Around the world, attitudes towards lesbians are more positive that they are towards gay men, according to new research.
The study was published in the journal Social Psychology and Personality Scienceand looked at attitudes towards gay men and lesbian women in 23 countries, “representing both Western and non-Western societies”.
The authors of the study analysed Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Peru, Poland, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, and the United States.
The researchers found that in every one of the 23 countries, lesbians were viewed less negatively than gay men. While in some countries, like India and Spain, attitudes to gay men and lesbians were more similar, the disparity was the greatest in Russia and Hungary.
The study also showed that while men were more likely have negative attitudes towards sexual minorities, as well as being more likely to become victims of this discrimination, in many places it was women who held more negative views against lesbians.
Researchers stated: “Only in China, France and Italy did men report more negative attitudes toward lesbian women. In Mexico and the United States, women were significantly more prejudiced than men on the evaluations of lesbian women.
But according to Psychology Today they added: “We found that in several countries (including the United States), men and women did not significantly differ in their attitudes toward gay men.”
The researchers suggested that any negativity towards sexual minorities is “driven, in part, by the perception that gay men and lesbian women violate traditional gender norms”.
Of the 23 countries included in the study, people in Spain were found to be the most positive towards gay and lesbian people, and people in Russia were the most negative. Western countries in general were more positive towards homosexuality, which the highest placing non-Western country being India in 14th place.
A total of 304 human rights defenders in 31 countries were killed in 2019 as space for those defending LGBT+ rights “remains extremely constrained”, a new report has revealed.
The report by Front Line Defenders (FLD) detailed attacks on activists as they worked to defend the environment, free speech, LGBT+ rights and indigenous lands.
Two thirds of the murders took place in Latin America, with Colombia emerging as the most dangerous country after 103 were killed in the past year. The Philippines was the second deadliest country with 43 killings, followed by Honduras, Brazil and Mexico.
Eighty-five per cent of those killed had previously been threatened, either as an individual or as part of the group or organisation they worked with. The report also details multiple physical assaults, defamation campaigns, digital security threats, judicial harassment and gender-based attacks.
“2019 was characterised by waves of public uprisings of remarkable magnitude in each of the world regions, demanding changes to how people were governed,” it reads.
Activists were specifically targeted in nearly all the countries which experienced mass protests, and the periods before, during and after elections were the most dangerous time for those fighting for human rights.
Transgender activists are especially vulnerable due to their heightened visibility, coupled with limited or entire lack of protections. Out of threats reported by LGBT+ activists who received support, 46 per cent were faced by defenders who identify as trans or non-binary.
“The fact that the security of HRDs is inextricably linked to those in power, starkly highlights how human rights have failed to be institutionalised and continue to be seen as a gift that rulers have the discretion to bestow,” the report observes.
Although the FLD acknowledges “significant gains” in LGBT+ rights, such as in Botswana, Angola and Taiwan, it found that backlash from existing and new anti-rights and conservative actors had doubled while increasing the level of sophistication in their tactics.
For example, in May the Kenyan High Court upheld the country’s law criminalising gay sex, with the government justifying it as an “effective method to contain the country’s HIV epidemic”.
And in India, a bill ostensibly written to protect transgender rights is in reality “deeply flawed” as it requires a proof of gender confirmation surgery, and gives the state the discretion to decide on the final evaluation of a request to change legal gender.
At least four villas in Bali, Indonesia, are being investigated for “marketing themselves specifically for the gay community”, amid increasing anti-LGBT+ sentiment on the island.
Although the island of Bali has historically been seen as one of the most tolerant places in country, in general discrimination and violence against LGBT+ people is on the rise in Indonesia.
Gay sex is currently legal in most regions of the country, including Bali, but there are no discrimination protections for LGBT+ people and same-sex relationships are not recognised.
In 2018, an Indonesian province where LGBT+ people face rife persecutionannounced that it wanted to introduce beheadings, and in 2019 new laws were proposed to ban sex between unmarried couples and make it illegal for unmarried couples to live together.As same-sex relationships are not recognised under Indonesian law, it will be illegal for same-sex couples to live together and gay sex will be effectively criminalised.
