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US: Executive Order Addresses Religious Objections To Contraception

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After stating the Trump administration’s support for religious freedom, the EO addresses two substantive issues. The first such provision directs the Internal Revenue Service not to take adverse action against a religious organization that speaks about a moral or political issue from a religious perspective where similar speech has “not ordinarily been treated as participation or intervention in a political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) a candidate for political office.”

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South Africa: Centre for Human Rights hosts first consultative meeting to discuss Draft Model Law on the rights of intersex persons in Africa

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On 24 April 2017, the Centre for Human Rights hosted its first consultative meeting on the Model Law on the rights of intersex persons in Africa.

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Poland: Why Online Sex Education is Necessary in Poland Today

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Natalia Trybus is a sex educator and YouTuber. Her channel PinkCandy has over 50,000 subscribers. In her short films, she talks about female condoms, hymen types, masturbation, stand-to-pee devices and STDs. If not for her job at a Poznań sex shop, she would never have found the courage to start her YouTube channel on human sexuality.

US: Syphilis rates among MSM eclipse those of other populations

The rate of primary and secondary syphilis in the United States among men who have sex with men is 106 times that of men who have sex with women only, researchers said. 

The disparity is even greater — 167.5-fold — when men who have sex with men (MSM) are compared with women.

“These data highlight the disproportionate impact of syphilis among MSM and underscore the need for innovative and targeted syphilis prevention measures at the state and local level, especially among MSM,” Alex de Voux, PhD, an epidemic intelligence service officer at the CDC’s Division of STD Prevention, and colleagues wrote in MMWR. Read more via Healio

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US: This bus is on a road trip to convince you that transgender people aren’t real

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An orange bus rolled onto the streets of Manhattan to make its first stop on an East Coast tour, during which a load of activist passengers will evangelize that transgender people don't exist and citizens must rise up to complain about their growing acceptance.

The creators are calling it the "Free Speech Bus," and they've decorated it with male and female stick figures along with the slogan: "Boys are boys... and always will be. Girls are girls... and always will be. You can't change sex. Respect all."

On Wednesday, they parked outside the United Nations headquarters, where ambassadors are considering a sex education resolution that a spokesperson for the bus argued promotes "an ideology that gender is fluid."

"We are trying to strike back against that," said Joseph Grabowski, a spokesperson for the National Organization for Marriage, one of the three conservative groups behind the project. They hope parading the bus through major cities will unleash a silent majority that they believe is frustrated by shifting norms about gender and families.

In their efforts to block LGBT legal protections since the Supreme Court resolved questions about same-sex marriage, religious conservatives have struggled to spark conversations among ordinary people. While they have sometimes reached the airwaves during controversies around bills to restrict bathroom usage, they've often played political defense, or found their message buried in the back of newspapers and the back rooms of legislatures. Read more via Buzzfeed