“The degree of liberty or tyranny in any government is in large degree a reflection of the relative determination of the subjects to be free and their willingness and ability to resist efforts to enslave them.”
― Gene Sharp, From Dictatorship to Democracy
Category Archives: News
Justice Denied: Steven Kabuye Remains Committed to Human Rights Fight Months After Horrific Attack
“The attack on Kabuye goes against human rights. Every person deserves respect, dignity, and safety, no matter their gender identity or sexual orientation. This is non-negotiable. We cannot compromise on protecting the rights and freedoms of each individual.” – Kenya Human Rights Commission
“Like You’re Praying”: The Art of Humiliation and History of Forced Anal Exams
“I want the exams stopped, the practice discredited, the awards and certificates stripped from the doctors’ walls, the practitioners to lose their reputations for dispassionate expertise and sample a small measure of the humiliation they have inflicted on countless men. The doctors who do this must be recognized as torturers.” – Scott Long – When Doctors Torture: The Anus and the State in Egypt and Beyond
Entrapment: Middle East and North Africa No Safe Place for LGBT Online Dating
“The idea of a licentious West that many Arabs hold today closely mirrors the view that Europeans had of the Middle East a couple of centuries or more ago.”
― Brian Whitaker, Unspeakable Love: Gay and Lesbian Life in the Middle East
No Laughing Matter: Zambia’s Anti-LGBT Campaign Takes Serious Turn
“As is often the case, an individual who has been racially oppressed may be blind that the same mechanisms of exclusion and denigration are at work in gender oppression.”
― Chantal Zabus
Hateful East Africa: Burundi President Joins Regional Leaders to Declare War on LGBTQIA+
“In the society of humans, what is normal and what is not, is defined by not the reality or the truth whatsoever. It is defined by the society’s innate knacks and beliefs.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Either Civilized or Phobic: A Treatise on Homosexuality
No Safe Harbor: UK’s Rwanda Asylum Plan a Danger to LGBTQIA+ Migrants
“If I say that I’m educated and was jobless in Dhaka, that I want to work here, build myself a healthy, beautiful life, the kind of life that everyone dreams of, they’d just throw me out of the country. Political asylum they may just allow, but economical asylum – never!”
― Taslima Nasrin, French Lover
Violent Wakeup Call: Brutal Transphobic Attack Highlights Vulnerability of LGBTQIA+ People in Namibia
“There are few things more dangerous to a transgender woman than the risk of a straight man not totally comfortable in his sexuality or masculinity realizing he is attracted to her.”
― Sarah McBride, Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality
Ugandan Human Rights Activist Suffers Horrific Homophobic Attack
“As we wait for the Bill to come into force, . Amnesty International urges the international community to urgently put pressure on the Ugandan government to protect the rights of LGBTI persons in the country. We stand in solidarity with Ugandan LGBTI communities, and all Ugandans affected by this hateful legislation.”- Flavia Mwangovya, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director
Impasse: Ghana’s First Cardinal and Bishop’s Conference Break on LGBTQIA+ Rights
“Lesbian affairs were virtually universal among unmarried Akan women, sometimes continuing after marriage. Whenever possible, the women purchased extra-large beds to accommodate group sex sessions involving perhaps half-a-dozen women” – David Greenberg -Professor and Historian
Welcome Change: Vatican’s Move to Bless Same-Sex Couples a Sign of Inclusivity Push by Pontiff
“On the outside, they present themselves as righteous, as good: they like to be seen when they pray and when they fast, when they give alms. [But] it is all appearance and in their hearts there is nothing … They put make-up on their souls, they live on make-up: holiness is make-up for them”
― Frédéric Martel, In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy
Dangerous Disinformation: Sex-ed Seminar Encourages Anti-LGBT Discrimination in China
Gay men who have sex with men are disproportionately impacted by the HIV epidemic. In 2019, the risk of acquiring HIV was 26 times higher for gay men and other men who have sex with men than for the rest of the population. In 2019, 23 percent of new HIV infections were among gay men and other men who have sex with men. In western and central Europe, North America, Latin America, and Asia and the Pacific, that figure has risen to more than 40 percent.
– UNAIDS Human Rights Fact Sheet 2021
The Erdoğan Solution: Gender and Sexual Minorities Targets in Turkish Culture War Battle
Imagine being on holiday in one of the world’s most beautiful and historic countries, one that you have longed to visit for as long as you can remember. While asking for directions from police officers, you are placed under arrest. You have unwittingly stumbled into a sweep. The reason for your arrest? You look Gay!Continue reading “The Erdoğan Solution: Gender and Sexual Minorities Targets in Turkish Culture War Battle”
Not a Straight Affair: How Climate Change Affects Gender and Sexual Minorities in S. Asia
“I feel that there is a lack of seriousness. Perhaps world leaders do not realize the urgency of the situation. We have a lot of ideas, but as someone said, ‘ideas without funding is mere hallucination,'” – Imran Khan
Phobia: Spike in Confirmed Mpox Cases Risks a Repeat of COVID Period Social Panic
“Really, however, it is doubtful if this could be called a victory. All that could be said was that the disease seemed to be leaving us as unaccountably as it had come. Our strategy had not changed, but whereas yesterday it had obviously failed, today it seemed triumphant. Indeed one’s chief impression was that the epidemic had called a retreat after reaching all its objectives; it had, so to speak, achieved its purpose.”
― Albert Camus, The Plague
Unity in Diversity: Gay Games to Make Asian Debut in Hong Kong
“It is not about striving to be more – it is about caring for yourself as you are. This, in turn, will always lead to greater resilience and happiness.”
― Tom Daley, Coming Up for Air
A Step Backward: What the Shariat Ruling Means for Pakistan’s Trans Community
A vicious misinformation campaign conflating the rights of transgender people with homosexuality has created a permissive
environment for the challenges to the legislation. In a bid to justify the inclusion of a medical board to “approve” of the
person’s gender , speaking to the media, 17 Mushtaq Ahmed Khan claims that a person should not be able to choose their
gender and must adhere to the gender assigned at birth.18 He went on to claim that instead, these people should seek
“psychological help” – Amnesty International
Slow Start: Japan’s Watered-down LGBTQ Understanding Bill a Step in the Right Direction
“Why do people have to be this lonely? What’s the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?”
― Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart
Foreign & Feared – Chinese CDC’s Monkeypox Advice Sparks Xenophobia and Homophobia
“Our love of lockstep is our greatest curse, the source of all that bedevils us. It is the source of homophobia, xenophobia, racism, sexism, terrorism, bigotry of every variety and hue, because it tells us there is one right way to do things, to look, to behave, to feel, when the only right way is to feel your heart hammering inside you and to listen to what its timpani is saying.”
― Anna Quindlen
Phoenix Rising – Sri Lanka’s Queer Community Anticipates Penal Code Change
“I was able to leave the constraints of myself and ascend into another, more brilliant, more beautiful self, a self to whom this day was dedicated, and around whom the world, represented by my cousins putting flowers in my hair, draping the palu, seemed to revolve. It was a self magnified, like the goddesses of the Sinhalese and Tamil cinema, larger than life; and like them, like the Malini Fonsekas and the Geetha Kumarasinghes, I was an icon, a graceful, benevolent, perfect being upon whom the adoring eyes of the world rested.”
― Shyam Selvadurai, Funny Boy
Piquing Duck 