A group of Russian LGBT+ activists have been arrested in St. Petersburg during an annual “Day of Silence” protest for sex and gender equality.
Some 11 people were detained by police on April 17, including Daniel Maksimenko, who spoke to reporters at local news site OVD-Info.
“The police are going to detain everyone who walked with their mouths sealed. I heard what they said,” said Maksimenko.
The activists were walking in the direction of the Church of the Saviour and covered their mouths with red tape when the police began making arrests. According to the organisers around 40-50 people attended the protest.
In 2013 Russia implemented a “gay propaganda” law which prohibits “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relationships” towards minors. The European Court of Human Rights ruled the law is discriminatory.
Since it was implemented hate crimes against LGBT+ people have doubled in the country.
LGBT activists have filed a criminal complaint to Russia’s Investigative Committee. (John MacDougall/AFP/Getty)
In August 2018 police detained around 30 LGBT+ activists in St Petersburg. A total of around 60 campaigners assembled in Palace Square after their request for a pride parade was turned down by local authorities.
On November 27, 2018, the European Court of Human rights ruled that Russia’s ban on pride events breaches human rights. The ruling found that “the applicants suffered unjustified discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation.”
The state of Nevada has banned gay and trans “panic” defences in criminal cases in an effort to prevent LGBT+ victims from being blamed for their own assaults and murders.
Gay and trans panic defences are still frequently deployed in criminal cases across the world in an effort to get more lenient sentences for homophobic and transphobic attacks.
The line of decence usually involves the perpetrator claiming they had a moment of “temporary insanity” brought on by unwanted sexual advances or suddenly discovering a person’s gender identity. The use of such defences has previously been banned in California and Illinois.
Nevada’s gay and trans ‘panic’ bill passed by 19 votes to 2
Representatives voted yesterday on the bill and it was passed by 19 votes to 2. The only two members to vote against the bill were Ira Hansen and Pete Goicoechea.
The bill says that “an alleged state of passion or provocation” in a perpetrator will not be considered a valid defence “if it resulted from… [the] sexual orientation or gender identity or expression of the victim.”
The wide-ranging bill also notes that gay and trans panic defences continue to appear in criminal cases across the United States. It notes that these defences are “surprisingly long-lived, historical artifacts and remnants of a time when widespread public antipathy was the norm for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons.”
“The bill says that gay and trans panic defences are ‘surprisingly long-lived, historical artifacts and remnants of a time when widespread public antipathy was the norm for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons.’”
– Nevada bill banning the use of gay and trans ‘panic’ defences
It also says that gay and trans panic defences appeal to “irrational fears and hatred of [LGBT+] people, thereby undermining the legitimacy of criminal prosecutions and resulting in unjustifiable acquittals or sentencing reductions.”
The bill concludes by noting that they want to “end the antiquated notion that the lives of [LGBT+ people] are worth less than the lives of other persons and to reflect a modern understanding of [LGBT] persons as equal to other persons under the law.”
Nevada bans gay and trans ‘panic’ defences in criminal cases (Pexels)
The most famous example of the ‘gay panic’ defence was in the Matthew Shepard case
The American Bar Association unanimously passed a resolution in 2013 which urged governments to provide guidance to jurors and prosecutors about the use of gay and trans panic defences.
In the same year, California became the first state in the US to ban gay and trans panic defences.
Meanwhile, Democrats filed a bill to Congress last year in an effort to outlaw the use of such defences nationwide.
The best known use of the gay panic defence in the US was in the murder case of Matthew Shepard. He was killed in a violent attack in 1998 in which he was beaten, robbed, tied to a fence and left to die.
His killers, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, attempted to argue in court that they suffered “a moment of insanity” when Shepard made sexual advances towards them.
A lawyer named Susel Paredes and her wife, Gracia Aljovin, are battling to legalise same-sex marriage in Peru.
Paredes and her wife married in Miami in 2016 and have since been campaigning to get the union recognised in the heavily Catholic, conservative country.
On April 4, a local court asked authorities to treat the couple’s marriage like they would any other stating that not to do so would be unconstitutional.
“We want to trigger a legal process that moves us toward obtaining the equal right to marriage in Peru,” Paredes told Reuters.
