Sebastopol Center for the Arts Hosts ‘Gypsy Jazz’ Cabaret

Sunday August 25 @ 3 pm . Occidental Center for the Arts proudly presents: The Gorgon Medusa: Her Significance for Women of Our Time. Archaeomythologist Joan Marler will trace the ancient roots of the Gorgon Medusa’s multi-layered powers and explore her myths, stories, and iconography in a multi-media presentation that will reveal her timeless significance for women of our time. Drummer Barbara Borden and friends will begin and conclude this memorable event, which is a fundraiser for O.C.A!Admission $15.@ https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4295297 or at the door. Fine refreshments. Wheelchair accessible. Art Gallery open for viewing. www.occidentalcenterforthearts.org. 707-874-9293. 3850 Doris Murphy Ct. Occidental, CA. 95465
Just months after a Tunisian presidential commission recommended the decriminalization of homosexuality, the North African nation has its first openly gay candidate for president: Mounir Baatour.
Baatour, 48, is a lawyer and president of both the Tunisian Liberal Party and Association Shams, Tunisia’s main LGBTQ rights organization. Baatour’s candidacy is noteworthy because in Tunisia homosexuality is still a crime that is punishable by up to three years in prison. Baatour himself was jailed in 2013 for an accusation of “homosexuality,” and he said prison was “very hard, and the psychological impact is very sad, and after that I was in depression for one year.”
Baatour said he expected to make the ballot for the September 15 election, which was moved up because President Beji Caid El Sebsi died unexpectedly in July. Baatour vowed to go to court to challenge any effort to bar his candidacy, though he said he collected double the number of signatures required to run.
In June, the Committee on Individual Freedoms and Equality, known by its French acronym COLIBE, released a report that recommended an overhaul of Tunisia’s penal code — including ending the country’s criminalization of homosexuality. It also recommended abolishing the death penalty, giving women more rights and dismantling patrilineal citizenship and inheritance.
“The state and society have nothing to do with the sexual life amongst adults … sexual orientations and choices of individuals are essential to private life,” the COLIBE report states. “Therefore the commission recommends canceling [the criminalization of homosexuality], since it violates the self-evident private life, and because it has brought criticism to the Republic of Tunisia from international human rights bodies.”
If elected, Baatour hopes to enact the recommendations in the COLIBE report.
“I am absolutely in favor of the COLIBE report, I will adopt it in my program, and I will do all my best to execute the report,” Baatour said. “The main idea of my candidacy is to fight more for more freedom in Tunisia, more individual rights, and to stop the persecution against LGBT community engaged by the government against all homosexuals in my country.”
Since Tunisia’s 2011 revolution ushered a new period of democracy into the country, the government has actually ramped up its persecution of the LGBTQ community due in part, according to Baatour, to an increase in police recruiting Islamist people to join the force.
“I think because the Islamists were in the older coalition after the revolution, and I think in the police there is a lot of recruitment of Islamist persons,” Baatour said.
Baatour’s run is another historic moment for Tunisia. In 2011, Tunisians took to the streets in massive protests that resulted in the resignation of dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who eventually fled in exile to Saudi Arabia. The Tunisian uprising inspired similar movements in Yemen, Libya, and Egypt that also deposed presidents, while an uprising in Syria morphed into the civil war that continues to this day.
Fred Karger, who in his 2012 Republican primary run became the first openly gay American to run for president, congratulated Baatour on Twitter. “He’s very, very courageous for doing what he’s doing in the Arab World, as the first not just in Tunisia but the first in Africa and the Muslim world. He seems to be a very qualified candidate,” Karger said.
“It’s such an important thing to do for so many people around the world,” Karger said, “to see someone to be out and proud and doing what he’s doing.”
The first openly gay rights organization in the United States was established in 1924 by a German immigrant, Henry Gerber.
The Society for Human Rights had a significant and prophetic name. Over two decades before the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Gerber understood that sexuality was defined as a human right. It’s true, this did not represent a breakthrough for gay people in the US in the wider culture: police raids led to the Society’s disbanding in 1925.
Rather, it was the beginning of a struggle.
Ninety-five years later, the Stonewall rebellion. This act of resistance, considered to be the most important milestone in the progress towards gay liberation in the US, celebrates 50 years in a few days.
