5-Year-Old Sent Home from Christian School for Having Same-Sex Parents
A five-year-old girl in San Diego, California, was sent home from a Christian school for having two moms, according to KGTV San Diego.
HRC.org
Daily Archives: September 29, 2015
North Carolina Legislators Launch Sneak Attack on Local LGBT Rights Ordinances
North Carolina Legislators Launch Sneak Attack on Local LGBT Rights Ordinances
Anti-gay legislators in the North Carolina General Assembly are seeking to eradicate local ordinances throughout the state that provide non-discrimination protections to LGBT people.
In an eleventh hour sneak attack, anti-LGBT legislators scheduled SB 279 — which would strip away the ability of local municipalities to enact ordinances that protect LGBT people from discrimination — for an up or down vote in the House of Representatives this afternoon. The legislation, which would also override existing municipal non-discrimination ordinances, could move to the Senate and the Governor’s desk as soon as today.
SB 279 was originally drafted as a bill addressing sex education. Late last night, anti-equality legislators added the anti-LGBT language as an amendment to SB 279 in conference committee.
The Charlotte Observer reports:
Democrats and gay, lesbian and transgender advocacy groups like Equality N.C. say the legislation would scrap nondiscrimination ordinances in eight communities. Some compared it with the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA, which was scrapped earlier this session amid opposition from businesses.
Charlotte leaders narrowly voted down a nondiscrimination ordinance earlier this year, which would have added sexual orientation and gender identity to protected categories. Opponents said it would force businesses to serve gay and transgender people.
The post North Carolina Legislators Launch Sneak Attack on Local LGBT Rights Ordinances appeared first on Towleroad.
Sean Mandell
North Carolina Legislators Launch Sneak Attack on Local LGBT Rights Ordinances
Ban Ki-moon: Leading By Example
Ban Ki-moon: Leading By Example
In our recent blog Making History at the U.N., we told the story of openly gay Syrian refugee Subhi Nahas, who recently made history when he addressed the first ever meeting of the United Nations Security Council concerning the human rights of LGBT refugees. Today, we focus on the extraordinary support for LGBT equality coming from the head of the United Nations: Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
On June 26, 2015, the day the Supreme Court issued its historic nationwide marriage equality decision, Ban Ki-moon was in San Francisco to commemorate the 70th Anniversary of the UN’s founding and to receive the Harvey Milk Honors Medal for “his unparalleled and unequivocal support of LGBT inclusive human rights across the globe.”
In his speech at the celebration, Ban proclaimed the marriage equality decision to be a “great step forward for human rights in the United States.” He recognized the broad importance of the ruling, explaining that “[d]enying couples legal recognition of their relationship opens the door to widespread discrimination” and that the Court’s “ruling will help close that door ….” He also spoke passionately about the struggle of LGBT people all over the world:
Millions of people, in every corner of the world, are forced to live in hiding, in fear of brutal violence, discrimination, even arrest and imprisonment, just because of who they are, or whom they love….The abuses and indignity suffered by members of the LGBT community are an outrage — an affront to the values of the United Nations and to the very idea of universal human rights. I consider the struggle to end these abuses to be a great cause on a par with the struggle to end discrimination against women and on the basis of race.
Ban has put his words into action and spoken the truth to those who need to hear it most. For example, at the start of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, Ban gave a speech in Sochi in which he stood up against homophobia in Russia and elsewhere, and urged all people to “raise our voices against attacks on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or intersex people…. We must oppose the arrests, imprisonments and discriminatory restrictions they face.”
After Ban, early in his tenure, met with LGBT UN staff who were afraid to come out, he declared that he “would make the United Nations the best workplace in the world, where people living with different sexual orientation would have no obstacles, no discrimination.” Under Ban’s leadership, the UN extended to same-sex spouses the same benefits available to different-sex spouses, and a General Assembly committee rejected a Russian effort to thwart the move by a nearly 2-1 margin. In 2013, the UN Human Rights Office launched the Free & Equal campaign to combat homophobia and transphobia. In Ban’s words: “I believe in leading by example.”
In January 2015, the Secretary General traveled to India, where the Indian Supreme Court is currently rehearing a legal challenge to India’s retention of British era anti-sodomy laws. Ban made his position clear: “I staunchly oppose the criminalization of homosexuality…. I speak out because laws criminalizing consensual, adult same-sex relationships violate basic rights to privacy and to freedom from discrimination. Even if they are not enforced, these laws breed intolerance….”
On a 2010 trip to Malawi, Ban engaged in quieter diplomacy on behalf of LGBT people when in a private meeting he urged Malawi’s president to release Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga, two LGBT Malawians who had been sentenced to 14 years in prison after announcing their engagement. Upon the couple’s release the next day, Ban publicly urged that “outdated penal code[s]” such as Malawi’s “be reformed wherever [they] … may exist.” On other occasions, Ban has noted that most such laws “are not home-grown,” but “inherited from former colonial powers.”
