Popular dating services like Grindr, OkCupid and Tinder are spreading user information like dating choices and precise location to advertising and marketing companies in ways that may violate privacy laws, according to a new report that examined some of the world’s most downloaded Android apps.
Grindr, the world’s most popular gay dating app, transmitted user-tracking codes and the app’s name to more than a dozen companies, essentially tagging individuals with their sexual orientation, according to the report, which was released Tuesday by the Norwegian Consumer Council, a government-funded nonprofit organization in Oslo.
Grindr also sent a user’s location to multiple companies, which may then share that data with many other businesses, the report said. When The New York Times tested Grindr’s Android app, it shared precise latitude and longitude information with five companies.
A HIV-positive man has said he is “proud and overwhelmed” after becoming the first-ever person in Europe with HIV to become a commercial air pilot.
James Bushe, 31, wanted to be a pilot since he was a child. He began learning to fly at just 15 years old, and by the age of 17 he had his private pilot’s license – before he could even drive a car.
Five years ago, Bushe was diagnosed with HIV. In 2017, when he was offered a place on an airline’s training programme, but he was denied the medical certificate needed to obtain his commercial license because of his diagnosis.
At the time, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) was bound by rules from the European Aviation Safety Authority (EASA), which said that a medical certificate could not be granted to someone who was HIV-positive.
Bushe decided to fight his case, with the help of HIV Scotland, and document it anonymously on Twitter under the pseudonym “Pilot Anthony”. Two years on, he has won his case and revealed his identity, officially able to fly from Monday, January 13.
He has been training with the airline Loganair, flying alongside training captains since November 2019, but is now qualified to fly Embraer 145 Regional Jets from the airline’s base at Glasgow Airport.
According to the BBC, the CAA has changed its rules but will only allow HIV-positive people to fly in multi-pilot operations, as it said that is as far as it can go before the EASA reforms its own regulations.
Bushe said: “I am proud, totally overwhelmed and so grateful to Loganair. But this is not just about me – it’s about anyone living with HIV who can now become a pilot.
“My hope now is that it triggers action not just in the UK but in the rest of Europe. Anyone who has felt restricted by the condition, who is in my situation, can now follow their dreams.”
He continued: “There is no reason in the year 2020 why a person who is HIV-positive should face barriers in any profession… Living with this condition doesn’t threaten my life or my health at all, and I cannot pass HIV on to others.
“I want to put that out there to the millions of people who are living with the same fear and stigma that I was once living with.”
Loganair chief executive Jonathan Hinkles added: “HIV is not a bar to employment in other industries and there is no reason why it should be so in aviation.”
Nathan Sparling, chief executive oh HIV Scotland, says that Bushe’s landmark win shows that whatever your status, you can follow your dreams.
“I extend my personal congratulations to James, thank him for bringing this issue into the public eye, and commend him for doing his part in fighting HIV-related stigma by waiving his anonymity,” he said.
“Without James’ determination to pursue his goals these unjust rules would still be in place, and this campaign shows that only by taking on unjust regulations and demanding change can we ever hope to change the world in which we live.”
Virginia state Sen. Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria) has introduced a bill that would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the state’s nondiscrimination law.
Senate Bill 868 — also known as the Virginia Values Act — would prohibit anti-LGBTQ discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodations and credit. The measure has been referred to the Senate General Laws and Technology Committee.
“This legislation creates a critical update to Virginia law and sends a clear message that the Commonwealth is a safe and welcoming place for all people,” said James Parrish, director of the Virginia Values Coalition, a group of LGBTQ advocacy groups that supports the bill, on Friday in a press release. “It is imperative lawmakers pass the Virginia Values Act in the General Assembly.”
Democrats last November regained controlof the General Assembly for the first time in more than two decades.
Virginia House of Delegates Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn (D-Fairfax County) last month said during a press conference with Parrish, Equality Virginia Executive Director Vee Lamneck, Human Rights Campaign President Alphonso David and other activists that passage of a comprehensive LGBTQ nondiscrimination is a 2020 legislative priority. Governor Ralph Northam and Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw (D-Fairfax County) are among those who support the bill.
