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Illegal to be gay: Countries around the World

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Illegal to be gay: Countries around the World

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This video explores only some of the countries where it is illegal to be gay, the laws, and the punishments.

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Why Is Iran Subsidizing Sex Reassignment Surgeries? http://www.seeker.com/why-is-iran-subsidizing-sex-reassignment-surgeries-1792718386.html Subscribe! http://bitly.com/1iLOHml Countries around the world celebrated Pride month in June, but not all places are as accepting. So where is homosexuality illegal? Learn More: Reuters: U.N.

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Being gay and getting caught in Malaysia is still considered a crime. In this image is Thi Laga who helped founded "Justice for sister" which is an advocacy group for members of the LGBTQ community.
Website with image:
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/audio/2018/oct/10/woman-fighting-for-lgbt-rights-malaysia-lesbian-car-sex-caning-thilaga-podcast

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This news article describes the lives of gay women and men. This is just a small glance into what the LGTBQ community in Russia go through, and the dangers they face, even though gay marriage is legal.

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"I think they should be banned from donating blood or sperm, and if they die in a car crash, their hearts should be burnt or buried in the ground as unsuitable for the continuation of life," was the message from Dmitry Kiselyov, a well-known Russian television journalist. It was directed at Russia's gay population, or those "with non-traditional sexual orientation," as some in the country refer to the LGBT community.

Kiselyov has been a prominent homophobic voice in Russian media, though he denies the accusation. His 2012 televised comments about banning gays and lesbians as organ donors were met by a round of applause from the audience.

Russian and international rights groups have criticized such public remarks as feeding a culture of homophobia in Russia. They can have deadly results: In 2013, Vladislav Tornovoi was found dead in the southern Russia city of Volgograd. The 23-year-old man had his head smashed in. He had been raped with beer bottles. A suspect told police he was killed for being gay.
'Propaganda' law
Both the murder and Kiselyov's comments came amid the passing of a law banning "homosexual propaganda," especially in regard to minors. That includes a nationwide ban on events promoting gay rights and big fines for event organizers. Media outlets are obliged to carry age warnings on articles about homosexuality.

Putin signed Russia's gay 'propaganda' bill into law in 2013

The law puts Russia's gay community in danger of intimidation, humiliation and aggression, although same-sex relationships remain officially legal in Russia.

That was five years ago, and homophobia remains widespread today. Public statements against gays and lesbians can score political points, especially among conservative voters who don't see them as homophobic, but rather as upholding "traditional values" and "protecting children." Indeed, those were the words of President Vladimir Putin when he signed the "propaganda" bill into law.
Parents against children
When ordinary citizen Boris Konakov protested against the persecution of gays in Chechnya by chaining himself to a bridge in St. Petersburg named for the father of the current Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, lawmaker Vitaly Milonov lashed out. Milonov, a member of the Duma, Russia's parliament, called him "AIDS-infected," and suggested the bridge be washed with shampoo. The lawmaker was not reproached for his derogatory and inflammatory comments.

Elsewhere in Russia, a mother said she would "get on her knees and pray that God makes my daughter normal like everyone else." It was like being "in front of a monster," she said, when her daughter, Natalia, came out as a lesbian. Natalia's mother eventually came to terms with her daughter's sexuality, a benefit many young Russians do not enjoy. Human rights organizations have documented cases of "corrective rape," including families locking their lesbian daughters in a room with a rapist.
Homophobia and persecution
Russian media often rail against the cost of bread. However, little was said when Russian businessman German Sterligov posted a homophobic sign on his chain of bakeries. "Entry for 'pidarasam' forbidden," the placard read, using a vulgar Russian-language word for gays. It was part of Sterglilov's push to attract customers with homophobic messaging. Despite the sign banning his presence, gay rights blogger Kirill Egor went into one of the bakeries with his camera, finding many of the workers there to be welcoming.

Even less has been reported on the fate of more than 100 gay men who have been detained at an undisclosed location in Chechnya since the spring. Human Rights Watch has documented their mistreatment, torture and humiliation. German Chancellor Angela Merkel publicly criticized Vladimir Putin during a visit to Sochi, calling on his government to do more to ensure the safety of gays and lesbians in Russia. One man, who uses the pseudonym Viktor, described how he was told to leave Chechnya because of his sexual orientation.

Boris, Natalia, Kirill, Viktor: They shared their experiences from Moscow and St. Petersburg. Their stories are full of pain, desperation and courage - a small window into the perilous lives of thousands of gay men and women in Russia.

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Homophobia in Russia: 'I thought my daughter was a monster' | DW | 10.10.2017

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"I think they should be banned from donating blood or sperm, and if they die in a car crash, their hearts should be burnt or buried in the ground as unsuitable for the continuation of life," was the message from Dmitry Kiselyov, a well-known Russian television journalist.