Two years later, as part of 2012 Human Rights Day events, Ban declared: “It is an outrage that in our modern world, so many countries continue to criminalize people simply for loving another human being of the same sex.” A year later as part of a 2013 International Human Rights Conference in Oslo, Ban recognized that the struggle for LGBT equality “is one of the great neglected human rights challenges of our time.” He observed that opponents of change “may invoke culture, tradition or religion to defend the status quo.” But that “[s]uch arguments have been used to try to justify slavery, child marriage, rape in marriage and female genital mutilation. I respect culture, tradition and religion, but they can never justify the denial of basic rights.”
The 71-year-old Secretary-General was not born an LGBT civil rights activist but came to support the cause through “a journey.” As Ban grew up in Korea in the 1950s and 60s, he was unaware of knowing any LGBT people. Noting the influence of Confucianism in Korea, Ban explained that “[s]exual orientation and gender identity were not issues we spoke about.” But according to Ban, “I … learned to speak out when I realized that people’s lives are at stake. It is that simple.”
Ban feels “enormous pride” in being “the first UN Secretary-General to push hard for equal rights and respect for LGBT people around the world.” We are proud to have such a strong advocate leading the UN. In speaking out for LGBT rights, Ban has reminded the world that the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights begins with the proclamation: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” Ban has emphasized how that declaration applies to: “All human beings — not some, not most, but all.” We agree.
John Lewis and Stuart Gaffney, together for nearly three decades, were plaintiffs in the California case for equal marriage rights decided by the California Supreme Court in 2008. They are leaders in the nationwide grassroots organization Marriage Equality USA.
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Danny Pintauro’s Who’s The Boss co-stars support his going public with HIV status
Danny Pintauro’s Who’s The Boss co-stars support his going public with HIV status
Danny Pintauro and Judith Light remained close after spending eight years playing mother and son on the ABC sitcom Who’s the Boss.
So it was not a surprise to Light when Pintauro shared with the world that he is HIV positive over the weekend during an interview with Oprah Winfrey.
‘He’s kept me informed all the way along,’ Light said in an interview with Good Day New York after Pintauro’s Where Are They Now? segment aired on OWN.
‘I am so proud of him,’ Light said. ‘He’s talking about being HIV positive. He is being incredibly proactive. … He’s giving a different face to what is still a disease that has not been handled.’
It’s no surprise that Pintauro would have an ally in Light. The two-time Tony Award winning actress who currently appears in the TV series Transparent has long been an activist for LGBTI equality.
Light was one of the first celebrities in the 1980s to speak out about the AIDS epidemic and to lend her name to benefits and she has remained involved since then.
She points out that while gains have been made in terms of equality and acceptance, there is still much work to be done.
‘The world is different, and it’s better, but we still need to have a more understanding and a more responsible and a more responsive and a kinder society.’
Pintauro has not been in touch with another co-star Alyssa Milano, but she had words of support during an appearance on the CBS talk show The Talk on Tuesday (29 September).
‘I’m so glad that he is able to express himself now and I guarantee he will change so many lives,’ she said. ‘And I’m so grateful that this disease is being discussed again because it feels like there was such a long time that it wasn’t. And he is a beacon of light and he will be. I’m proud.’
The post Danny Pintauro’s Who’s The Boss co-stars support his going public with HIV status appeared first on Gay Star News.
Greg Hernandez
Sneak Attack in North Carolina General Assembly Puts LGBT Rights At Risk
Sneak Attack in North Carolina General Assembly Puts LGBT Rights At Risk
Anti-LGBT legislation could strip rights of local municipalities to enact LGBT non-discrimination ordinances and erase existing protections
HRC.org
Grindr, Tinder Upset Over AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s New STD Billboard — Should They Be?
Grindr, Tinder Upset Over AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s New STD Billboard — Should They Be?
Drivers in Los Angeles already have it pretty rough — they’re driving, in Los Angeles, after all.
But now on top of the traffic, the noise and the pollution, they also have their sexual health to worry about after passing by a new billboard erected by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.
And maybe that’s a good thing?
The ad’s message, which depicts two couples in silhouette with the words “Tinder,” “chlamydia,” “Grindr,” and “gonorrhea” next to the text “freestdcheck.org” couldn’t be any clearer. A rise in hook-up culture contributes to a rise in STIs.
Related: Four Men Face Felony Sex Charges After Hookup With Grindr Teen
Are these apps at fault for their users’ actions by merely existing? No, but the connection remains.