“Nondiscrimination protections are long overdue for Virginia’s LGBTQ community,” said Lamneck in Friday’s press release.
“The Virginia Values Act will ensure LGBTQ people are treated fairly and equitably by the laws of the state and have the opportunity to earn a living, access housing and healthcare, and participate fully in society,” they added. “This bill represents an important step to move our state forward.”
David in the press release agreed, noting last year’s election results.
“In November 2019 — after one of the largest state legislative electoral investments in the history of the Human Rights Campaign — Virginia voters sent a clear message that they want lawmakers to support fairness and equality for all, including LGBTQ people,” he said.
“For years, LGBTQ people living in Virginia have faced discrimination,” added David. “The Virginia Values Act will not only provide critical protections for LGBTQ Virginians, but expand existing civil rights laws to provide recourse for discrimination on the basis of race, religion, sex, and veteran status. Virginia voters sent pro-equality majorities to Richmond to make this change, and we look forward to working with the House of Delegates and the Senate to pass the Virginia Values Act into law.”
CBS New York has confirmed that a reporter who named a man and revealed his HIV status in a dangerously misleading report has been dismissed.
The journalist was sacked after writing an article suggesting that a man put a police officer at risk of acquiring HIV by spitting in his mouth after he had been arrested for stealing a yoghurt at LaGuardia Airport.ADVERTISING
The alleged incident was described as a “HIV attack” in a tweet penned by the reporter, who also wrote that the “suspect admitted they spit into an officer’s mouth knowing they had HIV”.
“This online story should not have been published. It does not meet our journalistic standards, nor does it reflect our core values,” CBS New York told Gay City News (GCN).
CBS refuses to identify reporter who named man living with HIV.
While the “suspect” was named in the article, the author was not, with the byline left empty.
CBS New York has allowed the reporter to remain anonymous, declining a request by GCN to identify them.
“The person who wrote and published the story and social media post failed to review the copy with our news managers,” its statement continued.
“This individual is no longer employed by CBS New York.”
A spokesperson made clear that Tony Aiello, who was listed under the “filed under” section of the article, was not the journalist in question despite social media speculation. PinkNews has contacted CBS New York for further comment.
Port Authority union criticised for furthering stigma.
The article relied on quotes from the Port Authority Police Benevolent Association (PAPBA) union, which continued to connect the man’s HIV status to his arrest after the initial report.
“The problem is when a person with an infectious disease has a weapon, we have a problem with that,” the union’s public information officer Bob Egbert told GCN after the CBS story went viral.
GCN said that PAPBA has “not apologised or retracted any comments” a month after the report was first published, leading to heavy criticism from campaigners and LGBT+ groups. The union has been contacted by PinkNewsfor further comment.
Housing Works, which work to combat “the twin crises of AIDS and homelessness”, accused the union of trying to “create hysteria” around New York bail reforms which allowed the man to be released while facing charges.
Sean Strub, founder of POZ magazine, called it “a disappointing reality that HIV stigma is alive and well”.
“But when HIV stigma is perpetuated by law enforcement leadership, as in the comment from the PBA spokesperson, it is not only disappointing and irresponsible, but dangerous,” he told GCN.
“Just as bad was the CBS stations’ tweet headline referring to an ‘HIV attack’. That newsroom needs some serious remedial education, starting with a basic science course about what the actual routes and risks of HIV transmission.”
At least four villas in Bali, Indonesia, are being investigated for “marketing themselves specifically for the gay community”, amid increasing anti-LGBT+ sentiment on the island.
Although the island of Bali has historically been seen as one of the most tolerant places in country, in general discrimination and violence against LGBT+ people is on the rise in Indonesia.
Gay sex is currently legal in most regions of the country, including Bali, but there are no discrimination protections for LGBT+ people and same-sex relationships are not recognised.
In 2018, an Indonesian province where LGBT+ people face rife persecutionannounced that it wanted to introduce beheadings, and in 2019 new laws were proposed to ban sex between unmarried couples and make it illegal for unmarried couples to live together.As same-sex relationships are not recognised under Indonesian law, it will be illegal for same-sex couples to live together and gay sex will be effectively criminalised.
