Tokyo will open Pride House, Japan’s first permanent such center, next month to raise awareness of LGBTQ rights before and during the rearranged Olympic Games in 2021.
Although there have been similar initiatives before previous Games, organizers said Pride House Tokyo, which will open its doors on International Coming Out Day on October 11, is the first to get official International Olympic Committee backing.
“Pride House Tokyo aims to educate the world and also Japan of the difficulties the LGBTQ community has playing and enjoying sports … while helping create a safe space for the community too,” Pride House Tokyo said in a statement on Monday.
“Many people might think that Japan is a human rights defender, but actually there are no laws to protect LGBTQ people.”
GON MATSUNAKA
It is traditional for most nations competing at the Olympics to have a hospitality “house,” where they promote their country and hold parties for winning athletes.
Gon Matsunaka, the head of Good Aging Yells, one of the organizations supporting the project, said Japan lags behind many other developed nations when it comes to LGBTQ rights.
“Many people might think that Japan is a human rights defender, but actually there are no laws to protect LGBTQ people,” Matsunaka told Reuters via email.
“Society is filled with prejudice, discrimination and harassment towards LGBTQ community.”
“While we have to change the sports arena, we also hope Pride House Legacy can help change society as a whole as well.”
Gay marriage is illegal in Japan and although about two dozen cities, towns and wards issue same-sex partnership certificates, they lack legal standing and prejudice persists.
Fumino Sugiyama, a transgender man and former fencer for the Japanese national team, said little had changed in 15 years since retiring from professional sport.
“Even now looking around, there are few LGBTQ athletes that live their lives openly and that is the reality here in Japan,” Sugiyama told a news briefing to launch Pride House Tokyo.
There has been a huge spike in homophobic and racist abuse in football over the last year, according to new figures figures released Thursday (September 3).
Kick It Out, an organisation that monitors discrimination in football, found that there was a significant rise in discriminatory abuse at both football matches and in discussions about football online.
There was a 42 per cent increase in reports of discrimination in professional football, up from 313 last year to 446 in the 2019/20 football season.
Alarmingly, there were 117 reports of discrimination based on sexual orientation, almost double the 60 incidents recorded last year (up 95 per cent).
There was also a 53 per cent increase in racist discrimination in football – 282, up from 184 last year.
At a grassroots level, Kick It Out recorded 94 reports of discrimination in the 2019/2020 football season, down from 113 last year. However, the organisation noted that this was likely due to widespread cancellations during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The advocacy group said that, when compared with the equivalent period of last season, there was actually an 11 per cent increase in discriminatory incidents at a grassroots level.
Kick It Out also released the results of a YouGov poll which surveyed 1,000 football fans about discrimination in the sport.
Some 39 per cent of those surveyed said they had heard or witnessed an act of discrimination in the last year, while 14 per cent said they had witnessed an incident in the last week.
Between January and December 2019, 30 per cent witnessed racist comments or chants at a football match, while a whopping 71 per cent said they had seen racist abuse directed at a footballer on social media.
A further 51 per cent of those surveyed had seen racism directed at a fan of an opposing team on social media.
Meanwhile, 32 per cent of fans surveyed said they had witnessed homophobic abuse at a football match, while 41 per cent had seen homophobia aimed at a footballer on social media.
Kick It Out will play its part with campaigning, education and talent programmes that diversify the face of football. But this is everyone’s responsibility.
Worryingly, 22 per cent of respondents said they would be unlikely to report a discriminatory incident at a football match.
Half of those surveyed said they would be unlikely to report racist or homophobic abuse aimed at footballers, coaches or match officials at a football game.
Sanjay Bhandari, chair of Kick It Out, said “hate and division” pose a “pernicious threat” to society.
“Our reports indicate a steep rise in discrimination reports over the last two years,” he said, noting that their figures are in line with increases in hate crime reports.
“We know that reports to Kick It Out are just the tip of the iceberg. We only report what is reported to us. There is no single view across the whole of football.
“We need to aggregate the data across Kick it Out, clubs, law enforcement, governing bodies and others so that we have the complete picture to give us a greater chance of finding better solutions together.”
He also urged social media companies to be “part of the solution” and join in the fight to tackle online hate speech.
“Kick It Out will play its part with campaigning, education and talent programmes that diversify the face of football. But this is everyone’s responsibility.
