A Syrian refugee was sentenced to one year in prison on an array of charges related to sexual debauchery after an officer from the Morality Police set up a fake gay hookup date online.
US: Conversion therapy group committed consumer fraud, N.J. jury says
A New Jersey jury on Thursday found a non-profit group that provides gay-to-straight conversion therapy guilty of consumer fraud for promising clients they could overcome their sexual urges by undressing in front of other men, pummeling an effigy of their mothers, and re-enacting traumatic childhood experiences.
In the first case in the nation to put the controversial practice on trial, the jury concluded that Arthur Goldberg and Elaine Berk, the founders of Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing in Jersey City and life coach Alan Downing to whom JONAH referred patients, "engaged in unconscionable commercial practices" and misrepresented their services. Read More
Malaysia: Court convicts nine transgender women
An Islamic court in Malaysia has convicted 9 transgender women of violating laws that prohibit “a male person posing as a woman,” Human Rights Watch reported. All women were fined and two were handed jail sentences. The nine women, locally known as mak nyah, were attending a birthday party at a hotel when officials from Kelantan’s Islamic Affairs Department raided the place and arrested them.
In 2014, a Malaysian appeals court struck down the law against cross-dressing in the state of Negeri Sembilan, with the presiding judge calling it “degrading, oppressive and inhumane.” Enforcement of the law has since been suspended in the state, but the state government has appealed the decision to a federal court. Meanwhile, the law against cross-dressing remains in place across the rest of Malaysia’s 13 states and its federal territories. Read More
Morocco: Court sentences two men accused of homosexuality to four months in jail
Two men charged with “violating public modesty” have been convicted and sentenced to four months in jail and a fine of up to around $135. The two men were arrested on June 3 while taking a photograph in front of landmark in the Moroccan capital, Rabat. A day earlier, two activists with the Paris-based feminist organization Femen took a photograph at the same spot while kissing topless with the slogan “In gay we trust” written on their bodies.
A representative of Human Rights Watch who attended their trial reported that the men said they had never been given a chance to read the statements police attributed to them in which they were said to have disclosed being gay.
Their arrest came amidst heightened sensitivity around homosexuality in the country sparked in large part by foreign activists coming to the country to challenge its law against homosexuality, known as Article 489. A Moroccan newspaper reported that 25 people had been arrested for homosexuality since February. Read More
US: In some states, defiance over Supreme Court ruling
More than a dozen states that saw gay marriage bans struck down last week by the U.S. Supreme Court are vowing to protect religious liberty, even though they grudgingly accept that the ruling is now the law of the land.
In the wake of Friday's decision, Texas’s attorney general told county clerks in the state that they have a statutory right to refuse marriage licenses to same-sex couples if they have religious objections to gay marriage.
In Alabama, state Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore — a staunch opponent of same-sex marriage — said a new state court order could temporarily delay the practice, only to walk back the remarks.
And in Louisiana, the attorney general contends there is nothing in the Supreme Court’s ruling that renders it effective immediately, raising questions about how soon the state would have to comply.
Many other states across the South and upper Midwest are criticizing the ruling as an encroachment on states’ rights and religious freedom, though most acknowledge they cannot ignore it. Read More
Mexico: Supreme Court legalizes same-sex marriages in all 31 states
Mexico's Supreme Court has decided in favor of marriage equality, stating "procreation" was not a purpose for marriage. Therefore, limiting marriages to heterosexual couples amounted to discrimination against other couples seeking marriage.
The court’s decision legalizes same-sex marriage in all of the 31 states of Mexico – which is over 80% Catholic – adding the country to the growing list of Latin American nations that permit it. Since current civil codes will remain temporarily, same-sex couples wishing to marry can obtain injunctions against laws holding up traditional marriage.
The Mexican Catholic bishops’ conference has disagreed with the court’s decision, stating that the family is founded on the marriage between a man and a woman who can procreate and, therefore, guarantee “the survival of society.” Read More
UK: Same-sex marriage bid goes to court in Northern Ireland
The first two gay couples to enter into civil partnerships in the UK will this week mount a High Court challenge to Northern Ireland's same-sex marriage ban, the Belfast Telegraph can reveal.
Grainne Close and Shannon Sickles will be joined by Chris and Henry Flanagan-Kane to seek a judicial review of the ban. Both couples cemented their relationships in civil partnerships a decade ago in Belfast City Hall. But while Northern Ireland was the first place in the UK to recognise civil partnerships, it is now the only part of the UK and Ireland that has not legalised same-sex marriage. Read More
US: Supreme Court ruling makes same-sex marriage a right nationwide
In a long-sought victory for the gay rights movement, the Supreme Court ruled by a 5-to-4 vote on Friday that the Constitution guarantees a right to same-sex marriage.