According to Coconuts Bali, a villa in the beach resort Seminyak first received attention on social media, which alerted authorities.
The Facebook page of a villa under the name “Angelo Bali Gay Guesthouse”, which has since been taken down, made headlines for catering to the gay community.
Some of the photos shared on the page by the guesthouse reportedly featured photos of gay male couples, and on TripAdvisor it is described as “a small, luxurious, all-men, clothing-optional gay guesthouse”. According to its website, the villa stopped operating on January 9 with no explanation.
I Gusti Agung Ketut Suryanegara, head of Bali’s Public Order Agency (Satpol PP), said: “We received a report, including the one on social media about this villa, accommodation or a guesthouse marketing themselves specifically for the gay community… Here in Bali we don’t recognise that culture.”
The head of the Badung regency’s cultural agency, I Made Badra, also said the existence of the villa was “tainting Bali’s tourism” reputation.
Since then, authorities have said that three other villas in Seminyak and Kerobokan are also catering to the LGBT+ community.
AA Oka Ambara Dewi, a Badung regency Satpol PP officer, said that the agency had summoned the owners of the guesthouses to check their documents.
He said: “We will do it according to our standards of procedure so we will check their permit documents and whether or not they match what they are allotted for, if there is proof that it [caters to the gay community] then we will temporarily seal the property.” It is unclear what the next steps would be, or whether the businesses would be permanently closed.
Two transgender women filed a lawsuit against the state of Florida on Monday over its ban on transgender-related health care for state workers, arguing it violates the U.S. Constitution and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
“We brought this lawsuit because all people need access to medical care. This is not about special treatment; this is about equal treatment,” said lead counsel Simone Chriss. “Transgender state employees are singled out and explicitly denied coverage for one reason: They are transgender. That is discrimination, and it cannot stand.”
The suit, which was brought by Southern Legal Counsel, the ACLU of Florida and Eric Lindstrom, an attorney, seeks to end Florida’s State Plan Exclusion, a rule that prohibits state employer-provided health plans from covering “gender reassignment or modification services or supplies.”
The plaintiffs, Jami Claire and Kathryn Lane, both state employees, have had to delay their transition-related care, which their suit argues worsened their gender dysphoria.
In part because many of the same private insurance plans provided by Florida to its employees would cover transition-related care if the plans were provided by nonstate employers, the suit argues that the State Plan Exclusion “constitutes unlawful sex discrimination in violation of Title VII and the Equal Protection Clause.”
“As a result of the State Plan Exclusion, nontransgender employees receive coverage for all medically necessary health care, but transgender employees do not,” the suit states.
For example, if a cisgender Florida state employee required an orchiectomy as treatment for testicular cancer, it would be covered by his state-provided plan. However, if a transgender woman sought the same surgery to eliminate testosterone production and alleviate gender dysphoria, it would not.
The plaintiffs are both employees of the state of Florida — Claire is a researcher at the University of Florida’s College of Veterinary Medicine, and Lane works in a Tallahassee public defender’s office. Both are covered by employer-sponsored health plans, but since the plans are provided by the state, they are banned from any coverage for transition-related health care.
The suit claims the plaintiffs have also faced additional financial burdens due to the state’s trans health care ban.
Claire began her transition in 1997, but was forced to pause in 2002 after her divorce affected her finances. Claire said she then attempted suicide three times.
“I literally couldn’t see a way financially forward,” she explained. “I went through 10, 14 years of hell.”
She resumed her transition 16 years later, and in 2016 fully transitioned socially. Although she has paid for her private insurance premiums through her employer, the University of Florida, Claire has been barred from any coverage of her transition-related care, and has therefore been forced to pay out of pocket for all of transition-related expenses.
Claire’s experience with her employer has been positive — Claire said the university has been understanding as she has worked through her mental health challenges. However, she said her health plan’s ban on trans-related care has made her feel like “a second-class employee.”
