alleged same-sex marriage in Kano state. 

Equatorial Guinea, Central African Republic, and Zambia all abolished the death penalty. A death penalty abolition bill passed the Senate of Liberia and awaits a vote in the lower house. Death penalty abolition for non-military crimes is being debated in Ghana. Courts in Malawi reversed an earlier ruling banning the death penalty there, and legislators defeated a proposal to ban it again, however, a moratorium on its use remains in place. A clear trend away from the death penalty is emerging in Africa, where 25 of the 55 sovereign states have completely abolished it, 1 has abolished it for non-military crimes, and a further 15 have a moratorium on its use.

In other “isn’t that interesting?” news, former French colonies Gabon and Togo both joined the Commonwealth of Nations (what some people erroneously call the British Commonwealth). Togo criminalizes sodomy while Gabon doesn’t, so their membership doesn’t change the ratio. We’ll discuss the Commonwealth more in a few days.

Oceania

Progress in Oceania continues to be slow, although in absolute terms, since most people in the region live in Australia and New Zealand, about 80% of the population already lives in an equal marriage state. The percentage is even higher if you include people living in French and US territories and Hawaii.

Eight countries in the region criminalize same-sex sexual relations, though reports of prosecutions are extremely rare and half of those states also prohibit employment discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Australia: The previous government had attempted to pass a “religious discrimination” bill that would have allowed anti-LGBT discrimination, but they shelved it ahead of national elections. The more LGBT-friendly Labor Party won federal elections in May, but there hasn’t been any major policy developments nationally as of yet.

The state of Victoria banned conversion therapy, while Tasmania and Western Australia have announced plans to ban it in the new year. They would be the fourth and fifth of Australia’s eight states and territories to pass a ban. Activists are petitioning for a national ban.

Western Australia‘s government announced legislation to modernize its gender recognition system, removing the surgical requirement and streamlining the application process. The proposal is thus far silent on offering a non-binary option. Western Australia, Queensland, and New South Wales are the only Australian states that currently require surgery for gender change, and Western Australia and Queensland are the only that don’t allow a nonbinary gender option.

New Zealand: The government banned conversion therapy.

In the New Zealand associated state Cook Islands, Parliament failed to pass the new Crimes Bill (first proposed in 2017!) as it wasn’t returned from review by Crown Law in New Zealand before Parliament was dissolved for August elections. As those elections were inconclusive and subject to numerous court challenges, the new Parliament hasn’t met since. I believe the court challenges have recently been resolved and the new Parliament is expected to finally debate the Crimes Bill next March.

Once again, I am including Niue as a state that criminalizes same-sex intercourse. It appears that ILGA erroneously removed the tiny (population < 2,000) country from their list in 2006, when New Zealand revised the Niue Act, which contained the territory’s criminal law. However, Niue never accepted New Zealand’s revisions (which is a necessary step in a New Zealand-initiated law), and in any event, Niue reaffirmed its older Criminal Law Code when it reprinted its legislation in 2007 and 2019.

New Zealand has also announced that it will support Cook Islands’ membership in the UN. While it is rare for states that aren’t fully sovereign to become UN members, it’s not unprecedented: Belarus, Ukraine, India, and Philippines all joined before they became independent, and technically, so did New Zealand. The UN has recognized Cook Islands’ and Niue’s sovereignty and treaty-making capacity already and in the past the primary objection to membership was from New Zealand, which didn’t want to allow them membership when they share New Zealand citizenship. Related, the US quietly pledged to recognize Cook Islands and Niue as fully sovereign states in the future, following consultations. This may be an effort to strengthen democracy in the region as China attempts to build influence (including a new security agreement with Solomon Islands).

Fiji: National elections in December saw candidates of all stripes rushing to attack same-sex marriage or deny that they support it. The elections saw the governing party lose its majority for the first time in 16 years. The new government will be a coalition propped up by a deeply Christian party.

Papua New Guinea: The government formally repealed capital punishment. Next year, the government is expected to begin the formal ratification process for Bougainville’s independence. The breakaway state is in the process of drafting its new constitution. Upon independence, unless PNG decriminalizes sodomy first, Bougainville is likely to become a new state with criminal sanctions on sodomy.

Easter Island: Same-sex marriage became legal in this territory of Chile. (Read more in the section on South America).

American Samoa: The Supreme Court refused to take a case this term seeking to overturn the insular cases and declare residents of American Samoa citizens of the US (rather than their current designation, “US nationals”). If the court had ruled in their favor, then the US Constitution would apply there fully, and the Obergefell ruling would have required the territory to finally allow same-sex marriage.

Still, in the Respect for Marriage Act, the US Congress specifically required all US territories, including American Samoa, to recognize legal same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions, a first for the territory. We haven’t yet seen how it will play out. In theory, American Samoa residents could travel to Hawaii, or even to New Zealand to have a same-sex marriage that would be recognized at home. They could also opt for the entirely online zoom wedding services that were launched in Utah during the pandemic and have become popular in many countries without same-sex marriage, like Israel and Venezuela.

And that covers the Africa and Oceania! Tomorrow, we’ll take a look at Asia. But before we go, a programming note:

I write this blog and maintain the @LGBTMarriage Twitter feed unpaid on the side of my freelance journalism work. This entails hundreds of hours of research and writing, as well as hundreds of dollars spent out of pocket to host and maintain this web site.

If you like the work I do here, please consider supporting it, either by sending me a tip through Venmo or Paypal, or by purchasing a copy of my book of plays, SMASHING YOUNG MAN. Any contribution helps me keep this vital work going. Thank you!

Earlier in this series – Part 1: North America

Some of the biggest developments in LGBT rights in 2022 happened in Latin America and the Caribbean. We saw same-sex marriage become legal in two countries, plus, as discussed yesterday, it became legal nationwide in Mexico. At this point, around 85% of the population of the Western Hemisphere now lives in an equal marriage jurisdiction. As a reminder, many of the countries in the region are parties to the Interamerican Convention on Human Rights and its judicial body, the Interamerican Court of Human Rights (IACHR), which in 2018 found that the Convention assured the right to same-sex marriage. Parties to the treaty are on their own as far as implementing this right, however.

We also saw three countries decriminalize sodomy in 2022, and we’re well on our way to eradicating all laws criminalizing homosexuality from the hemisphere.

Here’s how it all played out in 2022.

Caribbean

Cuba: Following years of campaigning, Cuba became the first independent country in the Caribbean to pass same-sex marriage and adoption into law. The new Family Code also included the right to reproductive treatment for lesbians and single women, and access to altruistic surrogacy. The law was put to a referendum in September, and although some were critical of the referendum process, it passed with a 2/3 majority (with the obvious caveats about the limits of Cuban democracy). Cuba is also the first communist country to pass same-sex marriage.

UK territories: The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC — a body that serves as a sort of Supreme Court for the UK, its territories, and several former colonies) finally delivered its long-awaited rulings in the appeals of same-sex marriage decisions from Bermuda and Cayman Islands, and bluntly, we did not get what we wanted. The frankly baffling decision reversed progress – making Bermuda one of the only places in the world where same-sex marriage went from being legal to illegal. To the Bermuda government’s limited credit, it passed a bill ensuring that already married couples would continue to be recognized as such on the island. The Bermuda opposition has come out firmly in favor of equality, while the government has also ironically used the whole debacle as part of its simmering campaign to build support for independence from Britain (a prospect that is currently not popular on the island).

Meanwhile, the Cayman government remains petulant, continuing to pursue a case to the JCPC hoping to have the governor-imposed civil partnership law overturned.

Over in the Virgin Islands, a case proceeding through the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court is seeking same-sex marriage. In the plaintiff’s favor, the Virgin Islands’ constitution doesn’t define marriage in the same way as the Cayman and Bermuda constitutions do, and the Virgin Islands constitution explicitly bans discrimination based on sexual orientation. Christian groups managed to derail hearings in the fall so who knows when it will finally be heard, but whatever is decided, it’s likely to end up at the JCPC. In late December, the Islands’ premier announced that the government has decided to hold a referendum on same-sex marriage and domestic partnerships. The details of the proposed referendum, including the exact question, whether the proposal is a ban on marriage or limiting the question to Parliament’s discretion, the exact nature of the domestic partnerships, and the proposed date remain unclear at this time (though the Premier has said it will be after the May elections). It will have to be approved by Parliament first, and would be the first referendum in the Islands’ history.

And a UK Lord has proposed a bill that would legalize same-sex marriage in all remaining UK territories, including the aforementioned, as well as Anguilla, Montserrat, and Turks & Caicos. It has not been brought forward for debate, and it should be noted that private members bills — especially those proposed by the House of Lords — rarely become law.

It should be noted that all UK territories are bound by the European Convention on Human Rights to implement at least some form of relationship recognition for same-sex couples, ever since the 2015 ruling in Oliari and Others v. Italy.

Antigua & Barbuda, Saint Kitts & Nevis, and Barbados: All three countries had their sodomy laws struck down by their respective courts this year. Antigua hadn’t even defended the law and has accepted the decision. I have not heard anything about Saint Kitts filing an appeal, which would go to the JCPC. The Antigua ruling goes a bit further than the Saint Kitts ruling; it finds that Antigua’s constitutional prohibition on sex discrimination is also a prohibition on discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The Barbados judgement was delivered orally in December, with the full written ruling expected in the new year; the government has said it will make its decision after the written judgment is published. If the government appeals, it would go through the Court of Appeal, and possibly to the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) for a final verdict.

This was part of a coordinated campaign seeking to have sodomy laws struck down across the Caribbean region, and I wrote about it more in-depth for Xtra Magazine earlier this year. That article also goes a bit more in-depth on explaining the history and legal structures of the different nations in the Caribbean, which can be a bit confusing.

At press time, we’re waiting on decisions from the ECSC in sodomy law challenges from Grenada, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent & the Grenadines, and Dominica, which are all expected in the new year. A separate case is winding its way through procedural hurdles in domestic courts in Jamaica, but it could be years before the substantive case is even heard, let alone decided.

Barbados: A same-sex civil union bill has still not materialized, two years after it was promised by Prime Minister Mia Mottley, who was reelected this year with another massive majority. Barbados is unique among former UK territories in that it accepts the compulsory jurisdiction of the IACHR, so the 2018 marriage equality ruling should apply to it if any challenge was brought to its courts. It’s therefore probably the country in the region most likely to get equal marriage next.

Barbados is also in the process of drafting a new, fully republican constitution, and there are efforts afoot to include a nondiscrimination clause that includes LGBT people. Of course, a new constitution could also include new roadblocks on LGBT rights, like a marriage ban or removing/subordinating the IACHR.

In a development that may have been related to the jurisprudence around the striking down of the buggery law, the CCJ ruled that the island’s rape laws covered male victims as well as female victims; the charge of “buggery” is not needed to prosecute a male-on-male rape.

Trinidad & Tobago: The government is appealing the 2018 decision that decriminalized sodomy there, and the appeal is expected to be heard in domestic courts in the early new year. Whoever loses, both sides have said they will appeal all the way to the JCPC. Frankly, I do not think the JCPC will be able to find that Trinidad may continue to criminalize sodomy, given the preponderance of international law on the subject. But then again, I was wrong about the Bermuda case. On a related note, the Privy Council ruled against a plaintiff seeking to have Trinidad’s mandatory death penalty ruled unconstitutional (mandatory death penalties are also going out of fashion worldwide, though there isn’t clear international law on the subject).

All of these territories are former UK colonies, which is why many of them still use the JCPC as their final court of appeal. But that’s changing. Particularly in the wake of the death of Queen Elizabeth II, many of these states are considering cutting legal ties with Britain, including ditching the monarchy and the JCPC. Saint Lucia has begun the process of moving its final court to the Caribbean Court of Justice, which may affect the final decision process in its decriminalization case. (You may be surprised to learn that neither ditching the monarchy nor ditching the JCPC are particularly popular options in the region, and several recent referenda on the JCPC have failed. It seems that many Caribbean people are distrustful of giving more power to the local political class and see the JCPC as a politically neutral body.)

Jamaica: In addition to an ongoing case trying to have sodomy laws struck down in domestic courts, a case seeking the right to same-sex marriage was accepted by the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights in December. The Commission can only make recommendations to a country and is a required step before escalating a petition to the Interamerican Court of Human Rights. Unfortunately, Jamaica does not accept the Court’s jurisdiction, so its opinion will remain advisory only. Curiously, Jamaica is arguing that there is no right to same-sex marriage under the Interamerican Convention on Human Rights, though the Court settled this question in 2018 – there is. The Commission also issued a recommendation last year that Jamaica repeal its sodomy law, but the government has ignored it.

Saint Lucia: While a sodomy law challenge continues, the government quietly expanded the scope of its domestic violence laws to include LGBT people.

Haiti: A new Criminal Code, which had been issued by Presidential decree in 2020, was meant to come into force in June, but was postponed a further two years to June 2024, to give the judicial system and legal profession time to get caught up with its contents. The proposed code established penalties for anti-LGBT hate crimes and discrimination and legalized abortion. The old code had a provision against vagrancy that was often used to target transgender people – I can’t find reports on whether it’s been included in the new code, and the only text of it I can find is an unsearchable 214-page long French PDF.    

Aruba, Curacao: In December, the local court for the Dutch territories in the Caribbean ruled that the ban on same-sex marriage in these two states is unconstitutional, and same-sex marriage must be legalized. The effect of the ruling is stayed pending appeal and cassation. Some activists are hopeful that Aruba will not appeal and will simply pass a pending same-sex marriage bill in its Parliament — the bill has been proposed by the junior partner in the governing coalition, but the larger party disagrees with the ruling and some MPs are publicly calling for an appeal and a referendum on the issue. Curacao has announced it will appeal.

The ruling does not immediately apply to Sint-Maarten, the only other Dutch territory were same-sex marriage is not currently legal. But one would have to think if the final cassation ruling is for same-sex marriage, then Sint-Maarten would have to legalize it as well. Apparently appeals should be ruled upon by March, but it’s very difficult to find information.

In the meantime, same-sex couples can still register civil unions in Aruba, and all three islands recognize marriages performed in the Netherlands proper or its Caribbean municipalities (Saba, St. Eustatius, and Bonaire).

Central America

Belize: The government began consultations on a draft new constitution, meant to fully decolonize the country from the UK (the republic question is still open). Among the groups being consulted is the LGBT community, which has enjoyed implied constitutional protection since the 2016 ruling that decriminalized sodomy. The constitution commission is expected to report by the end of next year.

Guatemala: Congress passed a bill explicitly banning same-sex marriage in March, in contravention of the 2018 IACHR ruling. When the president threatened to veto the bill, Congress withdrew it. In November, the President of the Constitutional Court affirmed at a UN hearing that international human rights documents like the Interamerican Convention are supreme over the Guatemalan constitution, possibly indicating a path for marriage equality in the country.

Honduras: The country elected a president who supports same-sex marriage at the same time as it elected a national congress that is very opposed to it. She’s since had to clarify that she will not push it forward, though some of her actions have to be seen as attempts to build support. A Congressman did introduce a bill for same-sex marriage and legal name and gender change for trans people, but it has not advanced. It seems, however, that the President has instructed the government to allow trans people to change legal name and gender in the National Register of Persons anyway.

In January, the Constitutional Court rejected cases seeking equal marriage despite the binding 2018 Interamerican Court ruling. Several cases have been taken directly to the Interamerican Court.

El Salvador: The Constitutional Court ruled that transgender people must be allowed to change their legal gender. Meanwhile, the government’s ongoing suspension of civil liberties in a supposed crackdown on organized crime has led to mass arrests of LGBT activists.

Panama: We are now in year seven of waiting for the Supreme Court to rule on its same-sex marriage case, and it seems no amount of brow-beating from activists and lawyers is going to get the Court to publish its decision. I kind of assume that the Court is withholding the opinion because it’s so contrary to public opinion, meaning in favor of same-sex marriage, and it’s worried about public backlash. Certainly if it were a popular opinion, they wouldn’t be holding it back, right?

South America

Chile: The same-sex marriage and adoption law that was passed last year came into effect in March. Chile’s same-sex marriage law also extends to its Polynesian territory Easter Island, as well as to its disputed territory in Antarctica. Chile was the last of the seven countries with a claim on Antarctica (the others are Argentina, France, UK, Norway, Australia, and New Zealand) to legalize same-sex marriage, so by some measure, same-sex marriage is now legal in every claimed part of the continent.

The government also celebrated the repeal of what it called “the last homophobic law” this year, when it repealed the differential age of consent. The government passed a law banning discrimination based on sex characteristics (intersex status) and a Childhood Law that bans discrimination against children based on LGBT status. Multiple courts also ordered the government to issue nonbinary identification documents.

On the other hand, a proposed constitutional overhaul failed at referendum. The proposed constitution would have included recognition of the right to marriage and freedom from discrimination. It seems the government is pressing ahead with a new process for revising the constitution, however.

Colombia: A court ordered the government to amend the law to allow nonbinary identification certificates, and the government had complied by the end of the year. The Constitutional Court also ruled that same-sex adoptive parents must receive the same parental leave benefits as other parents, and decriminalized abortion up to 24 weeks.

Legislators also introduced a bill to ban “conversion therapy” in the country — actually, they did it twice because the first bill died on procedural grounds. The current bill was introduced in November and is still under consideration.

Venezuela: A nine-day sit-in by LGBT activists led the government to agree to finally implement a court ruling that allows trans people to update their legal gender. The activists had also been demanding equal marriage and a repeal of the ban on gay sex among military members.

Also this year, a minor opposition party introduced a same-sex marriage bill in the National Assembly. Although President Maduro has called for the Assembly to pass an equal marriage law since 2017. A case seeking same-sex marriage has been pending at the Supreme Court since 2015. It is unclear if the country is under the jurisdiction of the IACHR, but it probably is not for all effective purposes. Former President Chavez withdrew from the Convention in 2013; the opposition-controlled National Assembly rejoined it in 2019, but that Assembly didn’t have effective rule over the country.

Suriname: The courts ruled that the state must allow trans people to update their legal gender. The country is subject to the 2018 IACHR ruling, but no action has been taken to implement it, nor has a case been brought to the courts. Perhaps this former Dutch colony will be influenced by the Aruba and Curacao case after it’s resolved in the new year.

Guyana: Guyana appears to be the only country in the Western Hemisphere that has a sodomy law that is not currently subject to a court challenge, but presumably regional activists have it in their sights once the cases in the Eastern Caribbean islands are complete. Or maybe the government will see the writing on the wall after all the other former British colonies have their sodomy laws struck and it’ll repeal it on its own. Meanwhile, the government launched an initiative this summer to promote the Rupununi district as an LGBT tourism destination in coordination with the local LGBT rights organization SASOD.

In December, the Court of Appeal ruled that the death penalty is not unconstitutional.

Brazil: The homophobic president Bolsonaro lost his reelection bid, while two LGBT people were elected as state governors.

Peru: The Constitutional Court delivered a truly bonkers ruling against same-sex marriage, finding not only that the ban was legal, but that Peru was not bound by the 2018 Interamerican Court of Human Rights ruling, because (essentially) they didn’t agree with it. Meanwhile, legislative attempts to pass equal marriage hit a stone wall, as conservatives hold power in the state congress.

In December, homophobic but leftist President Castillo was impeached and pushed out of office by the Congress after he attempted to dissolve congress in a power grab. His own supporters accuse the conservative-led Congress of its own power grab and protests led to many deaths. The new President has agree to move forward new elections to April 2024, but the situation remains volatile.

Bolivia: The ministry of justice has said several times over a couple of years that it is expecting a ruling from the constitutional court regarding same-sex marriage, but 2022 seems to have gone by without one. The state ombudsman’s office also called on the government to fully recognize same-sex couples and families and trans gender identities in accordance with the 2018 IACHR ruling.

The legal situation in Bolivia is complicated: the constitution defines marriage as pertaining to opposite-sex couples, but the constitution also says that the IACHR takes precedence over it. So the 2018 ruling should prevail, as it did in Ecuador in 2019.

In the meantime, at least four same-sex couples have managed to register a “free union,” which entails all the rights of marriage.

Paraguay: The government passed a law banning medical treatment of sexual orientation as a disease.

Argentina: Although the country was a leader in passing same-sex marriage in 2010, it’s lagged behind recent. Pride marchers called for a broad anti-discrimination law, and a law for legal gender change. Also, despite a ban on medical workers performing “conversion therapy,” it emerged that the practice was continuing in the country with little effective control.

And that covers the Western Hemisphere! Tomorrow, we’ll take a look at Africa and Oceania. But before we go, a programming note:

I write this blog and maintain the @LGBTMarriage Twitter feed unpaid on the side of my freelance journalism work. This entails hundreds of hours of research and writing, as well as hundreds of dollars spent out of pocket to host and maintain this web site.

If you like the work I do here, please consider supporting it, either by sending me a tip through Venmo or Paypal, or by purchasing a copy of my book of plays, SMASHING YOUNG MAN. Any contribution helps me keep this vital work going. Thank you!

It’s time for my annual roundup of global progress on LGBT rights and equal marriage in particular. 2022 turned out to be a major year for queer people with huge developments in every corner of the world. As always, you can follow my coverage of these developments year round at my Twitter feed @LGBTmarriage — though for who knows how much longer?

This year, in order to improve readability, I’m going to divide this post into regional segments that I’ll be posting over the course of the next week. Today, we’ll be looking at North America — Canada, the USA and Mexico. Finally in 2022, same-sex marriage became legal nationwide across North America’s three largest countries (with some exceptions among US Tribal Nations), and there were plenty of other developments for queer people to cheer and jeer across the continent.

