All LGBTQIA+ youth, families, adults, and elders are welcome at Social Saturdays, which are a recurring series of monthly events taking place throughout Sonoma County where we are seeking to bring together members of our community across generations, particularly gender expansive youth, teens, and adults.
At our March gathering we are excited to be offering two amazing activities: Zumba and cyanotype art!
Zumba: For participants interested in music and movement, Delia (she/her) will offer participants two different 30-minute Zumba sessions, which will include bilingual instruction in both English and Spanish, and start at approximately 12pm and 1pm. Delia is originally from Los Angeles and has been a licensed Zumba instructor since 2010.
Cyanotype Art: For participants interested in an art activity, Positive Images Program Coordinator Drew Crawford (he/they) will lead a cyanotype activity. Cyanotype is an ancient form of photography that involves placing items (in this case, natural items that we will forage) onto a special type of paper to form a pattern using sun exposure. You could also call it “nature art” or “nature prints” in simpler terms. Our cyanotype activity will begin at approximately 11:30am.
We will have $50 gift cards available at the picnic to families for whom financial barriers such as the cost of gas, a meal, or missed work would otherwise prevent them from attending. If you feel your family could benefit from this support, please fill out the form at the following link:
The Los Angeles City Council Tuesday unanimously confirmed Kristin Crowley as fire chief, making her the first woman and first out LGBTQ+ person to hold that post.
Mayor Eric Garcetti had nominated Crowley in January. As chief of the Los Angeles Fire Department, she will oversee 3,246 uniformed personnel and 353 professional support workers, the Los Angeles Blade reports. She will begin her duties as chief March 26, when predecessor Ralph Terrazas retires.
Before the vote, Crowley told the council she was “truly honored” as well as “humbled and proud” to be appointed fire chief, according to L.A. TV station KABC. Her confirmation came on the first day of Women’s History Month.
Crowley has been with the department 22 years, having been a firefighter, paramedic, engineer, fire inspector, captain, battalion chief, assistant chief, fire marshal, and deputy chief. She was Los Angeles’s first woman fire marshal, a post she assumed in 2016. When she took the firefighters’ exam in the late 1990s, her score was in the top 50 out of 16,000 applicants.
Crowley and her wife, retired firefighter Hollyn Bullock, received a letter of special commendation from the fire department in 2020 for their work fighting a wildfire in the Malibu Canyon area in 2018. They had planned to simply help a relative evacuate from the neighborhood, but they ended up convincing the other residents of the block to evacuate as well and then stayed 16 hours to keep the flames away from the homes there. They saved nine out of 10 homes on the street.
“Throughout her distinguished career, Kristin Crowley has proven her brilliance, determination, and bravery on the job again and again,” Garcetti said when he announced her nomination. “She’s also shown this city her heart, with her tireless commitment to helping students access life-changing educational opportunities. There is no one better equipped to lead the LAFD at this moment than Kristin. She’s ready to make history, and I’m proud to nominate her as the department’s next chief.”
Her work will include efforts to change the culture of the department, which has been rocked by accusations of racism and sexism. She has pledged to address these problems.
“As the next fire chief, my priorities will be to ensure the LAFD stands ready and remains operationally efficient to serve our communities and this great city; that we enhance and support our firefighters’ safety, health and overall well-being; and that we promote and demand a work environment that is free of harassment, discrimination, and hazing,” she told council members Tuesday.
“Our efforts will be maximized by making sure diversity is celebrated and valued, and that equity and inclusion are intertwined into every policy, procedure, and practice,” she continued.
The Los Angeles LGBT Center celebrated Crowley’s confirmation. “The Center applauds the historic confirmation of Kristin Crowley to lead the fire department of the nation’s second-largest city,” Executive Director Joe Hollendoner said in a press release. “She is the first female fire chief of the LAFD and the first openly LGBTQ person to hold the position. She has dedicated more than two decades — previously as the City’s first female and first LGBTQ Deputy Chief Fire Marshal — to serving our communities and ensuring the safety and well-being of all Los Angeles residents. We cannot imagine a more qualified candidate for the job.”
