"Entre Aspas"

(Brazil) ONG contrata

noreply@blogger.com (''Entre Aspas'') — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 03:26:00 +0000

ONG CONTRATA:
Advogados(as), psicólogos(as), assistente-sociais, estagiários(as), assistente administrativo e jornalistas.

Para a defesa e promoção dos direitos humanos da comunidade LGBT (Lésbicas, Gays, Bissexuais, Travestis e Transexuais) nas cidades de Curitiba e Londrina: Advogados(as), Psicólogos(as) e Assistentes Sociais com registros de classe. Estagiários(as) de psicologia, direito e serviço social. Assistente administrativo e financeiro com experiência. Coordenadores(as) de projetos sociais. Jornalistas e diagramadores(as) com MTB. Enviar currículo para o e-mail cepac@cepac.org.br até o dia 09/01/2008. Informações somente por e-mail.

Saiba mais:
Os (as) profissionais atuarão em projetos sociais do Centro Paranaense de Cidadania (CEPAC), ligados ao Programa Brasil sem Homofobia da Secretaria Especial dos Direitos Humamos da Presidência da República (SEDH/PR).

Entre os projetos estão os Centros de Referência LGBT.

Centros de Referência:
Os Centros de Referência em Direitos Humanos para prevenção e combate a homofobia são espaços onde a população encontra informações, orientações e apoio em casos de violência homofóbica ou em casos de desrespeito e discriminação por homofobia ou identidade de gênero.

Nos Centros, advogados, psicólogos e assistentes sociais, estão a disposição para atender e orientar a população na busca de seus direitos e no combate a homofobia. Qualquer pessoa que se sinta vítima de discriminação ou violência homofóbica pode buscar apoio jurídico e psicossocial nos Centros de Referência.

Outra importante função dos Centros de Referência são as ações de capacitação que buscam ampliar o entendimento e valorizar o respeito a diversidade, contribuindo para uma verdadeira construção de cidadania para a comunidade LGBT e também valorizar o respeito entre a comunidade local e a população LGBT.

Atualmente estão em funcionamento Centros de Referência em diversas capitais e cidades do interior. Ao todo a previsão é de que 48.

Fonte: Toni Reis - Presidência ABGLT

(Brazil) Orçamento da união aprovado

noreply@blogger.com (''Entre Aspas'') — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 03:24:00 +0000

INFORME PROJETO ALIADAS
www.abglt.org.br/aliadas

O Congresso Nacional aprovou nesta quinta-feira (18) o Orçamento de 2009. O relatório do senador Delcídio Amaral (PT-SP) tem o valor total de R$ 1,6 trilhão. A proposta segue para a sanção do presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

A ABGLT por meio do Projeto Aliadas com o apoio da Secretaria Especial dos Direitos Humanos da Presidência da República (SEDH), atuou na apresentação de emendas, de caráter nacional, para todos (as) os (as) parlamentares que compõem a Frente Parlamentar pela Cidadania LGBT no Congresso Nacional e nas comissões de Direitos Humanos e Minorias da Câmara de Deputados , Direitos Humanos e Legislação Participativa do Senado Federal e nas comissões de Educação e Cultura das duas casas.

Na Comissão de Direitos Humanos e Minorias da Câmara dos Deputados, as emendas para o BSH foram defendidas pela Deputada Janete Pieta (PT/SP) e Luiz Couto (PT/PB). Com o apoio de Pieta e Couto uma emenda no valor de R$ 10 milhões de reais para Centros de Referencias em Direitos Humanos foi aprovado, boa parte deste recurso deverá atender os Centros de Referencias LGBT da SEDH. A ABGLT por meio do Aliadas apresentará em janeiro de 2009, o orçamento LGBT da União.

As emendas propostas pela ABGLT foram de caráter nacional e visavam alocar recursos para as Secretarias e Ministérios que executam o Programa Brasil Sem Homofobia (BSH). As propostas de emendas orçamentárias para o BSH também foram apresentadas ao relator geral do Orçamento da União/2009, Senador Delcidio Amaral (PT/MS).

PPA
Em 2008 a ABGLT/Projeto Aliadas garantiu na Comissão de Direitos Humanos do Senado Federal, uma nova ação no PPA 2008/2011, trata-se da Conferencia Nacional LGBT. A emenda foi articulada e defendida pela senadora FÁTIMA CLEIDE (PT/RO). Com isso a 2ª Conferência Nacional LGBT esta garantida.

O Projeto Aliadas incentivou e orientou Ongs LGBT a apresentarem propostas de emendas individuais aos (as) parlamentares.

TONI REIS - Presidente da ABGLT

Fonte: TONI REIS - Presidente da ABGLT

(New Zealand) Vinegar Hill ready for 1,000 LGBT campers

noreply@blogger.com (''Entre Aspas'') — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 03:20:00 +0000

By GayNZ.com Daily News Staff - 22nd December 2008

2008's Queen of Vinegar Hill Jenni James says she's expecting over 1,000 gay and lesbian family and friends to join her at Vinegar Hill Summer Camp in the lead-up to New Years Eve.

An LGBT summer camping spot for 32 years now, Vinegar Hill is set on the Rangitikie River, State Highway 54, Manawatu, five minutes north of Hunterville, within the stunning Putai Ngahere Reserve.

"Some organised events include 'fashion in the field', movie nights, softball challenge, raft racing, drag king and queen shows, and other talented performers," reveals James.

"You can camp in the midst of happenings or there's plenty of quiet sites to rest away the days."

The annual New Years Eve Dance Party around the bonfire is sure to again rock on until the wee hours of the morning of January 1st 2009, says James.

"Other pastimes include river rafting, swimming, bush walks, lazing, cricket, hacky, drinks and songs around the bonfires, sleeping, sunning and glow worm discovery - to name a few."

Camp fees are $9 each person each night, with toilets and cold showers provided in the campsite, "but you will need drinking water and the rest of your camping equipment," James explains. There will be a basic supplies van and a laundry pick up visiting the camp daily.

Hot showers, meals, ice, gas refills, drinking water and supplies are available 5km down the road in Hunterville.

James thanks sponsors Kings and Queens NZ, 42 Below and Alchemia Vodka for their support of Vinegar Hill 2008-9.

Vinegar Hill's 2008-9 Events Schedule:
24th December: Vinegar Hill Fairy Float in the Hunterville Christmas Parade

28th December: Queens Party

29th December: On the Stage - Fashion in the Field (where contestants design a costume using the natural materials of Putai Ngahere Reserve), Game show: Pick a Purse, Talent Quest: all welcome.

30th December: Movie Night: First a family movie then the adults-only movie.

31st December: On the Stage: Performers, Crowning of the new Queen. Then PARTY time, music till 4-5am.

1st January: Recovery.

Source: gaynz.com

(USA) A Brief History of the Gay Cocktail

noreply@blogger.com (''Entre Aspas'') — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 03:15:00 +0000

If there are two things gays like to be at the forefront of it's trends and liquor. Combine the two and you have the gay obsession with what cocktail is in and which isn't. Don't believe us? We dare you to go into a gay bar in any major metropolitan area on a busy night and loudly order a Cosmo. (We apologize in advance if you really like Cosmo's and in fact, the best kind of drink is the one that's best for you.) Still, one of the best ways to take the temperature of the gay community is to see what they're drinking, as our look into the recent past reveals.

B.C.: Before Cosmo (pre-1997)
Oh sure, gays were getting drunk long before the Cosmo came to town, but it's remembered now as a shadowy world of light beers, wine coolers, Cape Cods, Long Island Iced Teas and other seashore-related libations. People drank and certain drinks were more popular than others, but the idea that everyone just had to be drinking the same thing was unheard of. Early gays did not yet know the unifying power of a single cocktail and so, like hunter-gatherers, each found his own respective drink, rarely holding much allegiance one way or another, unaware that just beyond the horizon a new sunset beckoned.

The Cosmo (1997-2001)
The Cosmopolitan wasn't just a drink, it was a way of life. Though it had been around since the 1970's, most likely created by gay men in Provincetown, it wasn't until the early 90s when Odeon bartender Toby Cecchini replaced the drink's original call for Rose's lime syrup with fresh-squeezed lime juice and added Cointreau to balance the flavors that the drink really began to take off.