According to Coconuts Bali, a villa in the beach resort Seminyak first received attention on social media, which alerted authorities.
The Facebook page of a villa under the name “Angelo Bali Gay Guesthouse”, which has since been taken down, made headlines for catering to the gay community.
Some of the photos shared on the page by the guesthouse reportedly featured photos of gay male couples, and on TripAdvisor it is described as “a small, luxurious, all-men, clothing-optional gay guesthouse”. According to its website, the villa stopped operating on January 9 with no explanation.
I Gusti Agung Ketut Suryanegara, head of Bali’s Public Order Agency (Satpol PP), said: “We received a report, including the one on social media about this villa, accommodation or a guesthouse marketing themselves specifically for the gay community… Here in Bali we don’t recognise that culture.”
The head of the Badung regency’s cultural agency, I Made Badra, also said the existence of the villa was “tainting Bali’s tourism” reputation.
Since then, authorities have said that three other villas in Seminyak and Kerobokan are also catering to the LGBT+ community.
AA Oka Ambara Dewi, a Badung regency Satpol PP officer, said that the agency had summoned the owners of the guesthouses to check their documents.
He said: “We will do it according to our standards of procedure so we will check their permit documents and whether or not they match what they are allotted for, if there is proof that it [caters to the gay community] then we will temporarily seal the property.” It is unclear what the next steps would be, or whether the businesses would be permanently closed.
For years, Ugandan refugee Mbazira Moses has been typing out emails to dozens of international humanitarian organizations and United Nations officials with a message: LGBTQ refugees at the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya need your help.
The Kakuma camp and nearby Kalobeyei Integrated Settlement, both operated by the U.N. Refugee Agency, or UNHCR, are together home to nearly 200,000 refugees from dozens of countries. Many, if not most, have fled overland from Kenya’s conflict-stricken neighbors: Uganda, South Sudan and Somalia.
But according to Moses and experts on refugees and migration, the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer refugees in Kakuma — many of whom fled homophobic and transphobic violence in nearby Uganda — continue to face threats and violence from locals and other refugees for the simple reason that they are LGBTQ. While the situation for sexual and gender minorities may generally be more dire in neighboring countries, Kenya is still among the nearly 70 nations that criminalize homosexuality.
On Tuesday night, Moses sent out another such email: Over 50 queer refugees camped outside the UNHCR reception center at Kakuma for safety reasons were again attacked, this time by Turkana-speaking locals and other Kakuma refugees.
“They were kicked out by the UNHCR and forced into the homophobic community with other refugees,” and then local residents from the area, the Turkana, “attacked them some time ago,” Moses wrote in the email sent to human rights officials and journalists.
“They fled to the reception center where they were denied entry,” he wrote. “The two groups hate them badly.”
Moses alleged that the refugees were attacked with “knife stabs, stones and clubs,” and included images of people with head injuries. Police hesitated, the ambulance was slow, and the refugees fled through holes and over fences, Moses said. The Turkana locals allegedly blamed the gay refugees for a local drought. Seven refugees were injured.
Kakuma camp is “very hard to administer,” said Bruce Knotts, director of the Unitarian Universalist United Nations office, who has for decades worked in refugee advocacy and relief — including a visit to Kakuma years ago.
“You have got a handful of UNHCR officials, so bad things can happen, and bad things do happen in refugee camps — not only to LGBT people, but women and other people as well, so it’s unfortunately not surprising,” Knotts said.
In June 2018, Moses and Refugee Flag Kakuma, an LGBTQ rights group he leads at the camp, hosted its first gay pride event. The march attracted hundreds of Kakuma onlookers, but soon after it finished, a series of murderous threats were posted around the camp: Leave or be killed “one by one.”
