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takemehomefromnarnia · 7 years

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30 Strong LGBTQ+ Women of now and then and rainbow flags for Harry’s Berlin show

Patriarchy.

It is a word often thrown around in human rights circles, so much so that it has lost a bit of it’s meaning. Patriarchy, when viewed from the other side, is systemic-misogyny: the assumption that it is men who make everything possible. The LGBTQ+ community is not immune to this systemic problem. We are all products of the society in which we live, and for the most part we all continue to live in a male-focused society that celebrates successful men and questions the motives and abilities of successful women.

What follows is a small attempt to set the record straight. Hollywood may enjoy making movies about the men who led the early LGBTQ+ rights movement, we must never forget the strong, defiant, and very LOUD women who often stood by their side, and often, led the charge. If anything, the LGBTQ+ right movement is a Matriarchy - led by amazing female athletes, Queens, Divas, scientists, authors, and grandmothers. When the forces of tradition and orthodoxy took a swing, these women stood strong as leaders worthy of celebration.

But not all history is in the past. Many of the names on this list are still very active in LGBTQ+ activism today. History is being made by women around the world every day.

One of our participants and team members @dieinthewinter decided to shine a light on 30 of them by taping little notes to 538 handheld rainbow flags and give them out to the fans today at Harry’s show at Tempodrom in Berlin, Germany.

This is the story of some very “Strong Women”:

African-American lesbian Ruth Ellis (born 1899) welcomed black LGBTQ+ refugees in her home for several decades.

Edith “Edie” Windsor’s lawsuit against the state due to tax inequalities after her wife died led to one of the most significant marriage equality supreme court cases.

Mirna Haidar is a lebanese refugee and queer-identifying spokesperson for the Muslim Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity. She has has survived bombs, surveillance and detainment from her government.

bell hooks wrote several books and articles on feminism, including “Feminism is For Everybody” and “Ain’t I a woman?: Black Women and Feminism.”

Sylvia Rivera, a hispanic transgender activist, was one of the first women to throw a bottle at the Stonewall Inn raid in 1969.

Marsha P. Johnson, a black transgender activist, was one of the first women to throw a bottle at the Stonewall Inn raid in 1969.

Billie Jean King is an American former professional tennis player and was the first ever publicly out athlete.

Christine Jorgensen was the first out, well-known American trans woman to undergo sex reassignment surgery.

Sally Ride was the first woman and lesbian in space. She was also a space shuttle robotic arm operator.

Dusty Springfield was an English pop singer who described her sexuality as “perfectly as capable of being swayed by a girl as by a boy”.

Jenny Bailey was the first trans woman to become a Mayor in the UK. Her transgender partner Jennifer Liddle served as her mayoress.

Nicola Adams is Great Britain’s most decorated female boxer, identifies as bisexual and became the first openly LGBT person to win an Olympic boxing Gold medal.

Beth Ditto is a lesbian who is well known for her outspoken support of both LGBT and feminist causes.

The recent coach for Germany's national women's football team Steffi Jones is the daughter of an afro-american US-army soldier and married to a woman.

Frida Kahlo was an openly bisexual, Mexican painter who was in a somewhat polyamorous marriage with a man.

Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir became Prime Minister of Iceland in 1978 and the world's first openly gay head of government of the modern era.

Alba Reyes lost her son Sergio at the age of 16 to a suicide driven by severe homophobic discrimination. Colombia changed its laws to protect the LGBTQ+ community after this incident and Alba is now one of the country’s biggest advocates in the fight for equality for LGBTQ+ youth.

Sarah Hegazy was one of 57 Egyptians arrested for allegedly waving a rainbow flag at a concert by the Lebanese band Mashrou' Leila - whose lead singer is openly gay in September 2017.

37-year-old and out-spoken LGBTQ+ community member Kimberly Morris was one of the 49 victims of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando in June 2016.

Happily married Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon met in 1950 and helped founding Daughters of Bilitis, the first national lesbian organization in the US in 1995.

Anna Grodzka was the first openly transgender Member of Parliament in Poland. She was elected to the Sjem in 2011.

Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera is a Ugandan LGBT rights activist and founder of the LGBT rights organization Freedom & Roam Uganda.

Indian human rights activist Anjali Gopalan is the founder and executive director of the Naz Foundation Trust, an NGO dedicated to the fight against the HIV/AIDS epidemic in India mainly focused on women and children.

