Nigeria: Coming out, ‘Hate, isolation, loneliness may come’

Among trends that produce change, the process of coming out is one that can subtly persuade a society of the importance of recognizing the human rights of LGBTI people. When enough friends, colleagues, family members and celebrities come out, fear and hatred of LGBTI people tend to dissolve.

But for an individual, coming out can be risky, especially in an intensely homophobic country. Mike Daemon, host of the Nigeria-based No Strings podcasts, highlights those risks in the podcasts’ latest episode, titled “Should I come out?” 

“It’s a life-changing decision,” he says of coming out. But “how safe will you be when this decision is finally made?” Some Nigerian parents have turned a son over to police after learning that he is gay, he says. Read more via 76Crimes

South Africa: Lobola from a gay perspective

Not only did loving couple Sape ‘Moude’ Maodi and Antoinette ‘Vaivi’ Swartz have to overcome prejudice against their relationship because they are both women, but the issue of paying lobola once they decided to get married was another challenge for them and their families.

Lobola is traditionally considered to be an exchange between a man and a woman and their families, with the woman often being the recipient of the lobola. Ten years after the decision to legalise gay marriage in South Africa, there appears to be a slight shift in some traditional circles around homosexuality. Prof Pitika Ntuli at Tshwane University of Technology said that being gay does not exclude one from being African. “If you look at isangoma, you see that homosexual practises are common,” he said.

Sape and Vaivi wished from the start of their relationship in 2009, to express their love publicly and do so in a traditional way that reflects their culture. On the day of the lobola negotiations in 2012, Sape’s family acknowledged to the ancestors that what was happening was something new, reassured them they have seen two women and admitted they were yet to learn. Read more via the Citizen

US: Safe place program rolls out to Starbucks stores in Seattle

One of the first things Jim Ritter did when he became LGBTQ liaison officer for the Seattle Police Department earlier this year was to page through reports of hate crimes. The numbers indicated a possible modest uptick in attacks and menacing behavior aimed at the gay community. Anecdotally, however, Ritter was encountering something very different.

“I’m getting calls from people saying it had happened to them or their friends,” Ritter recalled. “I’m getting calls from people and they’re not matching up with the reports I have. I’d say, ‘Well, did you report these?’ and they’d say no. It was clear to me that this was a huge problem for us, because if we don’t know about it we can’t devote resources to it.”

That realization that hate crimes were more frequent than the numbers indicated prompted Ritter to create the Seattle Police Department Safe Place program. Designed to identify plentiful safe and secure places for victims of anti-LGBTQ-related crimes and harassment, SPD Safe Place’s mission is intentionally uncomplicated. Window clings with the program’s rainbow logo are circulated to Seattle area businesses and public facilities identifying them as places where staff who’ve received SPD Safe Place training will call 911 and allow victims to remain on the premises until police arrive.   Read more via Starbucks 

UK: LGBT tech workers to gather at Facebook to ‘MakeStuffBetter’

InterTech, the UK-based LGBT network for those who work in the tech industries, have announced that its next event will be a #MakeStuffBetter Holiday Hackathon at the offices of Facebook in Euston, London.

The 24-hour event will run from on Saturday 12 December. They’re wanting tech workers who can aid in the creation of products that may spread tolerance, promote health or create awareness.

Previous hackathons have led to the creation of the LGBT Whip, a website that allows you to check on the voting record of MPs, and online, stereotype-questioning game Hansel in Distress. Read more via Gay Star News 

Some top-ranked companies on LGBT scorecard work in harshly anti-LGBT nations

Companies doing business in countries with harsh anti-LGBT laws are among the top scorers in the Human Rights Campaign’s first ever corporate LGBT scorecard to consider international operations alongside domestic ones. HRC launches its 14th annual Corporate Equality Index, which scores hundreds of companies on measures like health insurance coverage for transgender workers and employee benefits for employees’ same-sex partners. 

Only one area that employers were scored on this year actually applied to work overseas: whether the company has a nondiscrimination policy covering LGBT workers that applies throughout its global operations. Some of the companies that met this requirement have operations in countries that not only make same-sex relationships or wearing non-gender conforming clothing illegal, but actively seek out LGBT people for arrest, have extreme jail sentences or flogging as penalties, or criminalize support for LGBT rights.

In such countries, invoking a company’s nondiscrimination protections might require LGBT employees to out themselves to company officers in a way that could expose them to arrest or extortion. That could mean policies on paper have little effect on the ground, or might force companies into difficult confrontations with local governments. Read more via Buzzfeed 

Asia: Global HIV targets ‘could be derailed’ by hook up apps

A new UN report cites the boom in hook-up apps as one of the drivers of a worsening HIV epidemic in Asia. The report found that HIV infections had surged among young people, aged 10-19, in the Asia-Pacific region. 

Analysing data from Thailand, it notes: “Bangkok’s intensifying HIV epidemic among young MSM is largely a result of extensive sexual risk-taking, a higher number of partners, overall increased biological vulnerability through unprotected anal sex with an HIV positive partner, low uptake of HIV testing, and an earlier age of first sex – frequently in the low to mid-teens.

“The explosion of smartphone gay dating apps has expanded the options for casual spontaneous sex as never before – mobile app users in the same vicinity (if not the same street) can locate each other and arrange an immediate sexual encounter with a few screen touches.” Read more via PinkNews 

Grindr and World AIDS Day 2015

When we created Grindr for Equality, we envisioned education and support for sexual health in addition to our work for LGBTQ rights. Today, World AIDS Day, we proudly recommit to these efforts, which exist in a four-pronged plan for your health. In the latter half of 2015, we took a deep dive into the third piece of this plan, as we sought to understand our users’ experience with pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP.

So along with our partners at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation (SFAF) and with help from the Center for Disease Control and the Gilead science team, we fielded a survey and heard from Grindr users who shared their experiences. We’re very excited here to be able to share a little bit of what we found.  Read more via Grindr

Grindr and other hook-up apps offer free adverts to HIV testing service

Three dating apps popular with gay and bisexual men – Grindr, Hornet and Planet Romeo – have announced that they are to host free advertising to promote a new, mobile-optimized  European HIV Test Finder. 

The test finder was devised by Aidsmap and lists over 2,000 HIV testing centers and clinics in all 28 EU countries. The initiative has been organized by a pan-country group of HIV organizations, including Terrence Higgins Trust in the UK, Soak Aids in the Netherlands and RSFL (Sweden), the European Centre of Disease Prevention, among others.

Dr Andrew Amato-Gauci, Head of the ECDC Programme on HIV/AIDS, STI and viral hepatitis said in a statement: ‘Across Europe, 47 per cent of newly reported HIV cases are diagnosed late although we know that those tested early are a lot less likely to pass the virus on to others because of both lower infectivity when on treatment and changes in sexual and drug injecting behavior.

‘Whether on your computer or on your mobile phone, with the European HIV Test Finder it will only take you a few seconds to locate a testing site near you – wherever you are in Europe.” Read more via Gay Star News 

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