Unsurprisingly, Tinder and Grindr aren’t too happy with the characterization, and Tinder actually sent a cease and desist letter to AHF to take down the ad.
“These unprovoked and wholly unsubstantiated accusations are made to irreparably damage Tinder’s reputation in an attempt to encourage others to take an HIV test by your organization,” Tinder attorney Jonathan Reichman said in a letter to the foundation.
Related: 12 Grindr Fails To Avoid If You Actually Want To Get Lucky This Weekend
Grindr quietly (by comparison) dropped AHF as a paid advertiser, saying, “We were surprised at the approach [the foundation] took, and paused the campaign in order to speak with them and assess our relationship.”
While AHF is by no means a knight in shining armor — they’re sex-negative attitude is well-documented — is there really any harm in reminding people to check their dipsticks?
Will fewer people use Grindr and Tinder as a result of the ad? (We think not.)
Related: AIDS Healthcare Foundation Pres. Calls Truvada A “Party Drug”, Refuels Debate Over PrEP Meds
“In many ways, location-based mobile dating apps are becoming a digital bathhouse for millennials wherein the next sexual encounter can literally just be a few feet away—as well as the next STD,” Whitney Engeran-Cordova, the foundation’s public health division director, said in a statement.
If we can’t admit how these apps are being used, and encourage smart behavior, should we even have them in the first place?
Dan Tracer
Right-Wing Extremist Calls For Global ‘Inquisition’ To End ‘Fag Problem’, Kill Gays: VIDEO
Right-Wing Extremist Calls For Global ‘Inquisition’ To End ‘Fag Problem’, Kill Gays: VIDEO
Right-wing Christian activist Theodore Shoebat posted a new video this past weekend in which he calls for a worldwide “inquisition” to end “homo-tyranny.”
Shoebat’s rant was spurred on by news that a doctor had been fired by Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center “for repeatedly spreading anti-gay material to colleagues”, as Right Wing Watch reports. In his rambling monologue, Shoebat declared that he was not a fan of democracy (he likes “mo-narchy” better) and that the world has a “fag problem”:
“I’m sick and tired of the homo tyranny,” he said. “What the world needs is a collective law … What we need is the laws of God, the virtues of Heaven to become the law of the world. That is the bottom line. Do I believe in Christian world domination? Absolutely. I would be a liar if I said I didn’t. Do I believe in Christian supremacy? Absolutely. Do I believe in democracy? Hell no. Do I believe in some sort of a democratic socialist republic? Hell no. I believe in monarchy, I believe in Inquisitions, I believe we need to revive the system of the Middle Ages that we had; we had no fag problems, we didn’t have a lot of serial killers back in those days, we didn’t have frickin drug cartel problems, we had none of the crap. We didn’t have no fags asking to be married. None of that garbage.”
“It’s homo tyranny and it needs to be destroyed,” Shoebat continued, “Christian world domination needs to be established and homosexuality needs to be deemed as a crime. And the homos need to be told, hey, you gotta stop that and if they don’t stop that then, I’m sorry, we have an Inquisition and that Inquisition will enact the death penalty, as Scripture tells us.”
Watch the video below:
The post Right-Wing Extremist Calls For Global ‘Inquisition’ To End ‘Fag Problem’, Kill Gays: VIDEO appeared first on Towleroad.
Sean Mandell
Right-Wing Extremist Calls For Global ‘Inquisition’ To End ‘Fag Problem’, Kill Gays: VIDEO
WATCH: Matt Damon Explain Himself to Ellen
WATCH: Matt Damon Explain Himself to Ellen
Matt Damon wants everyone to know he does not believe out gay actors should go back into the closet, nor did he ever say so.
That’s one of the things the actor wanted to make clear while taping an interview with Ellen DeGeneres on her syndicated talk show Monday. DeGeneres — who invited Damon on her show to promote his new film, The Martian — asked him to address how his comments to the UK newspaper, The Guardian, which she said were “twisted around.” He says they were taken wildly out of context.
“I was just trying to say actors are more effective when they’re a mystery,” said Damon. “And someone picked it up and said I said ‘Gay actors should get back in the closet.’ Which is like, it’s stupid.” The audience joined the actor in laughing at that misinterpretation; DeGeneres stayed cool and paid rapt attention.
“It’s painful when things get said that you don’t believe,” Damon told DeGeneres. “You know what I mean? And then it gets represented that that’s what you believe. Because in the blogosphere, there’s no penalty for just taking the ball and running with it.”
As The Advocate reported, Damon told U.K. newspaper The Guardian that out actors “take a hit for being out,” specifically mentioning Rupert Everett, whose career sputtered after breaking out in the 1990s with My Best Friend’s Wedding. Though he seems sympathetic toward Everett, Damon thinks an aura of mystery makes actors more believable.