Romanița Iordache is the vice president of Accept, a non-governmental organization that advocates for the rights of LGBTQ+ people in Romania.

Josephine Chuen-juei Ho is the chair of the English department of National Central University, Taiwan, and coordinator of its Center For the Study of Sexualities. She has withstood lawsuits directed at her outspokenness on gender and rights issues.

Tonette Lopez was the first transgender woman activist in the Philippines and a popular Asian LGBT activist, HIV/AIDS researcher and journalist.

FannyAnn Viola Eddy was an activist for LGBTQ+ rights in her native Sierra Leone and throughout Africa. She was the victim of a brutal, homophobia driven murder on September 29 2004.

Chely Wright is American country music’s first openly lesbian singer. She’s focused on serving as a mentor for children and teens in order to reduce LGBTQ+ related suicides in children.

Lydia Annice Foy in an Irish trans woman notable for leading legal challenges regarding gender recognition in Ireland.

Lena Klimova is the founder of online community Children-404, which publishes letters from Russian LGBT teenagers and provides a space for them to support each other. She has been charged with violating the so called "Propaganda law" several times, the most recent time in the morning of Oct 24th 2017.

#rainbow direction #takemehomefromnarnia #tmhfn #educational #hslot berlin #LGBTQ #LGBT #lgbtq women #lgbt women #lgbt history #history #lgbtq history

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diarrheaworldstarhiphop · 7 years

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For Mostafa, a gay Egyptian man in his mid-20s, seeing rainbow flags flying at an open-air rock concert in the Arab world’s most populous nation was thrilling. But he had a feeling it wouldn’t end well.

Dozens of people have been arrested and put on trial in Egypt in the ensuing crackdown. Some were also beaten and subjected to invasive physical exams, spreading panic in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender circles.

Many of Mostafa’s friends are deleting their profiles on cellphone dating apps and scrubbing their social media accounts, which police have long used to ensnare people suspected of being gay or transgender. Some who were at last month’s concert have gone into hiding. There has even been talk of fleeing the country.

“The problem is that no one can tell the limit of this crackdown and how far it might go,” said Mostafa, a community activist who asked to be identified by one name, for fear that he too might be swept up by police. “There was an incredible amount of hate speech by the media and by people on social media. Everyone I know is depressed and fearful.”

It’s not the first time that the Egyptian authorities have gone after gay and transgender people. In one particularly notorious case, 52 men were put on trial at once after a high-profile raid on Cairo’s Queen Boat nightclub in 2001.

The “Arab Spring” uprising that toppled Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak a decade later brought some respite for the city’s embattled LGBT community, whose members were able to socialize more openly at house parties and bars.

But that respite came to an abrupt end after the military takeover that brought President Abdel Fattah Sisi to power in 2013. Hundreds of gay and transgender people have been rounded up, part of a broad crackdown that has seen political dissidents jailed, public protests harshly put down and the country’s once vibrant civil society quashed.

Still, human rights activists say the scale of this latest assault on Egypt’s LGBT population is unprecedented. At least 65 people were detained around the country in three weeks, according to a local rights group, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. Of those, 20 were sentenced to prison terms ranging from six months to six years, and four were released. Cases against the rest are pending.

Almost every day brings word of new arrests, according to the group’s lawyers, who are scrambling to keep up with the caseload.

They include Mohamed Alaa, a 21-year-old law student who was photographed at the concert waving a rainbow flag, and Sara Hegazy, 28, the only woman identified so far among the detainees. Both are being questioned by state security prosecutors who usually investigate terrorism cases.

Homosexuality is not specifically outlawed in Egypt, but authorities there have a history of using a 1961 law that prohibits “debauchery” to target the population. The accusations against Alaa and Hegazy are more serious. They include membership in an illegal organization, a charge also used against the government’s Islamist opponents.

“The Egyptian authorities tend to view challenge to authority in any sense in a deeply uncharitable fashion — and seem to have interpreted the raising of the rainbow flag very much in that way,” said H.A. Hellyer, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank.

The crackdown began after a Sept. 22 concert in Cairo by the Lebanese indie-rock group Mashrou’ Leila, whose lead singer, Hamed Sinno, is one of the few openly gay performers in the Middle East.

