How African LGBT activists are risking their lives to bring tolerance to their homes

When Ugandan LGBT activist Clare Byarugaba woke up and turned on her phone on February 28, 2014, she was greeted by the same ominous message over and over: "Have you seen the newspaper?" A few days before, the president of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, had signed into law a bill that punished certain sexual acts between two people of the same gender with life in prison and threatened incarceration for those who provided services and support to the LGBT community. In response, a popular tabloid newspaper ran Byarugaba's name and photo on its front page that day with the headline "Top Ugandan Gays Speak Out: How We Became Homos."

"All I could think of was, Oh, my God, my mom!" recalls Byarugaba, whose voice catches as she describes her mother's response: She threatened to hand her daughter over to the police. Byarugaba left town, fearing for her life after receiving death threats on her phone and via social media. She had seen what happened to out gays and lesbians in her country. In 2011 Uganda's most visible LGBT activist, David Kato, was bludgeoned to death with a hammer shortly after another tabloid splashed his photo on its front page under a banner that read, "Hang Them."

As the co-coordinator of the Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights and Constitutional Law, an LGBT advocacy group, Byarugaba worried that something similar might happen to her. Speaking out and organizing against her government's anti-LGBT rhetoric had made her vulnerable. Read more via Essence

US: A fresh gay face is shaking things up in evangelical land

When Matthew Vines burst onto the evangelical scene in 2012, he could have become another one-hit wonder of viral videos. A YouTube video of the 21-year-old outlining a scriptural defense of monogamous, Christ-centered same-sex relationships showed up on LGBT blogs and Facebook timelines all over.

Since then, he has established The Reformation Project, an organization aimed to change Christians minds on same-sex relationships, and he's published God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships. Three years later, Vines is an emerging voice in Christian conversations on the intersections of faith, gender, and sexuality.

When I met Vines in the beginning of this venture with The Reformation Project, he was eager, albeit a bit naïve. He wanted to change the world equipped only with theology that affirmed same-sex relationships: “In 10-15 years, I want to change 2 billion Christians' minds on same-sex relationships,” I once heard him say. While his goals haven’t changed, the timeline has — and so have his methods. Read more via the Advocate 

UK: Transgender baptisms offered at Greater Manchester church

Transgender baptisms are to be offered for the first time in the UK by a church in Greater Manchester. The New Chapel Unitarian and Free Christian in Denton, Tameside, agreed the move at its annual general meeting.

Jean Clements, the church's worship leader, proposed the change after meeting a couple who had a transgender child. The church was moved to make a change in order to help those in the same situation. Mrs Clements said: "I felt saddened by the fact that this family were being shunned by many mainstream churches.

New Chapel stressed it is for other Unitarian Chapels within neighbouring districts "to decide for themselves whether they wish to offer similar services". Read more via BBC 

India's Hijra women are getting happy about trans rights

INDIA has been kicking goals on trans rights recently and the latest news from the subcontinent will leave you feeling happy.

Last year a small town elected the country’s first trans mayor, a trans woman became a prominent TV news anchor and India officially recognised trans as a third gender.  Last night, six singers from India’s Hijra community — the cultural term for its trans women — released an YouTube video covering Pharell William’s worldwide hit Happy.

The 6 Pack Band is India’s first-ever trans girl group made up of six singers and their first single Hum Hain Happy is a celebration of all things trans.  Read more

Gender fluidity went pop in 2015 – and it's not just a phase

Miley Cyrus blurred the lines between boy and girl, Angel Haze came out as agender and cross-dressing rapper Young Thug challenged stereotypes. In the first of a three-part series on the musical talking points of 2015, a look at how pop stars are refusing to be pinned down

don’t call it a trend. Gender fluidity found its way into more headlines than ever in 2015. But regardless of the moment it’s having in both music and pop culture at large, to dismiss it as a passing fad or, worse, gimmickry is a mistake – one with echoes of that damaging and all too familiar phrase that queerness is “just a phase”.

Proclamations that “gender fluidity is the new black” may be well intentioned, but are unhelpful. Instead, the cultural landscape of the last year has afforded a new openness for artists who don’t identify with gender binaries.  Read more

Taiwan: "We Are Not Monsters. We Are Full of Love."

Monster. The words on the medical record, scrawled in a doctor’s messy English script, said “pseudo hermaphrodite.” But what 18-year-old Hiker Chiu read on the paper was monster. 

