UN Secretary Calls Out African Homophobia

via Advocate, by Neal Broverman

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon urged African nations to end government-sanctioned discrimination and violence against LGBT people.

Speaking at the African Union summit on Sunday in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Ban Ki-Moon called the discrimination a violation of the UN's universal declaration of human rights.

"One form of discrimination ignored or even sanctioned by many states for too long has been discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity," he said, according to Agence France Presse.

"Confronting these discriminations is a challenge, but we must not give up on the ideas of the universal declaration of human rights."

The U.S. and the U.K. have begun pressuring some African nations, with threats of reduced aid, to reign in some of their virulent antigay policies.


Read the rest

UN First LGBT Report Cites Human Rights Violations

via Queerty, by Evan Mulvihill

It’s been a good year for making strides toward international gay rights, all things considered.

Hillary Clinton made a great speech before the UN in Geneva championing gay rights as synonymous with human rights last week.

And today, more progress, as the world’s top governing body has released its first-ever report on the status of human rights (full PDF here).

After reviewing reports of the violence and oppression that LGBT people have endured in various corners of the globe, the UN Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights concluded that,”a pattern of human rights violations emerges that demands a response… Further action is now needed, especially at the national level, if individuals are to be better protected from such human rights violations in future.”

And what are they going to do about it? Well, the High Commissioner recommends that UN states “investigate promptly all reported killings and other serious incidents of violence perpetrated against individuals because of their actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity… and hold perpetrators accountable, and establish systems for the recording and reporting of such incidents.”

We’d prefer that he mandated such actions, but we’ll take incremental steps forward over big steps backward any day.

Now how do we get the nations that were not quite tickled pink by Clintons speech to read the damned report?


Read the rest

U.S. Falls Behind Other Nations on LGBT Issues

A high-level US government delegation defended the country’s human rights record before the Human Rights Council at the UN in Geneva on November 5. The Council for Global Equality submitted a report to the US government and to the UN to emphasize the lack of rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Americans. The Council is pleased that during the meeting today, known as the “Universal Periodic Review,” the US government freely admitted that the US civil rights record is incomplete and that LGBT Americans are among those who are still fighting to achieve full equality. Read the full press release.

A New “Benedict Arnold” Heralds Salvation for Africa

By Pete Subkoviak

There is a reason why I consider myself a recovering Catholic – his name is Benedict. Now don’t get me wrong, I think there are many wonderful Catholic organizations, priests and laity doing important work out there. My beef isn’t with the do-gooders, it’s with the leadership.

The growing rift between the realities of a people and the priorities of their leaders is apparent in the Roman Catholic Church. For us in the United States, the disillusion stems from the Church’s war on science and human sexuality, as well as its hidden sexual abuse scandals and misogynistic nature. Oh, and that pesky vow of poverty that few bishops, cardinals and popes feel the need to adhere to. Proselytizing yes, but skimping on gold-plated décor? I think not.

For impoverished nations, the Church’s misguided leadership has larger implications than fewer worshippers in the pews. Take, for instance, the AIDS-ridden African continent where millions of lives are at stake.

Last week while in Cameroon, Pope Benedict XVI claimed that condoms are not only ineffective, but contribute to the spread of HIV. “You can't resolve it with the distribution of condoms," the pope told reporters. "On the contrary, it increases the problem." The pope said a responsible and moral attitude toward sex would help fight the disease. The Catholic Church rejects the use of condoms as part of its overall teaching against artificial contraception. The Vatican instead advocates fidelity in marriage and abstinence from premarital sex as key weapons in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

Let’s put these statements in context with the current pandemic. Three-quarters of all AIDS deaths worldwide in 2007 were in sub-Saharan Africa, where some 22 million people are infected with HIV — accounting for two-thirds of the world's infections, according to UNAIDS. About 5% of the African population is infected with HIV. In Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe around 15-20% of adults are infected with HIV. In Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland, the national adult HIV is between 23-26%. Only one in five HIV-positive Africans has access to the medicines they need; generations are becoming too disabled to work and cannot provide an income for their families, and eventually their children are being orphaned, left alone in a world where the deck is stacked against them.

Pope Benedict favoring religious dogma over the health and wellbeing of his followers, and all of God’s children, is un-Christ-like (and totally not pro-life) as far as I’m concerned. What Catholics need here is a little more honesty and a little less guilt. Saying condoms don’t prevent HIV/AIDS is like professing food doesn’t prevent hunger. When used properly and consistently, condoms are about 98% effective at preventing HIV, other STDs and unwanted pregnancy. Now I’m all for promoting abstinence and fidelity, but tone must take reality into account.