Canada

A law banning all conversion therapy nationwide came into effect in January.

Later in the year, Canada effectively ended the country’s ban on blood donation from men who have sex with men, moving to a risk-based, monogamy model for donors. This was actually two decisions by Canada’s two independent blood agencies, Canada Blood Services and Hema-Quebec. However, a ban on tissue and organ donation (including semen donation) remains.

The federal government also announced its first 2SLGBTQI+ action plan. One of the items is that Canada is going to formalize the use of “2SLGBTQI+” across the federal government. Among other promises in the plan is an increase in funding toward community groups and services for 2SLGBTQI+ people, a ban on cosmetic genital surgeries on intersex children, a modernization of the “indecency” segments of the Criminal Code, new restrictions on prosecution for HIV nondisclosure (it’s already meant to be quite restricted under a 2017 policy), and an expansion of the expungement scheme for historically unjust prosecutions to cover more offences.

One thing to keep an eye on: The unelected Senate is on the verge of passing a draconian anti-pornography law that would effectively attempt to censor the entire internet. While it’s rare for Senate-initiated bills to get a hearing in the Commons, its entirely possible that this one could sneak through, and that would be disastrous for free speech.

Meanwhile, a couple other worrying trends appeared in Canada this year. In February, far-right protesters managed to lay siege to the city of Ottawa and several border crossings. They were ostensibly demanding an end to COVID restrictions and vaccine mandates but were actually calling for the overthrow of the government and included many of the usual anti-LGBT and anti-minority groups often found among these types of crazies. Most worrying is that they were warmly embraced by the federal and some provincial Conservative parties, including the newly elected Conservative party leader.

This is of a piece with an alarming trend at the provincial level, where conservative provincial governments have been giddily ripping up basic rights and constitutional and democratic norms for years, accelerating through 2022. The notwithstanding clause — a constitutional provision that allows federal or provincial governments to override certain segments of the Charter of Rights — has been used by the Quebec government to ban people from wearing non-Christian religious symbols while employed in the public service or receiving public services, and to restrict the use of languages other than French when receiving services. Ontario has used it to restrict third-party election advertising and restrict the right of public sector workers to strike (though was forced to back down on that last one after massive public outcry). Meanwhile, the governments of Quebec, Alberta, and Saskatchewan have been unilaterally amending the constitution to restrict minority rights and override federal jurisdiction. All minorities in Canada should be shocked and alarmed at the cavalier attitude conversative governments are taking toward human rights and constitutional law.

United States

But this is the country we’re really here for.

The US Supreme Court’s deeply conservative majority wreaked havoc upon the rights Americans have come to count on this year, in a number of rulings whose long-term effects are still being discovered. For our purposes, the most important ruling was Dobbs, which overturned 50 years of precedent in deciding that there is no right to abortion in the US. Aside from immediately stripping reproductive rights from women in dozens of states, the ruling featured a rambling decision by Justice Thomas, who argued that the decision implies the court should review all of its due process decisions, including decisions that decriminalized sodomy and legalized same-sex marriage. The decision was not joined by any other justice, but it gave many queer Americans chills.

That got enough Republicans to overcome a filibuster for the passage of the Respect For Marriage Act, a federal bill that repeals the discriminatory 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, and requires every state and territory to recognize legal same-sex or interracial marriages performed anywhere (NOTE: no state currently has a law that bars interracial marriage; the last state to repeal such a law was Alabama in 2000). The bill does not require states to perform same-sex marriages.

In a first, the RFMA requires American Samoa to recognize same-sex marriage. Due to historical racism, the US Bill of Rights doesn’t apply to the US territory, and the state has resisted its obligation to perform and recognize same-sex marriage until now. The US Supreme Court has indicated that it wants to review the constitutional situation, but turned away a citizenship case that may have clarified the status this year.

The bill does not apply to sovereign tribal nations in the US. Among these, only the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska and the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma legalized same-sex marriage on their territory this year. The Navajo Nation Council continued discussing a legalization bill, but has not advanced it. A newly elected council may take it up in the new year. It is the largest of US tribal nations that has not allowed same-sex marriage. The Choctaw Nation in Oklahoma said in December it was considering updating its marriage laws in accordance with the RFMA.

Lawmakers in California and Oregon have already discussed beginning the process of repealing the defunct state constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, while those in Pennsylvania have discussed repealing its statutory ban; Michigan, Colorado, and Alaska would need to do both. Any state constitutional amendments would have to be put before voters and the requirements vary in each state. Democrats in some states may attempt to put the referendums on November 2024 general election ballots to energize turnout in what is expected to be a very competitive election.

Earlier this year, Republicans killed a proposed amendment to repeal the defunct ban on same-sex marriage from the Virginia state constitution. But then in December, a Republican legislator proposed a new amendment that repeals the ban without inserting any other language protecting marriage rights. If the compromise goes forward, it will be on the ballot in 2024. Lawmakers have also proposed constitutional amendments to repeal same-sex marriage bans in Florida and Missouri, but these are unlikely to even get hearings next year in overwhelmingly Republican state legislatures.

New Jersey‘s marriage statutes were amended by the legislature last year, but signed into law in January.

The other effect of the Dobbs ruling was that it galvanized Democratic voters to minimize their losses in the midterm elections and pass substantive reforms at the state and federal level to protect rights Americans have come to depend on. Referendums in multiple states protected the right to abortion. Dozens of LGBT legislators were elected across the country. Democrats also managed to take over state houses in Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and in Alaska, where Democrats are in a coalition agreement with moderate Republicans, but a Republican governor wields a veto.

In the event that the Supreme Court takes up a sodomy case and reverses its 2003 Lawrence decision decriminalizing it, gay sex could suddenly become illegal in several states that never amended their statutes to remove sodomy laws. Not all states that still have sodomy laws would be impacted by a reversal of Lawrence – some of these laws were struck down under provisions of their state constitutions. See map above. Democratic legislators in Michigan, Minnesota, Maryland, and Massachusetts have all announced plans to repeal their defunct sodomy laws next year.

Voters in Nevada passed a state constitutional amendment banning all discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. A bill was introduced to add “sexual orientation” (but not gender identity) as a prohibited form of discrimination in the US Virgin Islands, but it was never brought forward for debate.

Anti-discrimination laws have also been proposed by incoming Democratic legislators in Michigan (where the state court ruled this year that LGBT are already protected under the category of sex in existing state law), Alaska, and Pennsylvania (where the governor banned it by regulation this year). Hate crime legislation could also be on the table in Michigan, Alaska, and Pennsylvania.

It should also be noted that anti-discrimination laws have also come under fire from the Supreme Court’s conservative majority. The 303 Creative case was heard in December, in which a Christian web designer preemptively challenged Colorado’s anti-discrimination laws, claiming that she should be allowed to bar her services to LGBT clients seeking wedding web sites. The court is expected to rule in June, and conservatives were already frothing at the mouth with the opportunity to legalize discrimination against queer people.

Most of the states that have new Democratic majorities in their legislatures already have effective bans on conversion therapy, but lawmakers in Minnesota and Michigan have talked about codifying and expanding their regulatory bans into state law. Pennsylvania could also be on that list. Unfortunately, a freeze on conversion therapy bans has remained in place under the jurisdiction of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals covering Florida, Georgia, and Alabama. The challenge to these laws is likely to be heard by the Supreme Court.

We shouldn’t rule out that Republicans can do the right thing on these sorts of laws, either (especially ones that don’t actually change facts on the ground). Lawmakers in Idaho repealed the state’s defunct sodomy law this year, while lawmakers in Pennsylvania deleted the word “homosexuality” from state obscenity laws. So there may be hope to pass such laws through states with divided or GOP governments in 2023 as well.

The Biden administration also quietly made nonbinary options available on passports and social security systems, and ended a ban on intersex people serving in the military. The administration also pushed cabinet departments to address anti-LGBT discrimination, prevent federal funding of conversion therapy, and investigate whether conversion therapy is a fraudulent practice that can be banned by the FTC. The FDA also began the process of ending the MSM blood donation ban.

Some of this progress is, unfortunately, tempered by the onslaught of anti-trans and anti-LGBT legislation that was proposed or passed at the state level. I don’t have the time to chronicle every single one of these bills here, but the marquee ones are Florida‘s draconian and intentionally vague “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which has already led to the banning of books and topics from classrooms and led some school boards to amend their bullying and discrimination codes to remove any references to homophobia and transphobia. And Texas led the nation in the cruelty of of its attacks on trans children, by initiating a policy of investigating the parents of any trans child for child abuse. A judge has put a stop to the policy, but it’s understandably put families on edge across the state. Other states have simply banned or criminalized standard medical care for trans minors, and even proposed extending such bans to adults. Drag performances have come under fire from some red states as well, with near-certainly unconstitutional bills floated to ban any drag performance.

Mexico

Mexico’s long journey to marriage equality finally came to an end, more or less, in 2022. At the beginning of the year, seven states had not yet legalized same-sex marriage: Yucatan, Durango, Veracruz, Mexico state, Tabasco, Tamaulipas, and Guerrero. By October, they all had, although as of press time, Guerrero has still not officially published its same-sex marriage law.

[UPDATE: A reader has given me more information about the situation in Guerrero. The Governor has returned the bill to congress with technical amendments, requiring it to be reexamined in committee and voted on again by the whole congress. However, the head of the judicial committee is refusing to bring the bill to discussion, in hopes of preventing its passage. The situation is incredibly bizarre, given the original bill passed 38-6 with only 2 abstentions. But work to pass an equal marriage bill in the state will continue into 2023.]

[UPDATE 2: The Guerrero state government published its equal marriage and concubinage bill on December 30, 2022, taking effect the following day. It’s done now, and just in time for the end of the year.]

The federal congress celebrated by giving final approval to a long-stalled bill to ensure equal treatment of same-sex couples in the federal social security plan.

Marriage equality isn’t quite complete in Mexico yet, however. Five states only have equal marriage due to court order or administrative action, and they need to bring their laws into compliance: Aguascalientes, Chihuahua, Chiapas, Guanajuato, and Nuevo Leon. Jalisco finally did this year, after the courts ordered marriage equality in 2016.

Some states also have laws on their books that prevent people living with HIV from getting married, even with the knowledge and consent of both spouses. The Supreme Court ruled this unconstitutional last year, but not all states have struck the laws, and some registries have been known to give problems to people living with HIV seeking marriage certificates. This repeatedly came up in Puebla this year, and Tamaulipas and Aguascalientes also have an HIV ban in their marriage laws. One source says the number of states with such marriage bans is nineteen, though it doesn’t include a list. It is a bit beyond my research abilities to find a comprehensive list of all such laws on the books (I don’t speak Spanish and don’t know where to find every state’s marriage laws), but I would appreciate any help from any readers who can help dig this up.

Additionally, ten states have not updated their laws to allow same-sex married couples to adopt or permit automatic parental recognition for same-sex couples although the Supreme Court has required them to do so. But this year, Quintana Roo and Baja California Sur did update their laws to allow it.

The Mexican Senate passed a ban on conversion therapy, which is currently pending in the Chamber of Deputies. Meanwhile, Jalisco, Baja California, Hidalgo, Puebla, Sonora and Nuevo Leon all passed laws banning it in their states, bringing the total to 13/32 federal entities. A bill to ban it has been advanced in Quintana Roo.

Sonora also passed a hate crime law, brining the total to 17/32 states. Activists in Veracruz were calling for the creation of a special prosecutors office for anti-LGBT hate crimes amid a long-running crisis of violence and murders of trans women in particular, but legislation for it did not advance this year.

Sinaloa and Zacatecas became the nineteenth and twentieth states to pass a gender identity law, while Hidalgo became the first to recognize non-binary identities. The federal government also issued at least a few non-binary registrations, but it’s not clear if this a firm policy. The Supreme Court had already ruled that states must allow trans people to update their gender identities, and earlier this year ruled that requirements that trans people be at least 18 years old to update their gender are also unconstitutional.

The Nayarit state government reduced the fee for a gender change from 2000 pesos (approximately $100 USD) to 470 pesos ($24).

I wrote quite a bit more about the fight for LGBT rights in Mexico for Xtra Magazine in October. LGBT activists are determined to push ahead with all of these issues and more in each of Mexico’s states. In contrast to the United States, Mexico’s Supreme Court has been a strong advocate for LGBT equality — and in even greater contrast, earlier this year ruled that laws criminalizing abortion are unconstitutional.

Tomorrow, we’ll take a look at the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean, which saw some incredible progress on LGBT equality this year. 

I write this blog and maintain the @LGBTMarriage Twitter feed unpaid on the side of my freelance journalism work. This entails hundreds of hours of research and writing, as well as hundreds of dollars spent out of pocket to host and maintain this web site.

If you like the work I do here, please consider supporting it, either by sending me a tip through Venmo or Paypal, or by purchasing a copy of my book of plays, SMASHING YOUNG MAN. Any contribution helps me keep this vital work going. Thank you!

Previous Posts: Introduction | Chapter 1: Lee/Kirby Era Part 1 | Chapter 2: Lee/Kirby Era Part 2 | Chapter 3: The Roy Thomas Era (1966-1968) | Chapter 4: The End of the Silver Age (1968-1970) | Chapter 5: Origins and Flashbacks Part 1 | Chapter 6: Silver Age Flashbacks Part 2 | Chapter 6.1: Voices of Pride | Chapter 7: X-Men: First Class Vol 1 | Chapter 8: X-Men: First Class Vol 2 Part 1 | Chapter 9: X-Men: First Class Vol 2 Part 2 | Chapter 10: The Hidden Years | Chapter 11: X-Men on Hiatus (1970-75) | Chapter 12: The Champions Part 1 (1975-76) | Chapter 13: The Champions Part 2 (1977-78) | Chapter 14: The College Years (1978-83) | Chapter 15: The New Defenders Part 1 (1983-84) | Chapter 16: The New Defenders Part 2 (1984-85) | Chapter 17: The End of the New Defenders (1985-86) | Chapter 18: X-Factor Part 1 (1986) | Chapter 19: X-Factor – Mutant Massacre (1987) | Chapter 20: X-Factor – Fall of the Mutants (1987) | Chapter 21: X-Factor – Inferno Prologue (1988) | Chapter 22: X-Factor: Inferno (1989) | Chapter 23: X-Factor – Judgment War (1989) | Chapter 24: X-Factor – X-Tinction Agenda (1990) | Chapter 25: X-Factor – Endgame (1991) | Chapter 26: X-Men: Blue and Gold (1991-92) | Chapter 27: X-Men: Dirty Thirty (1993) | Chapter 28: The End of the World (1994)

Before we begin, I have some big news! Since I was last here writing about Bobby Drake, I published a book!

SMASHING YOUNG MAN is an anthology of my plays which have been produced to rave reviews and sold-out houses across Canada, in the United States, and Europe! This brand new collection features searing wit and indelible characters in a series of plays investigating what it means to be a young man today. SMASHING YOUNG MAN is available in paperback and Kindle format from Amazon and Amazon.ca. Get your copy today!

Now that that’s out of the way…

When we last left Bobby, he was starting to reevaluate his life, particularly his relationship with his father and his lack of commitment to exploring and mastering his mutant powers. He’d also struck up a friendship with Rogue.

Then the universe ended.

And now we’re back! Brace yourselves. This is a loooooooong post. Even though it only covers 15 months worth of comics, Marvel was shipping an overwhelming amount of comics in 1995 as the industry charged through its commercial peak. Surely, it was going to be clear skies ahead for years for Marvel, right? Right?

X-Men: Prime (July 1995)
Writers: Scott Lobdell, Fabian Nicieza
Artists: Too many to list

This was the big starting point for the line after the Age of Apocalypse, essentially trailing the ne status quos on all the X-Books. Just going to be upfront, from this point forward, the entire line is more or less in a state of constant crossover, especially with Uncanny X-Men, X-Men, X-Men Unlimited, Wolverine, X-Force, and Cable now all set at the Mansion.

Not at the mansion: Rogue and Iceman, who’ve taken off on a road trip across the US to help Rogue clear her head after the kiss she gave Gambit when she thought the world was ending in X-Men #41. We check in with them for a couple pages where they’re partying in what is clearly a Miami gay bar (the narration says “There is one woman for every six guys”).

Over in the main plot, Trish Tilby breaks the story that Legacy Virus exists and it’s now spread to the human population. This ratchets up anti—mutant hysteria, with deadly consequences for one Dennis Hogan, a mutant who happens to be passing through Westchester looking for help from the X-Men. Unfortunately, they fail to arrive in time to prevent a group of college kids from beating him to death. Both stories were clear allegories for the struggles of queer people in a time of HIV hysteria and gay bashing (this story predates the Matthew Sheppard murder by three years).

Meanwhile, Wolverine is becoming feral and living on the mansion grounds, Bishop is having flashbacks to the Age of Apocalypse, X-Force’s base is blown up, X-Factor capture Mystique but Havok’s powers flare out of control, Sugar Man stops Excalibur from discovering that he’s the secret power behind Genosha, Marrow summons the Dark Beast, the Acolytes find Holocaust floating in space and bring him into Avalon, and Nate Grey falls to earth.

Bobby skips Uncanny X-Men #322, where the Juggernaut is punched all the way from Canada to New Jersey by something called “Onslaught,” and he ends up in a coma in the Mansion.

X-Men #42 (July 1995)
Writer: Fabian Nicieza
Artist: Paul Smith

In a two-page subplot, Rogue finds herself under Gambit’s lingering influence and attempts to steal a gold helmet from a home in Key West, Florida, but Iceman stops her. She can’t or doesn’t explain her actions.

Meanwhile, Exodus is convinced that the mysterious stranger they found floating in space is a gift from Magneto, but the other Acolytes increasingly think he’s nuts. The stranger turns out to be Holocaust from the Age of Apocalypse, who doesn’t understand he’s in a new universe and assumes the followers of Magneto are the X-Men. He kills Milan, Javitz, and, more importantly, Rusty Collins, who joined the Acolytes with Skids in X-Force #25 (isn’t it time he got a resurrection, by the way?). Voght teleports away for help and ends up accidentally bringing a confused Cyclops and Phoenix there.

Bobby skips X-Men #43-44, where Jean rescues Skids and they crash to earth together. Colossus gets the comatose Magneto to an escape pod, but when he lands in Antarctica, he’s alone and found by Callisto, who’s returned from the extra-dimensional exile in Mikhail’s dimension (from Uncanny X-Men #293) a decade older. And Cyclops leads the surviving Acolytes to safety after they crash in the Australian outback. They agree to turn themselves in, apparently, but eventually escape. A minor plot point is established that someone has been using the X-Men’s former Outback base recently – but presumably it was just Donald Pierce and the Reavers, who were living there in Uncanny X-Men #281, when they were killed.

 

Uncanny X-Men #323-324 (July-September 1995)
Writer: Scott Lobdell
Artist: Tom Grummet, Bryan Hitch, Roger Cruz

Rogue and Iceman’s car breaks down in Arizona, and Rogue holds Iceman to their agreement not to use powers during their road trip. They walk through the desert to find help, and along the way Bobby either hallucinates or is telepathically contacted by Emma Frost, who teases him about the argument they had in Uncanny X-Men #318. When they eventually arrive at a restaurant in Millstone, Arizona, Rogue recalls someone named Grey Crow, who we learn was friends with Gambit and their waitress (years later in the 1999 Gambit series, we’ll learn he’s Scalphunter of the Marauders). Bobby tries to call Emma to figure out what’s up, but she refuses to answer the phone for some reason.

Meanwhile, in the main plot, a new mutant terrorist organization called Gene Nation attacks a night club, murdering dozens of patrons. Storm, Wolverine, and new member Cannonball (who graduated to the X-Men in X-Force #44), fight off Vessel and Sack. Two other members of Gene Nation, Marrow and Hemingway, attempted to kidnap the former Morlock Leech in Generation X #5-6.

And Graydon Creed is starting to lead large public rallies against mutants. This will become important soon.

Iceman makes a brief and unimportant appearance in DC vs Marvel #2.

 

Uncanny X-Men #325 (October 1995)
Writer: Scott Lobdell
Artist: Joe Madureira

In the road trip subplot, a recently awakened Gambit is startled to learn Rogue is heading to Seattle and tries to convince her to stop. When she hangs up on him, he heads there to intercept her, with Mr. Sinister following on his heels.

Meanwhile, Callisto interrupts the X-Men/Generation X intra-varsity baseball game to warn the X-Men that Gene Nation are planning a massive attack to commemorate the Morlock Massacre. In the battle, Storm kills the Gene Nation member Reverb and appears to kill Marrow by ripping out her heart. Callisto takes the surviving Gene Nation members back to their pocket dimension, instead of, for example, putting them on trial for mass murder.

 

X-Men #45 (October 1995)
Writer: Fabian Nicieza
Artist: Andy Kubert

Bobby tries to convince Rogue not to dig up whatever painful memories she stole from Gambit that brought them to Seattle, because Bobby is very much still about repressing any and all uncomfortable thoughts. Rogue is not having it.

 

 

Gambit tracks down Rogue and Iceman to an abandoned theatre. He refuses to tell her outright what the dark secret in his past is but does offer to let her touch him and absorb his mind again, presumably because that would show her proof that he’s changed. She refuses, breaks up with him, and leaves the X-Men for a while. But before she goes, she tries to give Bobby some words of encouragement that sure sound like a nudge out of the closet to me.

Bobby tries to console Gambit, but he’s not taking it. In the end, Mr. Sinister shows up to remind Gambit that he’s still his pawn. The significance of the theatre is eventually explained in Nicieza’s 1998 Gambit solo title.

This is Fabian Nicieza’s final issue on the title, closing out nearly four years.