“I pay for my health insurance for 30 years now, but I can’t use all of it,” she said. “Everybody else pays for their insurance and they get to use it like they want, but I don’t get to use mine.”
One of the original plaintiffs in the case, a transgender man, Billy Huff, will be called as a witness instead. Huff said he left Florida for a job in Illinois, since staying in the state while subject to the State Plan Exclusion was having too great an impact on his gender dysphoria.
“Part of the impact was having to leave,” Huff told NBC News. “I left my home and my friends.”
Huff was the director of the University of Florida’s LGBTQ center, where he said he promised students that he “would be their best advocate.”
“Knowing that a lot of students that I worked for would go on to work for state offices in Florida, I thought I should try to change it if I could do something,” Huff said of his efforts to start the lawsuit.
“When I was looking to leave, I only applied at universities that were in states that covered transition-related health care,” Huff said. “That was one of my main qualifications.”
In addition, the U.S. Supreme Court is currently reviewing the question of whether Title VII of the Civil Rights Act — which “prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin” — affords protections to LGBTQ people through its ban on “sex” discrimination.
For years, Ugandan refugee Mbazira Moses has been typing out emails to dozens of international humanitarian organizations and United Nations officials with a message: LGBTQ refugees at the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya need your help.
The Kakuma camp and nearby Kalobeyei Integrated Settlement, both operated by the U.N. Refugee Agency, or UNHCR, are together home to nearly 200,000 refugees from dozens of countries. Many, if not most, have fled overland from Kenya’s conflict-stricken neighbors: Uganda, South Sudan and Somalia.
But according to Moses and experts on refugees and migration, the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer refugees in Kakuma — many of whom fled homophobic and transphobic violence in nearby Uganda — continue to face threats and violence from locals and other refugees for the simple reason that they are LGBTQ. While the situation for sexual and gender minorities may generally be more dire in neighboring countries, Kenya is still among the nearly 70 nations that criminalize homosexuality.
On Tuesday night, Moses sent out another such email: Over 50 queer refugees camped outside the UNHCR reception center at Kakuma for safety reasons were again attacked, this time by Turkana-speaking locals and other Kakuma refugees.
“They were kicked out by the UNHCR and forced into the homophobic community with other refugees,” and then local residents from the area, the Turkana, “attacked them some time ago,” Moses wrote in the email sent to human rights officials and journalists.
“They fled to the reception center where they were denied entry,” he wrote. “The two groups hate them badly.”
Moses alleged that the refugees were attacked with “knife stabs, stones and clubs,” and included images of people with head injuries. Police hesitated, the ambulance was slow, and the refugees fled through holes and over fences, Moses said. The Turkana locals allegedly blamed the gay refugees for a local drought. Seven refugees were injured.
Kakuma camp is “very hard to administer,” said Bruce Knotts, director of the Unitarian Universalist United Nations office, who has for decades worked in refugee advocacy and relief — including a visit to Kakuma years ago.
“You have got a handful of UNHCR officials, so bad things can happen, and bad things do happen in refugee camps — not only to LGBT people, but women and other people as well, so it’s unfortunately not surprising,” Knotts said.
In June 2018, Moses and Refugee Flag Kakuma, an LGBTQ rights group he leads at the camp, hosted its first gay pride event. The march attracted hundreds of Kakuma onlookers, but soon after it finished, a series of murderous threats were posted around the camp: Leave or be killed “one by one.”
The dire situation at the camp worsened in December 2018, when an attack on LGBTQ refugees at Kakuma injured 20 and was so brutal that UNHCR officials relocated hundreds of refugees to a gated school compound 450 miles south in Nairobi, where some remain today. And yet, according to Moses, new lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer refugees continue to arrive for registration at UNHCR offices in Kakuma and Nairobi.
In a WhatsApp message sent to NBC News on Friday, Moses said he and other members of Refugee Flag Kakuma question “the logic of returning and housing LGBT refugees in a place where others had been withdrawn because of insecurity.”
“Some of the 200 LGBT refugees who were relocated from Kakuma camp last year were arrested and returned to camp,” Moses said. “At the same time, some new ones have been reporting both in Nairobi and Kakuma. Those who report in Nairobi are always sent to Kakuma refugee camp.”
