News

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Poland Opposition Parties Hit Back at Anti-gay Sentiment by Appointing Gay Candidate for President

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 […]

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Three CA Bills for the LGBTQ+ Community to Keep An Eye On

Three key pieces of California legislation that were tabled last year for various reasons will see the floor in 2020.  These bills – SB 132, SB 145 and SB 201 were all introduced by openly gay Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and were co-sponsored by Equality California. SB 132, the Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act, aims to improve the living conditions for incarcerated transgender person. SB 132 will require that incarcerated transgender people in the custody of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) be classified and housed based on their sense of health, safety and gender identity — rather than the […]

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D.C. Council Proposes Making City’s Laws and Regulations Gender-neutral

The Council of the District of Columbia on Tuesday introduced legislation that would strip gendered and “patriarchal” terms from the D.C. code and replace them with gender-neutral language. The Gendered Terms Modernization Amendment Act of 2020 would change instances of “he” or “she” in the law books to “the individual” or “they.” The bill was introduced by David Grosso, an at-large independent member of the council who has been a leader on LGBTQ legislation during his council tenure. “We believe very strongly that language matters, that it actually holds power, and that the language of our laws matters,” Grosso told NBC News. […]

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Police Search for Suspect in Murder of Trans Activist in Oklahoma

Authorities are searching for a suspect after a transgender activist was found shot and killed in McAlester, Oklahoma, while on his way to pickup a taxi fare. Dustin James Parker, 25, was found dead Wednesday with the windows of his car shot out after a 911 caller told police they heard gunshots in the early morning, according to NBC affiliate KJRH.McAlester Mayor John Browne assured the community that law enforcement was doing all it could to locate a suspect in Parker’s death. “McAlester lost a supremely nice person who had such a positive outlook in his life,” Browne said in a […]

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Pakistan Extends Free Healthcare to Trans People

Pakistan has extended free healthcare to transgender citizens for the first time, in a move that will help lessen discrimination against trans people. All trans people in Pakistan will now be eligible for free medical treatment, including transition-related care. 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, […]

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Belize’s Appeal Courts just Unanimously Ruled that Gay Sex is Legal

A battle against an outdated colonial law has finally come to an end, after the court of appeals in Belize unanimously upheld a 2016 ruling that a ban on gay sex is unconditional. Section 53 of the country’s criminal code, which dubbed same-sex desire as “against the order of nature”, was found to go against five sections of the constitution. Belize, a small Anglophone Caribbean nation tucked into the eastern flank of Guatemala and Mexico, has been a battleground for LGBT rights for more than a decade. It’s been a battle that started in 2010 and ended in 2019, rounding off […]

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Chile Transgender Rights Law Takes Effect

Friday was historic moment for transgender rights in Chile because the country’s Gender Identity Law came into force.  Trans people who are at least 18 and single can now change their name and legal gender with a simple procedure in the country’s Civil Registry. Teenagers who are between 14-18 can do so in court, but the new law does not include trans children and adolescents who are under 14. “Today alone we have 136 people who will complete their procedure throughout Chile,” Justice and Human Rights Minister Hernán Larraín told local media. “There was an invisible reality here; people who […]

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UN Official: Past Decade has Seen Human Rights ‘Backlash’

 The past decade has seen a backlash against human rights on every front, especially the rights of women and the LGBT communities, according to a top U.N. human rights official. Andrew Gilmour, the outgoing assistant secretary-general for human rights, said the regression of the past 10 years hasn’t equaled the advances that began in the late 1970s — but it is serious, widespread and regrettable. He pointed to “populist authoritarian nationalists” in North America, South America, Europe and Asia, who he said are taking aim at the most vulnerable groups of society, including Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims, Roma, and Mexican immigrants, […]

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Judicial Candidate who Claimed Gays ‘Face Eternal Damnation’ Suspended

A Trump-supporting Florida judicial candidate has had his law license suspended after saying that gay people will “face eternal damnation.” Attorney Donald McBath has been suspended from the Florida Bar for violating the Florida Code of Judicial Conduct while running to become a state circuit court judge. In a filing with the Florida Supreme Court, the Florida Bar asserted that McBath had “failed to maintain the dignity appropriate to judicial office and act in a manner that is consistent with impartiality, integrity, and independence of the judiciary” due to anti-Muslim and anti-gay messages posted to social media. Trump-supporting attorney claimed God can […]

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A Very LGBTQ Decade: Marriage Equality, Trans Rights and a ‘Rainbow Wave’

At the dawn of the year 2010, few Americans could predict that the coming decade would revolutionize the legal and cultural landscape for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. After all, it was only in 2003 that homosexuality was decriminalized across the country, thanks to a landmark Supreme Court ruling. Over the past 10 years, the United States saw the nationwide legalization of same-sex marriage, the emergence of transgender rights as the central frontier in the LGBTQ rights battle and the introduction of PrEP to fight the HIV epidemic. The decade also saw tragedies and setbacks, like the Pulse […]

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