Italy: Poor turnout for Rome anti-gay union protest

Tens of thousands of people gathered in Rome's Circus Maximus arena to protest against a civil unions bill for same-sex couples, a hot-potato issue for Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's government.

But while organisers had been hoping to attract one million people and authorities had prepared for 500,000, journalists at the scene estimated the numbers to be in the tens of thousands. Official numbers were not immediately available.
   
"Without limits, our society will go mad!" organiser Massimo Gandolfini told the "Family Day" rally, as grandparents, parents and children held up banners reading "Wrong is wrong" in the capital's ancient Roman chariot racing stadium.  

 Read more via The Local
 

Italy: Thousands march for gay rights

A bill, which the Senate will start examining on Thursday, is the first to get to parliament. If approved, the draft legislation will enable same-sex couples to commit themselves to one another before a state official, to take each other's names and, in certain circumstances, adopt each other's children and inherit each other's residual pension rights.

"The first time I marched with these slogans, it was 10 years ago, and I was pregnant. I hope this time it works," said bank worker Costanza Tantillo, who joined the Rome protest with her partner and their two children, nine-year-old Beatrice and Ludovico, four.

Two women who marched nearby held up a sign that read: "Stella and Paola, we've been together for 30 years and you still don't acknowledge us." Protests had been planned for 90 towns and cities across Italy, under the slogan "Wake up Italy! It's time to be civil."  Read more via The Local 

A history of same-sex unions in Europe

As Italy’s Senate prepares to vote on the introduction of civil unions, we take a look at the rights of gay and lesbian couples across the continent. Legal recognition of same-sex partnerships is far from uniform across Europe.
 
Even within the EU laws differ significantly. The bloc’s website describes the differences between the 28 member states as “huge”. 

Read more via Guardian
 

European Parliament calls on Kosovo and Serbia to step up efforts on LGBTI rights

The European Parliament adopted two of its annual progress reports for candidate and potential candidate EU countries. MEPs have assessed the rights of LGBTI people in Serbia and Kosovo, and recommended the countries to improve the situation.

Discrimination, hate speech and hate crime against LGBTI people, remain a strong concern for the Parliament in both countries. In this regard, the Parliament stresses its concern that the processing and investigation of such cases remains insufficient. Read more via Intergroup on LGBT rights

European Parliament gravely concerned over situation LGBTI people in Crimea

The European Parliament adopted a resolution on the human rights situation in Crimea and the severe restrictions on the freedoms of expression, association and peaceful assembly.

The resolution starts out by strongly condemning “the unprecedented levels of human rights abuses perpetrated against Crimean residents” (paragraph 2) following the Russian annexation.

Tanja Fajon MEP, Vice-President of the European Parliament Intergroup on LGBTI Rights, reacted: “I am deeply concerned about the situation for LGBTI people in Crimea. With homophobic rhetoric coming from the highest levels, and violence going completely unpunished, it is no wonder that many see no other option than leaving the peninsula.”  Read more via Intergroup on LGBT Rights

Indonesia: Minister on back foot over anti-gay remarks

A minister has found himself on the receiving end of angry scorn and fierce criticism following comments he made attacking the LGBT community. Research, Technology and Higher Education Minister Muhammad Nasir took to his Twitter account @menristekdikti on Monday to clarify the statement he made on Sunday, in which he said that LGBT “corrupted the nation's morals”.

Nasir agreed that members of the LGBT community, as Indonesian citizens, were entitled to equality before the law: "But that does not mean that the state legitimizes the LGBT status. Only their rights as citizens must be guaranteed by the state," he tweeted on Monday to his 16,500 followers.

His earlier comments that LGBT elements should be barred from universities as there were "values and moral standards to uphold" met with a wave of public fury and criticism.

A petition issued on change.org by a student named Poedjiati Tan from Surabaya demands that Nasir withdraw his comments regarding LGBT and morality, as well as his calls for a ban on LGBT people within universities. Read more via Jakarta Post

Portugal: The President blocks adoption laws for same-sex couples – just weeks before leaving office

The new law had passed through Portugal’s Parliament last last year, granting full adoption rights to same-sex couples, and allowing lesbian couples to receive medically assisted fertilisation. Portuguese President Anibal Cavaco Silva, of the centre-right Social Democratic Party, blocked the law just two months before he is set to leave office.

He claimed in a statement that the law doesn’t regard “the child’s best interest” as a priority, which he claims is more important than equality for gay couples. He added: “It is important that such a big change on a sensitive social topic is not entered into force without a broad public debate.”

