UK: Bisexuals still face discrimination from the National Health Services and LGBT services

With the legalisation of same sex marriage in Britain and Ireland given the green light over the past few years, it’s easy to assume attitudes toward the LGBT community are becoming more accepting. Yet despite this, a portion of bisexual people are still experiencing discrimination.

Almost half of bisexuals claim to have experienced biphobic comments while accessing mainstream services, a new report launched by the Equality Network found. Biphobia was most commonly experienced within NHS and LGBT services. The research is said to be the first UK-wide research report on bisexual people’s experience of services. The study revealed 66% respondents felt they had to pass as straight and 42% felt they had to pass as gay or lesbian while accessing services.

More than a quarter of those asked claimed to have experienced prejudice even when accessing LGBT services. One respondent reported they had “heard lots of negative comments about bisexual people and dismissal of the need to include bisexual people”. Another respondent reported being told that “bisexuals are ‘confused’ and not as good as ‘real gays’”. Read More

South Africa: African academics challenge homophobic laws

A Western import. Unnatural. Contagious. Un-African. All of these arguments and more have been invoked to support the numerous laws criminalizing homosexuality in Africa. But now African academics have used scientific evidence to argue against such laws and to urge African nations to abandon them.

In a report published by the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf), the academics, most of whom are scientists, make the case that laws criminalizing homosexuality have no basis in science and hamper efforts to prevent and treat HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (see go.nature.com/q3rr4k).

Partly because those arguing in favour of criminalising sexual and gender diversity have made explicit appeals to science, this report examines the extent to which science supports any of the arguments that proponents of these new laws make. Drawing on recent scientific evidence and, where possible, on systematic reviews, the report seeks to provide an up-to-date overview of the state of the current biological, socio-psychological, and public health evidence and assess how this supports, or contests, the key arguments made in favour of new laws. Read More

Russia: Police hold gay activists at unauthorised rally, including Pride parade organizer

Russian police held around half a dozen activists for attempting to stage an unauthorised gay pride rally in central Moscow, AFP journalists witnessed. Police officers detained the activists and loaded them into waiting vans as around 30 nationalist counter-demonstrators in camouflage clothing and football fans hurled eggs at the activists and attacked them.

Several religious counter-demonstrators were also detained by police as a large crowd of Russian and international journalists looked on.

"Arrested and beaten at 10th Moscow Pride. We are arrested! They probably broke my left hand finger," leading gay rights activist Nikolai Alexeyev wrote on Twitter, posting a photo of himself in detention. Alexeyev, a prominent LGBT activist and lawyer and main organizer of Saturday's gay pride parade in Moscow was sentenced to 10 days in jail for "disobeying police orders" by a city court Monday. Read More

US: Transgender people are more visible than ever, but it's still legal to discriminate against them in most states

Caitlyn Jenner's Vanity Fair cover was met with an outpouring of love and acceptance. Though Jenner's coming out marks a huge moment for trans visibility, daily discrimination and violence is still the norm for thousands of transgender Americans. The rate of violence against trans women, especially trans women of color, is alarming -- according to a 2013 report by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, 72% of victims of anti-LGBTQ homicide were transgender women, and 89% of victims were people of color. 

It's not surprising there are so many health and safety issues in the trans community -- in many places there aren't laws to protect them from housing or workplace discrimination, and hate crime legislation is nonexistent or doesn't include trans people as a protected group. Read More

Cuba: Murders of gays raise question of hate crimes

During the events surrounding the annual celebration of IDAHOT in Cuba, it emerged that a young transsexual had recently been killed in the city of Pinar del Río near the western tip of this Caribbean island nation. While efforts to combat discrimination against LGBT are stepped up in Cuba, this segment of the population remains vulnerable to harassment and violence – and even death.

Violent crime is generally surrounded by silence in this island nation of 11.2 million people, and killings of LGBT individuals are no exception. The 1987 penal code does not specifically recognise hate crimes, or sexual orientation and gender identity as aggravating circumstances in murders.

National Centre for Sex Education (CENESEX) said the number of murders of MSM in 2013 and 2014 was high. At that time the issue came to the forefront because of the deaths of two high-profile openly gay cultural figures, who died in strange circumstances, according to activists. Read More

US: Transgender Woman Stabbed To Death In Philadelphia

London Chanel, a 21-year-old transgender woman, was stabbed to death in North Philadelphia. Chanel is the eighth transgender woman of color (the 10th over all) killed in the United States this year — a trend that anti-violence advocates have called an epidemic. And as in many of the cases, Chanel was misgendered in early reports.  Read More

US: Wisconsin Trans Teen Bullied for Femininity Dies by Suicide

Just days after teen Cameron Langrell announced to friends and classmates online that she identified as a transgender girl, switching her Facebook gender identifier to "female," the 15-year-old took her own life.