On the heels of a discriminatory gubernatorial order in Texas, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra released the following statement reaffirming HHS’s commitment to supporting and protecting transgender youth and their parents, caretakers and families. Secretary Becerra also announced several immediate actions HHS is taking actions to support LGBTQI+ youth and further remind Texas and others of the federal protections that exist to ensure transgender youth receive the care they need:
“The Texas government’s attacks against transgender youth and those who love and care for them are discriminatory and unconscionable. These actions are clearly dangerous to the health of transgender youth in Texas. At HHS, we listen to medical experts and doctors, and they agree with us, that access to affirming care for transgender youth is essential and can be life-saving.
“HHS is committed to protecting young Americans who are targeted because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, and supporting their parents, caretakers and families. That is why I directed my team to evaluate the tools at our disposal to protect trans and gender diverse youth in Texas, and today I am announcing several steps we can take to protect them.
“HHS will take immediate action if needed. I know that many youth and their supportive families are feeling scared and isolated because of these attacks. HHS is closely monitoring the situation in Texas, and will use every tool at our disposal to keep Texans safe.
“Any individual or family in Texas who is being targeted by a child welfare investigation because of this discriminatory gubernatorial order is encouraged to contact our Office for Civil Rights to report their experience.”
New HHS Actions Announced by Secretary Xavier Becerra:
HHS is releasing guidance to state child welfare agencies through an Information Memorandum that makes clear that states should use their child welfare systems to advance safety and support for LGBTQI+ youth, which importantly can include access to gender affirming care;
HHS is also releasing guidance on patient privacy, clarifying that, despite the Texas government’s threat, health care providers are not required to disclose private patient information related to gender affirming care;
HHS also issued guidance making clear that denials of health care based on gender identity are illegal, as is restricting doctors and health care providers from providing care because of a patient’s gender identity;
The Secretary also called on all of HHS to explore all options to protect kids, their parents, caretakers and families; and
HHS will also ensure that families and health care providers in Texas are aware of all the resources available to them if they face discrimination as a result of this discriminatory gubernatorial order.
If you believe that you or another party has been discriminated against on the basis of gender identity or disability in seeking to access gender affirming health care, visit theOCR complaint portal to file a complaint online.
If you have questions regarding patient privacy laws, please reach out to the Office for Civil Rights email: [email protected] or call Toll-free: (800) 368-1019
Resources for kids, parents, caretakers and families:
· SAMHSA supports the Center of Excellence on LGBTQ+ Behavioral Health Equity, which provides behavioral health practitioners with vital information on supporting the population of people identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, two-spirit, and other diverse sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions. The Center’s website includes a recorded webinar on Gender Identity, Expression & Behavioral Health 101. Upcoming webinars will include topics such as: How to Signal to Youth that You are an LGBTQ+ Affirming Provider; How to Respond When a Young Person Discloses their SOGIE; Supporting Families of LGBTQ+ Youth; and Safety Planning for LGBTQ+ Students.
· A Practitioner’s Resource Guide: Helping Families to Support Their LGBT Children is a resource guide developed by SAMHSA that offers information and resources to help practitioners throughout health and social service systems implement best practices in engaging and helping families and caregivers to support their lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) children.
An LGBTQ rights group in Ukraine on Tuesday said a group of “bandits” broke into their office in the country’s capital and attacked four activists who were inside.
Nash Mir Coordinator Andriy Maymulakhin in an email to supporters wrote that “some unknown people broke (the) door in our office in” Kyiv where four of his colleagues were living and “brutally beat them and robbed (them.)”
An LGBTQ activist in the Ukrainian capital with whom the Washington Blade spoke on Tuesday confirmed the Nash Mir staffers who were attacked “are safe.” It is not immediately clear who carried out the attack, but it took place against the backdrop of Russian troops’ continued advance towards Kyiv.