The left-wingers who dominate the country’s Parliament will try to override Silva’s veto on the issue. Despite the stalling on the issue, many same-sex couples are already raising children together in Portugal under existing laws. 

 Read more via Pink News
 

Australia: These are the queer refugees the government has locked up on a remote pacific island

Mohsen is one of more than 1,300 asylum seekers that Australia has sent, since 2012, to what is called the Manus Island detention center. It’s a facility for single men and teenage boys; several hundred women and families are being detained 1,300 miles to the east on the island nation of Nauru. They were all captured at sea while trying to reach Australia by boat from Indonesia, under a policy that even the UN secretary general has personally pleaded with the Australia’s prime minister to bring to an end.

Canberra calls this the “Pacific Solution” to the problem of people attempting to get to Australia by boat. Those it cannot force back into international waters it holds in camps outside its borders in an attempt to prevent them from asserting the right to asylum on its territory.

There’s an added fear for queer asylum seekers like Mohsen. They worry about being targeted by others in the camp, who are mostly from Iran and other countries where homosexuality is criminalized, including Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. They also are afraid of Papua New Guinea’s police force because the country’s laws punish homosexuality with up to 14 years in prison. “This place is no better than Iran,” Mohsen said. “I wish I had died on that boat 100 times a day.” 

Read more via Buzzfeed

 

India: Supreme Court refers plea against Section 377 to five-judge Bench

Moved by arguments that a person cannot be branded a criminal for his sexuality, the Supreme Court referred a batch of petitions challenging Section 377 of IPC, a colonial era law criminalising consensual sexual acts of LGBT adults in private, to a five-judge Constitution Bench for in-depth hearing. A three-judge Bench of Chief Justice of India T.S. Thakur and Justices Anil R. Dave and J.S. Khehar gave full credence to arguments that the threat imposed by Section 377 amounts to denial of the rights to privacy and dignity and results in gross miscarriage of justice.

Giving an indication that the Supreme Court will consider the constitutionality of Section 377 with new eyes, Chief Justice Thakur told senior advocate Anand Grover, appearing for petitioner Naz Foundation, that the new Bench would not limit itself to the narrow confines of the curative law and conduct a comprehensive hearing of the arguments placed for the protection of the dignity and rights of the LGBT community.

With this, what had seemed to have been the last strand of hope for the decade-old legal fight for LGBT rights has suddenly transformed into a full-fledged battle cry with the Supreme Court indirectly accepting that its past decisions upholding Section 377 IPC needs a thorough relook. Read more via the Hindu

Oral sex can raise risk for head and neck cancer by seven times

Oral sex can spread viruses that can cause head and neck cancers, according to a new study. The research shows a strong connection between the human papillomavirus (HPV), which can be spread through oral sex, and head and neck cancer. The virus can raise the risk of getting head and neck cancer by as much as seven times, and maybe by far more, scientists say. The study involved nearly 97,000 people in two studies, according to the researchers.

HPV accounts for 70% of head and neck cancer, according to experts. It is so prevalent that by 2020 it is predicted to beat cervical cancer as the main cancer caused by HPV.

Head and neck cancers were long thought to have been caused by smoking and drinking. But a sharp rise in the number of cases led doctors to speculate that there may be another cause, and the new study is the first to show conclusively that HPV-16 precedes the development of those cancers. The research, conducted by scientists at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, was published in 'JAMA Oncology'.   Read more via the Independent 

UK: PrEP, plus increased testing and treatment, could prevent nearly half of HIV infections in gay men by 2020

A new British mathematical modelling study published in The Lancet HIV has found that adding pre-exposure prophylaxis for gay men at high risk of HIV to relatively modest increases in HIV testing, and immediate treatment for those diagnosed, could substantially cut the number of gay men infected by 2020. The researchers conclude that without these interventions, the number of gay men acquiring HIV is unlikely to decrease by 2020, even if the UK achieves the ‘90-90-90’ target of 73% of all people with HIV virally suppressed by this time.

The study, which was funded by the UK Health Protection Agency (now Public Health England) also finds that behavioural changes such as reducing the number of regular sexual partners could also make substantial inroads into HIV incidence but are less powerful as individual interventions.

It finds that increases in sexual partner numbers or condomless sex would substantially reduce the effectiveness of PrEP, testing and treatment, but even a complete cessation of condom use would not totally negate the effect of other interventions: only this, combined with a decrease in HIV testing, would do so. 

Read more via AIDSmap