With more countries understanding the essential truth of that early Society of Human Rights, that LGBTI rights are human rights, and with equal marriage recognized to a greater degree than ever before, LGBTI people in some parts of the world are beginning to see the fruits of that long, hard struggle.
From the perspective of my own country, Uganda, however, an openly gay organization cannot operate.
The Anti-Homosexuality Act was passed into law by Uganda’s president in 2014 but later annulled by the Constitutional Court of Uganda on grounds that it was passed without a quorum, as required.
The annulment was a great win but it did not stop the harassment of LGBTI communities by the Ugandan Police and media, by Simon Lokodo who serves as the Minister of State for Ethics and Integrity, and by homophobic citizens.
Homosexuality is criminalized in most African states. Only a few don’t have written laws criminalizing same-sex intimacy, and one or two have begun the process of throwing out what is principally colonial era legislation introduced by the British to control African sexuality.
Instead of Uganda learning from those few African countries that are decriminalizing homosexuality and trying to fight homophobia, it is taking steps backward. For example, Rebecca Kadaga, Speaker of Parliament in Uganda, threatened that Uganda would withdraw from the International Parliamentary Union (IPU) if they were to keep pushing for the rights of LGBTI people in a declaration on migrants and refugees.
It is perhaps the greatest human rights violation for a government to deny that any group of people can rely on universally recognised human rights, that they even have human rights at all, but that is what the Ugandan government has effectively tried to do to the LGBTI communities.
This is Pride Month and Gay Pride is considered one of the most precious moments in the gay communities’ year because that is when everyone gets together to celebrate who we are and where we have come from. People from all communities, including LGBTI communities and heterosexual allies, attend Gay Pride. It’s all about being happy and being yourself.
This is the time when openly gay activists and non-activists meet as well. The Ugandan government does not have a problem robbing us of such precious moments. Our events beyond pride, such as conferences, meetings, and educational workshops are always disrupted or banned; illegal arrests of LGBTI people are not uncommon. So it’s no surprise that Pride itself has consistently been crushed, often brutally.
Where has all this hate come from?
Evangelical Christians, particularly from the U.S., have found a way of taking advantage of Ugandans. They lie to them and say homosexuality is imported, un-African.
As I have always said, homophobia is not African. Homophobia was imported along with the laws the British gave us.
Homosexuality is not new in Africa because it’s not something that can be invented or started. It breaks my heart to see minorities suffer the wrath of marginalization just because they’re not the majority. I don’t know why people think because a few people are doing something the rest don’t, it must be wrong or unnatural.
Why do those who hate us hate us? I don’t know. But here is what I do know, the LGBTI communities in Uganda, myself as an openly Ugandan gay man included, will stop at nothing in order to spread warm love, kindness, and the generosity that everyone deserves.
I believe we must spread love to receive love. I understand we still have a lot of work to do as Ugandans to achieve gay rights. That is why we can’t stop fighting even with the current harassment and injustice we face in Uganda.
Back in 1924 Henry Gerber and his colleagues in the US didn’t give up. They knew that LGBTI rights are human rights. A few African countries that have recognized this too and have rejected the importation of homophobia motivate us to keep moving and fighting. This is not a battle that can be won in a day, month or year, but we are hopeful. If others can do it, so can we.
Frank Mugisha is the director of Sexual Minorities Uganda. Follow him on Twitter.
A group of LGBTQ creators has sued YouTube and its parent company Google, alleging that the video platform was regularly restricting their abilities to make money with their videos based on their sexual orientation.
The lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in California Tuesday and first reported by The Washington Post Wednesday morning, seeks class-action status.
YouTube did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday morning.
“YouTube is engaged in discriminatory, anticompetitive, and unlawful conduct that harms a protected class of persons under California law,” the lawsuit alleges. It was filed on behalf of the creators of GNews!, Bria Kam and Chrissy Chambers (BriaAndChrissy), Chase Ross (uppercaseCHASE1), Lindsay Amer (Queer Kid Stuff) and Amp Somers (Watts The Safeword).
In their lawsuit, these creators allege that YouTube regularly labels their videos as offensive or sexually explicit simply because of their sexual orientation. They also allege that their videos are regularly being demonetized, that YouTube changes their thumbnail videos, and excludes them from content recommendations, resulting in suppressed view counts.
