Tag: homophobia tw

‘It Will Pass’: Egypt Set to Enact One of the World’s Most Extreme Anti-LGBTQ Laws

ezzelbean:

ezzelbean:

ezzelbean:

ezzelbean:

I’m so fucking scared and angry, how could they do this. how could they fucking do this

“The law was proposed following a series of arrests in Egypt, as police target LGBTQ people in an unprecedented siege on the local community. More than 70 people have been jailed following the Sept. 22 music festival. Many of those detained were straight, and some remain in prison.

LGBTQ activists tell INTO that the legislation, which is likely to go into effect, will only lead to further attacks on queer people.

“The legislation will pass the parliament by a vast majority,” says Hafez, an Egyptian activist based in the United States, in a phone interview. “I don’t think anyone will vote against it. It’s going to be disastrous. It not only targets LGBTQ people, but it also targets people that are allied to the cause and support us.”

“We will be seeing many, many more arrests than we’ve seen before,” he predicts.

What makes the law so unprecedented, Hafez says, is that the legislation is a “hybrid” of many other anti-LGBTQ bills. It acts an addendum strengthening Egypt’s 1961 law on “debauchery,” a once outdated civil code that has recently been used to target sex work, as well as any public behavior the government doesn’t agree with.

The parallels to Russia’s 2013 law on “homosexual propaganda” offer a chilling warning to the LGBTQ community in Egypt.

That law, which prohibits the spread of information on “nontraditional sexual relationships” to minors, has led to an epidemic of hate crimes in the Eurasian country. Since the legislation was enacted by the Duma four years ago, numerous gay men have been kidnapped, beaten, and tortured. Their attackers frequently broadcast the victims’ humiliation on YouTube to publicly shame them.

Egypt’s law is arguably more broad than the Russian legislation.

The severity with which Egyptian authorities are lashing out at LGBTQ people is no accident, Hafez explains. The country’s military dictatorship once relied on the Muslim Brotherhood as a scapegoat, but after the Sunni Islamist group lost political power, they’re no longer a credible patsy.

“The government needs to keep that flame of hatred directed toward a group,” Hafez says. “The easiest target is the LGBTQ community. They’re weak, not organized, and in hiding—a lot of people are not out.”

And the government, he adds, can count on immediate support from the conservative public in cracking down on LGBTQ people.

Queer and trans citizens have reportedly been leaving the country in droves following Egypt’s embrace of fundamentalism. The nation is no longer safe for LGBTQ individuals, Hafez says. Many have been changing their Facebook names and unfriending other members of the community in order to avoid being targeted on social media.

“People are terrified,” Hafez claims. “They’re going underground.”

As the campaign against LGBTQ people escalates, advocates are calling on foreign nations to take action. Although Hafez argues that the proposed anti-gay law is a “clear violation” of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, few member countries have challenged the crackdown. French President Emmanuel Macron recently claimed that he refused to “lecture” Egypt on LGBTQ rights.

A failure to oppose the proposed law, Hafez claims, will only allow the spread of violent homophobia in the Arab world.

“Egypt is a very influential country in the region,” he says. “Countries that are identical socially but don’t have anti-LGBTQ laws—like Jordan, Iraq, and Libya—will follow in their footsteps. It will give legitimacy to any crackdown in the region.”

“We need to stand together in this,” Hafez adds. “Today it could be Egypt, and tomorrow it could be somewhere else.”

FUCK YOU MACRON AND FUCK FRANCE

YOU FUCKING COLONIZED US AND STOLE FROM US AND LEFT US WITH THIS FUCKING MESS

FUCK YOU

FUCK YOU

This is going to eradicate Egypt’s queer culture

This is going kill queer Egyptians

This is going to erase queer Egyptian history

When this is all done and through we’re going to have to start from scratch. We’re going to lose entire generations of queer Egyptians if this keeps up.

‘It Will Pass’: Egypt Set to Enact One of the World’s Most Extreme Anti-LGBTQ Laws

afatblackfairy:

wetheurban:

HOW TO HELP TORTURED GAY MEN IN CHECHNYA

We can’t allow this to continue. A petition has also been launched by change.org and signed by tens of thousands of people.

It demands a full investigation of all the facts and unlawful repression in Chechnya of the LGBT population and calls for punishment for the ‘guilty parties’ and the end to the practice of extra-judicial violence.

You can sign that here.

Instagram.com/WeTheUrban

Can y’all share this please???

stability:

            !!!!!!!!PLEASE HELP TO SPREAD THIS!!!!!!

Gay men in Russia are being rounded up and put into concentration camps.  I’m so beyond upset and I’m asking you to help spread this information in hopes that it will bring this disgustingly horrible situation more media attention and put additional pressure on Russia to investigate these camps and shut them down.