Rogue next turns up in X-Man #11, continuing her tour across the US. Gambit and Bobby are both back in the Mansion by Uncanny X-Men #326, although Bobby doesn’t appear on panel. That issue is devoted mostly to Gambit torturing Sabretooth because he resents Sabretooth being given an opportunity to rehabilitate himself. And if you’re wondering, “Oh, Sabretooth is still in the Mansion?” Yes, his plotline was mostly moved over to X-Force, where Boom-Boom was tending to him in his animal state. Also, Beast, Professor X, and Val Cooper all lie to an epidemiology conference to try to downplay the severity of the Legacy Virus.

Bobby also skips Uncanny X-Men #327, where an amnesiac who appears to be Magneto (but isn’t) turns up in Latin America and finally decides to go look for the X-men. This is the start of the story of Magneto’s clone, Joseph. And he misses Uncanny X-Men Annual ’95 (they stopped getting numbers from here forward), where Storm, Bishop, Cannonball, and Husk check in on the Guthrie family when Joelle Guthrie falls in with the survivalist faction of the Friends of Humanity, Humanity’s Last Stand. He also misses X-Men Annual ’95, in which Jean Grey learns a bit more about Mr. Sinister’s backstory of torturing and (it’s implied) raping victims in the name of scientific research. She learns even more in The Further Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix, in which the title couple time travel to Victorian England and fail to stop Apocalypse from turning Nathaniel Essex into Sinister, and accidentally inspire Sinister’s fascination with their DNA.

 

X-Men Unlimited #8 (October 1995)
Writer: Howard Mackie
Artist: Tom Grummet

The X-Men help new mutant Chris Bradley cope with his electricity powers, only to find out that he has contracted the Legacy Virus. In the end, he decides to go back home to try to return to normal life (presumably because no one wanted him in Generation X).

Chris’ story has some obvious parallels with school homophobia and HIV-panic around this era. Unfortunately, Mackie spends the vast bulk of this 48-page story on Chris’ week with the X-Men rather than the more interesting parts of his exclusion and reintegration into his normal life.

On the plus side, Chris develops a very cute friendship with Bobby, full of double entendre. It’s a bit ironic that he delivers the big speech about how true friends accept you no matter who or what you are, but the moment lands despite the melodrama.

Chris, however, is obsessed with the nice hot girl at his old school, and races to tell Bobby that she still wants to go out with him even after he tells her about his status, in a bit of a “no homo” coda to the story.

A flashback to this story appears in X-Men Unlimited #15, which sets up Chris’ new status as Maverick’s sidekick in his 1997 ongoing series. After that, Chris appears in the 1999 New Warriors revival, before being killed in the mutant concentration camp in Weapon X. He’s probably due for a revival. He even appears as a supporting character in X-Men Origins: Wolverine!

 

All-New Exiles vs. X-Men #0
Writer: Terry Kavanaugh
Artist: Ken Lashley

Iceman is among the X-Men who journey to the Ultraverse to attempt to find the Juggernaut, who disappeared mid-battle in Wolverine #93. They find him there with Sienna Blaze and Reaper, who have joined a team called The Exiles. When Reaper tries to sneak back to earth through Gateway’s portal, he they discover a monster who eats members of the Exiles if they try to pass, so the X-Men leave content that they’ve found Juggernaut and that he can’t escape this pocket universe.

Marvel had bought Malibu comics in 1994 for reasons that remain mysterious, since they swiftly cancelled all the books. They attempted to revive them in 1995 by seeding them with minor Marvel characters. All-New Exiles became a pseudo X-book and if I remember correctly this was some mail-away promo trailing it. The quality of these books was pretty dismal and their continuity status is questionable, though Juggernaut’s disappearance and return to the 616 universe is on-panel. Mercifully, Iceman doesn’t appear in any other Ultraverse books so I can happily ignore the remainder.    

 

X-Men & Clan Destine #1 (August-September 1995)
Writer/Artist: Alan Davis

The Clan Destine, a family of immortal British superheroes that Alan Davis introduced in swiftly cancelled series that no one cared about in 1994 get one more chance to make an impression on the audience in a contrived crossover with Marvel’s most popular characters. It doesn’t work.

Basically, an evil demon tries to trick Xavier and two members of the Clan Destine into helping it get back to Earth so it can do evil things I guess. What does this have to do with the X-Men? Nothing at all. What does it have to do with the Clan Destine? Fuck if I know, since this double-size two-parter barely manages to introduce the Clan Destine by name, let alone explain the concept. At the end, the Clan’s patriarch says they’re all gonna go away for a while, not that that’s set up anywhere in the story, either. Lord knows what Davis was trying to achieve with this.

The original X-Men have a brief scene hazing Cannonball at the beginning of issue #1, and this really does seem embarrassing for the former leader of X-Force. Iceman expresses sympathy, and implies that the fact he was the original target of bullying on the X-Men made it difficult for him to feel safe enough to come out.

Iceman doesn’t actually appear in the second half of the miniseries, due to an admittedly clever (if confusingly executed) fake-out in the story.

 

X-Men #46-47 (November-December 1995)
Writer: Scott Lobdell
Artist: Andy Kubert

The X-Men protect the X-Babies, who have escaped Mojoworld and are on the run from Gog and Magog, who want to eliminate all vestiges of Mojo’s old order. Eventually, rebel leader Dazzler appears and offers them sanctuary in her palace.

The X-Babies were a Mojoworld joke about crass franchise exploitation – and a riff on the “Babies” trend in 80s cartoons whose most prominent examples are Flintstones Kids and Muppet Babies. The lineup has changed since we last saw them in Excalibur: Mojo Mayhem.

The important part here is that Jean has taken Bobby shopping for presents for her niece and nephew. Bobby shows up in the gayest outfit he’s worn since Marvel Team-Up #4. To be honest, there’s something weirdly off-model about Bobby’s entire look in this sequence – the proportions are all wrong and his face looks about ten years too young. But beyond that, it seems like Bobby is desperately trying to come out to Jean before they’re interrupted by the X-Babies. It’s ironic that here Jean insists she won’t just read his mind to find out what he wants to talk about when that’s exactly how Teenage Jean confronts Teenage Bobby in 2015.

Jean suggests Dazzler has miscarried, because she’s no longer pregnant, no one considering she might’ve given birth since X-Men #11. Years later, X-Factor vol 2 will establish that she did indeed give birth, in a sense, to Shatterstar, but the baby was taken away and she doesn’t know it.

 

X-Men & Spider-Man #3 (January 2009)
Writer: Christos Gage
Artist: Mario Alberti

We last checked in on this time-spanning miniseries in the silver age. Issue two found Spider-Man approach the X-Men shortly after the “Mutant Massacre” after he discovered that Kraven was working with Sinister. This issue takes place in the 90s era after the X-Men discover Sinister’s taken an interest in Carnage. Not much happens here, but Bobby’s powers are key to stopping Carnage after Sinister frees him from Ravencroft. Since Iceman doesn’t appear in the final issue, which is set around 2005 continuity, I’ll just tell you Sinister sends his super-powered clone of Kraven, Xraven, to attack the X-Men and collect more DNA samples, but the X-Men convince him to turn on Sinister.

 

Sabretooth: In the Red Zone (January 1996)
Writer: Fabian Nicieza
Artist: Gary Frank

After tricking Boom-Boom into letting him free and then mortally wounding Psylocke in Uncanny X-Men #328, it’s up to the original X-Men to track down and arrest Sabretooth. They track him through Manhattan, but what he really wants in suicide by cop. In the end, the apparently dead Sabretooth is carted away by Val Cooper to join the cast of X-Factor.

Archangel suffers an injury to his wing, and Iceman takes a moment to tend to him, caressing his chest and cheek. He’ll eventually have the wound taken care of the in mostly inconsequential Archangel one-shot, but this also explains why Angel and Psylocke are sidelined for the next year or so of stories.

 

X-Men #48 (January 1996)
Writer: Scott Lobdell
Artist: Luke Ross

While the X-Men play poker with the visiting Thing from Fantastic Four, the Dark Beast and Sugar Man discuss their recent discovery that Bishop exists in this world and their consequent fear that he may tell Mr. Sinister about their existence.

The big turning point for Bobby is that he asks Storm for some “tutoring” in the use of his powers, because he’s a white gay man and she’s a strong Black woman they both have elemental powers.

Bobby skips X-Men #49, where Bishop gets into a fight with that waitress from Uncanny X-Men #299, who turns out to be the Dark Beast’s agent Fatale (who had debuted over in X-Factor a few months earlier). He also misses Uncanny X-Men #329-330, where Archangel and Wolverine team-up with Dr. Strange to use the Crimson Dawn to save Psylocke’s life.  And he misses X-Men Unlimited #9, where Wolverine, Psylocke and Beast fight Bloodscream and Belasco.

 

X-Men vs. Brood #1-2 (September-October 1996)
Writer: John Ostrander
Artist: Bryan Hitch

The X-Men respond to a distress cry from Hannah Connover, who’s been carrying a Brood Queen inside her since way back in Uncanny X-Men #233. Her ability to fight off the infection is regarded as something of a heresy by the Brood Empress, who sends her children, the Firstborn, to kill her and everyone else she’s infected. Iceman reluctantly joins the strike team after Xavier wakes him up from a sex dream with three redheads.

Iceman doesn’t really contribute much to the story other than his useful powers in the climax, which allow the X-Men to cryogenically freeze Connover so they can study how she fought off the infection. The fact she’s never been seen again, despite several Brood stories since, suggests the X-Men didn’t learn anything useful.

Incidentally, this story is a year out of sequence because Xavier’s presence means it needs to take place before Onslaught and while Wolverine is still living on the grounds of the mansion. Also Bobby skips the crossover special Star Trek/X-Men #1, in which the X-Men team up with the crew of the SS Enterprise to fight Proteus and a Star Trek villain. That issue is also not on Marvel Unlimited.

 

X-Men Unlimited #10 (March 1996)
Writer: Mark Waid
Artist: Frank Toscano

The Dark Beast enacts his plan to capture and replace our Beast, so he can hide from Sinister with the X-Men. Iceman has a couple scenes with the real Beast before the switch, where he tries and fails to get Beast to take a break from his Legacy Virus research.

 

X-Men #50 (March 1996)
Writer: Scott Lobdell
Artist: Adam Kubert

Gateway appears in the Mansion and teleports Storm, Cyclops, Iceman, and Wolverine to an apparent jungle where Post, the herald of Onslaught, tests them. The rest of the X-Men and the Professor try to figure out who or what Onslaught is, to no avail – largely because the writers hadn’t yet entirely figured out the plot. It has to be said though, there are more than a few clues to Onslaught’s identity in this issue, not least is Xavier’s narration throughout.

But the important part for Bobby is that before the story begins, Post smashes a huge crater into the chest of his ice-form. This has never happened to Bobby before (though it did when Emma Frost controlled his body in Uncanny X-Men #314), so he’s thoroughly disturbed by what it means for him.

This issue reads like it features the normal Beast, but the timeline doesn’t work unless X-Men Unlimited #10 comes first, because of Bobby’s injury.

 

Uncanny X-Men #331 (April 1996)
Writer: Scott Lobdell
Artist: Bryan Hitch

Ah, the issue that launched thousand fan theories. Bobby confronts Emma Frost to demand she help him fix the gaping hole in his chest, and she spends the issue taunting him with what she knows of his secrets. She doesn’t come outright and say the F-word, but Bobby knows what she means throughout.

Emma opens by ribbing Bobby about his dreams of being an interior designer (slight homophobia that we can forgive because she’s iconic).

Frost confronts bobby with images of the people she believes he’s lying to himself about. It’s worth including the whole sequence here:

Bobby’s father is the most direct: “But you’re not a REAL man, are you Bobby? You’re a MUTANT. You’re –“ Bobby cuts him off before he can say what is presumably the F-word. Ironically, Bobby uses this moment to tell Frost to “Come out now!”

Next up is Opal, who tells Bobby that “you never loved me. You just needed me there to make you look good.” Opal may never have figured out she was a beard, but Emma’s got Bobby’s number here.

Finally, Emma has Beast invite Bobby to “just party!” saying it’s time for the two of them to be “together again.”

Bobby responds that he won’t be “BULLIED or SEDUCED or DISTRACTED.” The obvious reading is that Mr. Drake is the bully, Opal the seductress, and Beast the distraction, but is that correct? Opal’s not exactly acting seductively. She seems resigned to Bobby’s indifference. I think she’s the distraction, and Beast is the seduction who wants to get together with him to party.

Emma finally relents and coaches Bobby to return to his human form, allowing him to finish his emotional growth on his own terms.

Meanwhile, Dark Best is having a hard time maintaining the illusion that he’s the real Beast, because obviously, so he blows up the lab to try to explain away his odd behavior as a consequence of overwork. Later, we’ll learn that Onslaught was blocking the telepaths from spotting him immediately upon entering the mansion.

 

Uncanny X-Men #332, Wolverine #101 (May-June 1996)
Writer: Scott Lobdell, Larry Hama
Artist: Joe Madureira, Val Semekis

Following the events of Wolverine #100, in which Logan fought off Cable’s son Genesis’ attempt to make him his new Horseman and then killed him, Wolverine has devolved into a feral monster incapable of rational thought (and seeming to be missing a nose). He’s come under the sway of Apocalypse’s long-hidden servant Ozymandias (whose backstory, with Apocalypse’s own origin, will be revealed in the Rise of Apocalypse miniseries next year) and a scratch team of X-Men go off to rescue him.

Iceman’s role is small in this story, but he does get a couple scenes of his stilted attempts to bond with Cannonball. Their friendship is underexplored in X-Men continuity, but they make a nice pair when they’re teamed together.

There’s some minor foreshadowing of Xavier’s role in the Onslaught story here, plus a seemingly abandoned thread about Cyclops possibly having accidentally cured the brain damage that ruined his control over his optic blasts. That bit never goes anywhere.

And then there’s this.

Bobby skips X-Men #51-52, where Bishop, Gambit, and Dark Beast fight Mr. Sinister when he releases a rapid mutating agent on a commuter train in New Jersey.

 

Uncanny X-Men #333 (June 1996)
Writer: Scott Lobdell
Artist: Pascual Ferry

Jean and Gambit infiltrate the Pentagon to learn more about Operation: Zero Tolerance (because we’re already prepping for next year’s crossover), and when they’re caught, Onslaught appears and helps them escape. Iceman, playing backup, rightly complains that this ought to be something X-Factor does, since they actually have government clearances, but let’s be charitable and suggest this is more evidence of the Professor behaving suspiciously. He also takes note of Beast’s strange behavior.

Meanwhile, Cyclops goes to see Senator Kelly, and both are kidnapped by O:ZT – they get rescued in X-Force #55. And a giant shadow attacks Archangel and Psylocke.

Iceman skips X-Men #53, in which Onslaught tries to convince Jean to join him, and we find out the shadow is Juggernaut retuning from the Ultraverse, looking for help to stop Onslaught. He also skips X-Men Unlimited #11, where Rogue is captured by the Friends of Humanity and rescued by Joseph, who’d infiltrated them looking for information on the X-Men. Oddly, that issue is missing from Marvel Unlimited.

 

Storm #4 (March 1996)
Writer: Warren Ellis
Artist: Terry Dodson

Iceman makes a cameo at the end of this not very good miniseries, in which Storm travels to the dimension where Mikhail Rasputin took the Morlocks in Uncanny X-Men #293, defeats him, and then takes their descendants Gene Nation back to earth, where the X-Men bring them to the village in Africa Storm found in Uncanny X-Men #198. The point of that story was that the village couldn’t sustain any additional lives so any new person required someone to die, so this is a bit of an odd choice. It seems like the point was that Storm was trying to force Gene Nation to use their powers to expand the productivity of the land, but it seems odd to trust a bunch of genocidal maniacs with protecting human life. Uncanny X-Men Annual ’97 slightly retcons this to a different village in Sudan.

Oh and at the end, Storm debuts a new Madureira-designed midriff-bearing outfit and anime-inspired haircut, ditching the Portacio-designed black leather bodysuit with the giant shoulder-pads that was her signature look through the 90s cartoon.

Also, Cable spends half a page sniffing Storm’s pits.

 

Uncanny X-Men #334 (July 1996)
Writer: Scott Lobdell
Artist: Joe Madureira

Juggernaut reaches the X-Mansion, where he asks Jean for help digging the secret of who Onslaught is from his brain. Meanwhile, Xavier is acting increasingly bizarre.

Iceman has a short scene where he insists that Beast will be able to diagnose and cure Wolverine’s devolution. As it turns out, the Dark Beast is much less the comprehensive polymath that the real Beast is and can’t figure out the problem at all.

And in aborted plots, Bishop wonders why the Mansion’s technology is so similar to the tech of his own time, speculating that something must’ve help back technology for 100 years. This didn’t make a lot of sense, since the X-Men’s tech is alien technology far advanced beyond anything else on earth, and Bishop’s home timeline was on the other side of a near apocalyptic global war.

 

X-Men #54 (July 1996)
Writer: Mark Waid
Artist: Andy Kubert

While the X-Men search the mansion for Juggernaut and Xavier acts increasingly bizarre, Jean goes down to the psi-shielded chamber Xavier used way back in the 60s when he faked his death to try to dig out the secret of Onslaught from Juggernaut’s brain. She realizes that Onslaught is the Professor just as he hears a news report that one of the mutant bashers from X-Men: Prime has been arrested, which reminds him of his recent failures and causes him to snap. Jean tells Juggernaut to run, but Onslaught catches him and seemingly depowers him (he’ll be rescued by Dr. Strange in X-Men Unlimited #12, a chapter so marginal to the crossover it’s not even included in the Onslaught Omnibus).

Iceman’s appearance here is mostly to flag that Beast is still acting bizarrely – here, he gets details about the X-Men’s first encounter with Juggernaut (way back in X-Men Vol. 1 #12-13) wrong. Iceman still doesn’t find any of this suspicious, but it’s later established that Onslaught is helping suppress the X-Men’s suspicions.

Incidentally, the arrested mutant basher eventually gets a half-hearted redemption arc when he’s sent to work as a janitor at the school in Generation X, but that plot thread is quickly dropped.

Meanwhile, Beast escapes from the Dark Beast’s prison, trailing X-Factor #125-126, where he’s rescued by that team, while they fail to stop Onslaught from stealing the Sentinels he’ll use to attack New York.

 

“Onslaught” (August-September 1996)
Onslaught: X-Men, Uncanny X-Men #335-336, Avengers #401, Fantastic Four #415-416, X-Men #55, Incredible Hulk #445, Onslaught: Marvel Universe
Creators: Too many to list

And now we get to the crossover proper. As you might imagine with a crossover this immense, there isn’t a lot of room for Iceman – he actually only appears in 9 of the 32 chapters of the crossover.

The plot kicks off with Onslaught: X-Men, in which Onslaught reveals himself as the Professor and handily defeats the X-Men, but fails to kill them when Bishop gets in the way of his attack, thus resolving the ”X-Traitor” subplot that had been going since Uncanny X-Men #287. Dark Beast also joins him.

 

In Uncanny X-Men #335, the Avengers arrive at the destroyed mansion, having been told by Nate Grey that Xavier is dangerous in the coda to Avengers #400. The various teams split up for their missions: Storm goes to get Cable in Cable #34 and Incredible Hulk #444; Wolverine goes to investigate a hunch in Wolverine #104, and learns that Onslaught is an evil parasite that infected Xavier when he shut down Magneto’s brain in X-Men #25; some of the X-Men go to Muir Isle to find the Xavier Protocols, which are Xavier’s failsafe instructions to kill the X-Men, including himself, if they go bad, in Excalibur #100; and X-Force are assigned to stay back and protect Nate Grey in X-Force #57-58 and X-Man #18-19, but he gets captured by Mr. Sinister and then by Onslaught anyway.

 

 

Iceman sees the Avengers and Gambit off in Avengers #401, in which they try to find Magneto, and instead find Joseph and Rogue, whom they bring back to New York.

Iceman is assigned to another group of Avengers who go to warn the Fantastic Four that Onslaught is after their kid, Franklin Richards in Fantastic Four #415 – luckily for Onslaught, Franklin had just been returned to the right timeline in the previous issue (which also includes an Onslaught cameo). They fail to stop Onslaught from kidnapping Franklin.

Onslaught unleashes a devastating EMP attack and a Sentinel occupation of Manhattan in ­X-Men #55. It forms the background of many “Impact” chapters of the crossover, including issues of Amazing Spider-Man, Spider-Man, Sensational Spider-Man, Punisher, Green Goblin, Thor, and Wolverine #105. The assembled heroes meet at the Fantastic Four’s HQ, where they attempt to build weapons to use against Onslaught, but they’re all (momentarily) wiped out when Onslaught unleashes a massive electromagnetic pulse. But before that, Iceman and his old bud the Human Torch have a little dust-up that sounds more than a little sexual.

They make up in Uncanny X-Men #336, where the heroes try to rescue civilians, rebuild their weapons, and a handful of heroes lead a frontal assault on Onslaught. Those heroes end up freeing a now powerless Xavier from within Onslaught’s body, which somehow makes him even more powerful, and Onslaught responds with yet another EM pulse.

Iceman has a brief cameo in Incredible Hulk #445, where the Hulk makes a fruitless attempt to attack Onslaught. Cable leads another attack that fails when temporary ally Apocalypse betrays his team in Cable #36. The Avengers defeat Post and Holocaust in Avengers #402. Iron Man makes an armor that protects the Avengers from Onslaught’s telepathy in Iron Man #332. Everyone reconvenes back at the FF HQ in Fantastic Four #416, where Onslaught attacks the FF with psionic projections of their worst villains, and Iceman makes a brief cameo. In X-Men #56, Xavier foolishly decides to confront Onslaught, just as Onslaught learns from Nate Grey that the Age of Apocalypse wasn’t a paradise (shouldn’t he have learned that from Dark Beast?) and decides that he now wants to destroy all life, mutant and human.

