Intersex Awareness Day marked around the world

Advocates in the U.S. and around the world this week marked the annual Intersex Awareness Day. Intersex Awareness Day — which falls on Oct. 26 — provided the backdrop for the federal lawsuit against the State Department that Lambda Legal filed on behalf of an intersex person who was denied a passport because they do not identify as male or female. 

The U.S. Agency for International Development on Oct. 19 hosted what a State Department spokesperson described to the Washington Blade as “the first-ever U.S. government interagency intersex forum” that the Council for Global Equality and Advocates for Informed Choice, a group that advocates on behalf of intersex children, organized.

“The United States government places great importance on the protection and promotion of the human rights of all people, including intersex individuals,” said the State Department spokesperson. “We are committed to raising awareness about the challenges faced by the intersex community.” The State Department earlier in the week declined to comment on Lambda Legal’s lawsuit against it.  Read More via Washington Blade 

Asexuality Awareness and The Right to Family

Last week was Asexuality Awareness Week, an international campaign to educate communities about asexual, aromantic, demisexual, grey-asexual experiences. In honor of the shared stories about asexuality that have been circulating through cyberspace, I want to talk about what the asexual community is doing for human rights, specifically the right to family.

While  the Supreme Court ruling was a great victory for LGBTQ+ community, it supports a “just like you” identity trope: Same-sex couples want the same rights as heterosexual couples because they are no different; they deserve the same privileges because they live their lives adhering to the same standards.

This still creates a dividing line of who should count legally, and who should not. With this boundary, families that don’t fit into legal marriage are forced to choose between accentuated privileges and the relationship structures they want and need. Often times, that choice is not even available to minority groups. Read more via Woodhull Foundation

US: Administration seeks protection of refugees' LGBT spouses

Without much fanfare, the Obama administration recently took a significant step towards helping LGBT people fleeing persecution. The State Department is expanding its interpretation of the term "spouse" to include partners of same sex refugees and asylum seekers.

Buried in the State Department's annual report to Congress on refugee program admissions for fiscal year 2016, the government announced that it will allow an already qualified refugee to apply to bring their same-sex partner to the United States even if they are not legally married.

The refugee has to file an Affidavit of Relationship (AOR) providing evidence that the relationship has existed for at least one year overseas prior to the application; the relationship is on-going; and legal marriage in the home country was not possible due to "social and/or legal prohibitions." Read more via NPR 

Israel: 11 police disciplined over Jerusalem Pride attack security failures

Israel’s Police Force is taking strong disciplinary action against a group of officers who were tasked with ensuring a safe 2015 Jerusalem Pride march after intelligence failings allowed religious extremist Yishai Schlissel into the parade area despite his only being released for a similar attack a month before.

Schlissel stabbed three marchers in the 2005 Jerusalem Pride march and was released in early July this year. On 30 July, just weeks after being set free, he carried out a stabbing attack on this year’s parade which wounded six and ultimately resulted in the death of 16-year-old victim Shira Banki.

Reacting to the announcement, the Banki family released a public statement earlier today. ‘The report won’t bring Shira back to her family,’ they say. ‘However, the family hopes that to the degree that deficiencies were found, they will be corrected and the conclusions drawn applied in the most thorough possible fashion to prevent the recurrence of such incidents.’ Read More via Gay Star News 

Italy: Venice mayor refuses to allow city to host gay pride parade

It will gladly play host to giant cruise ships on its canals and hordes of tourists along its narrow, winding streets. But the city of Venice will not see fit to hold a gay pride parade as long as the current rightwing mayor is in charge, the politician has reportedly said.

Mayor Luigi Brugnaro was quoted as saying that gay pride marches were the “height of kitsch” and would not happen in Venice on his watch. “There will never be a gay pride in my city,” he was quoted as saying in La Repubblica. “Let them go and do it in Milan, or in front of their own homes.”

Brugnaro was criticised by Italy’s rights group Arcigay, which accused him of besmirching Venice’s reputation as an open, sophisticated society. Read More via the Guardian 

Myanmar spirit festival offers rare space for gay community

Waving their floral offerings in the air, devotees danced through a temple to celebrate Myanmar's biggest spirit festival which has also become a rare host for the country's marginalised gay community. The six-day spirit or "nat" celebration in Taungbyone village, around 20 kilometres from the central city of Mandalay, draws thousands of revellers each year in search of karmic reward as well as all-night parties.

Gay people in the former junta-run nation still routinely suffer discrimination despite sweeping modernisation in recent years that has started to create more openness. At Taungbyone, however, there is a warm welcome and many of the most well-regarded mediums are gay or transvestite, providing advice and a direct line to the spirits by day and spending evenings dancing in elaborate costumes as part of the celebrations.

Same-sex relations are criminalised under Myanmar's colonial-era penal code, and although the law is not strictly enforced, activists say it is still used by authorities to discriminate and extort. But taboos around homosexuality have begun to be relaxed after a quasi-civilian government replaced military rule in 2011.  Read More via Bangkok Post

Netherlands: Asylum easier for Russian gay men

The situation of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in Russia has deteriorated so much that the Netherlands how considers them a “risk group”. For this reason the Netherlands has made it easier for Russian homosexuals to find asylum here.

