India’s Supreme Court Upholds Ban On Gay Rights.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvoVN9gxG6o
Link to NPR Radio Michel Martin interviewing Sandip Roy:
http://www.npr.org/2013/12/12/250468528/did-india-turn-back-the-clock-back-on-gay-rights
Shocking News: Transgender Teen Murdered By Violent Mob In Jamaica!!!
Associated Press | 13/08/11 4:52 PM ET
MONTEGO BAY, Jamaica — Dwayne Jones was relentlessly teased in high school for being effeminate until he dropped out. His father not only kicked him out of the house at the age of 14 but also helped jeering neighbours push the youngster from the rough Jamaican slum where he grew up.
By age 16, the teenager was dead – beaten, stabbed, shot and run over by a car when he showed up at a street party dressed as a woman. His mistake: confiding to a friend that he was attending a “straight” party as a girl for the first time in his life.
“When I saw Dwayne’s body, I started shaking and crying,” said Khloe, one of three transgender friends who shared a derelict house with the teenager in the hills above the north coast city of Montego Bay. Like many transgender and gay people in Jamaica, Khloe wouldn’t give a full name out of fear.
“It was horrible. It was so, so painful to see him like that.”
International advocacy groups often portray this Caribbean island as the most hostile country in the Western Hemisphere for gay and transgender people. After two prominent gay rights activists were murdered, a researcher with the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch in 2006 called the environment in Jamaica for such groups “the worst any of us has ever seen.”
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Local activists have since disputed that label, but still say homophobia is pervasive. Dwayne’s horrific July 22 murder has made headlines in newspapers on the island and stirred calls in some quarters for doing more to protect Jamaica’s gay community, especially those who live on the streets and resort to sex work.
Advocates say much of the homophobia is fueled by a nearly 150-year-old anti-sodomy law that bans anal sex as well as by dancehall reggae performers who flaunt anti-gay themes. The island’s main gay rights group estimated that two homosexual men were killed for their sexual orientation last year, and 36 were the victims of mob violence.
For years, Jamaica’s gay community has lived so far underground that their parties and church services were held in secret locations. Many gays have stuck to a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy of keeping their sexual orientation hidden to avoid scrutiny or protect loved ones.
“Judging by comments made on social media, most Jamaicans think Dwayne Jones brought his death on himself for wearing a dress and dancing in a society that has made it abundantly clear that homosexuals are neither to be seen nor heard,” said Annie Paul, a blogger and publications officer at Jamaica’s campus of the University of the West Indies.
Some say the hostility partly stems from the legacy of slavery when black men were sometimes sodomized as punishment or humiliation. Some historians believe that practice carried over into a general dread of homosexuality.
But in recent years, emboldened young people such as Dwayne have helped bring the island’s gay and transgender community out of the shadows. A small group of gay runaways now rowdily congregates on the streets of Kingston’s financial district.
Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller’s government has also vowed to put the anti-sodomy law to a “conscience vote” in Parliament, and she said during her 2011 campaign that only merit would decide who got a Cabinet position in her government. By contrast, former Prime Minister Bruce Golding said in 2008 that he would never allow homosexuals in his Cabinet.
Dane Lewis, executive director of the Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals & Gays, said there were increasing “pockets of tolerance” on the island.
“We can say that we are becoming more tolerant. And thankfully that’s because of people like Dwayne who have helped push the envelope,” said Lewis, one of the few Jamaican gays who will publicly disclose his full name.
Yet rights groups still complain of the slow pace of the investigation into Jones’ murder, despite the justice minister calling for a full probe.
Police spokesman Steve Brown said detectives working the case are struggling to overcome a chronic problem: a strong anti-informant culture that makes eyewitnesses to murders and other crimes too afraid or simply unwilling to come forward.
Even though some 300 people were at the dance party in the small riverside community of Irwin, police have yet to make a single arrest in Dwayne’s murder. Police say witnesses have said they couldn’t see the attackers’ faces.
Dwayne was the center of attraction shortly after arriving in a taxi at 2 a.m. with his two 23-year-old housemates, Khloe and Keke. Dwayne’s expert dance moves, long legs and high cheekbones quickly made him the one that the guys were trying to get next to.
Like many Jamaican homosexuals, Dwayne was careful about confiding in others about his sexual orientation. But when he saw a girl he had known from church, he told her he was attending the party in drag.
