02 Mar 2017 - NPWJ News Digest on LGBTI Rights

Articles

Government announces mandatory sex ed… but LGBT issues are absent
by Pink News, 01 Mar 2017

Education Secretary Justine Greening confirmed today that she would act to make SRE mandatory in all schools. At present, sex ed is only required in local authority-run schools, leaving academies, independents and faith schools free to ignore the subject or to teach a narrow version of SRE. There have been multiple warnings that the system is leading to a lack of basic sex ed among young people, and the government has come under repeated pressure to act on the issue. However in a written statement Ms Greening confirmed: “I am today announcing my intention to put Relationships and Sex Education on a statutory footing, so every child has access to age appropriate provision, in a consistent way.” The statement does not address whether the SRE proposals will require schools to teach in an LGBT-inclusive way, given the lack of current teaching on same-sex relationships an other LGBT issues. Ms Greening did confirm a revamp for the “increasingly outdated” statutory guidance for Sex and Relationships Education, which was last updated in 2000. The statement confirms that the expanded SRE guidance will address “cyber bullying, ‘sexting’ and staying safe online”, but it is unclear whether teachings on same-sex relationships will also be a part of this guidance.

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It’s official: Gay marriage is now legal in Finland – but there’s a catch
by Business Insider Nordic, 01 Mar 2017

As of today, it is legal for same-sex couples to marry in Finland. This makes the country the last one of the Nordics to instate gay marriage in law. Beyond granting same-sex couples the right to marriage and registered partnership, the law also enables adoption by gay couples. “We took the juridical step 2002, when we instated registered partnership. But, that was a second tier kind of marriage. It is therefore important that homosexuals are treated equal to heterosexuals and that the constitution of marriage is available to all," sociologist Kari Mustola says to Finnish Yle. However, the law only concerns civil marriages, which means gay couples who want to marry in a church are kept waiting.  The issue has divided the Finnish Lutheran church. No formal verdict has been reached, but the church's official line is that old rules still apply and that marriage should be seen as a privilege for couples made up of a man and a woman. “Seeing the development from the individual’s perspective, waiting 10 years is a long time. But within a larger time frame it has been moving forward relatively fast” Mustola continues. Many priests across the country are making their views on the subject clear by openly defying the bishops’ stance, by joining together, all couples equally, in marriage. For instance, through the site Sateenkaaripapit (tr. The Rainbow Priests), couples can find priests willing to facilitate church weddings.

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You’re in Trump’s America Now, Attacker Tells Gay Men
by The Advocate, 27 Feb 2017

A drunk man yelled gay slurs at two men who were riding their bicycles home in Key West, Fla., early Thursday morning, saying "I bet you faggots voted for that bitch Hillary" and "You live in Trump country now," reports the Miami Herald.  The two men — Kevin Seymour, 38, and Kevin Paul Taylor, 49 — told the police a drunken man wearing gray shorts and a blue polo shirt, in his mid-to-late 30s and riding a black Eclipse scooter followed them home, the Herald reports. The drunk man was "calling us faggots and a slew of other anti-gay remarks," the men said, according to police. Seymour warned the man that he would call the police. “If you do that, I’ll cut you up,” the man said, according to a police report. The drunken man hit the back of Seymour's bike with his scooter, causing Seymour to fall onto the street.  Taylor posted several messages on Facebook about the incident. “We were victims of a hate crime last night biking home from dinner,” he wrote. “He kept stopping in front of us and swerving into us. Finally Kevin got ahead of him and the guy charges him with his scooter and runs into him and knocks him off his bike. Kevin is okay.” “I think the cops will be able to track him down,” wrote Taylor.

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Deported gay Afghans told to ‘pretend to be straight’
By The Guardian, 26 Feb 2017

Gay Afghans can be deported to their home country, where homosexuality is illegal and “wholly taboo” and they must pretend to be straight, under new British government guidelines for handling asylum applications.The new guidance for a country where not a single citizen lives an openly gay lifehas been denounced by human rights groups as a violation of international law, and criticised by the Home Office’s own Afghanistan unit.“The Home Office’s approach seems to be to tell asylum seekers, ‘Pretend you’re straight, move to Kabul and best of luck,’” said Heather Barr, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Living a life where you are forced to lie every day about a key part of your identity, and live in constant fear of being found out and harassed, prosecuted or attacked, is exactly the kind of persecution asylum laws are supposed to prevent.” The document, dated last month, clearly lays out the multiple risks to LGBT Afghans from their own families, from Afghan laws, and from Taliban insurgents who consider homosexuality a crime punishable by death. It also suggests that lesbians and gay men “with what may be seen as feminine traits” would be at serious risk if forced to return. But the guidance goes on to argue that as the Afghan government has not recently prosecuted anyone for homosexuality, and the Taliban do not currently threaten the capital, a closeted gay Afghan could live safely in Kabul.

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White House rolls back federal transgender protections
by Al Jazeera, 23 Feb 2017

The White House overturned protections for transgender students that required public schools to allow them to use bathrooms and locker rooms matching the gender with which they identify. With the move, President Donald Trump - who indicated during his campaign that he might protect LGBT rights - has sided with social conservatives on a key issue at the centre of a broader cultural battle between conservatives and liberals.  By lifting federal guidelines issued by the Obama administration - interpreting Title IX, the federal law banning sex discrimination in schools, to include gender identity - the Trump administration is leaving it up to states and school districts to decide whether students should have access to bathrooms that do not reflect their biological sex. The justice and education departments said in a joint statement late on Wednesday that they "withdrew guidance for educational institutions, issued in 2015 and 2016, that took the position that the prohibitions in Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and implementing regulations against discrimination on the basis of sex require access to sex-segregated facilities on the basis of gender identity rather than biological sex."  In a two-page guidance letter to public schools, the White House said that the existing guidance did not "contain extensive legal analysis or explain how the position is consistent with the express language of Title IX, nor did they undergo any formal public process."  The decision comes after a reported disagreement over the language between Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a major opponent of the LGBT rights movement, and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who is said to support LGBT rights and had to sign off on the move. 
 

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