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Archives for June 2015

Scottish Charity says more needs to be done to make LGBT youth feel safe

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More needs to be done to ensure LGBT young people feel safe in their communities, according to a charity.

LGBT Youth Scotland welcomed an increase in the reporting of hate crimes but called for further moves to help lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people understand their rights and report discrimination.
In a new report based on a survey of LGBT people aged 13 to 25, the group said they still encounter harassment in public spaces and not all are aware of what constitutes a criminal act under hate crime legislation and how to report it.
Half said they were aware of their rights, while a similar proportion (53%) said they would feel confident in reporting a crime they experienced to the police.
Among transgender young people the figure dropped to 48%, while bisexual women were the least likely to feel confident reporting a hate crime at 46%.
Just under 49% of LGBT young people said they felt safe and supported by the legal system, falling to 40% for the transgender group.
Just over half (51%) of transgender young people said they felt safe using public transport.
Chief executive Fergus McMillan said: “In Scotland, we are fortunate to have strong hate crime legislation that is inclusive of transgender identities yet the safety report shows a gap in knowledge and confidence for transgender young people in particular.
“When young people know about their rights, and have confidence in the process, they are more likely to be willing to report.
“An increase in reported crimes since the introduction of the legislation is certainly positive, yet more must be done to ensure that LGBT young people feel safe in their communities, understand their rights and how to report discrimination and harassment, and have the confidence to report.”
The group has recommended that campaigns, activities and lesson plans be developed for use in schools with specific reference to hate crime.
The report was based on a total of 273 responses to its online survey.

LGBT Support groups in Northern Ireland

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Editorial:  Support for LGBT is important, and in Northern Ireland we are lucky to have both Cara Friend, Rainbow Project and many others – the following link will take you to a holding page which has links to all of of our LGBT Support Groups in Northern Ireland,  Don’t be frightened of contacting them, everyone is friendly and is there to help you.  Being gay, lesbian, transgender or bisexual is normal, and life is wonderful.

 
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These Celebrities Are Taking Selfies To Raise Awareness Of An LGBT Helpline

The London Lesbian and Gay Switchboard is Britain’s leading support service for LGBT+ people. Celebrities, along with members of the public, are posting pictures to promote it.

posted on Jun. 12, 2015, at 11:28 a.m.

Patrick Strudwick

Patrick Strudwick

BuzzFeed LGBT Editor, UK

Click Buzz Feed and see who they are!

 

Why I am walking for gay rights

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 BY KYLIE NOBLE – 12 JUNE 2015

Tomorrow, those in Northern Ireland who care for human rights and equality for all, will take to the streets of Belfast at 2.30pm from Art College Gardens, in a call for same-sex marriage.

The rally is being organised by Amnesty Northern Ireland and the Rainbow Project.
The Assembly has voted down the introduction of same-sex marriage rights four times.
Four times Stormont has told our LGBT citizens that their love is lesser simply because of the sexuality they are born with.
Unionist politicians most ardently oppose same-sex marriage.
In the last vote, held on April 27, out of 53 MLAs who designate as unionist, only four voted in support.
The passing of same-sex marriage rights in the Republic has increased pressure on our politicians.
Yet, unionists must remember that it was the United Kingdom which led the way, with England and Wales passing legislation in favour of same-sex marriage in 2013. Scotland followed suit in 2014.
I grew up on a farm in Co Fermanagh, in a unionist family.
I understand that the Church has a massive influence on many unionist politicians on this matter.

I never thought much about LGBT rights until I started at Queen’s University in Belfast.

I listened in horror and anger to the accounts of what my LGBT friends have gone through; bullying, self-harm, suicide attempts, depression, having to hide their sexuality from their family.
Several of these friends come from unionist families.
Some of them are becoming more open to a united Ireland due to the recent referendum in the south.
Many unionist politicians fear supporting same-sex marriage will lose them votes.
That may be true for older voters, but they are already losing votes among my generation.
There are many young people from across Northern Ireland who believe our interests are better served in being part of the United Kingdom, but they aspire to an inclusive and fair United Kingdom, in which LGBT citizens are equal.