The artistic freshman had faced incessant bullying at Horlick High School. Now, Cameron's parents are calling on officials to be more proactive about bullying to stave off the kind of harassment their child endured. "There needs to be more within the school, not just some outside resource," Jamie Olender, Cameron's mother. 

Meanwhile, Langrell's death is the tenth reported suicide of a trans youth in the U.S. this year, in an "epidemic" that trans advocates say sees far more casualties than make headlines.  An additional nine trans people have been murdered since January.  Read More

Turkey: Two trans women brutally attacked in Istanbul

Two trans women sex workers were attacked on the same night. Migel was attacked in her own apartment by a group of men. She was brutally injured with deep cuts on several parts of her body. The same night, Işıl was attacked by a group of 5 men. She was assaulted and her jaw was broken. 

Attacks on trans women are increasing. Last week there were 4 attacks on trans women sex workers in 3 different cities (Istanbul, Izmir and Kocaeli). Read More 

Pakistan: Four transgenders killed in week

Three transgenders were shot dead and six other people were injured after two gunmen ambushed them in the bustling Rialto Chowk on Saturday night.

Ahmed alias Tania, who was among the injured, in her statement told the police that she along with some other transgenders were standing at the corner of a street in Chamanzar Colony when two motorcycle riders brandishing guns reached there and opened fire on them. As a result, two of the transgenders died on the spot and five other people, including three transgenders, injured. 

On May 5, the decomposed body of a transgender was found from a greenbelt at Koral. Police said the deceased, Falak Sher alias Bijli, a native of Bahawalpur, was strangled. The motive behind the murder could not be ascertained.  Read More

Gambia: President Yahya Jammeh Threatens To Slit The Throats Of Gay People

Gambia's notorious dictator Yahya Jammeh recently intensified his anti-homosexual rhetoric, threatening to slit the throats of gay men living in the small West African nation while seeming to claim that the West could do nothing to stop him.

"If you do it [in the Gambia] I will slit your throat — if you are a man and want to marry another man in this country and we catch you, no one will ever set eyes on you again, and no white person can do anything about it," he said to a crowd in the town of Farafeni as he spoke about fostering a healthy atmosphere for the country's youth.

The US and the European Union have both slashed aid to the country in the last year, citing general concerns over continued human rights abuses.  Read More 

France: Is Homophobia Really on the Rise in France?

France may have taken the historic step of legalising gay marriage last year, but it appears the landmark social reform came at a cost. The number of reported homophobic acts increased in 2013 by a staggering 78%, according to SOS Homophobie, a homophobia hotline and LGBTQ defense organization. 

The cases are striking to Americans because of the widely held fallacy that France is a tolerant society. This is not entirely the case. Religious diversity is tolerated as long as minorities remain quiet. “Laïcité,” the French version of secularism, favors Catholicism and is often used as a cudgel against the Muslim (and in some cases the Jewish) minority.

If there are more reports of homophobia, it is partly because of more homophobic incidents. But it is also because of more reporting of those incidents. For many years French LGBTQ people bought into the notion that France was tolerant. The virulence of the attacks on homosexuals during marriage equality was a revelation to these gays, as were the visible physical assaults on gay men. Read More 

Egypt: How distaste of LGBT people in Egypt has turned into state-sponsored persecution

Whenever protests are planned and the Egyptian tanks roll into Cairo’s main squares, Mariam takes a longer route to work, the one that avoids the police checkpoints. Her ID carries the name she was born with (a boy’s name) and a number that signals her original gender (male). These details are not easily changed, and they could get her arrested.

“Last time I got stopped, I panicked and pretended I was going to a fancy-dress party. The officers made fun of me but it worked and they let me go,” she says. The policemen ridiculed her for a bit, and called her names, but she played along and once they got bored they let her pass. With dozens of members of the LGBT community in prison on so-called charges of “debauchery”, she does not want to risk it again.

Being gay or transgender is not illegal in Egypt but since the military pushed out the unpopular Islamist president Mohammed Morsi in the summer of 2013, the country has been engaged in a fierce crackdown. Human rights workers say at least 150 LGBT people have been arrested. Read More