Costa Rica: Where is Costa Rica on gay marriage? International community asks

Costa Rica made international news in 2015 when a family court judge recognized the first same-sex common-law marriage in Central America. Later that same year, Vice President Ana Helena Chacón announced a robust anti-discrimination policy for public sector workers employed by the executive branch. But since then, a bill to legalize same-sex marriage here has stalled under the weight of hundreds of amendments tacked on by evangelical lawmakers.

The Ombudsman’s Office, with assistance from the Dutch Embassy, invited Human Rights Watch’s LGBT Advocacy Director Boris Dittrich to visit Costa Rica in March to assess the situation. Here he met with government officials and members of the LGBT community.  Read more via Tico Times

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India: Old custom, new couples

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It’s a custom for which India is well known: arranged marriages, when parents pick appropriate spouses for their children based on caste, class, education and looks. By some counts, as many as three in four Indians still prefer to find a partner this way. “Matrimonial” ads — personal ads seeking brides and grooms — have been common in Indian newspapers for decades, and in the Internet age apps and websites have proliferated around the demand.

Now, an Indian-American is bringing these convenient matchmaking tools to gay men and women around the world — even if India won’t recognize their marriages yet.

“The big step for us was when the United States made gay marriage legal,” said Joshua Samson, the CEO of Arranged Gay Marriage. “We knew there is a huge underground gay and lesbian community in India, and we thought why not spread some light out there, help people who feel like they can never be helped?” Read more via PRI

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Middle East, op-ed: The myth of the queer Arab life

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For most people in the West life in the Arab world for gay people is hard to fathom. It is, like many other parts of life in this region, complicated. 

One of my favorite television shows growing up was a Ramadan special featuring an Egyptian performer called Sherihan. One year she had a Ramadan special called ‘Sherihan Around the World’, a twenty-minute singing and dancing extravaganza, which had her dressing in exquisite costumes from around the world and performing elaborate song and dance routines. Sherihan was a woman, but she was the best drag queen I had ever seen: camp, self-aware, and fabulous. She had planted in me, without my knowledge, the first seeds of my own gay identity.

Twelve years later, when I was living in Amman, my boyfriend broke up with me. I was becoming too open with my sexuality, he said. I had confided in too many people. Being with me was becoming dangerous. I told him that no one would kill us, let alone threaten us. The Jordanian police don’t have a history of targeting gay men, I reasoned, especially those of our social class. But that wasn’t the danger, he explained. The danger was that being seen with me was making people think he was ‘gay’. And he did not want to be seen as ‘gay’. Read more via Daily Beast

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UK: AIDS activists go bare to target austerity

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As part of a global series of direct actions in cities on five continents, naked activists from ACT UP London stood in the lobby of the pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences, displaying the slogan “Pharma Greed Kills”. Gilead produces Truvada, a type of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) which is used to treat HIV in adults and teenagers. Yet at £446 per month, Truvada’s price makes it too expensive for it to be viably considered under the National Health Service.

Whilst the high cost of PrEP has a negative effect on those living with HIV by making medication more difficult to obtain, ACT Up London’s protest is about more than challenging the price of these medicines. Pharmaceutical companies are one part of a wider healthcare establishment that values profit margins over public health. As massive cuts to the NHS take effect on people living with HIV, this is a timely and important concern.

The medical industry is based on the premise that healthcare is a product that can be bought and sold, rather than a means to create dignity and social uplift. ACT UP London is the latest iteration in a series of AIDS campaigns that have, historically, focused on the affordability of drugs, and the speed at which they are released to market.  Read more via the Guardian

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Saudi Arabia: Authorities seek death penalty for coming out

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A published report indicates that people who come out online in Saudi Arabia could face the death penalty. Oraz, a Saudi newspaper, reported that prosecutors in the city of Jiddah have proposed the penalty in response to dozens of cases they have prosecuted over the last six months. These include 35 people who received prison sentences for sodomy.

A gay Saudi man, who operates a Twitter account that publishes LGBT-specific news and other information from Saudi Arabia, said the proposal has caused fear among LGBT people in the country. Social media users in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere have begun to use the hashtag “You will not terrorize me. I’m gay” on Twitter to express their opposition to the proposed penalty.

Saudi Arabia is among the countries in which consensual same-sex sexual activity remains punishable by death.  Read more via WashingtonBlade

US: The APA on discrimination-related stress and its effect on LGBT lives

Discrimination is a fact of life for many in the LGBT community. The American Psychological Association’s recently released Stress in America report found that nearly one-quarter of adults who are LGBT say that they have been unfairly stopped, searched, questioned, physically threatened or abused by the police, and a third say they have been unfairly not hired for a job. Other forms of discrimination reported by LGBT respondents include day-to-day discrimination such as being threatened or harassed, receiving poorer service than others, or being treated with less courtesy or respect.

