Even in Asia, where the level of LGBT acceptance can vary and change with alarming regularity, Hong Kong is a contradictory beast. In 1991, the territory finally ditched British anti-buggery laws that still dog former colonies like Singapore and Malaysia. Today, Asia’s “world city” embraces its queer celebrities and supports a sizable calendar of LGBT events.
Privately many Hong Kongers face enormous pressure to conform. It’s a common dilemma in Northeast Asia, one that in Hong Kong skews the queer bar scene heavily toward ex-pats and visitors. Despite the 1991 reform, an equal age of consent was not established until 2006, and anti-discrimination laws remain a matter of interpretation rather than being absolute. In this deeply traditional society, less than a third of the population supports the legalization of same-sex marriage. In 2012, property developer Cecil Chao offered 500 million Hong Kong dollars ($75 million Canadian) to any man who could woo his lesbian daughter into marriage, and while mere financial mortals may not be throwing around that kind of offer, the underlying attitude is a common one.
Yet three quarters of Hong Kongers also say they support equal rights for same-sex couples, and most are very accepting of LGBT media personalities. While same-sex unions are still not recognized, transgender citizens were finally granted the right to marry an opposite-sex partner in 2013. It seems that in the land of “one country, two systems,” it’s a case of “one territory, two attitudes” on equality. Read More
Uganda: The Gay Pride festival defied local law and taboo
Members of the Ugandan LGBT community celebrated their annual Pride Uganda festival this weekend, defying strict laws criminalizing homosexuality with up to 14 years in jail. Crowds of Ugandans traveled to the shores of Lake Victoria to walk in the festival’s gay pride parade, which was held at a secluded botanical garden 30 miles outside the nation’s capital of Kampala.
Gay rights activists and allies marched, chanted and danced in the small parade, many waving rainbow flags and wearing colorful masks to conceal their identities. The celebration was part of the five-day Pride Uganda festival, which provided a rare occasion for members of the LGBT community to gather together openly. Many LGBT Ugandans are forced to keep their identities secret, as same-sex relationships are punishable by up to 14 years in prison in the country.
Not everyone was celebrating. The youngest of 20 brothers and sisters, Badru, a man from Kampala, was thrown out of his home because his family discovered he was gay. Homeless, unemployed and born HIV positive, Badru said he has nothing to celebrate about at Pride Uganda: “Today is rights day but I don’t know what I should be celebrating about when I have so many difficulties,” he said. “Pride is meaningless to me.”
Still, many LGBT Ugandans expressed their desire to live as authentically as possible, despite the almost daily threats of homophobic-based violence. Read More
UK: ‘I’m a bisexual homoromantic’: why young Brits are rejecting old labels
The gay-straight binary is collapsing, and it’s doing so at speed. The more people who are out, the more normal it becomes. Combine that with the seemingly unstoppable legislative reinforcement of equal rights and it seems less “abnormal”, less boundary-busting, to fall in love or lust with someone of the same gender.
In fact, the word queer, once the defiant reclamation of a homophobic slur, has become a ubiquitous term. While the young people I spoke to were largely resistant to the word “bisexual”, even if they are sleeping with both men and women, they used “queer” easily and freely. “Among our callers and our volunteers, more people are identifying as ‘queer’, particularly among younger generations,” says Natasha Walker, of the LGBT+ Helpline. “In the past, people were fighting for the right to be able to define themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans* etc. Although this is very much still the case, there is also a definite shift towards an acceptance of people as they are – label or no label.”
Moving beyond the need to identify as one thing or the other feels utopian in many respects, and it acknowledges that for many people, sexuality is not an either/or decision. But it also relies on an idealised vision of an open-minded and kind society, which is true for the privileged world of, say, celebrities, but is not always the case elsewhere. Casual homophobia has not been erased by semantic optimism. Read more
UK: 1 in 2 young people say they are not 100% heterosexual
Invented by Alfred Kinsey in the 1940s, the Kinsey scale plots individuals on a range of sexual dispositions from exclusively heterosexual at 0 through to exclusively homosexual at 6. Asked to plot themselves on a 'sexuality scale', 72% of the British public place themselves at the completely heterosexual end of the scale, while 4% put themselves at the completely homosexual end and 19% say they are somewhere in between.