Magomed Tushayev, a Chechen warlord who played a role in the anti-LGBTQ crackdown in his homeland, on Saturday died during a skirmish with the Ukrainian military’s elite Alpha Group outside of Kyiv. A White House official late last week told the Blade the Biden administration has “engaged directly” with LGBTQ Ukrainians and other groups that Russia may target if it gains control of their country.
‘I am not going anywhere’
Olena Shevchenko, chair of Insight, another Ukrainian LGBTQ rights group, in a post to her Facebook page on Tuesday said she heard “powerful explosions nearby” in reference to the destruction of Kyiv’s main TV tower. Shevchenko, who lives in Kyiv, in another Facebook post on Tuesday wrote the city “is under permanent bombing all the time.”
“It’s the sixth day of this nightmare,” wrote Shevchenko. “Many of my friends are spending all night in the basements or subway stations. My parents told me they put Ukrainian flag on their balcony. They are not going anywhere, it’s their home. I am not going anywhere, it’s my home too. We are staying and continue to help others as much as we can do in these circumstances.”
Anna Sharyhina is the co-founder of the Sphere Women’s Association, which is based in Kharkiv, the country’s second largest city that is less than 30 miles from the Russian border in the eastern part of the country.
Sharyhina on Tuesday posted to her Facebook page a video of a Russian missile strike a regional administration building in Kharkiv that is on the city’s Freedom Square.
“I am in Kharkiv right now with my family in an extended compound,” said Sharyhina on Tuesday in another post to her Facebook page that she wrote in Russian. “We live close to the city center and here a lot of sounds. We go into a room without windows.”
Sharyhina in the same Facebook post pleaded with Russia to stop shelling Kharkiv.
“I know that the European Parliament is meeting now,” wrote Sharyhina. “Everyone asks me what will we be, given the status of a candidate country, and I don’t know what to answer, but let the explosions in Kharkiv stop, so we can at least do something.”
Many trans women are not being permitted to flee Ukraine, it has been reported, with one woman describing Russia’s invasion as a “war within a war” for trans folk.
Kyiv’s mayor said Wednesday (2 March) that Russian forces are gathering “closer and closer” to the capital – but that “Kyiv stands and will stand”.
One citizen who remains in the capital is Zi Faámelu, a musician best-known in Ukraine for competing in the competition show Star Factory. She has been hiding in her Kyiv apartment as gunfire and missiles get closer.blob:https://www.gaysonoma.com/8970d02c-4d1b-4aed-adc7-f9c106da0c82
She is starting to run out of food, she told CBS News, but is scared to leave home not just because of war – but also because she fears for her safety as a trans woman. Faámelu described life as a trans person in Ukraine as “bleak” and fears that the violence could easily turn transphobic.
“Many people have guns and weapons… It can be an excuse for violence,” she said. “This is a very scary situation.”
Faámelu fears that even if she managed to reach the Ukrainian border, she would not be allowed to cross because her passport does not align with her gender.
Activists on the ground told the TGEU (Transgender Europe) network that trans people with documents that don’t their gender “cannot pass internal check-points”, and that trans women of fighting age with a male gender marker on their passport are being made to stay in the country as potential recruits.
“This is not a very rainbow-friendly place… Lives for trans people are very bleak here,” Faámelu added.
“If you have a male gender in your passport, they will not let you go abroad. They will not let you through… [It’s] a war within a war, truly.”
However, she added that she still has faith that Ukrainian forces can defeat Russia.
She said: “There’s something about Ukrainians, they are very optimistic and joyful people… They never give up.
“You don’t know if you’re going to be alive the next morning. So what are you going to do? I just prefer to dance in the kitchen, to be honest.
Because if this is the last moment of my life, I just want to celebrate. I just want to dance.”
Until 2017, Ukraine required a diagnosis of “transexuality” for trans people to change their legal gender. This meant spending a month in a psychiatric hospital so a board of mental health professionals could make the diagnosis.
Although the process has since been simplified, it is far from easy. Being trans is still considered a psychiatric disorder, and a diagnosis through outpatient appointments is still required.
A rush of LGBT+ volunteers in Ukraine are preparing for combat after the Russian invasion.
