Mexico: "Miss Gay" 2015 dies after being beaten

A member of the gay and lesbian community of Nayarit, died last Thursday in the town of Ixtlan del Rio, Nayarit, after suffering a tremendous beating by unknown assailants in the town of Etzatlán, according to Jalisco Nayarit portal line.

The young man, who was originally from Ixtlan del Rio, called himself "Paloma" and last year won the title of Miss Gay Nayarit, in an event that was held at the Casino Los Fresnos, Tepic. It was reported officially by more police authorities of Jalisco, Nayarit. Read more via Provincia

Syria: Teenager thrown from roof 'for being gay' - but the ISIS chief spared

Militants of the Islamic State (ISIS) executed a teenage boy by throwing him off a roof in Syria’s eastern city of Deir ez-Zor for being gay, local sources reported. The 15-year-old boy was arrested by ISIS militants on charges of homosexuality. 

“The horrific execution took place in front of a large crowd,” a local media activist and an eyewitness said. An informed source reported that the victim was captured “in the house of an ISIS leader." Media activist Sarai al-Din revealed the boy was accused of homosexual relations with prominent ISIS officer Abu Zaid al-Jazrawi. While the boy was executed, Abu Zaid was expelled to Iraq after being deprived of his position.

According to pro-ISIS sources, the Sharia Court in Deir ez-Zor had demanded the execution of Abu Zaid for being homosexual, but the ISIS top commanders insisted to let him join the battlefronts in Iraq instead, as the group has been recently exposed to heavy losses in battles both in Syria and Iraq.  Read more via ARA 

Fiji: PM says gays should go to Iceland and stay there

Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama has said LGBTI people in the Pacific island nation should go to Iceland and stay there. Bainimarama was responding to Shamima Ali, co-ordinator of the Fiji Women’s Crisis Center, who had called on the government to legalize gay marriage. 

‘Tell Shamima Ali, there will be no same-sex marriage in Fiji,’ he said in a televised interview, ‘Not in her lifetime and not in ours.’ If two women want to marry, ‘they should go and have it done in Iceland and stay and live there.’

Ali condemned Bainimarama’s statements: ‘It’s extreme homophobia and really total disrespect for a community in Fiji.' Read more via Gay Star News

Italy: Treat surrogate parents as sex offenders, says Italian minister

Italy’s interior minister has called for surrogate parents to be treated as sex offenders, as part of a broader campaign against the prime minister’s efforts to grant family rights to same-sex couples.

“We want ‘wombs for rent’ to become a universal crime. And that it is punished with prison. Just as happens for sexual crimes,” Angelino Alfano said.

The minister’s comments outline the fierce debate over family rights under way in Italy as the country prepares to give gay couples legal rights for the first time. The push for same-sex unions and stepchild adoption rights has proved perhaps the greatest challenge in the first two years of Matteo Renzi’s coalition government.

Surrogacy is illegal in Italy and punishable by steep fines and up to two years in prison, although a legal grey area has meant that couples who travel abroad for surrogacy are not prosecuted when they return home. A “family day” held in June brought hundreds of thousands of people to Rome, marching against proposed legal changes and lessons about gay families in schools. Read more via the Guardian 

Lebanon: "As long as they stay away”: Exploring Lebanese attitudes towards sexualities and gender identities

The Gender and Sexuality Resource Center (GSRC) at the Arab Foundation for Freedoms and Equality has the great pleasure to present its two-year nationwide study entitled “As long as they stay away”: Exploring Lebanese attitudes towards sexualities and gender identities.

This study was the first of its kind to provide nationwide attitudinal data on sexuality, alternative sexualities and gender identities, and is the largest of its type, scope and subject in the MENA region. It was designed to fill a serious information gap in advocacy work relating to sexual and gender rights in Lebanon by providing critical and previously unavailable information by measuring and qualifying attitudes towards sexual and gender rights in Lebanon.  Read more via AFEMA

Read the full report "As long as they stay away” here

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This survey constitutes a main deliverable of a project entitled “Lebanese Attitudes towards Private Liberties”. It is designed to fill a serious information gap in advocacy work relating to sexual and gender rights in Lebanon by providing critical and previously unavailable information by measuring and qualifying attitudes towards sexual and gender rights in Lebanon.

