Tag: anti-LGBTQ

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Mike Pence Bans Media From Breakfast Meeting With Openly Gay Irish Prime Minister

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar with Vice President Mike Pence and
Second Lady Karen Pence

After Ireland’s first openly gay leader said he would bring up LGBTQ rights with Vice President Mike Pence at a breakfast meeting, Pence barred media from attending the meeting.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar told the press before the meeting that he would be bringing up the issue of LGBTQ rights to the veep during the annual St Patrick’s Day meeting at the U.S. Naval Observatory where Pence and his wife Karen reside.

Ahead of the event, Pence stipulated that the media were only allowed to capture the arrival of the pair outside Pence’s residence.

Pence’s anti-LGBTQ policies and positions are well known from opposing open service in the military and same-sex marriage to supporting so-called “ex-gay” therapy.

Mr Varadkar expressed disappointment at the media ban but added, “It allows us maybe to have a frank conversation that’s easier to have without the media present.”

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Mississippi: Starkville City Council Denies Permit For Pride Parade

With no explanation offered, the aldermen of Starkville, Mississippi, voted to deny organizers of a proposed Pride Parade a permit for the event.

The city council voted 4-3 against granting the permit to Starkville Pride even though 16 citizens showed up to speak in favor of the event.

“It’s unfortunate that you go through the process, you do everything you’re supposed to do and you get denied, really without any explanation as to why,” alderman Jason Walker, who voted to approve the permit.

Only two spoke against allowing the event.

Resident Dorothy Isaac said she was against the parade because “God created Adam and Eve.”

“Do not turn our city into a sin city,” Isaac said. “It should not be this.”

Starkville is a college town home to Mississippi State University. You can imagine there might be several LGBT students who would have liked to take part in a Pride event.

Starkville’s mayor, Lynn Spruill, denounced the decision saying “I think it sends a message that we are not the inclusive community that I believe us to be.”

With Starkville being home to Mississippi State University, Mayor Spruill noted that Oxford, Mississippi, where the University of Mississippi is based, has held gay pride parades for several years.

(source)

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Georgia Senate Committee Approves Anti-LGBTQ Adoption Bill

A Georgia state Senate committee has approved an anti-LGBTQ bill that would allow adoption agencies to refuse to place children with same-sex couples based on “sincerely-held religious beliefs.”

The legislation would also keep the Georgia Department of Human Services from taking any “adverse action” against such agencies who chose to discriminate against LGBTs.

Senate Bill 375, also known as the “Keep Faith in Adoption and Foster Care Act,” passed in the Georgia Senate Judiciary Committee this morning on a party line vote. Only the two Democrats voted against the measure.

There were no public comments allowed during the committee meeting and the bill now head to the Senate floor for a vote.

Jeff Graham, Georgia Equality’s Executive Director, issued this statement:

“There are no winners with SB 375. This bill does not help the thousands of young people in our state’s adoption and foster care system. It does not help loving parents who are looking to open their homes to children in need, either through fostering or adoption.

“It does not help our state’s economic image – particularly at this crucial juncture in our bid to bring up to 50,000 new and high-paying jobs to our state through Amazon.

“There are only losers with this bill: children denied permanent and loving homes, and potential parents coldly turned away simply because of who they are.”

(source)

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Report: State “Religious Exemption” Laws Threaten LGBTQ+ Freedom

(image via Movement Advancement Project)

A new 41-page report released by the Human Rights Watch details how so-called “religious freedom” laws allow for a vast number of individuals and corporations to discriminate against LGBTQ+ folk.

Human Rights Watch researcher Ryan Thoreson says anti-LGBTQ+ legislators like using the term “exemptions” even though the term is misleading.

“Given the dearth of laws that protect LGBT people from discrimination in the first place, legislators are getting it exactly backwards and creating exceptions before they’ve ever established the rule,” said Thoreson.

The report lists several examples like:

• Mississippi allows for individuals and businesses to discriminate based on sexual orientation, gender identity/presentation, and persons having extramarital affairs due to religious or moral objections.

• Michigan, Alabama, and North Dakota have passed legislation that allows for adoption/foster care agencies to explicitly discriminate against queer couples or individuals.