With each generation, people see their sexuality as less fixed in stone. The results for 18-24 year-olds are particularly striking, as 43% place themselves in the non-binary area between 1 and 5 and 52% place themselves at one end or the other. Of these, only 46% say they are completely heterosexual and 6% as completely homosexual. Read More
US: Boy Scouts ends ban on gay leaders
The Boy Scouts of America ended its blanket ban on gay leaders , following an executive board vote that capped off several months of quick movement on the issue. “The national executive board ratified a resolution removing the national restriction on openly gay leaders and employees,” Boy Scouts President Robert Gates said in a video announcing the news. Under the new policy, however, individually chartered troops — many of which are backed by churches — will be allowed to continue the ban.
“The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is deeply troubled by today’s vote,” the church said in a statement. “The admission of openly gay leaders is inconsistent with the doctrines of the Church and what have traditionally been the values of the Boy Scouts of America.”
“While this isn’t a complete victory, it’s an enormous step forward,” said Brian Peffly, who was kicked out of the Boy Scouts this spring because he is gay. “We so much closer to getting back to being about what scouting is all about, going on camping trips and teaching how to build fires and tie knots and lash poles together and build stuff,” he said, “and learning to be a good leader and good friend and good citizen in the midst of all that.” Read More
Vietnam: Hundreds of transgender people who had reassignment surgery request new identification
Nearly 600 transgender people in Vietnam who underwent sex reassignment surgery have proposed having their names and identification papers changed in accordance with their reassigned gender. The information was announced by a representative of the Maternal and Child Health Department under the Ministry of Health.
The ministry has also suggested adding transgender people’s identification adjustment to a draft amendment to the Civil Code. According to the ministry’s staff, current regulations do not allow the modification of transgender people's identification. The only exception is for people who have a gender which is different from their looks due to defects in chromosomes or genitals.
Studies presented at a seminar on trans people at Ho Chi Minh City University last year showed that it is usually hard for young transgender people to access social and health services as well as land jobs because they do not have appropriate identification. Trans people face significant challenges because their appearance differs from the image on their ID card. Read More
Brazil: Rio de Janeiro prisons seek to protect transgender inmates
Brazil’s penitentiaries are notorious for rampant overcrowding and violence endured by all inmates. But advocates say few prisoners are as vulnerable as transgender people, who are often singled out for taunting, physical, and sexual abuse. In Rio de Janeiro, new regulations aim to curb such abuse within the state’s 52 penitentiaries. Advocates have hailed the rules that ban discrimination against transgender prisoners and protect their gender identities while behind bars.
“In Brazil, even regular prisoners are an invisible to society at large. Transgender prisoners are doubly invisible and vulnerable,” said Claudio Nascimento, who heads the Rio Without Homophobia advocacy group, which lobbied for the new rules. The rules allow transgender inmates to be known by their common, rather than only their legal names. They guarantee access to conjugal visits and let transgender people who identify as female decide whether to serve their sentences in a women’s facility.
Rio’s new measures were adopted amid an outcry over the brutal beating in April of a trans woman at a detention center in neighboring Sao Paulo state. Police are investigating allegations that officers tortured Veronica Bolina after graphic photos of her went viral online. In images taken before her detention, Bolina is striking, with cat eyes, prominent cheekbones and flowing hair. After, she’s unrecognizable, her hair roughly shorn, her face a patchwork of lesions, & her eyes swollen shut. Read More
UK: Powerful Ministry of Defense campaign aims to challenge sexual assaults
A campaign launched by the Ministry of Defence aims to tackle the issue of rape in the armed forces. The campaign features a number of soldiers – both male and female – who are the victims of sexual assault. The posters aim to disspel the idea that ‘not saying no’ is enough – with the slogan “Don’t Kid Yourself! Without consent it’s rape”.