“No longer may this liberty be denied,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority in the historic decision. “No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were.”
Marriage is a “keystone of our social order,” Justice Kennedy said, adding that the plaintiffs in the case were seeking “equal dignity in the eyes of the law.”
The decision, which was the culmination of decades of litigation and activism, set off jubilation and tearful embraces across the country, the first same-sex marriages in several states, and resistance — or at least stalling — in others. It came against the backdrop of fast-moving changes in public opinion, with polls indicating that most Americans now approve of the unions.
The court’s four more liberal justices joined Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion. Each member of the court’s conservative wing filed a separate dissent, in tones ranging from resigned dismay to bitter scorn.
In dissent, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said the Constitution had nothing to say on the subject of same-sex marriage.
Morocco: Gay men to be tried for violating 'public modesty' over photo
Two Moroccan gay men are set to go on trial for violating “public modesty” after holding each other for a photo at a historic site in Rabat, and could go to jail for up to three years. Mohsine and Lahcen were touring and taking pictures near Hassan tower, the capital’s famous minaret, earlier in June when they were arrested by the police for supposedly standing too close to each other, activists said. It is not clear if the men were in a relationship.
Last month, Morocco sentenced three gay people to three years in jail, the first time the authorities are known to have used the maximum sentence to punish homosexuals. This week, the latest issue of Maroc Hebdo magazine controversially asked on its cover: “Should we burn gays?”
On Tuesday authorities arrested two French members of the controversial feminist campaign Femen after they protested topless in front of a Rabat landmark against Morocco’s treatment of gays. The women, one of whom had the slogan “in gay we trust” written in black on her torso, were expelled Tuesday evening. They had protested in front of the Hassan Tower, a landmark minaret in Rabat. Read More
US: Guam becomes first US territory to recognize gay marriage after judge strikes down ban
U.S. District Court Chief Judge Frances M. Tydingco-Gatewood issued the decision and gay couples can begin applying for marriage licenses, the Pacific Daily News reported. Attorneys representing the government of Guam said in a May 18 court document that "should a court strike current Guam law, they would respect and follow such a decision."
Loretta M. Pangelinan and Kathleen M. Aguero filed the lawsuit in April after the 28-year-old women were denied a marriage license. They based their lawsuit on a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision last year in favor of same-sex marriage.
Attorneys for the Guam plaintiffs had argued the territory must fall in line with the 9th Circuit decision and accept marriage license applications unless the U.S. Supreme Court rules otherwise. Currently, gay couples can marry in 36 states, the District of Columbia and now, Guam. Read More
Belize: The lonely fight against Belize’s anti-gay laws
In Belize — a small Anglophone Caribbean nation tucked into the eastern flank of Guatemala and Mexico — “batiman” (Creole for, literally, “butt man”) has long been the supreme slur against gay men, the worst possible insult to their personhood and dignity. But now another slur is beginning to take its place: “Orozco.”
Five years ago, Caleb Orozco’s lawyer walked into the Belize Supreme Court Registry and initiated the first challenge in Caribbean history to the criminalization of sodomy. Caleb Orozco v. the Attorney General of Belize focuses on Section 53, a statute in the criminal code that calls for a 10-year prison term for “carnal intercourse against the order of nature.” If Orozco won, his supporters hoped, it would establish a moral precedent across the Caribbean and even create a domino effect, pressuring other governments to decriminalize sodomy. But it took 3 years for the Supreme Court to hear the case; 2 years later, the nation still awaits a verdict.
Caleb Orzco is Belize’s most reviled homosexual and its most ostracized citizen, a man whom fundamentalists pray for and passers-by scorn. His weary face is on the evening news and in newspaper caricatures. His name is now a label, one used to remind other gays that they are sinners and public offenders. Read More
South Korea: Court Rules Police Cannot Ban LGBT Pride March
A court in the South Korean capital Seoul ruled Tuesday that police violated the law when they banned a pride march to be held June 28 as the culmination of the Korean Queer Cultural Festival. Police had denied permits to hold the march, citing conflicting applications for events that overlapped the parade route. These applications were filed as the result of a showdown between Christian conservative activists and LGBT activists, who had both camped out in front of the police station processing applications for more than a week in May. The conservatives managed to get their public use applications in first.
On Tuesday, the court ruled this violated the LGBT activists’ right to protest. “Unless there is a clear risk of danger to the public, preventing the demonstration is not allowed and should be the absolute last resort,” the court ruled, according to a local news report. Read More