It was a special show for the band, which was twice barred from performing in Jordan over accusations of not respecting the country’s traditions and beliefs. More than 30,000 people attended, and several of them raised rainbow flags.

“Cairo! This was one of the best shows we've ever played!” the band said on its Facebook page. “So much love!”

Excited fans shared photographs and video of the rainbow flags on social media. The backlash was swift and brutal.

Influential TV talk show hosts and newspaper columnists denounced the flag wavers as “sexual deviants” and suggested they were part of a foreign-backed plot to destabilize the country.

Al Azhar University, the center of Islamic learning in this mostly conservative Muslim country, said it would be organizing sermons and lectures to “fortify youth against these deviant thoughts.” St. Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Cathedral announced a conference on what it termed a “volcano of homosexuality.”

Responding to the public outcry, Egypt’s top prosecutor, Nabil Sadek, ordered an investigation into the flag waving.

Days later, Egypt’s media regulatory body issued an order prohibiting coverage that promotes or legitimizes homosexuality, which it labeled a “sickness and disgrace.” It also barred homosexual people from appearing in the media, unless it is to repent. The pro-government musicians union announced it would no longer issue permits to foreign performers unless they obtain security clearance.

“Perhaps certain officials are embarrassed that they didn’t catch this beforehand,” said Timothy E. Kaldas, a nonresident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy in Washington. “It’s not exactly hard to know Mashrou’ Leila’s politics on LGBT issues … and they approved the concert.”

“The question is,” Kaldas said, “to what extent is this the government responding to pressure, and to what extent is it also an opportunity to distract the population from its other failings?”

Despite signs of economic revival, the cost of living has skyrocketed in Egypt, and salaries and pensions have not kept pace. Unemployment remains punishingly high, especially among the young; corruption is rampant, and terrorist attacks are on the rise.

The first suspect was taken into custody the day after the concert. Police used a fake profile on a dating app to lure the 19-year-old man to a place where officers were waiting, then searched his phone for incriminating material.

“By coincidence, they found photos of the concert,” said Dalia Abdel Hameed, who heads the gender program at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. “So they spun the narrative that they had arrested him as one of the flag bearers.”

He was sentenced to six years in prison on charges of debauchery and inciting debauchery.

“Most of the people arrested had nothing to do with the concert or the flag,” Abdel Hameed said. “These were men who were frequenting gay-friendly cafes or using dating apps or sometimes even arrested for looking or acting too gay in the street.” Alaa and Hegazy were tracked down a week later through images from the concert shared on social media.

In a poignant video posted before his arrest, Alaa expressed dismay at the vitriolic response to his gesture, including death threats from his home village. Though he is not gay, according to his lawyers, he said he had borrowed a flag from another audience member to support the band’s lead singer. (The video has since been taken down.)

Hegazy, who denies she was one of the flag wavers, told her lawyers that she was sexually harassed and beaten in a holding cell on her first night in custody after police informed fellow inmates about the reason for her arrest.

At least five men were subjected to anal exams to determine whether they had had gay sex — a practice that leading rights groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch say amounts to torture.

The five members of Mashrou’ Leila were on a plane bound for the United States when news broke about the arrests. At first, they said, they stayed silent out of fear that a statement from them might further inflame Egyptian authorities. But on Oct. 2, they issued a statement denouncing the “demonization and prosecution of victimless acts between consenting adults.”

“It is sickening to think that all this hysteria has been generated over a couple of kids raising a piece of cloth that stands for love,” the band said.

Mostafa, the gay activist, is wondering whether the time has come for him to leave Egypt. Many gay and transgender people who have the means have already done so.

But for all the hatred directed against his community, he said, there has also been an outpouring of support on social media.

“That would not have been the case a few years ago,” he said. “Despite the tactics becoming more brutal, there is dialogue around the issue.”

#egypt #cairo #lgbt

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how2to18 · 6 years

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IN THE UNITED STATES, 2018 heralds a bumper year for queer culture: while award-winning Call Me by Your Name is enjoying widespread public accolade and generous critical acclaim, classics including Torch Song Trilogy, The Boys in the Band, and Angels in America are lined up on Broadway. Queer Eye and RuPaul’s Drag Race garner attention on the small screen.