The dire situation at the camp worsened in December 2018, when an attack on LGBTQ refugees at Kakuma injured 20 and was so brutal that UNHCR officials relocated hundreds of refugees to a gated school compound 450 miles south in Nairobi, where some remain today. And yet, according to Moses, new lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer refugees continue to arrive for registration at UNHCR offices in Kakuma and Nairobi.
In a WhatsApp message sent to NBC News on Friday, Moses said he and other members of Refugee Flag Kakuma question “the logic of returning and housing LGBT refugees in a place where others had been withdrawn because of insecurity.”
“Some of the 200 LGBT refugees who were relocated from Kakuma camp last year were arrested and returned to camp,” Moses said. “At the same time, some new ones have been reporting both in Nairobi and Kakuma. Those who report in Nairobi are always sent to Kakuma refugee camp.”
LGBTQ refugees also routinely accuse the camp’s administrators of turning a blind eye — due to homophobia and transphobia — to their plight and to the continued violence they face.
UNHCR did not respond to NBC News’ request for comment on reports of repeated violence against LGBTQ refugees at the Kakuma camp. However, in an interview with NBC News after the attack on the camp’s June 2018 pride event, Yvonne Ndege, a UNHCR Kenya spokesperson, said, “The community can sometimes feel isolated.”
“UNHCR and the government of Kenya with other relevant stakeholders are striving to promote the rights of all asylum-seekers and refugees and are ensuring partners are trained on how to work with LGBTI in a displacement context,” Ndege said. “Their rights as human beings shall be considered as such.”
While the process of getting a refugee application approved by UNHCR can take years in Kenya and other countries, including the United States, the average stay for a resident of Kakuma camp is 17 years, according to the UNHCR.
More than 25 million people worldwide are currently refugees, according to Amnesty International, and a third are living in the world’s lowest-income countries. The Kakuma Refugee Camp in northwestern Kenya was recently the world’s largest refugee camp — outstripped in late 2019 by Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh.
Knotts said UNHCR is “overwhelmed by Syrian refugees, by Rohingya refugees; there are massive refugee situations around the world, and when you are talking about LGBTQ refugees, you’re talking about a small number and nobody wants to talk about that.”
Even so, “the UNHCR has an obligation to do better than this,” Knotts said.
A federal judge has ordered the Department of Homeland Security to return a gay asylum-seeker who was deported to Chad, ruling that the government had not properly considered his asylum claim based on his status as a gay man before deporting him.
Oumar Yaide arrived in the U.S. in 2009 and requested political asylum because he was a member of “a disfavored group,” a Chadian ethnic group called the Gorane. His asylum application was denied in 2014, and in December 2018 a judge denied his final appeal.
In October, however, two months after officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, removed him from his San Francisco home and sent him to California’s Yuba County Jail, Yaide filed a motion to reopen his asylum case. This request for relief was based upon new information: Chad criminalized homosexuality in 2016 — years after Yaide arrived in the U.S. — and Yaide came out as gay in 2019. This combination, according to court documents, led Yaide to fear “torture and death” if he returned home to the central African nation.
But in early December, while Yaide’s new case was waiting to be seen by an immigration judge, ICE agents removed him from the Yuba County Jail, processed his deportation and sent him to the Sacramento airport, where he and two ICE agents boarded a flight to Chad. Yaide was in handcuffs until a layover in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. His lawyers said they had no idea where he was during the trip.
While Yaide was making the long journey back to Chad, his attorneys filed an instant habeas petition and temporary restraining order requesting that the government return him to the U.S. Last month, U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer granted the request and ordered Homeland Security to return Yaide to the U.S., ruling the “deportation violates his procedural due process right to pursue his motion to reopen.”
“Obviously, imprisonment or death would foreclose Yaide’s ability to pursue his motion to reopen,” Breyer wrote in his order, referring to the possible punishment Yaide could face as a gay man in Chad.
Returning Yaide to the U.S., however, is not without complications. He has an expired Chadian passport, and Homeland Security says it has no jurisdiction to retrieve him from Chad without a valid passport. It is unknown whether Chad’s government will issue him a new one.