That brings us to Onslaught: Marvel Universe, the final chapter, in which Iceman technically appears. I mean, he’s there in a couple panels, honest. He just doesn’t do anything notable and he’s absent from all the big splash pages. The book had a cast of dozens and there was evident back-end confusion over who even appears in the story (none of the FF’s allies who showed up in Fantastic Four #416 stayed for the fight, for example), so it’s understandable that Bobby got lost in the shuffle. Anyway, this is the big climax where Onslaught transforms into pure psionic energy, and Mr. Fantastic decides that the way they can beat him is for the heroes to jump in and absorb him into them, and then have the mutants kill them. Apparently, if mutants tried to absorb Onslaught, they’d only make him stronger, but that didn’t stop Falcon, Namor, and Scarlet Witch from jumping in. Anyway, the villain is defeated but all of New York sees the X-Men murder their heroes and the X-Men don’t stick around to give any kind of explanation, because that’s not what X-Men do. This all ramps up anti-mutant hysteria over the course of next year’s stories.

Of course, you probably know that the heroes didn’t actually die. Franklin Richards used his reality warping powers to send them to the “Heroes Reborn” pocket universe, where Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld wrote and drew them for a year, bringing these characters back to the top of the sales charts again for the first time in ages.

 

Avengers Annual 1999 (July 1999)
Writer: John Francis Moore
Artist: Leonardo Manco

In a flashback scene, we learn that days after the Avengers’ apparent deaths, Black Widow reached out her former Champions teammates Angel and Iceman and former Avenger Beast to join her in a new team of Avengers. They all politely decline, citing Angel’s obligations to the X-Men, Beast’s legacy virus research, and Iceman’s concern that the public won’t welcome mutants right now.

It’s interesting that Iceman is the one most concerned about public perception and is once again holding himself back from an opportunity because of it.

 

Uncanny X-Men #337 (October 1996)
Writer: Scott Lobdell
Artist: Joe Madureira

The X-Men and Quicksilver reconnect in the wake of the Onslaught event.

This issue is notable for a bizarre bathroom sequence, where, first of all, we learn that Cyclops soaks his glasses in some liquid over night for some reason. Second, the bathroom has just absolutely insane dimensions. Third, Bobby sneaks by and pranks both of them like the old high school days. (I suppose they’re all sleeping in Scott and Jean’s boat house since the Mansion is a wreck?)

Meanwhile, Bastion and Graydon Creed are seriously playing into the growing anti-mutant hysteria in the wake of Onslaught, and Bastian is subtly displaying some strange abilities.

 

X-Men #57 (October 1996)
Writer Scott Lobdell
Artist: Andy Kubert

The X-Men debate allowing Val Cooper to take the Professor into custody, but he ends up going willingly. Bobby’s there but he doesn’t play an integral part in the proceedings.

We’ll see Xavier in his prison in Onslaught: Epilogue, where he’s basically tortured by Bastian but finds hope from one of his fellow prisoners, a little girl named Nina.

 

 

X-Men Annual 1996
Writer: Larry Hama
Artist: Roberto Flores, Anthony Castrillo

Included here because it rounds out the Onslaught Omnibus. The X-Men, X-Force, and Generation X get together to play baseball (or some approximation of it) and have a barbecue. A stray Sentinel from the Onslaught event that has somehow evolved its own conscience shows up to warn the X-Men about something, but they attack it on sight and it “dies.” Then the X-Men do a weird mind-meld/Care Bear Stare at each other to make themselves feel good. The telepaths go at lengths to stress that it’s only a surface level connection and no one’s secrets will come out, which is probably why Bobby goes along with it. That’s it. Honestly, this issue feels like a harbinger of a bunch of really bad filler issues that are going to start cropping up across the line over the next year. So you’re warned.

Iceman gets a little scene where he drops ice down Cannonball’s butt. I’ll just leave this here to wrap up.

Where to find these issues: All these issues are on Marvel Unlimited (except for the All New Exiles issue and X-Men Annual ’96). All of these issues except for All-New Exiles and Storm are collected in X-Men: The Road to Onslaught Vol 1-3 and the X-Men/Avengers: Onslaught Omnibus. Storm got its own TPB several years ago.

Next time: It’s Operation: Zero Tolerance!

Previous Posts: Introduction | Chapter 1: Lee/Kirby Era Part 1 | Chapter 2: Lee/Kirby Era Part 2 | Chapter 3: The Roy Thomas Era (1966-1968) | Chapter 4: The End of the Silver Age (1968-1970) | Chapter 5: Origins and Flashbacks Part 1 | Chapter 6: Silver Age Flashbacks Part 2 | Chapter 6.1: Voices of Pride | Chapter 7: X-Men: First Class Vol 1 | Chapter 8: X-Men: First Class Vol 2 Part 1 | Chapter 9: X-Men: First Class Vol 2 Part 2 | Chapter 10: The Hidden Years | Chapter 11: X-Men on Hiatus (1970-75) | Chapter 12: The Champions Part 1 (1975-76) | Chapter 13: The Champions Part 2 (1977-78) | Chapter 14: The College Years (1978-83) | Chapter 15: The New Defenders Part 1 (1983-84) | Chapter 16: The New Defenders Part 2 (1984-85) | Chapter 17: The End of the New Defenders (1985-86) | Chapter 18: X-Factor Part 1 (1986) | Chapter 19: X-Factor – Mutant Massacre (1987) | Chapter 20: X-Factor – Fall of the Mutants (1987) | Chapter 21: X-Factor – Inferno Prologue (1988) | Chapter 22: X-Factor: Inferno (1989) | Chapter 23: X-Factor – Judgment War (1989) | Chapter 24: X-Factor – X-Tinction Agenda (1990) | Chapter 25: X-Factor – Endgame (1991) | Chapter 26: X-Men: Blue and Gold (1991)

Can you believe we’ve covered 30 years of X-Men history?! 1993 was a busy year for the X-Men, as Lobdell and Nicieza worked to put their stamp on the line in the wake of the Image departure, while prepping for multiple mega-events to celebrate the anniversary. The year is dominated by two main themes: The legacy of Magneto and his impending return (and a bit of a meta narrative around the legacy of the all the outgoing creators from 1991-92), and the dawning of the Legacy Virus, a poorly thought out AIDS parallel that made some good stories in 1993 but petered out by the time it was just swept aside in 2000.

We’re also really in the peak of the comics sales boom here, so the volume of comics to cover is huge – and so many of them have those gimmicky chrome and hologram covers. Let’s dive in!

 

Wolverine #67-68 (March-April 1993)
Writer: Larry Hama
Artist: Mark Texiera

After Wolverine asks Professor X to remove some of the mental blocks on his memories, Wolverine has a bit of a psychotic break  and runs off to Russia to chase after a mission he’s beginning to remember from his CIA days. There, he meets aging Soviet super-cosmonaut Epsilon Red, whose psychic daughter helps remove the rest of Wolverine’s false memories. Iceman joins the X-Men team that chases after Wolverine and catches up with him just in time to give him a lift out.

Bobby doesn’t really do much here other than demonstrate his ignorance of Russian geography while continuing to try to make friends with Colossus.

By this point, the Blue and Gold distinction between the teams has all but evaporated and the X-Men are just grabbing whoever’s handy for each mission. In this case though, it seems like the Blue Team has just grabbed Bobby and Colossus because Rogue and Gambit are still recovering from their injuries during the “X-Cutioner’s Song” story (Beast also skips out for some reason). Maybe they thought Colossus’ fluency in Russian would be helpful.

Anyway, since they’re in Russia anyway, the X-Men decide to stop off at Colossus’ parents’ house in Siberia (a mere 3,000 kilometers away, as the story points out) so he can break the news about Mikhail.

X-Men #17-19 (February-April 1993)
Writer: Fabian Nicieza
Artist: Andy Kubert

While visiting Colossus’ parents in Siberia, the X-Men get roped into helping the Russian government stop the Soul Skinner, a psychic mutant who’s taken over a neighboring town. While they’re doing that, the Russians kill Colossus’ parents and kidnap his sister Illyana, hoping to use technology to rapidly age her and cause her powers to develop, so she can be the last line of defense against the Skinner.

When it’s mentioned that Darkstar has already failed to stop the Soul Skinner, Bobby shows concern for his former Champions teammate, but thankfully his unreciprocated crush is not brought up.

Later, when the Soul Skinner uses his powers to cripple people with feelings of guilt and shame on the X-Men, Bobby is confronted his shame at not being able to make a relationship with Opal work. Opal is shown as literally melting Bobby into nothing, a reflection of his own feelings of failure at heterosexuality.

The Skinner is later executed on panel by Col Vazhin. It’s possible he could be brought back and rehabilitated in the Krakoan era, possibly even with his daughter, whose death sparked his psychotic break.

Heap this on the pile of early 90s misery stories for the X-Men. At one point, Soul Skinner himself is overwhelmed by the misery the X-Men have gone through. But just wait for what’s in store for Colossus.

While Bobby’s in Russia, Beast flirts with Gambit.

Because he’s in Russia, Bobby misses Uncanny X-Men #298, where the returned Acolytes attack a school and kill Sharon Friedlander, and Xavier collects autopsy notes of a mutant who dies of a mysterious illness. Oddly, Xavier had predicted the Acolytes returning a year earlier in Avengers #350, which feels like precisely the wrong book for that.

 

Spectacular Spider-Man #197-199 (February-April 1993)
Writer: JM DeMattias
Artist: Sal Buscema

A sequel of sorts to Marvel Team-Up #117-118, Spider-Man gets caught in the crossfire when Professor Power attempts to kill the original X-Men, as revenge for the time when Professor X failed to save his son’s life. The X-Men and Spider-Man defeat Professor Power and stop his floating castle fortress from crashing into a small town.

A very boring story with an undermotivated villain who has almost zero relationship with any of the heroes, incredibly stretched over two and a half issues. Buscema’s art is pretty ugly too. A real miss.

The only thing of note in this story is the opening bit where the X-Men boys are out on the town and reminisce about hitting the Village together in the Silver Age and seem to recall events exactly the opposite of the way they happened. Angel laments that he was too shy to talk to girls, Scott says the girls were always after Bobby, and Hank says the girls were actually always after Scott. This of course bears no resemblance to any stories that have seen print. Nevertheless, Scott gets in a dig about how everyone knew Bobby would never actually make it with a girl.

Uncanny X-Men #299 (March 1993)
Writer: Scott Lobdell
Artist: Brandon Peterson

The Professor, now a mini-celebrity because of the assassination attempt in “X-Cutioner’s Song,” appears on ABC’s Nightline to debate Senator Kelly and Graydon Creed, who makes his debut as the leader of the “Friends of Humanity” (who no one knows were actually trying to assassinate Xavier before Stryfe got there). Beast is also in the debate, as the most high-profile mutant, and he thoroughly humiliates Creed in a way that really damaged his credibility as a political leader to readers in the 1990s, but honestly reads like exactly the sort of grievance politician that thrives in the post-Trump era of politics.

Bobby makes a cameo cheering on Beast from a bar where the X-Men are all watching along.

In other subplots, Senator Kelly seems to be softening his approach toward mutants and even invites Xavier to dinner. He also appears to have a telepathic aide in his retinue – we’ll eventually learn that’s a Landau, Luckman and Lake operative, but it’s never explained what he was doing there (and they’re both dead now, so it probably never will be). Bishop seems to recognize a waitress in the bar from somewhere – it turns out she’s Dark Beast’s henchman Fatale, which still doesn’t explain how he recognizes her. Forge finds the remains of Asteroid M in Kuwait, along with strong evidence that Magneto survived.

And most consequentially, Illyana has a cough…

 

Uncanny X-Men #300 (April 1993)
Writer: Scott Lobdell
Artist: John Romita Jr.

The X-Men Gold Team, joined by Cyclops, Wolverine, and Nightcrawler, track the Acolytes to France, where they’ve also kidnapped Moira MacTaggart. Cortez wants to use MacTaggart’s mind control process from X-Men #1-3 to recruit more Acolytes, but she resists their attempts to read her mind (a hint at her mutant abilities?). Meanwhile, Gamesmaster announces that Cortez has lost all the points he claimed for killing Magneto, a revelation that gets overheard by one of the new Acolytes, who turns on him and helps the X-Men. The X-Men defeat the Acolytes, but in the end, new member Amelia Voght, who has a relationship with Xavier, teleports them all away.

Iceman gets into a fight with new Acolyte Joanna Cargill, formerly Frenzy of the Alliance of Queer-Coded Villains Evil. She tells him that she’s gotten stronger since she’s found “acceptance,” to which Iceman retorts by showing off his own developing strength, in a continuation of the storyline about his powers being tied to his own self-acceptance.

In subplots, Xavier and Moira start to piece together that Illyana’s sickness is related to the Genoshan mutate plague she was investigating in X-Factor #88-90, and that it may have been engineered by Stryfe. We also get a flashback to Xavier and Moira discussing founding the X-Men, in which Xavier indicates he already had Storm, Nightcrawler and Colossus in mind prior to recruiting the original team. It makes a certain degree of sense that he’d have files on them, but bear in mind that Colossus is younger than the original team, so he’s at most twelve, maybe thirteen in this flashback.

 

Uncanny X-Men Annual #17 (1993)
Writer: Scott Lobdell
Artist: Jason Pearson

Iceman, Jean Grey, and Bishop get trapped in illusions when they go to investigate Mastermind, who’s dying of the Legacy Virus on Muir Island. Meanwhile, the debuting X-Cutioner arrives to try to kill him.

The fantasy sequences in this one are subtler than they first appear. In Bobby’s fantasy, he’s Icemaster, leader of the world-famous X-Men. His name implies the control over his powers that he’s always failed to live up to (and also, possibly, BDSM fantasies he hasn’t gotten to play out). He’s actually revered for dropping out of college and he claims his mastery of accounting made him the perfect X-Men leader. He commands respect from Xavier, Wolverine, and, tellingly, Polaris, and the guy she dumped him for, Havok.

Bobby’s fantasy doesn’t include even a hint of women being attracted to him – it’s entirely about guys giving him respect and complimenting him on what a man he is. But he does take one weird, half-hearted swing at Jean, someone he has never once shown any romantic interest in, and she lets him down immediately. In fact, Bobby flirting with her is the thing that makes Jean finally realize that something’s off with the world.

The ending is a bit melodramatic, with Jean risking her life to forgive Mastermind for what he did to the Phoenix (when he, y’know, tried to rape her and drove her insane). Endless selfless forgiveness is a big trope for superheroes, but this feels a bit too far for me.

In minor developments, X-Cutioner kills Tower, who was previously one of the most queer-coded members of the Alliance of Evil, but is seen here trying to rape a woman in Central America. We learn the X-Cutioner is a former partner of the X-Men’s former FBI liaison Fred Duncan, who has died in unrevealed circumstances. Bishop’s sister Shard debuts in the fantasy sequence. And Colossus suffers a brain injury that is said to exacerbate his erratic behavior in the upcoming issues.

And in the backup feature, the final member of the Upstarts, Sienna Blaze, makes her debut in a trailer for X-Men Unlimited #1, where she attempts to kill Cyclops, Storm, and Xavier.

 

Uncanny X-Men #301-302 (May-June 1993)
Writer: Scott Lobdell
Artist: John Romita Jr.

Trevor Fitzroy tries to kill Forge, but the X-Men arrive in time to stop him. In the battle, Colossus nearly kills Fitzroy before the X-Men restrain him.

Opal Tanaka surprises Bobby at the mansion to talk, revealing that Bobby’s been sending her a dozen roses daily, so, I guess he didn’t give her the space he said she’d asked for back in #294. Honestly, I was surprised the relationship was even still going on. They don’t get to have their conversation because he gets sent on the mission.

When he arrives, he gets to show off his powers by stopping a mob of bigots who accuse Storm of attacking the city. It’s a good scene that’s unfortunately marred by a police officer rushing to defend the X-Men because he knows what it’s like to be feared and hated simply because he’s a cop. Sigh, “Blue lives matter…”

Otherwise, it’s a pretty bad story with some awful plot logic. The X-Men fly to Dallas to recruit Forge to help them with Illyana, instead of just calling the man, when it’s such an emergency? Forge somehow knows that Fitzroy is in the Upstarts even though Fitzroy didn’t introduce himself or say that and the X-Men don’t even know about the Upstarts yet? And Gamesmaster claims that Forge will do something important in the next 24 hours, but of course he doesn’t.

Also, Fitzroy has captured and imprisoned Selene, just to get Gamesmaster’s attention, which seems… counterproductive, since she’s the person running the Upstarts competition? This ultimately gets addressed years down the road in X-Man, when Selene enslaves him as one of her pawns in her new Hellfire Club.

 

Uncanny X-Men #303 (July 1993)
Writer: Scott Lobdell
Artist: Richard Bennett

The Gold Team arrive home at the mansion just after Illyana succumbs to the Legacy Virus.

Bobby only appears in two panels of this issue (in which he makes a bad joke because he’s completely incapable of reading the room), but it’s one of the better issues of the era. It’s all about Jubilee coping with this kind of death that she’s never experienced before.

Jubilee states that the story takes place simultaneously with X-Men #20-23, where a white lady who claims to be the real Psylocke but is actually Kwannon leads the X-Men to Japan, where they learn that both women are now inseparable mixes of the two. The X-Men also finally learn about the Upstarts. Meanwhile, Cyclops visits his grandparents in Alaska, where Mr. Sinister ambushes him and tells him about the Legacy Virus and drops the first mention of his missing third brother. And, the Dark Riders kill Mesmero (well, actually, he fools them and gets away) and then kill their own member Psynapse, who was already sick with the Legacy Virus. Everyone (including Banshee, who explains that he abandoned his search for Moira upon realizing she was fine) returns to the mansion in X-Men #24, which is another issue of mourning Illyana.

 

X-Factor #93 (July 1993)
Writers: Scott Lobdell and JM DeMattias
Artist:

Havok and Wolfsbane visit the mansion, where Professor X wants to continue trying to reverse the mutate process done on Wolfsbane. Upon arrival, they have a chat with Archangel and Iceman about how Illyana’s death is affecting Colossus, and Bobby announces that he’s going to try to shake Colossus out of his stoic behavior to try and get him to open up about his feelings. Colossus shuts him down immediately. It’s nice that the budding yet testy Bobby-Peter friendship got picked up in this cameo.

In the rest of the book, Wolfsbane decides to undergo a risky medical procedure to cure her condition, Multiple Man is brooding and everyone thinks its because he killed the Acolyte Mellancamp in the previous issue and not because he contracted the Legacy Virus, and Polaris and Quicksilver get new costumes just in time for him to leave the book next issue, and Forge replaces Val Cooper as the team’s government liaison.

 

Uncanny X-Men #304 (August 1993)
Writer: Scott Lobdell
Artist: John Romita Jr.

This is the third part of the “Fatal Attractions” story that runs through 1993 as the celebration of the X-Men’s 30^th Anniversary. It isn’t really a cohesive story so much as it’s a set of single issues set around the theme of Magneto’s legacy and return. In X-Factor #92, the team fight the Acolytes after they attack a hospice and then a facility where the government is relaunching the Sentinel program. In X-Force #25, Cable returns just in time for Exodus to offer the former New Mutants the opportunity to reunite with Magneto on his orbiting haven Avalon, which turns out to be Cable’s former station Graymalkin, and when he goes to rescue them, Magneto savagely attacks and cripples him before he can escape.

In this chapter, the X-Men bury Illyana, and Magneto crashes the funeral with the Acolytes in tow, and dares the X-Men to join him. He’s in full-on raving looney mode this issue, and murders one of the Acolytes Senyaka in front of everyone for killing humans without his authorization, although he also says he would have given authorization if asked. Despite this, the Acolytes have no reservations about following him, and in fact Colossus abandons the X-Men and joins him too.

Iceman has a speaking part, but he’s mostly just a face in the gathered X-Men at the funeral.

“Fatal Attractions” is structured such that there’s room for a gap between chapters, which is convenient, because a whole other crossover fits here. Yup, it’s time for…

 

Infinity Crusade #1-6
Writer: Jim Starlin
Artist: Ron Lim

Adam Warlock’s stray “good side” The Goddess decides to “rapture” the universe in service of The One Above All (the Marvel Universe’s equivalent of God). She “recruits” the Marvel heroes who either believe in God or have some connection with the supernatural to be her stooges in order to carry out her plan, while she also causes everyone in the universe to stop being evil and stop fighting. In the grand tradition of the awful Infinity Trilogy, the remaining heroes of earth gather to stand around and not really contribute anything to the plot until Adam Warlock and Thanos do some hand-wavey stuff to make the villain go away. This is easily the worst chapter of the trilogy because Starlin clearly thinks he’s making some interesting points about faith and good and evil but he doesn’t actually have anything to say.

For what it’s worth, Iceman is among the heroes defined as an “infidel” with no real faith in God. I suppose that’s fair enough, even if you subscribe to Bobby as being a kid who was raised Catholic and Jewish. The story takes pains to point out that The Goddess rejected the Human Torch even though he thought himself to be reasonably religious.

Bobby is mostly there to fill out crowd scenes, but he does participate in the invasion of The Goddess’ world in Infinity Crusade #5, where he’s paired with fellow infidel Beast (that sounds right) and gets beaten by Storm. He also appears in Darkhawk #30, where he asks the title character his opinion on the Goddess, and makes a cameo in Web of Spider-Man #105.