This all happens while YouTube doesn’t enforce its content policies against users harassing LGBTQ creators, the lawsuit alleges:
“Defendants’ control and regulation of speech on YouTube has resulted in a chaotic cesspool where popular, compliant, top quality, and protected LGBTQ+ content is restricted, stigmatized, and demonetized as “shocking,” “inappropriate,” “offensive,” and “sexually explicit,” while homophobic and racist hatemongers run wild and are free to post vile and obscene content on the pages and channels of the LGBTQ+ Plaintiffs and other LGBTQ+ content creators.”
To further make their case, the plaintiffs published a video on YouTube Wednesday morning:
The lawsuit comes just a few months after YouTube faced a backlash over the way it handled homophobic speech on its platform. At the time, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki apologized for its handling of a particularly high-profile case, which involved the far-right YouTube commentator Steven Crowder mocking gay Vox journalist Carlos Maza.
“I know the decision we made was very hurtful to the LGBT community and that was not our intention at all,” she said during an interview at Recode’s Code Conference.
The lawsuit alleges that this was just a PR exercise: “Instead of taking LGBTQ+ reports of viewpoint discrimination and selective restrictions on LGBTQ+ content seriously, Ms. Wojcicki spent some of her “personal vacation” time doing carefully scripted PR or “selfie” interviews with selected YouTubers.”
The lawsuit also cites recent reports by the New York Times that suggested that the video platform was in part to blame for the election of Brazil’s far-right and homophobic president Jair Bolsonaro, and reference recent appearances of Google and YouTube executives in congressional hearings.
In addition to monetary compensation, the lawsuit is also asking the court to order an injunction that would stop YouTube from “censoring, restricting, restraining, or regulating speech based on the discretionary use or application of discriminatory, animus-based, arbitrary, capricious, vague, unspecified, or subjective criteria, rules, guidelines, and/or practices.”
In a stunning move the Trump Dept. of Justice is trying to get the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission(EEOC) to reverse years of findings and rulings, and declare that discrimination against LGBT workers is legal. The EEOC does not make law but its findings are highly-regarded and taken into account by the courts.
Since 2011 the EEOC has stated that stereotyping of lesbian, gay, and bisexual workers is sex discrimination and thus illegal. The following year that was expanded to include transgender workers. In 2015 the EEOC declared sexual orientation workplace discrimination is already illegal..
Now, the DOJ is “urging,” as Bloomberg Law reports, the EEOC to “flip” its position, and tell the U.S. Supreme Court discriminating against LGBT workers is not a form of sex bias and therefore is totally legal.
“Political leadership in the Solicitor General’s office wants the EEOC on board to show the high court that the Trump administration is now unified in the belief that Congress didn’t have lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender workers in mind when it passed a federal workplace discrimination law more than five decades ago,” Bloomberg Law states.
The government has until Friday to decide how it will proceed – united or not.00:1100:44
The EEOC successfully sued on behalf of a transgender woman who worked as a funeral home director in Michigan, but was fired when she said she would be transitioning. The Justice Dept. would like the case reversed by the Supreme Court.
Bloomberg says it’s “unlikely” the EEOC will reverse course, but it also reports the DOJ could just roll over the EEOC. Given its history under the Trump administration, it seems that is more likely to happen than Bloomberg suggests.
The United Methodist Church announced that it has voided a vote that would have governed how congregations leave the faith over the issue of LGBTQ inclusion, citing “irregularities” in a measure that passed by just two votes in February.
In a press release released Saturday, the United Methodist Church said that an investigation uncovered that four people posed as absent delegates to cast votes at the February conference.
“Multiple pieces of evidence corroborated the conclusion that these four individuals improperly cast votes,” the press release said.
In February, Methodists met in St. Louis for a General Conference that was summoned in order to “resolve the longtime debate over the status of LGBTQ people” in the church.
The church voted on multiple measures on the issue, including the “Traditional Plan,” which passed by a vote of 438-384 and reaffirmed the church’s traditional stance on LGBTQ issues by banning same sex marriages and the ordination of gay clergy. The Traditional Plan goes into effect January 1, 2020 and is not impacted by the voided vote.
However, voting irregularities emerged over another part of a measure known as the “disaffiliation legislation,” which would have changed how congregations could choose to leave the United Methodist Church.
Following the implementation of the “Traditional Plan,” LGBTQ-inclusive Methodist churches whose gay clergy and same-sex marriages will be banned, might be looking to leave the church. The “disaffiliation legislation” would have governed how they leave the church and whether they would be able to “take their buildings with them,” according to UM News, a Methodist news service. With the process in limbo, it is not clear how these churches will go about breaking ties the the United Methodist Church.