• Tennessee law allows for mental health counselors to decline to see LGBTQ+ clients.

In the United States, only 19 states and the District of Columbia prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in employment, public accommodations, and housing.

New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Utah offer protections based on sexual orientation (not gender identity), though Utah doesn’t prohibit such discrimination in public accommodations.

In 2018, Illinois, Georgia, Washington, Oklahoma and Florida have all seen new “religious exemption” bills filed in their state legislatures.

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Trump Administration Opens New Division To Promote Religious-Based LGBTQ Discrimination

The Trump administration is taking further steps to make anti-LGBT animus legal by creating a new office within the Department of Health and Human Services – The Conscience and Religious Freedom Division.

While the move is being dressed up as an attempt to shield doctors whose religious beliefs oppose performing abortions, this also opens the door for any service provider to deny LGBTs treatment.

From The New York Times:

Critics said the administration was giving health care providers a license to discriminate, and they raised the possibility that some doctors might deny fertility treatments to lesbian couples and that some pharmacists might refuse to fill prescriptions for certain types of contraceptives. In such situations, patients could suffer, and health care workers could violate professional or ethical obligations.

“Donald Trump’s administration is handing out permission slips for hospitals and providers to deny individuals, including women and LGBT patients, access to a full range of health services including life saving emergency care,” said Dawn Huckelbridge, director of the Women’s Rights Initiative at American Bridge, a Democratic advocacy group. “If there is any doubt about how morally repulsive, politically unpopular, and far-reaching the consequences of this rule will be, crafting it in secret behind closed doors and without public input says all you need to know.”

LGBT blogger/activist JoeMyGod writes, “The new HHS division provides a complaint page if healthcare providers feel they’ve been forced to betray Jesus by providing care to somebody they hate.”

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Survey: 29% Of The World Thinks Homosexuality Should Be Criminalized

Via Gay Times:

More than one in four people (28.5%) believe that those in same-sex relationships should be ‘charged as criminals’, according to a new survey of over 100,000 people across 77 countries and territories around the world.

Unsurprisingly, the 2017 ILGA-RIWI Global Attitudes Survey showed that there were major differences in views towards sexual and gender minorities in different regions.

45% of respondents in the 15 African countries surveyed agreed that people who engage in same-sex relationships should be charged as criminals, by far the highest percentage around the world.

Elsewhere, 36% of respondents from the Middle East agreed with that sentiment, compared to 15% of respondents from Australia and New Zealand, and 19% from North America, South America, and Western Europe.

In the UK, one in six (17%) people said they believe that same-sex couples should be charged.

Of the 77 countries that were polled for the survey, 25 continue to hold laws which make being LGBT a crime.

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News Round-Up: October 31, 2017

(via Instagram)

Some news items you might have missed:

• Steve Pena (above) plans to “walk like an Egyptian” this Halloween. I’d follow his Pharaoh…

• Both chambers of Congress have now unanimously condemned Chechnya for anti-LGBTQ violence as President Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson remain silent.

• In related news, Russia and Egypt are fighting to remove language in Principal 6 of the Olympic Charter which calls for banning discrimination based on sexual orientation. Both countries have been involved in anti-LGBTQ actions in past months.

• Marques Brownlee unboxes the new iPhone X – check out his thoughts below. Hubby Michael and I have both ordered the X as we haven’t upgraded our iPhones in years.

• While the majority of news outlets were covering yesterday’s indictments of three Trump campaign officials, several Fox News employees were embarrassed by their network’s obvious lack of coverage. At one point on Monday morning, Fox News was actually taking time to report on a hamburger emoji – “Look, the cheese is under the burger!!!”

• A new study indicates gay men (and straight women) are twice as likely to be attracted to guys with the same eye color as their father due to “sexual imprinting.” I do not fall into that category as my father had stunning ice blue eyes, but my hunky hubby Michael has beautiful brown eyes.

• No trick, total treat from 7-time Grammy Award winner Toni Braxton as she drops her new single, “Deadwood,” from her forthcoming album, Sex and Cigarettes, scheduled for a January release.

• One more Halloween post: “Super” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada arrived at work today dressed as “Clark Kent.” #WinnerWinnerWinner