 

Uncanny X-Men #305 (September 1993)
Writer: Scott Lobdell
Artist: Jan Duursema

The X-Men find strange genetic anomalies stalking Opal Tanaka, so they wait around using her as bait to draw them out. When she finds out this was Bobby’s idea, she finally dumps him (I mean, there’s no real definitive “It’s over” moment, but she isn’t seen again for years after this). And if you’re thinking, “wait, didn’t they break up over a year ago?” Well, honestly, yeah, it sure seemed more definitive back in Uncanny X-Men #290. Presumably Lobdell just needed another associate of the X-Men and realized there just aren’t that many girlfriends available to use like this. To be honest, this scene doesn’t even read like a conclusive “it’s over” moment so much as it does a big argument, but Opal won’t appear again for another seven years, by which point she’s long moved on.

The strange anomalies turn out to be an early iteration of the Phalanx, but they don’t look anything like we’d expect. They look more like they’re usual depiction next issue, but Bobby doesn’t appear in it.

Meanwhile, the Professor and Storm steal a suit of armor that Xavier hopes will be useful against Magneto. That suit debuted in X-Men Unlimited #2, which is a mostly excellent character study of Magneto told through the eyes of a human man who’s spent his life dedicated to killing him in revenge for murdering his brother. That issues main drawback was the retcon that Magneto wasn’t Jewish, but instead was targeted by the Nazis because he was a “Gypsy.” A few years later, that bad retcon was undone, and Magneto’s Jewish origins were finally confirmed in X-Men: Magneto – Testament. Oh, and in that issue it turns out “Fatal Attraction” is the title of a best selling book about the human-mutant conflict written by Jonathan Chambers, who we’ll see more of shortly.

 

“Fatal Attractions”
X-Men #25, Wolverine #75 (September-October 1993)
Writer: Fabian Nicieza, Larry Hama
Artist: Andy Kubert, Adam Kubert

The Professor leads a small group of X-Men and Quicksilver onto Avalon for the final confrontation with Magneto. Magneto nearly kills Wolverine by pulling the adamantium out of his body, and Xavier responds by disabling Magneto’s mind. Wolverine recovers from his injuries, discovers he has bone claws, and leaves the X-Men.

Iceman is among the gathered X-Men who see the battle group off and watch as they return from space.

Iceman doesn’t appear in the final part of “Fatal Attractions,” Excalibur #71, where the X-Men trick Colossus into coming to Muir Isle to finally receive treatment for his head injury. In the end, he decides to return to the Acolytes. Meanwhile, Jean makes peace with her sort-of daughter Rachel Summers, who also meets her sort-of brother Cable for the first time as an adult.

 

Gambit Vol 4 #10 (May 2005)
Writer: John Layman
Artist: Georges Jeanty

A random flashback scene to the X-Men fighting the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Presumably it’s been placed here on the basis of costumes and because it has to come after Avalanche rejoins that team in X-Men Annual #2. In that issue, the X-Men investigate Jonathan Chambers’ refuge for mutants who are dying of the Legacy Virus and we learn that Pyro and Revanche are both infected with the virus. Chambers is very clearly queer coded and the issue actually devotes a whole page to Pyro and Avalanche making up and rekindling their relationship – even Blob asks “are they kissing yet”?

Basically, the gist of this flashback is that Blob’s costume gets destroyed mid fight and everyone stops to stare and/or laugh at his junk. Gambit uses this mental image to scare off telepaths. In the moment though, the assembled starers are mostly queer-coded characters: Iceman, Beast, Pyro, Avalanche, and Toad.

 

“Bloodties” (October-November 1993)
Avengers #368-369, X-Men #26, Avengers West Coast #101, Uncanny X-Men #307
Writers: Scott Lobdell, Fabian Nicieza, Bob Harras, Roy Thomas
Artists: Steven Epting, Andy Kubert, John Romita Jr, David Ross

Fearing retaliation from Magneto, Fabian Cortez kidnaps Crystal and Quicksilver’s daughter (in the epilogue to Avengers #367), Luna to use as a hostage, and then goes to Genosha, where Magneto’s electromagnetic pulse attack has inspired a civil war between the humans and mutates. There, he manages to install himself as president and inspires atrocities on both sides. The Avengers ignore a UN order to stay out of the conflict, while the US government sends Xavier in a doomed attempt to mediate, leading the X-Men to follow. Ultimately, Exodus shows up and revealing himself to be massively powerful, threatens to destroy the entire island himself. The X-Men and Avengers team up to stop him.

An odd little crossover to celebrate the 30^th anniversary of both titles, “Bloodties” is better than I remember it being. There are a few botched storytelling errors, the Avengers lineup is kinda meh, and for some reason the X-Men take the dying Revanche on the mission instead of Psylocke. But overall, this is a nice little coda to “Fatal Attractions,” with Cortez staging one last desperate stand for his own safety and relevance and getting completely outclassed by the true believer. His on-panel death is a satisfying conclusion to his arc, although he ends up returning with no explanation a few years later. As for Genosha, the civil war from this story never really ends and crops up from time to time over the years until the UN hands it over to Magneto in 1998’s “The Magneto War.”

 

Iceman doesn’t have a whole lot to do in this story, but he does have a weird little scene where he gooses Rogue in the Danger Room in Avengers #368, and then frets over the safety of his former lover beast in Avengers #369.

 

X-Men #27 (December 1993)
Writer: Scott Lobdell
Artist: Richard Bennett

Iceman, Rogue and Beast check in on Infectia who’s dying of the Legacy Virus, and find Mr. Sinister, who’s also investigating the virus.

The Legacy Virus was introduced to give the X-Men a parallel to the AIDS crisis that was tearing its way through the world – and in particular, through the queer community and other marginalized groups around this time. 1993 was something of a watershed year in the crisis, as the Clinton White House did a full reversal on previous administrations’ basic policy of ignoring the virus. People were talking much more openly about it, and consequently about sexuality in general, and this was across all media.

As we’ve already seen already, the X-books were getting much more open about making the direct comparison between mutants and gays in the comics, and this continues to be a prominent theme for a while. Nearly every issue of X-Factor around this time was making the point in dialogue, for example. It must have seemed natural for the X-office to want to do a story parallel to one of the most pressing issues in America, and in particular, to the queer community. These early issues that deal with characters’ fears and insecurities around the virus are the best part of the story. Unfortunately, as a long-term direction, the Legacy Virus was kind of a failure. It just didn’t make for a lot of dramatic storytelling, since the darn thing couldn’t just be cured. And an AIDS parallel that only affects mutants is fairly problematic too.

This time, it’s Rogue who points out that the virus attacks mutants by targeting exactly what makes them different, in a monologue that wouldn’t be out of place in much of the contemporary queer HIV melodrama of 1993.

Later, a disguised Mr. Sinister who delivers a lengthy monologue that directly compares the virus to AIDS and criticizes the medical establishment for its homophobia in dealing with it in its early days. It’s actually a wonderfully camp performance.

Remarkably, this issue also marks the first time Rogue and Iceman have had a real on-panel conversation outside of Danger Room quips. We’ll see their friendship become quite important to Bobby next year.

And look how intimate Bobby gets with Hank once Rogue leaves the room. “You got something good, Hank?”

(Ok, so a minor quibble with this issue is that the X-Men and the hospital staff are behaving like the Legacy Virus is common knowledge, but two years down the road it’s a plot point that the X-Men have kept this a secret, which is a story that doesn’t really make much sense anyway.)

This issue also features the debut of Threnody, a homeless mutant (who’s seemingly coded as a sex worker, given her clothes) with the plot-convenient power to detect people dying of the Legacy Virus. Beast lets Sinister take her, reasoning that the amoral Sinister will be willing to exploit her to cure the virus, while the X-Men won’t, putting all of mutantkind at risk. Kind of a false moral dilemma, if you ask me.

 

Uncanny X-Men #308 (January 1994)
Writer: Scott Lobdell
Artist: John Romita Jr.

On Thanksgiving, Jean asks Scott to marry her.

Meanwhile, the other X-Men play football, and Iceman struggles to explain the concept to Bishop. It’s tempting to think Bobby’s vest outfit is inspired by Chandler from Friends, but actually that show won’t debut for another year.

In an interesting touch, Bobby’s racist parents show up for Thanksgiving dinner. I can only imagine their conversation on the ride over.

 

Iceman doesn’t appear in Uncanny X-Men #309, in which Xavier has nightmares that expand on his relationship with Amelia Voght. He also skips X-Men Unlimited #3, in which Xavier invites Sabertooth to live in the mansion to be rehabilitated; Uncanny X-Men Annual #18, in which Caliban kidnaps Jubilee hoping the X-Men will trade her for Sabertooth; and X-Men #28-29, in which Jean slaps down Sabertooth and Shinobi Shaw tries to recruit Archangel into his new Hellfire Club. But Jubilee does take a moment to make homophobic comments about Bobby masturbating to National Geographic (“master of my domain” is a Seinfeld reference) and says Shinobi’s invitation looks like something out of Liberace. Nice.  

 

X-Men: The Wedding Album (March 1994)
Writer: Scott Lobdell
Artist: Ian Churchill

Mostly a clip show of Jubilee reading Jean’s diary of the Silver Age and deciding that marrying Scott is actually “way cool.” In the framing sequence, Bobby tries to get Jean to set him up with fashion designer Nicole Miller, who Jean knows from her Silver Age modelling stint and designed Jean’s wedding dress. Jean shrugs him off because she knows he’s gay but is too polite at this point to say anything.

 

Uncanny X-Men #310 (March 1994)
Writer: Scott Lobdell
Artist: John Romita Jr.

Before heading to his bachelor party, Scott is confronted by Cable over how he abandoned him as an infant, and together they fight off the X-Cutioner, who sneaks into the mansion to kill the comatose Emma Frost.

Cable and Cyclops got final confirmation that Cable was the real Nathan Summers over in Cable #6-8. Much of this issue reads like a well-deserved swipe at X-Factor #68 and subsequent issues for underplaying Scott’s horror and pain at giving up his son. By the end of the issue, Cable and Cyclops have basically made up. Cable also tells him that he had people who took care of him in the future, foreshadowing The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix.

Meanwhile, the bachelor party is at a bar in Greenwich Village populated entirely by the male X-characters. Look at Bobby reminiscing about Cyclops and a secret he’s not allowed to tell his teammates.

There’s also a strange beat where the bartender cards Bobby and he claims not to have his ID on him. Lobdell can’t possibly have intended this scene to imply that Bobby was below the legal drinking age (21), right? That had been definitively not the take for at least a decade of his appearances by this point. My take is he’s probably around 25-26 at this point.

 

 

 

 

 

X-Men #30 (March 1994)
Writer: Fabian Nicieza
Artist: Andy Kubert

Scott and Jean get married.

Professor X takes the opportunity to reflect on the fact that his first students getting married (*ahem* again) means that all of his students are definitely adults and he should start reassessing his relationship to his mission. We get a little foreshadowing about Generation X at the end.

Xavier’s narration also confirms that he is mentally scanning his students at the wedding to judge their feelings and he specifically mentions scanning Bobby’s mind. Which makes this panel either some epic homophobic shade, or some very early support for same-sex marriage.

Bobby and Hank also take a moment to commiserate about their love lives. Maybe they should go back to bunking together.

Parts of this issue also take place concurrently with the second story in The Wedding Album and What If…? Vol 2 #60, but Iceman doesn’t do anything significant in either.

After the wedding, Excalibur return to Muir Island where Rachel attempts to rescue Captain Britain but gets sucked into the timestream and lost in Excalibur #75 (her storyline had mostly been resolved earlier that year in Excalibure #67, when the time-travelling team overthrew the Sentinel administration of America in her home timeline, so it was time for a new direction). She ends up 2000 years in the future where she founds the Clan Askani to overthrow Apocalypse, as told in X-Men: Phoenix. The Askani of course pick up baby Nathan way back in X-Factor #68, although that apparently wasn’t their original plan. Rachel then uses her power to pluck Cyclops and Jean away from their honeymoon into the Askani future so that they can raise baby Nathan to defeat Apocalypse, as told in The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix. The story of Cable’s youth continues into Askani’son.

And that wraps up the X-Men’s momentous 30^th Anniversary year!

 

Where to find these issues: All of them, except, surprisingly, the Spectacular Spider-Man issues and Wolverine #67-68, are available on Marvel Unlimited. In print, most of the rest is collected across the X-Men: Shattershot, X-Men: Fatal Attractions, and X-Men: The Wedding of Cyclops and Phoenix omnibuses. X-Factor #93 is in X-Factor Epic Collection 9: Afterlives. Gambit #10 is in Gambit: Thieves’ World. Infinity Crusade has been collected on its own multiple times.

Next Time: The X-Men take off most of 1994 to get everyone excited about new spin-offs.

Previous Posts: Introduction | Chapter 1: Lee/Kirby Era Part 1 | Chapter 2: Lee/Kirby Era Part 2 | Chapter 3: The Roy Thomas Era (1966-1968) | Chapter 4: The End of the Silver Age (1968-1970) | Chapter 5: Origins and Flashbacks Part 1 | Chapter 6: Silver Age Flashbacks Part 2 | Chapter 6.1: Voices of Pride | Chapter 7: X-Men: First Class Vol 1 | Chapter 8: X-Men: First Class Vol 2 Part 1 | Chapter 9: X-Men: First Class Vol 2 Part 2 | Chapter 10: The Hidden Years | Chapter 11: X-Men on Hiatus (1970-75) | Chapter 12: The Champions Part 1 (1975-76) | Chapter 13: The Champions Part 2 (1977-78) | Chapter 14: The College Years (1978-83) | Chapter 15: The New Defenders Part 1 (1983-84) | Chapter 16: The New Defenders Part 2 (1984-85) | Chapter 17: The End of the New Defenders (1985-86) | Chapter 18: X-Factor Part 1 (1986) | Chapter 19: X-Factor – Mutant Massacre (1987) | Chapter 20: X-Factor – Fall of the Mutants (1987) | Chapter 21: X-Factor – Inferno Prologue (1988) | Chapter 22: X-Factor: Inferno (1989) | Chapter 23: X-Factor – Judgment War (1989) | Chapter 24: X-Factor – X-Tinction Agender (1990) | Chapter 25: X-Factor – Endgame (1991)

We’ve finally come to the era where I first started collecting — and judging by the sales at the time, so did a whole bunch of X-Men fans. This was the first big reboot of the line since Claremont took the helm 16 years earlier, and it set the template for a long time. Not only for the comics — Jim Lee’s redesigns and the new mansion set up was the basis of the X-Men animated series that brought the characters to millions of brand new viewers through the 90s.

This period also marks a welcome return to soapy team dynamics and for the first time in years, new writer Scott Lobdell has a clear sense of direction for Iceman. As we’ll eventually see, this era is chock full of suggestive fodder about Bobby’s sexuality, all of which fueled speculation on chat boards that were becoming popular on this newfangled thing called “the internet” which was about to become ubiquitous. But before we get to that, Claremont has one last story to tell.

X-Men Vol 2 #1-3 (October-December 1991)
Writer: Chris Claremont
Artist: Jim Lee

The newly reconstituted X-Men, divided into two strike teams based out of the rebuilt X-Mansion, defend the world from Magneto, after he’s goaded by a new group of fanatical followers led by Fabian Cortez, who reveals that Magneto’s powers and psyche were meddled with by Moira MacTaggart when he was in her care after being reduced to an infant in Defenders #16. The X-Men try to plead sense with him, but in the end, he chooses to nobly sacrifice himself when the Cortez destroys Asteroid M in order to make him a martyr.

Even though it’s Chris Claremont’s grand swan song after 16 years writing the X-Men, credit has to be given for making these three issues really feel like the beginning of a bold new era rather than a farewell tour. Not only is the new status quo established, but Claremont even spends time developing subplots like Gambit and Rogue’s flirtation – their relationship is still going in 2022. And Cortes is given a thrilling introduction as the self-styled leader of a new generation of mutant activist/terrorists. We’ll eventually learn he’s part of the Upstarts competition that occupies the next year of stories.

As for Iceman, he gets assigned the new Gold Team led by Storm, with Jean Grey, Archangel, and Colossus. He does appear throughout the story but he doesn’t do much more than round out the numbers. To be fair, this story has a cast of fourteen X-Men, a half dozen villains, and a half-dozen supporting characters. Poor Jubilee doesn’t even get to make an appearance!

 

X-Men Vol 2 #5 (February 1992)
Writers: Jim Lee with John Byrne
Artist: Jim Lee

When Wolverine is kidnapped by The Hand, the X-Men’s Blue Team goes after him in Germany. Iceman appears in a brief scene where the Gold Team discusses responding to an invitation to discuss a strategic partnership with Hellfire Club (bizarrely trailing Uncanny X-Men #281, which came out four months earlier).

We don’t really need to worry ourselves with this story that runs through X-Men #4-7; suffice it to say that it establishes Wolverine’s past involvement in the CIA’s Team X and introduces Omega Red and Maverick, all of which is very important to Larry Hama’s Wolverine run. Matsu’o Tsurayaba and Fenris are trying to use Omega Red to gain points in the Upstarts competition, which also factors into the story in Uncanny. There’s some suggestion that there’s an effort to divide and conquer the X-Men by staging the attacks at the same time but that doesn’t really make sense, since the Upstarts aren’t working together and it’s the Hellfire Club who call on the X-Men, anyway.

 

Uncanny X-Men #281 (October 1991)
Writer: Jim Lee, Whilce Portacio, John Byrne
Artist: Whilce Portacio

The debut of the Upstarts, in which debuting villain Trevor Fitzroy kills the Reavers, the White Queen, the Hellions, and Jean Grey. Er, sorta.

The White Queen invites the X-Men to the Hellfire Gala to discuss working together (or renewing the cooperation that they’d been in since around Uncanny X-Men #195) to stop a bunch of attacks on Hellfire Club members, but won’t give the X-Men any further details. What she’s not telling them is that Sebastian Shaw was killed by his bisexual son Shinobi in X-Factor #67. Meanwhile, Portacio and Byrne are far less circumspect about Shinobi’s sexuality in this scene where he’s felt up by a bunch of pool boys in speedos, in which I count four separate euphemisms for “faggot.”

Iceman spends a chunk of the Gala flirting with the Hellion Roulette, which, ew, Bobby. She’s a teenager. Once again, Bobby’s aggressively demonstrative heterosexuality with a woman who is legally unavailable to him is best understood as a defense mechanism.

Or, you could chalk it up to the intense backroom confusion that apparently surrounded this issue’s production. In fact, the ending was so unclear that the next issue begins with Storm monologuing about what actually happened but wasn’t seen on panel – Fitzroy kidnaps the White Queen and the Hellions and gets away in the confusion.

Despite the huge body count in this issue, most of the deaths were undone fairly quickly. The Reavers all returned with no explanation, but in the Internet age, the idea is probably that they downloaded themselves into new bodies. Tarot, who dies on panel in both this issue and the next, also reappeared without explanation in X-Force. Even though Empath has a speaking part in this issue, it was decided he was never actually in the story (a New Mutants story had established that he’d left the group). The Hellions were all finally resurrected in the Krakoa era. And the Jean Grey/White Queen deaths were basically fake outs – the plot doesn’t really make sense on these points. Jean moved her mind to the White Queen’s dead body before Jean was killed – but how does that make Jean’s body viable for her to return to later in the story? And despite the White Queen’s body being referred to as a “corpse” several times in the next few issues, it’s eventually decided she was just in a coma.

 

Uncanny X-Men #282-283 (November-December 1991)
Writers: Whilce Portacio, John Byrne
Artist: Whilce Portacio

The X-Men rescue Jean Grey from Fitzroy, but while they’re distracted by his Sentinels, he kills the remaining Hellions and uses their life energies to open a time portal that brings 93 mutant criminals from the future into his lair to back him up. Unfortunately for him, he also brings in the debuting mutant cop Bishop and his sidekicks Malcolm and Randall.

In a bizarre error, Fitzroy seems to have kidnapped dozens of faceless Hellions – far more than ever appeared in other books, especially since he killed three of them in the previous chapter, and Empath was meant to not be there. Another weird element of these issues that’s never brought up again is that Fitzroy appears to have a large staff of henchmen, including a woman who he claims is one of the Upstarts. The only one seen again is his lacky Bantam.

Fitzroy shows off his sadist side when he appears in Shinobi’s bedroom to demand his leadership ring. He taunts Shinobi with what reads like veiled comments that he plans to rape the unconscious White Queen, acknowledging that Shinobi wouldn’t be interested in that. (A story in X-Factor Vol 3 eventually establishes that Fitzroy is so evil because he was brought back from the dead by Layla Miller without a soul). Later, Shinobi gets his revenge when he captures Fitzroy, destroys his base, and has Fitzroy’s points struck in arbitration with the Upstarts’ Gamesmaster (which should have been a clue that the Reavers and White Queen weren’t really dead, I suppose).

When Bishop learns that he can’t send the escaped mutants back through Fitzroy’s portal, his team decides they have to kill all the escapees, much to the X-Men’s horror. For his part, Bishop can’t believe the X-Men he grew up revering wouldn’t kill criminals, and decides they’re all fakes. He and his sidekicks escape and go on to track down the remaining criminals.

When Colossus is injured in the battle, Iceman takes the opportunity to feel up his chest.