Veronika Limina, from Lviv, has been running a camp which teaches volunteer LGBT+ cadets basic combat and paramedic skills, the Daily Beast reports.
Limina, who works for an NGO promoting equal rights for LGBT+ people in the military, told the news outlet that she has signed up for Lviv’s territorial defence force and is prepared to fight as Putin’s forces move into the west of the country.
“I am angry… We will kill Putin,” she told the Daily Beast.
Andrii Kravchuk works at the Nash Svit Cente in Kyiv. He said a Russian occupation of the country could lead to “total lawlessness and repressions”, and that he knows of many LGBT+ people who are joining the territorial defence forces, as well as LGBT+ veterans who are returning to service.
He told the Daily Beast: “Now we have only two options: either we defend our country, and it will become a part of the free world, or there will not be any freedom for us and will not be Ukraine at all.
“LGBT+ people who served in the army and military volunteers are ready to come back to their service. We are doing the same as the rest of the nation.”
The threat of Russian occupancy brings an additional danger to queer Ukrainians: Putin and his regime are intensely and violently anti-LGBT+, and reports suggest LGBT+ people are among those whose names are on “kill lists” drawn up ahead of the invasion.
A Ukrainian delegation is due to meet Russia on Monday morning (28 February) after a terrifying and uncertain weekend of fighting, which saw Vladimir Putin moved Russia’s nuclear deterrent forces to high alert.
Though not a declaration of intent to use nuclear weapons, Putin’s latest escalation has been forcefully condemned and was followed by a new raft of EU sanctions.
The Guardian reports 352 Ukrainian civilians have been killed since Russia’s invasion of the country.
According to the UN, at least 368,000 people have fled the country with many thousands more displaced internally.
However, there have been widespread reports of Black people, including African migrants, encountering racism as they attempt to flee.
Videos shared on Twitter appear to show Ukrainian officials blocking Black people from boarding trains to leave the country, while a group of 24 Jamaican students were forced to walk 20km to Poland after being denied entry to a bus. At the border, there have been reports of Polish official refusing Black people asylum.
In the UK, Boris Johnson is facing increasing pressure to waive visa rules for Ukrainians. Over the weekend the government announced that family members of Brits will be able to apply for a free visa, however the scheme only covers spouse and civil partners, unmarried partners of at least two years, children under the age of 18, parents or their children if one is under 18, and adult relatives who are carers.
Speaking with LGBT+ radio station GlitterBeam, director of Kyiv Pride Lenny Emson said the situation in Ukraine is one of “panic” and “anxiety”, urging listeners to provide “international political support”
“Of course, there is some anxiety, there is some panic, we’re all people, but first of all, we’re angry and we’re ready to fight. We want this to end. We want peace,” he said.
Emson explained that while “we would not say that we [the LGBT+ community in Ukraine] are totally fully accepted in society”, the country has made progress in terms of LGBT+ rights, which an invasion by Russia could strip back.
“We understand that LGBT+ Pride will be the first target for Russia… but we believe in the Ukrainian army that has been fighting already for 24 hours holding Russia back. We want to hope and we want to believe that the international community will stand up and help us in this fight.
“We don’t want to believe that Ukraine will be Russia. There is no space for human rights in that country. We don’t want Ukraine to be the same, and we are going to fight against it.”
“I love gay people,” activist and playwright Larry Kramer proclaimed at the outset of a 2004 speech in New York City. “I think we’re better than other people. I really do. I think we’re smarter and more talented and more aware.”
A new study making waves among LGBTQ-focused academics lends empirical credence to the iconic Act Up co-founder’s prideful claims — not to the supposed sweeping superiority of gay men, rather to the more narrow assertion that this group is remarkably inclined to excel academically.
But the paper, which was published in the American Sociological Review on Feb. 20, comes to starkly opposing conclusions about how growing up gay appears to affect the academic performance of males versus females.
