Category: Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

LGBT Advocates to Protest ACL Conference at Wesley Mission

The Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) is set to host its national conference at the Wesley Mission on April 23 and LGBTI advocates are planning a protest of the event which will host guest speakers including members of right wing US anti-gay group the Alliance Defending Freedom.

The ACL were instrumental in the recent gutting of the Safe Schools program – spearheading a campaign and lobbying politicians to shut down funding to the anti bullying program.

Cat Rose, Co-convener of Community Action Against Homophobia said:

“The Australian Christian Lobby successfully tore shreds off the Safe Schools program through a campaign of bigotry and fear mongering. They may like to pose as moderate Christians but this conference shows exactly who’s in bed with who. We want to give the ACL and Scott Morrison the protest they deserve.”

The ACL’s conference will present both local and international speakers including Eric Metaxas, US author, public speaker and radio host who is outspoken in his cricticism of LGBTI people and a proponent of ex-gay therapy. Also speaking at the conference is Jeffery J Ventrella, a prominent US lawyer from the Alliance Defending Freedom and Blackstone Legal Fellowship who argue anti-gay marriage cases. Australian treasurer, MP Scott Morrison – an opponent of same-sex marriage is a guest speaker as is Daily Telegraph columnist Miranda Devine.

Patrick Wright, co-convener of CAAH said the ACL is giving a platform to a posse of hard right extremists.

Read the full article at Gay News Network now. 

Malaysia: Transgender individuals in pageant to be charged with encouraging vice

The Federal Territories Islamic Department (JAWI) is planning to charge a trans woman with encouraging vice and with defying religious authorities after she allegedly organised a purported beauty pageant, a group said.

Lalita Abdullah, exco member of transgender rights group SEED Malaysia, said the religious authorities had informed Ira Sophia, after detaining her for almost 24 hours, that she would be charged next month under Section 9 and Section 35 of the Shariah Criminal Offences (Federal Territories) Act 1997.

“She has to appear in court on 5th of May,” Lalita told Malay Mail Online after Ira was released late last night.

The activist said JAWI officers did not specify Ira’s alleged actions that prompted the prosecution, but merely stated the sections of the law they planned to charge her under.

Section 9 of the Shariah Criminal Offences (Federal Territories) Act states that “any person who acts in contempt of religious authority or defies, disobeys or disputes the orders or directions of the Yang di-Pertuan Agong as the Head of the religion of Islam, the Majlis or the Mufti, expressed or given by way of fatwa, shall be guilty of an offence”, punishable by a fine of not more than RM3,000, or imprisonment of not more than two years, or both.

Section 35 prohibits anyone from promoting, inducing, or encouraging another person to indulge in “any vice”, an offence punishable with a fine of not more than RM5,000, or imprisonment of not more than three years, or both.

Read the full article at MalayMail Online now. 

Mississippi Governor Signs Sweeping Anti-LGBT Bill Into Law

Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant on Tuesday signed into law what critics say is the most sweeping anti-LGBT legislation in the United States, permitting the denial of products and services in a wide range of venues.

The Republican governor said he enacted the law “to protect the sincerely held religious beliefs and moral convictions of individuals, organizations, and private associations.”

Attempting to rebut criticism from LGBT advocates and Democrats — who had urged him to veto the measure — Bryant added the law does not strip anyone’s existing rights.

House Bill 1523 protects individuals, religious organizations, and certain businesses who take actions due to their religious objections to same-sex marriage — or any sex outside straight marriage. It also protects those who object to transgender people.

Read the full article from BuzzFeed.

Tunisia: Men Prosecuted for Homosexuality

Tunisia’s law criminalizing consensual same-sex conduct among adults is discriminatory and invites abuse by the police of gay men and men perceived to be homosexual.