Yet this cultural revival takes place against a backdrop of uncertainty in the United States with a rollback of rights for LGBT people domestically and a wavering of support internationally. This tension played itself out in a highly publicized, frosty standoff between Vice President Mike Pence and the ice skater Adam Rippon during the Winter Olympics in Seoul. “You mean Mike Pence, the same Mike Pence that funded gay conversion therapy? I’m not buying it,” Rippon said in response to a reported overture for a meeting.

The US government withdrew protection for transgender students under Title IX in February, and in October issued a directive stating that transgender people are not protected from employment discrimination under Title VII, reversing a 2014 Justice Department position. In two separate cases, the Justice Department filed amicus briefs in efforts to curtail LGBT protections against workplace and public accommodations.

President Donald Trump issued a memorandum barring transgender people from serving in the military, although this has been blocked by courts and contradicted in practice. An executive order opened the way for religious exemptions, and poses a threat to the rights of women and LGBT people.

Looking back over a tumultuous year, for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in many parts of the world, 2017 was grim by any standard. The most disturbing trend was the scale and frequency of arbitrary arrests, state-sponsored discrimination, and violence against LGBT people. The brutal consequence of intensified homophobia orchestrated or facilitated by agents of the state was evident in Azerbaijan, Russia’s Chechen Republic (Chechnya), Egypt, Indonesia, Tajikistan, and Tanzania. For activists, it was a year of responding to a seemingly endless cycle of unfolding crises.

And yet, looking beyond these egregious abuses, there was also remarkable progress. Positive court rulings in several jurisdictions enhanced protections for LGBT people, while several countries gave legal recognition to same-sex relationships and transgender identities. The United Nations General Assembly received a report on violence and discrimination against LGBT people.

No doubt, as the visibility of LGBT people grows, and rights are achieved in some parts of the world, there has been a strong response from groups that stand against LGBT rights and that are better organized, funded, and more sophisticated than in the past. There has also been a spike in political homophobia, as unpopular minorities bear the brunt of majoritarian rhetoric and authoritarian rule.

State-sponsored homophobia

Political homophobia remains a potent symbol for autocratic leaders and a convenient football for competing ideologies. It is also a dangerous precursor to discrimination and violence against LGBT people.

Since 2014, the Egyptian government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has systematically arrested gay and bisexual men and transgender women, with several hundred imprisoned for same-sex conduct. In September 2017, the police conducted a new wave of arrests after revelers at the acclaimed Mashrou’ Leila concert displayed a rainbow flag. The United States withheld a portion of military aid to Egypt, due to stated concerns about human rights abuses, specifically a law that places onerous restrictions on nongovernmental organizations. Yet, by and large, Egypt’s allies focused on investment, migration, and counterterrorism, and ignored Egypt’s abysmal human rights record.

During the year, Indonesian authorities conducted raids against LGBT people, exploiting an existing anti-pornography law to apprehend at least 200, and bring charges against gay men arrested in a hotel, as well as night clubs and saunas. Transgender women found themselves hounded by vigilantes. Despite an international outcry, two men convicted of having consensual sex in Aceh were subjected to 85 lashes with a cane in public under Sharia (Islamic law) applicable in that region.

Nonetheless, Indonesia accepted two recommendations during its Universal Periodic Review (UPR) before the UN Human Rights Council pertaining to LGBT people: one on the protection of LGBT human rights defenders, and another on prioritizing equality and nondiscrimination, including in relation to LGBT people.

In April, news broke of a wide-scale purge against gay and bisexual men in Chechnya. Security and police officials rounded up presumably gay men and tortured them in informal detention facilities. The authorities mined the men’s social media accounts and contacts for the names of other men, who were also rounded up. Detainees were released to elder male relatives in public rituals of humiliation, and their captors encouraged families to commit so-called “honor killings.”

Sustained international pressure compelled the Kremlin to press Chechen authorities to suspend the purge and to open a federal inquest. The investigation has made little progress, but the crimes have not gone unheeded. The United States has sanctioned the Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, and another Chechen official.

At least 79 survivors or people otherwise affected by the purge fled Chechnya with the assistance of Russia’s leading LGBT support group and were eventually resettled in Canada and several European Union countries.

In Africa, the Tanzanian government closed down drop-in centers providing HIV services for key populations, contending that the centers “promote homosexuality.” When activists and lawyers held a meeting in October to discuss a legal challenge to policies that limit the right to health, police arrested and detained them without charge.