Minutes later, according to Khloe and Keke, the girl’s male friends gathered around Dwayne in the dimly-lit street asking: “Are you a woman or a man?” One man waved a lighter’s flame near Dwayne’s sneakers, asking whether a girl could have such big feet.
Then, his friends said, another man grabbed a lantern from an outdoor bar and walked over to Dwayne, shining the bright light over him from head to toe. “It’s a man,” he concluded, while the others hissed “batty boy” and other anti-gay epithets.
Khloe says she tried to steer him away from the crowd, whispering in Dwayne’s ear: “Walk with me, walk with me.” But Dwayne pulled away, loudly insisting to partygoers that he was a girl. When someone behind him snapped his bra strap, the teen panicked and raced down the street.
But he couldn’t run fast enough to escape the mob.
The teenager was viciously assaulted and apparently half-conscious for some two hours before another sustained attack finished him off, according to Khloe, who was also beaten and nearly raped. She hid in a nearby church and then the surrounding woods, unable to call for help because she didn’t have her cellphone.
Dwayne’s father in the Montego Bay slum of North Gully didn’t want to talk about his son’s life or death. The teen’s family wouldn’t even claim the body, according to Dwayne’s friends.
They remembered him as a spirited boy with a contagious laugh who dreamt of becoming a performer like Lady Gaga. He was also a street-smart hustler who resorted to sleeping in the bushes or on beaches when he became homeless. He won a local dancing competition during his time on the streets and was affectionately nicknamed “Gully Queen.”
“He was the youngest of us but he was a diva,” Khloe said. “He was always very feisty and joking around.”
Inside their squatter house, Khloe and Keke said, they still talk to their dead friend.
“I’ll be cooking in the kitchen and I’ll say, `Dwayne, you hungry?’ or something like that,” said Keke while sitting on the old mattress in her bedroom, flinching as neighborhood dogs barked outside. “We just miss him all the time. Sometimes I think I see him.”
But down the hall, Dwayne’s room is empty except for pink window curtains decorated with roses, his favorite flower.
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard Blasts Opposition Leader Tony Abbott For His Hypocrisy & Misogyny!!
Julia Gillard Australia’s first female Prime Minister has experienced a lot of misogyny from the opposition parties and the Australian media. In this fifteen minute speech, Prime Minister Gillard blasts the opposition leader Tony Abbott for his hypocrisy and sexism. This is a wonderful take down by Ms. Gillard! However, I find it interesting that Prime Minister Gillard isn’t so vocal about marriage equality or gay rights in Australia? Can’t Ms. Gillard see the similarities between the right to equality for women and for gay people in Australia? Gays and lesbians in Australia deserve to have the same human rights as heterosexuals.
Associated Press Article: California Bans Gay Conversion Therapy For Teens More States Might Follow.
More states could join California’s ban on gay teen ‘conversion’ therapy
California Gov. Jerry Brown speaks to congregants celebrating Yom Kippur at Temple Emanuel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2012. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)
Published Monday, Oct. 1, 2012 7:11PM EDT
SAN FRANCISCO — Gay rights advocates are making plans to get other states to join California in banning psychotherapy aimed at making gay teenagers straight, even as opponents prepared Monday to sue to overturn the first law in the nation to take aim at the practice.
After months of intense lobbying, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill late Saturday that prohibits licensed mental health professionals from using so-called reparative or conversion therapies with clients under age 18. Brown called the therapies “quackery” that “have no basis in science or medicine.”
Two New Jersey lawmakers already are drafting similar legislation, while groups that helped get the California law passed are sharing research, witnesses and talking points with counterparts in other gay-friendly states, said Geoff Kors, senior legislative and policy strategist for the San Francisco-based National Center for Lesbian Rights.
“There are lots of folks today who are looking at this, now that the governor has signed it,” Kors said. “We’ll be reaching out to all the state (gay rights) groups, especially in states that have had success passing LGBT rights legislation.”
The law only applies to licensed therapists, not ministers or lay people who counsel teens to resist same-sex attractions.
Two Christian legal groups, meanwhile, said they would sue in federal court in Sacramento to prevent the law from taking effect on Jan. 1.
