Via JMG: INDIA: Law Criminalizing Homosexuality May Be Years From Being Repealed

The Independent reports:

When [in 2009] the Delhi High Court suspended the draconian Section 377 of the Indian penal code which dated from the days of British rule, India’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community thought there was no turning back. Five years on the euphoria has gone. In December, the country’s highest court overturned the lower court’s ruling, once again making gay sex a crime punishable by up to ten years in jail and putting tens of millions of Indians at risk of prosecution or harassment. Last month, that court – which had said gay people in India were just a “minuscule minority” – upheld its decision against an appeal and said it was up to the government to change the law. But there is little chance for that. While senior figures of the ruling Congress party supported repealing Section 377, the leadership of the main opposition party, which most analysts believe is set to secure power in an upcoming election, do not. As it was, the current parliament held its last session on Friday; it could be years before a new parliament amends the law.

With a population of more than 1.3 billion, India has at least 65 million LGBT citizens, if one uses the 5% estimate. That is HARDLY a "minuscule minority." In fact, using the 5% figure, the LGBT community in India is larger than the entire populations of more than 200 nations. Only 20 countries have populations greater than 65 million. Even if you cut the 5% estimate in half, the LGBT community in India is larger than the entire population of Canada.

Labels: homosexuality, India, LGBT rights

Reposted from Joe Jervis

Via JMG: UGANDA: Anti-Gay Bill On Hold While President Challenges US Scientists To Disprove That Homosexuality Is A Choice

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has put off signing the anti-gay bill while he challenges American scientists to disprove that homosexuality is a choice.

A week ago Museveni had insisted that he would approve the legislation, prompting criticism from US president Barack Obama and former president Bill Clinton. The US warned that the move would "complicate" relations with Uganda, to which it gives more than $400m (£240m) in aid annually. Uganda dismissed the threat as blackmail but on Friday it emerged that Museveni had done a u-turn and would not sign the proposed law until after hearing from scientists. "I therefore encourage the US government to help us by working with our scientists to study whether, indeed, there are people who are born homosexual," he wrote. "When that is proved, we can review this legislation." But he added: "Africans do not seek to impose their views on anybody. We do not want anybody to impose their views on us. This very debate was provoked by western groups who come to our schools and try to recruit children into homosexuality."

My guess is that Obama's strong denouncement of the bill is working. For now. Ugandan Minister of Ethics Simon Lokodo is very unhappy.

"It is a social style of life that is acquired," he said. "The point is they chose to be homosexual and are trying to recruit others. The commercialisation of homosexuality is unacceptable. If they were doing it in their own rooms we wouldn't mind, but when they go for children, that's not fair. They are beasts of the forest." Lokodo condemned western meddling in Uganda's domestic affairs. "When I heard the US saying they will cut aid, we said fine. Will they be comfortable if we come to America and started practising polygamy? Homosexuality is strange to us and polygamy is strange to you. We have divergent views. When they call me wrong, I will call them wrong. Don't bring it to Africa; keep it there."

Last week Lokodo declared that Uganda shows tolerance to gay people by "not slaughtering them."

Labels: Africa, LGBT rights, Uganda, Yoweri Museveni

Reposted from Joe Jervis  

Via Tricycle Daily Dharma

Tricycle Daily Dharma February 23, 2014

Do Less, Accomplish More

We are born with all the wisdom, playfulness, and imagination we need; we just sometimes need a reminder to return to our senses and get out of our own way. Let go of whatever fears, assumptions, distractions, resistance, and busyness may be hampering you. Allow yourself to think and feel and live that way.

- Marc Lesser, "Do Less, Accomplish More"

Read the entire article in the Wisdom Collection through February 24, 2014
For full access at any time, become a Tricycle Community Supporting or Sustaining Member

Via JMG: Meghan McCain Slams AZ Hate Bill

Labels: Arizona, bigotry, GOP, LGBT rights, Meghan McCain, public accommodations, religion

Reposted from Joe Jervis

Via JMG: BRITAIN: King's Husband Won't Be Queen

The first headline is from the tabloid Daily Mail.  The Telegraph has a less sensational story:

Men are to be banned from becoming Queen or Princess of Wales as part of an unprecedented effort to rewrite more than 700 years of law to prevent unintended consequences of gay marriage. Even a 14th Century act declaring it high treason to have an affair with the monarch’s husband or wife is included in the sweeping redrafting exercise. The order makes clear that a clause in the Act giving gay and heterosexual marriage the same legal effect does not apply to the rights of anyone “who marries, or who is married to, the King Regnant, to the title of Queen”. It also makes clear that were a future Prince of Wales to marry a man his husband could not be called Princess of Wales.