Regardless of the cause, experiencing discrimination is associated with higher reported stress and poorer reported health. Adults who are LGBT who have experienced discrimination report higher average stress levels than those who say that they have not. 

Adults who are LGBT are more likely to say their stress has increased in the prior year and are also more likely to report extreme stress levels compared to others (39 percent versus 23%). The survey found that money and work typically top the list of stressors, but LGBT adults are also stressed about their continued employment, with almost six in 10 saying that job stability is a source of stress for them, compared to just one-third of their non-LGBT counterparts. This is hardly surprising when you consider that 29 states offer no protections against workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation, and 32 states offer no protection against discrimination based on gender identity.   Read more via the Advocate

China: Lesbian couples resort to foreign sperm banks to evade domestic restrictions

As China does not acknowledge gay marriage and unmarried women are not allowed to use assisted reproductive technology, more and more lesbian couples in China are now seeking foreign sperm banks and IVF clinics. Experts said as the country is aging, fertility rights of the LGBT group should be guaranteed which will help alleviate the imminent old age problem.

Dou and Zhi, a lesbian couple living in Beijing, had their twins not through natural means, but through in-vitro fertilization (IVF) performed with sperm provided by a sperm bank based in the US. Zhi got pregnant last October and the couple spent about 300,000 yuan ($46,380) on their fertility trip to the US.

"I've always wanted to have my own child. When I met my wife, I knew it was time to do it," said Dou, 34, an NGO worker. Since gay marriage is not legal, it's impossible for lesbian couples to use IVF in China.  Read more via Global Times

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Cuba: Gay scene and HIV education as borders open

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As a youth growing up in Chicago, Phill Wilson had a Cuban fetish. The Spanish literature major romanticized the island nation, which was off-limits to U.S. travelers since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1963.

A half-century later, Wilson — now the out president of the Los Angeles-based Black AIDS Institute —would find himself en route to Havana, not just to soak up Cuban culture, but to see what the U.S. and Cuba could learn from each other in the fight against HIV and homophobia.

Wilson led a delegation of 15 gay men, many of color, to Cuba for two weeks starting on Christmas Eve; that was less than a year after President Obama helped normalize the once-strained relationship between the U.S. and communist Cuba.

Wilson says his team was greeted warmly, meeting with government officials, everyday Cubans, and people living with HIV. Wilson was impressed with the nation’s response to the disease, which has been greatly aided by the public information campaign of Mariela Castro, the LGBT-supportive daughter of Cuban president Raul Castro.

“From a public health perspective, from a human rights perspective, they are light years ahead of where we are with HIV,” Wilson says. Read more via the Advocate

International Day of Trans Visibility – a statement by GATE

On March 31st, Global Action for Trans* Equality (GATE) calls for collective and critical reflection as we honor the International Day of Trans Visibility.

Undoubtedly, individual and community visibility has been a key strategy to build trans* social and political movements. Visibility has played a central historical role in the ongoing work to transform our material and symbolic conditions of existence in the pursuit of social justice. In fact, the very recognition of our existence and affirmation of our full selves demands visibility every day. Nevertheless, trans visibility does not happen without risk: those who are visible are also exposed to the very dynamics they are challenging – discrimination, oppression, and violence. Read more via RHM Journal  

Balkans: The LGBT community is invisible

The young gay activist slowly stirs sugar into his coffee as he says he’s never had a boyfriend who would hold his hand in public.

“Most people from my generation are too scared to come out,” says 22-year-old Liridon Veliou, who works with the LGBT rights group QESh. Behind him, is a cafe scene from any European city – smartphones and MacBook computers illuminating the faces of young men and women against a backdrop of bookshelves stacked with 60s American novels.

But beyond the cafe’s terrace and its young, open-minded clientele, lies a country where 81% of the LGBT community has suffered threats or insults because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. This is the highest rate of discrimination in the western Balkans, according to a 2015 poll by the National Democracy Institute. The statistics are a sharp reminder that, despite appearances, this isn’t London or Rome – this is Pristina, capital of Kosovo.

On paper, Kosovo looks modern and inclusive – its progressive constitution written in the aftermath of the 1998-99 war includes a ban of discrimination based on sexual orientation. But LGBT groups say this image contradicts reality.