A 58-year-old man is accused of shouting homophobic and racial slurs during an attack on a group of Latino men leaving a gay nightclub in Portland, Oregon.
The men passed Robert Oden after leaving CC Slaughters at approximately 2am on Saturday as he was sitting in an alcove of a nearby building.
He allegedly punched three of the men in the face and told them: “Go back to your country.” One of the victims was reportedly left with a bloody, swollen lip and pain.
The arrest makes Oden the first person to be accused of a bias crime under the state’s new law.
Nightclub staff called police and Oden has been charged with one count of bias crime in the first degree, felony assault in the fourth degree, two counts of harassment and two counts of bias crime in the second degree.
Multnomah County District Attorney’s office said this marks the first time this crime has been issued in the state.
Court documents say that he continued to use racial and homophobic language and threatened continued assaults after he was taken into custody.
Bias crime law protects gender identity.
Oregon’s new ‘bias crime law’ came into effect on July 15. It is the most significant update to the state’s hate crime laws since the 1980s.
It added gender identity to the list of protected categories and removed the requirement that two or more people commit the crime in order to make it a felony.
Under this law, it is now a felony to commit a bias crime when a person intentionally, knowingly or recklessly causes physical injury to another person because of the perpetrator’s perception of the victim’s race, colour, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or national origin.
Previously, to be charged as a felony, two or more people would need to commit the offence.
LGBT people, especially transgender people, could be subjected to discrimination, harassment, and identity theft if careful government controls are not placed on rapidly developing and widely used facial recognition technology, according to the group LGBT Tech.
The Staunton, Va.-based group has joined six other LGBT organizations in signing on to a June 3, 2019 letter written by the ACLU calling on Congress to place a moratorium on the use of facial recognition technology for law enforcement and immigration enforcement purposes until privacy related restrictions can be developed for the technology.
“The well documented potential for abuse and misuse of these tools built by giant and influential companies as well as government and law enforcement agencies should give serious pause to anyone who values their privacy – especially members of communities that have been historically marginalized and discriminated against,” said LGBT Tech deputy director and general counsel Carlos Gutierrez in a July 18 op-ed column.
“Without proper privacy protections in place, data breaches that target facial recognition data may become far more likely,” Gutierrez said. “In the wrong hands, a person’s previously undisclosed sexual orientation or gender identity can become a tool for discrimination, harassment, or harm to their life or livelihood,” he said.
“The risks to transgender, nonbinary, or gender non-conforming individuals are even more acute,” he continued.
Gutierrez and other experts familiar with software already in use that uses facial recognition technology say the software has been programmed to divide the people it recognizes as male and female based on their biological or physiological gender.
“The extent of the misgendering problem was highlighted in a recent report that found that over the last three decades of facial recognition, researchers used a binary construct to gender over 90 percent of the time and understood gender to be solely a physiological construct over 80 percent of the time,” Gutierrez said.
He and other experts monitoring the technology say the inability of most of the software now in use, including the software expected to be used for security screening at all airports by 2020, could have a devastating impact on transgender people attempting to board a plane.
“We are deeply concerned about the growth and lack of efficacy of facial recognition technology as a means of increasing security in airports or any other public space,” said Gillian Branstetter, media relations manager for the National Center for Transgender Equality.
“The technologies most frequently sold by vendors have proven biases against women and people of color born of inaccuracies and oversights in their development,” she told the Blade in a statement.
“Just as well, they have consistently misidentified transgender people in academic studies, perhaps providing an automated way to out trans people while we’re traveling or just living our lives,” Branstetter said. “In a worst case scenario, such a technology could be used to ensure transgender people are excluded from gendered spaces, including locker rooms and restrooms.”
Added Branstetter: “The use and growth of the technology’s popularity has plainly outpaced the law, and we’ve urged Congress and government agencies to respond to and assess the risks of these technologies before implementing them.”
The National Center for Transgender Equality and LGBT Tech are among seven LGBT groups that joined 29 civil liberties, privacy rights, civil rights, investor, and faith groups in signing a letter drafted by the ACLU calling on Congress to intervene to regulate facial recognition technology.
The other LGBT groups that signed on to the letter include CenterLink: The Community of LGBT Centers, Equality North Carolina, National LGBTQ Task Force Action Fund, PFLAG National, and TRANScending Barriers of Atlanta.