“We all need to do more. We all need to take a stand,” Bhandari added.
While 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton deemed Donald Trump’s supporters a “basket of deplorables” during the campaign, the list of Republican National Convention speakers this week may be taking the term to a whole new level.
Trump’s reelection convention will feature an extensive lineup of racists, anti-LGBTQ activists, and con men. And that doesn’t count Trump himself.
The gun-toting St. Louis couple, Patricia and Mark McCloskey – who threatened Black Lives Matter protesters and became a national laughingstock and personification of white privilege – will also speak. It was recently revealed that not only do they want people of color kept outside the gates of their rich neighborhood, they sued their neighborhood association in an attempt to prevent gay couples from moving into the community.
Nick Sandmann, the high school kid who made headlines during a confrontation with a Native American protester and a group of militant Black Christians, will share the depth of his knowledge with the virtual crowd. Actor Scott Baio from Happy Days and Charles in Charge will also drop some deep thoughts, presumably about something.
As with any good mafia syndicate, Trump’s family members will also appear to help convince voters to stick by the Don. Melania Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump, and even Tiffany Trump will try to “sway” voters. Almost half of the keynote speakers will be part of the President’s family.
Even Don Jr.’s girlfriend will be on stage. Ivanka’s husband will too. They both work in the White House too, of course.
A host of Republican politicians and administration officials with ties to anti-LGBTQ hate groups will share the stage throughout the week-long event. Vice President Mike Pence will also address the party, presumably to lecture them on the dangers of dancing and rap music.
No word yet whether or not the Deplorable Choir will sing. But since the GOP is stuck with Kid Rock for entertainment, what could it hurt?
For those of us in the communities hardest hit, in the industries hardest hit, in the states hardest hit by COVID-19, relief cannot come fast enough.
I live in the Rio Grande Valley, an area in South Texas that has been hit the hardest in the country by the COVID-19 virus. In the state, there is a record of more than 100,000 new cases per day, up 55% in July alone. Now, people in our region are dealing with recovering from a tropical storm.
This pandemic caused me to lose my job. I am a queer- and trans-inclusive sex educator and have spent years addressing the erasure of trans, queer and disabled folks in discussions of healthy sexuality. My education efforts are shaped by and complemented by my experience as a queer and trans sex worker. I used to teach out of a brick and mortar adult shop, but like so many small businesses during the pandemic, the shop closed.
While small businesses have been allowed to open up again under the Phase 3 plan, I still can’t return to work because of my own health. A few months ago I contracted a virus, and while I do not know if it was COVID-19, I now have to use an inhaler for the foreseeable future. To keep myself and my community safe, I have been socially distancing myself from others.
Right now, I can only do about 40% of my job. I can’t do in-person sex work, or in-person sex education. Forty percent is not enough to make ends meet.
For my colleagues who are able to go to work, they are at risk of contracting the virus every day. Many of my coworkers are queer and trans people of color. Some have pre-existing conditions or children. Some of them are college students. Even if their paychecks average $200 a week, that $200 is the difference between making rent, paying bills, grocery shopping — or not.
In May, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the HEROES Act, a COVID-19 stimulus package. It is a necessary and desperately needed piece of legislation: COVID-19 cases in the United States climb every single day. Over 5 million people in the U.S. have been infected and over 160,000 have died. Latinx and Black people are three times more likely to become infected than their white neighbors, and three times more likely to die of COVID-19. Trans women and gender non-conforming communities who were already facing transphobia and transmisogyny are now facing high unemployment and delays in necessary health care.
And yet, the Senate has still not passed comprehensive COVID relief. It is apparent that those in power don’t care about me and my community. They do not care about Black people, Latinx people, queer people, trans people, small business owners, or the people who rely on them.
My community is one of the poorest in the United States. We don’t have any real mental health resources, and now we are isolated. Not being able to check in on my regulars is extremely stressful. Many of my customers have lower incomes; many use substances or self medicate for their mental illness. We have high rates of heart disease and diabetes and these factors make an already dangerous epidemic particularly lethal to folks like me, and to my community.
Queer people in the work force need relief. LGBTQ people are more likely than the general public to have lost employment due to the pandemic. We need comprehensive and affordable health care, paid sick time, paid family and medical leave, personal protective equipment for all health care providers and other essential workers, protective occupational safety and health standards for front line workers, and more. It is now up to the Senate to pass COVID relief to ensure that people like me, my colleagues, and members of my community get much needed relief.
