Watch: New Houston Unites Ad Asks You to Give Your Neighbor a Fair Shot
Today, Houston Unites, the coalition to protect the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance, released a new television ad to illustrate the ordinance’s broad community important.
HRC.org
Get Ready Because The Cher Musical Is Almost Here
If ever there was a diva worthy of having her life turned into a Broadway musical, it would be Cherilyn Sarkisian, AKA Cher.
The 69-year-old entertainer has been very hard at work on the stage play about her life. Plans for the autobiographical featuring her biggest hits from the past six — yes, six! — decades were first announced back in 2012, but then the project stalled. Now, according to the “Believe” singer herself, it’s back on track and may be near completion.
Related: Everyone Relax! Despite Reports, Cher Is Not “Dying,” Publicist Says
Over the weekend, Cher tweeted that she was busy working with Rick Elice, co-creator of the hit musical Jersey Boys:
Spent last 3 Days with Rick?? He is Writer of Cher Musical. We had so much fun??? He wrote Jersey Boys. Hhmmm… She’ll be more of a PAIN?
— Cher (@cher) October 25, 2015
When the project was initially announced three years ago, Cher revealed that it would focus on three different periods in her life –before she met Sonny Bono, after the couple separated through her Believe tour in 1999, and the present day — with a different actress playing her in each era.
Related: 12 More Pearls Of Wisdom Gathered From Cher’s Twitter Account
“Prod r trying to write musical of my life at the moment! Its very interesting idea,” she tweeted at the time, adding that she would be closely involved in the writing process “cause I was there and know stories that no1 knows but me.”
No word yet on when the project might be complete or which actresses are in the running to play Cher.
Who do you think should play the iconic dance diva? Sound off in the comments section below.
h/t: Attitude
Graham Gremore
The Dixie Chicks Cover Lana Del Rey’s ‘Video Games’ – LISTEN
Country music trio the Dixie Chicks gave a country twist to one of Lana Del Rey’s most popular songs.
Performing at a school benefit in Mountainview, California, the Chicks covered Del Rey’s “Video Games”, infusing their at-times melancholy and twang-tinged sound to the modern classic.
The Dixie Chicks may want to consider a cover of the entire Born To Die album a la Ryan Adams and 1989.
Watch and listen below:
[h/t Attitude]
The post The Dixie Chicks Cover Lana Del Rey’s ‘Video Games’ – LISTEN appeared first on Towleroad.
Sean Mandell
The Dixie Chicks Cover Lana Del Rey’s ‘Video Games’ – LISTEN
Don't Let Them Eat Cake, Antigay Baker Begs Colorado Supreme Court
An antigay baker in Colorado is asking the state’s Supreme Court to weigh in on his fight to deny service to same-sex couples, reports The Denver Post.
Jack Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colo., has seen his legal requests denied at every turn since he was first found to have violated Colorado’s nondiscrimination law when refusing to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple in 2012. Phillips admitted that he had denied service to other LGBT customers, though the state’s investigation found that he agreed to make a cake for a dog wedding.
In August, the Colorado Court of Appeals ruled that Phillips cannot refuse to serve same-sex couples based on his self-professed Christian beliefs. That ruling affirmed several previous rulings, by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission in 2014 and the Colorado Civil Rights Division in 2013, which found that Phillips violated the state’s nondiscrimination law when he refused to make a wedding cake for Dave Mullins and Charlie Craig, who married in Massachusetts in 2012, then held a reception with friends and family in Denver shortly thereafter.
While same-sex marriage became legal in Colorado in October 2014, the state’s pre-existing nondiscrimination law prohibits businesses that serve the public from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, in addition to several other traits.
Nevertheless, Phillips has asked the Colorado Supreme Court to review his case.
Watch the Denver Post‘s report on the latest development below.
Sunnivie Brydum
There’s Now A Yelp To Help Trans People Find A Doctor
The trans community lacks health care guidance — so they’re creating their own user-generated resource.
The post There’s Now A Yelp To Help Trans People Find A Doctor appeared first on ThinkProgress.
Alex Zielinski
thinkprogress.org/health/2015/10/26/3715959/trans-health-website/
Lawmakers Slam Social Security's Treatment Of Same-Sex Couples
Thirty-eight U.S. senators and 83 U.S. Representatives on Monday sent a letter to the Social Security Administration grilling the agency over its treatment of married same-sex couples.
The group, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), specifically takes issue with the SSA giving legally married gay and lesbian couples incorrect payouts after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a section of the Defense of Marriage Act in 2013, then fining them.
While the agency worked to update its policies following the court’s decision, the SSA continued to treat people in same-sex marriages as single individuals, resulting in higher benefit payouts. Now, the SSA wants those couples to pay it back.
For some time after the Supreme Court’s Windsor decision, SSA continued to issue benefits to Supplemental Security Income recipients in same-sex marriages as though these individuals were single.
The letter highlights the experiences of Hugh Held and Kelley Richardson-Wright, who are both in same-sex marriages in California. More than a year after the Supreme Court’s decision, they each received letters from the SSA informing them they’d received about $6,200 and $4,100 more, respectively, than they were entitled to, and would have to reimburse the agency for the overpayment. (After Held and Richardson-Wright took the matter to court, the SSA opted to waive their penalty.)
“We are concerned to hear that, for some time after the Supreme Court’s Windsor decision, SSA continued to issue benefits to Supplemental Security Income recipients in same-sex marriages as though these individuals were single, and that for some SSI recipients, SSA is still doing so,” the letter reads.
“SSA should not penalize people who are poor, elderly or disabled because SSA continued issuing benefits to these married individuals as though they were single,” it continues. “According to SSA’s statute and regulations, SSA shall avoid penalizing an individual for overpayment if the individual is without fault and if recovery of the overpayment would be against equity and good conscience.”
