Seventeen states currently grant gay couples the right to marry. Credit: Bigstock

By Farangis Abdurazokzoda
WASHINGTON, May 16 2014 (IPS)

Honouring the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry Friday emphasised progress in advancing the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons, but a new report on criminalisation of LBGT people suggests that there is still a long way to go.

“Today of all days, we are reminded that the cause of justice can and must triumph over hatred and prejudice,” said Kerry said in a statement.“The United States arrests and prosecutes more people on the basis of their HIV status than the rest of the world combined." -- Catherine Hanssens

Undeniably, a number of events over the past week indicate significant advances in LGBT rights.

Michael Sam, the first openly gay U.S. football player, kissed his boyfriend on national TV after being drafted by the National Football League; Arkansas, one U.S. Bible-Belt state lifted a ban on gay marriage; and Conchita Wurst, an Austrian cross-dresser, won Eurovision Song Contest, the televised singing competition watched by tens of millions of viewers across Europe.

Nonetheless, LGBT people and and People Living with HIV (PLWH) experience higher rates of homelessness and poverty, lower levels of education, and high rates of family and community rejection, according to the report.

“Seventy-three percent of LGBT people and PLWH have had run-ins with police in the past five years,” said Aisha Moodie-Mills, co-author of the report and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress (CAP), a think tank considered close to the administration of President Barack Obama.

“Oftentimes these groups also experience police misconduct such as false arrests and verbal, physical, and sexual abuse while in police custody,” she told IPS.

Released late last week by CAP and several civil rights law groups, the report urges relevant U.S. agencies to adopt key reforms that can improve the plight of LGBT people and PLWH. Existing criminal-justice policies, according to the report, perpetuate poor life outcomes of LGBT people and PLWH.

“Police profile transgender women and use possession of condoms as evidence of prostitution-related offenses and grounds for arrest,” Moodie-Mills said. “And, in 36 states there are laws that criminalise HIV exposure. PLWH can be charged with felonies for having consensual sex, biting, and spitting despite the fact that spitting and biting have not been shown to pose significant risks for HIV transmission.”

Further, some states that do not have HIV-specific laws prosecute PLWH under more general criminal laws, including attempted murder, assault, and even bio-terrorism.

According to conservative estimates by the New York-based Center for HIV Law and Policy, nearly 200 PLWH have been prosecuted since 2008. In Texas, for example, a man with HIV is serving 35 years for spitting at a police officer. In New York, a man was sentenced to 10 years for aggravated assault for biting a police officer.

And in Michigan, prosecutors charged an HIV-positive man under the state’s anti-terrorism statute with possession of a “biological weapon,” and equated the HIV infection with possession of a “harmful device.”

“The United States arrests and prosecutes more people on the basis of their HIV status than the rest of the world combined,” noted Catherine Hanssens, the centre’s executive director and a co-author.

“The policies that drive these arrests spring from profoundly phobic misconceptions about the actual routes, risks, and consequences of HIV transmission and federal health officials’ refusal to promote frank, accurate information about sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity.”

The particular needs of LGBT people and PLWH are often overlooked when in jail. For example, discriminatory attitudes toward LGBT people prevent them from reporting sexual assaults. Despite the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (PREA) – the first federal law passed that deals with sexual assault of prisoners.

“Justice continues to be elusive and conditional for these populations due to a range of unequal laws and policies that dehumanise, victimise, and criminalise them because of their sexual orientation, gender identity, or HIV status,” says the report.

The report was generated in collaboration with over 50 activists, policy advocates, lawyers, and grassroots organisations working on LGBT criminalisation and racial justice issues and is the first comprehensive publication to offer policy recommendations to the all levels of government, from local police and state prisons to federal agencies and prosecutors.

They call for more aggressive efforts to curb discrimination in policing and law enforcement, to stop violence and discrimination inside prisons and detention centers, including the federally funded immigrant detention facilities.

The roadmap’s authors stress that existing legislation that oftentimes fail to protect LGBT people.

PREA can be amended to better address specific issues LGBT people face with in prisons, according to the report. This also includes allowing transgender people to specify the gender of the officer they would prefer to conduct searches on their persons and specifically to ban prohibit degrading and invasive genital searches.

Criminalisation and official harassment of LGBT people and PLWH are widespread across the world, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, where the governments of Nigeria and Uganda have recently approved laws that impose draconian punishment on homosexual conduct.

On May 19, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Global Health Policy Center will issue a new report on the criminalisation of homosexuality at the Third Atlanta Summit on Health in Africa.

Shakhmarli is laid to rest the day after his suicide. Credit: Free LGBT

By Shahin Abbasov
BAKU, Feb 7 2014 (EurasiaNet)

The suicide of a gay rights activist in Azerbaijan is prompting the country’s LGBT community to become more assertive in fighting for civil rights.
Isa Shakhmarly, the head of the Free LGBT non-governmental organisation, died on Jan. 22, using a rainbow flag to hang himself in his Baku apartment. He was 20. In a suicide note, he faulted Azerbaijani society at large for pushing him to take his life. “This world… is not able to hold my colours,” the note stated.“Isa has died, but his fight for equality of all people in Azerbaijan will continue.” -- Javid Nabiyev

The LGBT community until now has kept a relatively low profile in socially conservative Azerbaijan. But Shakhmarly’s death catalysed Azerbaijani activists to take public action. On Jan. 27, over 20 activists held a news conference in Baku to announce plans for a signature drive for fresh legislation to protect sexual minorities, and for an outreach campaign and a hotline that could provide psychological counseling. They also designated Jan. 22 as a “Day of Pride in Azerbaijan’s LGBT Community.”