“I think it must be really hard for actors to be out publicly. But in terms of actors, I think you’re a better actor the less people know about you, period. And sexuality is a huge part of that. Whether you’re straight or gay, people shouldn’t know anything about your sexuality because that’s one of the mysteries that you should be able to play.”
The controversy may have received more play than usual as it came on the heels of another contentious statement from Damon, for which he half-heartedly apologized.
As Mashable reported, producer Effie Brown, a black woman, made a comment on the season premiere of Project Greenlight that casting diversity was an important factor in choosing a director for the HBO show’s project; Damon shot back that picking the best candidate for the sake of the show — and the film they would be making within it — was the top priority.
DeGeneres ended the brief conversation about the controversy by appearing to accept Damon’s clarification, adding, “And it shocks me that you and Ben are not gay,” she added as a final tension-breaker. “But. If you want to deny it and keep the mystery in your marriage … .”
Watch the clip from Ellen, below.
Dawn Ennis
www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/2015/9/29/watch-matt-damon-explain-himself-ellen
What the FDA Can Learn From Argentina's New Gay Blood Donation Policy
What the FDA Can Learn From Argentina's New Gay Blood Donation Policy
Last week, Argentina’s Health Ministry lifted its ban on gay blood donors in favor of an individualized risk assessment policy. The news comes at a time when the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is reviewing public comments on their own proposed policy change – to swap a lifetime deferral of men who have sex with men (MSM) for a 12-month deferral. If approved, the new American policy would then allow MSM to donate blood if they have abstained from same-sex sexual contact for the last year. Thus, the potential new American policy does not go nearly as far as Argentina’s complete overhaul of the blood donor deferral process.
However, the forthcoming potential shift in blood donation policy in the USA is a note worthy of excitement. The Williams Institute estimates that the 12-month deferral will add about 185,800 new likely blood donors and 317,000 pints of blood. With each pint of blood potentially saving up to three lives, the new deferral is certainly a great step towards removing bias from the donation process while also benefitting the people whom are affected most – recipients of blood transfusions.
That being said, the FDA has much to learn from our counterparts down south, as even though our new American policy will contribute to our blood supply, it remains grounded in stereotypes about HIV and sexual orientation. These stereotypes are damaging to both MSM and blood recipients, especially during blood shortages, which last occurred in 2014.
The FDA’s current policy of a lifetime deferral was adopted in 1983, during the HIV epidemic, out of fear of transmitting HIV to transfusion recipients. Much as our understanding of the virus has evolved, though, so have our methods for its detection. For that exact reason, the FDA screens all donated blood for HIV.
The current and potentially new FDA policies thus beg the question – what is unique about MSM that subjects them to additional scrutiny in the blood donation process?
Is it that the CDC estimates that gay and bisexual men comprise 57% of the HIV positive population and 63% of new HIV infections? This reasoning would make sense, but MSM are not the only group that is disproportionately susceptible. For example, African American individuals are eight times more likely than white people to be HIV positive and account for 44% of new adult and adolescent HIV infections. Does that mean that the FDA should defer African Americans for 12 months until they have remained abstinent? No – because that is racism and we know better.
But the FDA fails to apply that same logic to MSM, who also make up a very large group with such vast variations in sexual behavior and other HIV risk factors. It makes no sense to apply such a policy uniformly to such a diverse demographic.
Perhaps it is that MSM are unique in their prevalence of anal intercourse, the type of sex that presents the highest risk of HIV infection. Well, straight people have anal sex too – a lot of them. 44% of straight men and 36% of straight women report having anal intercourse at least once in their lifetimes.
A heterosexual person who has unprotected anal sex with multiple partners jumps to the front of the blood donation line, while a monogamous married gay man must remain abstinent for 12 months to be seen as equal in the eyes of the FDA. The skewed rationale behind the FDA’s deferral of MSM is a reminder of the double standards inflicted upon LGBTQ individuals in American society. In addition to failing to meet the blood needs of potential transfusion recipients, a policy like this can also take a negative toll on the deferred population. These discriminatory social policies adversely impact the wellbeing of the groups they target.
What’s the solution? The great news is that it has already been laid out and implemented around the world. Chile, Mexico, Spain, Italy, and now Argentina have shifted from damaging stereotypes to a more practical individualized risk assessment protocol. Now is a critical time for the FDA to learn from our peers around the world – American lives could depend on it.
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At Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting, HRC To Launch Groundbreaking Global Corporate Coalition
At Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting, HRC To Launch Groundbreaking Global Corporate Coalition
Consortium of 12 major businesses with 1.4 million employees across more than 190 countries commit to uphold LGBT workplace protections abroad
HRC.org