We deserve to feel safe and secure during this pandemic. We deserve leaders who give a damn.
How to explain the unlikely, perverse phenomenon of a gay Republican in 2020?
Delusion? Denial? Blinded by privilege? Daddy issues rendering them subservient to Master Trump?
Whatever the underlying issue, it’s truly sad to watch the once respected Log Cabin Republicans sink into further irrelevance. From Rich Tafel and Patrick Guerriero to R. Clarke Cooper and Patrick Sammon, Log Cabin has been led over the years by smart, committed advocates working to change the Republican Party from within. Whatever your views on the GOP, it’s important to fight from the inside, whether it’s inside political parties, organized religions, or sports leagues, to bring about change.
But 2020 is no ordinary year and Donald Trump is no ordinary president. Anyone who defends Trump’s indefensible behavior is lying to themselves. There’s no excusing racism, sexism, and transphobia. There’s no looking the other way when Trump allows his buddy, the murderous Vladimir Putin, to put bounties on the heads of American soldiers. And there’s no justification for snatching screaming toddlers from their mothers’ arms and locking them in cages.
Trump is running a criminal enterprise out of the people’s house; Steve Bannon is just the latest senior Trump official to be charged with felonies. What the hell more do people need to see to conclude that Trump is unfit for office, incapable and incompetent, and likely to leave Washington in handcuffs?
Despite the overwhelming and undeniable evidence, these hypocritical gay Republicans continue to carry water for their criminal master. The latest is Ric Grenell, the former acting Director of National Intelligence (key word: acting), who released an unintentionally hilarious video touting Trump as the “most pro-gay president in American history.”
In the Log Cabin-produced clip, Grenell refers to “gays and lesbians” throughout, notably eschewing the more common “LGBTQ.” That’s because while Trump’s attacks on gays and lesbians may be more subtle, his assault on the transgender community is overt and aggressive. From banning transgender service members from the military, to enacting an HHS rule that ends non-discrimination protections for trans patients, Trump has used the transgender community as a punching bag to score cheap points with his bigoted base.
In the video, Grenell criticizes Joe Biden for not congratulating him on his acting appointment. Maybe that’s because the short, temporary, non-Senate-confirmed appointment was roundly criticized by experts in the intelligence community due to Grenell’s stunning lack of experience. “This is a job requiring leadership, management, substance and secrecy,” John Sipher, a former CIA officer, told the New York Times. “He doesn’t have the kind of background and experience we would expect for such a critical position.” That’s quite the diplomatic understatement.
Grenell touts his experience as ambassador to Germany, another short-tenured post that led to widespread criticism about his inexperience and ham-handed efforts to interfere in internal German politics.
He references Trump’s purported effort to decriminalize homosexuality around the world, but that effort seems to exist in word, not in deed.
Grenell further criticizes Biden for his past anti-gay positions. Yes, Biden, along with most other Democrats and Republicans, has evolved on LGBTQ issues over the decades (as have a majority of Americans), but we must allow allies to grow, change, and ultimately fight with us.
By contrast, Trump’s assault on LGBTQ equality is long and well documented. From picking the notoriously homophobic Mike Pence — who doth protest too much — as his vice president, to naming a slew of hostile, right-wing judges to the federal bench, to advocating for so-called “religious freedom” carveouts to enable anti-LGBTQ discrimination, Trump has undermined decades of work in just four short years.
Grenell isn’t the only gay toadie still standing in Trump’s corner. Robert Kabel, Log Cabin’s board chair and a former Reagan administration official, this week announced the impending release of his new book. In the press release announcing it, Kabel “is proud to call the GOP the true party of equality—not the Democratic Party.”
Again, these delusional sycophants cherry pick empty Trump gestures to justify their support while ignoring a tidal wave of attacks on LGBTQ Americans. Has Kabel read his own party’s platform?
The 2016 platform was recently re-adopted for 2020. As the Blade reported, “it calls for ending same-sex marriage either through judicial reconsideration or a constitutional amendment, offers veiled support for widely discredited conversion therapy and objects to enforcing civil rights laws to ensure transgender people can use the restroom consistent with their gender identity. Although the 2016 document doesn’t explicitly mention conversion therapy, it includes this line: ‘We support the right of parents to determine the proper medical treatment and therapy for their minor children.’”