With the groundwork knowledge acquired from our activist backgrounds, we had embarked on this project not knowing to what extent Lebanese public attitudes would reflect tolerance and acceptance towards this delicate topic, especially when looking at the national context, not just Beirut. While some results were expected, this project did yield promising and unexpected results on which future advocacy work could be based.

Views on sexuality highlighted the importance of the right to sex for enjoyment, free from coercion, judgment and criminalization. While the Lebanese public primarily saw homosexual and transgender identities as a medical or psychological issue, results consistently and repeatedly point in the direction of general disapproval of the use of violence, punitive actions, and imprisonment. Personal attitudes towards individuals with non-normative sexualities and gender identities ranged from a position of advising, helping and medicating, to a position of avoidance, ostracization and marginalization.

It is no secret that attitudes with regards to sex, sexuality, and sexual and gender minorities in Lebanon have yet to develop towards more equality and inclusivity.
What this first large-scale study in the region suggests, however, is that the Lebanese public’s belief in any individual’s human rights to safety and non-violence is a ground on which we can work towards a more just society.

Vietnam: The archive that celebrates a secret LGBT culture

“This boy – his life is so overwhelming,” Dinh Nhung sighs, handing over a photograph of a teddybear, the stuffing bleeding from its ripped seams. Its 22-year-old owner, whose family would not accept that he is gay, travelled illegally to Russia to work in a sweatshop, but returned after seeing a man shot dead by police in the street.

“When my father was shouting at me, my mother also cut my favourite things,” reads the caption. “She cut this teddy bear on its neck and legs. However, the scissors were not sharp enough. She cut, but not completely.”

“Cut, but not completely” is a thread that runs through many of the stories that Nhung and her colleagues at Hanoi’s Centre for Creative Initiatives in Health and Population (CCIHP) have painstakingly archived since 2009. From love between prisoners in re-education camps, to domestic violence, to the daily hardships borne by sex workers and those living with HIV, the collection is an unflinching account of the struggles and frequent despair experienced by Vietnam’s LGBT community, past and present. But other stories are happier – or, at least, more defiant.  Read more via the Guardian

UK: Transgender prisoners reveal deepening crisis

27 October, barrister Nicholas Wragg told a court that the "clang of a prison door should never be pleasant", but for his client, it was "extraordinarily frightening".  Tara Hudson was in an all-male prison: HMP Bristol - capacity 600.

Wragg told the Bristol Crown Court that prison should have a "sobering effect" on inmates, but for Hudson it was "unrelenting and frightening". That very day, he said, other inmates had taunted her, shouting: "Tara, Tara, show us your tits."

Hudson, a transgender make-up artist who was previously known as Raymond Aaron David, was locked up with men because she didn't have a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC). Prisons assign inmates to facilities based on the gender recorded on their birth certificate, or on a GRC. The certificate alone costs £140, not including the price of medical and psychiatric reports required to obtain it.

Vicky Thompson, 21, and Joanne Latham, 38, didn't have a Gender Recognition Certificate either. Both died in suspected suicides this month while jailed in all-male prisons. Read more via Huffington Post 

Transphobia leads to suicide -- end of story

Since January of this year, a transgender person was murdered somewhere around the globe every 29 hours. Additionally, trans people are statistically at a much greater risk to commit suicide; the rate of suicide in the general population is under 10%, yet within the trans community it is over 40%. Dr. Alex Abramovich, from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, says, "Transphobia leads to suicide. End of story."

Global's 16x9, an investigative newsmagazine television program, aired a poignant piece that is a must watch for everyone--regardless of your thoughts on trans rights. It's available to stream on YouTube. The video highlights some of the many examples in which trans people are demonized, oppressed, and attacked on a daily basis. These attacks are not always quite so overt. 