More immediately, the order rules out the possibility of Dukes, Earls and other male peers who marry other men making their husbands Duchess, Countess or Lady. Meanwhile dozens of other laws are to be excluded from the remit of the Act. They include the Second Statute of Westminster from 1285, which deals with inheritance matters, and even the Treason Act of 1351. It makes it high treason to “violate the King’s companion” – meaning the husband or wife of the monarch – or that of the heir. A Government spokeswoman explained that it would still be considered high treason to have sex with a king’s wife – but not his husband.

Britain's anti-gay groups are mocking the changes, of course.

 

Labels: Britain, marriage equality, royals

Reposted from Joe Jervis

Via George Takei: Dear Arizona

Dear Arizona,

Congratulations. You are now the first state actually to pass a bill permitting businesses–even those open to the public–to refuse to provide service to LGBT people based on an individual’s “sincerely held religious belief.” This “turn away the gay” bill enshrines discrimination into the law. Your taxi drivers can refuse to carry us. Your hotels can refuse to house us. And your restaurants can refuse to serve us.

Kansas tried to pass a similar law, but had the good sense to not let it come up for a vote. The quashing came only after the Kansas Chamber of Commerce and other traditional conservative groups came out strongly against the bill.

But not you, Arizona. You’re willing to ostracize and marginalize LGBT people to score political points with the extreme right of the Republican Party. You say this bill protects “religious freedom,” but no one is fooled. When I was younger, people used “God’s Will” as a reason to keep the races separate, too. Make no mistake, this is the new segregation, yours is a Jim Crow law, and you are about to make yourself ground zero.

This bill also saddens me deeply. Brad and I have strong ties to Arizona. Brad was born in Phoenix, and we vacation in Show Low. We have close friends and relatives in the state and spend weeks there annually. We even attended the Fourth of July Parade in Show Low in 2012, looking like a pair of Arizona ranchers.

The law is breathtaking in its scope. It gives bigotry against us gays and lesbians a powerful and unprecedented weapon. But your mean-spirited representatives and senators know this. They also know that it is going to be struck down eventually by the courts. But they passed it anyway, just to make their hateful opinion of us crystal clear.

So let me make mine just as clear. If your Governor Jan Brewer signs this repugnant bill into law, make no mistake. We will not come. We will not spend. And we will urge everyone we know–from large corporations to small families on vacation–to boycott. Because you don’t deserve our dollars. Not one red cent.

And maybe you just never learn. In 1989, you voted down recognition of the Martin Luther King holiday, and as a result, conventions and tourists boycotted the state, and the NFL moved the Superbowl to Pasadena. That was a $500 million mistake.

So if our appeals to equality, fairness, and our basic right to live in a civil society without doors being slammed in our face for being who we are don’t move you, I’ll bet a big hit to your pocketbook and state coffers will.

George Takei

The original post can be found here

Via Tricycle Daily Dharma

Tricycle Daily Dharma February 22, 2014

Seeing Clearly

What does seeing clearly mean? It doesn’t mean that you look at something and analyze it, noting all its composite parts; no. When you see clearly, when you look at a flower and really see it, the flower sees you. It’s not that the flower has eyes, of course. It’s that the flower is no longer just a flower, and you are no longer just you.

- Maurine Stewart, “Our One and Only Commandment”

Read the entire article in the Wisdom Collection through February 23, 2014
For full access at any time, become a Tricycle Community Supporting or Sustaining Member

Via FB:

THE RITZ

Your Disco Needs You

Via JMG: Photo Of The Day

 

Posted to the Facebook page of Rocco's Little Chicago Pizzeria in Tucson. The restaurant has also posted this: "As a longtime employer and feeder of the gay community, Rocco's reserves the right to eject any State Senators we see fit to kick out. That is all." The photo has been shared over 2000 times and many commenters are vowing to patronize Rocco's.  (Tipped by JMG reader Christopher)

Labels: Arizona, LGBT rights, restaurants, Tucson

posted by Joe Jervis

Homophobic People Die Earlier

People who espouse anti-gay views die younger than those who don't, found a sure-to-be-controversial study in the February issue of the American Journal of Public Health.
"Anti-gay prejudice is associated with elevated mortality risk among heterosexuals, over and above multiple established risk factors for mortality," wrote the researchers, led by Mark L. Hatzenbuehler of Columbia University.