Grenell, Kabel, and the rest of Trump’s twisted enablers aren’t just on the wrong side of history, they’re on the wrong side of the law. LGBTQ voters see through these last-gasp attempts by his enablers to hang onto power. From the botched COVID response that has claimed thousands of American lives, to the stoking of racial division and support for white supremacists, to retreating from the climate change fight, and the rolling back of LGBTQ equality, Trump has shown the world he is unfit for the presidency. He knows that clinging to power by any means necessary is the only way he will avoid prison.
Instead of Grenell and Kabel, let’s look to Pete Buttigieg for inspiration. As he put it in his convention speech Thursday night, “I believe in this country because America uniquely holds the promise of a place where everyone can belong. … Joe Biden is right: This is a contest for the soul of the nation.”
Indeed it is. Some of us will emerge with our dignity intact. Others like Grenell and Kabel will have to explain how they sided with a monster who worked to dismantle our government, destroy our democracy, and harm members of our LGBTQ community.
A longtime broadcaster for the Cincinnati Reds was suspended Wednesday after using an anti-gay slur on a hot mic during a game against the Kansas City Royals.
“If I have hurt anyone out there I can’t tell you how much I say from the bottom of my heart I am so very, very sorry,” he said.
Brennaman also acknowledged the uncertain fate of his job.
“I don’t know if I’ll be putting on this headset again,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s going to be for the Reds. I don’t know if it’s going to be for my bosses at Fox. I want to apologize for the people who sign my paycheck, for the Reds, for Fox Sports Ohio, for the people I work with, for anybody that I’ve offended here tonight.”
Shortly afterward, the Reds announced his suspension.
“The Cincinnati Reds organization is devastated by the horrific, homophobic remark made this evening by broadcaster Thom Brennaman,” the statement said. “He was pulled off the air, and effective immediately was suspended from doing Reds broadcasts.”
The Reds “will be addressing our broadcast team in coming days,” the statement said, adding that the organization has a zero-tolerance policy for discrimination.
“In no way does this incident represent our players, coaches, organization, or our fans,” the statement said. “We share our sincerest apologies to the LGBTQ+ community in Cincinnati, Kansas City, all across this country, and beyond.”
Brennaman’s father, Marty Brennaman, a former broadcaster and play-by-play announcer for the Reds, told the Cincinnati Enquirer on Wednesday that the language heard on the air doesn’t represent his son.
“As a dad, I hurt for him,” Marty Brennaman said. “What he said is not a reflection of who Thom Brennaman is. I know that’s not him. But I also feel terrible for the people the comment offended.”
Marty Brennaman said “an open mic is the biggest enemy you have.”
“The worst feeling in the world, if you’re not on the air, is that you say something and you hear it coming back into your headset,” he said.
Chris Seelbach, the first openly gay person elected to Cincinnati’s city council, condemned Brennaman’s comments Wednesday night on Twitter.
“The Brennaman family are Cincinnati sports icons with a powerful voice in our community, which makes it even more disgusting and totally unprofessional to hear such language used,” Seelbach wrote.
“It’s incredibly disappointing to hear Mr. Brennaman use such language of hate when our country is begging for unity,” the councilman said.
Fox Sports Ohio didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
MLB responded to a request for comment by referring NBC News to the Reds statement.
Deep in a Smithsonian vault rests an iconic election poster from the 1980s stored in an archival drawer. It reads: “Silence = Death, VOTE.” It can still shock with its imagery and blunt words. “Your vote is a weapon….we are at war,” the poster states in an historic political call to action for LGBTQ Americans to engage in the most important election of their lives in the midst of a raging epidemic. It was an election as primally important then as the one all Americans face, today.
Despite President Trump’s suggestion that it be postponed, we are have that election, hell or high water, on Nov. 3.
“Silence = Death,” emerging from the pain of the AIDS epidemic, is oddly prophetic for 2020. Engage and fight back or quietly succumb. Intended to rally outrage about the indifference of the federal government to the epidemic of that time, the words called forth three decades of LGBTQ activism that brought unimaginable change. Today, that same challenge faces the whole nation. An epidemic spreads like wildfire. Americans are dying and the White House is indifferent, if not hostile, to the science and medical progress essential to survival.