The letter notes that federal government agencies, including the FBI, have continued to expand the use of facial recognition technology without safeguards.
“The FBI has access to over 400 million photos for face matching, including the driver’s license databases of over fifteen states and passport application photos, has performed hundreds of thousands of face recognition searches, and is now reportedly piloting new uses of the technology,” the letter says.
“This capability threatens to create a world where people are watched and identified as they attend a protest, congregate outside a place of worship, visit a medical provider, or simply go about their daily lives,” the ACLU letter states.
In his op-ed, Gutierrez of LGBT Tech stressed the need for government regulation of facial recognition technology.
“Members of the LGBTQ+ community cannot shoulder the burden of lax digital privacy standards without also assuming unnecessary risks to their safety online and offline,” he said. “Our vibrant communities deserve comprehensive, national privacy protections to fully participate in society and live without the fear that their data – biometric or otherwise – will be used to further entrench existing bias and prejudice.”
Transgender rights advocate Dana Beyer, co-founder of the trans group Gender Rights Maryland, said the urgency for adopting government regulations for the technology can’t be overstated.
“I think the problem goes far beyond the trans community, as is the case with most things happening today, but should we not turn things around in 15 months this will definitely become a tool to make trans lives miserable,” she said.
The D.C.-based Capital Area Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce announced on Aug. 2 that it’s changing its name and rebranding its image for the second time in its 28-year history.
Its new name will be the Equality Chamber of Commerce DC Metro Area (ECCDC).
“Originally founded as the Potomac Executive Network (PEN), the Chamber began when being associated with an organization that had ‘gay’ in its name would end a career or business,” the organization said in a statement.
“Eventually rebranding to the Capital Area Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (CAGLCC), its members were proud to ‘come out’ as an organization,” the statement says. “With the continued advancement of the LGBTQ rights movement,” the Chamber announced in its Aug. 2 statement, “‘gay and lesbian’ no longer reflects where it is as an organization, nor where the LGBTQ rights movement should be.”
In a separate statement on social media, the organization’s president, Van Goodwin, stated, “We are changing our brand to reflect both the progress we’ve made in being a more inclusive organization and where we want to continue to grow…We believe more LGBTQ professionals and business owners should have a seat at the table, and we want you to have a seat at ours.”
The first statement says that in connection with the rebrand, the Chamber plans to host special public and members-only events over the next few months, including an official rebrand celebration for its members on Aug. 22. Goodwin told the Blade the organization’s new website, eccdc.biz, would be officially live by Monday, Aug. 12.
Andrei Vaganov and Evgeny Erofeyev have been raising their two sons, now 12 and 14, for nearly a decade. The children were adopted by Vaganov shortly before he and Erofeyev were married in Denmark.
The couple didn’t face any problems until the youngest son, Yuri, was hospitalised due to a stomach ache and doctors realised he had no mother.
This precipitated a sexual abuse investigation that threatened their right to live freely as a family.
Here we live, we are an ordinary family
“We never asked our children to hide anything,” Vaganov told independent Russian news outlet Meduza. “This was our conscious position: why is it somehow stigmatising and so on. Here we live, we are an ordinary family.”
The morning after Yuri was discharged from hospital, Vaganov and Erofeyev were told to report to police for questioning.
What started as a “pre-investigation check” quickly became more serious, and Yuri was ordered to undergo a physical exam to rule out abuse.
“This, frankly, is a very traumatic event for a child,” Vaganov explained, particularly as Yuri had a troubled childhood before adoption. “They inspect Yuri, he swears, cries. 40 minutes, probably this all went on.”
By the time Vaganov and his son were allowed home, the story that a gay couple had ‘raped a child’ was already all over the internet.
Later their elder son Denis was also called in for an interview, and a family law attorney advised them to prepare to flee the country. The couple were told protective services would almost certainly try to place their children in foster care.
“Because in such situations, children are simply removed from the family before further proceedings, which can last for years, since the article is related to the sexual integrity of the child,” Vaganov said.
Shortly afterwards authorities suggested that Yuri be turned over to a state-owned rehabilitation centre while the case was investigated, despite forensic testing showing no signs of physical abuse.
Erofeyev and Vaganov decided the time to leave had come; not long after they did so, investigators demanded they turn themselves in for questioning.
No charges have been made against them yet, but Buzzfeed News reported that the case has only gotten more dire in the last month.