 

 

Uncanny X-Men #284-286 (January-March 1992)
Writers: Whilce Portacio, John Byrne
Artist: Whilce Portacio

When Sunfire explores a strange pit on the Sakhalin Islands, he and the X-Men who come to his aid get sucked into an alternate dimension and become players in a cyberpunk fantasy civil war. But more importantly, they also find Colossus’ long-lost brother Mikhail, a cosmonaut who was sucked into the void years earlier and became a hermit after he accidentally killed his wife and half the forces loyal to them with his reality-warping powers. Meanwhile, Bishop continues hunting and killing escaped criminals from the future.

Colossus does the thing he always does when he lands in an alien world: he gets welcomed into the nearest harem and fucks every available woman. Archangel, on the other hand, has to be mind-controlled into fucking the Princess.

Iceman does get an opportunity to flirt with a local woman, but once again finds an excuse not to escalate beyond that.

Oh, and Sunfire gets a new costume that he uses for most of the early 90s. I think it’s meant to evoke solar panels? It’s pretty bland.

 

 

 

 

Uncanny X-Men #287 (April 1992)
Writers: Jim Lee, Scott Lobdell
Artist: John Romita

The X-Men finally catch up with Bishop as he slaughters the last remaining escaped criminals. While the X-Men are horrified by his actions, Professor X offers him an invitation to join the team, which he accepts.

And this is the issue that kicks off the X-Traitor story that runs through to 1996. Bishop remembers stumbling across the X-Men’s abandoned War Room in the future, and finds a damaged recording of Jean Grey’s distress call saying that a traitor to the team has murdered all of X-Men. We’ll eventually learn that it’s Xavier himself. Sorta.

Parts of this issue are reprised in X-Men: The Times and Life of Lucas Bishop #3, but that story doesn’t add much. It’s also full of intentional errors (like saying that Cable, Cyclops, and Gambit are there) as it’s told through Bishop’s own unreliable narration.

 

Uncanny X-Men Annual #16 (1992)
Writer: Fabian Nicieza
Artist: Jae Lee

This is Part 2 of the “Shattershot” story, which ran through the 1992 X-book annuals. The story tries to make sense of the various Mojoworld stories by reconciling Chris Claremont’s slapstick stories with the darker original Ann Nocenti take in the Longshot miniseries.

Anyway, the general thrust is that Arize, the geneticist who created the humanoid race that is enslaved on Mojoworld, flees to Earth to try to find Longshot to help him overthrow Mojo. In the previous chapter, X-Men Vol 2 Annual #1, the Blue Team find Arize in Afghanistan and protect him from Mojo’s forces. In this chapter, Mojo sends his team, the Death Sponsors, to collect him from the X-Men Mansion, but in the process, Arize regains his memories. In the next chapter, X-Factor Annual #7, Arize confirms that Spiral was indeed the stuntwoman Ricochet Rita that Spiral herself kidnapped from Earth in the Longshot mini and was driven insane and forced to relive that time loop over and over. The point was to drive home that Longshot himself is playing through that exact loop – constantly fighting to overthrow Mojo and losing. Unfortunately, for some unfathomable reason, the final chapter takes place in an alternate future world so the plot never actually gets resolved – or maybe the point is that Mojoworld stories never can be resolved because they’re inherently full of time loops?

Anyway, the core story was more or less resolved in X-Men #10-11, which saw Longshot and Dazzler finally overthrow and kill Mojo with the X-Men’s help. As is the nature of Mojo stories, that doesn’t stick.

There are two short back-up stories in this one as well, but Iceman doesn’t appear in either.

 

Uncanny X-Men #288 (May 1992)
Writers: Jim Lee, Whilce Portacio, John Byrne, Scott Lobdell
Artist: Andy Kubert

Bishop attempts to acclimate himself to the twentieth century (*cough*) but earns himself no friends in the X-Men when he once again murders on sight one of the escaped convicts, Styglut.

Bishop only thinks Styglut is the last of the escapees Fitzroy brought back. He’s wrong. Another one, Mountjoy, was hiding in the body of Fitzroy’s lackey Bantam. He’ll crop up in the Bishop miniseries.

While horsing around with Cyclops, Iceman gets to be gross about Psylocke, once again demonstrating aggressively unpleasant heterosexuality as a defense mechanism. This kicks off a long-running, annoying subplot about Psylocke aggressively flirting with Cyclops and Cyclops being constantly distracted by her tits, mostly seen in X-Men.

Iceman later shows up at Opal’s home to take her on a date. She’s writing to someone in Japan who she wants to make peace with Bobby, trailing the Cyburai story that’s about to come.

Meanwhile, Archangel is flying around the grounds naked to remind himself that he’s still Warren Worthington.

 

Uncanny X-Men #289-290 (June-July 1992)
Writers: Scott Lobdell
Artist: While Portacio

Iceman introduces Opal to his parents, beginning a plotline about Mr. Drake being a racist. But before dinner can even begin, they’re all attacked by the Cyburai, who want revenge on Bobby for beating them back in X-Factor #63-64. Over the course of the fight, Opal finds herself taken with Hiro, the relatively nice one, who broke with his team and sacrifices himself to protect the Drakes.

Mr. and Mrs. Drake have had a complete redesign in body and personality since we last saw them in the Iceman miniseries. Although the Drakes were portrayed as being uncomfortable with Bobby being a mutant, they were never portrayed as outright bigots (indeed, a point was made that they’re an interfaith couple). Nevertheless, it’s a strong direction for the characters and fuels some of Bobby’s best material in this era.

Interestingly, Mr. Drake is very quick to frame his disappointment in his son’s choice of partner as an issue of morality.

We can’t let this issue go by without talking about Bobby’s HIDEOUS date outfit. He’s wearing bright red suspenders with not one, not two, but THREE forest green belts, plus an olive suit and a coral shirt. My god. I think the colorist just saw the fit and said “I give up.” This singly panel is the strongest evidence of Bobby’s heterosexuality in 60 years of publishing.

The Cyburai are dreadful Japanese stereotypes, by the way. Thankfully they never turn up again after this story.

This is the last Whilce Portacio story, as he decamped along with X-Men artist Jim Lee, X-Force artist Rob Liefeld, and Spider-Man artist Todd MacFarlane to launch image comics. You’d think losing half the X-books’ creative teams would be a disaster for the line, especially as we’re heading into the big crossover, but actually the books remain remarkably coherent going forward. Perhaps that’s because the new writers Scott Lobdell and Fabian Nicieza were given a stronger hand in the storytelling.

In the other plots, Forge asks Storm to marry him, then leaves her and the X-Men when she doesn’t answer immediately. He takes Mystique – who’s been staying at the mansion since Wolverine #52 – with him, fulfilling part of a prophecy Destiny made when she died in Uncanny X-Men #255. Mystique is apparently insane following her ordeal in that story, but Bishop says files from his time say she’s started slipping when her lover Destiny died.

Archangel is brooding and talking about ghosting his girlfriend Charlotte Jones. For those who like to wonder about Marvel Time, it’s apparently been “months” since Warren became Archangel in X-Factor #15-23, sure. And Mikhail shows signs of PTSD-related insanity when he kills a hapless pizza delivery guy. Boy, the body count sure was high in 1991-92! And it’s about to get bigger!

But first…

 

Infinity War #1-6 (June-November 1992)
Writer: Jim Starlin
Artist: Ron Lim

In a follow-up to the previous year’s hit Infinity Gauntlet miniseries, Adam Warlock’s evil doppelganger Magus conspires to trick the universe’s protectors into giving him the Infinity Gems and making him a god. Warlock and Thanos defeat him, with minimal help from the assembled Marvel heroes who mostly just clutter up the story.

The story is supposed to involve the Magus creating evil doppelgangers of all the heroes, and maybe even of every planet in the universe? It’s really not clear. This plotline seems to exist just to give Ron Lim some wild scenes to draw and keep the heroes busy while Starlin waxes philosophical.

Iceman is with the X-Men throughout the series, although he barely appears in the actual story (and no, he never gets shot as appears on the cover above). I haven’t read all the tie-in issues, since they’re surprisingly not all on Marvel Unlimited, but for the most part his appearances there are off-panel too. We get to do this all again next year with Infinity Crusade. Joy.

 

Around this time, Iceman also makes a bunch of appearances in Marvel UK titles. The UK line was a flood of titles Marvel pushed in 1992, which by editorial mandate had to include guest appearances from the mainstream Marvel characters in every issue. But the guest appearances were all excised for the UK editions, so they had to be completely inconsequential pages. So I’m not including them in this because I have to draw the line somewhere, and they’re also not an MU. The issues Iceman guests in are Hell’s Angel #1-2 & #4-5, Dark Angel #9-10, and Mys-Tech Wars #1-4.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled slaughter.

 

 

Uncanny X-Men #291-293 (August-October 1992)
Writers: Scott Lobdell
Artist: Tom Raney

After the Morlocks attack Callisto (who’s been living as a New York supermodel since Masque made her beautiful in Uncanny X-Men #260), and the X-Men fail to stop their rampage, Mikhail installs himself as their leader and then leads them all into a mass suicide. But before he does that, he uses his energy manipulation powers to push Iceman’s powers beyond their previous limits, turning him fully to water for the first time.

The important bit for us is that this kicks off a long-running story that Bobby is seriously holding himself back from exploring the limits of his own power. There is a definite queer reading to the idea of a guy who hides his true capabilities behind a dopey, pleasing façade in order to be liked. Over the years – and this story continues even to the present day – the explanation for Bobby’s holding back goes to everything from shame at being a mutant, to shame at being gay, to a general lack of confidence stemming from both.

Also, this goes unremarked on in-universe, but after this story, Bobby never wears the homosexuality inhibiting power inhibiting belt again. Perhaps whatever Mikhail did to him returned his control, or maybe the experience just challenged Bobby to control his powers himself.

These early Lobdell issues do read like a real deck-clearing exercise to get rid of characters and subplots he’d inherited that were inconvenient. In a handful of issues we’ve said goodbye to Mikhail, Forge, Opal, the Morlocks, and the long-running subplot of Archangel’s evil wings, which Jean says have no mind of their own and never did.

And look at the body count over the last year or so: dozens of Morlocks, Mikhail, Callisto, Healer, the Hellions, the Reavers, the White Queen, the Cyburai, Sebastian Shaw, Magneto, his Acolytes, Malcolm, Randall, and 93 mutant outlaws from the future plus dozens of random human victims of their violence.

In the event, the Morlocks don’t really die. Mikhail actually transports them all to a pocket dimension as seen in the 1997 Storm miniseries. Some of them will come back as Gene Nation in Uncanny X-Men #322.

“X-Cutioner’s Song”
Uncanny X-Men #294-296, X-Factor #84-86, X-Men #14-16, X-Force #16-18 (November 1992-January 1993)
Writers: Scott Lobdell, Fabian Nicieza, Peter David
Artists: Brandon Peterson, Andy Kubert, Jae Lee, Greg Capullo

In the big annual crossover, Stryfe, while disguised as Cable, attempts to assassinate Professor Xavier by infecting him with the techno-organic virus that once infected Cyclops’ son Nathan, and Cyclops and Jean Grey get kidnapped by the Horsemen of Apocalypse, leading X-Factor and the X-Men to track down and arrest both X-Force and the Horsemen. They learn that Stryfe was behind both the assassination and the kidnapping, so they team up with X-Force to hunt down and arrest the Mutant Liberation Front. With a surprise assist from Apocalypse, who’s also been attacked by Stryfe, they attack Stryfe’s base on the moon, where they learn that Cable and Stryfe are somehow both the grown up versions of Cyclops’ son Nathan, who’ve returned from the future. Cable sacrifices himself to trap Stryfe in the timestream (don’t worry, they both escape eventually) and Apocalypse is killed by the Dark Riders (don’t worry, he gets better). In the epilogue, we learn that Stryfe has double-crossed his supposed ally Mr. Sinister and tricked him into releasing the Legacy Virus into the world.

I’ve always loved this crossover because every part of it is so deliriously over-the-top. Stryfe is possibly the X-Men’s most tragically camp villain. Anthony Olivera described him as a sad gay boy who just wants a hug but wears a costume made out of knives. The story is just his attempt to get revenge on the parents who he believes abandoned him but actually never stopped loving him – or did they? After all, Stryfe is not even in a literal sense the same child they gave up.

As for Bobby, he gets a handful of plot advancement, complaining in Chapter 1 that Opal has passive-aggressively dumped him. Just look at this homosexual try to decipher “woman-ese” while shopping for pork rinds with his buddy.

And in Chapter 5, he notes that he’s been working with Storm to coordinate their powers, showing that he’s actually challenging himself. Growth!

Warren also goes on what will be his last date with Charlotte Jones, using an image induce to make his skin appear Caucasian and generally acting the horny Warren Worthington of old.

Xavier gives a speech at a unity concert in Central Park where he casually equates the fight against anti-mutant prejudice to the fight against racism and homophobia, which gets him booed off the stage. It’s very rare at this time to see the words “sexual orientation” used explicitly in a Marvel book, let alone to have the X-Men’s themes so supportively compared to the struggle for gay rights. Nevertheless, a fan will complain in the letters column of Uncanny X-Men #298 that comparing homophobia to racism is itself racist. Sigh.

Bobby only appears in a random silver age flashback in the crossover epilogue in Uncanny X-Men #297 – we covered that one last year. Bobby also doesn’t appear in Stryfe’s Strike File #1, a sort of “secret files” one-shot of Stryfe’s thoughts on various X-characters, written entirely in Stryfe’s campy purple prose.

Where to find these issues: They’re all on Marvel Unlimited, unless otherwise noted. All of the X-Men/Uncanny X-Men issues have been collected, between the X-Men by Chris Claremont and Jim Lee Vol 2 Omnibus, X-Men: Bishop’s Crossing and X-Cutioner’s Song Original Hardcovers. The X-Men Epic editions Mutant Genesis and Bishop’s Crossing cover up to Uncanny #288 in TPB format.

Meanwhile, in other X-Books:

• The X-Men team up with Ghost Rider to fight the Brood, and meet Gambit’s secret wife (X-Men #8-9, Ghost Rider #26-27) and fight Xavier’s childhood friend Carter Ryking (#12-13).
• The New Mutants were relaunched as Cable’s paramilitary group X-Force, consisting of Cable, Domino, Shatterstar, Feral, Warpath, Cannonball, Syrin, and Boom Boom. They fight the Mutant Liberation Front, fail to stop the Juggernaut and Black Tom from destroying the World Trade Centre (ooof), fight Toad’s new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, and then lose Cable and the woman who had been posing as Domino the whole time (X-Force #1-15)
• X-Factor is revamped as the new Freedom Force — a government-salaried super-hero team consisting of Havok, Polaris, Madrox the Multiple Man, Strong Guy, Quicksilver, and Wolfsbane. They fight Mr Sinister’s new henchmen the Nasty Boys, the Mutant Liberation Front, Cyber’s Hell’s Belles, the new Brotherhood, and a group of Genoshan refugees who refuse to believe the government was overthrown (X-Factor #71-83)
• Excalibur had a bunch of allegedly funny off-world adventures.
• Wolverine mostly delved into Wolverine’s background as a special agent, and explored the idea that his memories were fake and full of holes.

Next time: The X-books ramp up speculation that Magneto is back in anticipation of the X-Men’s 30^th anniversary.

Previous Posts: Introduction | Chapter 1: Lee/Kirby Era Part 1 | Chapter 2: Lee/Kirby Era Part 2 | Chapter 3: The Roy Thomas Era (1966-1968) | Chapter 4: The End of the Silver Age (1968-1970) | Chapter 5: Origins and Flashbacks Part 1 | Chapter 6: Silver Age Flashbacks Part 2 | Chapter 6.1: Voices of Pride | Chapter 7: X-Men: First Class Vol 1 | Chapter 8: X-Men: First Class Vol 2 Part 1 | Chapter 9: X-Men: First Class Vol 2 Part 2 | Chapter 10: The Hidden Years | Chapter 11: X-Men on Hiatus (1970-75) | Chapter 12: The Champions Part 1 (1975-76) | Chapter 13: The Champions Part 2 (1977-78) | Chapter 14: The College Years (1978-83) | Chapter 15: The New Defenders Part 1 (1983-84) | Chapter 16: The New Defenders Part 2 (1984-85) | Chapter 17: The End of the New Defenders (1985-86) | Chapter 18: X-Factor Part 1 (1986) | Chapter 19: X-Factor – Mutant Massacre (1987) | Chapter 20: X-Factor – Fall of the Mutants (1987) | Chapter 21: X-Factor – Inferno Prologue (1988) | Chapter 22: X-Factor: Inferno (1989) | Chapter 23: X-Factor – Judgment War (1989) | Chapter 24: X-Factor – X-Tinction Agender (1990)

We now come to the end of the X-Factor era. By this point, the main X-books were becoming more heavily influenced by the pencilers, who were getting writing credits and supplanting the longstanding writers. This era was just about the commercial peak of the line as the dynamic early 90s grim-n-gritty style and tone of artists like Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, and While Portacio brought even more attention to the books. That, of course, led to the expansion of the X-Men line with the new X-Men book, and the decision to return the X-Factor cast to the core X-Men books (after all, no one could quite figure out what the point of X-Factor was after nearly six years in print). But in these last few issues, we get to wrap up some key stories.

 

Uncanny X-Men #308 (January 1994)
Writer: Scott Lobdell
Artist: John Romita Jr.

We’ll come back to this later, but this issue has a generic flashback to X-Factor with baby Nathan, which the chronologies are placing here.

 

Ghost Rider Vol 2 #9 (January 1991)
Writer: Howard Mackie
Artist: Javier Saltares

While attempting to save a homeless man from being murdered by his archenemy Blackout, Ghost Rider rescues some children that were kidnapped by Morlocks in order to protect them from Masque. X-Factor (minus Archangel) wander through the plot contributing absolutely nothing.

Despite the cover date and placement in the official chronology, this really feels out of place here. It reads like it belongs between the pages of X-Factor #56, when Jean returns to the team but Archangel is still missing. Or even earlier, given multiple references to “Inferno” as if it were a very recent story.

The most notable thing in this issue for our purposes is this panel, where Beast asks Iceman to do his “ice thing” so he can “enter the nether regions.” Hmmmmm.

Howard Mackie’s 1990s Ghost Rider was a huge, zeitgeist-capturing hit, epitomizing the grim-n-gritty anti-heroes of the era and spawning a whole line of spin-off books, but in retrospect, it’s hard to see the book’s specific appeal. Mackie’s, shall we say, stream-of-consciousness storytelling is on full display in this story, in which Ghost Rider stumbles into the plot by sheer coincidence, and no thought is given to curing Masque’s victims or to stopping Masque’s attacks. What’s more, Masque doesn’t even appear! It’s unclear what X-Factor are doing in this story at all (was Marvel trying to goose X-Factor’s sales months before the title was effectively cancelled? Or are they here to give Ghost Rider a bump?) but Mackie doesn’t even try to find something for them to do. They show up to the fight and disappear for several pages until the resolution. It’s garbage. Unfortunately for us, X-Men make several guest appearances in Ghost Rider over the next several years.

It’s possible Mackie was planning to return to this Masque plot down the road, but in the event, his story was resolved over in X-Force, where he joined the reformed Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and was killed by Cable (he got better somehow).

 

X-Factor #63-64 (February-March 1991)
Writer: Louise Simonson
Plot/Artist: Whilce Portacio

When five cyborgs kidnap Opal, Bobby and Jean go to Japan to rescue her with the help of Mariko Yoshida.

We learn that Opal has just found out she was adopted. Her birth father was the son of a gang lord in Japan and her mother had her sent to America with her cousins to protect her. When her father died and left her grandfather without an heir, he kidnapped her to force her to wed one of his cyborg ninja in order to produce one. In the course of it, Opal appears to get some serious Stockholm syndrome for one of her kidnappers, Hiro.

In the end, four of the cyborgs die, leaving the slightly nicer one to fight Bobby in a no-powers duel for Opal. But Hiro realizes that he can’t actually turn his cyborg enhancements off, so he throws the fight rather than win without honor. Opal goes back with Bobby, but she sure doesn’t seem all that keen anymore.

This is just about the only true Iceman story that appears in X-Factor and even this is mostly about Opal. We don’t get a lot of thought bubbles in the story, but Bobby’s actions seem to be mostly motivated by his sense of duty to protect Opal. The story plays like a (not particularly good) girl-in-peril ninja movie or western, and Bobby’s actions and dialogue seem a bit like he’s intentionally playing the part of the big heterosexual hero. There’s actually very little love or sexual attraction between Bobby and Opal on display in this story (or any story, for that matter).

And this is Louise Simonson’s last contribution to the X-books for decades as she was pushed out by Rob Liefeld on New Mutants two months previously and is being pushed out by Whilce Portacio here. But then there’s….

X-Factor Forever #1-5 (May-September 2010)
Writer: Louise Simonson
Artist: Dan Panosian

This five-issue miniseries was part of a mini line of books Marvel put out in 2009-2011 in which Chris Claremont and Louise Simonson wrote stories that continued on from where they left when the artists took over the line in 1991 (the others were Claremont’s X-Men Forever, X-Men Forever 2, and New Mutants Forever). Marvel has returned to the general idea with the in-continuity X-Men: Legends, and Simonson wrote a story for that which we covered last month.

These are considered alternate universe stories — they’re not even consistent with each other. And while I’m not going to go down every alternate universe story this brief one at least fits in thematically and features a major creator.

Simonson’s big idea here is to take Apocalypse to the logical conclusion of the original concept of the character — someone who thinks war and destruction are good for the advancement of society, not as a nihilistic goal in and of itself. Unfortunately, he discovers that the Celestials have come to judge life on Earth earlier than expected, and he fears that they will punish the Earth for the meddling he and his former lackey Mr. Sinister have done with mutant genetics.