“Silence = Death” was introduced in 1988 after seven excruciating years of denial of science and public health in favor of silence about the AIDS epidemic by the Reagan administration. Dr. Anthony Fauci had been director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for four years, and had witnessed first-hand the political silence and bumbling that surrounded the epidemic. Five presidencies later, Dr. Fauci recalled the crucial intersection between then and today’s American COVID epidemic challenge: “….it was only when the world realized how the gay community responded to the outbreak with incredible courage and dignity and strength and activism” did the stigma of AIDS diminish and global progress against the epidemic advance.
The Silence = Death “activism that Dr. Fauci praised led to the growth of the self-identified LGBTQ vote that today numbers nine million adults, according to the Williams Institute. These voters developed a new intensity of engagement with politics in the first national presidential election when the major party candidates took clear and differing positions on the issue of LGBTQ rights. It was at the 1992 presidential convention where candidate Patrick Buchanan declared, “There is a religious war going on in the country, it is a cultural war…..We must take back our culture and take back our country!” At Mount Rushmore on July 4th, Trump could not have sounded more like Buchanan: a “left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American revolution…..they would destroy the very civilization.”
The 2020 election demands the same historic courage, dignity, strength and activism Dr. Fauci summoned at the White House coronavirus briefing. Trump is reelected only if Americans don’t vote, if they are silent. LGBTQ, as well as young, Black, brown, seniors, women – all Americans have an extraordinary stake in the outcome of this election. Indeed “Silence = Death” stands as a warning to all Americans who do not use the only true weapon we have, the vote, to fight the epidemic and to keep our precious country and its citizens alive.
Jeff Trammell headed LGBTQ outreach for the Gore and Kerry presidential campaigns. Charles Francis is president of The Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C. and served on President George W. Bush’s Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS.
When former Vice President Joe Biden announced the historic selection of Sen. Kamala Harris of California as his running mate, he added a candidate to the ticket with a pro-LGBTQ political record that goes back to 2004.
“It’s clear the Biden-Harris ticket marks our nation’s most pro-equality ticket in history,” Alphonso David, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest LGBTQ rights group, said in a statement.
Harris first ran for elected office as San Francisco district attorney in 2004 when LGBTQ rights were firmly established in local law — but still highly contentious nationally.
After winning that election, she established a hate crimes unit to investigate and prosecute anti-LGBTQ violence. In 2006, Harris organized a conference in California that brought together over 100 officials from across the U.S. to discuss strategies to end the use of the so-called gay and transgender panic defense. In 2014, California became the first state to ban the practice in law, and in 2018, Harris and other senators introduced a bill to prohibit the practice nationally.
Harris announced her campaign for California attorney general days after the 2008 passage of Proposition 8, a successful California ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage in the state. While serving as California’s top prosecutor — a job she held for six years — she declined to defend the ban in court. In 2013’s Hollingsworth v. Perry ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a 2010 federal court decision invalidating Proposition 8, and gay marriages resumed in the state.
Shortly after it was announced that Biden, the presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, had chosen Harris as his running mate, Matt Hill, a gay Biden staffer, shared a clip from “The Case Against 8,” a documentary about Proposition 8, showing the moments in 2013 when Harris, then-California’s attorney general, found out about the high court’s decision.
After she was elected to the Senate in 2016, Harris continued to staunchly support LGBTQ rights, frequently co-sponsoring pro-equality legislation and speaking out against the violence faced by transgender women.
After her selection as Biden’s running mate on Tuesday, Harris made immediate waves when she announced her chief of staff would be Karine Jean-Pierre — an out lesbian, a former Obama White House staffer and a spokesperson for the progressive group MoveOn. Jean-Pierre is the first Black person to serve as a chief of staff for a vice presidential candidate.
During the 2020 Democratic primary campaign, where Harris was among the field of presidential hopefuls, her LGBTQ platform stood out for promising to appoint a White House chief advocate for LGBTQ affairs “to ensure that LGBTQ+ Americans are represented in hiring and policy priorities across the government.”
But during the primary, Harris, Biden and over a dozen other Democratic hopefuls were remarkably unified in their positions on many LGBTQ issues, which included ending the transgender military ban and religious exemptions to anti-discrimination laws, and reversing policies that discriminate against LGBTQ people in adoption and housing.
