LGBT migrants face abuse, discrimination in Mexico

In 2013, Mexican immigration officials near the Guatemalan border took into custody Ender Manuel Martínez, an LGBT rights advocate from El Salvador, when he tried to apply for asylum because of death threats he said he received in his Central American homeland because of his activism and sexual orientation.

He alleges authorities at the facility housed him with those who were mentally ill, did not allow him to bathe, forced him to sleep on a damp floor and demanded “sexual favors” from him in exchange for better food. Officials transferred Martínez to another detention facility, but he was still subjected to sexual harassment and anti-gay discrimination and was denied emergency healthcare.

Mexican law bans anti-gay discrimination, but the country’s immigration statutes do not include LGBT-specific protections. Read More

Astounding Victory As Botswana High Court Asserts Right Of Lesbians And Gays To Register Their Own Organisation

The Gaborone High Court delivered judgment in a case concerning the Department of Labour and Home Affairs’ refusal to register the organisation Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals of Botswana (LEGABIBO). The case was brought by 20 individuals who argued that the refusal to register their organisation violated their constitutional rights, including their rights to freedom of association, freedom of expression, and equal protection of the law.

“Botswana’s HIV/AIDS National Strategic Framework 2010-2016 seeks to ensure equal access to health and social support services for all people regardless of race, creed, religious or political affiliation, sexual orientation or socio-economic status. LEGABIBO intends to work with government to improve access to health services for LGBT persons, and this judgment enables them to do so,” says Cindy Kelemi from the Botswana Network on Ethics, Law and HIV/AIDS (BONELA).  Read More 

Malaysian Court Scraps Cross-Dressing Ban in Landmark Decision

Rights group Human Rights Watch has listed Malaysia as one of the worst countries in which to be a transgender person, due to systematic abuses by religious authorities and police. Activists welcomed Friday’s ruling that gives transgender Muslims the right to cross-dress in a landmark decision overturning an Islamic law ban that could trigger similar challenges.

“Now the transgender community know they have their rights to challenge the law and not just plead guilty to charges,” said Nisha Ayub of Justice for Sisters, an LGBT group.  Read More 

Mozambique: Gay Mozambicans Demand Recognition

Lambda, the sole Mozambican association defending the rights of LGBT people, has protested publicly against the illegal refusal by the Justice Ministry to register it as a bona fide association.

On Monday Lambda took out a full page advertisement in the Maputo daily paper “Noticias” protesting at the discrimination it has suffered. Lambda first submitted its application for legal recognition as an association almost seven years ago, in January 2008.  Read More

Montenegro's Gay Pride Parade Draws About 200 Activists Despite Nation's Conservative Mindset

Protected by hundreds of riot police, about 200 gay activists marched peacefully on Sunday in Montenegro, a staunchly conservative Balkan country seeking EU membership.

Carrying banners reading "Let's Love Each Other" or "This is Just Beginning," gay activists gathered in the capital, Podgorica, as police deployed heavily, practically blocking the city center. Read More

LGBT group steps out, marches for pride and acceptance in Pune

People from all walks of life took part in the LGBT parade, which took place in the conservative Indian city. Participants covered many stretches of the city singing songs like 'Born This Way' by international pop artist Lady Gaga', the paean for fearless love 'Jab pyaar kiya toh darna kya' and 'Hum honge kamyaab'.

"Society does not accept us, but we are asserting our right to be here in this march. We respect everyone and deserve respect," said one participant who had traveled from Mumbai. Read More 

How The Bond Between Two Gay Men Produced Some Of The Finest Poems Of WWI

The warrior-poets were among the most significant chroniclers of World War I. “If I should die, think only this of me;/ That there’s some corner of a foreign field/ That is forever England” and “In Flanders fields the poppies blow/ Between the crosses, row on row” are lines that live on in the popular imagination, 100 years after the outbreak of hostilities.

But many of the finest poems of the Great War—including “Anthem for Doomed Youth” and “Dulce et Decorum Est”—might not exist were it not for the pivotal bond between two gay men who were the era’s finest war poets: Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. Read More 

Germany’s shame: Paragraph 175 and homosexuality

Gay men were not only persecuted by the Nazis, but were revictimized when liberating armies put the men they rescued from concentration camps back into prison, Dr James Waller told a Toronto lecture hall.

The Nazis, he said, rationalized their persecution of male homosexuals on the basis of their failure to reproduce for the Aryan race, their alleged propensity to “infect” youth, and their existence as a disloyal, subversive threat to the regime. Within the span of a few years, Germany went from being the home to a 1920s Berlin that had more gay bars than 1970s New York City, to more than 100,000 gay men arrested under the newly expanded Paragraph 175.

The statistics Waller cites are grim. About half the men arrested served some sort of prison term as convicted homosexuals. Between 5,000 and 15,000 gay German men were sent to concentration camps; they are often referred to as “The 175ers.” An unknown number of gay men were institutionalized in mental hospitals, castrated or committed suicide. Read More

Study: Pro-LGBT laws spur global economic growth

A study from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Williams Institute suggests pro-LGBT laws can spur economic growth in developing countries. 

The study used the Global Index on Legal Recognition of Homosexual Orientation, a Dutch research tool from the 1960s that ranks countries on whether they have decriminalized consensual same-sex sexual acts between adults and seven other factors in relation to rights for gays and lesbians. Researchers also relied upon a preliminary transgender rights index that ranks countries on anti-discrimination laws and 15 other measures.

The Global Index on Legal Recognition of Homosexual Orientation ranks countries on a scale from zero to eight. And researchers concluded that a country’s gross domestic product was $320 — or three percent higher — for each point it gained on the index.  Read More 

Latvian Minister Declares He’s Gay, Exposing New Culture War in Europe

When Latvia’s foreign minister, Edgars Rinkevics, declared on Twitter on Thursday that he was “proud to be gay,” the announcement was welcomed there by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights activists, who have faced open hostility from social conservatives in the former Soviet republic.

In neighboring countries, contrasting reactions to the minister’s declaration — and his statement, in Latvian, that he would also work for legal recognition for same-sex couples — seemed to reveal the contours of a cultural fault line on the issue in post-Cold War Europe between West and East. Read More 

Over 50% of gay population in Taiwan have suffered partner abuse

As many as over 50 percent of gay and lesbian Taiwanese have suffered abuse at the hand of their intimate partners, and nearly 10 percent of victims have never sought outside help, a new survey conducted by The Modern Women's Foundation has suggested.

The Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline Association said that many LGBT people in Taiwan do not seek assistance in abusive situations because they are afraid of being "outed" or have no trust in formal institutions. Read More

Total of Gambia’s anti-gay arrests reaches 8

A police sweep of suspected LGBT people continued in Gambia, with a total of five men, three women and one teenage boy all in custody, according to the Fatu Radio website, run by Fatu (Fatou) Camara, a journalist and former Gambian official.

Gambia secret police reportedly went door-to-door with the teenager so he could identify more people suspected of being gay or lesbian. Read More