The lawsuits will be filed on behalf of therapists whose practices include efforts to help clients change their sexual orientations or reduce their attractions to people of the same-sex; parents who have sought such therapy for their children; and teenagers who currently are undergoing it, lawyers for the California-based Pacific Justice Institute and Florida-based Liberty Counsel said.
Liberty Counsel Chairman Mat Staver said his organization plans to argue in court that the law infringes on the First Amendment and equal protection rights of individuals to give and receive information that matches their personal and professional beliefs.
“What this law does is tell minors that they can no longer receive information about same-sex attractions that they have been receiving and that they find beneficial to them,” Staver said. “It also puts counsellors in a situation where they must present only one viewpoint of this subject.”
The law Brown signed states that mental health providers who use sexual orientation change efforts on clients under 18 would be engaging in unprofessional conduct and subject to discipline by their respective state licensing boards.
Mainstream associations representing psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers have dismissed reparative therapy in recent decades as being ineffective and potentially dangerous to the mental health of teenagers and young adults who are led to believe their interest in same-sex partners is wrong.
As originally written, the bill introduced by state Sen. Ted Lieu, also would have required therapists to warn adult patients of the practice’s risks and limitations and to obtain their written consent before engaging in it.
Lieu dropped the informed consent provision, however, after a number of mental health associations in California — including the California Psychological Association and the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists — complained that it interfered with the therapist-client relationship.
Both groups, as well as the other leading professional groups, ultimately endorsed the ban for juveniles.
It remained unclear how many practitioners and patients the law would affect.
David Pruden, vice-president of the California-based National Association for Research and Therapy on Homosexuality, a professional association that supports treatment for homosexuality, estimated there are two dozen therapists statewide who engage in efforts to change sexual orientation, and not all of them treat adolescents.
The association plans to be a plaintiff in the Liberty Counsel lawsuit, with its support based mostly on the law’s symbolic effect than its consequences for large numbers of California teens and their counsellors, Pruden said.
“If you said, realistically, how many hamburgers did you think you weren’t going to sell at McDonald’s because of the new pickle law, the answer is not very many,” he said. “Then the question becomes should we be legislating pickles.”
Staver thinks the law could impact hundreds of licensed Christian psychotherapists and their teen clients from religious families nationwide. Depending on how it’s enforced, California therapists who treat clients in other states via Skype, and therapists in other states who conduct telephone sessions with California residents could be investigated for misconduct, he said.
Shocking News: Gay Couple Sue Airline For Removing A Dildo From Their Luggage Causing Emotional Distress.
A dream vacation turned into a nightmare for a Virginia-based gay couple after airport staff allegedly removed a dildo from their luggage, smeared foul-smelling lubricant on it and taped it to their top of one of their checked bags before placing it back on the baggage carousel.
The Bilerico Project’s Michael Hamarreports that the couple — who were returning from a vacation in Costa Rica to Norfolk at the time of the alleged May 2011 incident — are now suing United/Continental Airlines for “intentional infliction of emotional distress, invasion of privacy, and negligence.”
The couple, identified by Courthouse News as Christopher Bridgeman and Martin Borger, are reportedly seeking punitive damages.
“Plaintiffs’ bags were sent to the baggage carousel where plaintiffs discovered, to their horror, that a private sex toy had been removed from one of their bags, covered in a greasy foul-smelling substance and taped prominently to the top of their bag,” the lawsuit states, according to Courthouse News. “Plaintiffs experienced extreme shock and horror when they observed the above-described bag and when observing the surprised and/or laughing faces of numerous onlookers in the baggage claim area.”
Borger, who said he was the first to spot the bag, told NBC News, “I was absolutely and utterly shocked and embarrassed and humiliated and I didn’t even know what to do at the time.”
Added Bridgeman: “I absolutely, fervently believe that this was intentional. It was very sick and it was very wrong and it was just maliciously taped to the top and targeted because we’re gay.”
The case mirrors that of Jill Filipovic, a writer (who has penned pieces for The Huffington Post among other media outlets) who found a handwritten note on a TSA form encouraging her to “Get [her] freak on girl” in her checked suitcase, which contained a $15 vibrator.
Still, Filipovic told Forbes that although she was “grossed out,” she found the situation “hilarious.”
“I’ve had that Missy Elliott song stuck in my head all day,” she told Wired.com.
Gayblackcanada 