This way through this crisis is common sense, love, and understanding. "If you go through life and people are continually using the wrong name or the wrong pronoun to refer to you, you start to question your mind. You start to question your own mental health. You start to eventually believe that you aren't real and maybe you shouldn't exist." Dr. Abramovich continues, "When people can't figure you out, they get angry. They're afraid. They get aggressive." Read more via HuffingtonPost 

Kenya: After anti-gay sermons, anti-gay rape and arson

Four men attacked a gay street vendor, raped him, and set his home on fire in West Kenya.

Erik Wasike, 28, an openly gay hawker of vests, socks, sweets and soft drinks, was abducted by the four unidentified men in Bungoma town in west Kenya.The men set Wasike’s house ablaze, destroying it and his furniture. They tied him up and left him unconscious in Lwakhakha village, he said. 

After the rape he was hospitalized for two weeks and needed corrective surgery at Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Teaching and Referral Hospital in Kisumu.

Wasike said his attackers accused him of spreading “the gay gospel” and luring many people into a “demonic denomination.” About three months ago, many Bungoma clergymen launched a preaching campaign against homosexuality, terming it un-Christian, satanic and un-African. Read more via 76 Crimes 

Sweden: Teenagers 'murdered gay man before wrapping snake around his neck and dressing him in women's clothes'

Two teenagers have been accused of murder after allegedly launching a brutal assault on a gay man which was filmed on a mobile phone. The pair of Moroccan refugees, aged 16 and 19, had travelled from their home country to Sweden. They followed a gay man back to his home in Bergsjön after he offered them clothes and food upon hearing they were in need. However after arriving at the apartment the two refugees allegedly beat him to death, police claim. Read more via Mirror

 

Turkey: Gays seeking military exemption no longer need to provide visual proof of their homosexuality

Turkey makes it difficult for potential conscriptees to avoid the draft, generally making exceptions only for those who are sick, disabled or homosexual. To receive an exemption based on their sexuality, men must publicly declare they are gay — a declaration that ensures discrimination will follow them for the rest of their lives. It's either that, or they must successfully hide their gay identity for a year.

As if that isn't bad enough, until last week, to receive the exemption men also had to prove their homosexuality by undergoing nude examinations and submitting photos of themselves engaged in homosexual intercourse.

Last week, however, the military silently amended the most controversial provisions in the regulation. Doctors will now merely observe the behaviors homosexuals display and the verbal declarations they make. In other words, a homosexual can choose to disclose or not to disclose his identity. If he does, this declaration will constitute the sole basis for the doctor's decision. The change represents a major step toward aligning Turkey's military with the norms for basic human rights. 

Pakistan: Officially recognized but publicly shamed

One Friday night earlier this year, a nervous but meticulously made-up crowd of transgender women sat in the upper circle of the smart Al Hamra Arts complex in Lahore, Pakistan. Bored with waiting for the performance to begin, one and then all of them stood up to take in a better view of the surroundings. The rest of the audience gawked at the sight before them: Pakistani transgender women are ordinarily found dancing at tawdry wedding parties or turning tricks. Certainly never as patrons at an upscale theatre.

That night, however, they were to be centre stage, performing "Theesri Dhun" ("Third Tune"), a rare and unique dramatization of real-life transgender stories. With harrowing tales of rape, police brutality and social stigma, it made for sombre viewing.

It also shed a light on Pakistan's complicated and disturbing LGBT rights landscape, where trans people technically enjoy better rights than in many places around the world, but in practice face violence and stigma. Even so, they are worlds ahead of Pakistani gay men, who are outlawed, brutalized and even murdered with no recourse to protection. 

While trans women are the success story amongst LGBT Pakistanis, their counterparts, transgender men — people born biologically female but who identify as male — barely register on the national conscience. Technically they should also be able to register as third gender but none has ever attempted it. Read more via Vice News