There is a petition to stop the persecution here and the Russian LGBT Network has a donation page here (it looks pretty legit to me and is associated with a Facebook page with 12,000+ followers, but if anyone can find more information confirming the validity of it that would be beyond appreciated.)

These men are all the way across the world but they’re part of my community and they need our help. They don’t have the same luxuries (basic human rights) that we do and they are in desperate need for us to help speak up for them. 

You can read the full article here or google the topic for more information. Please.

edit: i have updated this post with more info here

muldertorture:

gemfyre:

lauralandons:

thereadersmuse:

jehovahhthickness:

lightning-st0rm:

pearlmito:

smootymormonhelldream:

stripedsilverfeline:

anti-clerical:

ramirezbundydahmer:

When the Nazi concentration camps were liberated by the Allies, it was a time of great jubilation for the tens of thousands of people incarcerated in them. But an often forgotten fact of this time is that prisoners who happened to be wearing the pink triangle (the Nazis’ way of marking and identifying homosexuals) were forced to serve out the rest of their sentence. This was due to a part of German law simply known as “Paragraph 175” which criminalized homosexuality. The law wasn’t repealed until 1969.

This should be required learning, internationally. 

You need to know this. You need to remember this. This is not something to swept under the carpet nor be forgotten. 

Never. Too many have died for the way they have loved. That needs stop now. 

Make it stop? 

I did a report on this in my World History class my sophomore year of high school. It was incredibly unsettling.

My teacher shown the class this. Mostly everyone in the class felt uncomfortable. 

I have reblogged this in the past, but it is so ironic that it comes across my dash right now. I a currently working as a docent at my city’s Holocaust Education Center (( I say currently because I’ve also done research and translation for them )) and out current exhibit is one on loan from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ((USHMM)). This is a little known historical fact that Paragraph 175 was not repealed after the war and those convicted under Nazi laws as a danger to society because they were gay were not released because they had be convicted in a court of law. There was no liberation or justice for them as they weren’t considered criminals, or even victims for that matter. They were criminals who remained persecuted and ostracized and kept on the fringes of society for decades after the war had been won. Paragraph175 wasn’t actually repealed until 1994. And it was only in May 2002, that the German parliament completed legislation to pardon all homosexuals convicted under Paragraph175 during the Nazi era. History has forgotten about these men and women — please educate yourselves so this does not happen again. Remember this history. Remember them.

@mindlesshumor ok how the fuck did I miss this when I’ve studied The Holocaust like nobody’s business??? wtf

Because the history we have left regarding it is literally the contents of this first hand account.

It is a thin little book.

When I first opened it, I wondered why it was so thin.

Why there wasn’t other books like it.

Other first hand accounts.

By the time I finished it, I didn’t wonder anymore.

Further reading:

I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual: A Memoir of Nazi Terror by Pierre Seel

An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin by Gad Beck

The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals by Richard Plant

Branded By The Pink Triangle by Ken Setterington

Bent by Martin Sherman (fiction; however, it’s often credited with bringing attention to gay Holocaust victims for the first time since the war ended)

This is one of the memorial sculptures in Dachau.  It was erected in the early 60s and is missing the pink triangles.  Because in the early 60s, homosexuality was still a crime in most of the world.
Our tour guide explained why the pink triangles have not been added later – if they were, then folks would assume that they had always been there.  This way people ask “why aren’t there pink triangles?” and somebody can explain why – because in some ways, the rest of the world was as bass-ackwards as Nazi Germany.

I toured Dachau in 2011. You do that, you can’t miss this piece of history. They hit you right in the face with it. You go to Dachau or Auschwitz or the like, and you learn a hell of a lot. And if you’re not uncomfortable like the ghosts of a hundred thousand souls are watching you then you must be dead too.

THE NIGHTMARE CONTINUES (WITH NO END IN SIGHT): The GOP’s Anti-LGBT, Anti-Women ‘Religious Freedom’ Law on Steroids

mortalityplays:

tpfnews:

The First Amendment Defense Act is the nuclear version of the so-called “religious freedom” laws that have appeared across the country, most infamously in Mike Pence’s Indiana.  The Republican House will surely pass it, the Senate will pass it unless it’s filibustered by Democrats, and President-elect Trump has promised to sign it.

If it becomes law, FADA will be the worst thing to happen to women and LGBT people in a generation.

Like state “religious freedom restoration acts,” FADA’s basic principle is that it’s not discrimination when businesses discriminate against LGBT people if they have a religious reason for doing so.  The most famous situations have to do with marriage: wedding cake bakers who say that if they bake a cake, they’re violating their religion; Kim Davis, the government clerk who said that signing a secular marriage certificate was a religious act that she could not perform.