  • Kylie Noble is a former editor of The Gown, the independent student newspaper at Queen’s University, and an alumna of the Washington Ireland Program of Service and Leadership

Yes, England has openly gay footballers. And it's totally irrelevant

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England is obsessed with footballers WAGs and now the Women’s World Cup has sparked an interest in HABs (yep, that’s husbands and boyfriends). But, says Radhika Sanghani, it’s not so easy to slap labels on the women’s game

Casey Stoney and Megan Harris

England footballer Casey Stoney with her partner Megan Harris Photo: Rex

11:00AM BST 13 Jun 2015

It’s hard to ignore England’s obsession with WAGs. Every time the World Cup rolls around, the media and the public can’t get enough of our footballers’ wives and girlfriends, with their glamorous outfits, manicured talons and coiffed manes.

WAG-mania seemed to start with the TV series Footballers Wives (RIP). But it really went mainstream during the 2006 World Cup, and at every tournament since, WAG-watching has basically become a spectator sport.
So it’s no big surprise that this year, the Women’s World Cup has sparked a similar interest in the England team’s HABs (yep, that’s husbands and boyfriends).
HABs have already made the headlines, and there’s even a Twitter account dedicated to “the husbands, boyfriends and partners of female athletes.”
Unsurprisingly it’s called @Sports_HABS and for the next month, it has dedicated itself to tweeting about the Women’s World Cup and the best HABs around.

There’s just one tiny little thing – not all of England’s women team have HABs. Some of them are single, and some of them have girlfriends or wives.
This is something that football has not traditionally been open to – in the men’s game anyway. There are hardly any openly gay male footballers at international level, and it was only last year that a Premier League footballer came out as gay for the first time.
Thomas Hitzlsperger, a German former West Ham United player, revealed his sexuality to “move the discussion about homosexuality among professional sportspeople forwards.”
Before him, the most high profile footballer to come out in Britain was Justin Fashanu, who suffered years of homophobic abuse before he took his own life in 1998, at the age of 37.
Thomas Hitzlsperger came out last year (Getty images)
The Women’s World Cup is now throwing a spotlight on just how backwards men’s football can be when it comes to homosexuality.
Outsports estimates there are 17 women involved in this year’s tournament, who are either gay or bisexual – compared to the handful in the Men’s World Cup.
England has two openly gay players, Lianne Sanderson and former captain, Casey Stoney, 33, who came out last year and revealed she was in a relationship with former team-mate Megan Harris (the couple now have twins together).
Lianne Sanderson is openly gay (Getty Images)
Homosexuality is not taboo in the women’s game. It is, quite rightly, seen as entirely irrelevant to the football they play.
Many of women who have come out have spoken about how “positive” the experience has been for them.
It’s a far cry to the men’s game. Only last year Roy Hodgson revealed he had no idea what LGBT stood for (it’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans), and Arsene Wenger said: “[Tackling homophobia] is a [value] here maybe we are a bit behind and we have to work on it, of course.”
There is a lot that needs to change in the men’s game before players can come out as confidently as their female counterparts; from managerial attitudes to acceptance from fans.
But terms such as WAG don’t help either.
They might be three seemingly harmless letters, but I’d argue it’s unconscious homophobia. What’s worse, I’ve been using it for years without a second thought.

But the absurdity of the HABs label in the context of the Women’s World Cup has proved just how outdated these terms – and our views – really are. Not only are we ignoring the real stars of the game by focusing on their partners, we’re making assumptions that aren’t just blind but offensive.
It’s why this World Cup, I’m steering clear of all three-letter acronyms. Who’s with me?

