French President Francois Hollande has vowed to introduce tougher penalties for racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic crimes in the wake of last month’s terrorist attacks in Paris.
Speaking at a dinner hosted by the country’s Jewish community, the President called for “faster, more effective sanctions” against hate speech and added: “I want such speech to come under criminal law rather than press laws.” Read More
Arlene Harrison Henry, who was appointed recently as Jamaica's first female public defender, has indicated that her mission is to defend the rights of all citizens, especially the vulnerable groups in society.
"The LGBT (lesbians, gays, bisexual, and transgender) group is also a delicate matter in our country, but they, too, are entitled to equality, representation, and equal protection of laws," she said.
Henry added: "The bottom line is I won't be partial, and if I encounter someone from that group whose rights have been breached, I will be defending them just the same, and every sector in society will be represented." Read More
For Kate Bornstein, the American author and pioneer gender activist, this is a pivotal time in history for transgender people as the rigid concept of two sexes is challenged by a growing number of individuals who don't conform to either. Some even suggest the notion of gender as we know it, the categorization of individuals as either male or female, might become obsolete altogether.
"Most college students are okay with the idea of someone who defines themselves as not a man or a woman," said Bornstein, 66, who was born a man but had a sex change operation in the 1980s. "That's very different from their parents or even their older siblings," she said. Now gender non-conformity, also known as genderqueer, and transsexuality are far more visible. Read More
Nearly 80% of LGBTI Vietnamese say society had changed positively toward them over the last five years, according to a new survey. The most voted changes were confidence to be themselves, government recognition and LGBTI activities. Read More
All heads turned when Thi took the stage to speak about her youngest son's struggle with being gay and to promote support for gays and lesbians. The conference, organized by by Ho Chi Minh City-based activist group ICS, gathered supporters for and families of LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) people.
A farmer, Thi said she could only learn about the community from her son because she did not know how to access the Internet to study and there was no LGBT support group in her hometown. Read More
Speaking to a Bhutanese audience Rinpoche stated: "your sexual orientation has nothing to do with understanding or not understanding the truth. You could be gay, you could be lesbian, you could be straight, we never know which one will get enlightened first."
He concluded his speech: "Time is changing, and we should be really tolerant, I mean tolerant is even I mean… You should not be tolerating this, actually. You should be respecting it. Tolerance is not a good thing. If you are tolerating this, it means that you think it’s something wrong that you will tolerate. But you have to go beyond that. You have to actually respect this one." Watch his statements here.
The Botswana Network on Ethics Law and HIV/AIDS (BONELA) has welcomed the decision by the government to spread the HIV/AIDS message to marginalised groups, including the gay community and commercial sex workers. In an interview, BONELA executive director, Cindy Kelemi said her organisation had been calling for such intervention “for more than a decade” but no one had been willing to listen.
“We see it as a milestone that finally government is reaching out to minority groups. We applaud government for taking such a step,” she said. Read More
Poland’s first openly transgender lawmaker, Anna Grodzka, plans to run for President. There are currently no openly transgender heads of state in the world, meaning that Grodzka – who is already the world’s only elected transgender MP – would make history again if successful. Read More
Members of the Center for Integrated Training and Research, a Dominican advocacy group known by the Spanish acronym COIN that has fought the AIDS epidemic in the country and throughout the Caribbean for more than two decades, will meet with representatives of the Dominican Ministry of Tourism and Tourism Police to promote LGBT tourism and gay rights in the Caribbean country. Read More
The question often facing development agencies is whether or not to wade into a controversial debate on a country level, which could aggravate the authorities that give them their license to operate, when promoting gay rights is often not perceived to be ‘mission critical’ to their job – delivering services, running development programmes etc. Read More
History has been made in India after a transgender candidate won a mayoral election in Chhattisgarh’s Raigarh Municipal Corporation. Independent candidate Madhu Kinnar defeated her opposition by 4357 votes on 4 January, beating the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Mahaveer Guruji to become mayor of Raigarh.
The win is a historic occasion for the LGBT population in Raigarh, which lies west of the India-Bangladesh border. However homosexuality still remains a criminal offence in India, with those caught in sexual acts imprisoned. Read More