The Biden-Harris LGBTQ platform promises to make major changes in areas where LGBTQ people are not fully protected by the law — like housing, military service and health care.
During the Democratic primary, candidates were all unified in their vow to sign the Equality Act, a bill that would update many nondiscrimination laws to explicitly include lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people.
The Biden-Harris campaign’s LGBTQ campaign platformconsolidates many of those threads into the strongest presidential platform in support of LGBTQ rights.
Although Harris has been a staunch LGBTQ supporter since she entered politics in 2004, Biden, like nearly all American politicians at that time, did not support LGBTQ rights when elected to the Senate in 1972 the way he does today. Biden, along with the vast majority of the Senate, voted for the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, which defined marriage in federal law as a union between one man and one woman, but by the 2010s his views had changed.
Most famously, while serving as vice president, Biden in May 2012 pre-empted the Obama administration’s official policy in support of same-sex marriage by endorsing the unions during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women and heterosexual men and women marrying one another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties,” Biden said at the time.
Three days later, President Barack Obama endorsed same-sex marriage.
An ‘incredibly meaningful’ pick
Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., called Harris “well qualified and well prepared” to be vice president.
Takano, who is gay, said her selection is “incredibly meaningful to the LGBTQ community, and as a Japanese American I am also proud to have someone of Asian heritage on the ticket.”
“Senator Kamala Harris is revered in the LGBTQ community for her leadership as Attorney General during the litigation of Proposition 8 and her fervent refusal to defend an unjust law,” he said in an email. “Joe Biden selecting her as his running mate reflects the deep value that both candidates share regarding equality for LGBTQ people.”
Pete Buttigieg, the openly gay former presidential hopeful who frequently campaigned on his experience as a mayor and gay man in “Mike Pence’s Indiana,” tweeted, “It feels good to visualize the moment when Vice President Mike Pence is replaced by Vice President Kamala Harris.”
Pence and Harris have starkly different track records when it comes to LGBTQ rights, with Pence, the former Indiana governor, having signed the 2015 Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was controversial for protecting anti-LGBTQ discrimination. The two are set to debate on Oct. 7.
Speaking on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Monday, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, the first Black woman and first lesbian to be mayor of that city, said there’s “a tremendous level of excitement” around the selection of Harris.
“This has been a very, very difficult time for people around the country, and we need something to rally around, and I think her addition to the ticket really gives people that thread of hope that we have all been looking for,” Lightfoot said, adding that her 12-year-old daughter was “beside herself with joy.”
Not everyone across the LGBTQ spectrum, however, is applauding Biden’s choice of Harris.
Ashlee Marie Preston, a Black trans advocate who supported Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts during the primaries, said many Democrats like her “are experiencing a flux of emotions right now” because of their view that Biden and Harris represent the “tough on crime” culture, which Preston described as particularly harmful to transgender people of color, who according to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey are likelier to experience police harassment, incarceration and abuse while in detention.
“This won’t be a cake walk for them,” Preston said. “We need to see that their loyalty to systems that crush vulnerable communities has been dissolved. Politicians can change, as can their policies. But we’re still waiting on proof of such evolution, or at least a straightforward conversation on the matter.”
A draft bill before Russia’s parliament would significantly affect the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, Human Rights Watch said today. Among the proposed amendments to the family code are changes to the legal gender recognition rights for transgender people that will negatively affect their ability to marry and raise children. The bill also contains a superfluous ban on same-sex marriage.
Under Russia’s current laws, transgender people can change their legal gender by taking steps that include a psychiatric evaluation and medical procedures. The proposed law provides that a person’s sex on their birth certificate cannot be changed, and that trans people who have changed their birth certificates under the current law would have to change them back to the sex they were assigned at birth. That is discriminatory in and of itself and would flagrantly violate the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), to which Russia is a party. The European Court of Human Rights has long ruled that a government’s refusal to alter the birth certificate of a person who has undergone gender reassignment violates their rights to privacy and personal autonomy under the Convention.
“The proposed amendments to the family code are intentionally regressive and harmful,” said Graeme Reid, LGBT rights director at Human Rights Watch. “Deliberately creating more barriers for legal gender recognition and parenting rights for transgender people only further marginalizes an already-embattled community.”