Joel Mittleman, a University of Notre Dame sociologist and the paper’s sole author, found that on an array of academic measures, gay males outperform all other groups on average, across all major racial groups. Conversely, he concluded that lesbians perform more poorly in school overall and that Black gay women have a much lower college graduation rate than their white counterparts.
“This article is focusing a lens on what we do to all kids,” Lisa Diamond, a psychology professor at the University of Utah, said of the societal pressures that appear to impede lesbians in schooleven as these stressors possibly unnerve gay males into compensating for homophobia through academic striving. “And the most vulnerable kids are going to show it first.”
In recent years, academics, lawmakers and journalists alike have sounded an increasingly urgent alarm that on balance, American males are stuck in a scholastic funk. As the economic gap between those with and without a college degree has widened, women’s college graduation rate has risen in tandem, but men’s rate has remained largely stagnant for decades. Today, women comprise 59.2 percent of college students, according to the National Student Clearinghouse.
Mittleman’s research indicates that this characterization of the educational gender gap is critically lacking in specificity. It is, in fact, straight males who tend to be mired in a scholastic morass. And the considerable academic progress that young women have charted since the advent of second-wave feminism has been largely restricted to the heterosexuals among them.
Benefit of adding sexuality questions to surveys
Mittleman was able to reach his striking research findings thanks to a move during President Barack Obama’s second term to add questions about sexual orientation to a trio of federally funded, nationally representative surveys. These major annual surveys — which focus on health, drug use and crime victimization — provided the sociologist with information regarding nearly half a million Americans’ diplomas.
Additionally, the National Center for Education Statistics’ High School Longitudinal Study posed questions about sexuality for the first time to the cohort it followed between 2009 and 2017. From this, Mittleman mined a trove of data including 15,270 students’ high school and undergraduate transcripts.
The three surveys of American adults consistently indicated that gay men are far more likely than straight men to have graduated from high school or college, with just over half of gay men having earned a college degree, compared with about 35 percent of straight men. Some 6 percent of gay men have a Ph.D., J.D. or M.D. — a rate 50 percent higher than that of straight men. Mittleman found that gay men’s considerably higher levels of educational attainment hold even after taking into account differences in men’s race and birth cohorts. What’s more, gay men’s college graduation rate dramatically bests even that of straight women, about one-third of whom have a bachelor’s degree.
The longitudinal survey showed that compared with their straight male peers, gay males earned higher GPAs in high school and college, enrolled in harder classes, took school more seriously, had more academically minded friends and had a much lower rate of ever dropping out for a month or more. In stark contrast, these performance disparities were largely reversed when comparing lesbians with straight girls. Most strikingly, 26 percent of lesbians reported at least one dropout period, compared with 15 percent of heterosexual females.
The U.S. lesbian population’s overall college graduation rate, which ranged between 41 percent and 47 percent in the three survey studies, is significantly higher than that of straight women. But Mittleman found this advantage was limited almost entirely to white lesbians, and among women born more recently, gay women’s educational edge has eroded.
Historically, girls have received better grades than boys. But during much of the 20th century, societal constraints — including the predominant expectation that young women would become wives and mothers and not pursue careers — suppressed their graduation rates. In theory, this left lesbians with an advantage. But as constrictions on women’s potential have eased since the 1960s, straight women’s college graduation rate has risen to the point of statistical parity with lesbians among today’s young adults.
The Nancy Drew effect
Searching for the drivers of these differences in school performance between straight and gay students, Mittleman used a machine-learning algorithm to identify response patterns to survey questions that predicted being male versus female among members of the longitudinal cohort. In turn, he found that being atypical for their gender in survey responses helped explain at least part of the gay students’ GPA variation.
This suggested that not just sexual orientation, but its intersection with gender affectation could have influenced how well the gay and lesbians students did in school.
Seeking to explain the sociocultural dynamics possibly at play in these complex equations, Mittleman pointed in his paper to the feminine archetype, long a prized ideal in white, middle-American culture, of the demurely diligent student. (Think Nancy Drew.)
Characterizing masculinity as a fragile and insecure state, Mittleman argued that the long-standing anti-intellectual bias that plagues many American boys is driven in large part by their urge to assert their masculinity by differentiating themselves from the good-girl archetype.