But those stories are a red herring.  The more important cases are ones like hospitals refusing to treat LGBT people (or their children), pharmacies refusing to fill birth control prescriptions, businesses refusing to offer health benefits to a same-sex partner, and state-funded adoption agencies refusing to place kids with gay families.  Underneath the rhetorical BS, that’s what FADA is all about.

First, the bill applies to any corporation, organization, or person who “believes or acts in accordance with a religious belief or moral conviction that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, or that sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage.”

Notice how broad that is: any business, agency, or individual, including government employees, hospitals, or huge businesses like Hobby Lobby or Chick-Fil-A. Old-age homes and hospices that turn away gay people – yes, this has actually happened – are covered. Hospitals that refuse a same-sex partner visitation rights – covered. National hotel chains that refuse to rent rooms to gay couples (or unmarried straight ones) – covered.  

And notice that it applies not just to religious beliefs about same-sex marriage, but also to sexual conduct in general. Translation: contraception, sex education, treatment of STDs – all of these are part of the bill.  If a national pharmacy chain wants to refuse to fill prescriptions for the “morning after pill,” if a company wants to fire someone for being pregnant out of wedlock or becoming HIV positive, if a public school wants to stop teaching sex ed – all covered.  

And finally, since “moral conviction” is added in there, it doesn’t matter that Jesus never mentioned health insurance coverage. No actual religious grounds are necessary; just some moral conviction that the only allowable sex is sex within a heterosexual marriage.

What does “covered” mean? Essentially, FADA prohibits the federal government from doing anything about any of these acts. Specifically, it lists revoking tax exempt status (as it did for Bob Jones University because of its racist policies, in the case that started the whole “religious freedom” movement) and refusing any federal grant, contract, or certification.

But then the bill adds “otherwise discriminate against such person,” which actually means anything at all, so long as the government is taking some adverse action. (“Person” includes companies and organizations, remember.) For example:

– The current government policy requiring federal contractors – 20% of the entire U.S. workforce – not to discriminate against LGBT people will be immediately revoked. Contractors can legally fire people for being gay (or transgender).

– A governor can order that, in his state, no clerk anywhere may certify a same-sex marriage, and the federal government could do nothing about it.

– If a restaurant or hotel posts a sign saying “NO FAGGOTS ALLOWED,” FADA prohibits the government from “discriminating” against it by initiating an enforcement action under public accommodations laws. Gay couples may be refused hotel rooms anywhere in the country.

– If a company refuses to let a person take time off to take care of her same-sex partner in the hospital, the government cannot pursue any action under relevant employment laws.

– If a state-funded adoption agency refuses to place children with legally married same-sex couples, the government cannot withdraw its contracts with that agency. (This was a key request by Catholic adoption agencies, which receive the bulk of their funding from the government.)

– An employee at the Department of Veterans Affairs could refuse to process a claim for survivor benefits for the same-sex spouse of a servicemember.

– All schools and universities can discriminate against LGBT people, regardless of Title IX (as long as they link that discrimination to a view about marriage, which is quite easy to do). Universities may turn away gay applicants, deny LGBT clubs, and fire all gay faculty and staff members, with no penalties from the federal government.

– Any hospital may refuse to provide contraception, reproductive health care (including consultations of any kind), or health care of any kind to unmarried people or gay people, and not lose accreditation.

– And yes, however unlikely, your boss could fire you for having (straight) premarital sex, and no federal agency could come after you.

Oh, and then there’s that third point to consider. FADA has one of the strangest “pre-emption” clauses of any bill I’ve ever seen. Normally, federal bills either pre-empt state ones, or have a “no pre-emption” clause, saying that state laws take precedence. FADA has some of each, stating that “Nothing in this Act shall be construed to preempt State law, or repeal Federal law, that is equally or more protective of free exercise of religious beliefs and moral convictions.”

In other words, if a state has a non-discrimination law against gay people, FADA supercedes it, prohibiting any federal action based on that law. But if a state has a law that protects the religious party more, FADA doesn’t supercede it.

Under that language, state level actions against anti-gay corporations, organizations, and individuals would not be prohibited – but the federal government could offer no assistance, and indeed could not do anything at all, even if the anti-gay party is in clear violation of state law. In other words, states with more protections for women or LGBT people – you’re on your own out there.

Overall, FADA makes LGBTs officially second-class citizens of the United States – more like those in anti-gay countries like Putin’s Russia. We may be fired, barred from entry, denied services, denied health care, denied education, and denied legitimacy in ways that straight married people (and probably most straight unmarried people) do not. My fully legal marriage isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on, because no one anywhere has to respect it, not even a government employee.

As you can see, FADA effectively overturns Obergefell without anyone having to file a lawsuit, because it creates a loophole as large as the right to marry itself. Any governor, mayor, or clerk could proffer a “moral objection” to same-sex marriage, and stop all employees under his or her authority from registering gay couples or certifying gay weddings. And even absent such action, any employer or business can act as though the marriage simply does not exist.

