UK: How do you prove you are gay? A culture of disbelief is traumatising asylum seekers

Ugandan man, Robert Kityo, was denied asylum last week on the basis that the Home Office wasn’t sufficiently convinced that he was gay. The question of evidence is the problem facing gay men and lesbians seeking protection in the UK because of persecution due to their sexuality. 

It used to be the case that claims for asylum from gay men and lesbians were refused as the Home Office reasoned claimants could return to their home countries and just be discreet: refrain from same-sex relationships and hide their sexuality.

It took a case at the supreme court to overturn this. In the same way as you cannot be expected to hide your religion, the court said you couldn’t be expected to hide your sexuality. Since then, the Home Office has changed tack in the way it refuses these asylum claims. Instead of telling applicants to be discreet, it just doesn’t believe them when they say they are gay.

So how do you prove you are gay? No one arrives in the UK with a certificate stating their sexuality, just as no one in the UK has such a certificate. Instead applicants have to rely on the believability of their oral testimony at their Home Office interview. Read more via the Guardian

US: How these gay and bisexual members of congress sold out desperate LGBT Syrian refugees

"Our people are being thrown off buildings and they're stoned to death," Neil Grungras, the executive director of the Organization for Refuge, Asylum & Migration, told me this week, speaking about the plight of LGBT people in the grip of ISIS in Syria. The photos and videos of gruesome atrocities committed against them have gone viral around the world, with reports of men executed on the charge of engaging in sodomy. Michael Lavers at The Washington Blade has done a great deal of reporting on this ghastly reality, quoting leaders of LGBT refugee support groups and others who discuss blood-curdling reports of violence by ISIS. 

"You couldn't get more desperate," Grugras said. "You couldn't get a situation that's more shouting for justice." Those LGBT Syrians that do make it to Turkey or elsewhere as refugees seeking permanent, new homes, find themselves with little support, he said, facing rampant anti-gay discrimination, police brutality and poverty, often forced into sex work and put in dangerous situations.

These stories are among the many reasons why an intense backlash continues against gay and bisexual Democratic lawmakers in the U.S. House -- Jared Polis of Colorado, Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona -- who cowardly voted last week with the GOP and 44 other Democrats for the SAFE Act, a bill that, according to many refugee experts, would effectively shut down an already overburdened vetting process for Syrian and Iraqi refugees that takes up to two years.  Read more via Huffington Post 

Kenya: Gay Ugandans regret fleeing

Hundreds of people in Uganda's LGBT community have fled the country to escape homophobia and persecution. But many are now stuck in Kenya where the situation is not much better. Even the UNHCR - the very group tasked with protected LGBT people - has admitted its own staff are hostile. The deputy head of protection for UNHCR told me that staff have said that as Christians they could not work with, or talk to, a gay man.

Some of the Ugandans I spoke to also told me this discrimination from UNHCR staff has led to delays in determining their refugee status, making them live with uncertainty about their future.

"In Uganda we were unsafe and here it's the same," said Blessed, not his real name.
He was a church pastor in Uganda and fled to Kakuma 18 months ago after his name was published in a local newspaper, which said he was gay. He received death threats and had to leave his family behind. "I don't know if I will ever see them again," he said.
"First I have to survive being here and then maybe one day I can entertain that thought."

The Ugandans have to sleep in shifts - taking it in turns to guard their compounds at night, after an attempt this year to burn it down. And that is not the only threat they have received. A few weeks back, hate leaflets were circulated around the camp asking people not to mix with the LGBT community there.   Read more via the BBC 

Canada: Government to accept gay Syrian refugees

The Canadian Liberal government announced it will sponsor queer men as part of its pledge to take in 25,000 Syrian refugees — though it’s asking local groups for help.

In a media briefing, officials said the government will make it a priority to sponsor classes of people which includes “single adult men only if identified as vulnerable due to membership in LGBTI community.” Other priority groups include people who are “members of the LGBTI community,” as well as “women at risk” and “complete families.” Officials say they’ve consistently prioritized those groups of Syrians since 2013.

The announcement comes after conflicting media reports that the government would not be taking in single young men.

