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01 Dec 2016 - NPWJ News Digest on LGBTI rights
Articles
Tanzania suspends HIV outreach programmes because ‘homosexuality is illegal’
By PinkNews, 29 Nov 2016
Tanzania has suspended programmes aimed at tackling the spread of HIV because they acknowledged the existence of homosexuality. In the East African country, sex between men is illegal and punishable by up to 30 years in prison. Earlier this year, a government health minister warned charities not to engage with the LGBT community in his country. The officizl: “Tanzania does not allow activist groups carrying out campaigns that promote homosexuality … Any attempt to commit unnatural offences is illegal and severely punished by law. “I cannot deny the presence of LGBTI people in our country and the risk they pose in fuelling the spread of HIV/AIDS but we don’t subscribe to the assertion that there’s a ‘gender continuum’.” 25 percent of men who have sex with men in the country are thought to have HIV, as the virus is rampant in the general population and little protection or education is available for the underground gay community. The country has now followed through on the threat – and ‘temporarily’ suspended a number of HIV outreach programmes that included the LGBT community, alarming campaigners. The government confirmed: “We have suspended MSM (men who have sex with men) community-based interventions pending review.” The block has impacted a number of efforts, leading to fears that HIV prevention and treatment efforts will collapse under the burden.
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Top court in Italy rules that calling someone ‘a homosexual’ isn’t offensive
By PinkNews, 29 Nov 2016
A top appeals court in Italy has deemed that calling someone “a homosexual” is no longer offensive. The court weighed in on a libel case against a man who had used the term. “The term ‘homosexual’ used by the defendant has not retained in the current historical context the intrinsically offensive meaning that perhaps could have been attributed to it in a not even too distant past,” the Italian Court of Cassation ruled. Judges from the Cassation Court ruled that the term was “neutral”, and was not harmful to the repuation of the complainant in the libel case. A fine the man was ordered to pay for calling the person “a homosexual” by a lower court back in 2015 was annulled by the court. After a long battle, Italy this year legalised same-sex civil unions. The country’s new law takes effect despite strong opposition from the Catholic Church which led to same-sex adoption being dropped from the law. A later ruling did make it easier for gay couples to adopt each other’s children. A lesbian couple won their court battle to adopt each other’s children in late April – other cases where women have been allowed to legally adopt each other’s children are at appeal stages, Efforts to legalise same-sex civil unions recently saw adoption rights stripped out, in an effort to appease Catholic politicians. The bill passed in the Senate after having the adoption provision removed. The civil unions bill came about after the European Court of Human Rights upheld complaints of discrimination by same-sex couples, who currently have no legal rights in Italy
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Judge orders U.S. to reconsider denying passport to 'intersex' veteran
by Reuters , 24 Nov 2016
A federal judge in Denver ordered the U.S. Department of State to reconsider its denial of a passport to a Navy veteran from Colorado who identifies as neither male or female, court documents showed on Tuesday. The ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by Dana Zzyym, who was born with ambiguous sex characteristics, and had been attempting to travel to Mexico City for a meeting of intersex people - those born with reproductive or sexual anatomy that does not fit the typical definitions of male or female. "I shouldn't have to suffer at the hands of my government," said Zzyym, who was born in 1958 and raised as a boy. Zzyym welcomed the ruling but said it was the first step in a long battle for rights of intersex people. Zzyym's lawsuit, filed last year by the LGBT rights legal firm Lambda Legal Defense Fund in federal court in Denver, argued that the policy of requiring either a male or female designation on passport applications violated due process and equal protection rights for intersex people. U.S. District Court Judge R. Brooke Jackson concluded in a 12-page ruling that the State Department’s “binary-only gender passport policy” did not follow a rational decision-making process and ordered officials to reconsider it. Jackson did not consider the constitutionality of the policy but kept the door open for doing so. “The Court will not address the constitutional issues unless and until it needs to,” Jackson wrote.
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