Breyer’s ruling directed the U.S. government to work with Yaide’s lawyers to “formulate a mutually agreeable plan to return Yaide to the United States as soon as practically possible.”
Edwin Carmona-Cruz, co-director of Pangea Legal Services, the group representing Yaide, told NBC News on Wednesday that his organization is now “working with federal elected officials to assist in this process.”
Tanya J. Roman, an ICE spokesperson, said the agency is “unable to comment due to pending litigation.”
Chad is one of 68 U.N. member states where consensual same-sex activity is illegal, according to ILGA World, an international LGBTQ advocacy organization. In the United States, asylum-seekers have been successful with claims of potential persecution because of membership in a “social group,” namely the LGBTQ community.
In 1994, Attorney General Janet Reno ordered that the ruling in the case of a Cuban gay asylum-seeker, Fidel Armando Toboso-Alfonso, should be the guidance for future cases, thus cementing an earlier decision finding that Taboso-Alfonso was eligible for asylum because of his membership in the LGBTQ “social group” and the threat of political violence he would face if he were forced to return to his home country of Cuba.
Aaron C. Morris, executive director of Immigration Equality, a nonprofit LGBTQ immigrant advocacy group, said Yaide’s case will have no clear impact on other LGBTQ asylum-seekers. However, he noted that “it’s pretty common” for LGBTQ asylum-seekers, like Yaide, to first seek asylum with a claim other than their sexual orientation or gender identity.
“A lot of our clients, often before they meet Immigration Equality, for various reasons, put forward meritorious claims that aren’t successful, whether that is a religion-based claim or political opinion claim like in this case,” Morris said. “That could be a young person whose parents are paying for a lawyer and involved with their case, a person who is from anti-queer country but living with relatives or living within that community — there are a lot of reasons that are really compelling why someone might only bring a claim based on sexual orientation later in the life of a case.”
From Monday, same-sex couples will be able to register to marry, meaning the first ceremonies will take place in February. For couples who are already married, their marriage will now be legally recognised in Northern Ireland.
However, those who are already in a civil partnership will not be able to convert it to a marriage at this stage. The Northern Ireland Office is set to begin a consultation later this year about converting civil partnerships and the role of churches in same-sex marriages.
Same-sex marriages have been allowed in England, Scotland and Wales since 2014, but Stormont did not legalise them. In November 2015, a vote on the issue in the devolved assembly resulted in a numerical majority in favour of same-sex marriage for the first time. However, the DUP blocked a change in the law by using a veto known as the Petition of Concern.
A Canadian appeals court has ruled that a trans teenager has the right to transition and that his father cannot stop him.
The ruling comes just four months after the British Columbia Supreme Court ruled that the teenage boy didn’t need his father’s consent to access hormone treatment.
But the boy’s father didn’t give up his fight there. He subsequently filed an appeal – but the appeals court has reaffirmed its support of his trans son.
The courts – which have also issued a ban on naming the father and son – insisted in a decision release on Friday (January 10) that the father is entitled to his views, but that they shouldn’t prevent his son from accessing hormone therapy, City News 1130 reports.
Trans teenage boy is mature enough to make his own decisions, appeals court rules.
The teenage boy – who is now 15-years-old – is mature enough to make his own decision about hormone therapy, the appeals court ruled.
Furthermore, Chief Justice Robert Bauman and Justice Barbara Fisher wrote in their judgement that the father’s refusal to accept his son’s identity has caused “significant pain” and has caused damage to what was once a loving relationship.
“This rupture is not in [the boy’s] best interest,” the ruling continued. “He clearly wants and needs acceptance and support from his father.”
They closed out their decision by urging the father to listen to his son and to engage with his medical team, noting that if he refuses to do so, their relationship will “likely not heal.”
This rupture is not in [the boy’s] best interest. He clearly wants and needs acceptance and support from his father.
The appeals court decided to overturn parts of the former Supreme Court ruling, which limited what the father was allowed to say about his child’s transition. However, they upheld parts of the ruling which insist that he refer to his son by the correct name and gender.