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This video explores the stories of gay women and men in Russia of how the propaganda law will effects their lives. Families are moving to another country, people have been fired for being openly gay, and politicians do not believe this law is discriminatory.

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Not a good time to be gay in Russia - reporter

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This article shares the story of Haena Kim, when her and her girlfriend moved to Shanghai. She compares it to her experience from living in New York, even claiming that people in Shanghai is more tolerant then the people in New York. However, even with the people being more tolerant, the rights for the LGTBQ community are non existent.

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Haena Kim, our Head of Asia Sales, moved to Shanghai with her girlfriend in 2013 with no idea how a gay couple would be treated. She was pleasantly surprised by what she found.

Here's her take on what it's like to be gay in China.

Shanghai surprise

There were always instances in the US, even in New York City, when people would look at us disapprovingly. So when I came to Shanghai with my partner, I expected more of the same - or worse. After all, this was Asia and I knew from experience in South Korea that 'gayness', let alone PDA, was frowned upon and more so than in the US.

To my pleasure, when we arrived in Shanghai, I was amazed at the sheer amount of lesbians that I could identify and see showing affection to each other.

Ps and Ts

One reason for this visibility is that gender roles in a lesbian relationship in China are much clearer than in the US. In a Chinese lesbian (or gay) couple, there are Ts and Ps. A T (short for tomboy) is a more butch lesbian usually sporting shorter hair and dressed quite masculine. A P is expected to be the more feminine of the two, with long hair, make-up and in general be the 'girlier' girl by societal standards.

A downside to this was that every time my girlfriend and I would go out, we would be asked, 'Oh, so who is the T?' because both my girlfriend and I are P presenting. It was almost as if, though we were lesbian, one person in the relationship had to at least present like a man. I still become a little bit offended when asked this question. I try to explain that's not how I view my relationship. Usually the easiest way to explain this is to say that in the West they don't divide lesbians into these categories.

Better than NYC

Perhaps due to this visible P and T distinction, when I came to Shanghai I felt like I had never seen as many lesbians in one place in my life. I had been to lesbian and gay nights at clubs during college, and to a lesbian bar in New York City where there were at most maybe forty lesbian women. That was very different from Shanghai.

My partner at the time and I had made code names for lesbians we saw. We called the lesbians 'Kitties' and gays 'Puppies.' We would walk through malls in Shanghai, and I would tug at her hand excitedly saying "Kitties!", "Puppies!" what seemed like every ten or twenty meters. This was a change from the US where, perhaps because of the less binary physical presentation of lesbians, I hadn't felt as represented.

No fear

In general, the Chinese don't care whether you're gay or not, as long as you're not their own child. And the people here are mild tempered. Even if they were to find gayness distasteful, it is very unlikely they would ever act on their emotions and even more unlikely they would resort to any form of violence. If you are an LGBT traveler in China, have no fear. It is highly unlikely that you will be 'gaybashed' or assaulted for anything else.

Clubs and bars

Shanghai is better for the LGBT party scene than any other city that I have been to. And that's a long list that includes New York City! Here are some venues that you will definitely want to visit if you're in Shanghai.
http://www.smartshanghai.com/articles/nightlife/the-list-gay-bars-in-shanghai-lgbtq https://www.travelgayasia.com/shanghai-gay-bars-and-clubs/
Tolerance, not rights

Despite all these upsides, presence and tolerance are not the same as legal rights and representation. Gay marriage is not legal in China. Nor are there domestic partnership laws. When my partner and I moved to China, we found it was impossible to get a spousal visa.

Transgender rights are non-existent, and there are no equal housing laws to date. In fact, China did not remove homosexuality from its index of mental disease until 2001!

Same-sex couples cannot adopt as children are not eligible for 'hukou' (local residency papers) unless both a mother and father sign the papers. This means that single mothers can't send their children to school. Imagine the difficulties a lesbian couple would face trying to get papers for a child.

Recently a man was forcibly sent to a mental institute by his family for being gay. The hospital refused to let him leave, citing that his immediate family's wish was for him to be 'cured.' It was only after a community effort of making calls to the hospital and seeking legal help that he was finally released back to his boyfriend.

Family values

The point of tension in China for the LGBT community is different to the US. The US, for all its progressive facets, has a Christian narrative woven into its politics. Religion is often used to defend the denial of rights to the LGBT community.

China is not particularly religious. Living together before marriage is not considered a sin. And there is no hellfire and brimstone waiting for homosexuals. The point of tension in China boils down to two other factors.

