African gays make simple request to pope: preach tolerance

African gays who often face persecution in the streets and sometimes prosecution in courts have a simple plea for Pope Francis ahead of his first visit to the continent: bring a message of tolerance even if you will not bless our sexuality.

Francis traveled to Kenya and Uganda, where many conservative Christians bristle at the idea of the West forcing its morality on them, especially when it comes to gays and lesbians. He also visited conflict-torn Central African Republic.

"I would like the Pope to at least make people know that being LGBT is not a curse," said Jackson Mukasa, 20, a Ugandan in Kampala who was imprisoned last year on suspicion of committing homosexual acts, before charges were dropped for lack of evidence.  Read more via Reuters 

Pakistan: Officially recognized but publicly shamed

One Friday night earlier this year, a nervous but meticulously made-up crowd of transgender women sat in the upper circle of the smart Al Hamra Arts complex in Lahore, Pakistan. Bored with waiting for the performance to begin, one and then all of them stood up to take in a better view of the surroundings. The rest of the audience gawked at the sight before them: Pakistani transgender women are ordinarily found dancing at tawdry wedding parties or turning tricks. Certainly never as patrons at an upscale theatre.

That night, however, they were to be centre stage, performing "Theesri Dhun" ("Third Tune"), a rare and unique dramatization of real-life transgender stories. With harrowing tales of rape, police brutality and social stigma, it made for sombre viewing.

It also shed a light on Pakistan's complicated and disturbing LGBT rights landscape, where trans people technically enjoy better rights than in many places around the world, but in practice face violence and stigma. Even so, they are worlds ahead of Pakistani gay men, who are outlawed, brutalized and even murdered with no recourse to protection. 

While trans women are the success story amongst LGBT Pakistanis, their counterparts, transgender men — people born biologically female but who identify as male — barely register on the national conscience. Technically they should also be able to register as third gender but none has ever attempted it. Read more via Vice News

China: Transgender people forced to hide behind their secrets

At home her son still calls her daddy, at work she dresses in a masculine style, but this Chinese person has a “little secret” — she was born male, but is not any more. She had long identified as a woman, and suffered from depression after starting a family, opting in the end to have a surgical sex change.

“I had wanted to kill myself, but then I decided I should do something — if I die, I’d rather die on the operating table,” she added. Chinese society remains deeply traditional in many respects so in public she still has to hide her new identity and does not want her name or occupation revealed, for fear of any negative consequences. Now she tries to help others in her position, running an online network from her home to connect transgender individuals with each other and professionals such as doctors, psychiatrists and lawyers — who can help with divorces.

Sexually ambiguous characters have a long history in Chinese art and literature, but being transgender is still classified as a mental illness in the country —homosexuality was removed from the category in 2001 —although sex reassignment surgery is legal.

Transgender issues were given unusual prominence in China last year when the country’s most famous sexologist, Li Yinhe, announced she had been living for 17 years with a partner who was born female but identifies as a man, referring to him as her “husband” and stressing she sees herself as heterosexual. Read more via Japan Times 

Nigeria: Gay people face beatings, harsh prison sentences, even death

Nigeria made same-sex marriage and gay rights activism illegal last January. Since then, gay Nigerians say abuse and extortion have become commonplace by state-sponsored vigilantes, police and public mobs. As part of a week-long series "Nigeria: Pain and Promise," special correspondent Nick Schifrin reports on the threats and violence that LGBT citizens face in that country. Watch the report 

Iraq: 2 blindfolded men thrown off a roof in Fallujah for being gay

The Islamic State (Isis) terrorists have released a new photo report from the Iraqi city of Fallujah, showing the execution of two men, "punished" for being homosexuals. The photo report released on social media on Monday by Isis supporters shows two blindfolded men being thrown off a roof in Fallujah on charges of "sodomy."

The images shows an Isis Sharia judge reading out their crimes before a crowd of onlookers while the two gay men stand on the roof of a high-rise. After the reading out of the verdict, the Isis fighters throw down the two men, one by one as the crowd looks on in horror. Read more via International Business Times (disturbing images) 

A Dutch ISIS Fighter Takes Questions on Tumblr

Usually, by the time the public learns the names and biographies of Islamic State militants, or radicals from other groups who attack civilians, they are already dead, and so unable to speak for themselves, except occasionally in the ritualized form of martyrdom videos or manifestoes posted online. This week, however, a Dutch citizen who says he is fighting on behalf of the Islamic State in Syria, and who documents his life in the self-proclaimed caliphate on Tumblr, has been taking questions from readers.

Israfil Yilmaz, who is of Turkish descent and who abandoned a career in the Royal Netherlands Army in 2013 to join Islamist rebels fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, has turned to Tumblr since his accounts on Instagram, Ask.fm and Twitter were suspended.

The exchanges reveal that the former soldier is well aware of his notoriety back home in the Netherlands. Asked his age recently, he referred his questioner to the Dutch government’s list of banned terrorists, to which his full name and details of his birth — Salih Yahya Gazali Yilmaz, born on Sept. 29, 1987, in Brunei — had been added just the week before. 

