Facebook finally reforms ‘real name’ policy after drag queen bans

After enduring more than a year of criticism, Facebook is making major changes to the way it enforces its real name policy. Facebook users will notice a new system for reporting fake names along with a new system for responding to those reports. The system now includes specific support channels for LGBTQ issues, non-Western names, and instances of stalking or abuse. The new system will deploy in the US immediately, expanding internationally depending on feedback from the US rollout.

Facebook is quick to note that the new system doesn’t reflect a change in the real name policy itself, and users will still be required to use the same name on Facebook that they use in real life. Still, Facebook is betting that the new process will address many of the concerns and open the door to more improvements in the future. 

The real name policy has also presented problems in cases of stalking and abuse, although those instances have received less press coverage. Targets of sustained abuse sometimes avoid using their legal names for privacy reasons, but until now there’s been little guidance for how to square that practice with Facebook’s policy. In the worst cases, the old system could lead to inadvertent doxxing if a user sent in a driver’s license only to have their account automatically switched to their legal name. Read more via Verge 

Malaysia: ‘Gay imam’ sparks debate on Twitter

This week’s curator for the @twt_LGBT Twitter account has raised more eyebrows than usual. Claiming himself to be a “gay imam”, the curator, who only refers himself as “Adik”, said that he anted to share his life story and experiences in being a homosexual Muslim in Malaysia.

“Saya nak kongsi hidup sebagai seorang imam yang gay (I would like to share my life as a gay imam),” he tweeted.

Aside from sharing his experiences, Adik also invoked several arguments and connotations on Islamic teachings in aspects of homosexuality and his opinion on what it was to be a gay Muslim. The social media discussion has snowballed into a heated debate with netizens taking on both sides of the matter. 

Read more via the Rakyat Post
 

New online tool launched to eradicate gay ‘cure’ therapies

Global LGBT rights organisation All Out has launched the online tool, ‘Gay Cure Watch.’ It aims to allow members and international partners to report and shut down gay “cures” in whatever form they take.

“No one should be told that their love is a disease,” said Leandro Ramos, Interim Executive Director of All Out: “The Gay ‘Cure’ Watch is a powerful tool, funded entirely by All Out members, which will allow our organisation to find out where these dangerous “treatments” are happening and get them shut down once and for all.”

All Out notes that the “outdated” and “medically unfounded” practices can cause harm to the subjects, including increasing the risk of depression and suicide.

In the UK earlier this month, Parliament debated banning the practice of gay ‘cure’ therapies for minors. UK Prime Minister David Cameron pledged that a future Conservative government would act to end so called “gay cure” therapy, which attempts to change the sexuality of a person, labelling the practice as “dangerous” and “profoundly wrong”. Read more via PinkNews 

Australia: This website will be a one stop shop for LGBTI health

A new website providing information on drug use in the LGBTI community has been launched, highlighting the specific experiences faced by sexual and gender diverse people. TouchBase, launched by the Victorian AIDS Council (VAC) in partnership with the Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations (AFAO) and the Australian Drug Foundation, was created as a resource on drugs and places them in the context of mental and sexual health by using personal stories from those in the community.

VAC chief executive Simon Ruth said there was information specific to the LGBTI community around drugs that the site aims to address: “There are specific things we need to be aware of, such as the interactions that drugs might have with HIV medications or hormones for gender diverse people."

The site provides targeted information on drug use, mental health, and sexual health, helping to address the gaps in information for LGBTI people.

Harm Reduction Victoria president Bill O’Loughlin believes TouchBase gives a much-needed voice to drug use in the community: “The beauty of this resource is that our community organisations have framed it in our terms, and it’s really comprehensive, from cigarettes and injecting to sex and support for people in trouble." Read more via Star Observer  

US: College sports officials will reconsider cities chosen to host championships

Amid a national debate over civil rights protections based on sexual orientation, the Indianapolis-based NCAA apparently will reconsider sites already chosen to host its championships — including Indianapolis, the NCAA announced.

“We’ll continue to review current events in all cities bidding on NCAA championships and events, as well as cities that have already been named as future host sites, such as Indianapolis,” Bob Williams, NCAA senior vice president for communications, wrote. Requests to speak to NCAA leaders for more information were denied.

Among the Indianapolis events that could be in jeopardy is the NCAA’s richest showcase — the men’s basketball Final Four — slated to return to the city in 2021. The same event held here this year pumped an estimated $71 million into the local economy, according to Visit Indy. Indianapolis also is scheduled to host first- and second-round games in the 2017 men’s basketball tournament.

The NCAA statement about future and scheduled sites comes after Houston voters this month repealed an ordinance that banned discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation.  Read more via IndyStar 

US: Safe place program rolls out to Starbucks stores in Seattle

One of the first things Jim Ritter did when he became LGBTQ liaison officer for the Seattle Police Department earlier this year was to page through reports of hate crimes. The numbers indicated a possible modest uptick in attacks and menacing behavior aimed at the gay community. Anecdotally, however, Ritter was encountering something very different.

“I’m getting calls from people saying it had happened to them or their friends,” Ritter recalled. “I’m getting calls from people and they’re not matching up with the reports I have. I’d say, ‘Well, did you report these?’ and they’d say no. It was clear to me that this was a huge problem for us, because if we don’t know about it we can’t devote resources to it.”