This discrimination is compounded by the proposed law’s explicit ban on same-sex marriage. Heterosexual trans people forced to list their birth-assigned sex on their birth certificates would most likely not be able to marry, as their marriages would be considered same-sex marriages. This would, in turn, prevent such couples from raising children as legally recognized co-parents.
The new law falls into a pattern of the Russian government increasingly using so-called “traditional values” to trample human rights, particularly for LGBT people, Human Rights Watch said.
Russia’s notorious anti-gay “propaganda” law has been used increasingly in recent years as a tool for outright discrimination. Under the law, adopted in 2013, portraying same-sex relations as socially acceptable in the public domain and in the presence of children is illegal.
The “propaganda” law has been used to target peaceful public protests, individuals’ social media posts, teachers, and Deti-404, a website providing psychosocial – mental health – support for LGBT youth. It has been used to justify a criminal investigation of social workers who allowed a gay couple, married abroad, to adopt children, forcing the family to flee to the United States. In 2019, a court censored LGBT social media groups, citing the law. The judge deemed this content responsible for “rejecting family values, promoting non-traditional sexual relations and fostering disrespect for parents and/or other family members.”
The social and legal environment in Russia already creates significant difficulties for transgender people with children. The proposed law further entrenches the widespread antipathy toward LGBT people by creating additional barriers to fundamental rights. Limiting transgender people’s ability to parent – as these proposed amendments to the family code would do – fails not only to uphold the rights of the parents, but also the rights of the children. International human rights law says the best interests of the child should be a primary consideration in all matters that involve them, including custody issues.
In 2010 the Council of Europe recommended that: “Taking into account that the child’s best interests should be the primary consideration in decisions regarding the parental responsibility for, or guardianship of a child, member states should ensure that such decisions are taken without discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.” The European Court of Human Rights is currently considering a case of a Russian trans woman who has been barred from visiting her children.
“These proposed amendments amount to a cruel solution in search of a problem,” Reid said. “Further restricting the rights of transgender people in the name of ‘traditional values’ in Russia does nothing but harm a group of vulnerable people.”
The Trump administration has proposed a new regulation that would gut the asylum laws in the United States; excluding those who are applying because of the violence they face as LGBTQIA+ people, survivors of domestic violence, and many others. Even as a relatively recent resident of the United States, this goes against the very values I came to this country to experience.
I am a 26 year-old lesbian woman and a citizen of a county in Central Asia — a country with zero tolerance of LGBTQIA+ people and with a strong patriarchal culture. I am here in the United States as an asylum seeker because my country refused to accept me and threatened me with violence if I didn’t change, which is impossible.
The proposed new rule may block me from getting the asylum protection I need, and force me to return to a country where my life is in danger.
As a child, I was abused by my parents due to the fact that I was “different” — non-conforming to cultural and religious expectations. This included sending me to physically and mentally abusive “religious” retreats to rid me of the “evil” inside of me. As a teenager, I was threatened by the police and forced to pay them a bribe when they found me in a car with a female classmate. Into my adult years, I was forced to endure a severely physically, sexually and emotionally abusive relationship with a man who coerced me into a relationship with him by threatening to reveal my sexual orientation to others, including my parents.
If I were to return to my home country, I believe I would continue to be subject to violence from my family and a forced marriage. I would not be able to have relationships with other women or even wear short hair and unisex clothing, because to do so would put me at risk of violence from my family and the public. Similarly, I would not be able to continue my activism without threat of violence from ultra-right groups. The only way to guarantee my survival in my home country would be to change my appearance, stop participating in feminist and LGBTQ activism, and live as a lesbian secretly. The years I spent doing this before coming to the United States made me deeply depressed and suicidal.
The government of the country where gay marriage is legal in all of its 50 states should know how important it is to have the basic freedom to love anybody you want. The years of LGBTQIA+ activism and struggle that won those freedoms for Americans make it clear how tough it is to gain that freedom, without getting abused or killed.
Humanity is when people take care of each other globally. Humanity is when one country opens its doors to suffering people from other countries. While the commenting period is closed for the rule that would affect LGBTQ+ asylum seekers, the government is still collecting public comments for another asylum rule that would affect all asylum seekers — trying to use public health as an excuse to keep others out. The LGBTQ+ community knows too well how governments can weaponize health to discriminate against us. It’s not too late to speak out against this rule, and to make the United States a safe place for everyone.