Peru does not recognise same-sex marriage
Reneic responded to the request by saying the couple’s marriage cannot be legally recognised, as same-sex marriage isn’t legal in Peru.
In official documents, Reneic noted that Article 2347 of the Civil Code states that “marriage is the union voluntarily arranged by a man and a woman, and since the plaintiffs are the concerted union of two women, it is not effective.”
However, the Paredes appeal could potentially result in the legalisation of gay marriage in Peru, which is one of the few countries in Latin America not to recognise same-sex unions.
Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani voiced his disdain for same-sex marriage. (Djacobo)
Catholicism compromises up to 90% of Peru’s population. And despite Paredes also being a Catholic herself, religious officials disagrees with her decision.
“A judge has basically said that God was wrong, that it’s not just man and woman (who can marry),” Peru’s Catholic Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani told a local broadcaster on the matter.
Susel Paredes asks other gay people to come out
In an interview with local media Paredes made an appeal to other gay people in the country. “Christ said the truth will set you free. That’s why I call on you to come out of the closet,” she said. “Who can be happy leading two lives?”
Paredes has vouched to take the battle to Peru’s high court, the Constitutional Tribunal, or even the Costa Rica-based Inter-American Court of Human Rights if needs be.
A gay foreign policy expert who worked in the Obama administration on international LGBT issues has declared his intention to run for U.S. Senate in Colorado.
Daniel Baer, who’s 42 and a former U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security & Cooperation in Europe, announced his candidacy Tuesday in an email blast referencing his spouse, Brian Walsh.
“Like many of you, Brian and I are dismayed by the chaos unfolding in Washington under this president,” Baer said. “But we’ve also realized that the best way to find hope and optimism is by putting ourselves on the line, taking risks for the values we believe in, and fighting for the country we want.”
If Baer succeeds if his campaign bid, he’d become the first openly gay man elected to the U.S. Senate and would join Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), the first out lesbian elected to the Senate, and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), the first open bisexual elected to the Senate.
One of seven openly gay ambassadors in the Obama administration, Baer as U.S. ambassador to OSCE was charged with deescalating tensions in Europe during the Ukraine crisis in 2014.
Previously, Baer served as deputy assistant secretary for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights & Labor under Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state. Baer worked on international LGBT issues, including the integration of LGBT human rights abuses in the State Department’s annual human rights report.
In a campaign video announcement titled “Driving Change,” Baer touts his foreign policy experience at OSCE as well his relationship with his spouse and their dog.
It’s not the first time Baer has pursued a run for Congress. In 2017, Baer launched a campaign to run for a U.S. House seat representing Colorado’s 7th congressional district. But Baer later dropped that bid after incumbent Rep. Ed. Perlmutter (D-Colo.) changed his mind and decided to keep the seat he said he’d vacate.
By seeking the Democratic nomination to run for U.S. Senate, Baer is potentially challenging Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), one of the most vulnerable senators up for election in 2020. According to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Gardner is currently polling eight points behind a generic Democratic on the ballot.
In an interview with the Denver Post, Baer touted his foreign policy experience in explaining why he’d be superior to the sitting Republican incumbent currently representing Colorado.
“Cory Gardner sits on the Foreign Relations Committee,” Baer said. “I think one of the things I offer as a candidate going up against him is that I can go toe-to-toe with Cory Gardner on foreign policy issues.”
But Baer is one of seven Democrats seeking their party’s nomination to run against Gardner and it remains to be seen if Baer will claim victory. The filing deadline and primary for Colorado aren’t yet scheduled.
It’s been less than four years since gay marriage was legalized in the U.S., and LGBTQ people still face hurdles in adopting children, joining the military and buying wedding cakes. But on primetime TV Monday night, a remarkable conversation took place: A presidential contender and one of the country’s most-watched cable news hosts discussed the weight of the metaphorical closet and their experiences in coming out as gay.
“You went through college, and then the Rhodes Scholarship process and getting the Rhodes scholarship and going to work for McKinsey and joining the Navy and deploying to Afghanistan and coming home and running for mayor in your hometown and getting elected before you came out at the age of 33,” MSNBC host Rachel Maddow said to Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, on her show Monday night. “I think it would have killed me to be closeted for that long.”