The Jan. 27 news conference marked the first such event held in Baku by LGBT activists, and took place without incident. A flash-mob event in downtown Baku area to memorialise Shakhmarly also did not experience any disturbances.

In planning their civil rights campaign, LGBT activists intend to capitalise on the fact that Azerbaijan will assume the chairmanship in May of the Council of Europe, one of the continent’s leading human-rights watchdog organisations.

“We will use this opportunity to demand further reforms in this area,” said Javid Nabiyev, a friend of Shakhmarly and the leader of Nefes (Breath), an LGBT non-profit organisation.

On Jan. 24, the Council of Europe’s rapporteur on LGBT rights, Robert Bedron, issued a statement of concern about Shakhmarly’s suicide.

The civil rights campaign in Azerbaijan is fraught with the potential for civil tension to spill over into confrontation, similar to that which occurred in neighbouring Georgia last May. Homosexuality has not been a criminal offence in Azerbaijan since 2000, and the constitution proclaims the “equality of all people.” But most Azerbaijanis are not accepting of public displays of same-sex relationships or identity. Gay clubs do not exist.

“We are not accepted by society — by parents, relatives, neighbours, classmates and so on,” Nabiyev declared at the news conference. “Some people avoid us, while others show open intolerance.”

Shakhmarly’s friends claim that the young man lived alone – an unusual status in this communal society – since his family did not accept his homosexuality. His suicide did not appear an impromptu decision; the day before his death, he reportedly paid off all of his debts.

A member of parliament who asked not to be named suggested that new legislation, as proposed by the LGBT activists, would do little in practice to gain LGBT Azerbaijanis a greater degree of mainstream social acceptance.  “The law cannot change people’s attitudes. Better educational work is needed,” the MP said.

Azerbaijan’s legislation already is in sync “with European [Council of Europe] standards for LGBT-rights’ protection,” asserted the MP, who works on social-welfare issues. “There is no need to approve a new law.”

Parliament will not discuss any bill on the topic, he predicted.

LGBT activists directed their public frustration more at society than at officials, but causes for concern about the government do exist. While several LGBT-rights groups exist in Azerbaijan, none have been registered officially as non-governmental organisations, including Shakhmarly’s Free LGBT group.

Although no official record of violence against sexual minorities exists, police do not always listen to complaints about prejudice or harassment, commented Free LGBT activist Gulnara Azimzade. She said going to the police was “often useless because the police attitude toward us is often humiliating.”

The government has not commented on Shakhmarly’s death or responded to the activists’ remarks contained in his suicide note.  Azerbaijani media reports about Shakhmarly’s suicide and subsequent events have tended to be either sympathetic or neutral. But the mood is different online, where many social-network and forum users, particularly those stressing their Islamic beliefs, have left aggressively homophobic denunciations of Shahkmarly and other members of the LGBT community.

Similar hostility was on display at Shakhmarly’s funeral in the strongly conservative Baku suburb of Bina. Some residents threw stones at Shakhmarly’s friends and their cars as a protest against burying a gay man in the local cemetery. The burial occurred only after a Bina mullah stated that a person’s past cannot prevent his interment.

For LGBT activist Nabiyev and others, thrown stones and name-calling won’t deter them from agitating for their rights. “Isa has died, but his fight for equality of all people in Azerbaijan will continue,” Nabiyev said.

French senators have begun examining a controversial bill to legalise same-sex marriage and adoption, prompting protests by opponents keen to see the reform thrown out.

The bill, which would give same-sex couples the same rights as heterosexual couples to marry and adopt children, is expected to pass the Senate after being adopted by the lower house of parliament in February.

Both chambers are dominated by the ruling Socialist Party and its allies.

However, the government has been taken aback by the size and vehemence of protests to the bill, which Catholic, Muslim and Jewish religious leaders all opposed.

The bill has come under fierce attack in a country that is officially secular but predominantly Catholic, mobilising hundreds of thousands of pro- and anti-gay marriage protesters nationwide.

“We have the honour of submitting the bill, which was comfortably adopted by the National Assembly (the lower chamber) and aims to open up marriage and adoption to same-sex couples,” said French Justice Minister Christiane Taubira.

Tight vote expected

Debate on the bill is likely to last until Apr. 12 or 13 in the Senate, after which senators will vote to approve or reject it.

The vote is expected to be a tight one as the ruling Socialist party enjoys a smaller majority in the Senate than in the National Assembly.

Broadly speaking, the Socialists support the proposed reform, as do the Greens, Communists and some centrists.

About 280 amendments have been introduced for debate, and the conservative opposition UMP party may put forward a motion asking for the bill to be put to a referendum.

Early on Thursday, opponents registered their protest by turning up at the home of centre-right, pro-bill Senator Chantal Jouanno, blowing whistles and shouting slogans, to try and persuade her to vote against the bill.

Two other anti-gay marriage groups are planning protests later in the day in front of the Senate – one with whistles, drums, tin cans and saucepans, the other involving Catholics praying.

Polarised society

Opinion polls have routinely indicated that a majority of French people support gay marriage.

On Thursday, research by pollsters CSA showed that 53 percent of the French were “favourable” to same-sex marriage, but that 56 percent opposed adoption by a homosexual couple.

The movement against gay marriage has been more vociferous than the one backing same-sex unions.

A campaign orchestrated by the Catholic Church and belatedly backed by the mainstream centre-right opposition has steadily gathered momentum.

In January, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators flooded into Paris for an anti-gay marriage march.

Last month, police were forced to fire tear gas on people protesting the bill, and dozens were arrested.

French President Francois Hollande championed same-sex marriage and adoption during his election campaign last year, and his support for the legislation has not wavered throughout the turmoil.

His girlfriend, Valerie Trierweiler, has revealed that Hollande will be attending the marriages of gay friends once the legislation is on the statute books.

* Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.