It was the 1997 opening of New York City's G Lounge, however, that transformed the Cosmo from being just a labor-intensive sweet martini into the cultural Sex in the City/Ohmygod-I-am-so-embarrassed-my-mother-is-drinking-it icon that it's now become. G Lounge was the first gay bar in New York to embrace style and design. Gay bars of yesteryear had dark plywood walls and windowless facades. G Lounge aimed for slick and open, it's glass windows letting any passerby on 19th Street to look in on the action. At the center of it was The Cosmo, whose very name fit in with the decor. Mania for the drink continued and soon G was serving frozen slushy versions of the drink while the rest of the city's gay bars played catch-up; embracing a style and sweetness that said in the boom time, post-AIDS crisis that fun was back.

Sure, it was Carrie Bradshaw and company who popularized the drink in mainstream America, but the ubiquity of it wasn't overhyped on the show: Everyone you knew drank cosmos, all the time. Every time the Cosmo trend looked to be flagging, a new group would discover it or rediscover it and the whole process started over again, like the tech bubble, but with alcohol. Once it became the queer drink for the straight guy, the Cosmo's days in gay bars was doomed and ever since, people have searched for "the next Cosmo."

The Mojito (2000-2003)
Simply put, no drink could ever hope to be the true heir of the mighty Cosmo, but the mojito came pretty damn close. Our guess is that it won out simply because of all the sweet-flavored challengers to the throne. The mojito, which requires approximately seven days to make, was the only thing more complicated to make than the Cosmo. It also had the added benefits of being a Latin drink that didn't have a pineapple in it and was served in something besides a martini glass. Which is why, by 2002, even James Bond was drinking it in Die Another Day. You would think that after 9/11, drinks would go back to simplicity, but now cocktails were seen less and less as things designed to get you blasted and more like small works of art. Bar owners, more than willing to find an excuse to jack-up the prices, were happy to oblige.

Sake/ Cucumber-Infused/ Anything with a Complicated Garnish (2004)
2004 marked the high point of cocktail baroque. As the country went to war and our rights went down the can, at the very least we could have a fancy cocktail. Bartenders started to look more like apothecaries with infusions, tinctures, washes and gold-dust rims on hand to whip up increasingly nonsensical drinks. With so many mutant drinks running around, it wasn't long before there was a call for new found order and simplicity.

Pomegranate Martini (2005)
For a brief shining moment, order and harmony was restored to the world of the gay cocktail. As the world fell apart and Bush began a second term, the pomegranate martini was the drink of choice. Even Oprah named it as her favorite drink, though in reality, despite the dubious claims of health benefits, the pomegranate martini's popularity was solely based on the fact that it reminded people of drinking a Cosmo. After the better part of a decade being spent in pursuit of the "new Cosmo", the time had finally come to start looking for something else.

Rosé (Summer 2006)
Things had become so bad that for a moment, the cocktail of choice wasn't even a cocktail at all, it was a wine. Rosé wine, that bastard child that's neither red nor white, served in paper cups over ice, became, according the NYTimes, "the new Cosmo", with its associations of St. Tropez and the Carribean. People enjoyed it because it didn't give them a hangover. If the Cosmo exemplified the showiness of gay style in the 90s, rosé captured the studied casualness and low-rent virtues of the new hipsterati.

Vodka & Tonic (2006-2007)
Eventually, everyone seemed to catch on that alcohol on its own has a pretty high-caloric intake, but mix it with sugar and fruit juice and you're downing your gym routine every night at the bar. A vodka tonic with lime exemplifies the new simplicity ethos, but at the same time, seems a bit like overkill. A vodka tonic will get you drunk, but it's also drab and boring. Put it this way, when you drink a vodka tonic, you're only a glass full of fizzy water away from being a lonely Siberian doing shots on the steppes.

The Return of the Classic Cocktail (2008-present)
Manhattans, Sazeracs, Old-Fashioneds and Brown Derbys; the drinks your great-grandfather drank, are being rediscovered by a new generation. Where the Cosmo promised a night out on the town with the girls, today's popular drinks evoke dim-lounges filled with well-dressed men eying each other in the night. Perhaps it's a sign of progress that the gay bars of the 30s, 40s and 50s, which thrived on danger and shame, are viewed by the modern gay community as places of mystery and intrigue. Maybe it's that even though we're emulating the drinking habits of old, we're no longer hiding in the dark. It could just be that the classics taste so good. My drink of choice at the moment is a French 75, a combination of gin, lemon, simple syrup and champagne, named during World War I for the artillery shell which gave a similar kick. The upshot of the "classic cocktail" meme is that people are now ordering based on their own personal preference, meaning that perhaps the days of the gay solidarity cocktail are at long last, numbered.

Source: queerty.com

(UK) Sex and The Sound of Music

noreply@blogger.com (''Entre Aspas'') — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 03:12:00 +0000

Posted By: Mick Brown

Tags:Climb Every Mountain, Longer Lasting Sex, the Houses of Parliament, the London Palladium, The Sound of Music

Driving through Vauxhall the other day my eye was taken by a huge billboard posing the question in lurid day-glo colours several feet high 'Want Longer Lasting Sex?'

At a busy traffic intersection? In broad daylight? The product being advertised seemed to be some sort of nasal spray, but such was the flow of traffic that I was unable to note down the 0800 number underneath, so I'm afraid I'm unable to pass it on.

Vauxhall, for those unfamiliar with the area, is a scruffy neighbourhood, just across the bridge from the Houses of Parliament which, for reasons that are not exactly clear, has recently transmogrified into London's largest gay erogenous zone. A long-established drag pub, which spills shaven-headed, and often bare-chested, men onto the pavement, has been joined by a handful of other pubs and clubs, a leather-goods specialist, and a premises called 'Chariots Roman Spa' (who knows?). There are more moustaches walking the streets than in Saddam Hussein's war cabinet.

In this context, the promise of Longer Lasting Sex seemed to be simply another, albeit rather more in-your-face, addition, to the colourful pageant of local life. But driving on to Waterloo (fewer moustaches, lots of families disgorging from the railway station en route to the South Bank), there was the billboard again. A colleague reports a sighting outside a Tesco on a busy road in West London - 'there was almost a pile-up'.

The same advertisement has been appearing in advertisements in newspapers, but its impact seems measurably greater when it is blaring at you in letters four feet, rather than 48pt, high. It's a sign that provokes mixed feelings - of mild shock, curiosity, a silent cry of affirmation, nostalgia perhaps - and also a distinct discomfort. It's not exactly offensive, but it seems to mark another step in the gradual erosion of the barriers between private and public life. It's that button-holing, importuning tone - oy, you! The presumption that your sex life is their business. We know that advertising is the exploitation of insecurities and the manipulation of desires - but do they need to be so blatantly crude about it? It causes embarrassment, not least because disapproving of it makes you feel more fogey-ish than you fondly imagine yourself to be.

We were on our way to the London Palladium with our grand-daughter to see the current production of The Sound of Music. The show celebrates its fiftieth anniversary next year, and miraculously seems to have withstood the combined assault of being, variously, hopelessly old-fashioned, screamingly camp and terminally kitsch to emerge triumphantly unscathed into the elysian fields of the blissfully sublime. The melodies are terrific, of course, the lyrics delightful - imagine Oscar Hammerstein's pleasure at being able to shoehorn the words 'wimple' and 'flibbertijibbet' into the same song (surely a first - and a last - in the history of popular music). But beyond that it invokes an unabashed sentimentality, and a nostalgia for childhood that has a lethal capacity to turn the hardest heart to jelly.

The Palladium was packed with families and charabanc parties, the mood one of unbridled bonhomie and high anticipation; a big night out. A few minutes before curtains up a party filed into the seats in front of us - a fearsome-looking man-mountain with a large earring, three women of uncertain age - his wife and sisters perhaps - and an elderly lady who was obviously mum. The man spied my grand-daughter and immediately arranged his party in order of size so that nobody was blocking her view. It was mum's 80th, he explained, and they'd laid on a limo, champagne and a show. At the end, as the lights came up, I leaned forward to thank him again for his consideration. Evidently still in the grip of the high emotional catharsis occasioned by Climb Every Mountain, he wiped at his eyes with his hands (it's alright, I wanted to say, I've been struggling to hold back the tears ever since How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria? in the first act). It had, he said, been a blinding night.

I agree - three hours of pure joy in which nobody is trying to sell you anything but a commemorative t-shirt and a tub of vanilla ice-cream at £3 a pop. My new friend announced that he would be coming again. I'm tempted to join him.

Source: blogs.telegraph.uk

(Vatican) Pope likens "saving" gays to saving the rainforest

noreply@blogger.com (''Entre Aspas'') — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 03:09:00 +0000

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict said on Monday that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behavior was just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction.

"(The Church) should also protect man from the destruction of himself. A sort of ecology of man is needed," the pontiff said in a holiday address to the Curia, the Vatican's central administration.

"The tropical forests do deserve our protection. But man, as a creature, does not deserve any less."

The Catholic Church teaches that while homosexuality is not sinful, homosexual acts are. It opposes gay marriage and, in October, a leading Vatican official called homosexuality "a deviation, an irregularity, a wound."

The pope said humanity needed to "listen to the language of creation" to understand the intended roles of man and woman. He compared behavior beyond traditional heterosexual relations as "a destruction of God's work."

He also defended the Church's right to "speak of human nature as man and woman, and ask that this order of creation be respected."

(Reporting by Phil Stewart)

Source: uk.reuters.com

(USA) Putting the Episcopal rift in a historical context

noreply@blogger.com (''Entre Aspas'') — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 18:13:00 +0000

The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church of the United States says the current controversy over gays mirrors past conflicts that the global church has managed to overcome.

By Duke Helfand - December 15, 2008

Since its founding more than two centuries ago, the Episcopal Church has often struggled to keep disparate factions unified under its diverse umbrella.

Repeated controversies -- over slavery, the ordination of women and even the role of children in church life -- have threatened to tear at its religious fabric.

Now, the church faces one of its most daunting challenges yet, with hundreds of conservative congregations forming a separate North American church amid a dispute with liberal Episcopalians over homosexuality and Scripture.

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori sees the latest discord in historical terms, a view that sheds light on Episcopalians' religious and cultural DNA.

Similar controversies have come and gone, she told Times reporters earlier this month, but the 2.4-million-member church has remained largely intact -- even if unity has sometimes come at a steep price.

"The place of gay and lesbian people in the church is the latest expression of the ancient human struggle over who is 'the other,' " Jefferts Schori said. "There will be another group. I don't know who it is going to be."

Slaves were one of these first "other" groups to cast a long shadow over the church.

During the Civil War the church held together loosely, as Methodists and other denominations split over the issue of slavery. Southern Episcopalians formed their own branch but were marked absent during the church's 1862 general convention, returning to the fold after the war.

The church may have emerged from slavery intact, but many contemporary Episcopalians believe it lost its moral compass along the way. Episcopal leaders, acting at their national convention in 2006, apologized for the church's "complicity" in slavery. Church officials also have acknowledged that Southern and Northern Episcopalians alike benefited from the slave trade.

Modern disputes have similarly engulfed the church. Its decision in 1976 to ordain women raised new tensions, prompting the departure of some congregations while transforming the Episcopalian landscape, ultimately leading to Jefferts Schori's election to the top church office.

Revisions to the Book of Common Prayer in 1979 led to further dissension. The changes made baptism more central to the practice of the faith, empowering lay people and challenging the historical power of the clergy. The updates also made the Eucharist a regular act of Sunday worship and allowed children to receive Communion before they were confirmed, further challenging established practice.

The struggle over homosexuality burst to the top of the grievance chart in 2003 when an openly gay priest, V. Gene Robinson, was consecrated as bishop of New Hampshire. Tensions mounted as local churches blessed same-sex couples even as the national church refused to authorize official rites for such ceremonies.

(As bishop of Nevada in 2003, Jefferts Schori voted to affirm Robinson's election. She also permitted congregations to bless same-sex unions if they chose to do so after discussing the issue and developing their own policies.)

In the time since Jefferts Schori's 2006 installation at Washington's soaring National Cathedral, the furor over Robinson and gay marriage has intensified. Conservative Anglican leaders from Africa and elsewhere have waged a revolt against what they see as a permissive American church.

Those who study the Episcopal Church say the recent tumult over sexuality exemplifies a deeply rooted tradition of religious freedom and tolerance that hearkens to the church's Anglican roots.

The American church, they say, grew up in the late 1700s as a democratic institution alongside a young American republic. As time passed, it remained part of the global Anglican Communion even as its policies and tone were influenced by the culture in which it matured.

"There is something in the Anglican ethos . . . in which we live out our life of faith in the messiness of everyday life," said the Rev. Ian T. Douglas, a professor at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass.

Speaking of same-sex marriage, Douglas added: "If that's what we are wrestling with in American culture, then of course the Episcopal Church is going to wrestle with it."

Jefferts Schori believes that Episcopalians in general are far less preoccupied with issues of sexuality than the congregations that have broken away.

"In most of the rest of the church," she said, "people are moving on with feeding the hungry, providing housing for low-income people and doing creative things to build what we call the reign of God in their own communities."

The pressures within the Episcopal Church have amplified tensions in the Anglican Communion. Several of Jefferts Schori's conservative counterparts, meeting in Jerusalem last summer, called for the creation of a new independent church, and 700 breakaway congregations did just that this month, declaring themselves the Anglican Church in North America.

Scholars say Jefferts Schori, and the church she leads, must find a way to harmonize their differences in the same way their predecessors have done.

"The biggest challenge for the Episcopal church is to get over its own internal arguments to live out its identity as a church dedicated to God and its mission in the world," said Daniel Joslyn-Siemiatkoski, assistant professor of church history at Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley.

"The Anglican tradition is about holding things in a healthy and respectful tension and finding a way to . . . keep our eyes on the ministry we have been called to," he added.

Helfand is a Times staff writer.

duke.helfand@latimes.com

Source: latimes.com

(China) A Gay-Pride Revolution in Hong Kong

noreply@blogger.com (''Entre Aspas'') — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 18:10:00 +0000

By Deena Guzder and Ann Binlot / Hong Kong Sunday, Dec. 14, 2008

There were no drag queens in sexy ensembles with heavy makeup strutting down the streets in platform heels or buff shirtless sailor boys splayed like starfish on moving floats. But Hong Kong's first official gay-pride parade Saturday was still a colorful gathering; in fact, for a country that rarely acknowledges homosexuality, let alone celebrates it, it was downright revolutionary.

For a few hours, a city that usually seems immune to surprises watched in awe as approximately 1,000 paradegoers stopped traffic, filled the streets and spread their message to "celebrate love." A rainbow-colored dragon bobbed over the heads of carefully coiffed men donning dainty dresses and dancing to "Celebrate Pride," which warbled through a loudspeaker in the center of the city. Men with fiery red-feathered tiaras chanted, "Pride parade! Pride parade! Pride parade!" in Cantonese and English while marching through Hong Kong's congested Hennessy Road waving multicolored pride flags. (See TIME's top 10 pictures of 2008.)

Although Hong Kong has held several small demonstrations against homophobia, this was the first parade solely dedicated to celebrating queer identity. "We came out today to show the world that people in the queer community are normal people too," said Ariel Wong, a 21-year-old student at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University who wore a rainbow Afro wig and distributed stickers with pink hearts on them. The parade was co-organized by Rainbow of Hong Kong, Midnight Blue, Social Movement Resource Centre and the Women Coalition, with support from groups working on myriad issues, including civil rights, HIV/AIDS education and transgender awareness. It represented progress for China's gay community, marking the first large-scale event of its kind in any major Chinese city (only Taipei has hosted similar events). Antonio Licon, a Web designer for Hong Kong Magazine who grew up in Hawaii, said, "I think socially there are a lot of pressures in Hong Kong to conform to expectations and not disappoint parents."

People emerged from shops and restaurants to witness the historic event. While some spectators cheered in support, most looked confused and bewildered. "I never thought I would see this in Hong Kong," said Kevin Li, a salesman who nevertheless believes the younger generation is less homophobic than the older one. "Our society has different values than the West regarding sex because we are more traditional and more Chinese."

Yet it was Victorian colonial laws, not conservative Chinese attitudes, which first criminalized homosexuality. In 1901 British colonial laws threatened homosexuals with life imprisonment for anal intercourse and up to two years imprisonment for any so-called indecent acts involving two men, even if the acts occurred in the privacy of their home. In 1980, after an inspector of the Royal Hong Kong Police Force committed suicide as a group of officers were about to arrest him on suspicion of having engaged in homosexual activities, a debate sparked on legalizing homosexuality. Finally in 1991, after more than a decade of discussion, it was decriminalized.

But even if homosexuality is no longer a crime in Hong Kong, a stigma remains, as do discriminatory statutes with double standards. In 2005, Hong Kong–based civil rights attorney Michael Vidler successfully challenged a law that set the legal age of consent 21 for homosexuals (the age of consent for heterosexuals was 16), with a punishment of up to life in prison for violators. The law was ruled unconstitutional, but it has not been formally repealed.

"There are still archaic ideas of homosexuality as a form of gross indecency," said Vidler, who said he has seen cases of discrimination against homosexuals in the work force and housing market. "Hong Kong says it's a world city, but [it] has protocols in place that show it is still a backward country in regard to homosexuals' rights." Hong Kong lacks any non-discriminatory ordinance, and many locals still regard homosexuality with unease. Eric Herrera, a member of a white-collar gay-rights group called Fruits in Suits, which helped organize the parade, said, "I have no problem walking down the streets arm in arm with my partner of 21 years, but it makes many people very uncomfortable."

Many of the parade participants came from mainland China and Hong Kong's large expatriate community. "I've lived in China for a long time, and I've never marched in a gay-pride parade, so I always had my sister march in Chicago on my behalf," said Scott Wilson, who works in Wanzhou province. Amnesty International's LGBT coordinator in Hong Kong, Medeleine Mok, said, "In mainland China, it's impossible to have a gay-pride march, so this is a very important day that has attracted many people to Hong Kong."

The parade emphasized celebrating diversity and equality but also aired grievances with the Chinese government. Gun Lu of Beijing held a sign protesting censorship of movies and television shows that deal openly with homosexuality. In January 2007, the Broadcasting Authority issued a warning to producers of a show called Gay Lovers for presenting a "pro-gay" view. In March, Hong Kong's legislative council panel unanimously passed a motion demanding that the Broadcasting Authority withdraw its earlier ruling. "Non-heterosexuals rarely appear in the media, and when they do, they are portrayed as effeminate, flamboyant, sissies, perverts or AIDS carriers," said Dr. Ching Yau, an associate professor who teaches courses on media and gender studies at Lingnan University.

Such attitudes were reflected in the fact that, though Pride Parade 2008 turned out to be a success in many ways, planning the event was no easy matter. "While organizing the parade, we encountered many obstacles from the government, the police and a bus company," said Wai-Wai Yeo, a member of the Hong Kong Pride 2008 Organizing Committee. The local company Citybus refused to rent a double-decker to organizers of the city's parade because of concerns about its image. "This was a blatant act of discrimination, especially seeing the fact that this is a legal parade and the Hong Kong police have granted a permit," says Betty Grisoni, co-founder of a lesbian-rights organization called Les Peches, which helped organize the parade. A Citybus spokeswoman said on Dec. 11 that it would not discriminate against any party and that it was a commercial decision.

While significantly smaller in comparison to its counterparts in Berlin, New York City and San Francisco, Pride Parade 2008 set a precedent for what may become an annual event. "You have to start small," said Bill Boyle, a retiree who lives in Hong Kong and Toronto, as he watched the parade. "You want to educate the general population, not only to your presence, but also to the fact that you are just like them. You have the same right to fall in love like everyone else has and you need to have the same legal rights, and those legal rights are not here yet for people who are gay."

Source: time.com

(USA) Lee County man claims he was fired for being gay

noreply@blogger.com (''Entre Aspas'') — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 18:09:00 +0000

By CHARLIE WHITEHEAD
9:14 p.m., Domingo, Dezembro 14, 2008

BONITA SPRINGS — A Lee County man says he was fired from his job at Hess Express solely because he’s gay.

If it is true, it is not illegal, according to county officials, because federal, state and county discrimination laws do not recognize gays as a protected class.

“It should be equal rights for everybody,” said Lehigh Acres resident Kenneth Rothwell. “I’m a taxpayer in this county and in this state. It bothers me a lot that everybody is not considered equal.”

Rothwell says he started working at Hess as a manager in January 2007. He recalls riding to a store with a training manager who he says warned him that the store manager was gay.

“Gays are sick,” Rothwell says the training manager told him. “They should all be taken out and shot.”

Rothwell said he went to his store manager the next day to report the remark.

“I told my (store) manager I was gay and I didn’t like it,” he said. “From that moment on, my training stopped.”

Rothwell says he was transferred from the store at Jamaica Bay on U.S. 41 to the Site station — also owned by Hess — in Pine Manor. That store is in one of Fort Myers most depressed areas, he said, and he often dealt with panhandlers, drug dealers and prostitutes.

A fellow employee told him he was moved there “so the little (explicative) would tuck his tail between his legs and run” Rothwell said.

That happened in June 2007, Rothwell said. He said he put up with unfair treatment until September. He claims superiors concocted a bad store audit to get rid of him, and he was fired Sept. 8.

Jon Pepper, corporate spokesman for Hess, said the company does not fire someone for being gay.

“We are committed to providing a positive and respectful work environment for all of our employees,” Pepper said. “We do not tolerate discrimination against our employees.

“I can’t comment on him specifically, but Hess does not fire people for being gay,” he said.

Rothwell took his case to the Lee County Equal Opportunity office where he told his story. He was told there was nothing they could do.

“We enforce for the same protected groups there are in state law,” said county equal opportunity chief Paul Valenti. “Gays are not a protected group.”

So even if Rothwell was fired for being gay there is no law to make it illegal. For at least one county commissioners that’s not good enough.

“I believe that people, regardless of race, religious background, eye color, hair color, level of physical ability, they are first and foremost people,” said Commissioner Brian Bigelow.

That gives them the right to hold a job if they’re qualified, Bigelow said.

“Nothing about their physical characteristics that they cannot control should preclude them from holding a job,” he said.

That includes being gay, Bigelow said.

Bigelow is the first openly gay man to serve as a Lee County commissioner. He has shied away from being pigeonholed as “the gay commissioner” and believes his own orientation is not an issue.

Rothwell said he’s never spoken to Bigelow and had no idea the county had a gay commissioner.

“If he’s gay that’s his life,” he said. “If he’s a commissioner that’s his job.”

It’s the same for him, Rothwell said. He’s over 50. He’s lived with the same man for 15 years.

“We own a home. We go to work,” he said. “We do what we have to do and we live our life.”

Or they did.

“They’ve blackballed me,” Rothwell said. “Any place I apply they give me a bad reference. I’m about to lose my home. I’m about to lose my car. All because of Hess.”

Bigelow said he wants the county to investigate even though there’s no law to stop what Rothwell says happened.

“They say because gays are not a protected class the complaint is invalid,” Bigelow said. “If the county manager wanted to, he could tell them to investigate.”

Or one of the county minority advisory committees could recommend changing the county ordinance. There are six Florida counties and 10 Florida cities that have already passed laws making gays a protected class.

Bigelow said if the county investigates and finds Rothwell was discriminated against — protected class or not — it will show a problem that should be addressed.

“The board wouldn’t move to solve a problem without proof that there is a problem,” he said.

Commission Chairman Ray Judah took over from Bigelow as liaison to the minority affairs committee this month. He said it would be up to the committee members to decide whether gay discrimination is an issue.

In an e-mail to Bigelow, Valenti said he can only investigate those cases that involve a protected class.

“There are many things which can happen in the employment context which you and I may agree are ‘wrong’ but for which the law provides no protection,” Valenti said. “If someone comes to my office and says they were fired to allow the owner to hire the ne’er-do-well nephew, there would be nothing this office could do, as ‘Being fired to make room for the ne’er-do-well nephew’ is not a protected class.”

Rothwell said he won’t give up.

Source: naplesnews.com

(New Zealand) Lesbian poet Dorothy Porter dies aged 54

noreply@blogger.com (''Entre Aspas'') — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 18:00:00 +0000

By GayNZ.com Daily News Staff - 15th December 2008

Australian lesbian poet Dorothy Porter has died from complications due to cancer.

She was 54, and had been suffering from breast cancer for four years before her death, reports The Age newspaper.

Porter was best known for The Monkey's Mask, a crime thriller in verse about a lesbian detective. Published in 1994, the book won the Age Poetry Book of the Year.

Porter moved to Melbourne in 1993 to be with her partner and fellow writer Andrea Goldsmith.

Her agent Jenny Darling said: "Dorothy was the most passionate of people who gave her all to everything she engaged with. We cannot imagine the world without her."

Source: gaynz.com

(Brazil) 11ª Conferência Nacional dos Direitos Humanos

noreply@blogger.com (''Entre Aspas'') — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 17:57:00 +0000

LOCAL: Centro de Convenções Ulisses Guimarães (SDC Setor de Divulgação Cultural - Eixo Monumental) - Brasília / DF

DATA: 15 a 18 de Dezembro de 2008.

15 de Dezembro

9h00 às 19h00: Credenciamento

12h00 às 14h00: Almoço

14h00 às 17h00: Solenidade de abertura da 11ª Conferência Nacional dos Direitos Humanos e entrega do Prêmio de Direitos Humanos com a presença do Presidente da República e o ministro da Secretaria Especial dos Direitos Humanos da Presidência da República.

17h30 às 19h00: Plenária de aprovação do regulamento

16 de Dezembro

9h00 às 12h00: Mesa: Contextualização, histórico, processo de construção e eixos da 11ª CNDH e do PNDH.

Ministro Paulo Vannuchi
Secretaria Especial dos Direitos Humanos da Presidência da República - SEDH/PR

Alexandre Ciconello
Fórum das Entidades Nacionais de Direitos Humanos – FENDH

Profª Drª Flávia Piovesan
Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo - PUC/SP

12h00 às 14h00: Almoço

14h00 às 16h00: Grupos de Trabalho: Painéis temáticos sobre os respectivos eixos orientadores.

Eixo 1: Universalizar Direitos em um Contexto de Desigualdades

Ministra Nilcéa Freire
Secretaria Especial de Políticas para as Mulheres da Presidência da República – SPM

Ministro Edson Santos
Secretaria Especial de Políticas de Promoção da Igualdade Racial da Presidência da República – SEPPIR

Prof. Dr. Marcelo Paixão
Diretor de Graduação do Instituto de Economia da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro

Eixo 2: Violência, Segurança Pública e Acesso à Justiça

Ricardo Balestreri
Secretaria Nacional de Segurança Pública do Ministério da Justiça - SENASP/MJ

Vilma Reis
Centro de Estudos Afro Orientais da Universidade Federal da Bahia - CEAO/UFBA

Eixo 3: Pacto Federativo e Responsabilidade dos três Poderes, do Ministério Público e da Defensoria Pública

Alci Borges
Secretaria Estadual de Justiça e Cidadania do Piauí

Ela Wiecko
Subprocuradora Geral da República - Ministério Público Federal - MPF

Eixo 4: Educação e Cultura em Direitos Humanos

Nair Bicalho
Comitê Nacional de Educação em Direitos Humanos

Celso Schröder
Fórum Nacional pela Democratização da Comunicação - FNDC

Eixo 5: Interação Democrática entre Estado e Sociedade Civil

José Antônio Moroni
Instituto de Estudos Socioeconômicos – INESC

Eixo 6: Desenvolvimento e Direitos Humanos

Ministra Dilma Roussef
Casa Civil da Presidência da República

Marijane Lisboa
Fórum Brasileiro de ONGs e Movimentos Sociais para o Meio Ambiente e o Desenvolvimento – FBOMS

Eixo 7: Direito à Memória e à Verdade

Marco Antônio Rodrigues Barbosa
Comissão Especial de Mortos e Desaparecidos do Brasil da SEDH/PR

Paulo Abrão
Presidente da Comissão de Anistia do Ministério da Justiça

Maria Amélia Teles
Tortura Nunca-Mais

16h00 às 16h30: Coffee-Break

16h30 às 19h00: Grupos de Trabalho: Propostas Estaduais

19h00 às 21h00: Oficinas simultâneas, filmes e lançamentos

17 de Dezembro

9h00 às 12h00: Grupos de Trabalho: Propostas Estaduais e Diretrizes Nacionais

12h00 às 14h00: Almoço

14h00 às 16h00: Grupos de Trabalho: Diretrizes Nacionais

16h00 às 16h30: Coffee-Break

16h30 às 19h00: Atividade em plenária: depoimentos e manifestações livres

19h00 às 21h00: Show dos Direitos Humanos

18 de Dezembro

9h00 às 12h00: Plenária Final

12h00 às 14h00: Almoço

14h00 às 16h00: Plenária Final

16h00 às 16h30: Coffee-Break

16h30 às 19h00: Plenária Final

Fonte: Toni Reis (Presidência ABGLT)

(Showbiz) How gay films made me a better man

noreply@blogger.com (''Entre Aspas'') — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 17:52:00 +0000

A new book about homosexuality on film will strike chords with many bashful Brits

In 1960, the British housewife's favourite pin-up, Dirk Bogarde, made a decision that would all but destroy his existing career. The actor now best remembered for his roles in tense studies of society's hidden underbelly had before then been famous as the heart-throb star of unchallenging comedies and romances, the staple, sugar-coated fare so essential to propping up the uneasy peace of 1950s normalcy. But then he signed up to play the part of Melville Farr, a gay barrister who decides to expose a gang who are blackmailing him with evidence of an illegal homosexual attachment, at the cost of his career, reputation and marriage.

When it came out in 1961, Victim, directed by Basil Dearden, provoked responses of disgust from the press, public and even members of its own production crew. It was the first film in which the quintessential cinematic line "I love you" found itself being addressed to one man by another, and in which therefore the emotional lives of gay men were represented as being in sync with heterosexual "normality" – rather than, as was usual, as emanating from a seedy, topsy-turvy world bearing no discernible relation to the feelings and lives of "the rest of us." In this respect, the course of Bogarde's career wasn't the only thing altered irrevocably by the film – although Bogarde, who never publicly came out as gay, always maintained there was nothing autobiographical in his performance – for Victim is credited in part for paving the way for the Sexual Offences Act of 1967, ending the blanket proscription of sex between men that had existed in British legislation since 1885.

It's a rare thing this. While lovers of the cinematic arts are used to seeing the world and its web of dreams, fears and desires reflected on the flickering screen, when it comes to politics, and above all sexual politics, the medium has for many proved a disappointment. Indeed, while Hollywood actors have become accustomed of late to wearing their political liberalism on their sleeves, the average movie release still draws on visions of gender and social relations that were probably already unfashionable at the dawn of the iron age. However much you shuffle the pack, the man with the gun and the girl with the pretty hair-do always seem to come back to the top.

It took 40 years after Victim before a gay sex scene was shown in mainstream cinema with anything approaching the candour with which heterosexual sex is now routinely displayed. Brokeback Mountain, and its now legendary tale of chaps in chaps, not only won three Oscars but brought tears to eyes that would hitherto have been averted as if in response to some mortal threat.

Brokeback Mountain and Victim are both given a starring role in a new book about the history of gay cinema. Following a rather gushy preface by Simon Callow, author Steven Paul Davies displays a well-judged queer eye for numerous ostensibly straight films, showing on a movie-by-movie basis how gay and lesbian sensibilities find themselves reflected throughout the history of modern society's love affair with celluloid. While evidently targeted at a gay readership – no prizes for guessing the colour of the cover – Out at the Movies presents us with a rare case of something genuinely progressive having been aided and abetted by commercial cinema.

I was, for many years, one of those who looked away. It wasn't that I wanted to, or that there was any genuine homophobia in my attitudes. Yet I simply found I just couldn't quite cope with the sight of Rupert Everett canoodling with Michael Jenn in Another Country, or Daniel Day Lewis getting it on with Gordon Warnecke in My Beautiful Laundrette. Now, though, with the progress of cinema's slow journey out of the closet and the gentle readjustment of my sensibilities - and perhaps those of millions of others, too – I can, with pleasure.

So as a man with a straight eye for a queer film, may I say thanks a bunch. It is rare that one can speak of cinema as being genuinely "improving", but in the case of gay films I can certainly say watching them has improved me.

Source: guardia.co.uk

(USA) Va. must enforce gay visitation rights

noreply@blogger.com (''Entre Aspas'') — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 17:51:00 +0000

Associated Press
Wednesday Dec 10, 2008

The U.S. Supreme Court has let stand a ruling that Virginia must enforce a Vermont court order awarding child-visitation rights to a mother’s former lesbian partner.