“It was hard,” replied Buttigieg, who announced his bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination over the weekend. “It was really hard.”
“Coming out is hard, but being in the closet is harder,” said Maddow, a fellow Rhodes scholar who came out during college.
In addition to coming out to others, Buttigieg, now 37, revealed it also took him “plenty of time to come out to myself.”
“There were certainly plenty of indications by the time I was 15 or so that I could point back and be like, ‘Yeah, yeah, this kid’s gay,’ but I guess I just needed to not be,” he explained. “There’s this war that breaks out, I think, inside a lot of people when they realize they might be something that they’re afraid of, and it took me a very long time to resolve that.”
In addition to the struggles many people face coming out as gay, at the time Buttigieg was planning to come out, he was also an officer in the United States Navy Reserve and an elected official in Indiana. He told Maddow he assumed at the time that both roles were “totally incompatible with being out.”
Initially, Buttigieg said, the demands of his job as mayor forced him to put his personal life on the back burner.
“I did get a lot of meaning from that work, and in some ways, because it was so demanding, I almost didn’t mind for a sort of inordinately long time that I didn’t have much of a personal life,” he said. “The city was a jealous bride for a long time and kept me busy.”
However, a seven-month deployment to Afghanistan in 2014 really put him “over the top.”
“I realize that you only get to be one person,” he told Maddow. “You don’t know how long you have on this earth, and by the time I came back, I realized, ‘I’ve got to do something.’”
Buttigieg came out in a June 2015 op-ed in The South Bend Tribune just before the Supreme Court’s landmark Obergefell v. Hodges decision, which legalized same-sex marriage across the U.S.
“I was well into adulthood before I was prepared to acknowledge the simple fact that I am gay. It took years of struggle and growth for me to recognize that it’s just a fact of life, like having brown hair, and part of who I am,” Buttigieg wrote. “Like most people, I would like to get married one day and eventually raise a family. I hope that when my children are old enough to understand politics, they will be puzzled that someone like me revealing he is gay was ever considered to be newsworthy.”
When Maddow asked if Buttigieg thought coming out could cost him re-election, he revealed he was unsure.
“I felt like I had done a good job by the people of South Bend, and I had some level of trust that I would be rewarded for that with a re-election, but there’s no way to really know,” he said. “There’s no playbook, no executive in Indiana had ever been out, and so it was kind of a leap of faith.”
Buttigieg was re-elected in 2015 with nearly 80 percent of the vote — a wider margin than his election in 2011.
When it comes to the presidential election, Buttigieg said most people are “either supportive or even enthusiastic about the idea of the first out person going this far.” And he’s right: A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found nearly 70 percent of U.S. voterswere either enthusiastic (14 percent) or comfortable (54 percent) with a gay or lesbian presidential candidate. This is up from 43 percent in 2006.View image on Twitter
Buttigieg told Maddow at the very least, he hopes his presidential campaign will make it easier “for the next person who comes along.”
The conversion between Maddow and Buttigieg garnered a significant amount of social media attention. The country singer Chely Wright, who is lesbian, revealed she was in “tears” watching the segment.
“I came out 9 years ago and I feel like now— in this very moment— there’s is a tangible shift,” she wrote on Twitter.
A transgender student who is studying at the University of Texas in Austin (UT) has lost his scholarship after Donald Trump’s trans military ban came into effect last week.
Map Pesqueira was awarded a national three-year Reserve Officers’ Training Corps scholarship to fund his studies, according to Daily Texas Online.
However, due to Trump’s trans military ban—which came into effect last Friday (April 12)—his scholarship has been revoked by the US Department of Defence. He is now at risk of not being able to continue his studies and has started a fundraiserto finish his degree.
Transgender student Map Pesqueira’s dream was to serve in the military
“Since I’ve already had top surgery, hormone replacement therapy, gender marker and [a] name change, I can’t go in under this policy,” Pesqueira said.
“I’d automatically be discriminated. I really do see [the policy] as a waste of resources, money, time and personnel. It’s made figuring out my future education so much harder.”
Pesqueira went to UT to study and achieve his dream of serving in the military and becoming a filmmaker. He hopes that he can pursue a career in the military in the future.
“Because I have started medically transitioning, my scholarship is now void.”