That realization that hate crimes were more frequent than the numbers indicated prompted Ritter to create the Seattle Police Department Safe Place program. Designed to identify plentiful safe and secure places for victims of anti-LGBTQ-related crimes and harassment, SPD Safe Place’s mission is intentionally uncomplicated. Window clings with the program’s rainbow logo are circulated to Seattle area businesses and public facilities identifying them as places where staff who’ve received SPD Safe Place training will call 911 and allow victims to remain on the premises until police arrive.   Read more via Starbucks 

UK: LGBT tech workers to gather at Facebook to ‘MakeStuffBetter’

InterTech, the UK-based LGBT network for those who work in the tech industries, have announced that its next event will be a #MakeStuffBetter Holiday Hackathon at the offices of Facebook in Euston, London.

The 24-hour event will run from on Saturday 12 December. They’re wanting tech workers who can aid in the creation of products that may spread tolerance, promote health or create awareness.

Previous hackathons have led to the creation of the LGBT Whip, a website that allows you to check on the voting record of MPs, and online, stereotype-questioning game Hansel in Distress. Read more via Gay Star News 

Some top-ranked companies on LGBT scorecard work in harshly anti-LGBT nations

Companies doing business in countries with harsh anti-LGBT laws are among the top scorers in the Human Rights Campaign’s first ever corporate LGBT scorecard to consider international operations alongside domestic ones. HRC launches its 14th annual Corporate Equality Index, which scores hundreds of companies on measures like health insurance coverage for transgender workers and employee benefits for employees’ same-sex partners. 

Only one area that employers were scored on this year actually applied to work overseas: whether the company has a nondiscrimination policy covering LGBT workers that applies throughout its global operations. Some of the companies that met this requirement have operations in countries that not only make same-sex relationships or wearing non-gender conforming clothing illegal, but actively seek out LGBT people for arrest, have extreme jail sentences or flogging as penalties, or criminalize support for LGBT rights.

In such countries, invoking a company’s nondiscrimination protections might require LGBT employees to out themselves to company officers in a way that could expose them to arrest or extortion. That could mean policies on paper have little effect on the ground, or might force companies into difficult confrontations with local governments. Read more via Buzzfeed 

Asia: Global HIV targets ‘could be derailed’ by hook up apps

A new UN report cites the boom in hook-up apps as one of the drivers of a worsening HIV epidemic in Asia. The report found that HIV infections had surged among young people, aged 10-19, in the Asia-Pacific region. 

Analysing data from Thailand, it notes: “Bangkok’s intensifying HIV epidemic among young MSM is largely a result of extensive sexual risk-taking, a higher number of partners, overall increased biological vulnerability through unprotected anal sex with an HIV positive partner, low uptake of HIV testing, and an earlier age of first sex – frequently in the low to mid-teens.

“The explosion of smartphone gay dating apps has expanded the options for casual spontaneous sex as never before – mobile app users in the same vicinity (if not the same street) can locate each other and arrange an immediate sexual encounter with a few screen touches.” Read more via PinkNews 

Grindr and World AIDS Day 2015

When we created Grindr for Equality, we envisioned education and support for sexual health in addition to our work for LGBTQ rights. Today, World AIDS Day, we proudly recommit to these efforts, which exist in a four-pronged plan for your health. In the latter half of 2015, we took a deep dive into the third piece of this plan, as we sought to understand our users’ experience with pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP.

So along with our partners at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation (SFAF) and with help from the Center for Disease Control and the Gilead science team, we fielded a survey and heard from Grindr users who shared their experiences. We’re very excited here to be able to share a little bit of what we found.  Read more via Grindr

Grindr and other hook-up apps offer free adverts to HIV testing service

Three dating apps popular with gay and bisexual men – Grindr, Hornet and Planet Romeo – have announced that they are to host free advertising to promote a new, mobile-optimized  European HIV Test Finder. 

The test finder was devised by Aidsmap and lists over 2,000 HIV testing centers and clinics in all 28 EU countries. The initiative has been organized by a pan-country group of HIV organizations, including Terrence Higgins Trust in the UK, Soak Aids in the Netherlands and RSFL (Sweden), the European Centre of Disease Prevention, among others.

Dr Andrew Amato-Gauci, Head of the ECDC Programme on HIV/AIDS, STI and viral hepatitis said in a statement: ‘Across Europe, 47 per cent of newly reported HIV cases are diagnosed late although we know that those tested early are a lot less likely to pass the virus on to others because of both lower infectivity when on treatment and changes in sexual and drug injecting behavior.

‘Whether on your computer or on your mobile phone, with the European HIV Test Finder it will only take you a few seconds to locate a testing site near you – wherever you are in Europe.” Read more via Gay Star News 

Is your fav vacation spot Paradise or Persecution for LGBT people?

Can you tell heaven from hell? It's not all palm trees and blue seas for local LGBT people. Take the quiz yourself and help improve the lives of LGBT people. 

The quality of the local nightlife, museums and beaches matters more to people thinking of a holiday abroad than whether their hotel waiter is likely to be sentenced to death or imprisoned for being gay.
That’s a finding from an opinion poll by an international HIV charity ahead of the launch of an online quiz, ‘Paradise or Persecution’ , which aims to raise awareness of the more than 75 countries in the world that criminalise people on the grounds of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

But a HIV charity thinks people would probably think twice about holidaying in a country that criminalises Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Transgender (LGBT) communities, if they knew the scale of the problem.  More