On July 15, a speech in Russian Parliament denounced gay adoptions as the potential end of mankind. The next day, the Investigative Committee opened a case against the agency that allowed Vaganov to adopt his children.
The law bans the “promotion of nontraditional sexual relations to minors” – a reference universally understood to mean a ban on information about LGBT+ lifestyles.
Human rights groups say that the law has exacerbated hostility towards LGBT+ people in Russia, and that in preventing LGBT+ people from accessing inclusive education and support services, it has had detrimental impact on children and young people.
The European Court of Human Rights has found Russia to have violated LGBT+ people’s rights three times in as many years.
LGBTI people in four Caribbean countries over the last year have filed lawsuits against their nations’ colonial-era sodomy laws.
Javin Johnson and Sean Macleish on July 26 filed a lawsuit against two laws in St. Vincent and the Grenadines that criminalize consensual same-sex sexual relations.
Daryl Phillip, founder of Minority Rights Dominica, and Maurice Tomlinson, a senior policy analyst at the Toronto-based HIV Legal Network, on July 18 announced a gay man who remains anonymous filed a lawsuit against Dominica’s sodomy law.
Alexa Hoffmann, a transgender activist in Barbados, along with a gay man and a lesbian woman on June 6, 2018, filed a lawsuit against their country’s sodomy law with the same commission. Tomlinson, who was born in Jamaica, in 2015 challenged his country’s sodomy law before the Jamaica Supreme Court.
The commission on July 15 sent a letter to Barbados’ government that said it has three months to respond to the lawsuit. The Jamaican government received a similar letter three days later in response to a lawsuit that Tomlinson filed against the country’s same-sex marriage ban in 2018.
“The anti-sodomy law and serious indecency law in Barbados serve no purpose other than to foster alienation and marginalization against LGBT people,” Hoffmann told the Washington Blade on Tuesday on Facebook Messenger. “Any person who has anal sex, oral sex, engages in mutual or other masturbation or sexually interacts with another consenting adult, even in private, is legally branded a criminal, and the social implications are nothing nice, to say the least.”
Macleish told the Blade on Tuesday during a telephone interview from Chicago where he has lived for more than 30 years that his case “is very personal to me because of my experiences being gay in St. Vincent” with “all of the homophobia and discrimination that I experienced there.” Philip in a press release that announced the Dominica lawsuit echoed Hoffmann.
“Brutal and often life-threatening experiences are a daily reality for many LGBT people in Dominica, and elsewhere in the Caribbean,” said Philip. “Because the law criminalizes all LGBT individuals, it sends a powerful message that other people — whether law enforcement or regular citizens on the street — are entitled to discriminate and commit human rights abuses against LGBT individuals.”
Dominica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Barbados and Jamaica are among the handful of English-speaking Caribbean countries in which consensual same-sex sexual relations remain criminalized.
The government of Trinidad and Tobago has appealed a 2018 ruling that declared the country’s colonial-era sodomy law unconstitutional. Tomlinson said an appeal of the Belize Supreme Court’s 2016 decision that struck down the Central American country’s sodomy law is pending.
The Dominica lawsuit was filed in the country’s High Court of Justice, while Johnson and Macleish brought their case before St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ High Court.
The Caribbean Court of Justice — which last November struck down a Guyana law that criminalizes cross-dressing — would consider an appeal in the Dominica case. The Privy Council in London would consider an appeal in the case from St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which the Organization of American States created in 1979, enforces provisions of the American Convention on Human Rights that Barbados recognizes.
The court in 2018 issued a landmark ruling that recognizes same-sex marriage and trans rights. It also ruled in favor of Karen Atala, a lesbian judge in Chile who lost custody of her three daughters to her ex-husband because of her sexual orientation, in 2012.
“We expect a complete victory there,” said Tomlinson, referring to the Barbados case.
He added he also remains optimistic about the St. Vincent and the Grenadines case. Tomlinson told the Blade the rulings from Trinidad and Tobago and Belize, along with recent decisions against colonial-era sodomy laws in India and Botswana, will influence the English judges who sit on the Privy Council.
“I don’t think there will be any fear that they will be regressive,” he said.
Tomlinson told the Blade his case “presents a little unique challenge” because Jamaica’s constitution appears to preserve laws that were in place before the country’s Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms took effect in 2012. He said he is arguing this provision does not apply to the sodomy law because a provision that penalizes registered sex offenders without a pass with a $9,000 fine and a year in prison came into force that year.