Read more via New York Times
 

Armenia: Support and protect human rights defenders

Armenian NGO PINK is being threatened and intimidated for its work on LGBT issues by sections of the public and by some political figures in Armenia. The Armenian authorities must stop this intimidation and hold those responsible to account. Human Rights House Network calls on the authorities to end their silence and inaction, and meet their obligations to protect, empower, and support human rights defenders.

In a joint letter to the Armenian President, Serzh Sargsyan, 37 NGOs from nine Human Rights Houses have detailed instances of threats and intimidation against PINK, and raised concerns about the silence and inaction by the authorities. Armenia must counter the immediate and specific threats to PINK, and work to end the wider, long-term threat to all human rights defenders in Armenia, and prevent a climate of impunity created by silence and inaction against those who threaten and intimidate human rights defenders. 

HRHN wrote a letter of concern to the Armenian authorities in September 2013, condemning ongoing smear campaigns against organisations working on gender issues, and urging the authorities to protect human rights defenders.  Read more via Human Rights House 

US: LGBT activists rally outside Dallas police HQ after another attack

Dozens of LGBT activists gathered outside Dallas Police headquarters last night to protest what they see as slow police response to the wave of crime in the Oak Lawn neighborhood, which has a prominent gay entertainment district. The protest follows another violent attack last week; the 12th in less than three months. 

Protesters carried signs that read “We Shall Rise Up” and “Justice Will Prevail.” Some waved gay pride flags, while others joined hands in silent grief for the dozen gay men who’ve been assaulted in Oak Lawn since September.

The latest victim, Geoffrey Hubbard, was beaten and robbed after leaving work. He rolled underneath a car for safety, until an off-duty officer found him. The next day, Dallas police stepped up patrols in the neighborhood. Though protesters, like Daniel Scott Cates, said the response came too late.

“It has taken two and half months of terror; it has taken blood literally running in the streets for DPD to make a visible, swift action as they did this last weekend. It’s absolutely unacceptable,” he said. Read more via KERA news 

Norway: No surgery mandate for sex change

Acting on a plan drafted by Norway's ministry of health and social affairs this past April, the 13-member Norwegian Biotechnology Advisory Board voted to discontinue the forced-sterilization rule for transgender men and women seeking to change their gender legally and open the doors for them to receive reproduction assistance including in vitro fertilization.

While the board voted unanimously to drop forced sterilization, a minority went against extending reproductive assistance on grounds that being pregnant is associated with motherhood and a person cannot insist on being a woman and getting pregnant and be a man at the same time.

The bill also drops psychiatric and medical evaluations for children between seven and 16 years of ago who - after consulting with their parents - decide to legally change their gender. Health and social affairs minister Bent Hoie said the proposal "is historic in that it will no longer be the health service but the individual who decides if he or she has changed sex." Read more via Courthouse News Service 

Egypt: Reporter who orchestrated Cairo 'gay' bathhouse raid gets six months in jail

An Egyptian reporter who orchestrated a raid on a ‘gay’ bathhouse has been sentenced to six months in jail. Mona Iraqi was also fined EGP10,000 ($1,277; €1,207) by a Cairo court on for defamation and spreading false news.

In December last year, Iraqi tipped off police to an alleged gay hammam – which she claimed was a ‘den of male sex’ – and filmed as 33 men were arrested and paraded naked out of the bathhouse. The footage was then broadcast on the Al Kahera Walnas channel and made international headlines.

Twenty-six men, including the bathhouse owner and four employees, were tried for debauchery but later cleared due to lack of evidence.  Read more via Gay Star News 

Costa Rican woman able to marry her lesbian partner could face prison

When Jazmin Elizondo Arias was born in 1991, someone made a mistake and noted on her birth certificate that she was male, and no one corrected the record officially due to the drawn out administration involved.

Nearly a quarter of a century later, thanks to the simple clerical error, Ms Elizondo was able to become one half of the first gay couple to marry legally in Costa Rica – at least briefly.

The publicity prompted an unusually quick response by Civil Registry officials, who reviewed Ms Elizondo’s records, reclassified her as a woman and annulled the marriage. They also opened criminal complaints against the women and Mr Castillo, the lawyer, for allegedly performing an “impossible marriage”. 

“It’s clear the Civil Registry moved out of hate, because they not only annulled the marriage but filed this criminal complaint,” Ms Florez-Estrada said.  Read more via the Independent 

China: Homosexuality called ‘a psychological disorder’

A Chinese lesbian took the government to court over textbooks describing homosexuality as a “psychological disorder”, a landmark case in a country where discrimination remains common. Qiu Bai, 21, a student at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, brought the action against the ministry of education, demanding that it give her details of how it approved materials and how they could be changed.

Qiu's team showed AFP a manual, “Student Psychological Health”, published in 2015 by the prestigious Renmin University and distributed to students nationwide: “The most commonly encountered forms of sexual deviance are homosexuality and the sick addictions of transvestism, transsexuality, fetishism, sadism, voyeurism and exhibitionism,” it read. Other psychology textbooks had similar content.

Holding a large rainbow flag, she said she was “excited” by her “first opportunity to have a face-to-face dialogue with the ministry of education”. Supporters brandished signs outside the Fengtai district court in Beijing reading: “We want a fair judgement” and “Homosexuals must gain visibility”. Read more via AFP