Conservative MP Michelle Rempel said it’s important the government prioritize “those who are facing immediate threats of genocide,” including LGBT Syrians. Rempel argued their plight shows why the Liberal government should reverse its plan to pull out of airstrikes against ISIS. 

Read more via DailyXtra
 

Iran: This gay man sold a kidney to escape to Turkey

There was only one way Danial could think of to get out of Iran: He would have to sell his kidney. Danial risked his life to get to Turkey, trusting that the refugee system would look after him when he got there. Instead, it was just the beginning of his problems. 

His situation felt hopeless. His mother had confronted him about being gay one December morning in 2013. By noon he had fled the family home, taking nothing but the clothes on his back and 50,000 rials — about $2 — in his pocket. 

“I had no way forward, no way backwards — I just wanted to escape from that place,” Danial said. For most Iranians, getting to Turkey would be as simple as buying a plane ticket, which can cost less than $200; a few hundred LGBT Iranians make this trip every year because it’s an easy jumping-off point to a new life in the West. Iranian passport holders don’t need a visa to enter Turkey, and the United Nations fast-tracks LGBT refugees for resettlement because it considers them especially vulnerable.

But Danial couldn’t get an Iranian passport. He was the son of an Afghan. 

Read more via Buzzfeed
 

US: 'This Book Is Gay,' LGBT book for teens, is challenged Alaska

A book intended for LGBT young adults is being challenged in the Wasilla, Alaska, public library by residents who want to see it reshelved or removed, reports the Alaska Dispatch News.

James Dawson's "This Book Is Gay" is currently shelved in the library's juvenile nonfiction section. Wasilla resident Vanessa Campbell petitioned for the book to be moved to the adult section after her 10-year-old son came across the book, which contains profanity and sexually explicit passages. The library's director, Kathy Martin-Albright, declined to move the book, and the Campbell family is appealing her decision.

According to the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, Wasilla residents attacked the book at a Wasilla City Council meeting. Emily Hardy, who opposes the book being in the juvenile section, said: "I can't imagine what kind of person would order that material and want to make it readily available for children. That is straight-up pedophile kind of behavior."

Several schoolchildren attended the meeting, telling the city council that "they didn't want 'gay books' or books about gay people in the library at all."  Read more via Alaska Dispatch

Australia: Safe Schools Coalition and Minus 18 launch LGBTI lessons for teachers

It was a crush on the singer Pink that made Jaime realise she was different to other girls in her Year 8 class. Now 17 years old, it has been four years since she came out to her classmates as gay. It was a terrifying experience. "Lesbian or gay or trans people had never been talked about in a positive light in year 7 or 8. It had always been, 'don't be such a lezzo' or' that's so gay'," she said. "That really scared me and it made me feel quite anxious because I felt like I was holding in this big secret and I couldn't talk to anyone about it for fear of being shunned."

Jaimee is one of seven lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) young people telling their story as part of a groundbreaking teacher's resource to be used in year 7 and 8 classrooms. All of Us is the first resource of its kind to be funded by the federal government's Department of Education, and will be available to all schools in both the public and private sector.

Commissioned by LGBTI youth group Minus 18 and Safe Schools Coalition Australia – which has more than 470 member schools dedicated to making classrooms more inclusive and reducing bullying against same-sex attracted and gender diverse students -  it will form part of the health and physical education curriculum.  Read more via Sydney Morning Herald

China: Dream of the bed chamber

“Sex, sex, sexual intercourse, penis, penis, vagina.” More than 150 undergraduates are sitting in a lecture hall at China Agricultural University in Beijing, shouting loudly. Many are sexually active, yet for most it is the first sex education class they have attended.

Their instructor hopes that shouting such words will help youngsters talk more openly about sex. Lu Zhongbao, a 24-year-old student, says he was told as a child that he “emerged from a rock”. When he started having sex with his university girlfriend he had little idea about contraception. This evening he arrived an hour early armed with another question: will masturbating damage his health?

It is not just China’s economy that has loosened up since 1979. The country is in the midst of a sexual revolution. But a lack of sex education means that many are not protecting themselves, resulting in soaring abortion rates and a rise in sexually transmitted diseases. Education on the subject is compulsory in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan—societies that have some cultural similarities with China. But most Chinese schools teach only basic anatomy.