“The cases all have different apex courts,” he said. “The issue is how these different courts view LGBT rights and the countries also have different constitutions, so the issue will then will be how the constitutions interpret LGBT rights.”
Tomlinson also noted Caribbean politicians “have taken a hands-off approach” to the lawsuits.
“Truth be told we suspect that every politician in the Caribbean wants these laws to be struck down via court action so they have political cover,” he said, noting potential criticism they will face from religious conservatives. “They’re cowards, so they don’t want to do it themselves because of the potential of blowback, but they’re happy that it’s being done this way.”
Technology companies are often portrayed as being progressive businesses, but their political spending suggests otherwise. Activist group Zero for Zeros analyzed political contributions made by the highest-scoring companies on the Human Rights Campaign’s (HRC) Corporate Equality Index, a benchmarking tool that focuses on measuring corporate policies and practices for LGBTQ employees. It found that while many companies talk a big game when it comes to equality, they have quietly been lining the pockets of politicians who support regressive and oppressive measures that tread on LGBTQ rights.
In reviewing political contributions of 49 major companies, Zero for Zeros tallied a total of $5,837,331 given by corporate political action committees(PACs) that wound up in the coffers of politicians who have received a score of 0 on the HRC’s legislative scorecard. That score means they failed to support a single issue that would have improved the lives of LGBTQ people. Members of this elite group of people who can’t muster a single vote in favor of LGBTQ issues include Ted Cruz, who spent part of last year pushing a bill that would allow businesses and nonprofit organizations to refuse to serve same-sex couples, and Steve King, a Republican congressman who is known to be friendly with white supremacists. King led a campaign in his home state of Iowa that removed three Supreme Court justices who shot down a proposed law that would have restricted marriage in the state to one man and one woman.
Tech companies were particularly noteworthy offenders, racking up $1,312,560 in contributions that were spread around to ten members of the House and 19 Senators were identified by HRC as the worst-of-the-worst when it comes to LGBT issues. The “FAANG” companies — Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google — accounted for $356,000 of that total, with Amazon leading the way by giving $178,500 to anti-LGBTQ politicians. Facebook gave $100,000, while Amazon added $77,500. (Netflix and Apple did not make contributions to any of HRC’s lowest-scoring politicians, per Zero for Zeros’ data).
Several other tech firms contributed more than $100,000 to politicians who have pushed for laws that harm LGBTQ people over the last decade. Microsoft gave $238,500, while T-Mobile contributed $101,500. AT&T, one of the largest telecom providers in the country, was also the largest single contributor tracked by Zero for Zeros. It gave a total of $460,000 to anti-LGBTQ legislators. This, perhaps, shouldn’t come as a surprise, as the company has come under fire for its contributions to socially regressive politicians in the past.
Popular Information reported earlier this year that AT&T is one of the biggest financial backers of politicians pushing incredibly restrictive anti-abortion legislation in states like Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi and Ohio. The corporation also gave nearly $200,000 to the legislators who introduced and voted for laws that would effectively ban abortion. Popular Information also noted that during Pride Month in June, AT&T gave another $144,500 to politicians and leadership PACs that push anti-LGBTQ laws. That included a donation to Vicky Hartzler (R-MO), who proposed legislation to deny medical treatment to trans members of the military — made while AT&T was sporting a rainbow flag avatar on its social media accounts.
Tech companies and corporations as a whole have made it a habit to express their support for LGBTQ causes when it is most convenient. It’s easy to put out lukewarm statements full of platitudes about equality when everyone else is doing it. But when it comes down to it, these companies will put their own interests before those of the marginalized groups they claim to support. All you have to do to find proof of that is follow the money.
Students in Illinois public schools will learn about the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in state and national history after approval today of the Inclusive Curriculum Law by Gov. Pritzker, according to Equality Illinois.
Starting with the 2020-21 school year, the Inclusive Curriculum Law — House Bill 246 — will ensure the inclusion of the contributions of LGBTQ people in the history curriculum taught in Illinois public schools. Illinois is the fifth state to enact such legislation, after California in 2011 and New Jersey, Colorado and Oregon in 2019.