– Transgender student Map Pesqueira
He has started a GoFundMe with the goal of raising $20,000 so he can continue studying through his sophomore year.
In a lengthy post on his GoFundMe page, Pesqueira wrote: “Since I was a kid, one of my biggest dreams was to pursue a career in the Army to serve my country.
Specna Arms/Pexels
‘I can no longer afford to attend without financial assistance’
“I happen to be a transgender male who started medically transitioning in 2018. I have been on hormone replacement therapy and living in my preferred gender for 15 months, just recently had top surgery, and have legally changed my name and gender marker.
“In January of 2019, the Supreme Court gave the green light to the Department of Defense to begin implementing a new policy that prohibits transgender people who have begun their transition as well as transgender people with a gender dysphoria diagnosis from entering the military.
“Because I have started medically transitioning, my scholarship is now void.
“Since my scholarship is now invalid, I can no longer afford to attend without financial assistance. I received little financial aid from the university despite having a single mother with a low-income and struggled to pay my own way through my first year.
“Until now, I remained under the impression that my scholarship would take care of my remaining 3 years, but that is no longer the case.”
He is now pleading with people to help him raise the required funds to continue his education.
The Russian River Chamber of Commerce invites you to join us in a celebration of food and wine to kick off the summer season. Celebrate the Rise of the Russian River after the rainy winter. On April 27th, 2019 from 1-4 pm over 30 gourmet restaurants and wineries will be serving up a variety of local Sonoma County foods and delicious wines. The event is taking place in the tree-lined, center of town right next to Trios Restaurant. Nearby you’ll find art galleries and shops to browse after enjoying tastings from world class restaurants and wineries in the casual and relaxed atmosphere of Guerneville along the Russian River. Cost is $50 for unlimited Food & Wine, $30 for food only. Come and enjoy world class tastings from restaurants and wineries along the Russian River. First 100 tickets sold will be entered to win a Magnum of Woodenhead Pinot Noir! Advance Tickets here. A sampling of the wineries and food purveyors sampling for you at the Spring Fling:
The California National Guard will continue to welcome transgender troops despite a military-wide ban.
The Trump administration rule that bans transgender people from serving in the armed forces went into effect on April 12.
However, California’s National Guard has made clear that it will not be following suit in adopting the policy.
Transgender soldiers ‘will remain in’ California National Guard
Major General Matthew Beevers told The Hill that gender identity of soldiers is “the least of our concerns.”
He said: “Every [transgender] soldier or airmen currently serving in the California National Guard will remain in our ranks. We will not treat any soldier or airmen any differently today, than we did yesterday.”
The general added that the guard “will explore every avenue to ensure that [transgender] people who want to serve in the California National Guard are afforded every opportunity to serve.”
He continued: “Anybody who is willing and able to serve state [and] nation should have the opportunity to serve.
“It’s unconscionable in my mind that we would fundamentally discriminate against a certain class of people based on their gender identity.
“That should be the absolute least of our worries.”
California National Guard Major General Matthew Beevers
Beevers added that the guard would “exercise every available avenue” to welcome transgender troops while abiding by the guidelines.
He continued: “It’s a bit frightening where we’re at today.
“However, we’re compelled as military officers to follow the rules of the folks that are elected and appointed above us and we’ll continue to do that.”
13,700 people could face discharge under Trump ban
“After consultation with my generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the US military,” he wrote.
“Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail.”
Any person who comes out or is outed as trans in the US Armed Forces from April 12 will be discharged, unless they are willing to suppress their identity. The military will not pay for any gender confirmation surgeries, apart from those which will “protect the health” of people who have begun to medically transition.
After April 12, those applying to join the services with a record of gender dysphoria will have to adhere to the gender they were assigned at birth in order to serve. A doctor will have to certify that they have been stable in that gender for at least 36 months, and that they have not medically transitioned.
The US Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by gay death row inmate Charles Rhines amid claims he was given a harsher sentence because of his sexuality.
According to sworn statements from 2016, the South Dakota jury that convicted Rhines may have given him the death sentence instead of life imprisonment because of anti-gay prejudice.