The high court Monday declined to hear the case of Lisa Miller, who claimed that the Virginia Supreme Court improperly ignored a state law and constitutional amendment that prohibit same-sex unions and the recognition of such arrangements from other states.

The decision let stand a victory for Janet Jenkins, who has been fighting for visitation rights since the dissolution of the civil union she and Miller obtained in Vermont in 2000. Miller gave birth to the daughter, Isabella, in 2002, and the child was at the center of a legal battle closely watched by national conservative and gay-rights groups.

Source: edgeboston.com

(Italy) Italy's RAI chided for cutting Brokeback Mountain

noreply@blogger.com (''Entre Aspas'') — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 17:48:00 +0000

ROME (Reuters) - Homosexuals and free speech advocates have criticized Italian state broadcaster RAI for cutting the most explicit scenes when it showed the film Brokeback Mountain.

The film, which won three Oscars in 2006, tells the homosexual love story of two cowboys over the years while they are both married and have families.

The version which the state broadcaster ran on Monday night, starting at 10:45 p.m., did not include scenes where the two cowboys, played by Jake Gyllenhaal and the late Heath Ledger, first make love in a tent and a later kissing scene.

"Don't they think an adult audience could have withstood kisses and effusive love between two men?" Auerilio Mancuso, the head of Italy's largest gay rights group, Arcigay, was quoted as saying in the daily newspaper La Repubblica.

Mancuso said he would ask a parliamentary commission which oversees RAI to investigate.

RAI said it was not a case of censorship but more of an internal organizational issue.

It said the original plan was to run the cut version earlier at prime time, when broadcasts are subject to censorship because children may be watching. But the broadcast time was moved to a later slot and technicians forgot to run the full version.

Critics said a film with two heterosexuals kissing would not have been subjected to cuts, even in prime time.

RAI said the full version of the film, which was directed by Ang Lee, would be run sometime soon in a late-night slot.

(Editing by Timothy Heritage)

Source: hollywoodindustry.digitalmedianet.com

(Australia) Historic apology to gays and lesbians

noreply@blogger.com (''Entre Aspas'') — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 16:15:00 +0000

On Wednesday December 10, the Hobart City Council will apologise for banning a gay law reform stall from Salamanca Market in 1988 and ordering the arrest of those who defied the ban.

Hobart Lord Mayor Rob Valentine is expected to apologise to those arrested, as well as those council employees who carried out the council's orders.

The evening will also see the opening of an exhibition of photographs of the arrest by Richard Hale, picture, who was himself arrested at the time.

Rodney Croome, of the Tasmanian Gay and Lesbian Rights Group, said the arrests were traumatic for many of the people involved and the apology would help healing and reconciliation.

"The apology is also important because when public authorities say sorry for past discrimination they make discrimination less likely to happen again," Croome said.

In late 1988 the Tasmanian Law Reform Group was established to gather signatures for a petition and give out information on the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Tasmania. They set up a stall at Salamanca Market, which was promptly banned by the city council. This action led to large-scale protests and the arrests of 130 people.

The protests, described by Croome as Australia's largest ever act of gay rights civil disobedience, forced the council to retract the ban and led to an almost ten year debate which finally saw homosexuality decriminalised in Tasmania in 1997.

Twenty years later, the stall is still being manned every week.

The apology marks the twentieth anniversary of the arrest on December 9, 1988, and the sixtieth anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, December 10, 1948.

"This is the first apology of its kind in Australian history," Croome said.

Source: mcv.e-p.net.au

(Personalidade) Long-lost Oscar Wilde letters are found

noreply@blogger.com (''Entre Aspas'') — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 16:10:00 +0000

Monday, 8 December 2008

A collection of letters and manuscripts by Oscar Wilde, seemingly lost for more than 50 years have been rediscovered by academics.

The nine manuscripts and four letters that illuminate the life and work of the celebrated writer, dramatist, wit, and self-proclaimed "lord of language", were donated to The Morgan Library in New York. Among the pages is the earliest surviving letter from Wilde to his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, whom he called Bosie, which documents the start of his doomed gay relationship with the Magdalen College undergraduate in the early 1890s.

Writing on stationery of the Albemarle Club, probably in late 1892, Wilde expressed candid yearnings to be with Douglas and hoped that Douglas liked the visiting-card case he had given him, most likely for Douglas's 22nd birthday. He wrote: "Dearest Bosie, I am so glad you are better and that you like the little card case. Oxford is quite uncomfortable in winter. I go to Paris next, or in the next 10 days or so ... I should awfully like to go away with you somewhere where it is hot ... I am terribly busy in town ... Of the poem I will write tomorrow, Oscar."

Douglas destroyed many of the letters Wilde wrote to him. Nearly all he retained are in the Clark Library at UCLA, so the reappearance of this early letter is highly significant. The volume belonged to Douglas's father, the ninth Marquess of Queensberry, whose rage at his son's involvement with Wilde led to one of the most notorious criminal trials, resulting in Wilde's conviction on charges that he had committed acts of "gross indecency".

The volume's cover bears the arms of Queensberry, the shield flanked by two winged horses over the motto Forward, stamped in gilt. The manuscripts and letters were collected and preserved by the 11th Marquess of Queensberry, the grandson.

In one letter to a young man named George Kersley, Wilde spoke of his 1888 collection of stories The Happy Prince and Other Tales, calling them "studies in prose, put for Romance's sake into a fanciful form: meant partly for children, and partly for those who have kept the childlike faculties of wonder and joy." Wilde wrote the title and his name on a cover sheet and signed the manuscript.

Scholars at The Morgan Library will begin examining the writer's working processes in hope to make new discoveries. The more than 50 handwritten pages will be exhibited to the public next April.

The volume was donated by Lucia Moreira Salles, a Brazilian-born philanthropist who acquired the material with her late husband, Walter Moreira Salles, a Brazilian banker and book collector.

Source: belfasttelegraph.co.uk

(Burundi) ABGLT asks Burundian Senate to reject law making same-sex acts punishable

noreply@blogger.com (''Entre Aspas'') — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 16:07:00 +0000

Mr. Gervaise Rufyikiri
President of the Burundian Senate
senat@senat.bi

December 8th, 2008

Mister President,

The Brazilian Gay, Lesbian and Trans Association – ABGLT – was founded in 1995 and is a national network of 203 gay, lesbian, trans and other human rights organizations. ABGLT’s mission is “To promote the citizenship and defend the rights of gay men, lesbians, bisexuals and trans persons, in order to contribute towards the construction of a democracy free from any forms of discrimination, affirming the freedom of sexual orientation and gender identities.”

We work in direct partnership with the Brazilian Government to combat homophobic discrimination, promote equal rights for our community and contribute towards combating the AIDS epidemic. Our condition as homosexuals is not an impediment to this partnership, nor are we subject to legislation that makes our sexual orientation or gender identity illegal.

In the year that the world celebrates the 60th anniversary of the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ABGLT and its 203 member organizations were bitterly dismayed to learn that the National Assembly of Burundi passed a law on Friday November 21, 2008, making same-sex acts punishable by between 3 months and two years in prison, along with a substantial fine.

The Declaration of Human Rights is “Universal” because human rights are indivisible. They apply equally to all human beings, be they Black, White, Muslim, Christian, Burundian, Brazilian, heterosexual, gay… or whatever. The government of any country that proclaims itself to be democratic, as is the case of the Republic of Burundi, fails to uphold its pledge to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights when it discriminates to the detriment of segments within its society.

A fundamental principle of democracy is that all citizens be treated equally by the law, without discrimination of any nature. The proposed law is clearly discriminatory against gay men, lesbians, bisexuals and trans persons and as such we urge you as President of the Burundian Senate to take measures o ensure that the Senate rejects the proposal.

We urge Burundi to follow the example of Brazil’s government, which has an official programme to promote the citizenship of lesbians, gay men, lesbians, bisexuals and trans persons (LGBT), and which in June of this year held a national LGBT conference involving 15 ministries and and 1,000 civil society and government representatives in order to democratically define affirmative public policies aimed at ensuring the social inclusion of these segments of the Brazilian population.

We thank you for your attention in this matter and hope to count on your support in ensuring that Burundian citizens are not unnecessarily discriminated against because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Yours faithfully,

Toni Reis
President

Source: (Toni Reis - ABGLT Presidency)

(Brazil) CCJ proíbe discriminação por orientação sexual e por aparência

noreply@blogger.com (''Entre Aspas'') — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 16:03:00 +0000

A Comissão de Constituição e Justiça e de Cidadania (CCJ) aprovou na última quarta-feira (27) projeto de lei que amplia as punições em caso de discriminação contra candidatos a emprego. A proposta prevê pena de multa e de prestação de serviços à comunidade para quem fizer restrições quanto à orientação sexual e para quem exigir, em anúncios ou qualquer outra forma de recrutamento, que o candidato tenha boa aparência ou junte fotografia ao currículo. O projeto ainda será votado pelo Plenário.

A proposta inclui essas normas na Lei 7.716/89, que define os crimes resultantes de preconceito de raça, cor, etnia, religião ou procedência nacional.

Penas
A lei já prevê pena de reclusão de dois a cinco anos para quem negar ou obstar emprego em razão desses tipos de preconceito. De acordo com o projeto, incorre na mesma pena quem, por discriminação de raça ou cor, deixar de fornecer a empregado equipamento distribuído aos demais trabalhadores da mesma função; impedir a ascensão ou outra forma de benefício profissional; e dispensar tratamento diferenciado no ambiente de trabalho, especialmente quanto ao salário.

A proposta fixa a mesma pena para quem, por motivo de raça ou cor, obstar a promoção ou a concessão de qualquer outro benefício decorrente da relação funcional na administração pública direta ou indireta ou em concessionárias de serviços públicos.

Outras mudanças
A proposta também altera a Lei 9.029/95, que proíbe a exigência de atestados de gravidez e de esterilização e outras práticas discriminatórias para efeitos admissionais ou de permanência da relação jurídica de trabalho.

Nesse caso, a proposta também proíbe discriminação por orientação sexual para o acesso ao emprego ou sua manutenção. A lei já proíbe qualquer prática discriminatória por motivo de sexo, origem, raça, cor, estado civil, situação familiar ou idade.

Em caso de infração, a lei já prevê a reintegração ao trabalho com o pagamento dos salários durante o período de afastamento ou, se não houver reintegração, o pagamento em dobro dos salários durante o afastamento além das punições. A proposta inclui a possibilidade de reparação por dano moral.

A proposta (PL 3980/00, do Senado) foi aprovada na forma de substitutivo do relator, deputado Maurício Quintella Lessa (PR-AL).

Fonte: Toni Reis (Presidência ABGLT)

The Days of Their Lives: Lesbians Star in Funny Pages

noreply@blogger.com (''Entre Aspas'') — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 18:06:00 +0000

By DWIGHT GARNER
Published: December 2, 2008

Two years ago Alison Bechdel seemed to come out of nowhere with a graphic memoir, “Fun Home,” that knocked a lot of people, myself included, right over. You didn’t have to go quite as far as Time magazine, which called “Fun Home” the single best book of 2006, to recognize Ms. Bechdel’s achievement. Her memoir, about coming of age as a lesbian in her secret-filled family’s rural Pennsylvania funeral home, was moody, astringent, microscopically observed. “Fun Home” belongs on that same small, high shelf of comic books where “Maus” dwells.

Plenty of readers, however, needed no introduction to Ms. Bechdel. For more than 20 years she has been the creator of “Dykes to Watch Out For,” a weekly comic strip, printed mostly in college-town alternative newspapers, about the fractious lives and loves of an articulate group of lesbians in a city that resembles Minneapolis. The strip is sexy, sometimes in an R-rated way — imagine “Doonesbury” with regular references to sex toys — and it’s political, in a feisty, lefty, Greenpeace meets PETA meets MoveOn.org kind of way. Ms. Bechdel’s lesbians wanted to impeach the first George Bush.

Taken together, these comic strips don’t have the tightly coiled impact of “Fun Home,” but in some ways they offer greater consolations — they’re looser, more funny, and they offer the chance to watch a group of very appealing women grow and change (and struggle to have better sex) over the course of more than two decades. Ms. Bechdel calls her strips “half op-ed column and half endlessly serialized Victorian novel,” and that’s not far off. I suspect that, over the years, “Dykes to Watch Out For” has been as important to new generations of lesbians as landmark novels like Rita Mae Brown’s “Rubyfruit Jungle” (1973) and Lisa Alther’s “Kinflicks” (1976) were to an earlier one.

As Ms. Bechdel observes in her introduction to this new anthology, “The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For,” it was not especially easy to be openly lesbian back in 1983, when she published her first cartoon. “We had no ‘L Word,’ ” she writes. “We had no lesbian daytime TV hosts. We had no openly lesbian daughters of the creepy vice president. We had ‘Personal Best,’ and we liked it.”

If you are, with this volume, coming to Ms. Bechdel’s comic strips for the first time, you’ll notice a few things pretty quickly. For one, sex happens. There are a lot of naked cartoon women here — gloriously naked cartoon women: fat, thin, young, old, black, white. They are real women, many with ample armpit hair and zits on their shoulders. These lesbians aren’t Bambi, Betty or Veronica.

For another, you’ll pick up on how literate this strip is. It’s not just the dropped-in references to writers like Camille Paglia, Andrew Sullivan, Katha Pollitt, Judith Butler and Michel Foucault. In the stacks of a library, one character confesses: “I’ve always fantasized about library congress. Let’s do it in the HQ 70s.” What’s more, many of the characters work in a feminist bookstore called Madwimmin Books, always under threat from two chain stores Ms. Bechdel refers to as “Bounders Books and Muzak” and “Bunns and Noodle.” You’ll also come to realize that lesbians have been, over the last 25 years, on the cutting edge of just about every cultural trend in this country. They were among the first foodies, even if most went the vegetarian route. (Ms. Bechdel’s very first strip mentions a “seaweed-avocado pâté.”) And on the environment? Eighteen years ago Ms. Bechdel was writing about compost heaps and the threat posed by nonbiodegradable plastic trash bags. Ms. Bechdel adores her characters and gently satirizes them at the same time. They sometimes read books with absurd titles like “The Wheat-Free Guide to Creative Visualization in Co-Dependent Past-Life Relationships.” They go to workshops called “Parthenogenesis With Gemstones.” They develop crushes on women with names like Amethyst. Criticism, Ms. Bechdel understands, is a form of love.

The most important thing to know about “The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For,” however, is how deeply amusing it is. It crackles with one-liners. Log Cabin Republicans, one character intones, dream about “skinny-dipping at the Bohemian Grove with George Will.” During sex play, one woman says: “I’ll be the Lexus lesbian with a flat tire, and you be the surly biker who stops to help.” When a boy with two mommies leaves the house for a soccer game, one says to him, “No kicking.” His reply: “Not even the ball?”

After seeing “Brokeback Mountain,” one character delivers this sardonic monologue: “Who wouldn’t prefer a ruined life with a few pristine moments to a regular, banal, disappointing life? Imagine the cinematography if Ennis and Jack had been able to live together. Sweeping vistas of their couples therapist’s office.”

And here’s Ms. Bechdel’s characters’ running patter after seeing “Thelma and Louise”:

“What was the real message? The only way for women to be free in this culture is to be dead?”

“Yeah. Why couldn’t they have escaped into Mexico?”

“Where they would consummate their love for one another, open a guerrilla training camp for women and start fomenting armed resistance against rapists.” These characters fret about the insignificance of their “little counterculture lives,” especially when terrible things are happening in the world, and Republicans are in the White House. But Ms. Bechdel makes their lives resonate in ways that do not seem insignificant at all. Real things happen here: births, deaths, adoptions, affairs, breakups, commitment ceremonies, civil unions.

Ms. Bechdel began her strips all those years ago, she writes here, partly to provide “an antidote” to the culture’s image of gay women as “warped, sick, humorless and undesirable.” Boy, has she succeeded. Her crazy lesbians seem saner than the rest of us, and beyond beautiful.

Source: nytimes.com

(Canada) Gay activists urge Ottawa to sign global declaration

noreply@blogger.com (''Entre Aspas'') — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 18:03:00 +0000

By Steven EdwardsDecember 2, 2008

UNITED NATIONS - Gay rights groups in Canada are pressuring Ottawa to sign a United Nations “declaration” whose main theme calls on world governments to end discrimination against homosexuals.