Gay boys, however, appear willing — even eager — to flout gender norms in academics.
“To the extent that it’s feminine to study and appreciate validation in an academic sphere, the gay boys will have an advantage,” Yale School of Public Health psychologist John Pachankis said.
On the flip side, young lesbians may be disinclined to identify with the femininity intrinsic to the good-student ideal, Mittleman suggested. Moreover, by tending to present as more masculine, lesbians may be slapped with a “bad girl” label by educational authorities, subjected disproportionately to school punishment and generally discouraged academically. This could hold especially true for Black girls, whom white authority figures already tend to stereotype as masculine, according to previous research.
“Girls who present as masculine are seen as troublemakers, are seen as suspicious in some way,” Mittleman said.
The ‘Best Little Boy in the World’ phenomenon
An additional factor that Mittleman argued drives the average gay boy to surpass even the average straight girl academically is what’s known in queer psychology as the “Best Little Boy in the World” phenomenon. This refers to the title of the 1973 memoir by former Democratic National Committee treasurer Andrew Tobias, in which he chronicled his youthful crusade to appease his internalized homophobia through admission to Harvard University and other feats of superlative achievement.
In a 2013 paper published in Basic and Applied Social Psychology, psychologist Mark Hatzenbuehler, now of Harvard University, and Pachankis found evidence suggesting that gay male college students indeed sought to compensate for anti-gay stigma by deriving their self-worth in part through academic mastery and other forms of competition.
This psychological paradigm also comprises the bedrock of “The Velvet Rage,” psychologist Alan Downs’ go-to bible for queer men, published in 2005, on “overcoming the pain of growing up gay in a straight man’s world.”
From a young age … I was determined to become a doctor so I could prove to everyone that I could be successful even though I was gay.
DR. CHRIS REMISHOFSKY
While Mittleman is straight, he said he was nevertheless bullied as a child for “not being sufficiently masculine.” His brother, Dr. Chris Remishofsky, is gay and said the findings of Mittleman’s paper closely reflect his personal experience.
“From a young age,” said Remishofsky, a dermatologist in Sterling Heights, Michigan, “I was determined to become a doctor so I could prove to everyone that I could be successful even though I was gay.”
An analysis by the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project published in January found that gay male couples earn $30,000 more annually than lesbian couples.
Ilan Meyer, a researcher at UCLA’s Williams Institute, expressed intrigue over the story Mittleman’s paper tells of many gay men apparently overcoming considerable odds. Meyer pointed to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance reports that have chronicled the myriad stressors lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender young people weather in school and the litany of deleterious impacts, including depression and suicidality.
Indeed, Mittleman found that on the whole, lesbian, gay and bisexual young people reported feeling more unsafe in school and suffered higher levels of discrimination and what’s known as minority stress than their straight peers.
“The effect of resilience to override effectively all stressors is quite amazing,” Meyer said. “We’re basically saying gay boys have a terrible school environment, but still, on average, they’re doing fantastically well. To me, that is still a major question — how does that work?”
The price queer youth pay
Brian Mustanski, a professor of medical social sciences at Northwestern University, cautioned that the relative success of gay men could amount to a double-edged sword.
“While certainly, it’s good news for the young gay men that they’re able to succeed well academically, I do have some real concerns about what kind of pressure they’re putting on themselves,” he said.
Suggesting that feverish academic striving in search of validation can come at a steep cost to mental and physical health, Mustanski pointed to his own research findings that gay men have disproportionately high levels of chronic inflammation. He hypothesized that this physical effect is fueled by minority stress and that it could raise the risk of health problems such as cardiovascular disease.
“We need safe and inclusive policies that protect all students from bullying and differential treatment by school staff regardless of the student’s sexual orientation or gender expression,” Clark said. She called for special support for “those students who may be most likely to face difficulties in school, including sexual minority girls.”
While joining the other experts in praising what he called a “beautifully done study,” UCLA psychologist Patrick Wilsonnevertheless expressed concern that Mittleman’s findings may lead the public to paint student-achievement trends in overly broad strokes.