Sponsored by State Rep. Anna Moeller ( D-Elgin ) and State Sen. Heather Steans ( D-Chicago ), the Inclusive Curriculum Law is an initiative of Equality Illinois, the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance, and the Legacy Project and is supported by more than forty education, health care, and civil rights organizations across Illinois.
he body of a 40-year-old trans woman known as ‘La Gata’ was found by her family in the province of Santo Domingo de los Tsachilas in the South American country.
This is the eighth case of murder or violent death of a trans person in the country this year, according to Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Diane Rodriguez, the first trans woman elected to Ecuador’s National Assembly, told Reuters: “Once again, the LGBT community in Ecuador is in mourning. We thought (the attacks) were going to decrease, but on the contrary, we’ve been surprised by this year’s statistics.”
The killing has sparked fears of a rise in anti-LGBT violence in the country, which has seen progress for the LGBT+ community in recent years.
The constitutional court in the capital Quito voted five-to-four to approve same-sex marriage in the cases of the two, extending gay marriage across the country.
A 23-year-old Las Vegas man who allegedly wanted to attack Jews and patrons of an LGBTQ bar was arrested on suspicion of possessing parts to make a bomb, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Nevada said Friday.
Conor Climo, who was arrested Thursday, was connected to white supremacists though encrypted online conversations, federal prosecutors said.
“Threats of violence motivated by hate and intended to intimidate or coerce our faith-based and LGBTQ communities have no place in this country,” Nicholas A. Trutanich, U.S. Attorney for the District of Nevada, said in a statement.
Climo had already caused concern among his neighbors in 2016 when, in a video posted to his now-deleted YouTube channel, he announced plans to patrol his Centennial Hills neighborhood with an AR-15-style rifle, four 30-round clips, and camouflaged packs.
FBI agents with the Las Vegas Joint Terrorism Task Force began looking at Climo in April when, according to the complaint, they learned he was communicating with the white extremist group Atomwaffen Division.
Members of that group have been linked to at least five deaths since 2017, including a Tampa man who killed his two roommates and told police they were members of the group planning a large-scale attack.
Climo, who faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted, was arraigned in federal court on Friday, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney for Nevada.
His arrest stemmed from an investigation conducted by an FBI task force specializing in monitoring the activities and online communications of extremists and domestic terror groups. The investigation was detailed in an 11-page criminal complaint and probable cause statement filed in court federal prosecutors and the FBI.
During encrypted online conversations with undercover FBI operatives, Climo discussed attacking a Las Vegas synagogue and making Molotov cocktails and improvised explosive devices, according to the criminal complaint.
The evangelical blogger made anti-LGBT comments as he destroyed the books, including young adult novel Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan, illustrated LGBT+ history book This Day in June by Gayle Pitman, Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress by Christine Baldacchino and Families, Families, Families! by Suzanne Lang.
Dorr was found guilty of 5th degree criminal mischief in Sioux County District Court on Tuesday (August 6).
The state of Iowa had sought the maximum penalty, a fine of $625.
Dorr, who represented himself, had told the court: “My motive was to honour the Triune God in whom my faith resides and to protect the children of Orange City from being seduced into a life of sin and misery.”
LGBT+ campaigners condemn ‘reprehensible’ burning of library books
Courtney Reyes of One Iowa told Iowa Public Radio: “Libraries are safe havens where every person has free access to all ideas and expressions without restriction.
“Dorr intended to deprive the children of Orange City that access, to isolate LGBTQ youth from reflections of themselves in stories, to take from all youth the opportunity to empathise with people different than themselves. Such an act is terrible, and we are glad justice was served today.”
Bettis Austen of the ACLU of Iowa said: “Burning public library books is the destruction of ideas, and that’s reprehensible.
“The destruction of books from a public library is a clear attempt to shut down the open sharing and discussion of ideas.
“No one person or even group should decide that they are the gatekeepers of ideas for the rest of the public.”
Dorr has previously expressed the belief that people become gay because of “the harm that adults did to you as children” and urged LGBT+ people to “walk away from your degeneracy… repent and turn back to Christ.”
Explaining his actions, Dorr had said: “I cannot stand by and let the shameful adults at the Orange City Library Board bring the next group of little children into their foul, sexual reality without a firm resistance.”
One of the books burned, David Levithan’s Two Boys Kissing, was ranked as the fifth most-banned book during the American Library Association’s annual Banned Books Week in 2016.