December 21, 2007
There has been a recent boon for LGBT people abroad. Uruguay became first Latin American country to legally recognize gay couples.
Uruguay’s Congress legalized civil unions for homosexual couples Tuesday in the first nationwide law of its kind in Latin America.
Under the new law, gay and straight couples will be eligible to form civil unions after living together for five years. They will have rights similar to those granted to married couples on such matters as inheritance, pensions and child custody.
Meanwhile Hungary legalized same-sex domestic partnerships.
Hungary’s parliament passed a law late on Monday that allows same-sex couples to register a civil partnership with many of the rights and obligations of marriage.
Registered couples will have the same rights as married heterosexual couples in inheritance, taxation and other financial matters.
But they will not be allowed to adopt children, unlike married couples.
Most recently in Nepal:
Nepal’s Supreme Court has ordered the government to scrap laws that discriminate against homosexuals.
The court ordered that sexual minorities should be guaranteed the same rights as other citizens.
…..
In their ruling, two Supreme Court judges said: “The government of Nepal should formulate new laws and amend existing laws in order to safeguard the rights of these people.
So what has the USA done for us lately?
They dropped the Hate-crimes bill (a.k.a. Matthew Shepard Act).
“We don’t have the votes,” said one House Democratic aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because conference negotiations on the defense bill were ongoing. “We’re about 40 votes short, not four or six.”
And what about the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA)? That passed, sort of. You see, it doesn’t include protection for transgendered people. Apparently the bigots put up so much of a stink over TG individuals having employment protections that they were nixed from the bill. Of course even ENDA-lite still has to get past GWB so it’s not entirely safe yet.
So as other nations march bravely into the 21st century the USA limps along in a continuous struggle against bigots who fight valiantly to return us to the dark ages.
Posted by: Buffy
Permalink
|
Trackback
|
Category:
Asia,
Employment/ENDA,
Hate Crimes,
Latin America,
Marriage Equality
September 29, 2007
PlanetOut reports:
A 17-year-old Argentine has won a court battle to undergo surgery to become a female, the first decision of its kind involving a minor in Argentina, news reports said Thursday.
Ending a three-year legal battle, a court in the central province of Cordoba authorized the surgery this week.
In Argentina, the surgery requires court approval because of laws against mutilation.
A judge in 2004 initially ruled the teenager must wait until age 21, but the parents appealed and persuaded a court panel, the reports said.
. . .
In the United States, no court permission is necessary but most doctors are hesitant to operate on minors, said Denise Leclair, executive director of the International Foundation for Gender Education in Waltham, Mass.
An August court decision in Brazil required the public health system to pay for sex reassignment surgeries. At least eight other countries, including Canada, have similar policies.
Discuss this story
Posted by: Sapphocrat
Permalink
|
Trackback
|
Category:
Latin America,
Transgender,
Youth
September 9, 2007
Good! ‘Cause Baja is a great
honeymoon destination!
|
|
Newsweek checks the climate of same-sex equality in countries where you’d least expect to find it:
After eight years together, Gilberto Aranda and Mauricio List walked into a wedding chapel in the Mexico City neighborhood of Coyoacán last April and tied the knot in front of 30 friends and relatives. Aranda’s disapproving father was not invited to the springtime nuptials. For the newlyweds, the ceremony marked the fruit of the gay-rights movement’s long struggle to gain recognition in Mexico. The capital city had legalized gay civil unions only the month before. “After all the years of marches and protests,” says Aranda, 50, a state-government official, “a sea change was coming.”
. . .
The sweeping terms of the 2006 Civil Union Act placed South Africa in a select club of nations that have enacted similar laws and that, until last year, included only Canada, Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands. But there are glimmers of change in other nations. China decriminalized sodomy a decade ago and removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in 2001. Police broke up a gay and lesbian festival in Beijing in 2005 but took no action last February against an unauthorized rally in support of legalizing gay marriage. The Chinese Communist Party has established gay task forces in all provincial capitals to promote HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention. And in April a Web site launched a weekly hour-long online program called Connecting Homosexuals with an openly gay host. It is the first show in China to focus entirely on gay issues.
Tolerance, however, by no means spans the globe. Homosexuality remains taboo throughout the greater Middle East. In most of the Far East, laws permitting gay and lesbian civil unions are many years if not decades away. In Latin America, universal acceptance of homosexuality is a long way off. Jamaica is a hotbed of homophobia. Even in Mexico, the first couple to take advantage of Coahuila’s new civil-union statute were fired from their jobs as sales clerks after their boss realized they were lesbians. The new Mexico City law grants same-gender civil unions property and inheritance rights, but not the right to adopt children.
. . .
Tolerance is now the majority, at least among the young. A 2005 poll by the Mitofsky market-research firm found that 50 percent of all Mexicans between the ages of 18 and 29 supported proposals to allow gay marriage…
Discuss this story
Posted by: Sapphocrat
Permalink
|
Trackback
|
Category:
Africa,
Asia,
Canada,
Europe,
Latin America,
Marriage Equality,
Middle East
August 12, 2007
And that’s the extent of our pathetic grasp of Spanish. More to the point:
‘Y Tu Mama Tambien’ Stars Promote Rights
“Y Tu Mama Tambien” stars Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna said a gala dinner they are hosting Saturday will raise money to support human rights and shine light on poverty and injustice in Mexico.
The $300-a-plate meal in the capital will benefit Mexico’s Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights as well as Witness, an organization founded by singer Peter Gabriel that promotes the use of video and film to document human rights abuses.
. . .
Luna and Garcia Bernal, who recently launched the Canana production company, also want to use documentaries to raise awareness about failures of the Mexican judicial system, including the unsolved murders of more than 300 women in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas.
. . .
The actors, who starred in the 2001 road movie “Y Tu Mama Tambien,” have vocally backed other social and political causes such as Mexico City’s new law legalizing gay civil unions.
Discuss this story
Posted by: Sapphocrat
Permalink
|
Trackback
|
Category:
Celebrities,
Latin America,
Movies
