News

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Switzerland votes to legalize same-sex marriage

Cheers rang out, hugs were exchanged and rainbow-colored flags waved overhead across Switzerland as the Swiss resoundingly voted to allow same-sex couples to marry, final results of a nationwide referendum showed Sunday. Official results showed the measure passed with 64.1 percent of the vote while more than half of all voters approved in each of Switzerland’s 26 cantons, or states. The vote — years in the making — is set to bring the Alpine nation into line with many others in Western Europe and wraps up an often tense campaign between rival sides. Justice Minister Karin Keller-Sutter said on Twitter that the […]

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UK, Russia, Poland and Hungary in damning LGBT+ hate report due to transphobia

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The UK has been singled out for its “baseless and concerning” anti-trans rhetoric in a damning report on rising hate against LGBT+ people in Europe. The extensive report was published by the Council of Europe, the continent’s leading human rights organisation, on Tuesday (21 September). It describes “a marked increase” in anti-LGBT+ hate speech and hate crime and condemns “with particular force the extensive and often virulent attacks” on LGBT+ rights in the UK, which is named alongside Hungary, Poland, Turkey and the Russian Federation. The council notes that these attacks “deliberately mis-characterise the fight for the equality of LGBTI people as […]

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Students stage defiant walkout after lesbian teacher ‘marched off campus’

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Hundreds of students marched out of school in protest after a lesbian teacher was allegedly escorted off campus amid a row over “safe space” stickers on classroom doors. Crowds of students were seen pouring out of MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas on Wednesday (22 September) in response to the school’s alleged “targeted discrimination” against LGBT+ children and teachers. Many wore heart-shaped rainbow stickers on their faces and clothes, the symbol teachers used to show their classes were a safe space for LGBT+ students – until several weeks ago, when those stickers suddenly disappeared. “I was freaked. The kids were freaked out,” […]

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Advocate for the homeless fights vaccine misinformation on the streets

On an overcast day in late August, a line of homeless people gathered eagerly outside Sara D. Roosevelt Park in New York City’s Lower East Side.  Four volunteers were rapidly pulling backpacks out of a U-Haul and handing them to those in line. In just 45 minutes, the volunteers from Backpacks for the Street, a mobile nonprofit group that provides vital supplies to those without homes, handed off 165 backpacks — a new daily record. “I think the need is growing more and more,” said Jeffrey Newman, 53, who, along with his husband, Jayson Conner, 44, started the volunteer group […]

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Asian American lawmakers urge DOJ to give hate crimes law updates

Two Asian American lawmakers are asking the Department of Justice for updates to the Covid-19 Hate Crimes Act signed four months ago. U.S. lawmakers Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, and Rep. Grace Meng, D-N.Y., sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland on Monday urging the implementation of key provisions of the act that are “critical to its effectiveness.” The letter — which highlights the increased violence toward older Asians and the Atlanta-area spa shootings that killed eight people, six of whom were women of Asian descent — follows a recent FBI report that showed the number of hate crimes in 2020 was the highest in more than a decade. “We request your attention to these matters and […]

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California bans state travel to Ohio, saying law could harm LGBT people seeking medical care

California is banning state-funded travel to Ohio over the state’s new law allowing doctors to decline medical services to people on moral or religious grounds. The Ohio measure triggered a 2016 California law that requires the attorney general to prohibit state-funded travel to states that discriminate against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, according to a Friday news release from California Attorney General Rob Bonta. The ban takes effect Sept. 30, according to the release. Ohio will become the 18th state to which California won’t pay for travel, according to the release. Ohio legislators tucked the provision into a massive […]

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LGBT vets with other than honorable discharges will get VA benefits under new plan

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Tens of thousands of LGBT veterans forced from the military for their sexual orientation and given other-than-honorable discharges will be able to receive full Veterans Affairs benefits despite their dismissal status under a new move set to be announced Monday. The change comes as the country approaches the 10th anniversary of repeal of the controversial “don’t ask, don’t tell” law which forced nearly 14,000 service members out of the ranks for admitting their sexual orientation. But the impact of the new VA announcement goes further than just those individuals, to potentially include troops who served before and after the law who may have […]

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Architect Of Texas Abortion Ban Also Wants SCOTUS To Overturn Same-Sex Marriage, Recriminalize Gay Sex

The Guardian reports: In the same brief, which calls for Roe to be overturned, Mitchell and co-counsel Adam Mortara, an anti-abortion activist and lawyer who clerked for the Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, said such a decision could open the door for other “lawless” rights and protections to be reversed, including the right to have gay sex and the right to same-sex marriage. The lawyers argued that while it was not necessary for the high court to immediately overrule the legal cases that enshrine those rights, “neither should the court hesitate to write an opinion that leaves those decisions hanging by a thread”. Those […]

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Happening this month at Food for Thought

FFT’s 20th annual Dining Out For Life event is on December 2!Dining Out For Life raises funds to support our nutrition programs for people living with HIV and other serious medical conditions in Sonoma County. The event lands on Thursday December 2, which follows after World Aids Day. This event is Food For Thought’s most delicious fundraiser of the year, and we would love your help to make it a big success!Plan to dine-in or take-out at one of dozens of participating Sonoma County restaurants on December 2! Participating restaurants will be generously donating a portion of their sales to Food For Thought that day. […]

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Two men knock gay man unconscious in violent hate crime in San Diego

A gay man was knocked unconscious and left with severe spinal injuries in ahate crime that has left him deeply shaken and requiring surgery. Two men reportedly targeted Gersson Saavedra in Barrio Logan, an artistic neighbourhood of San Diego, California, on 12 September. He told NBC’s San Diego affiliate that he was strolling along the pier by Cesar Chavez park at around 9:30pm when his night spent with friends slipped into violence. “When we were leaving the event I fell behind my friends, Martin and Sunny,” Saavedra recalled. “My friend said that these two guys asked me for a lighter,” he said, adding that […]

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