Dominican Republic: Gay Pride and Prejudice

Shortly after taking up his post as American ambassador to the Dominican Republic in November 2013, Wally Brewster got a bit of unsolicited advice from the Vatican’s envoy to the Caribbean nation.

“If you keep your private life behind the walls of your embassy, you’ll be O.K. here,” Nuncio Jude Thaddeus Okolo told Mr. Brewster. He meant that Mr. Brewster, to be an effective diplomat, would be wise to keep his husband, Bob Satawake, out of sight in a country where prejudice against gay people remains widespread.

The advice went unheeded. Mr. Brewster and Mr. Satawake, who have been together for nearly 28 years, have been out and proud in Santo Domingo, sparking a spirited debate that has galvanized the nation’s fledgling gay rights movement and outraged local leaders of the Catholic Church.

The attacks against Mr. Brewster, a Chicago businessman who raised money for President Obama’s re-election campaign, began just days after the White House nominated him for the post. Read more via New York Times

France: Surrenders to the Vatican over plans for gay ambassador

France has finally backed down following a stand-off with the Vatican over the nomination of a gay ambassador. More than a year ago, in January 2015, the French government selected openly gay diplomat Laurent Stefanini to head to the home of the Catholic Church.

It usually takes just weeks for a nomination to be approved – but it became clear in April 2015 that the Vatican was ‘freezing out’ the country’s selection of ambassador, refusing to respond to the nomination at all.

French President François Hollande had initially stood firm in the dispute rather than be seen to discriminate against his own diplomat. However, after over a year-long stretch of silence from the Vatican, France surrendered today. Read more via Pink News

Norway: Bishops to allow gay church weddings

The Bishops’ Conference (Kirkemøtet) of the Church of Norway (Den Norske Kirke) approved new marriage ceremony rules that will allow homosexuals to be married within the church. 

As part of the church officials' historic decision, bishops and other church officials were granted the right to refuse to officiate homosexual marriages. However, gay couples are ensured the right of being married in their local church even if the officials decline to carry out the service. Read more via the Local

Botswana: Gaborone City Council rallies behind LGBTI community

Members of the Lesbians, Gays, and Bisexuals of Botswana (LEGABIBO) were yesterday in a jubilant mood after the Gaborone City Council (GCC) passed a motion calling on government to decriminalise same sex activities in order to support HIV/ AIDS programmes and policies.

The motion, which was tabled by councillor Sergeant Kgosietsile of Marulamantsi ward, wants government to extend HIV/AIDS services, information and materials specifically to gay groups, who have previously been discriminated against or stigmatised.

In support of the motion, Difetlhamolelo (Block 9) councillor Sesupo Jacobs said that one of their pillars as Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) stating that ‘no one is left out’ speaks of a system in which all citizens are entitled to protection under the Constitution and are brought to the social and economic mainstream of the society by accessing appropriate services that are beneficial and well managed. 

Read more via Mmegi

US: The long, winding road to marriage equality

Excerpted with permission from "Engines of Liberty: The Power of Citizen Activists to Make Constitutional Law,"
The path to marriage equality did not begin, of course, with Evan Wolfson’s Harvard Law School paper. The very fact that Wolfson could conceive of such a paper was itself testament to the efforts of countless gay and lesbian advocates before him, operating in far more difficult circumstances.

A good place to start in assessing the prehistory of the marriage equality movement is the Mattachine Society, one of the first gay organizations in the United States. Founded in Los Angeles in 1950, the Mattachine Society ultimately included chapters around the country, and in the 1950s and 1960s was the nation’s leading gay organization. It took its name from masked critics of ruling monarchs in medieval France. At its inception, the very idea of a gay organization was so radical that the group met only in secret.

The invisibility of the “closet” made mobilizing for lesbian and gay rights all but impossible. Thus, the first strategic step toward achieving equality was, as gay rights scholar and advocate Bill Eskridge  has called it, a “politics of protection.” The aim was to create space for gays and lesbians to come together without fear of official harassment. Read more via Salon

Scotland: Nicola Sturgeon reveals new LGBT policies

Nicola Sturgeon has revealed she plans to attack LGBTI discrimination in Scotland with a five pledge plan to tackle the scourge, should her party, as expected, be voted back in to government on 5 May.