Noting what an overwhelmingly unsafe place school still is for many queer kids, Wilson further cautioned the public not to conclude, for example, “that a poor Black gay boy living in Montgomery or Mobile, Alabama, feminine-presenting and gender-nonconforming, is actually succeeding in high school right now.”
Avaz Shikhmammadov-Hafizli, a 24-year-old journalist and LGBTQ activist was found stabbed to death last week near the capital, Baku, according to a spokesperson for the Azerbaijan Attorney General’s Office and Ministry of Internal Affairs.
In a joint statement released by the Ministry of Internal Affairs in conjunction with the Attorney General’s Office, Amrulla Gulaliyev, Shikhmammadov-Hafizli’s cousin was arrested for his killing.
“Initial investigation shows that Gulaliyev was drunk when he committed the crime and has admitted to killing his cousin as a result of a dispute,” the statement said.
Neither Gulaliyev nor his attorney has yet issued a comment.
Other LGBTQ Azerbaijani sources are disputing the official narrative saying that Gulaliyev murdered his cousin as a so-called family honor killing.
JAMnews, a media outlet which covers different regions of the Caucasus, noted that the Azerbaijani media not only regularly covers “honor crimes,” but gives voice to those who support this primitive idea of justice.
According to ILGA Europe, an international non-governmental organization advocating for LGBTQ rights and freedoms, Azerbaijan occupies the last place among 49 countries on the organization’s Rainbow Index.
Arzu Geybullayeva, a journalist with Global Voices reported that in September 2021 Hafizli chained himself to a fence outside the Prosecutor General Office to protest the institution’s lack of swift action against blogger Sevinj Huseynova, who openly called for violence against queer citizens in the country. Huseynova also targeted Hafizli after which, according to the journalist’s own accounts, his family disowned him. Hafizli also attempted to die by suicide after being targeted by the blogger.
In recent years, the Azerbaijan government intensified crackdowns against the LGBTQ community. In 2017, at least 83 people were detained by the police for being gay or transgender. The detainees reported being tortured and blackmailed. The same year, at least four Azerbaijani citizens who identified as LGBTQ died by suicide.
In March 2021, Minority Magazine reported a new movement calling itself “Pure Blood” which was mobilizing via Telegram to target LGBTQ people in Azerbaijan.
Then in the summer of 2021, during Pride month, Minority Magazine documented more attacks against LGBTQ people.
For many who face discrimination and violence, there is little recourse through the police or any official judicial channels. For instance, in November of last year, a trans woman and her partner were attacked on the street in Baku. Knowing the police’s poor track record with queer citizens, they decided not to file an official complaint, fearing reprisals and potential privacy violations.
The anti-LGBTQ narrative in Azerbaijan is pervasive among politicians, celebrities, and public figures, according to OC Media research that focused on the extent of homophobic hate speech in the country by analyzing media reports.
According to this research, LGBTQ members also face discrimination in military service. In Azerbaijan those who identify as LGBTQ are exempted from compulsory military service under Article 18, paragraph b of the Regulation on Military Medical Examinations, which states a person is considered unfit or partially fit for military service on the basis of personality disorders and under Article 17/b, which indicates reactive psychoses and neurotic disorders.
Blogger Sevinj Huseynova is not the only one who has made open calls for violence against the LGBTQ community.
According to Minority Magazine, in January 2022, a religious cleric Haji Tayyar Huseynli, described members of LGBTQ community as “filth” and said same-sex couples engaging in intercourse should be sentenced to death.
“That is, according to religious rules, those who commit this heinous act must be killed. This is the demand of religion,” Huseynli told a local news platform in an interview.
According to the statement issued by the Prosecutor General Office, Hafizli was killed by his cousin who was under the influence of alcohol, after the two had an argument. The office said an investigation has been launched.
