Young U.S. Catholics overwhelmingly accepting of homosexuality

Fully 85% of self-identified Catholics ages 18-29 said in a 2014 Pew Research Center survey that homosexuality should be accepted by society, compared with just 13% who said it should be discouraged. Older age groups are less likely to favor acceptance. But even among Catholics ages 65 and older, 57% say that homosexuality should be accepted.  Read More

Meanwhile, antigay politician Rick Santorum claims young people support LGBT rights only because gay activists have kept them from hearing the alternative view. Read More 

Conservative Cardinal Who Clashed With Pope Francis Confirms He Has Been Ousted

A top cardinal told BuzzFeed News that the worldwide meeting of church leaders coming to a close in Rome seemed to have been designed to “weaken the church’s teaching and practice” with the apparent blessing of Pope Francis. 

Internal discontent among conservatives inside church leadership began to simmer over in the weeks leading up to the synod. In an apparent attempt to mollify anglophone conservatives, the Vatican released a new translation of the report that changed the phrase “welcoming homosexual persons” to “providing for homosexual persons” and made other small changes, while leaving the versions in all other languages unchanged. Read More

Church should not fear change, pope says at synod close

Pope Francis has closed an assembly of Catholic bishops that revealed deep divisions on how to respond to homosexuality and divorce, saying on Sunday the Church should not be afraid of change and new challenges.

The working session of the gathering ended on Saturday night with a final document that reversed a historic acceptance of gays by the Church made just a week earlier -- a result some progressives see as a setback for Francis. Read More

Woman Slit Lesbian Sister's Throat after She Refused to Stop Dating Women

Azerbaijani police have arrested a woman who killed her sister after she found out she was a lesbian. LGBT Azerbaijan Alliance has called the incident “a hate crime against LGBT people.” Read More

Activists condemn Singapore court gay ruling

Human rights groups have condemned a Singapore court's decision that a law banning gay sex is constitutional. Under Section 377A, men who engage in "gross indecency" privately or publicly can be jailed for up to two years. Singapore, which largely remains conservative, has seen intense debate in recent years over gay rights.

Human Rights Watch called the decision "a major setback for equal rights", adding that it "tramples upon basic rights to privacy, equality and non-discrimination" and "gives carte blanche for discrimination and reinforces prejudice". Read More 

Fire Sweeps Through Kiev's Oldest Movie Theater During LGBT Movie

A fire has swept through the landmark Zhovten movie theatre in Ukraine's capital Kiev during the showing of an LGBT movie. Initial media reports cited movie-goers as saying the fire may have been started by arsonists who were outraged by the screening of the gay-themed film. Others suggested a connection with a business dispute that saw the movie theater fighting to avoid eviction from its building. The theatre, opened in 1931, suffered severe damage in the incident. Read More

Dozens of anti-gay Russian nationalists swarm three gay rights activists

Two young women and a man campaigning for gay rights in Russia were met with about 100 nationalist protesters on Sunday, who threw tomatoes and shouted anti-gay abuse. 

Dozens of nationalists gathered in the southern city of Lipetsk over the weekend to oppose a rally of three gay rights activists, a news report said.

Two young women and a man met Sunday in Lipetsk and walked to the city's central Sobornaya Ploshchad, where their demonstration for LGBT rights had been expected to take place, local news site LRNews reported. The rally was greeted by about 100 nationalists and conservative activists, as well as police officers deployed to prevent violence, the report said.

One of the rally participants, who gave her name as Reida Linn, said she and her friends wanted to draw public attention to “fighting homophobia, discrimination and violations of the Constitution and of the rights of LGBT people,” LRNews reported. Read More

Jamaica: Unchecked Homophobic Violence

LGBT Jamaicans are vulnerable to both physical and sexual violence and many live in constant fear, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. They are taunted, threatened, fired from their jobs, thrown out of their homes, or worse: beaten, stoned, raped, or killed.

The 86-page report, “Not Safe at Home: Violence and Discrimination Against LGBT People in Jamaica,” documents 56 cases of violence in which victims reported they were targeted because of their actual or perceived sexual identity. Read More

Jamaican Coalition Wants Buggery Punished Severely

The Coalition for a Healthy Society is urging Jamaican courts to increase punishment for the crime of 'Buggery' which has a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

Committee member Delroy Chuck quizzed the Coalition on whether it would accede to some flexibility in law in respect to what he described as private morality. "If two males live together, do you believe it is the business of the State to investigate what they are doing within the confines of their bedroom?" Chuck questioned.

Head of the Coalition Dr Wayne West said if he had been asked the question five years ago he would have been inclined to support the position "because I have no intention of peeping into anybody's bedroom". However, West quipped, "when your neighbour's house is on fire you better take note of it". He argued that what is taking place in the bedroom is now being forced on persons in the public square.  Read More

Palau legalizes gay sex: Eight Pacific countries still have anti-gay laws

The Pacific island nation of Palau has decriminalized gay sex in a revision of its penal code. Gay sex used to be punishable by up to ten years in jail but lesbian sex was legal.

Dr Paula Gerber, president of LGBTI rights group Kaleidoscope Australia, said, 'This is wonderful news - giving a much need impetus to the process for reform in the Pacific. It is especially pleasing to see that recommendations made during the UN Universal Periodic Review process appear to have had an impact. Read More

Turkey gets its first umbrella LGBTI organization to fight homophobia

A new organization, the first in Turkey to ensure LGBTI websites, groups and organizations has been established to fight homophobia and transphobia in the Islamic country that straddles Europe and Asia. In existence since less than two months, the organization was created in order to ensure unity and solidarity among LGBTI groups, LGBTI websites and LGBTI organizations. Read More

The Obama Brief: How Obama Transformed the Federal Judiciary

To the extent that there is an Obama legal legacy, it centers on gay rights and voting rights, subjects that the President addresses more with caution than with passion.

In July, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued a ruling that threatened the future of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. By a vote of two to one, the court held, in Halbig v. Burwell, that the insurance subsidies that allow millions of Americans to buy health insurance were contrary to the text of the law and thus were illegal. If such a decision had been made earlier in Obama’s tenure, lawyers for his Administration would have been left with a single, risky option: an appeal to the politically polarized, and usually conservative, Supreme Court. Read More