Tylenol hire out gay Oscar winner Dustin Lance Black to shoot TV Ad

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By The Gay UK, Jun 13 2015 06:00PM
Many forward thing major corporations are getting far more inclusive in their advertising these days, and US drug company Johnson & Johnson went one further by hiring out gay Academy Award winner Dustin Lance Black to shoot their latest campaign for Tylenol.
It features a same-sex prom couple and two gay dads and has a voiceover that declares, “Family isn’t defined by who you love, but how.” Manoj Raghunandanan, Senior Director of Marketing for Johnson and Johnson’s McNeil Consumer Healthcare, told Advertising Age that the ad was representative of his company’s commitment to celebrating how “families look and feel different [now] than they did before.”
Here’s a sneak preview of it before it is launched on American TV later this month.

LGBT Books in the wider Community

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Editorial:  I was sent the information on this LGBT archive for interest, and to also allow our readers who travel to Indianapolis to schedule time to visit such a wonderful resource.  

For me what is interesting is that the population of Indianapolis was calculated to be 852,866 (2013), whilst the population of 333,871 at the 2015 census.  From my research in the local libraries, I would hazard a guess that we proably have less than 50 items which be classified as LGBT; and indeed some 4 or 5 years ago I was at a Pride event held by UNISON about the dearth of material in our school libraries – at that time there was one, yes one, gay book in school libraries in Northern Ireland.

I would also hazard a guess that things will not have improved, indeed the indications are that our school libraries are being mothballed, and our Northern Ireland library service is under pressure to cut back again!

Indianapolis’ Chris Gonzalez Library and Archives

by Paul
 
Indianapolis’s Chris Gonzalez Library and Archives is the unofficial home of the city’s rich and relatively unknown LGBT history. with a collection of almost 10,000 items which have mostly been collected by Michael Bohr, pictured.
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Michael Bohr | Timothy Bella | 15070

Back in the ’60s, when I first started collecting gay books, it was very hard to find this stuff. You’d find two or three titles maybe in six months. It didn’t matter how good it was. You picked it up because that’s all there was.

The collection is named after Chris Gonzalez, whose  family threw out photos of the 1970s local LGBT scene that he had taken after he died. “His family just trashed all of it,” Bohr says.
The collection includes mementos of the Celebration on the Circle event in 1990, which was a turning point for Indianapolis’ gay community.
This is the poster from the first pride celebration on [Monument] Circle. Doing pride on the Circle was a way of stating that the gay community was here and that we had a presence in the city. Before it was done on the Circle, pride celebrations were small banquet affairs done out of the public eye.
At one time, after dark the only people on the Circle were hustlers. There was a police presence trying to drive people off the Circle. The pride celebrations were a way of taking back the Circle as a public space for everybody. You could be on the Circle and be gay without being harassed by the police. Monument Circle is the big circle of Indianapolis. Doing something on Monument Circle is saying, “Hey, pay attention to us. We’re here, and we’re a presence. We’re not going away.”
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Timothy Bella | 15071

Northern Ireland: 20,000 March In Favour Of Gay Marriage

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Campaigners attend a rally in Belfast to show their support for marriage equality

Campaigners attend a rally in Belfast to show their support for marriage equality

Belfast demo seeks equality for LGBT people

by Mike Hamilton
in Belfast
ABOUT 20,000 gay rights supporters marched through Belfast city centre on Saturday to demand that the legal recognition of same-sex marriage be extended to Northern Ireland.
The protest wound its way through the main shopping district to Belfast City Hall, where a large open-air rally took place.
The action was jointly organised by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU), Amnesty International and the Rainbow Project.
Participants included a wide range of individuals and movements, including LGBT groups, trade unions, charities, human and civil rights organisations, churches, political parties and pressure groups.
The huge turnout surprised even the organisers, who were forced to make repeated calls for participants to use all available space at both sides of the staging to allow thousands more people in to hear from a variety of invited guests.
Among the speakers was ICTU LGBT committee chairman Daire Toner, who said: “I dream one day of getting married, but my dreams are shattered by the laws that govern this state.
“Even if I got married elsewhere, a flight or a train journey would make it invalid.”
Rainbow Project director John O’Doherty added: “The numbers here say it all. We want our voice heard. We need to go out and tell our story, play our part in a new Northern Ireland. They can’t ignore us any more.”
Amnesty International Northern Ireland director Patrick Corrigan put it simply: “All people are equal — the state should protect all people equally.”
In 2005, while under direct rule by Westminster, Northern Ireland became the first part of the UK to introduce civil partnerships, but since the power-sharing institutions were restored at Stormont, the fight for equality has gone into reverse gear.
The most obvious manifestation of this was an attempt to introduce a “conscience clause” amendment to equality law which would have allowed firms owned by people of faith to discriminate against LGBT customers.
Members of the Northern Irish Assembly proposed motions supporting equality in civil marriage four times in the last parliament.
But, each time, the Democratic Unionist Party blocked it, using a device known as a “petition of concern,” which requires majorities on both the nationalist and unionist benches.
Further links:

 

Northern Ireland Political Leaders Missing In Action

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Belfast Book Festival THOMAS HITZLSPERGERThe Belfast Book Festival has just finished another brilliantly successful week of over 100 events.  For myself the highlight was meeting Thomas Hitzlsperger  a former footballer who has played for Aston Villa, Stuttgart (where he won the Bundesliga title), Lazio and West Ham United; who following his retirement  became the most high-profile footballer to come out, and in an interview to Die Zeit, he stated he wanted “to further the debate about homosexuality among sports professionals”.  His interview with Denise Watson was funny, enlightening and for someone who says he was late in coming to reading books, he came across as a very articulate and educated man, who is interested in being a wonderful role model to LGBT youth and others.

My second highlight was the presentation given by Stephen Connolly on Forrest Reid (born 24 June 1875, Belfast, Ireland; d. 4 January 1947, Warrenpoint, County Down, Northern Ireland) – a forgotten author from our shores.  A man who as known by a wide and high circle of friends and colleagues during his time, but whose books are difficult to find, yet when you do read one you want to read the others.  They books are full of wit and humour, brilliant descriptive pieces in relation to Belfast during his time.
…Though his books are not necessarily well known today, he has been labelled ‘the first Ulster novelist of European stature’, and comparisons have been drawn between his owncoming of age novel of Protestant Belfast, Following Darkness (1912), and James Joyce‘s seminal novel of growing up in Catholic Dublin, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man(1924). Reid’s fiction, which often uses submerged narratives to explore male beauty and love, can be placed within the historical context of the emergence of a more explicit expression of homosexuality in English literature in the 20th century...
Some of his books are being reprinted by Valancourt Books and can be purchased here:
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EDITORIAL:   Whilst I loved the Book Festival, what was disappointing was the level of support from our political leaders, namely our Ministers, MLAs, and Councillors, who all appear to have been missing in action.  This is a world renown event, has world renown artists in attendance but a source has indicated to me that to their knowledge not one of them has made an appearance; this means that our Westminster MPs (18 as at 2010), our Stormont MLAs (108) and our Belfast Councillors (60 as at 2014) were all to busy to support what is a prime event both for Belfast and Northern Ireland, but also in the eyes of tourists and internationally.

Books Are Important, Awesome, they provide access to the world to our children, to those who are ill or infirm, and a method of escapism – so why do our leaders fail to understand this and support this event?