This follows a report published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs last month that stated that LGBT’s are victims of violence everywhere in Russia, and that authorities hardly intervene. From now Russian homosexuals can prove to the Immigration and Naturalization Service with “low indications” that they fear persecution in their own country. Before they had to prove that they as individual would be in danger should they return to Russia.

Previously the Immigration and Naturalization Service regularly rejected asylum applications from Russian LGBT’s on the basis that larger cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg were still safe. The Foreign Affairs report no longer explicitly state that these cities are safer and the Service must therefore now be more restrained.  Read More via eikon

Vietnam: Hundreds brave persistent rain at LGBT rally in Vietnam

 In a country dominated by two-wheelers, Vietnam’s gay pride parade was fittingly on bicycle and motorbike. Organisers counted about 400 people at the start of the bike rally. Though the turnout was smaller than the 600 in the previous year, it was encouraging, they said, given the rainy weather.

"I have a lot of friends from LGBT so I’m here to support them," said Linh, a social sciences student at the Vietnam National University. The crowd grew as more joined the after-party in downtown Hanoi. A notable guest was US Ambassador to Vietnam Ted Osius, the first gay American Ambassador to be appointed in Asia who said: “This is a country with traditional values and very big focus on family, but there is also a great openness to people who may not fit exactly that traditional mould and there is a great sense of fairness in Vietnam.” 

Viet Pride organiser Nguyen Thanh Tam noted, “For a long time LGBT was a very invisible community, but now I think we’re having more and more space in Vietnamese society.” Read More 

Uganda: The Gay Pride festival defied local law and taboo

Members of the Ugandan LGBT community celebrated their annual Pride Uganda festival this weekend, defying strict laws criminalizing homosexuality with up to 14 years in jail. Crowds of Ugandans traveled to the shores of Lake Victoria to walk in the festival’s gay pride parade, which was held at a secluded botanical garden 30 miles outside the nation’s capital of Kampala. 

Gay rights activists and allies marched, chanted and danced in the small parade, many waving rainbow flags and wearing colorful masks to conceal their identities. The celebration was part of the five-day Pride Uganda festival, which provided a rare occasion for members of the LGBT community to gather together openly. Many LGBT Ugandans are forced to keep their identities secret, as same-sex relationships are punishable by up to 14 years in prison in the country. 

Not everyone was celebrating. The youngest of 20 brothers and sisters, Badru, a man from Kampala, was thrown out of his home because his family discovered he was gay. Homeless, unemployed and born HIV positive, Badru said he has nothing to celebrate about at Pride Uganda: “Today is rights day but I don’t know what I should be celebrating about when I have so many difficulties,” he said. “Pride is meaningless to me.”

Still, many LGBT Ugandans expressed their desire to live as authentically as possible, despite the almost daily threats of homophobic-based violence. Read More 

Jamaica: First public gay pride event a symbol of change, 'It felt liberating'

Early August is a special time for Jamaicans. The Emancipendence holidays celebrate both the end of slavery in 1838 and the country’s break away from British colonial rule in 1962. But this year has seen a very different kind of symbolic even, one that for LGBT campaigners in the country marks an equally important moment in the future development of this young nation.

It started not with a proclamation or a flag being hoisted up and down a pole but with a flash mob, an art day and a chance for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Jamaicans to show things are changing for the better. PRIDE JA was the first public gay pride celebration in the English-speaking Caribbean, after a similar event had to be canceled due to security concerns in the Bahamas last year. 

For those involved in the week’s activities – organised by JFLAG, the Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals and Gays – it was a chance to be proud and visible. “It felt liberating”, said Nicki who attended the arts performance. “It was safe with no fear. In public, if you express yourself in a particular way or use certain mannerisms you have to be on your guard but this really felt like it was ours.”  Read More

Israel: Thousands rally in Israel to protest attack during Pride march

Across Israel, thousands of people took to the streets to protest a week of violence. Yishai Schlissel, an Orthodox Jew who was previously convicted of stabbing three people at a Jerusalem pride parade in 2005, was recently released from prison after serving 10 years for the previous attack. After his release, Schlissel returned to his hometown where he began distributing handwritten pamphlets 'all Jews faithful to God' to risk 'beatings and imprisonment' for the sake of preventing the parade. At this month's parade he stabbed 6 people, killing a teenage girl.

Thousands attended a previously scheduled rally in Tel Aviv's Meir Park meant to commemorate an attack six years ago on a LGBT youth community center that left two dead and wounded 15 others. Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai and former Israeli president Shimon Peres attended the rally.

"I cannot believe we have reached such an abyss," Peres said in his speech. "I took before this stage six years ago, mere days after the murders at Barnoar. I am finding it difficult to believe that we are standing on that same stage, once again before the same phenomenon. We have gathered this evening for a war of independence – Israel's independence from insanity and insane people. This is not a disagreement between right and left. This is a profound clash between those with a conscience and those who lack a conscience."   Read More