Dating apps have provided an indispensable means for LGBT people to connect, form community, and find avenues for dating and sex. But when infiltrated, they are also effective tools for blackmailers and extortionists, and for authorities to pursue LGBT people. In South Korea, for example, where homosexual conduct is not permitted in the military, army investigators seized suspected gay soldiers’ smart phones and scanned dating apps to entrap gay soldiers.

Of course, governments are not the only sources of violence against LGBT people. Annual survey results in Britain and France revealed significant increases in bias-motivated attacks against people based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Men across the Netherlands took to holding hands in public in a demonstration of solidarity with a gay couple who were victims of a violent assault.

In the United States, 26 transgender people murdered in what appear to be hate crimes were commemorated on November 20, Transgender Remembrance Day.

The Obama administration explicitly included sexual orientation and gender identity as elements of a broader human rights agenda guiding foreign policy. Vocal political support from governments, including the United States, has helped LGBT groups internationally and is part of the reason why organizations have been more visible and vocal. If that support wanes, LGBT groups will be more vulnerable and exposed. It will also send a signal that these human rights issues are not being taken seriously, paving the way for increased discrimination and violence against LGBT people.

Freedom of expression, association, and assembly

For LGBT people around the world, invisibility has been a double-edged sword. The closet provides a measure of protection from social condemnation, legal prohibition, or worse — violent attack. But the price is high — it means hiding fundamental aspects of the self, which takes its toll, both personally and socially. The ability to form community, to associate, organize, and assemble are of great importance to LGBT groups around the world and yet these fundamental rights are often denied.

The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights has increasingly championed the rights of LGBT people and those who defend them. At its 60th ordinary session in May, the commission emphasized the need to protect all human rights defenders, including those working for the protection of LGBT rights, and to ensure freedom of assembly rights for LGBT groups.

Despite these directives, Tanzania repeatedly threatened LGBT human rights defenders, along with other groups working on controversial issues, and raided meetings and workshops. Ugandan police raided and shut down the Queer Kampala International Film Festival, as well as a week of scheduled activities for annual Pride Week, while an Egyptian media regulatory body declared a media blackout on positive reporting on homosexuality.

In Turkey, the governor of Ankara imposed an indefinite ban on all public LGBT events in the province. In contrast, Bulgarian police stepped in to protect Sofia Pride from threatened disruptions by an ultra-nationalist, virulently homophobic group. Businesses in Singapore stepped up to the podium to support the annual Pink Dot festival after the government forbade sponsorship by multinational corporations.

Meanwhile, there were some positive developments, as courts in South Korea and Mozambique stepped in to facilitate the registration of LGBT groups.

Abuses in medical settings

Paradoxically, because ideas about sexuality and gender identity are deeply embedded in medical science, the helping professions can be a source of trauma and abuse for LGBT people.

In China, a court ruled against a public hospital that had forced a gay man into so-called conversion therapy, which is widespread in both state and private medical settings, although homosexuality is not officially regarded as a mental disorder. In contrast, in Brazil, a judge overruled a long-standing decision by the Federal Council of Psychology to ban licensed psychologists from engaging in sexual orientation change efforts.

National and international medical authorities have been at the forefront of calls to ban forced anal examinations to determine if individuals have engaged in anal sex. The examinations have no forensic value or medical basis, and can amount to a form of torture or sexual assault, yet are still practiced in several countries.

In the United States, a legal settlement was reached in a case brought by adoptive parents involving medically unnecessary cosmetic surgery on an intersex infant. The settlement augured well for intersex activists in the United States who have been campaigning against such surgery for decades to little avail. The American Medical Association board of trustees, two pediatrics organizations, and three former US Surgeons General called for an end to medically unnecessary surgeries on intersex children.

School environment and sex education

Schools can be hostile environments for LGBT youth who struggle with rejection and an absence of positive affirmation at a time when they are most vulnerable.

Japan revised its national bullying prevention policy to explicitly include LGBT students, but failed to update its national educational curriculum, which still ignores LGBT issues. Meanwhile the Philippines issued a gender-inclusive policy in schools that offers express protection on grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity, but effective implementation is lacking.

Legal and policy developments

In a political environment in which the rights of LGBT people remain an unpopular cause, courts can play a positive role in affirming fundamental rights. But courts can also be an instrument of repression.