In fact, those who were not highly prejudiced against gay people lived an average of 2.5 years longer than those who were.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/antigay-prejudice-and-elevated-mortality-2014-2#ixzz2tzRiRaec

JMG Headline Of The Day

Via Business Insider:

People who espouse anti-gay views die younger than those who don't, found a sure-to-be-controversial study in the February issue of the American Journal of Public Health. "Anti-gay prejudice is associated with elevated mortality risk among heterosexuals, over and above multiple established risk factors for mortality," wrote the researchers, led by Mark L. Hatzenbuehler of Columbia University. In fact, those who were not highly prejudiced against gay people lived an average of 2.5 years longer than those who were. The researchers acknowledged that the questions represent "a limited range of potential indices of anti-gay prejudice," adding that the effect of such prejudice may actually be larger than they were able to measure. The respondents included in the study were 20,226 heterosexuals who participated in GSS interviews between 1988 and 2008, 4,216 of whom had died by the end of the study period.

Want to live longer? Embrace the gay!

Labels: homophobia, mortality, religion, science

Reposted from Joe Jervis

Via The Other 98% / FB:

Via JMG: BREAKING: Oregon AG Says She Won't Defend Against Gay Marriage Suit

Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum announced today that she will not defend the state against the marriage equality lawsuit filed in federal court in October. Rosenblum said that she will continue to enforce the gay marriage ban until the court rules, but adds that the ban "cannot withstand a federal constitutional challenge under any standard of review." Here's a reminder about the suit, which is scheduled to have oral arguments on April 23th:

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Eugene by Portland attorneys Lake Perriguey and Lea Ann Easton on behalf of two gay couples, seeks to have 2004's Measure 36 ruled unconstitutional. It names Gov. John Kitzhaber and Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, as well as a few other officials, as defendants. It argues that one couple—Deanna Geiger and Janine Nelson—should be able to legally marry. The other plaintiffs, Robert Deuhmig and William Griesar, were legally married in Vancouver, B.C., and wish to have their rights recognized in Oregon. The suit is separate from the anticipated $12 million campaign to overturn Measure 36 being orchestrated by Oregon United for Marriage. Volunteers are collecting signatures to put an initiative on the ballot next year.

Rosenblum is a Democrat and Oregon's first female Attorney General. I think I hear some sadz coming 'round the bend!
UPDATE: Freedom To Marry reacts.

“Attorney General Rosenblum is right in refusing to waste taxpayers’ dollars by defending the indefensible anti-marriage law in Oregon. Rosenblum is joined by other attorneys general from Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Nevada; and even Republican Governor Brian Sandoval in Nevada, who all came to the same conclusion that the state cannot in good conscience defend a law denying committed same-sex couples the freedom to marry. The rapid momentum for the freedom to marry in states across the country underscores the understanding that the Constitution’s guarantee of the freedom to marry and equal protection under the law apply to gay and non-gay people alike. America – and Oregon – are ready for the freedom to marry.”

UPDATE II: Oregon United reacts. Pay attention to the second paragraph.

“This is tremendous news. The Attorney General has taken a close look at the facts, and came to the same conclusion that courts around the country and freedom-minded Oregonians have: there is no reasonable or legal justification to exclude committed gay and lesbian couples from marriage,” campaign manager Mike Marshall says. “The dramatic increase in Oregonians’ support for the freedom to marry—from 42 percent support in May 2010 to 55 percent support today—mirrors the movement we’re seeing nationally. More and more people understand that no one should be denied the freedom to marry the person they love.”
Oregon United for Marriage also announced today it has gathered enough signatures to to be assured a place on the November 2014 ballot. 116,284 are required but the campaign has gathered more than 160,000 signatures—well over the requirement and more than enough to qualify for the November ballot. Oregon United will hold onto the signatures, pending the outcome of the federal lawsuit.

Labels: Ellen Rosenblum, lawsuits, marriage equality, Oregon

Reposted from Joe Jervis

Via HRC: Brian Brown: Stop Harming LGBT Russians

Being LGBT (Gay) in Japan【同性愛者（日本）】日英字幕

Coming out to my sister live on camera!

Via The Other 98% / FB: