Ugandan Lesbian Kasha Nabagesera Honored [Autostraddle]

Last week Ugandan lesbian activist Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera was awarded the 2011 Martin Ennals Human Rights Defenders Award, second only to the Nobel Peace Prize in prestige and the premiere award in human rights work.

Nabagesera runs the organization Freedom and Roam Uganda established in 2003 to “lobby and press for the recognition of same sex relationships, especially lesbians in Uganda and thereby attain full equal rights and freedom in all aspects of life.” Working for gay rights and acceptance in a country where homosexuality is illegal and  on a continent where this is the case in nearly 40 countries is clearly commendable.

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Recipes for Systemic Change

In Studio: Recipes for Systemic Change — A book about Strategic Design from Sitra- Finnish Innovation Fund on Vimeo.

Download the book for free.

Violent Attacks On Transgender People Raise Alarm [NPR]

"We have become the target, and someone has to be responsible for it,"
Ruby Corado says. "In my opinion, it really starts with the accountability of
those that are out there to protect us."

A series of shootings and violent attacks put Washington, D.C.'s transgender community on edge this summer. Police hesitate to call the attacks hate crimes, but they've stepped up their patrols. Still, the transgender community is demanding more action.

It's 2 o'clock in the afternoon on Dix Street in northeast Washington. The neighborhood is a popular gathering place for transgender women, but tensions arose when Lashai Mclean, 23, was murdered here in late July.

Days after the shooting, transgender activists Earline Budd and Ruby Corado held a vigil for Mclean. Today marks the first time they've returned to the site since then — and they are shocked by what they see.

The singed and severed legs of a teddy bear are strewn across the street, and floral bouquets are charred black. Corado and Budd find that the makeshift memorial they had left behind has been torched.

Budd sees the vandalism as an omen.

"It was a clear message to us that we're not welcome, and that what happened to Lashai could happen to any of us," she says.

Days after Mclean's murder, another transgender woman was shot, just one block away.

And on Aug. 26, an off-duty police officer stood on the hood of a car and shot through its windshield, hitting two transgender women and a male friend, wounding one critically. The officer is a 20-year veteran of the city's police force and is currently in jail, awaiting trial.

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Last ‘Pink Triangle’ Dies, Gay-Bashers Alive and Well [Southern Poverty Law Center]

 

In a moment of disturbing irony, the death [earlier this month] of the last known gay survivor of Hitler’s concentration camps coincided with a cultural event that highlighted the fragility of LGBT people’s foothold on civil rights in modern society.

Rudolf Brazda, who, according to the Los Angeles Times, spent three years in Buchenwald wearing prison garb marked with a pink triangle to indicate he was gay, died [August 3rd] at 98.

On [the following] Saturday – just one day after the Times published Brazda’s obituary – Texas Gov. Rick Perry led a prayer rally sponsored by American Family Association, an anti-gay hate group whose most prominent public face last year said that gays were responsible for the Holocaust.

“Homosexuality gave us Adolf Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and six million dead Jews,” Bryan Fischer, the AFA’s director of issue analysis for government and public policy, said in May 2010.

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Second-largest U.S. Indian tribe expels slave descendants [Reuters]

OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) - The nation's second-largest Indian tribe formally booted from membership thousands of descendants of black slaves who were brought to Oklahoma more than 170 years ago by Native American owners.

The Cherokee nation voted after the Civil War to admit the slave descendants to the tribe.

But on Monday, the Cherokee nation Supreme Court ruled that a 2007 tribal decision to kick the so-called "Freedmen" out of the tribe was proper.

The controversy stems from a footnote in the brutal history of U.S. treatment of Native Americans. When many Indians were forced to move to what later became Oklahoma from the eastern U.S. in 1838, some who had owned plantations in the South brought along their slaves.

Some 4,000 Indians died during the forced march, which became known as the "Trail of Tears."

"And our ancestors carried the baggage," said Marilyn Vann, the Freedman leader who is a plaintiff in the legal battle.

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This hurts. So much. I heard of the Cherokee Nation expelling it's black members years ago. Apparently the battle wages on. This article leaves a lot to be desired in knowing the Cherokee Nation's reasoning. I'm personally of various Native decent, particularly Shoshone, from my great great grandmother, whom my mother knew. There's definitely touchy politics about claiming one's Native heritage, and I get why. There's something to be said about experience; claiming heritage for the benefits without ever experiencing the struggle is, in my opinion, despicable. And so is turning your back on long standing members of your tribe who've been nothing but faithful....

Why Prop 8's Days are Numbered [Examiner]

One year ago Thursday, a federal court in California ruled that Proposition 8, a 2008 voter approved initiative which denies gay and lesbian couples the right to marry in California, is unconstitutional. Although the case is now up against the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, there are a few reasons to believe that the days of this discriminatory law are numbered.

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NO! The Rape Documentary

More Here

Israeli and Palestinian Women Take a Trip to the Beach [NYTimes]

TEL AVIV — Skittish at first, then wide-eyed with delight, the women and girls entered the sea, smiling, splashing and then joining hands, getting knocked over by the waves, throwing back their heads and ultimately laughing with joy. 

Most had never seen the sea before. 

The women were Palestinians from the southern part of the West Bank, which is landlocked, and Israel does not allow them in. They risked criminal prosecution, along with the dozen Israeli women who took them to the beach. And that, in fact, was part of the point: to protest what they and their hosts consider unjust laws. 

In the grinding rut of Israeli-Palestinian relations — no negotiations, mutual recriminations, growing distance and dehumanization — the illicit trip was a rare event that joined the simplest of pleasures with the most complex of politics. It showed why coexistence here is hard, but also why there are, on both sides, people who refuse to give up on it.

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For Gay Christian Musicians, Work Balances Faith, Art, Love [NPR]

Jeniffer Knapp

Many Christian denominations denounce homosexuality as a sin. As a result, gay Christian singers, songwriters and musicians face a challenge in balancing their art, their sexuality and their faith. For those few who have decided to come out, it has meant giving up successful careers.

Singer-songwriter Jennifer Knapp has sold more than a million albums and earned Dove Awards on the strength of songs like her 1998 hit, "Undo Me." But in 2002, at the height of her career as a contemporary Christian artist, Knapp suddenly stopped making music.

"Knowing that I was going to have to publicly deal with my sexuality — it really made me consider how much I wanted to participate in music," Knapp says.

Seven years later, Knapp reemerged, no longer self-identified as a Christian artist — instead, she was a folk-rock musician, a person of faith and a lesbian. Knapp says that even after all that time, she still had doubts about coming forward.

"It made me very hesitant to get back up into the public level, knowing that there would be discussion about my sexuality on the whole," she says.

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SLDN Releases Post-DADT Service Guide [Care2]

Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) this week released a legal guide for LGBTs to help them navigate the landscape of the post-DADT repeal environment.

The guide, “Freedom to Serve: The Definitive Guide to LGBT Military Service,” is designed to offer a comprehensive overview of laws and policies relating to military service that may be of interest to LGBT servicemembers, as well as their friends and family.

“The information contained in this legal guide will help service members, prospective service members, their families, and friends make informed decisions about how to serve successfully as we move beyond ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ It will also assist them in understanding how to protect themselves when necessary and how to respond if they are targeted in any way for their actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity,” said SLDN Legal Director David McKean.

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And I have to ask, what is going to be done to acclimate heterosexual service members into a DATD-repealed environment to further protect LGBTQ service members?

Prop 8 Arguments [Cherry Grrl]

The California Supreme Court will hear arguments on September 6th as to whether proponents of Proposition 8 have the legal standing to appeal Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision striking down the ballot measure. The court will hear oral arguments on a question of whether under state law proponents of initiatives have standing to defend their initiatives when they are challenged in court. The question was certified to them by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit earlier this year. In response to the court’s scheduling order, Chad Griffin, American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER) Co-Founder and Board President, had the following to say: “I am very pleased that the Supreme Court of California calendared our case for the first day of their fall session. The governor and attorney general of California – and the United States District Court – all have found Proposition 8 unconstitutional.

No Look Pass

No Look Pass is an identity quest film that follows Emily Tay’s transition into adulthood between her senior year at Harvard (where she ranks 23rd nationally for assists thanks to her signature move, the no look pass) into her first year playing professionally in Europe. Emily’s Buddhist parents risked everything to emigrate from Burma in 1980 to Los Angeles’ Chinatown and expect Emily to return home after graduation and comply with an arranged marriage. But Emily must follow her own American Dream, which means moving to Germany and falling in love with a U.S. servicewoman living under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. After feeling like an outsider her entire life, Emily struggles to become a leader, not just a star and faces the terror of telling her parents who she really is.

Check out No Look Pass at Outfest in West Hollywood on July 17th.

And on a sidenote: Sheryl Swoopes is engaged to a man.

Youth Say Race Still Matters—So What Are They Doing About It? [COLORLINES]

COLORLINES

by Juell Stewart 

Earlier this month, our publisher released a report, “Don’t Call Them Post-Racial,” which surveyed attitudes about race in key systems in U.S. society among young adults 18-25. Dom Apollon’s research team conducted focus groups with dozens of young people in the Los Angeles area, and learned that their thoughts on race are far more nuanced than most polling and commentary has suggested. Theirs is the most diverse generation in U.S. history, but that doesn’t make them post-race. Rather, the young people in the focus groups made clear that they believed race still matters today. 

The young people struggled for language to define racism and they differed across racial groups in how they saw race impacting society. But they identified race as a “significant problem” in a few key areas, with all racial groups agreeing that race remained a problem for both criminal justice and employment. Young people of color identified education as a particular trouble spot as well. 

They also differed in what they thought should be done about these problems—while white Millennials, as this generation has been dubbed, largely identified racism as driven by individuals and demanding individual solutions, young people of color were more likely to identify racism as a collective problem that demands political action to resolve. As Apollon wrote, “All of these ideas are crucial to understand because they also shape how this generation will choose to act upon racism and racial injustice.”

So to make these ideas more concrete, we talked to five organizations and campaigns that are working with Millennials to tackle racism as a collective, systemic problem rather than an individualized, personal one. Here’s what they had to say about their work.

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Queer Latinas Have Specific Healthcare Needs, This Billboard Isn’t One of Them [Autostraddle]

There could be a lot of effective ways to say this, but I’m just going to go the quick route: my name is Carmen Rios, I’m Latina, and I’m a lesbian. 

As a feminist, I’ve become aware of how my unique identity impacts my experiences. It’s pretty much a no-brainer that Latina women face challenges unique to the intersection of race and gender that they live at, or at least it should be by now. But what happens when you throw in the ‘LBT?’ Or, really, what happens when it comes to sex at all?

The National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health (NLIRH) recently released an issue brief on sexual health and LGBTQ Latinas. The outlook was not too bright: the conclusion of the brief was, pretty much, that more research on the unique needs of Latina women on a whole is needed to address their unique sexual health needs. But what the brief also reveals is a handful of problems that LBT Latinas are facing: provider bias and limited access to quality health care, a lack of accommodations for queer women and non-English speakers in health care, higher rates of cervical cancer, and lower rates of regular care for lesbian Latinas related to sexual health. 

The report, LGBTQ Latin@s and Reproductive Justice, can be found in full on the NLIRH website. It also explored how trans women face problems related to the gendering of health services and employment discrimination, both having an ugly impact on the opportunity to receive quality health care.

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Puerto Rico: 3 LGBT Murders This Week, 18 In 18 Months [The New Civil Rights Movement]

At least three gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender Americans have been murdered in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico this week, bringing the tragic total to 18 in the past year and a half. While there are both local and federal hate crimes laws that would assist authorities in investigating and potentially stemming the rapid rise of these anti-​gay hate crimes, the Republican Governor of Puerto Rico, Luis G. Fortuño, has often refused to implement or access these statutes. 

 Luis G. Fortuño, whose term began in January, 2009, refused to classify as a hate crime the infamous decapitation murder of 19-​year old Jorge Steven López Mercado, perhaps the most-​publicized of the 18 murders. Only under threat from the federal government, was Mercado’s murder investigated as a possible hate crime. Last year, Fortuño attempted to ban same-​sex marriage in Puerto Rico permanently via a constitutional amendment. 

 In addition to the murder of Jorge Steven López Mercado on November 14, 2009, the following have also been classified as LGBT murders:

• Michaell Galindo
• Ashley Santiago
• Angie González Oquendo
• Fernando López de Victoria
• Humberto Bonilla Rodríguez
• Michelle González García
• La Flaca Soto Fernández
• Benjamín Acevedo Román
• Charlotte Crespo
• Frank Di Giovani
• Ivan McDonald
• Edwin Rodríguez Grajales
• Ezequiel Crespo
• Eugenio Alberto Rivera Ortiz
• Karlota Brown
• Alejandro Torres Torres
• Ramón ‘Moncho’ Salgado

Tuesday, Edge On The Net National News Editor Michael K. Lavers was the first to recognize that in addition to the deaths this week of Karlota Gómez Sánchez and Alejandro Torres Torres, “Salgado is the 18th LGBT Puerto Rican who has been murdered on the island over the last year and a half.” Lavers added, “This is simply unacceptable. And people really need to begin to pay attention to this appalling situation in Puerto Rico that continues to grow worse by the day.”

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Forming A New Family, Emotionally And Legally [NPR]

My nickname is Joli. I am 38 years old (no longer a "girl" strictly speaking, but still an occasional wearer of pigtails). I live with my partner in Los Angeles. We are expecting our first child — a son — to be born in mid-August. I am the birth mother.

...

We learned that under California law A.B. 205, domestic partners (straight or gay) have the same rights with respect to a child born to either partner. Regardless, it is still a good idea for the non-birth mother to file for adoption to ensure all legal rights as the birth mother. We also learned from Amanda that although most of the local L.A. hospitals acknowledge A.B. 205 in their policies, we should still take a copy of our domestic partnership certificate with us to the hospital when the time comes to deliver, just in case we have to deal with any homophobic health care providers. Our domestic partnership ensures us that both of our names will appear on the baby's birth certificate. This helpful information has eased my sense of vulnerability surrounding our legal rights as parents.

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NY Senate Backs Same Sex Marriage [Reuters]

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Waves of gay couples rushed on Saturday to make wedding plans that had been dreams for decades, as euphoria over New York's legalization of same-sex marriage promised to turn a traditional pride parade into an enormous roving engagement party.

In the minutes and hours after the law was passed and signed by Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo late on Friday, sparkling rings were offered and accepted and champagne corks flew to kick off wedding plans likely to add an estimated $284 million to the state's economy, according to a report by the Independent Democratic Conference.

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In African Women’s Soccer, Homophobia Remains an Obstacle [NYTimes]

Shortly before she was hired in 2009 as the first female coach of Nigeria’s powerful women’s national soccer team, Eucharia Uche said at a seminar that she was troubled by the presence of lesbians on the squad, calling it a "worrisome experience."

Over the past two years, as Nigeria progressed toward the Women’s World Cup, which begins Sunday in Germany, Uche said that she has used religion in an attempt to rid her team of homosexual behavior, which she termed a "dirty issue," and "spiritually, morally very wrong."

FIFA, soccer’s world governing body, states as part of its mission a desire to use the game in "overcoming social and cultural obstacles for women with the ultimate aim of improving women’s standing in society." But the story of Nigeria’s Super Falcons illustrates the cultural obstacles that remain for many African women who play soccer decades after more assertive efforts at inclusivity occurred in places like the United States, Germany, Norway, Sweden and more recently in Brazil.

Uche said she had never witnessed her own players participating in homosexual activity. Instead, she said that she had relied on rumors, speculation and news media accounts to form her belief that lesbian behavior had been common in the Nigerian team.

"When rumors are strong, you are bound to believe it is happening," Uche, 38, said in a telephone interview from Nigeria’s World Cup training camp in Saalfelden, Austria.

In March, Uche made similar remarks to The Daily Sun newspaper of Nigeria. The newspaper also quoted a former technical assistant for the country’s soccer federation, James Peters, saying that he had removed some players from Nigeria’s women’s team last year, "not because they were not good players, but because they were lesbians."

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Alice Walker: Why I'm sailing to Gaza [CNN]

Editor's note: Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker will join an international flotilla of boats sailing to Gaza to challenge Israel's blockade of the territory. Here, Walker, best known for her 1983 novel "The Color Purple," explains why she will be taking part. 

By Alice Walker 

Why am I going on the Freedom Flotilla II to Gaza? I ask myself this, even though the answer is: What else would I do? I am in my sixty-seventh year, having lived already a long and fruitful life, one with which I am content. 

It seems to me that during this period of eldering it is good to reap the harvest of one's understanding of what is important, and to share this, especially with the young. How are they to learn, otherwise? 

Our boat, The Audacity of Hope, will be carrying letters to the people of Gaza. Letters expressing solidarity and love. That is all its cargo will consist of. If the Israeli military attacks us, it will be as if they attacked the mailman. This should go down hilariously in the annals of history. But if they insist on attacking us, wounding us, even murdering us, as they did some of the activists in the last flotilla, Freedom Flotilla I, what is to be done? 

There is a scene in the movie "Gandhi" that is very moving to me: it is when the unarmed Indian protesters line up to confront the armed forces of the British Empire. The soldiers beat them unmercifully, but the Indians, their broken and dead lifted tenderly out of the fray, keep coming. 

Alongside this image of brave followers of Gandhi there is for me an awareness of paying off a debt to the Jewish civil rights activists who faced death to come to the side of black people in the South in our time of need. I am especially indebted to Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman who heard our calls for help - our government then as now glacially slow in providing protection to non-violent protestors-and came to stand with us. 

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Video Interview with Tom MacMaster [Colorlines]

He even apologizes in a privileged way. Ugh! GREAT article by Akiba Solomon on Colorlines. Have a read.