In a strongly worded judgment that could have broad impact, a US district court ruled in a case brought against the anti-gay Christian evangelist Scott Lively for fomenting homophobia in Uganda. While the lawsuit was rejected on jurisdictional grounds, the judge minced no words in denouncing Lively’s “crackpot bigotry” that aided “a vicious and frightening campaign of repression against LGBTI people in Uganda.”

Indonesia’s Constitutional Court deliberated on, but rejected on procedural grounds, a proposal to criminalize all sex outside of marriage, including same-sex conduct.

The European Court of Human Rights condemned Russia’s “gay propaganda” law in a decision that Russia is obligated to abide by, even though three months after the ruling a Russian court found an activist, Evdokia Romanova, guilty under the same law. In the United States, Utah repealed its “no promo homo” law, which curtailed discussions of homosexuality in schools, but seven other US states retain similar laws.

In India, hope was rekindled by a Supreme Court judgment that ruled privacy a fundamental right and made express reference to section 377 of the penal code, a vestige of colonial rule that outlaws same-sex conduct. A writ petition filed against a 2013 judgment that upheld the constitutionality of the sodomy law will be heard by the Supreme Court this year.

While activists in India protested the shortcomings in a proposed law seeking to protect the rights of transgender people, Nepal took concrete steps toward a trans-inclusive civil service. Despite a surge in violent attacks on transgender women in Pakistan, activists there have pushed legal recognition and social services inclusion with human rights bodies and regional and national legislatures.

Ukraine took significant steps toward a less cumbersome and abusive legal gender-recognition procedure, and in a groundbreaking Botswanan case, a transgender man won a seven-year battle for legal gender recognition. In the United States, discriminatory bills that sought to restrict access to facilities for transgender students were withdrawn in South Dakota and died without coming to a vote in Texas.

Despite efforts by anti-gay marriage activists, Finland, Germany, Malta, and Australia embraced marriage equality, while constitutional courts in Taiwan and Austria ruled that current laws defining marriage as “between a man and a woman” were unconstitutional, instructing parliament to revise the law within a set timeframe.

The news from the British overseas territory Bermuda was less positive. The legislature passed a bill that replaced marriage with domestic partnerships for same-sex couples, undoing a previous Supreme Court ruling on equal marriage.

Legislatures in the US states of South Dakota, Alabama, and Texas curtailed adoption rights for same-sex couples. The Israeli government initially opposed, then accepted joint parent adoption for same-sex couples.

Moving forward in perilous times

For those who have been at the receiving end of state-sponsored crackdowns, there is cold comfort in seeing the stories of global progress that are incremental but significant. When Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in an emotional address to a cheering parliament, apologized for past injury to gender and sexual minorities, he sent a signal to the world that exclusion is not necessarily a permanent state of being and that governments can make amends for past discriminatory policies.

In a significant milestone, a group of experts issued the updated Yogyakarta + 10 principles, which provide guidelines for the interpretation and application of international human rights law regarding sexual orientation and gender identity. The principles will provide guidance for governments that are willing to reconsider their stance on LGBT rights. The 2016 launch of the Equal Rights Coalition, the first intergovernmental network to advance the rights of LGBT people, signifies a growing willingness of the almost 40 member states to play a more proactive international role.

The UN’s first independent expert on violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, Vitit Muntarbhorn, presented a report to the UN General Assembly in September that outlined his vision of the steps that need to be taken to combat violence and discrimination: decriminalization of same-sex relations, effective anti-discrimination measures, legal recognition of gender identity, de-stigmatization, sociocultural inclusion, and promotion of education and empathy.

This is a road map that activists around the world can rally around. But the best approach to defending and advancing rights is not through a blueprint but by tailoring strategy to context. In the United States, activists would do well to defend ground at risk by sweeping religious exemptions, and holding the government to account for its human rights record internationally. In regions of the world experiencing violent crackdowns, the activists focus on security, and evading the dragnet. In some countries, such as Indonesia, the immediate goal is to prevent sweeping discriminatory laws from being passed. It is in middle-ground countries — those that are neither fully accepting, nor overtly hostile — where the most promising developments are taking place, and where courts are playing a crucial role in defending and advancing the rights of LGBT people.

An overview of LGBT rights by country, courtesy of Human Rights Watch.

Graeme Reid is director of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights program at Human Rights Watch.

The post After a Grim Year for LGBT Rights, the Way Forward appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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