Tunisia prosecuted at least seven men for consensual same-sex conduct in two prominent cases over the last six months. All of the men were convicted under article 230 of the penal code, which criminalizes “sodomy” with up to three years in prison. Human Rights Watch interviewed five men who had been sentenced. All of them said that police had subjected them to grave human rights abuses, including beatings, forced anal examinations, and routine humiliating treatment.

“The Tunisian government has no business intruding on people’s private sexual behavior and brutalizing and humiliating them under the pretext of enforcing a discriminatory law,” said Amna Guellali, Tunisia director. “Tunisia should remove such archaic laws from its books, and the police who mistreated these men should be held accountable.”

The government should take steps to repeal article 230 of the penal code and issue a directive ordering an immediate end to anal examinations as part of police investigative procedures to determine a person’s sexual behavior, Human Rights Watch said. It should also investigate reports of ill-treatment, including by establishing a confidential complaint mechanism for all cases of abuse by police officers.

Police arrested “Marwen,” a 22-year-old student whose name has been changed for his protection, in Sousse, 120 kilometers from Tunis, in September 2015. The first instance tribunal in Sousse sentenced him to one year in prison for sodomy, in part on the basis of a medical report from a seriously flawed anal examination.

Read the full article from Human Rights Watch.

Malawi – Pastors call for arrest of homosexuals

A coalition of young pastors in Malawi have threatened to drag the government to court to force it to arrest 4 000 homosexuals living in northern Malawi’s city of Mzuzu.

The Young Pastors Coalition of Malawi (YPCM) has accused the government of encouraging homosexuality through its failure to arrest gays and lesbians.

The call comes after a local human rights grouping Centre for the Development of the People (Cedep) released research findings which indicate that northern Malawi’s city of Mzuzu has a population of 4 000 homosexuals.

The survey by Cedep was conducted to establish HIV/Aids and socio-behavioural characteristics amongst men who have sex with men.

Despite same sex relations being outlawed, Malawi government has been reluctant to arrest and prosecute homosexuals.

The survey results have irked the pastors who argue that the research was conducted as part of advocacy to promote homosexuality in Malawi.

Read the full article on News 24.

North Carolina Enacts Law To Allow LGBT Discrimination

Republican leaders of the North Carolina General Assembly on Wednesday rushed through a bill to repeal all local LGBT nondiscrimination ordinances in the state and ban transgender people from certain restrooms.

Introduced and passed within 10 hours, the bill then went to Gov. Pat McCrory’s desk. He signed it around 10 p.m. Wednesday, citing North Carolina residents’ expectation of privacy and “basic community norms.”

Republicans had unveiled the legislation Wednesday morning, arguing the measure was needed to protect women from transgender people and sex predators. They were reacting to an ordinance in Charlotte — which had been scheduled to take effect April 1 — that would protect LGBT people from discrimination in housing and public accommodations.

The governor and other critics claimed the public accommodations portion of the city ordinance posed a safety threat by allowing transgender women, whom they called “men,” to prey on women and girls.

“The basic expectation of privacy in the most personal of settings, a restroom or locker room, for each gender was violated by government overreach and intrusion by the mayor and city council of Charlotte,” McCrory said in a statement that explained why he signed the bill into law.

Read the full article at BuzzFeed.

Far-Right homophobic thugs attack LGBT Equality Festival in Lviv

The Equality Festival events planned for this weekend in Lviv have been disrupted and the activists effectively – and with violence – driven out of the city.   The police did not detain any of the young far-right thugs in masks who first harassed activists, then surrounded the hotel and attacked a coach with Equality Festival activists.

The LGBT initiative Equality Festival had planned an Equality ‘Quest’ on March 19, as part of various anti-discrimination, pro-tolerance events over the weekend.  The quest was to go around places linked with ideals of equality and freedom within the city.

During the early hours of Saturday morning, the Lviv District Administrative Court passed a ruling banning all events in the area where the Equality Festival quest had been planned.