However, activists in Azerbaijan fear not much will come out of it. Writing on her Facebook page, civic activist, Gulnara Mehdiyeva said, “LGBTQ people are of no importance to Azerbaijani law. They are not considered human beings, and neither the prosecutor’s office, nor the State Security Service, nor any other body wants to move a finger to prevent mass killings. The Azerbaijani government is directly guilty of legitimizing the killing of LGBTQ people at all levels.”
Singapore’s highest court on Monday upheld a lower court’s decision to dismiss three challenges to a law that criminalizes sexual relations between men.
While delivering the judgment, given by a bench of five judges, Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon of the Singapore Court of Appeal said that the appeals are not about “whether (Section) 377A (of the penal code) should be retained or repealed, that being a matter beyond our remit.”
“Nor are they about the moral worth of homosexual individuals,” said Menon. “In the words of our prime minister, Mr. Lee Hsien Loong, homosexual individuals are ‘part of our society’ and ‘our kith and kin.’”
The appeal court went ahead and said the appeals are also “not about the fundamental nature of sexual orientation, whether immutable or not, which is an extra-legal question well beyond the purview of the courts.”
The court also suggested that political resolution of the issue is more appropriate than litigating it. The chief justice said that the advantage of the political process is its ability to accommodate divergent interests and opinions, while litigation is “not a consultative or participatory process.”
“This is so for good reason because litigation is a zero-sum, adversarial process with win-lose outcomes,” said Menon. “The political process, in contrast, seeks to mediate — it strives for compromises and consensus in which no one side has to lose all.”
The chief justice also said that it is “unnecessary” for the court to address a constitutional issue.
“They do not face any real and credible threat of prosecution under 377A at this time,” said Menon while delivering the judgment. “Therefore, (they) do not have the standing to pursue their constitutional challenges to that provision.”
“We, as organizations advocating for LGBTQ+ equality in Singapore, are disappointed with the Court of Appeal’s landmark ruling on Section 377A, which comes as a setback for all who were hoping for a resounding conclusion to this decades-long fight for equality,” said Ready4Repeal, a Singapore-based LGBTQ rights group, in a press release. “Despite recognizing the current situation as deeply unsatisfactory for the LGBTQ+ community, the Court of Appeal has still decided to retain the law, albeit with legal assurances on its unenforceability.”
Last year, three men, DJ Johnson Ong Ming, retired general practitioner Roy Tan Seng Kee, and Bryan Choong Chee Hoong, the former executive director of Oogachaga, an LGBTQ non-profit organization, decided to appeal against a Supreme Court’s decision to dismiss their cases against Section 377A.
“While this is a small step in the right direction, this simply does not go far enough to provide real protection to the LGBTQ+ community, who continue to be impacted by the cascading effects of Section 377A,” said Ready4Repeal. “The judges themselves acknowledged that even with the assurance of unenforceability, homosexual men will still be left open to police investigations as if a crime had been committed.”
Ready4Repeal started a petition in 2018 to pressurize the Singaporean government on repealing the colonial-era law. The petition has received 51,047 online signatures.
Section 377A is a highly debated law in Singapore that prohibits sexual relationships between two men. According to the law, any man in public or private who commits an act of gross indecency with another male shall be punished with to years in prison.
Last year, Home Minister Affairs K Shanmugam said that everyone in Singapore will be protected regardless of community and social, religious, or sexual beliefs. He also said that the government’s position is clear. He also said that amendments to the Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act make it an offense to urge violence on the grounds of religion or religious belief against any person or group.
Finance Minister Lawrence Wong last year reiterated that different sections of the society have valid concerns, and it needs to be addressed.
“Tribalism is inherently exclusionary, and it’s based on mutual hate: ‘us’ versus ‘them,’ ‘friend’ vs ‘foe,’” said Wong. “Once this sort of tribal identity takes root, it becomes difficult to achieve any compromise. Because when we anchor our politics on identity, any compromise seems like dishonor.”
Ankush Kumar (Mohit) is a freelance reporter, who has covered many stories for Washington Blade and Los Angeles Blade from Iran, India, and Singapore. Recently covered story for The Daily Beast. He can be reached at [email protected].