The boy previously said he would ‘feel like a freak’ if he wasn’t allowed to continue hormone treatment.
The teenage boy came out as trans when he was 11-years-old, The Guardian reported last year. He came out following a period of serious distress which led to a suicide attempt.
Following consultations with medical professionals and with his mother, the boy began receiving hormone treatment in March of 2019 – but his father intervened and began legal action to stop him from doing so.
In an affidavit read in court at the time, the boy’s said: “I will be stranded between looking and sounding feminine and looking and sounding masculine. I would feel like a freak.”
The father’s lawyer told The Guardian at the time: “It’s a case about freedom of speech and the freedom to parent. It’s about the right of a parent to participate in the discussion on that issue.”
A well-known LGBTQ activist in Nicaragua who was arrested last September says he was tortured while in custody.
Ulises Rivas on Monday said members of Nicaragua’s National Police on Sept. 1, 2019, arrived at his niece’s volleyball game in Comalapa, a town in the country’s Chontales department that is roughly 75 miles east of the Nicaraguan capital of Managua, and arrested him because “they had an arrest warrant.”
A source with whom the Washington Blade spoke after Rivas’ arrest said he had been accused of robbing a woman. Rivas sent the Blade a screenshot of a message posted to a pro-government Facebook group that said he has also been accused of “inciting violence, destabilizing the peace” of his neighborhood and “hiding under the false flag of protectors of the environment.”
Rivas told the Blade during an emotional WhatsApp interview from his home in Santo Domingo, a town in Chontales department, the police brought him to the departmental capital of Juigalpa and placed him into a cell.
“I was not able to receive anything from my family, nor a visit or food,” said Rivas. “I was hungry all night.”
Rivas said officers the next morning took him to a local jail, and put him into what he described as a “punishment cell.” Rivas told the Blade he was forced to stand inside a cell for four hours with his hands in the air. He also said he suffered physical, “cultural and psychological torture.”
“I was bleeding and my entire body had been beaten and tortured,” said Rivas.
“I didn’t think that I would return to see my family,” he added. “I have tears in my eyes from everything they did to me.”
Rivas told the Blade he was forced to strip naked when his family arrived at the jail to visit him. Rivas also said authorities forced him to show his buttocks and made him do 10 squats.
Rivas said he spent 25 days in the cell before authorities transferred him to a prison within a larger penitentiary complex and placed him into another “punishment cell.”
“There was no bed, there were no mattresses, there were no hammocks,” said Rivas. “There was nothing on the floor.”
Rivas told the Blade there was a hole in the floor into which he and his other cellmate could defecate. Rivas also said they had access to water for only 20 minutes a day.
“You could hear cries, the cries of common prisoners when they were beaten,” said Rivas.
Rivas told the Blade there was also no access to medical care. He said the psychologists who worked at the prison were “from the government.”
“The first thing that they ask you is whether you want to kill yourself,” he said.
Rivas helped LGBTQ Nicaraguans in exile
Hundreds of people have been killed in Nicaragua since protests against the government of President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, began in April 2018 in response to proposed cuts to the country’s social security benefits and the response to a wildfire at the Indio Maíz Biological Reserve on Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast.
Rivas before he fled to Costa Rica protested against a gold mine in his hometown that B2Gold, a Canadian company, owns.
He helped create Asociación Hijos del Arco Iris LGBTI, a group in the Costa Rica that helps other LGBTQ Nicaraguans in exile. Rivas returned to Nicaragua in June 2019 in order to take care of his father who later died of cancer.
“I saw him die in the hospital,” Rivas told the Blade. “I was caring for him.”
Rivas said he then returned to his hometown for his father’s funeral.
“Afterwards they saw me and captured me because they had already seen that I was in Nicaragua,” he said.
Rivas spoke with the Blade less than two weeks after the Nicaraguan government released him and 90 other political prisoners from prison.
Rivas noted Waldemar Sommertag, the papal nuncio in Nicaragua, and the International Committee of the Red Cross played a role in the prisoners’ release, along with pressure from the international community. Rivas said his neighbors continue to protect him, even though he remains under house arrest and government surveillance.