What’s worse, he suspects that mutants have actually become a genetic dead-end, because so few mutants have been able to procreate. As evidence, he points out that X-Factor’s base used to be full to the brim with horny teenagers and not one pregnancy resulted (this may have been a lot to expect of Marvel Girl, Skids, and the 13-year-old Boom Boom…). That does give us this hilarious scene where Bobby protests that it’s because he always uses protection and a skeptical Beast gives him side-eye.

Apocalypse has to fudge around the point a bit — he says the only mutants who’ve reproduced by this time in continuity have done so by mating with humans (like Professor X, who fathered Legion) or with the aid of sorcery (like Magneto, taking the line that Magda was some kind of witch, which I’m not sure has a basis in continuity). That leaves out Banshee who fathered Syrin and Colossus who fathered a child in the Savage Land with no other help. X-Factor make the obvious point that baby Chris/Nathan exists, but Apocalypse suspects that Sinister had a hand (and, ew, possibly more) in his creation. Apocalypse presents Chris/Nathan to the Celestials for their judgement, and they seem to accept him as evidence that mutants are viable inheritors of the Earth. They leave, but just for good measure decide to go and destroy Genosha, and everyone lived happily every after.

 

Uncanny X-Men #273 (February 1991)
Writer: Chris Claremont
Artists: Jim Lee, Whilce Portacio, et al.

Following the “X-Tinction Agenda,” the combined New Mutants, X-Factor, and reunited X-Men are having difficulty fitting in the remains of the X-Mansion (destroyed in “Inferno”) or agreeing on their next tactical moves. Before the X-Men can decide whether to disband, go on, join X-Factor, or join Cable, Lila Cheney arrives to teleport them away to save Professor X.

Bobby takes the opportunity to resume his petty rivalry with Boom Boom from the early issues of ­X-Factor. The comic relief bit ends with Bobby storming his way into the women’s shower room, where he’s embarrassed in front of Jean and Psylocke. But nothing in the art suggests he has any lascivious motive or enjoyment from the situation. Given the next page is just Psylocke watching Jean shower, if the creators wanted this bit to be about cheesecake, they could have easily gone there.

The end of the issue plants the seed of X-Factor rejoining the X-Men and rebuilding the mansion, so even though Claremont disliked that editorially mandated direction, he was clearly already setting it in place before he left.

X-Factor don’t appear in the next few issues, but they resolve a few outstanding plots before Claremont’s departure. The X-Men put an end to Deathbird’s rule and restore Lilandra to the throne, ending a subplot that had continued from all the way back in Uncanny X-Men #161. Professor X returns to Earth to deal with the Shadow King, having left all the way back in Uncanny X-Men #200. Magneto defeats and kills Zaladane in the Savage Land, freeing Ka-Zar’s people (who had been enslaved since the Uncanny X-Men #249-250), restoring him to full power and completing his heel turn. Rogue also gets her powers back and loses the Ms. Marvel split-personality.

 

Web of Spider-Man #75 (April 1991)
Writer: Tony Isabella
Artist: Alex Saviuk

When evil mutant performance artists (uh, sure) unleash a terrible blizzard in New York City, Spidey encounters a bunch of local heroes working to rescue people caught in the storm.

Iceman appears in a two-page sequence where he rescues the Avenger’s butler Jarvis from a falling sign, and is then blamed for the storm by a bunch of anti-mutant passers-by. Iceman flees with Jarvis rather than deal with the bigots.

The issue ends on a cliffhanger, but I couldn’t be bothered to dig up the next issue to find out how Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four stop the, sigh, evil performance artists.

 

Spider-Man Family: Amazing Friends (August 2006)
Writer: Sean McKeever
Artists: Patrick Oliffe, Casey Jones, Kano, Nick Dragotta

When Mary Jane gets jealous that Spider-Man is spending time with Firestar, he tries to set her and Iceman up as a couple to prove his loyalty.

This is a bit of a continuity train wreck. I’m placing it here even though it says it takes place before Web of Spider-Man #75, because that’s the issue where Spidey meets Firestar and in this issue they appear to already know each other. I’m assuming they meant to write it takes place after that issue. But Iceman is also talking about having rejoined the X-Men and being on a break with Opal, which would suggest it goes sometime after their break-up around Uncanny X-Men #290. Let’s take it as given that Bobby and Opal are already fighting since she’s clearly caught feelings for that cyborg from the last X-Factor story.

Spider-Man and Bobby are hanging out and fighting crime like they occasionally did back in the 60s and 70s. Bobby gets to show off his misogyny once again for Spidey when Firestar first asks to team-up with the duo. Oddly, he later agrees to be set up with Firestar when Spidey pitches it to him. They do start to briefly date, which is shown in a series of fights, hand holding, and no romantic physical affection at all.

 

X-Factor Annual #6 (1991)
Writer: Fabian Nicieza
Artist: Terry Shoemaker

This is the final part of the “Kings of Pain” crossover running through New Mutants Annual #7, New Warriors Annual #1, and X-Men Annual #15. In the earlier chapters, the New Mutants (now calling themselves X-Force, though not in their title, so as not to spoil the upcoming ­X-Force #1) and New Warriors uncovered a plot by AIM to reconstitute Proteus by using an energy-absorbing teenage mutant named Piecemeal and his mother, Harness. They went to Muir Island to get Moira McTaggart’s help dealing with them, but are too late – Piecemeal merges with Proteus and they attack Edinburgh. (The story explicitly has Shadow King temporarily release his control on the Muir Islanders to let them deal with the plot.)

 

 

 

 

 

Cable’s dialogue in New Warriors Annual #1 is something to behold. This was a bizarre era where the most manly put down a big shirtless muscle man could shout at another male character was to call him “pretty boy” or “handsome.”

For some reason, Moira calls in X-Factor for help, rather than the local heroes Excalibur. The plot justification is that Cyclops was in the original Proteus story and might know how to deal with him. We also learn in this issue that the whole caper was a bet between Gideon, who was being positioned as a major baddie around this era and planned to use Proteus to control the world economy, and Toad, who was trying to rebrand himself as a major threat and wanted to recruit Proteus into his new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.

In the end, Cyclops’ plan is to convince Proteus/Piecemeal to commit suicide, given that Proteus was so much happier when he was simply energy flowing around the world than he ever was as a living person (this doesn’t really do much for poor Piecemeal, though, who’s essentially just booted from the story). The various heroes squabble over whether this is the right or moral thing to do, with the most surprising stance coming from Cable – he sharply rejects Cyclops’ plan and argues that Proteus should be saved somehow. When Proteus is convinced to kill himself, Cable lashes out at Cyclops. It seems out of character, but it also seems to fit with a pattern of hints and references in Nicieza’s Cable stories around this time that suggest that he knows he’s Cyclops’ son and he’s keeping that secret. In which case, it’s understandable why Cable would be upset to see Cyclops giving up on a child, given the story that’s coming up next in X-Factor. (“X-Cutioner’s Song” strongly suggests that Cable is surprised to learn of his connection to Cyclops, while later, in Cable #20, Cable says he strongly suspected who his parents really were the whole time.)

Iceman doesn’t have much to do in this story, other than be yet another hero whose powers prove useless against Proteus.

The backup strips are a bit more interesting to the X-Men’s queer history. First is the final part of “The Killing Stroke” (the previous parts were in the New Mutants Annual and X-Men Annual, but for some reason the X-Men chapter isn’t on Marvel Unlimited), in which Freedom Force fight their final mission in Iraq-occupied Kuwait. When the mission goes south, the queer-coded Silver Sabre is killed and Crimson Commando is mortally wounded. Avalanche abandons his friend/long-coded-as-lover Pyro to get the last chopper out of the mission. Pyro and Blob are captured by the debuted Iraqi super team, Desert Sword. The end of Freedom Force sets up the new X-Factor, about which more shortly. Pyro and Blob are eventually freed by the Toad to join the new Brotherhood, and Avalanche and Commando eventually turn up in X-Factor #102, still working for the government. As far as we know, Sabre and Stonewall have not yet been resurrected on Krakoa.

And finally, Peter David gets ten lovely pages to spend with Mystique mourning the death of her lover, Destiny. Destiny was one of those characters who were so thoroughly dead that despite everything in comics history, she was never coming back. And yet, in 2021, she finally made her return in Inferno #2, and she and Mystique are now referring to each other as their wives.

 

X-Factor #65-68 (April-July 1991)
Plotters: Jim Lee, Whilce Portacio
Script: Chris Claremont
Art: Whilce Portacio

Apocalypse makes his final move on X-Factor and Ship, along with his new henchmen, the Riders of the Storm (later the Dark Riders), who are drawn from the kidnapped Inhumans. Apocalypse wants to drain the life forces and powers of baby Nathan and X-Factor in order to achieve power to place him in the celestial pantheon with other Marvel cosmic characters. In the end, the Inhumans are freed, Apocalypse is defeated, Ship is destroyed, but baby Nathan is left with an incurable virus that X-Factor are told will kill him, unless Cyclops agrees to send him away with a mysterious woman named Askani who claims he is the chosen one. She says Cyclops will never see him again.

Once again Iceman doesn’t really have a lot to do other than be present to indicate that this is an X-Factor story. And to be fair, Claremont does a lot of work to give the story the feeling of a grand operatic climax to the series, with lots of references to other stories including the Dark Phoenix Saga, Jean’s origin story, the long-running Twelve subplot, and Apocalypse’s regular role behind the scenes for much of this series. He even has the Watcher show up at the end to hammer home the point.

If there’s a major weakness in the story, it’s the way Cyclops’ decision to sacrifice/save Nathan is presented so casually, and with barely any follow up in subsequent issues. Later stories will try to fill in this gap with a bigger reaction from him. Oddly, Jean is also basically silent in the decision-making process, when he’s basically her son too.

This blog couldn’t talk about this story without bringing up the “Apocalypse Manifesto” backup feature that appears in issues #65-66. These are basically Apocalypse’s diary entries on each of the members of X-Factor, and boy are they something else. His entry on Archangel is even gayer than his usual rantings about his beauty.

When he gets to Iceman, he has a lot of opinions about Iceman’s future siring children with Opal, but specifically calls out Iceman for living a fake life and a secret desire to be “normal.” Apocalypse is pretty perceptive when he’s not looking inward.

And we should also mention that issue #67 features the debut of Shinobi Shaw, the bisexual member of the Upstarts who makes his debut by supposedly killing his supposed father, Sebastian Shaw (Sebastian returns in X-Force #48 and later confirms Shinobi’s suspicion from this issue that his real father was Harry Leland in Marauders #26). More on him next time.

As we know by now, this wouldn’t be the last time we see Nathan. He grew up to be Cable, who made his debut in New Mutants #87. The baby was actually taken to the far future, where a time-travelling Scott and Jean from slightly later in their lives raised him to adolescence in The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix miniseries, he grew into his leadership role in the Askani’son miniseries, and he returns to the present time in Cable #-1. Askani turns out not to be the woman’s name, but the name of the far-future religion that was created by a time-travelling Rachel Summers, who was sucked into the timestream in Excalibur #75 and formed her new society as a challenge to Apocalypse in the X-Men: Phoenix miniseries. Hence all the times Askani refers to Nathan as “little brother” and X-Factor as “kinsmen.” Baby Nathan is also cloned as a decoy to throw off Apocalypse – that decoy grows up to be Stryfe. Much of this gets explained in the 1992 crossover ”X-Cutioner’s Song,” which we’ll get to next entry.

 

X-Factor #69, Uncanny X-Men #280 (August 1991)
Writer: Fabian Nicieza “(with lots of help)”
Artists: While Portacio, Andy Kubert, Steven Butler

At the end of the Claremont era, he sets about to wrap up his last major outstanding plot – The Shadow King’s takeover of Muir Island – but Claremont quits halfway through the story and hands it over to Fabian Nicieza to write the final two chapters.

So, for the last couple of years, the Shadow King had been simmering in the background, having slowly begun taking over the residents of Muir Isle when Polaris (who had suddenly developed the power to amplify negative emotions) and Legion accidentally gave him access to the physical world by using Cerebro untrained. The Shadow King used the Muir Isle mutants as a base of power from which to extend his psychic influence across the globe, stirring up people to act in irrationally hateful ways, which increased his own power due to his connection to Polaris. Meanwhile, he was using a dead FBI agent as his physical host in order to hunt down the X-Men, as part of his revenge on Xavier for banishing him to the astral plane in their origin story. In the first two parts of the story, the X-Men and Professor X returned from the Shi’ar Empire in order to deal with the Shadow King. The X-Men were almost immediately captured and mind-controlled by the Shadow King, except for Forge, who uses tech to block out the King’s influence. And Professor X was attacked by a Shadow King-controlled Colossus, but managed to stop him and finally reassert his normal personality in the process (Colossus had been an amnesiac since going through the Siege Perilous with the other X-Men). *phew*

Ok, so as the story picks up, the US Government and Professor X have called in X-Factor for help dealing with the Shadow King, as his influence is causing violent hateful mobs to spring up across the globe (Uncanny X-Men #278 illustrates this with an anti-gay mob celebrating “AIDS is God’s Punishment”). X-Factor lead an attack on Muir Island to free the X-Men and destroy the Shadow King’s “nexus” Polaris.  But when Xavier destroys the Shadow King’s host before the X-Men can figure out how to free Polaris, the King takes over Legion instead, and blows up the island. Remarkably, no one dies in the explosion. Finally, Xavier takes the Shadow King on alone in the astral plane, but the King’s psychic assault physically cripples Xavier again. Ultimately, Forge manages to use Psylocke’s psychic blade on Polaris to disrupt Shadow King’s nexus, in the process killing the Shadow King, leaving Legion brain dead, and reverting Polaris’ powers to normal (hey, it was never explained why they changed in the first place, so…)

Woof. For all the background chaos and the density of the story, it’s remarkably coherent even if there are a few moments that read like glitches (um, where do all the Muir Island mutants disappear to halfway through the story?). And there’s a real feeling that this is the grand operatic end of a long-term story with links going back all the way to the X-Men’s origin. Still, I’ve never liked the Shadow King as a villain, given that he’s just a personification of evil for evil’s sake. He’s not even that imaginative with what he does with his mind-controlled minions (gladiatorial combat? Sure, this is only the third or fourth time Claremont has had his villains do that…).

Given the cast of over a dozen, Iceman doesn’t get a whole lot to do, but he does have a nice moment in X-Factor #69 where he finds his ex-beard Lorna prisoner of the Shadow King, and is faced with the decision of killing her to stop the Shadow King, or risking the Shadow King taking over the world. Shall we say it’s interesting how swiftly Bobby lands on “Let’s get this over with.”

 

X-Factor #70 (September 1991)
Writer: Peter David
Artist: Kirk Jarvinen

An epilogue to the Muir Island/Shadow King saga. X-Factor rejoin the X-Men, and Val Cooper recruits some of the Muir Island mutants to be the new Freedom Force, who will debut in the next issue as the all-new, all-different X-Factor. Iceman’s still there, but he doesn’t do anything.

 

 

Avengers #336 (August 1991)
Writer: Bob Harras
Artist: Steven Epting

Iceman doesn’t appear in this story, but Beast returns to the Avengers in “The Collection Obsession” (Avengers #334-339), when he’s needed to do some science stuff. I’m mentioning this only so that I can share this panel of Hank McCoy flirting with Hank Pym.

 

Infinity Gauntlet #1-6 (June-December 1991)
Writer: Jim Starlin
Artist: George Perez

When Thanos collects the six Infinity Gems, he uses the power to erase half the sentient beings in the universe, and Iceman is among the disappeared. He is restored when Nebula steals the Infinity Gauntlet and undoes Thanos’ project. Iceman doesn’t actually appear in the story.

 

And that ends Bobby’s time with X-Factor! Next time, we kick off the new adjectiveless X-Men/Uncanny X-Men era with Chris Claremont’s actual swan song, and Bobby’s love life in ruins again.

Where to find these issues: All of the regular X-Factor and Uncanny X-Men issues are in the X-Men by Chris Claremont and Jim Lee Omnibus Vol. 2. All that plus the main story from X-Factor Annual #6 are in X-Men Epic Collection: Mutant Genesis; while the Mystique back-up strip from that annual appear in X-Factor by Peter David Omnibus Vol. 1. I’m not sure if the Freedom Force story is collected anywhere — bizarrely, the first and third chapters are on Marvel Unlimited, but not the second. I don’t think either of the Spider-Man stories have been reprinted anywhere — only Amazing Friends is on Marvel Unlimited. The Avengers, Ghost Rider, and Infinity Gauntlet stories are all on Marvel Unlimited.

It’s time for my annual rundown of the progress made in global LGBT rights and in particular in the fight for same-sex marriage recognition! As always, you can also follow along on this progress all year round by following my twitter feed @LGBTmarriage. New this year, if you like the work I do, you can also send me a tip via Venmo. I do this work on the side of my freelance journalism work and any little bit you can contribute helps me devote the time and resources needed to keep track of all this news from around the world.

The dominant global story this year continued to be the COVID-19 pandemic and recovery plans, which seems to be settling into a new normal. But as governments and courts got back to the business of governing, some significant progress on LGBT rights was seen in all corners of the world.

On the global scale, we saw the following major developments:

Equal Marriage law passed: Switzerland, Chile (both to come into effect in 2022); Mexican states of Baja California (codification), Guanajuato (by decree), Queretaro, Sinaloa, Sonora, Zacatecas
Sodomy decriminalized: Bhutan and Angola (both coming into effect)
Anti-LGBT discrimination banned: Botswana and Namibia (both by court decision), Angola (coming into effect); Chile (partial)
Hate crime laws passed: Mexican states of Sinaloa, Tlaxcala, and Zacatecas; Angola (coming into effect)
“Conversion therapy” banned: Canada, France, Chile; Mexican states Baja California Sur, Yucatán, Zacatecas, Colima and Tlaxcala; Austalian state of Victoria

Now, we’ll dive down into what’s going on country-by country:

THE AMERICAS

With same-sex marriage now legal in Canada, the United States, Mexico, Costa Rica, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador and Chile, as well as all French territories, Dutch municipalities, Greenland and Bermuda, more than 83% of the Western Hemisphere population lives in an equal marriage jurisdiction. This includes 72% of people living in Latin America. Truly, it is the non-equal marriage countries in this region that are the outliers now.

Many of the holdout countries are also subject to the 2018 ruling by the Interamerican Court of Human Rights that found that they are bound by the American Convention on Human Rights to legalize same-sex marriage, however, the court has no means of forcing the countries to abide by its decisions. Instead, local courts or politicians must implement it. This has already happened in Costa Rica, Ecuador, and now Chile. The remaining holdout states bound by the decision are: Barbados, Bolivia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Suriname.

NORTH AND CENTRAL AMERICA

CANADA: After several false starts, the federal government passed a law criminalizing all forms of conversion therapy, including on consenting adults, in December 2021. Additionally, Canada Blood Services concluded its lengthy study on the ban on blood donations from men who have sex with men, and announced it will recommend that Health Canada end the ban in 2022. If I’m not mistaken, this will complete the major legislative and regulatory demands of most LGBT rights advocates in Canada and globally. From here on, presumably Canadian activists move on to issues such as decriminalizing sex work and removing obscenity from the Criminal Code, codifying same-sex families and queer parenting into all provinces’ family laws, adapting assisted reproduction laws to better accommodate LGBT couples, and improving the inclusion of LGBT history in school curriculums.

UNITED STATES: The beginning of the Biden administration led the federal government to wipe out a number of anti-LGBT executive orders passed by Trump which blocked equal treatment of LGBT people and couples in federal law. At the same time, the Supreme Court has indicated that it plans to gut the right to privacy on its path to ending the right to abortion in the United States. Since that right undergirds many other rights enjoyed by LGBT Americans, many are worried that a long rollback of queer rights, including equal marriage, is possible.

Some states have tried to protect for this by codifying equal marriage into their laws. New Jersey’s state legislature did this at the tail end of the year. Virginia began the process of removing the ban on same-sex marriage from its constitution last year, but as Democrats lost control of the State House and Governor’s office, it’s unclear if the issue will be passed by the incoming legislature in order for it to be presented to voters in 2022. Virginia’s outgoing Democratic trifecta passed several other progressive pieces of pro-LGBT legislation in its two years, including abolishing the death penalty in 2021. Alabama’s commission to rewrite the state constitution to remove outdated or illegal parts did NOT recommend striking the ban on same-sex marriage. Thirty-four US states still have either a statute or a clause in the state constitution banning same-sex marriage, albeit that these are all rendered invalid since the 2015 Obergefell decision.

A federal appeals court panel struck down a ruling extending US citizenship to nationals of American Samoa, but the decision is being appealed to full court. If American Samoans are granted citizenship, then presumably the 14^th amendment would apply to them, which would require the territory to finally allow same-sex marriage.

A legislator in Massachusetts has introduced a bill to repeal that state’s defunct law banning sodomy, but it has not made any progress in the state assembly. In total, 15 states maintain a defunct ban on sodomy in their criminal laws.

MEXICO: Four states completed the process of bring equal marriage into law in 2021: Sinaloa, Sonora, Queretaro, and Zacatecas states all passed equal marriage laws. Additionally the government of Guanajuato simply decided to stop enforcing its ban while the state congress continued debating a same-sex marriage bill — that debate looks set to continue in the new year as a matter of codifying equal marriage into law. Similarly, Baja California amended its state constitution and civil code to allow same-sex marriage, in accordance with actual practice since 2017 under its governor’s decree. And Yucatan finally passed an amendment to its state constitution removing the ban on same-sex marriage in September, after two previous failed attempts. Oddly, the vote to amend the state constitution didn’t also amend the civil code, so same-sex marriage isn’t allowed quite yet – legislators have a deadline of early March to bring the code into line with the state constitution.