Hiker’s parents finally told her/him that s/he was born both male and female—the word intersex never came up. Read more via Alturi

Netherlands: Advertising watchdog defends gay hook-up ads at train stations

Adverts for a gay hook-up app will not be banned in the Netherlands, despite a number of complaints. Gay cruising app Squirt had put up the large signs and posters at major train stations across Rotterdam, Amsterdam Utrecht and The Hague. 

Despite a number of complaints, the Advertising Standards Board has ruled in favour of the site – and will allow the campaign to continue.  One complainant claimed that the ad was designed to entice children into visiting the website, while a third said it was “truly sickening and shocking”.
The ASB found that the ads met “the necessary precautions… in the context of good taste and public decency.”

The app’s ads were previously removed from trains in Canada – after the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) claimed they encouraged gay commuters to “break the law”. TTC spokesperson Danny Nicholson said: “The ad was taken down as it promoted sex in public places, which is against the law.” Read more via PinkNews

Slovenia: Newspaper honors gay man for refugee work

Slovenia’s largest newspaper has named as its person of the year for 2015 a gay dentist who works with refugees. Delo honored Jure Poglajen during a ceremony in the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana. President Borut Pahor and the newspaper’s publisher were among those who attended the event.
Poglajen and his partner of more than four years have spent weeks providing food, water and clothing to the hundreds of refugees from Syria, Iraq and other countries who were crossing the narrow Mytilini Strait from Turkey to Lesbos.

Poglajen and his partner returned to Lesbos last fall with Adra Slovenia, a Protestant relief group that is raising funds to assist refugees who continue to flood into Europe. The two men also offered assistance to those who entered Slovenia from Croatia after Hungary closed its border with Serbia. 

Read more via Washington Blade
 

Australia: Queensland Government moves to expunge convictions for gay sex under historic laws

Men convicted under Queensland's historic homosexuality laws may soon have their crimes cleared, with the Palaszczuk Government taking steps to expunge historic convictions for gay sex. The sunshine state decriminalised homosexuality in 1990, but anyone charged under the laws, which made consensual homosexual acts illegal, still hold criminal convictions.

The Government has referred the issue to Queensland Law Reform Commission to consider how convictions can be removed from a person's criminal record.

Alan Raabe, 61, was one the 460 men to be convicted under the laws in Queensland. He said he has never been able to pursue his dream of teaching due to his conviction. When asked how he felt about the prospect of his conviction being expunged more than three decades later, he started crying. Read more via ABC 

Botswana: Good leadership is about people – Festus Mogae

Festus Mogae served as president of the southern African country of Botswana from 1998 to 2008. He is the recipient of several international awards, including the 2008 Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership. In an interview the former president shared his thoughts on gay rights, the reform of the UN Security Council, the right to protect civilians in humanitarian crises and the fight against HIV/AIDS. 

In my long interaction with LGBT groups and extensive research, I have come to the realisation that we are limited in our knowledge and must be open to new discoveries. I have been converted; I used to hold the same beliefs as my counterparts.

President Mugabe has said that he hates homosexuals and is on record as saying they are worse than pigs and dogs. That is still his position. Leadership is not always about you, it is about people and often circumstances. I call upon African leaders to open up to second generation rights.  Read more via the UN

Botswana: LGBTI in Africa, from victims to victors

by Katlego K Kolanyane-Kesupile, ARTivist, writer, digital artist, and performer, as well as a Global Shaper. Her awards include being named 2015 Queen’s Young Leaders Award Highly Commended Runner Up.

Historically speaking, pride parades have been portrayed as festivals where athletic bodied, barely clad men gyrate to up-tempo music on glittery floats; and when night falls the festivities become a seething cornucopia of lust and drug use. This has been veiled as a chance for LGBTI+ people to celebrate life and “be free”.

Freedom, however, has many different applications. Anyone expecting such frivolous displays at the Joburg People’s Pride (which you can follow on Facebook and Twitter) would be in for grave disappointment, as was evident in the November 2015 march through down-town Johannesburg, South Africa. To anyone asking: “Can you really take the sex out of Pride and change what it means – especially in Africa?” My response is a big fat “YES!” and I’ll tell you why.  Read more via World Economic Forum

Canada: World's first chair in transgender studies

At The University of Victoria in Victoria, B.C. Prof. Aaron Devor, an internationally recognized sex- and-gender expert, will work with researchers, community activists and students to advance study into a broad range of topics that affect the lives of transgender individuals.

The professor has been appointed to what's believed to be the world's only chair in transgender studies hopes the research will clear away the myths and improve the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in society. Read more via CTV News