“My neighborhood loves me,” he told the Blade.
Rivas said he does not know what to expect during his next court appearance that is scheduled to take place on Jan. 15.
The screenshot of the Facebook page that Rivas sent to the Blade says he could be sent to El Chipote, a notorious Managua prison in which Ortega himself was once a prisoner, “for about 10 or 20 years without the right to freedom, under the accusation of terrorism and threats to people.” Rivas nevertheless remains defiant.
“Nicaragua is made of vigor and glory,” he said. “Nicaragua is made for freedom.”
A coalition of centre-left parties in Poland has responded to the growing LGBT+ backlash in the country by appointing an openly gay candidate to stand in the next presidential election.
The strongly conservative Catholic country has seen a huge surge in homophobia after the ruling party Law and Justice (PiS) based its winning 2019 parliamentary election campaign on a platform of LGBT+ abuse.
The problem has grown so severe that more than 80 Polish municipal or local governments have now proclaimed themselves to be ‘LGBT-free zones’, a move strongly condemned by the European Parliament.
An alliance formed of three left-wing parties is now aiming to combat the increasing anti-gay rhetoric by backing Robert Biedroń, an openly gay politician and LGBT+ activist, as their joint candidate in the May presidential election.
Biedroń, 44, is a former MEP and current leader of the social liberal and pro-European party, Spring. Leaders of the left-wing alliance said they chose him for his support for women’s rights, the rule of law and the separation of church and state – all of which have been undermined by PiS since it took office in 2015.
Wlodzimierz Czarzasty, leader of the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) noted that Biedroń “has clear views on the secular state, on social affairs, on the EU, on matters of freedom, including women’s issues”.
During his political career he has pushed for the removal of catechism classes from public schools, free access to contraception and sexual education and the right to abortion for all women.
He has long campaigned for LGBT+ rights, including the formal recognition of same-sex partnerships, which are not yet legal in Poland. His commitment to the LGBT+ community was recognised when he was awarded Poland’s ‘Rainbow Laurels’ in 2003 and named ‘Rainbow Man’ in 2004.
In May Biedroń will face incumbent right-wing president Andrzej Duda and liberal candidate Malgorzata Kidawa-Blonska, who is viewed as Duda’s main rival.
If he wins the office of president, Biedroń will be “a guarantor of modern and diverse Poland, a good partner for the future leftist government”, said liberal politician Adrian Zandberg.
The government is giving trans people a special health card that will give them access to an existing government health insurance scheme, which was introduced in 2015 to provide health cards for those earning less than $2 a day, although trans people will not face that financial test.
Prime minister Imran Khan said that his government was “taking responsibility” for trans people, who say they are routinely denied treatment and can face harassment or ridicule from hospital staff and patients.
“It is part of a grand programme to provide health insurance not just to the poor but the vulnerable sections of society, including … transgender (people),” said Mirza.
“Any person who identifies as transgender is eligible for this health insurance programme,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Trans people have historically faced severe discrimination in healthcare settings, with doctors denying trans people treatment when they could not decide whether to treat them in a male or female ward.
The health ID cards giving access to the free healthcare scheme will be immediately available, but only to trans people who have registered as trans on their other identity documents.
Pakistan officially recognised transgender people in 2012, adding a third gender option to forms and official documents.
The 2017 national census counted Pakistan’s trans population for the first time, recording 10,418 trans people in a population of about 207 million, though charities estimate there are at least 500,000 trans people.
“The scheme is good but healthcare providers need to be sensitised,” said Zehrish Khan, project manager for trans rights group Gender Interactive Alliance. “Many of us resort to drugs and alcohol because we need psychiatric help and empathy to overcome the continuous harassment we face.”
Aisha Mughal, a trans rights expert, said about 2,500 trans people were currently registered under the government’s third gender option, which means that the new free healthcare is not readily accessible.
“Only a few transgender people know about this and the first step is to spread the word,” Mughal said. “It is just the beginning.”