That leaves only six other states where equal marriage isn’t yet law, but it appears there is movement to at least debate an equal marriage law in all of them, particularly after the left-wing MORENA party swept local elections in many of these states. Legislators are already talking about passing legislation in state of Mexico, Veracruz, Durango, and Guerrero leaving just Tabasco and Tamaulipas. There is also a push to codify same-sex marriage into law in Aguascalientes following the 2019 court order that legalized it, as well as in Chihuahua (legal since 2015) and Guanajuato. Three other states also have only achieved equal marriage through judicial/administrative decisions and have not updated their civil laws to reflect it: Nuevo Leon, Chiapas, and Jalisco. I think there’s a strong possibility that all states allow same-sex marriage by the end of 2022.

Note also that not all of these equal marriage laws permit same-sex couples to adopt, although the Supreme Court has been clear that this is also required. Proposals to allow “homoparental adoption” have been introduced in Baja California Sur and Oaxaca states.

Additionally, Baja California Sur, Yucatán, Zacatecas, Colima and Tlaxcala banned “conversion therapy” and Sinaloa, Tlaxcala and Zacatecas passed laws imposing stiffer penalties on hate crimes.

HONDURAS: The country elected its first female president, a woman who publicly supports same-sex marriage. But don’t expect it to actually pass into law. A majority of congress has been clear in its opposition.

EL SALVADOR: The President floated including legalizing abortion and same-sex marriage in a proposed constitutional reform that critics say was otherwise a move to consolidate power in his office. He quickly backtracked amid popular opposition – or was that his plan all along?

CARIBBEAN/ATLANTIC

BARBADOS: Nothing much has come yet of Prime Minister Mia Mottley’s pledge last year to introduce civil unions and/or put same-sex marriage to a national referendum. Nor has the government used its overwhelming majority in the local parliament to strike the sodomy law from the books. But as the country prepares to draft a modern constitution to reflect its new status as a republic, it has taken steps to prepare for the inclusion of text that would ban discrimination based on sexual orientation (if not explicitly gender/transgender status).

UK Territories: Appeals to the differing same-sex marriage decisions made by courts in Bermuda and Cayman Islands were heard by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in February. The courts have not yet rendered a decision. Some have predicted that the court’s decision could have wide-ranging impact on the remaining UK territories that do not allow same-sex marriage (Virgin Islands, Turks and Caicos, Anguilla, Montserrat) but bear in mind that the JCPC is not interpreting some joint constitution that applies to all islands, but each island’s individual constitutions. Additionally, a local judicial review of the Cayman Islands’ Governor’s decision last year to impose the civil partnership act is underway – opponents believe he overstepped his bounds in imposing the law that had been rejected by the local parliament; he says he was acting to uphold rule of law by passing a law required by the courts.

CUBA: The National Assembly passed a draft Family Code that recognizes diverse families without specifically referring to same-sex marriage. It’s unclear how this will work in practice for LGBT couples. The draft will got to a referendum that will follow a popular consultation campaign that runs from February to April 20, 2022.

Curacao: A court found that the ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional, but left it up to the local legislature to amend the laws to allow it. Last year, a same-sex marriage bill was withdrawn due to lack of support.

HAITI: A new penal code enacted by decree by the former President takes effect in June 2022, unless blocked by Parliament. The new penal code includes protections against discrimination for LGBT Haitians. The country has been in an ongoing political crisis for several years now.

A coordinated campaign to bring court challenges to sodomy laws in the eight Caribbean countries that still have them on the books (Antigua & Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Saint Lucia) did not deliver any significant news this year.

 

SOUTH AMERICA

CHILE: After years of opposition, outgoing Chilean President Pinera shocked observers by announcing his support for an equal marriage bill introduced by his predecessor four years earlier. The bill then moved quickly through Congress and became law in December, with an effect date in March 2022. The bill includes automatic parenting recognition, the right to adopt (including for couples in civil unions, which continue), and an end to automatic divorce for trans people (although marriages only continue with a spouse’s permission). The bill also extends to Chile’s disputed claim on Antarctica, which means that all countries claiming territory in Antarctica have legalized same-sex marriage. It also extends to Easter Island in Polynesia.

Chile’s presidential election became a showdown between a millennial socialist and a far-right populist who had a long career opposing LGBT rights, and in the end, the 35-year-old socialist Boric won. Looming ahead in Chile, a national convention plans to unveil a draft new constitution next year, which will be put to a referendum. Progressives make up the majority of the convention, and some predict the draft constitution will include explicit non-discrimination protections for LGBT people and an LGBT-inclusive definition of marriage.

Chile also passed a bunch of laws that banned “conversion therapy” as a psychological practice, and banned discrimination against LGBT people in immigration and education.

BOLIVIA: Although a court ordered the government to recognize “free unions” between same-sex couples in December 2020, actual enforcement has apparently been limited. A lesbian couple was denied registration of their free union in May 2021. The Minister of Justice announced in May that an equal marriage case was being heard at the Constitutional Court, but no further news has come.

VENEZUELA: There has been no movement on legalizing same-sex marriage, as called for by the country’s (disputed) President Maduro in 2020.

GUYANA: The National Assembly removed the defunct ban on cross dressing from its Summary Jurisdiction Offences Act, after it had been struck down by the Caribbean Court of Justice in 2018. The sodomy law remains on the books.

PERU: The country elected a new president who is fiercely opposed to LGBT rights, especially same-sex marriage.

 

EUROPE

EUROPEAN UNION: The European Court of Justice ruled that all member states must recognize the birth certificates issued in other states, an issue that had previously posed a problem for children of LGBT couples. In the case in question, Bulgaria had refused to recognize the birth certificate of a child of two women that was born in Spain. As one of the parents was a Bulgarian national, the child had the right to Bulgarian citizenship, but the country would not recognize the birth certificate and issue a passport. Of the EU’s 27 countries, 14 do not recognize same-sex marriage or allow joint couple adoption, 11 ban step-child adoption, and 6 do not offer any formal recognition of same-sex couples.

 

WESTERN EUROPE

SWITZERLAND: The big news this year was that equal marriage campaigners in Switzerland won the referendum that right-wing elements forced the government to hold over the same-sex marriage law it passed last year. The vote was held in September 2021 and was won by a margin of 64%-36%. The law will finally come into effect in July 2022 – nothing moves fast in Switzerland, where this law was first proposed in 2013. Switzerland also passed a simplified legal gender transition law that takes effect Jan 1, 2022.

ANDORRA: A comic showdown has been happening in Andorra every three weeks since March 2021, where the Parliament has been delaying debate on an equal marriage bill, calling for more consultations. I’m not entirely clear what exactly is going on here, as news is difficult to come by out of the Pyrenees nation. What I’ve gathered is that the proposed bill offers same-sex couples a “casamente” while the term “matrimoni” is reserved for heterosexual couples, although both versions will be treated equally under the law. Confusingly, both words translate from Catalan to English as “marriage.” I think the distinction is akin to wedding/marriage. Anyway, the opposition appears to be trying to force the government to erase the distinction, not torpedo the bill altogether, although I could have that wrong.

LIECHTENSTEIN: After the Swiss referendum, the neighboring microstate had a discussion in their parliament about same-sex marriage that led to a commitment to reform after broad social debate. Elections in February reportedly brought in a large majority of legislators who support equal marriage, but the royal family has made vague statements in opposition, which may be why they’re being cautious. For what it’s worth, the Prince himself doesn’t seem to be commenting, though his retired father has expressed personal opposition. He previously was most vehemently opposed to same-sex couple adoption, but the Constitutional Court has already overruled him there, granting same-sex couples in civil partnerships the right to step-child adoption in June 2021. The Court left the issue of joint adoption to the legislature for now. Still, it seems like legislators are loath to pass a law that the Prince will veto, and I suspect the “broad social debate” is meant to force him to clearly state his position or convince him of its popularity more than anything.

SAN MARINO: Completing our tour of the microstates, legislation came into effect rendering civil unions to be functionally equal to marriages in all aspects, except for certain parts of family law (ie, joint adoption).

ITALY: After years of debate, a broad anti-discrimination and hate crime bill passed the lower house of Parliament only to be killed in the Senate. Though the bill was broadly popular, right-wing populists had campaigned hard against it, and a centrist party led by former PM Rezni joined them to kill it in a move that critics asserted was a political power move.

FRANCE: The National Assembly passed a broad bioethics reform law that gave access to assisted reproduction to single women and lesbians, as well as a comprehensive ban on “conversion therapy” practices.

UK: The UK spent much of the year going back-and-forth on a proposal to ban conversion therapy, but it did not pass after Conservatives torpedoed their own bill. UK territories in the Caribbean/Atlantic Bermuda and Cayman Islands both had cases heard at the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council dealing with equal marriage (see the section on the Americas).

GERMANY: The German government ended a ban on transgender soldiers serving in the military and instituted a compensation scheme for people who had been persecuted under the country’s anti-gay laws that remained on the books until 1969.

A newly elected progressive-led coalition has also made big promises to the LGBT community in its coalition agreement: transgender self-identification, ban on intersex surgeries, total ban on conversion therapy, ending the blood donation deferral from GBT men, covering gender-affirming surgeries in health care, compensating trans victims of legal discrimination, and enshrining a ban on anti-LGBT discrimination in the constitution.

GREECE: The government ended the ban on blood donation from GBT men. As of 2021, the main opposition parties in Parliament all support same-sex marriage.

 

EASTERN EUROPE

CROATIA: The Constitutional Court affirmed in June that same-sex couples in registered partnerships have the right to adopt, putting Croatia quite ahead of its neighboring countries.  

MONTENEGRO: The Life Partnership Act passed last year came into effect.

NORTH MACEDONIA: The government passed a law allowing trans people to update the gender markers on their identification.

SERBIA: Although a civil partnership bill had been in the works for years, President Vucic abruptly announced that he would veto it if it came to his desk. So it’s dead for now.

KOSOVO: Work continued on developing a new Civil Code, which last year the Ministry of Justice had pledged would introduce same-sex civil unions, continued, although momentum appears to have stalled in Parliament. It appears the local LGBT community is not pleased with being relegated to second-class status implied by continued block on marriage.

BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA: A proposal to offer civil partnerships in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina has not advanced since 2018.

Efforts to expand the European Union — which would bring some additional protections for LGBT individuals and families under EU law — into the Balkan region stalled a bit this year, with no real progress made on Serbia and Montenegro’s applications, and the applications for Albania and North Macedonia frozen for most of the year due to an objection by Bulgaria to the latter. The new Bulgarian government elected in December waived its objection and has proposed an (unlikely) program to speed those country’s membership talks by the end of 2022.

CZECHIA: Parliament advanced different bills that would make same-sex marriage legal or ban it in the constitution in the last months of its session, but neither passed. A new government coalition elected in October differs sharply on the issue, so it’s not expected to advance despite broad public support. Parliament also blocked a bill that would allow same-sex couples to foster children, and another bill that would have recognized children adopted by same-sex couples in other countries. One legislator has pledged to propose a comprehensive adoption reform law in the new year.

HUNGARY: While proto-fascist prime minister Orban continued his campaign against the country’s LGBT community with a harsh gag law, his political opponents have united ahead of next April’s elections and polls show a very tight race. The opposition’s presidential candidate is a progressive who supports same-sex marriage and has vowed to repeal all of Orban’s anti-LGBT laws. While this is encouraging, I would caution that even if his coalition wins, they will include some far-right elements that have been historically hostile to LGBT people, albeit that they seem to be recanting those views now.

ESTONIA: A planned referendum on continuing to ban same-sex marriage was killed in Parliament after left-wing politicians staged a filibuster just long enough for the government to fall in a corruption scandal. The bill was finally killed by a majority vote of the parliament. A new governing coalition that took office in January has pledged to finally pass the enabling legislation for the Registered Partnership Act that was originally passed in 2016. The coalition agreement pledges not to support same-sex marriage.

The Supreme Court ruled that LGBT couples must be treated the same as heterosexual couples for purposes of immigration and residency, including if they are unmarried. Separately, the government announced that because it no longer requires trans people to divorce before changing their legal gender, there are already a number of recognized same-sex marriages in the country.

LATVIA: Parliament debated but ultimately rejected extending hate crime provisions in law to protect people from attacks based on sexual orientation.

LITHUANIA: A draft civil partnership bill was rejected 65-63 in parliament in May. Its sponsor, an openly gay MP, had pledged to reintroduce the bill before the end of 2021, but it doesn’t seem he has yet. Presumably he’s trying to build a bigger base of support. In September, the president said he opposed adoption rights for same-sex couples.

RUSSIA: The European Court of Human Rights ruled that it was a violation of human rights for Russia not to offer any legal recognition of same-sex couples. Russia ignored the ruling.

 

ASIA

EAST ASIA

JAPAN: The District Court of Sapporo found that the constitution does not ban same-sex marriage, and in fact that banning same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. It left it up to the legislature to resolve the issue. Opposition parties largely support same-sex marriage, but Japan is basically a one-party democracy. The governing party also held a leadership race this year, but the candidate who supported same-sex marriage lost. Although the issue enjoys wide popular support, the political establishment appears to be behind the public on it.

The government had proposed passing a very milquetoast bill that would have encouraged greater understanding of LGBT people (but not actually banned discrimination or hate crimes) in the run up to the Tokyo Olympics, but ultimately it couldn’t even muster up enough interest to pass it..

In the meantime, the push to have local governments pass partnership registries that give limited rights to same-sex couples found some success.  As of press time, 135 municipalities (out of 1719) and 5 prefectures (out of 47) have passed such registries. Four more prefectures, including the largest, Tokyo, have announced plans to introduce them next year, and 19 more municipalities have registries coming into force next year as well.

TAIWAN: The government is in the process of amending its marriage laws to allow binational couples, where one party is from a non-equal-marriage country, to get married in Taiwan, following a March 2021 court ruling that found this restriction in contravention of the Constitutional Court’s original order for same-sex marriage in 2017.

Hong Kong: A court case was filed seeking recognition of a same-sex marriage after a man was refused recognition when his spouse died.

THAILAND: No actual progress was made on the government’s civil partnership bill or a competing same-sex marriage bill. In the meantime, the Constitutional Court issued a strongly criticized ruling that found not only was same-sex marriage not required by law, but that marriage also had to be restricted to heterosexual couples as gays can’t reproduce.

PHILLIPINES: Debate over same-sex marriage and an anti-discrimination law looks to carry on through next year’s general elections.

SOUTH KOREA: The government proposed reforms to family law to recognize single-parent families and unmarried parents but did not include same-sex partner recognition.

 

SOUTH ASIA

INDIA: The Delhi High Court is in the middle of a hearing on several related same-sex marriage cases, seeking recognition under several of India’s separate marriage laws. It should rule at some time in 2022. I would put money on the ruling being in favor.

BHUTAN: The Penal Code reform bill that removed sodomy as a crime received Royal Assent after passing through Parliament in 2020.

 

MIDDLE EAST & CENTRAL ASIA

ISRAEL: Israel’s multi-year political standoff finally came to an end, with a left-right coalition taking power. Some parts of the coalition support same-sex marriage but a big chunk doesn’t, and it’s a very fragile coalition, so don’t expect much progress.

UZBEKISTAN: A movement to strike the sodomy law from the Criminal Code failed to bear fruit, and in fact seemed to generate a strong backlash against the country’s LGBT community.

AFGHANISTAN: The fall of the government to the Taliban has certainly worsened the situation on the ground for the country’s LGBT people.

KAZAKHSTAN: Abolished the death penalty.

NORTH CYPRUS: Tensions continued across the island after last year’s election of a pro-independence/pro-Turkey hardliner in the North. It is unlikely that reunification, and application of generally LGBT-positive EU law to the North that would come with it, is likely any time soon.

 

AFRICA

NAMIBIA: Multiple same-sex marriage cases were heard in the courts this year. Three cases seeking recognition of foreign same-sex marriages were joined and heard, and a judgement is expected January 20, 2022.

A case seeking recognition of children born to two male parents via surrogacy was initially denied by the courts, although the government relented and issued travel documents to the infants anyway – surrogacy and same-sex marriage are both not recognized in current law. A different case later ordered the government to recognize the citizenship of their other child and went further by finding that discrimination based on sexual orientation is banned under the constitution.

Additionally, the ministry of justice announced plans to remove the common law crime of sodomy from Namibian law by the end of the year, but this hasn’t happened yet. A burgeoning LGBT rights movement has also drawn a lot of attention to all of these cases this year, so I would expect some significant progress here in 2022.

BOTSWANA: The Court of Appeal made a final decision upholding the 2019 decision that decriminalized sodomy and found that discrimination based on sexual orientation is banned under the constitution.

MAURITIUS: A case challenging the country’s sodomy law continued through the courts. It will continue into 2022.

ANGOLA: The new Criminal Code that passed in 2019 took effect in February. It decriminalized sodomy, banned anti-LGBT hate crimes and anti-LGBT discrimination.

UGANDA: Parliament passed a bill that would further criminalize LGBT people and their associates, but it was vetoed by President Museveni after intense pressure from local activists and international rights groups.

GHANA and SENEGAL: Both countries had legislators propose even stricter anti-LGBT laws than the ones on the books. Senegal’s Parliament voted its anti-LGBT bill down in the last days of December, but we’ll see how Ghana’s progresses in 2022.

SIERRA LEONNE: Abolished the death penalty.

MOROCCO: A growing social movement is seeking to strike all sections relating to consensual sex from the Penal Code, including sections prohibiting sodomy. A new, somewhat progressive government was swept into office in September and has pledged to revise the Penal Code but has not made any specific pledges related to the sex provisions (including a ban on extramarital sex).

TUNISIA: A court challenge of the country’s sodomy law was filed in December. Parliament has been suspended on order of the President until December 2022, and the President has rejected calls to decriminalize homosexuality, so a legislative solution is unlikely to arrive in 2022. Tunisia has also been condemned for subjected suspected homosexuals to force anal examinations.

 

OCEANIA

Easter Island: Same-sex marriage will become legal here in March 2022, as it’s part of Chile.

American Samoa: See the section on the US in the Americas. US Courts found that American Samoans are not citizens and therefore not entitled to the protections of the 14^th Amendment, which would require same-sex marriage. Appeals are ongoing and will likely reach the Supreme Court.

NEW ZEALAND: The government introduced a bill to ban “conversion therapy” in May. It’s currently in committee.

Cook Islands: Parliament kept postponing debate on its new Crimes Bill, which would potentially delete the provisions criminalizing sodomy or also criminalize lesbian sex. It was under review by the Crown Law office in New Zealand which returned a final draft in November, but Parliament deferred debate on it again. Unfortunately, the Cook Islands News paywalled itself this year, so I have no further context to provide.

Niue: Although the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA) has reported that this New Zealand territory had sodomy decriminalized by an act of the New Zealand Parliament in 2007, Wikipedia sleuths discovered this year that the law was never actually ratified by the local Parliament. So the sodomy law from the Niue Act 1966 is still in force. I’ve asked ILGA for comment about this, but haven’t received any updates if they’ve been able to confirm the status of the law. Hopefully, they will sort this out in their next global update.

AUSTRALIA: The federal government has been wrapped up in its bizarre plan to create a religious exception to anti-discrimination laws, which looks like it’s a dead letter now, do to internal opposition within the governing coalition. Australia also reduced the blood donation deferral period for GBT men from 12 to 3 months. Victoria state banned “conversion therapy” (only 2 of Australia’s 8 jurisdictions have banned it). Western Australia is still discussing legalizing altruistic surrogacy (it’s the only state where that’s banned).

Bougainville: Papua New Guinea agreed to grant this island independence by 2027. Assuming it inherits Papua New Guinea’s Penal Code, it will come into being as yet another state that criminalizes sodomy.

New Caledonia: Conversely, New Caledonia’s third independence referendum (from France) failed amid a massive boycott from the native population who protested that the COVID-19 pandemic made a referendum unfair. It will not be born as a new equal marriage country any time soon. 

 

LOOKING AHEAD

Looking ahead to 2022, there are a number of states to keep an eye on. Legislators are already planning debate on the issue in Andorra and Liechtenstein, and 2022 could be the year that the final holdout states in Mexico finish legalizing same-sex marriage.

Cuba will have a referendum on a proposed Family Code that would legalize same-sex marriage. Final court decisions are expected on same-sex marriage cases in India and Namibia. Separate cases will be heard by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (UK) for Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, which may also set precedents that impact other holdout UK territories. And the issue of American Samoa’s citizenship status within the United States may come to a head, and by extension, extend equal marriage to that territory. There may also be decisions coming from the high courts in Bolivia and Panama.

We’ll likely see more same-sex partnership registries adopted by municipalities and prefectures in Japan, but I strongly doubt the national definition of marriage will be up for debate this year. Ditto for Thailand, where I think the civil partnership law is the more likely option for legislators to pass – if anything, given how they’ve been dragging their feet on the issue for years.

Beyond that, it’ll be worth following elections in Hungary and Philippines, to see how advocates for same-sex marriage and broader LGBT rights perform. In Hungary in particular, it seems like the moment may have come for a big changeover in the debate. We should also watch how the ongoing political turmoil in Haiti unravels, if only to follow if the new Penal Code which bans anti-LGBT discrimination comes into effect.

If you want to keep up-to-date on the latest in the global fight for equal marriage and LGBT rights, follow my Twitter feed @LGBTmarriage. And, if you liked this article and appreciate the work I do, please consider sending me a tip via Venmo.