At long last the International Olympic Committee will change the wording of the Olympic Charter to include protection from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. This development was part of 40 recommendations published today ahead of next month’s IOC meeting in Monaco, where IOC President Thomas Bach’s “Agenda 2020” process will conclude with significant changes to the bidding process for and organization of the Olympic Games. The change in language is significant. Read More
I’m an evangelical minister. I now support the LGBT community — and the church should, too.
For Christians, the LGBT debate has always been framed as a question of sexual ethics. Our argument has centered on six or seven biblical passages that appear to mention homosexuality negatively or appear to establish a heterosexual norm. For most of my career, these ideas formed the foundation of my views and teachings as an evangelical minister and professor of Christian ethics. I co-authored a popular textbook that stated this position flatly: “Homosexual conduct is one form of sexual expression that falls outside the will of God.” I wasn’t mean about it. But I said it.
In recent years, my moral position has shifted. It has dawned on me with shocking force that homosexuality is not primarily an issue of Christian sexual ethics. It’s primarily an issue of human suffering. With that realization, I have now made the radical decision to stand in solidarity with the LGBT community. Read More
The LGBT Kids Who Flee Their Countries And Their Families For The U.S.
Some of the thousands of Central American children trying to get to the United States are seeking a love and acceptance they can’t get at home. Advocates say most LGBT migrants don’t petition for asylum in Mexico, largely because it doesn’t promise the same work opportunities as the U.S., and Mexico also has high rates of anti-LGBT violence. Advocates who work with LGBT people seeking asylum in the U.S. say that Mexico is among the most common countries their clients are fleeing. Read More
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