The letter asks the SSA to provide a count of how many individuals in same-sex marriages it has charged with overpayment, and what the agency has done to update its own systems “so that SSA can correctly take marital status into account and administer benefits fairly to all individuals.”
Also on HuffPost:
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
HRC, National Democratic Institute Launch Partnership to Foster Political Inclusion of LGBT People
Together, we will seek to help LGBT people grow their organizations, advocate for their rights, change hearts and minds, and inspire social change that acknowledges the equal dignity and rights of LGBT people around the world.
HRC.org
Daniel Tosh Has Done The Unthinkable — Showered With Carrot Top
Daniel Tosh rolls around on a sofa looking pretty dressed only in a sexy negligee and slinks about in nothing but a revealing wet T-shirt, but that’s hardly the most surprising element in his parody video for “Good For You” ft. A$AP Rocky by Selena Gomez. The Comedy Central personality, who is forever pushing the queer envelope with his series Tosh.0, takes a shower with entertainer comic red-headed person Carrot Top.
Watch the two have at it below.
Jeremy Kinser
South Park Wants Your Gay Fan Art, Now
South Park is looking for some gay fan art for this week’s episode and you have about 8 hours to get some into the show if you want a chance to be included.
Specifically, they’re looking for slash/yaoi art (focused on romantic or sexual relationship) of Craig and Tweek (shown above).
Write the producers: “So for any of you who are into this, submit by this Monday (October 26) at 6 p.m. Pacific Time and tune in Wednesday night to see if your art made it into the show. We will try to use as much as we can!”
More info on how to submit here.
The post South Park Wants Your Gay Fan Art, Now appeared first on Towleroad.
Andy Towle
Third-Gender Passports May Be the Future of Trans Travel
The arrival of a transgender activist from Nepal in Taiwan last Saturday for the 2015 International Lesbian and Gay Association’s Asia conference may seem unremarkable. But it was in fact quite special: The activist, Bhumika Shrestha, is the first Nepali citizen to travel abroad carrying a passport marked O for “other” instead of M for “male” or F for “female.”
This is a groundbreaking and long-overdue achievement for global travel because it demonstrates that self-identification can and should be the sole factor in obtaining gendered documents.
Nepal’s legal recognition of a third category began with a 2007 Supreme Court case in which the judge ordered the government to create a legal category for people who identify as neither male nor female. Crucially, the judgment dictated that the ability to get documents bearing a third gender should be based on “self-feeling.” That is to say: no tests, expert opinions, or other potentially humiliating adjudication should play a role in the process.
But that concept had at the time only recently been enshrined in the Yogyakarta Principles, the first international guidelines on sexual orientation, gender identity, and human rights standards. And carrying out the court decision proved knottier than the court’s declaration.
Following the court’s judgment, LGBTI rights activists in Nepal advocated with bureaucrats to include the third gender on everything from voter rolls to citizenship papers. In 2011, Nepal included a third gender in its census. But when I went with Shrestha that year to the District Administration Office in Kathmandu, the capital, to change her legally recognized gender on various documents, she got a real run-around. First she was told that she needed to change her citizenship certificate. The DAO bureaucrats sent her from office to office and handed her case off dismissively — ultimately telling her she needed more paperwork indicating various approvals.
“This is the 13th time I’ve been here, and the officials’ excuse for not changing my papers is different every time,” she told me as we exited to muddy monsoon streets. Shrestha was assigned male identity at birth and raised as a son by her parents. When she was a teenager, she began to develop her identity differently and soon came to understand herself as female. Her parents accepted her identity, and she still lives at home with them. But the government, despite the court’s ruling, needed more convincing. Like transgender people around the world who seek legal recognition of who they are, she braved dozens of humiliating and degrading inquisitions — government officials asked her questions about her genitalia and her sex life.
Only this year, after sustained pressure from LGBTI rights activists, was Shrestha able to finally obtain her third-gender citizenship certificate and begin changing other documents.
Shrestha’s push for third-gender documents, alongside other Nepali activists, is not the only way forward. Some transgender people prefer to be identified as male or female, not a third category. But for global travel, the concept of self-identification is too rarely implemented. There is already some precedent for reflecting gender identity on travel documents even if it falls outside a male-female binary. International travel document guidelines set out by the United Nations’ International Civil Aviation Organization, which sets regulations on global air travel, already specify that passports can be issued bearing M for male, F for female, or X for indeterminate gender. Australia, New Zealand, and Malta all allow for X passports in some cases. As one U.N. expert noted in 2009, “measures that involve increased travel document security, such as stricter procedures for issuing, changing and verifying identity documents, risk unduly penalizing transgender persons whose personal appearance and data are subject to change.”
But in addition to the dignity such a shift affords people who want third-gender passports, this autumn’s successful issuance of Shrestha’s passport and her Taiwanese visa shreds one common argument against issuing passports in three genders: that foreign governments will not acknowledge them, imperiling those who possess them. There is no Taiwanese consulate in Nepal, so Shrestha had to travel to India to apply for her visa. This means she left Nepal, entered India, and successfully obtained a Taiwan visa all bearing her legal gender marker, O. Hong Kong also issued her a transit visa for the trip.
That the budding politician is attending a major Asian LGBT rights conference is significant. The region’s governments have a long way to go on legal gender recognition. But there are glints of progress that should be held up as examples, and Shrestha’s long-overdue achievement should stand as an illustration of how dignity can be achieved and progress made simply by following basic human rights standards and international guidelines.
KYLE KNIGHT is a researcher in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights Program at Human Rights Watch.
Kyle Knight
www.advocate.com/commentary/2015/10/26/third-gender-passports-may-be-future-trans-travel
You must be 18 years old or older to chat