The reality is that most people do not remain abstinent forever. The most recent study on the impact of abstinence-only education from Johns Hopkins researcher Janet Rosenbaum was conclusive. Comparing teens who took a pledge of abstinence with teens of similar backgrounds who did not, she found absolutely no difference in their sexual behavior, or the age at which they began having sex, or the number of their partners. In fact, the only difference was that the group that promised to remain abstinent was significantly less likely to use birth control, especially condoms, when they did have sex.

And many people do not practice monogamy – whether their partners know it or not. In fact, a 2005 US Health Resources and Services Administration report found that 85% of women with HIV in India were infected through heterosexual contact and over 90% reported a single lifetime partner, generally their spouse.

Is it any different in Africa? Well, take the case of Annet Nyakisiki of Uganda. She was a virgin at the time of her marriage, but her husband was not. There is no way to know exactly when he contracted the AIDS virus, but he did. He subsequently passed it on to her, and all four of their children would eventually be born with the disease. Dr. David Serwadda, director of the Institute of Public Health at Makerere University in Kampala says, "Increasingly, people assume that marriage is a safe institution. But there are also extramarital relationships. Married women don't see why they are at risk, yet they are very much at risk." Should individuals really have to suffer the consequences of their partner’s infidelity just to adhere to the Church’s moral standards?

This is precisely why a band of progressive young folks has launched a grassroots campaign known as “Love the One You’re With”, which encourages love, respect and yes, abstinence as a valid CHOICE, while promoting condom education and acceptance right here in Chicago. The bright pink safe-sex kits and promotional materials are meant to highlight the morality of safer sex to the city and nudge local, state, and federal officials to expand condom promotion and distribution as a science-based response to the HIV and STD epidemics in the region.

There are some problems that religion simply cannot solve, just as there are some evils that science cannot remedy. An individual can adhere to their own religious beliefs, but they will never be able to control a partner’s fidelity or HIV-status. We can strive for a utopian society where all are chaste until marriage, but we must deal with reality. In many areas of the world, 25% of the population is HIV-positive. We cannot play Russian roulette with their lives for morality’s sake. That, in and of itself, is immoral.

[Pete Subkoviak is a policy associate at the AIDS Foundation of Chicago. He advocates for sound policies related to HIV/AIDS and works to improve the overall health and wellness of the LGBT community.]

The UN must pass this week's historic declaration calling for the decriminalisation of homosexuality worldwide

A watershed for gay rights

by Peter Tatchell

A declaration calling for the global decriminalisation of homosexuality will be put before the United Nations General Assembly this Wednesday, which is Human Rights Day and the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

It will be the first time in its history that the UN General Assembly has considered the issue of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) human rights.

Although it will not be binding on the member states, the declaration will have immense symbolic value, given the six decades in which homophobic persecution has been ignored by the UN.

If you want to understand why this decriminalisation declaration is so important and necessary, ponder this: even today, not a single international human rights convention explicitly acknowledges the human rights of LGBT people. The right to physically love the person of one's choice is nowhere enshrined in any global humanitarian law. No convention recognises sexual rights as human rights. None offers explicit protection against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

Yet 86 countries (nearly half the nations on Earth) still have a total ban on male homosexuality and a smaller number also ban sex between women. The penalties in these countries range from a few years jail to life imprisonment. In at least seven countries or regions of countries (all under Islamist jurisdiction), the sentence is death: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Yemen, Sudan, Mauritania and parts of Nigeria and Pakistan.

Many of the countries that continue to criminalise same-sex relationships are in Africa and Asia. Their anti-gay laws were, in fact, imposed by the European powers during the period of colonialism. With the backing of Christian churches and missionaries, the imperial states exported their homophobia to the rest of the world. In many of the conquered lands, little such prejudice had previously existed and, in some cases, same-sex relations were variously tolerated, accepted and even venerated. This importation of western homophobia happened in countries like Ghana, Jamaica, Nigeria and Uganda, which now absurdly decry homosexuality as a "white man's disease" and "unAfrican", while vehemently denying and suppressing all knowledge of their own pre-colonial era indigenous homosexualities.

Read the rest on the guardian.co.uk.