But FADA goes much further than marriage. It attacks unmarried women, who may be denied health care by state hospitals, employers, and insurance companies. It makes it impossible for the federal government to do anything in a host of discriminatory situations. It turns back the clock not just two years, to before Obergefell, but twenty years, to a time when simply being gay was criminal.

And it has the support of the House, the Senate, and the President-Elect.

everyone who posted/tweeted ‘we survived reagan’ can go fuck themselves

THE NIGHTMARE CONTINUES (WITH NO END IN SIGHT): The GOP’s Anti-LGBT, Anti-Women ‘Religious Freedom’ Law on Steroids

So – can we talk about Admiral Hennessey for a minute?

Good. See – I’ve been thinking, y’all. I even broke out the y’all so that we can have this convo. Please picture me sitting back against a counter of some kind, glass of something in hand, arms crossed, ready to have a Chat. 

Here’s the thing. I have a theory – a headcanon, really, and since @candlewinds did a lovely post with his wigged head in it today, and since I’m getting ready to post a chapter that features him rather heavily, I thought I’d do some airing of that headcanon. You’re by no means required to agree with me or give a single crap about my weird theories, but here goes one of them. *Takes a deep breath*

I don’t like what Hennessey does in canon, but I don’t think Hennessey does either.

I can’t reconcile Hennessey that sits in that tavern, that sees James beating the shit out of someone for insulting the Hamiltons, that gives him that little knowing smile and catches James’ use of Thomas’ given name so easily, with the man that stands in that office and condemns him as if he had no notion that the man he refers to as son is gay. I can’t reconcile the man who says, so gently, “I thought you’d heard me, son,” with the man in that office, and I think I know the difference – what changes his tone, his attitude, everything. Alfred fucking Hamilton. The minute that Hennessey enters that office, he becomes a different man. Hennessey outside that office pretty clearly knows that James isn’t straight. James as good as says it. “I know what you’re thinking,” he says, based on their earlier conversation. It’s never said out loud, but it’s heavily implied that Hennessey knows and while he may not approve, it’s not because he disapproves of James being into men. It’s because he disapproves of him becoming involved with a noble, given that James himself is nobody comparatively. He has no protection if Thomas turns out to be another noble shit in it for laughs and a good time and not up for standing up for his partner if anything goes wrong. Hennessey has no way of knowing what Thomas is like – he’s never met the man, and worse, he has no way of protecting James if anything happens, and he knows it. Hennessey at least once refers to the nobility as “these people.” He’s not of noble background himself. He has no standing in the peerage – in fact, he’s very much like James in the respect that he’s a transplanted Irishman who’s probably worked his way up the ranks much as James did.

Now, granted, that conversation could be read a lot of ways. The thing that really convinces me, though, is the gentle way that he addresses James two seconds before they enter his office. By that time, he’s talked to Alfred Hamilton. He knows that James is gay, without any kind of doubt. Hennessey knows what he’s done, and he still refers to him as son. There’s no trace of disgust in his voice when he talks to him. He doesn’t speak much, but what he does say is telling. He leads James into that office knowing what’s about to go down, and he doesn’t warn him because he can’t. He needs in that moment to try to force James to leave London quietly – to believe that he has no recourse to any kind of patron that would support and fight for him, which is accomplished both with what he says and with the removal of Thomas from the situation. I hate to say it, but I have the terrible suspicion that Thomas’ imprisonment in Bedlam might actually have been Hennessey’s idea, although I’m more willing to believe it was Alfred or Peter Ashe that came up with that particular godawful suggestion. In any case, Hennessey’s concern is with getting James to not do anything stupid and, even more importantly for him and for England, to protect the rest of the officers and seamen under his command. He cannot, absolutely cannot, allow Alfred to start raising questions about whether or not the Navy is harboring sodomites. He can’t allow that witch hunt to get started, not for James or anyone, because there are hundreds or even thousands of men under his command who can’t defend themselves against that kind of accusation. They’re in the middle of a war, and the last thing anyone can afford is for Alfred Hamilton to destabilize the Navy by using Hennessey’s protection of James to his own ends. If Alfred starts making accusations, no one is safe, because he could accuse who he wished and bribe anyone he liked until everyone jumped to his orders for fear of being accused of sodomy and hanged. As much as I think Hennessey hated having to do this to James, he couldn’t act as a father in that office. He had to be a commander, with the lives of all the other men under his command coming first since there was nothing he could do to save James save to get him out of London.

Again, you’re free to disagree with any of this. It’s just personal headcanon based on how I read the scenes. It could be that Hennessey really didn’t know until Alfred told him and is just a godawful, cruel asshat and a very good actor, but I’ve chosen to interpret the character a little differently for fun. And because I like politics.