The very fact that we are still having debates like this at election time just underlines that there is still much that we need to do. Gender recognition laws will be reformed to bring Scotland’s policy in line with international best practice and all police officers will receive appropriate training on the investigation of hate crime.

Speaking ahead of a hustings co-hosted by LGBT rights groups last night, Sturgeon said:  “In particular I want to see a renewed focus on areas such as education – both for young people themselves, and those responsible for their emotional and educational wellbeing.

“Tolerance, respect, inclusion – these are attitudes and principles we want to encourage and foster in modern, fairer Scotland. Read more via Third Force News

US Op-ed: LGBT hate is actually losing

The Christian right can no longer directly demonize gays and transgender people, so it has to lie and even the lies are backfiring. In the wake of last year’s loss on same-sex marriage, the Christian Right has begun to act tactically, attacking what it perceives to be the LGBT equality movement’s weakest links. And yet amazingly, this strategy is backfiring. Not only is the right failing to make their easiest cases, they are hardening opposition in those very cases, losing key battles in the areas of transgender rights and religious freedom.

Consider the strategy in North Carolina. North Carolina’s Republican legislature and governor used what they thought would be their best tactic to repeal anti-discrimination ordinances, one that that worked in Houston and elsewhere: that pro-LGBT laws would let men use women’s restrooms.

And notice what North Carolina didn’t do. They didn’t mount a frontal attack on Charlotte’s anti-discrimination law. They didn’t argue that gay people shouldn’t get “special rights.” They sneaked in under the cover of a lie, and still lost, first in the court of public opinion and next, probably, in courts of law. Read more via the Daily Beast 

Australia: Transgender people could change birth certificates

People could soon change the gender on their birth certificates without having to undergo sex reassignment surgery.  The Victorian attorney-general's department  has signalled that it is working to "remove barriers to new birth certificates for trans, gender diverse and intersex Victorians", in line with a Victorian Labor election commitment.

In a letter to a parent of a transgender child, the attorney-general's chief of staff advised that the office was "progressing work to address discrimination in Victoria's birth certificate laws".  

The current laws are complex and confusing. If a person wants to change the gender on their certificate, they must be unmarried, 18 years of age or over, and to have undergone sex reassignment surgery.  Read more via the Age

Intersectionality and discrimination

Intersectionality. The main impression this inelegant heptasyllabic word has made on me over the years is the almost automatic way in which any analysis focusing on it tends to indulge in spatial metaphor.

No wonder, as the notion of intersectionality is itself a spatial metaphor struggling to
upgrade itself (or reduce itself, depending on one’s perspective) to a technical legal and/or social science term. This issue of the Equal Rights Review is an ample case in point, as well as, hopefully, a snapshot capturing the current state of understanding among the experts.

Different people mean different things when they talk about intersectionality. That which intersects can relate to identities, prohibited grounds of discrimination, human rights, human rights violations, disadvantages, inequalities, systems of oppression, and so on; and intersectionality itself is referred to variously as a theory, a framework (another spatial metaphor), a method, a practice… The reader will find all of these usages, and more, in this issue alone. 

 Read more via Equal Rights Review

US: After notorious faked study, new work finds that one conversation can curb transphobia

Volunteer door-to-door canvassers who engaged in a 10-minute conversation were able to reduce some voters’ negative feelings about trans people for up to three months, a new study suggests. This decrease in prejudice was greater, the researchers say, than the change in Americans’ feelings toward gay people from 1998 to 2012.

The study, published today in the journal Science, may have strong implications for changing voter attitudes during a time when many cities and states — including Houston, Tennessee, Mississippi, and most recently, North Carolina — are introducing legislation to ban transgender people from certain restrooms, among other things, based on harmful stereotypes about transgender women being sex predators.

The results come nearly a year after the now-notorious study by then-UCLA graduate student Michael LaCour that Broockman and co-author Joshua Kalla exposed as fraudulent.  Advocates are relieved that the new study found that those experiences were, in fact, legitimate.  Read more via Buzzfeed