One of the posters features someone speculating: “He’s gay, he would have been gagging for it.” Others feature heterosexual pairings, with one soldier remarking of a woman: “Yeah, she just lay there, but I had fun.” Army chief General Sir Nick Carter launched the campaign after a survey found a shocking 40% of women in the armed forces have received unwanted comments of a sexual nature in the past year.
An Army spokesperson said: “The Consent Campaign, which has been endorsed by Rape Crisis and Stonewall, is the latest in a number of internal initiatives that the Army has launched to ensure all of its employees act lawfully and treat each other in a way that is consistent with our values and standard.” Read More
India: Government's Census recognizes transgenders as third gender
After being counted as 'males' by the Indian Government's Census department for decades, the transgender community for the first time found mention in a survey report released by the National Crime Records Bureau. In its new report of 2014, the NCRB recorded the deaths and suicides of the transgender community, making it the first time that transgenders have been recognised as a separate category in an official survey undertaken by the ministry of home affairs.
Transgender activists believe that induction of a third category in a National level survey marks a new beginning. However, there were some who said that in India where there is very little awareness about the rights of transgenders, categorising the community for the first time in NCRB survey might not be the ideal start.
"It seems like a good step but for people to recognise us as a people with equal rights, we would have preferred other concrete steps instead of featuring in a survey about deaths," said Rudrani, a Delhi based transgender activist.
"Another reason for suicide can be the lack of opportunities faced by the community be it in getting an education or jobs," said Rurani. The data provided by NCRB corroborated Rudrani--Out of the 16 people who allegedly committed suicide four were un-employed, two were self employed while profession of 10 others falls under "other professions". The economic status showed that 12 of them earned less than 1 lakh rupees. Read More
Sister Monica’s secret ministry to transgender people
Sister Monica lives alone in a small house at the edge of a Roman Catholic college run by a community of nuns. She doesn’t want to reveal the name of the town where she lives, the name of her Catholic order, or her real name. Sister Monica lives in hiding, so that others may live in plain sight.
Now in her early 70s and semiretired because of health problems, she remains committed to her singular calling for the past 16 years: ministering to transgender people and helping them come out of the shadows. “Many transgender people have been told there’s something wrong with them,” she said. “They have come to believe that they cannot be true to themselves and be true to God. There is no way we can pray, or be in communion with God, except in the truth of who we are.” Read More
Australia: Fact or fiction? A mother and father are better than same-sex parents
Riding the momentum of the Irish referendum and US supreme court ruling legalising same-sex marriage, there are expectations Australian legislators will change the Marriage Act. A cross-party bill to legalise same-sex marriage is expected to be introduced in the Federal Parliament. But passage of the bill is not guaranteed, and many MPs are against the change.
An argument often used against legalising same-sex marriage by groups like the Australian Christian Lobby, and even a group of 40 religious leaders from multiple faiths, is that gay marriage will have a negative impact on children's wellbeing. Opponents of same-sex marriage, including groups like Family Voice Australia claim that studies show a man and a woman are best placed to raise children.
ABC Fact Check took a look at the research on the effects of gender on parenting and found most studies from the US and from Australia saw no difference between families headed by homosexual or heterosexual couples. Read More
Portugal: Finally, a 'gay couple holding hands in public' video that won't ruin your day
In the past two weeks, viral videos from Ukraine, Russia, and Israel have shown us how dangerous it can be for gay men to holds hands in public. But a new version of the same "social experiment" offers some hope for humanity.
"There was no hate, threat, punches — not even a single verbal abuse," Lorenzo reported in the video. Some people stared, but he and Pedro felt that these weren't "negative stares," but rather evidence of surprise or curiosity. Before shooting the video, Lorenzo and Pedro rarely held hands in public.
Maybe they were a "bit frightened," they explained. Seeing how people of Lisbon reacted to them change that. "We felt respected and free," he said. "We felt what any straight or gay couple should feel: comfortable." Read More