3 years in prison just for being gay

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Imagine: 3 years in prison just for being gay. That’s what could happen to Lahcen and Mohsine, two Moroccan gay men. They were arrested while taking a photo next to a monument in Rabat. The police said they were violating “public modesty” by standing too close together.
Their trial is in 3 days, where it’s likely they’ll get a 3-year jail term: last month some other Moroccans were given 3-year sentences, just for being gay. All Out’s Moroccan partner, the Aswat Collective, is fighting for Lahcen and Mohsine’s freedom and have urgently asked us to help.
A huge global outcry, just before their trial on Tuesday could be a game-changer for Lahcen and Mohsine. The Moroccan authorities are investing in the tourist industry to attract visitors from across the world – they can’t risk the damage to their reputation of a massive global petition.
Just 3 days left to speak out that being gay is not a crime. Sign and share the petition now, to build a giant call for Lahcen and Mohsine to be freed:
go.allout.org/en/a/lahcen-mohsine/
Lahcen and Mohsine were sightseeing around Rabat on 4 June when they were arrested. Mohsine doesn’t live in the city, so Lahcen had showed him several tourist spots. They were taking photos at the Hassan Tower when they were arrested.
Since their arrest, Lahcen and Mohsine’s full names and pictures were leaked to national media in Morocco. Hate rallies have been organised outside their families’ homes and the police haven’t tried to protect their families from harassment.
Call for Lahcen and Mohsine to be freed: go.allout.org/en/a/lahcen-mohsine/
Being gay is still illegal in Morocco, even though the 2011 constitution bars discrimination on any grounds. The Aswat Collective is campaigning for the Moroccan government to abolish the article of the penal code – Article 489 – which outlaws homosexuality.
In April, 120,000 All Out members got behind five Chinese women who were arrested for campaigning for LGBT rights and women’s equality. We joined a global outcry of journalists and world leaders and all five women were released! Then in May, more than 2,000 of us chipped in donations to safely rehouse three gay and trans refugees fleeing ISIS. Now let’s help free Lahcen and Mohsine.
Add your name now: go.allout.org/en/a/lahcen-mohsine/
Thanks for going All Out,
Andre, Guillaume, Jessica, Oscar, Rose and the rest of the All Out team.
P.S. All Out depends on small donations from members. Every individual donation goes to powering groundbreaking global campaigns. It also means governments and corporations can’t tell us what to do because we won’t take their money. Will you help keep us strong? Click here now to chip in: go.allout.org/en/a/ps-donate

In 3 days, two Moroccan men could get 3-year jail terms – just for being gay.

Join a global outcry to free Lahcen and Mohsine.

SIGN

Hypocrisy Strikes Again

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Editorial:  How often in the recent past have we had pastors, reporters and people in power rant and rave about gays and the sin they do, and then we discover they are either closet gay themselves or have led adulterous lives.  Who is doing the most harm I wonder?

Reprinted from  THURSDAY, MAY 21, 2015

Michigan Grindr pastor urged gay teen to kill himself, says mom

The closeted father of five told a gay 17-year-old he was going to hell, so he might as well go now

Michigan Grindr pastor urged gay teen to kill himself, says mom

Michigan Grindr pastor urged gay teen to kill himself, says mom
Jennifer Kish, Tyler Kish (WNEM)
The recently outed anti-gay pastor Matthew Makela is coming under fire not just for his hypocrisy but, according to the mother of one of his parishioners, he encouraged her gay son that since he was going to hell anyway, he might as well kill himself.
After Queerty reported earlier this week that the married Midland, Michigan pastor used the Grindr networking app to chat with, and solicit sex from, other men. St. John’s Lutheran Church, where Makela worked until his resignation on Monday, issued a statement urging people not to read any more about Makela or his “sin.”
“The details of sin that have been kept confidential are being posted online by those who seek to do harm to the Makela family and to St. John’s,” the statement said. “This is taking an already difficult situation and making it even more painful. I write this to you to warn you that you may be confronted with the details of the sin, and to remind you that sin is never pretty.”
The writer of the Queerty article disagreed, claiming that “[i]f Makela made even one LGBT kid at St. John’s ‘Christ-based’ elementary school, their parents, friends, family or anyone who ever stepped foot in the church feel like being true to yourself is shameful (and it seems all too likely that he did), then we’re glad to share his hypocrisy with the world.”
According to Jennifer Kisk, Makela did far worse than make his LGBT parishioners uncomfortable — he actively urged them to kill themselves. As WNEM’s David Custer reported, Makela told then 17-year-old Tyler Kish — who was suffering from depression at the time — that if he insisted on embracing a homosexual lifestyle, he might as well commit the mortal sin of suicide because he was already ticketed for hell.
“If he’s going to hell for being gay then he might as well commit suicide,” Kish said Makela advised her son. He also, she alleged, went on social media to berate her for remaining supportive of her son after he came out to her.
Watch Custer’s interview with the Kishes below via WNEM.
WNEM TV 5 – CLICK THE LINK FOR THE VIDEO