Only this plank of the legislation had voting irregularities, and it is now up to the Council of Bishops and the Judicial Council whether the wrongly-decided plank also means that the entire disaffiliation legislation must also be voided.
Kim Simpson, chair of the Commission on the General Conference of the United Methodist Church, said, “I know there are some poised and ready [to leave the UMC] because [the Traditional Plan] goes into effect January 1.” Simpson said that if the Council of Bishops refers the disaffiliation legislation voting issue to the Judicial Council, “they could decide that it needs to be voted on again.”
According to the church’s internal rules, “any possibility that invalid ballots might affect the result of a vote renders the entire ballot null and void,” and since the disaffiliation measure passed by a wafer thin margin of two votes — 402 to 400 — the four ineligible ballots render the entire ballot null and void.
“The Commission on the General Conference is committed to protecting the integrity of the legislative process,” said Simpson. “We’ve carefully and prayerfully reviewed the results of the investigation undertaken with oversight from the task force, and we are taking the necessary steps to strengthen our procedures and restore confidence in the process.”
A 58-year-old man is accused of shouting homophobic and racial slurs during an attack on a group of Latino men leaving a gay nightclub in Portland, Oregon.
The men passed Robert Oden after leaving CC Slaughters at approximately 2am on Saturday as he was sitting in an alcove of a nearby building.
He allegedly punched three of the men in the face and told them: “Go back to your country.” One of the victims was reportedly left with a bloody, swollen lip and pain.
The arrest makes Oden the first person to be accused of a bias crime under the state’s new law.
Nightclub staff called police and Oden has been charged with one count of bias crime in the first degree, felony assault in the fourth degree, two counts of harassment and two counts of bias crime in the second degree.
Multnomah County District Attorney’s office said this marks the first time this crime has been issued in the state.
Court documents say that he continued to use racial and homophobic language and threatened continued assaults after he was taken into custody.
Oregon’s new ‘bias crime law’ came into effect on July 15. It is the most significant update to the state’s hate crime laws since the 1980s.
It added gender identity to the list of protected categories and removed the requirement that two or more people commit the crime in order to make it a felony.
Under this law, it is now a felony to commit a bias crime when a person intentionally, knowingly or recklessly causes physical injury to another person because of the perpetrator’s perception of the victim’s race, colour, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or national origin.
Previously, to be charged as a felony, two or more people would need to commit the offence.
When: Wednesday August 28th Time: 12:30 pm – 3 pm Where: The Marin Yacht Club, 24 Summit AveSan Rafael, CA 94901 |
Come enjoy a wonderful buffet lunch and as always the cash bar will be there for your enjoyment too! The price remains the same – $25 |
We want to extend our thanks to BUDWING for generously sponsoring this event. Don’t forget to make a contribution to one of BUDWING’s World Banks! It’s a small world, after all, and he will contribute by doubling or tripling your gift!! |
We hope to see you there!! Please RSVP by Friday, August 23rdIf you have any dietary restrictions please indicate as much along with your RSVP. by calling Bri at 415-886-8554 or emailing her at bsilva@thespahrcenter.org |
It is common to hear queer origin stories: without representation, we wither and die. Mythos, birth, coming into being—these are all invaluable totems of being truly alive for those forced into the margins. Coming out stories are radical and necessary, especially in the current political landscape, for they make space for others to find their own voices, their own stories. They clear a little patch in the grass and say, Come sit a spell.
However, what’s less common is an origin story rooted in what someone did in order to not come out. And that is the story of Dara, a self-identified non-practicing lesbian from the middle of Texas. After falling in love with a girl named Rhodie, Dara escapes into the drudgery of work. She takes a job at Sugar Land Prison, where she works for ten years before marrying the Warden and starting a new life. Dara does a pretty passable job escaping the terrors of out-queerness until the sudden death of her husband upends her life again.
This novel is a fun and quick read, and a quirky change from the usual, rural coming out story. The characters are humorous and self-effacing, and their wit holds up even more starkly against the harsh landscape of the Texas politics they find themselves enmeshed in. What’s more is that Dara is an excellent reminder that not all lives go in one direction: coming into oneself can happen at 15, or it can happen at 65.