03 August 2017 - NPWJ News Digest on LGBTI rights

Articles

Blood donation rules for gay men in Wales relaxed
By BBC, 02 Aug 2017

From early next year men who have sex with men will be able to give blood three months after their last sexual activity. Equality charity Stonewall welcomed the change, but said it should be a step towards a system that does not automatically exclude most gay men. The Welsh Government is looking at more personalised risk assessments. Currently gay and bisexual men have to abstain from sex for 12 months before they can give blood.
 

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Why is the mainstream media ignoring the abuses of gay & bi men in Chechnya?
By LGBTQ Nation, 02 Aug 2017

Since April, when the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta first broke the story, we have known of a purge of gay and bisexual men in Chechnya. We have read reports of men being tricked through dating apps and social media, abducted, detained, humiliated, beaten, and in some cases murdered.We have even seen some of them bravely tell of their horrifying experience, but the scale of the story, and the continued developments, has barely been touched by the mainstream press, a new report by Media Matters has found.
 

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Marriage equality in Australia: key survey charts radical 10-year shift to majority support
By The Guardian, 01 Aug 2017

Australian attitudes to same-sex rights have radically transformed in the past decade, new research shows.Almost two-thirds of Australians now support equal rights for same-sex couples, a dramatic rise from just 38% in 2005. The support for same-sex rights was roughly the same among both men – from 32% to 59% – and women – from 43% to 67%. The researcher behind the University of Melbourne’s national snapshot, Roger Wilkins, said he had never seen an attitude shift so profound in almost 10 years of conducting the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey (Hilda).“We measure attitudes on a variety of things, and this really stands out. The degree of change is more than twice as much as we see for any other aspect,” he said. “It certainly does seem that the political leadership is lagging behind community sentiment on this particular issue.”

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Social bodies hold meet to sensitize police force about LGBT issues
By The Times of India, 30 Jul 2017

Nagpur: Acceptance by the society of transgenders continues to be a dream as the community faces harassment, unlawful penalties and sexual abuse. Therefore, as part of social responsibility to end discrimination of LGBT community, volunteers of two organizations and police officials gathered at a city hotel on Saturday to sensitize people about their plight and bring about a change in their perception. The programme was organized by Voluntary Health Service (VHS), Chennai, and Sarathi Trust in which officials from Sitabuldi, Dhantoli and Mankapur police stations participated.

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Interview: Intersex Babies Don’t Need ‘Fixing’
By Human Rights Watch, 25 Jul 2017

For decades, parents of intersex babies – children whose sex characteristics aren’t quite typical male or typical female – have been pressured into consenting to medically unnecessary and irreversible surgery to make their children appear ‘normal.’ But these surgeries leave physical, emotional, and psychological scars, Human Rights Watch says in a new report. Philippa Stewart speaks to Kimberly Zieselman, the executive director of intersex advocacy group interACT, about this damaging surgery and what needs to be done to protect intersex children.
 

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