First, China is a country of only children. This means that if your child is gay, what with adoptive rights being next to non-existent, your family line dies with your child. And though China is not religious it does retain many of its Confucian values, which emphasise family relations.

Secondly, shame, shame, shame. 'Face' matters a lot for many Asian countries. Parents don't want their children to be gay for fear that they will be excluded from society. The nail that sticks out gets hammered in, is a saying that applies in East Asian society.

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What's it like to be gay in China? | The Dragon Trip

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Haena Kim, our Head of Asia Sales, moved to Shanghai with her girlfriend in 2013 with no idea how a gay couple would be treated. She was pleasantly surprised by what she found. Here's her take on what it's like to be gay in China.

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This image shows partners Sun Wenlin and Hu Mingliang making their way to court to attend trial after they were denied the right to get married.
Website with image:
https://www.newsweek.com/revealed-worlds-most-unwelcoming-city-gay-people-probably-not-where-you-629597

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This video shows the statistics and percentages of how many people in America identify as part as LGTBQ.

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Luckily in America, gay marriage and rights exist. However, there is still plenty of discrimination. This article talks about the political battle that the LGTBQ community battle. Rights do not mean the fight is over.

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If you're queer and pay attention to politics, chances are you spent a good portion of 2017 hyperventilating about Donald Trump. He'll do a bad thing for queer people, say he did the opposite, admit he did it, then say he's really just protecting us from Vice President Mike Pence, who would have us all hanged. This subtle form of psychological torture - the fact that all our lives hinge on the actions of a spoiled child in a grown man's body - has been the depressing theme of the past year in politics, and there's no sign it'll be any different in 2018.

To make sure you're prepared for the Orange Grimace's anti-queer tactics, here's a primer on the most important political issues we need to pay attention to in the coming year:
Watch transgender rights in the courts like a fierce hawk
While legal rights for gays and lesbians have, for the most part, stood firm in the first year of Trump's presidency, the administration has launched a full-scale attack on transgender people, who are most at risk because their rights are not as legally secure as gay rights. The administration is packing the federal judiciary with anti-LGBTQ+ appointees as quickly as possible, and the decisions those judges make now could harm the trans community for decades. The courts are currently wrangling over Trump's ban on transgender Americans serving in the Armed Forces. While trans people will be able to enlist in the military again starting January 1, the well-being of trans folk in and out of the services hangs in the balance in 2018.

Sympathetic lawyers say that existing laws - particularly the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which outlawed discrimination on the basis of gender - protect transgender Americans. The Obama administration agreed and enforced trans people's right to use the bathroom wherever possible, as well as offered trans and gender-nonconforming people some protections from being fired or denied housing because of their identity. Liberal judges were sympathetic; conservative judges were not. Now that Trump has come into office and flipped the script, the Supreme Court has to decide.

In 2017, the Justices took a hard pass on deciding whether existing laws protect trans people. But court-watchers expect them to take the issue up soon. The thing is, queers have an unreliable ally on the Court, Justice Anthony Kennedy. He wrote the decision that gave us marriage equality, but he also sympathizes with religious people who say making you a queer cake infringes on their liberty. Also, he's getting old - if Kennedy retires, it's likely that whoever replaces him will not be kind towards trans people, so queers have to muster their strength for that fight.

Keep the poor from being denied HIV/AIDS care
Trump and the Republicans' repeal of Obamacare's individual mandate - the requirement that everyone buy health insurance or pay a tax - means fewer healthy, young people are going to buy insurance in 2018. This will drive up the price of care for everyone else, locking out scores of queers. The Congressional Budget Office estimates 13 million Americans will lose health coverage because of the tax cut. Queer folks are already twice as likely as the general population to lack insurance, and this will only make things worse. The poorest members of the LGBTQ+ family, particularly queers of color and transgender people, will be hardest hit, especially when it comes to HIV/AIDS.

To ring in the New Year, Trump fired the remaining members of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS (the rest of them quit in protest over the summer). While it's unclear just how many people the Trump tax cuts will hit, the president's proposed budget for this year would have also cut HIV/AIDS funding by $800 million, leading to 600,000 new infections by 2020. That's going to devastate trans women of color and gay men who can't afford PrEP.

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The Most Urgent Queer Political Battles to Fight in 2018

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If you're queer and pay attention to politics, chances are you spent a good portion of 2017 hyperventilating about Donald Trump. He'll do a bad thing for queer people, say he did the opposite, admit he did it, then say he's really just protecting us from Vice President Mike Pence, who would have us all hanged.

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Not only were lesbians the part of the fight for gay rights, but they were also part of the women's movement.
Website with image:
http://www.lesbiannews.com/5-lesbian-activist-groups-fought/