UK: Archbishop of Wales apologises for gay prejudice

The head of the Church in Wales has apologized "unreservedly" to gay couples for prejudice in the church. Archbishop of Wales Dr Barry Morgan spoke at a meeting of the governing body in Llandudno. 

The church tweeted "Archbishop of Wales offers a pastoral letter on same-sex relationships apologizing unreservedly for prejudice within the church."

Last year, r Morgan said it would be "foolish" to bring forward a bill for same-sex marriages in church. A statement released by the church said although it was not ready to allow or bless same-sex marriages, "the debate is not over".  Read more via BBC

Australia: LGBTI Victorians speak out about the issues they want addressed by local and federal government

The Victorian Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby recently surveyed LGBTI Victorians about issues they were most important and should be addressed on both a local and federal level. 

On a federal level, 88 per cent of respondents said they wanted to see greater legal protections from discrimination, while 85 per cent said they would like to see violence and public harassment addressed. On a local level, 83 per cent of respondents said they wanted to see their local government focus on LGBTI-inclusive health and community services. Read more via Star Observer

UK: Did police homophobia allow a serial killer to target gay men for over a year?

The deaths of gay men in 2015 went unconnected despite similarities between the cases and a history of serial killers targeting gay men. A 2007 review into the Metropolitan Police's investigation of 10 killings and attacks on LGBT people concluded that the police's work on such cases was influenced by institutional homophobia. The review, published by the independent police advisors LGBT Advisory Group, condemned the 1993 Gay Slayer police investigation as a "serious failure of policing." It said: "The initial investigations seemed to us to be more focused on determining promiscuity and risk taking," adding that more should have been done to warn the community.

In fact, one of the world's foremost experts on serial killers, the British criminologist David Wilson, says that the gay community receives "at best, a patchy service from the police." In his 2007 book Serial Killers: Hunting Britons and Their Victims 1960-2006, Wilson concluded that "homophobia has created the circumstances in which gay men have become one of the prime targets of serial killers in this country."

While somewhere between one and ten percent of the UK population is LGBT, since Nilsen's conviction in 1983, gay men have accounted for all or most of the victims of five out of the 14 serial killers since active in the UK. Read more via VICE

South Africa: Ekurhuleni lesbian teen murdered on her birthday

Lucia Naido, a young lesbian woman, was stabbed to death on the night of her birthday in Katlehong on Johannesburg’s East Rand.

The teen was murdered in a suspected hate crime meters from her home on March 19. She was found dying by her horrified mother, who ran outside when she heard her daughter’s desperate screams.

Her mother Xoliswa is now concerned for her own safety and fears being targeted by the two suspects (who likely live in the same community) because she is a witness. She also has little confidence that the police will find the men.

“I don’t think the police are going to do something. It is better for us to find the two men before they find us. I am scared to go outside and I can’t go to the shops. It’s not safe anymore in my own community,” she said. Read more via Mamba Online

Colombia: high court rules in favor of same-sex marriage

Colombia’s highest court has given the green light to gay marriage in the conservative, mostly Catholic country. The magistrates of the constitutional court voted six to three against a proposed ruling that said marriage applied only to unions between men and women and that it was up to the congress and not the court to decide on same-sex marriage.

Magistrate Alberto Rojas, who voted against the proposed ruling and will now write up the majority decision making gay marriage legal, said: “All human beings ... have the fundamental right to be married with no discrimination.” 

 Read more via the Guardian

UK: Doctors are failing to help people with gender dysphoria

Dr James Barrett, the lead consultant psychiatrist at Charing Cross Gender Identity Clinic and president of the British Association of Gender Identity Specialists, warned about the issues facing trans people in the British Medical Journal: “In the experience of those of us who work at gender identity clinics as many as one in five GPs won’t prescribe for people with gender dysphoria, even after expert advice from an NHS clinic.

“Reasons that GPs have given me for this refusal include concerns about it being dangerous (it isn’t), difficult (it isn’t), expensive (it’s not, particularly), and I’ve also heard disturbingly frank admissions that it was against ‘deeply held Christian beliefs’ or that ‘we are trained to treat illnesses, not to change nature’.

“NHS England’s guidance on specialised commissioning makes it clear that GPs are expected to care for people with gender dysphoria just as for any other group with an uncommon condition easily managed with a joint care model.  Read more via PinkNews

Canada: Transgender man beaten to get $15k compensation from nightclub

A transgender man who was physically assaulted and humiliated by a bouncer at a nightclub in Ontario is awarded $15,000 in compensation. The altercation took place two years ago, when the victim, Caesar Lewis, was with his friends at Mississauga’s Sugar Daddy’s Night Club.

Lewis, who is in his mid-twenties, described to the court that he was in the men’s washroom when a bouncer of the nightclub came banging on his cubicle, demanding him to leave or he would be thrown out. However, before Lewis was ready, the bouncer forced open the door and dragged him out with his pants still at his knees.

Lewis’s friend, who is also a transgender male, said it was their right to use the men’s washroom, but the bouncer yelled back: ‘You freaks need to get your fucking faggot asses out of this club.'  Read more via Gay Star News 

South Africa musician Nakhane Toure tackles gay themes

Nakhane Mahlakahlaka, popularly known to many as Nakhane Toure, is an award winning South African singer-songwriter influenced by Mali's Ali Farka Toure. His 2014 debut album Brave Confusion saw him being crowned newcomer of the year at the South African Music Awards, and he is now working on a new project with popular South African DJ Black Coffee.

He has also come out as gay, something which he has addressed in his music. Read more

Brazil: How to fight transphobic violence

Imagine if one transgender person was murdered every 21 hours in the United States. In Brazil, we don't have to imagine this horrific, overwhelming epidemic of fatal violence against transgender individuals. One transgender person truly is killed every 21 hours, according to a statement from Transgender Europe’s Trans Murder Monitoring Project emailed to my colleague Eduarda Alice Santos. She is a correspondent for Planet Transgender, an English-language hub for international transgender concerns, who also provided the image above from a "die-in" protest in Rio de Janeiro this year.

Brazil has the world’s highest rate of fatal violence against transgender people. In fact, the South American nation's trans murder rate is 16.4 times higher than anywhere else on the planet. If the world overall experienced Brazil’s transgender murder rate, there would be 1,260 homicides in approximately 70 days worldwide. In a year, we would lose an estimated 6,588 transgender people to homicide. Read more via the Advocate

Australia: Love wins—Marriage equality forum feels the passion

Andrew Bolt derided it as a “leftie love-in” – a Guardian Australia special event on marriage equality featuring political leaders Bill Shorten and Richard Di Natale, and veteran campaigner Rodney Croome.

Why Knot? had all the hallmarks. A progressive panel of speakers, check. Gathered at an inner-city theatre, check. An audience who saw marriage equality as vital to LGBTI people’s dignity, check.

What more was there to learn about a legal change that, according to all the polling evidence, most Australians just want to be done and dusted? As speakers shared their personal anecdotes of wanting recognition for their partnerships, or facing discrimination because they were raised by gay parents, the answer was clear: unRead more via the Guardiantil marriage equality is law, there is still plenty more to say. 

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

India: Old custom, new couples

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