“If he’s gay, we’d be sending him where he wants to go,” Frances Cersosimo noted another juror saying.SPONSORED CONTENT
“We also knew he was a homosexual and thought he shouldn’t be able to spend his life with men in prison,” said juror Henry Keeney in his sworn statement at the time.
Charles Rhines’ many appeals against death row
Rhines made a similar appeal last year. His appeals follow a New York Times reportin 2017 where the jury’s deliberations were used to prove evidence of racial bias in Miguel Angel Peña Rodriguez’s case.
Usually proof of misconduct cannot be used to alter a conviction as the jurors’ thoughts should remain private.
“Mr. Rhines’s case represents one of the most extreme forms anti-LGBT bias can take.”
“Sexual orientation is not immutable to the same extent as race,” Ravnsborg wrote. “No politician has ever proposed constructing a wall to keep homosexuals out of the country.”
“The alleged juror comments here are not clear and explicit expressions of animus toward homosexuals,” Ravnsborg added. “At best, they fall into the category of an ‘offhand comment’.”
Charles Rhines believes he would’ve received life imprisonment rather than the death sentence if he wasn’t gay. (Pexels)
LGBT+ right groups such as Lambda Legal, the National LGBT Bar Association and the ACLU advocated on Rhines’ behalf.
“The constitutional right to a fair trial must include the right to establish whether a verdict or sentence was imposed due to jury bias,” said Ethan Rice, Lambda Legal Fair Courts Project Attorney. “Mr. Rhines’s case represents one of the most extreme forms anti-LGBT bias can take.”
An appeals court in the Cayman Islands has delayed the implementation of same-sex marriage legalisation in the British Overseas Territory.
The Court of Appeal accepted a government request to halt the legalisation of same-sex marriage that Chief Justice Anthony Smellie of the Grand Court of the Cayman Islands ruled with immediate effect in a historic ruling on March 29.
The government is appealing the ruling and demanded a stay on same-sex marriage legalisation, which the appeals court granted on Wednesday (April 10), the Cayman Compass reported.
“Chantelle and Vickie aren’t trailblazers. They’re just a couple who are in love and who know they want to spend the rest of their lives together. They don’t want to be in court fighting for their right to marry, a right which opposite-sex couples take for granted.”
— Jonathan Cooper
The March 29 ruling came less than a year after Chantelle Day and her partner Vickie Bodden Bush applied for the right to be married in the Cayman Islands, but had their application rejected due to the fact that they are a same-sex couple.
They initially said that they’d be prepared to accept a civil partnership as long as their relationship could be recognised by law, but since their plea was rejected they were forced to litigate to have their relationship officially recognised.
The couple was due to become the first married same-sex couple in the Cayman Islands this week, but will instead have to wait at least until August, when the Court of Appeal will hear the government’s argument and decide whether the March 29 ruling should stand.
Cayman islands delay in legalising same-sex marriage labelled a ‘disgrace’
Jonathan Cooper, a barrister at Doughty Street law firm, who has advised the couple on their case, called the appeals court’s decision a “disgrace.”
“Chantelle and Vickie are at the heart of this story. The Chief Justice of the Cayman Islands has recognised their constitutional right to marry.
“Chantelle and Vickie aren’t trailblazers. They’re just a couple who are in love and who know they want to spend the rest of their lives together. They don’t want to be in court fighting for their right to marry, a right which opposite-sex couples take for granted.
Chantelle Day, Peter Laverack, and Vickie Bodden Bush stand outside the court in the Cayman Island that legalised same-sex marriage on March 29. An appeals court has now blocked the implementation of that ruling to allow a government appeal against it. (Supplied)
“They just want the law to recognise their right to be together. Instead they are treated like pawns in a chess game,” Cooper said in a statement to PinkNews, adding: “They are being demeaned and shamed and it is a disgrace.”
The barrister renewed his call to the Foreign Office and Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt to take action in this case to ensure the couple can marry.
“Hunt needs to stand firm and ensure that Chantelle and Vickie’s ordeal is over. They want a Spring wedding. Is it too much for the Foreign Secretary to grant them that?”
In February, a report from the UK Parliament’s foreign affairs committee called on the government to extend equal marriage—which became legal in England and Wales in 2013 and Scotland in 2014—to British Overseas Territories such as the Cayman Islands.