LGBTQ refugees also routinely accuse the camp’s administrators of turning a blind eye — due to homophobia and transphobia — to their plight and to the continued violence they face.
UNHCR did not respond to NBC News’ request for comment on reports of repeated violence against LGBTQ refugees at the Kakuma camp. However, in an interview with NBC News after the attack on the camp’s June 2018 pride event, Yvonne Ndege, a UNHCR Kenya spokesperson, said, “The community can sometimes feel isolated.”
“UNHCR and the government of Kenya with other relevant stakeholders are striving to promote the rights of all asylum-seekers and refugees and are ensuring partners are trained on how to work with LGBTI in a displacement context,” Ndege said. “Their rights as human beings shall be considered as such.”
While the process of getting a refugee application approved by UNHCR can take years in Kenya and other countries, including the United States, the average stay for a resident of Kakuma camp is 17 years, according to the UNHCR.
More than 25 million people worldwide are currently refugees, according to Amnesty International, and a third are living in the world’s lowest-income countries. The Kakuma Refugee Camp in northwestern Kenya was recently the world’s largest refugee camp — outstripped in late 2019 by Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh.
Knotts said UNHCR is “overwhelmed by Syrian refugees, by Rohingya refugees; there are massive refugee situations around the world, and when you are talking about LGBTQ refugees, you’re talking about a small number and nobody wants to talk about that.”
Even so, “the UNHCR has an obligation to do better than this,” Knotts said.
A federal judge has ordered the Department of Homeland Security to return a gay asylum-seeker who was deported to Chad, ruling that the government had not properly considered his asylum claim based on his status as a gay man before deporting him.
Oumar Yaide arrived in the U.S. in 2009 and requested political asylum because he was a member of “a disfavored group,” a Chadian ethnic group called the Gorane. His asylum application was denied in 2014, and in December 2018 a judge denied his final appeal.
In October, however, two months after officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, removed him from his San Francisco home and sent him to California’s Yuba County Jail, Yaide filed a motion to reopen his asylum case. This request for relief was based upon new information: Chad criminalized homosexuality in 2016 — years after Yaide arrived in the U.S. — and Yaide came out as gay in 2019. This combination, according to court documents, led Yaide to fear “torture and death” if he returned home to the central African nation.
But in early December, while Yaide’s new case was waiting to be seen by an immigration judge, ICE agents removed him from the Yuba County Jail, processed his deportation and sent him to the Sacramento airport, where he and two ICE agents boarded a flight to Chad. Yaide was in handcuffs until a layover in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. His lawyers said they had no idea where he was during the trip.
While Yaide was making the long journey back to Chad, his attorneys filed an instant habeas petition and temporary restraining order requesting that the government return him to the U.S. Last month, U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer granted the request and ordered Homeland Security to return Yaide to the U.S., ruling the “deportation violates his procedural due process right to pursue his motion to reopen.”
“Obviously, imprisonment or death would foreclose Yaide’s ability to pursue his motion to reopen,” Breyer wrote in his order, referring to the possible punishment Yaide could face as a gay man in Chad.
Returning Yaide to the U.S., however, is not without complications. He has an expired Chadian passport, and Homeland Security says it has no jurisdiction to retrieve him from Chad without a valid passport. It is unknown whether Chad’s government will issue him a new one.
Breyer’s ruling directed the U.S. government to work with Yaide’s lawyers to “formulate a mutually agreeable plan to return Yaide to the United States as soon as practically possible.”
Edwin Carmona-Cruz, co-director of Pangea Legal Services, the group representing Yaide, told NBC News on Wednesday that his organization is now “working with federal elected officials to assist in this process.”
Tanya J. Roman, an ICE spokesperson, said the agency is “unable to comment due to pending litigation.”
Chad is one of 68 U.N. member states where consensual same-sex activity is illegal, according to ILGA World, an international LGBTQ advocacy organization. In the United States, asylum-seekers have been successful with claims of potential persecution because of membership in a “social group,” namely the LGBTQ community.