The pretext was depressingly familiar.  The Sokol nationalist organization had informed that it would be holding an event – almost certainly a counter-demonstration –  and the Mayor’s Office asked for all events on the square outside the Opera Theatre to be banned.  The European Court of Human Rights has on a number of occasions found that the likelihood of counter-events does not justify restricting citizens right to peaceful assembly.  The regional police also asked for the ban, although it is they who are obliged to protect all citizens exercising their right to gather.

Read the full article on Human Rights in Ukraine now.

Historic meeting of gender and sexual rights activists from across Africa

Human rights defenders from nearly twenty countries across Africa have gathered in Johannesburg ahead of this week’s Africa Regional Seminar on “Finding Practical Solutions to Address Violence and Discrimination against Persons Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity and Expression”.

This unique meeting is one of the largest gatherings of African activists working on issues relating to sexualorientation and gender identity and expression (SOGIE). It aims to generate learning among civil society organisations on the lived realities of sexual and gender minorities in different parts of the continent, and to use this knowledge to identify key advocacy priorities in ending violence and discrimination based on SOGIE in Africa.

“As human rights defenders working on gender and sexuality, it’s very important that we work together,” noted Fadzai Muparutsa of the Coalition of African Lesbians. “Before we engage with governments and other state actors, we need to have time and space to consider our diverse lived experiences. We need to understand better how different forms of oppression interact and intersect, particularly in women’s lives,” she added.

Sexual and gender minorities continue to be targets of violence, discrimination and abuse. This violence is often state-sanctioned, in many cases being carried out by police and other state agencies. Discriminatory beliefs are often endorsed by religious and traditional leaders, and given further currency through sensationalist media coverage. Such practices further stigmatise vulnerable communities, and result in people being denied access to medical, legal and other essential services because of their real or presumed sexual orientation and gender identity and expression.

Read on at the Coalition of African Lesbians’ site. 

Kenya’s LGBT Community Gains The Right To Organize, But Religious Opposition Looms

In a move that has stirred the anger of Kenya’s anti-gay Christian groups and sparked celebration by pro-gay clergy, the nation’s High Court has ruled that gay rights activists have the right to formally register their own groups and welfare organizations.

A three-judge panel issued the ruling Friday (April 24) in response to a 2013 petition by the National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. The organization had unsuccessfully tried — five times — to register under the nation’s Non-Governmental Organizations Co-ordination Act since 2012 but had been rejected on grounds that Kenya’s penal code criminalized gay and lesbian associations.

This time, things were different, with the court ruling that refusing to register the organization was an infringement of the constitutional rights of association for LGBT people. The judges said registration was not about the moral and religious views of Kenyans, since the constitution does not set a limit of rights.

“Every person has the right to freedom of association, which includes the right to form, join or participate in the activities of an association of any kind,” the judges ruled, quoting Article 36 of Kenya’s constitution.

By Fredrick Nzwili
Read the full article from the HuffPost Queer Voices website

Tony Abbott jets to US to address abortion and gay-marriage opponents Alliance Defending Freedom

Fresh from giving new hope to disaffected conservative Liberals by staying in federal politics, Tony Abbott will fly to the United States on Tuesday to gee-up one of the religious right’s most reactionary bodies, the Alliance Defending Freedom.

Mr Abbott, who is being accompanied by wife Margie, will give a speech on the topic of “the importance of family” to the pro-Christian, Republican-aligned lobby, which opposes abortion, wants to end gay marriage and is pushing to roll back some feminist advances.

he speech comes as the primary race for the presidential nomination approaches fever pitch, with contenders on the Republican side scrambling to secure the overwhelmingly Christian “Tea Party” base.

The Alliance Defending Freedom’s founding president, Alan Sears, is a regular conservative voice on Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News channel and co-authored the 2003 book, The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Liberty Today.

With Craig Osten, Sears argued that America’s growing tolerance of homosexuality was being achieved through the indoctrination of children, tacit support of corporate America, and through “positive” television depictions of alternative family structures.

 

By Mark Kenny
Read the full article on the Sydney Morning Herald website