Where classes happen, most students are merely given a textbook. “Happy Middle School Students”, written for 12- to 15-year-olds in 2006 and still widely used, refers to sperm meeting egg without describing the mechanics of intercourse. A more explicit volume for primary-school pupils published in 2011, which did explain how sperm were delivered, was criticised for being pornographic. Read more via The Economist 

Japan: Teacher helps fill school void on LGBT issues

Despite rising sensitivity toward sexual minorities in Japan, schools have a long way to go to improve the environment for LGBT students. But an elementary school teacher from Mie Prefecture hopes her efforts will result in change.

Takako Ogura, 57, a teacher at a public grade school in the town of Meiwa, has introduced her own textbook to teach students about gender identity disorders and related issues in her health and physical education classes. According to a recent survey by advertising giant Dentsu Inc., 1 in 13, or 7.6 percent, of 70,000 people polled consider themselves part of the LGBT community. 

To address the situation, the education ministry in April issued a notice calling on all elementary, junior high and high schools to take measures to prevent bullying and discrimination against LGBT students. Ministry officials, however, admit that school textbooks lack information to encourage students to deepen their understanding on the issue.  Read more via Japan Times

US: Tipping point or state of emergency? Real talk about transgender women of color

While the scales have tipped for some transgender and gender nonconforming (TGNC) individuals, notably those with access to wealth or those that fit a mainstream beauty ideal, the rest are left behind. Members of TGNC communities of color are having a different discussion. In panels and forums, on social media, in conversation, they are saying, “The transgender tipping point is crushing us.”

The notion that we as a society have arrived at a time and place in which TGNC people have gained equality is misleading. It creates an illusion of safety, reinforcing a binary gender system and excluding TGNC people at the margins—those most deeply affected by the intersections of racism, homophobia, transphobia, and poverty. The “transgender community” is not one community but many communities. Recent advancements in legislation and health care have greatly benefited some, but the progress is not equally distributed, and the increased visibility does not equal acceptance, which is clear when we consider the realities of many Black and Latina TGNC women’s lives.

Barely one year after being featured in TIME, Laverne Cox herself declared a “state of emergency” for TGNC people. And this is why...  Read more via Psychology Benefits

Marking Transgender Day of Remembrance around the globe

On November 20, LGBT and allied people will gather to honor Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR). TDOR is an annual event that gives communities an opportunity to come together and remember transgender people, gender-expansive individuals, and those perceived to be transgender who have been murdered because of hate.

Several transgender women have been killed in Argentina in the past few months, including transgender activist Diana Sacayán. It’s been reported that transgender people have been murdered in El Salvador and most recently, a transgender man in Japan was brutally murdered.

Transgender Europe’s Trans Murder Monitoring (TMM) project reported that at least 1,700 transgender and gender-expansive people were killed in the last seven years. Brazil and Mexico have the highest number of reported murders of transgender and gender-expansive people. Despite these tragedies, HRC’s Equality Rising report also details progress being made by the transgender and intersex advocates to end discrimination, harassment and violence.   Read more via Human Rights Campaign

Activist outed as a 'top gay' by a Kenyan tabloid answers your questions

Lawyer Eric Gitari shares his experiences of being harassed, publicly shamed and fighting for LGBT rights. In May a leading Kenyan tabloid, Citizen, ran a picture of Eric Gitari and nine of his compatriots on their front page. The news splash? They were were being outed as “top gays”.

Life in Kenya is not easy for the LGBT community, who have to contend with daily stigma, the threat of mob violence and lengthy prison sentences. Gitari, who is a lawyer and human rights activist, is undeterred by this and recently secured a major legal victory for the community.

After a long fight, Kenya’s high court ruled that his organisation, the National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, could be formally registered in Kenya. This paved the way for similar organisations also supporting the community to follow suit.

Shortly afterwards, Citizen ran their front page. The next battle on Gitari’s hands is a lawsuit he has filed against the state over forced HIV testing and anal examinations, which the government says can determine men’s sexuality. Read more via the Guardian