In 1994, Attorney General Janet Reno ordered that the ruling in the case of a Cuban gay asylum-seeker, Fidel Armando Toboso-Alfonso, should be the guidance for future cases, thus cementing an earlier decision finding that Taboso-Alfonso was eligible for asylum because of his membership in the LGBTQ “social group” and the threat of political violence he would face if he were forced to return to his home country of Cuba.
Aaron C. Morris, executive director of Immigration Equality, a nonprofit LGBTQ immigrant advocacy group, said Yaide’s case will have no clear impact on other LGBTQ asylum-seekers. However, he noted that “it’s pretty common” for LGBTQ asylum-seekers, like Yaide, to first seek asylum with a claim other than their sexual orientation or gender identity.
“A lot of our clients, often before they meet Immigration Equality, for various reasons, put forward meritorious claims that aren’t successful, whether that is a religion-based claim or political opinion claim like in this case,” Morris said. “That could be a young person whose parents are paying for a lawyer and involved with their case, a person who is from anti-queer country but living with relatives or living within that community — there are a lot of reasons that are really compelling why someone might only bring a claim based on sexual orientation later in the life of a case.”
From Monday, same-sex couples will be able to register to marry, meaning the first ceremonies will take place in February. For couples who are already married, their marriage will now be legally recognised in Northern Ireland.
However, those who are already in a civil partnership will not be able to convert it to a marriage at this stage. The Northern Ireland Office is set to begin a consultation later this year about converting civil partnerships and the role of churches in same-sex marriages.
Same-sex marriages have been allowed in England, Scotland and Wales since 2014, but Stormont did not legalise them. In November 2015, a vote on the issue in the devolved assembly resulted in a numerical majority in favour of same-sex marriage for the first time. However, the DUP blocked a change in the law by using a veto known as the Petition of Concern.
A Canadian appeals court has ruled that a trans teenager has the right to transition and that his father cannot stop him.
The ruling comes just four months after the British Columbia Supreme Court ruled that the teenage boy didn’t need his father’s consent to access hormone treatment.
But the boy’s father didn’t give up his fight there. He subsequently filed an appeal – but the appeals court has reaffirmed its support of his trans son.
The courts – which have also issued a ban on naming the father and son – insisted in a decision release on Friday (January 10) that the father is entitled to his views, but that they shouldn’t prevent his son from accessing hormone therapy, City News 1130 reports.
Trans teenage boy is mature enough to make his own decisions, appeals court rules.
The teenage boy – who is now 15-years-old – is mature enough to make his own decision about hormone therapy, the appeals court ruled.
Furthermore, Chief Justice Robert Bauman and Justice Barbara Fisher wrote in their judgement that the father’s refusal to accept his son’s identity has caused “significant pain” and has caused damage to what was once a loving relationship.
“This rupture is not in [the boy’s] best interest,” the ruling continued. “He clearly wants and needs acceptance and support from his father.”
They closed out their decision by urging the father to listen to his son and to engage with his medical team, noting that if he refuses to do so, their relationship will “likely not heal.”
This rupture is not in [the boy’s] best interest. He clearly wants and needs acceptance and support from his father.
The appeals court decided to overturn parts of the former Supreme Court ruling, which limited what the father was allowed to say about his child’s transition. However, they upheld parts of the ruling which insist that he refer to his son by the correct name and gender.
The boy previously said he would ‘feel like a freak’ if he wasn’t allowed to continue hormone treatment.
The teenage boy came out as trans when he was 11-years-old, The Guardian reported last year. He came out following a period of serious distress which led to a suicide attempt.
Following consultations with medical professionals and with his mother, the boy began receiving hormone treatment in March of 2019 – but his father intervened and began legal action to stop him from doing so.
In an affidavit read in court at the time, the boy’s said: “I will be stranded between looking and sounding feminine and looking and sounding masculine. I would feel like a freak.”
The father’s lawyer told The Guardian at the time: “It’s a case about freedom of speech and the freedom to parent. It’s about the right of a parent to participate in the discussion on that issue.”