The issue came into high relief Tuesday as gay rights activists and newspaper editorials in Europe condemned The Vatican for its decision to oppose the proposed document.

France, which will table the measure in the UN General Assembly before the end of the month, said the measure’s goal is to highlight persecution of homosexuals in many countries around the world.

“The idea . . . is to make decriminalization possible,” French Foreign Ministry spokesman Eric Chevallier said.

But noting only about 50 countries in the 192-member General Assembly have so far offered to support the measure, Archbishop Celestino Migliore said the Vatican believes it would “add new categories of those protected from discrimination.”

He also said it could lead to reverse discrimination against heterosexual marriage.

“States which do not recognize same-sex unions as ‘matrimony’ will be pilloried and made an object of pressure,” he said.

Human rights groups say homosexuality is still punishable by law in more than 85 countries, many of them in the Islamic world. Death remains the ultimate penalty in many, including in Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen.

But the declaration also contains references that could conflict with Canada’s anti-discrimination laws.

It says human rights should be respected, regardless of both “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.”

Current human rights protections in Canada don’t specifically ban discrimination based on gender identity, according to human rights activists.

The term refers to people who are physically of one sex, but may sense internally they are of another. It is distinguished from “sexual orientation,” which generally refers to whether a person is heterosexual or homosexual.

While the declaration will not be legally binding on countries that sign, many activists see UN backing for causes as an important step to advancing them.

“Right now, Canada has no human rights protections based on gender identity . . . in the federal human rights,” Kim Vance said from her Halifax base as co-director of ARC International, which promotes gay rights around the world.

She said Ottawa’s decision not to have taken a “leadership” role by joining France in trying to convince other countries to sign up “reflected the conservative nature of the current government.”

“I believe Canada will sign it, because they will look pretty bad if they didn’t support a non-binding document that basically said (countries) can’t kill people because they are gay.”

Canadian officials said the government was still considering a French invitation to sign up. While the 27-nation EU and several mainly developed countries have indicated their support, the United States is not expected to sign, observers said.

Helen Kennedy, executive director of the activist group Egale Canada, said there was “nothing in the declaration that Canada should be afraid of.”

But conservative family-values activists in Canada said Ottawa should reject the measure on principle.

“The UN shouldn’t be unilaterally attempting to change the laws of a sovereign country,” said Dave Quist, executive director of the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada.

“Nobody would support imprisonment or execution of people in foreign countries - that’s just simply off the scales - but any laws that Canadians change should be debated by Canadians.”

France says the declaration, not yet officially released publicly, builds on earlier international declarations.

“We condemn the human rights violations based on sexual orientation or gender identity wherever they occur, in particular, the use of the death penalty on this ground, extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, the practice of torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment, arbitrary arrest or detention and deprivation of economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to health,” says a section of a draft obtained by Canwest News Service.

© Copyright (c) CanWest News Service

Source: leaderpost.com

(Vatican) Vatican stands up against further UN resolutions

noreply@blogger.com (''Entre Aspas'') — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 17:59:00 +0000

Holy See refused to sign a UN document on the rights of the disabled because it did not condemn abortion

Richard Owen in Rome

Following the Vatican's controversial opposition this week to a UN declaration calling for an end to discrimination against homosexuals, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Vatican envoy to the UN, has confirmed that the Holy See also refused to sign a UN document last May on the rights of the disabled because it did not condemn abortion or assert the rights of foetuses with birth defects.

The Vatican made its position clear today Wednesday as it marked the United Nations International Day of Disabled People. Father Federico Lombardi, the Pope's spokesman, said the Holy See's position was "already widely known". Archbishop Migliore said the Vatican supported the rights of the disabled, but could not accept a clause in the UN declaration affirming a right to "sexual health and reproduction" because "in some countries such rights include the right to abortion".

The Italian left of centre Democratic Party said that coupled with the Vatican's stand on gays, this showed a "return to obscurantism" under Pope Benedict XVI. The Holy See's position was also criticised by the Italian Federation for the Handicapped.

The Vatican statement on discrimination against gays meanwhile was criticised by France, which currently holds the Presidency of the EU Council of Ministers, as well as by Amnesty International and gay rights groups. La Stampa described the Vatican stand as "grotesque".

Diplomats said the proposed UN declaration, to be adopted on 10 December by the UN general assembly, called for an end to the practice of criminalising and punishing people for their sexual orientation, and was aimed in part at countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, where homosexuality can be punished by death.

However Archbishop Migliore said the Vatican was concerned that countries where gay marriage is banned would "come under pressure" to allow it, and could even be "punished" for no doing so

Source: timesonline.co.uk

(Brazil) Adiamento do III Congresso da ABGLT

noreply@blogger.com (''Entre Aspas'') — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 17:55:00 +0000

NOTA OFICIAL de Adiamento do III Congresso da ABGLT

Na noite desta terça-feira ( 02/12/2008), em reunião virtual conjunta entre a comissão política (diretoria da ABGLT) e comissão de organizadora local (COL) decidiram pelo adiamento do III Congresso da Associação Brasileira de Gays, Lésbicas, bissexuais, Travestis e Transexuais (ABGLT) para dias 25 a 29 de março de 2009. O evento será realizado em Belém do Pará.

O Adiamento deu pelo prazo exíguo de execução dos convênios com Secretaria Especial dos Direitos Humanos, Ministério da Educação(UFPA) e a Secretaria de Justiça do Pará.

Tendo em vista também a portaria 0120 de 12 de novembro de 2008 do Governo do Pará que não permite empenhar despesas depois da data de 05 de dezembro de 2008.Os recursos serão a administrado pelo governo do estado do Pará.

Pedimos desculpas pelos transtornos causados pelo adiamento a todos e todas, especialmente a Secretaria Especial de Políticas de Igualdade Racial, Programa Nacional DST Aids, Secretaria Especial de Políticas para Mulheres, Coordenações Municipais e estaduais de AIDS enfim todos e todas que estão nos apoiando.

Pedimos que todas as passagens sejam transferidas automaticamente para as datas acima.

Informações adicionais pelo e-mail ficial congresso@abglt.org.br

Assinam,
.Diretoria da ABGLT
.Comissão Organizadora Local da Cidade de Belém
.Ivon Souza Cardoso Coordenador de Proteção à Livre Orientação Sexual da SEJUDH/PA

Fonte: Toni Reis (Presidência ABGLT)

(Brazil) Seminário: "A Atuação Profissional em Direitos Humanos LGBT"

noreply@blogger.com (''Entre Aspas'') — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 17:53:00 +0000

CONVITE PARA O I SEMINÁRIO “Saberes e Práticas: A Atuação Profissional em Direitos Humanos LGBT”:

Temos a satisfação de convidá-lo(a) para o I Seminário “Saberes e Práticas: A Atuação Profissional em Direitos Humanos LGBT”, evento executado pelo Centro de Referência GLBT João Antonio Mascarenhas, projeto desenvolvido pelo Grupo Dignidade por meio de convênio e financiamento da Secretaria Especial de Direitos Humanos da Presidência da República.

O evento destina-se a profissionais e estudantes das áreas de Direito, Psicologia e Serviço Social, bem como das demais áreas de atuação em direitos humanos, e pretende abordar os principais pontos envolvidos no atendimento à população LGBT (Lésbicas, Gays, Bissexuais, Travestis, Transexuais e Transgêneros) em situação de vulnerabilidade.

O Seminário será realizado no dia 04 de dezembro de 2008, das 14 às 18 horas, no Auditório do Anexo II da Câmara Municipal de Curitiba (Rua Barão do Rio Branco, s/n). Não há necessidade de inscrição prévia e haverá emissão de certificado de participação.

Para maiores informações, favor entrar em contato pelo telefone 3222 3999 – ramal 21, ou pelo e-mail: crglbt@grupodignidade.org.br

Fonte: Toni Reis (Presidência ABGLT)

(Brazil) Escritura de União Estável

noreply@blogger.com (''Entre Aspas'') — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 17:46:00 +0000

É possível sim que companheiros que têm uma união homoafetiva possam fazer uma escritura pública para formalizar e comprovar sua união.

Realmente o Código Civil estabelece que a união estável se dá entre homem e mulher, no entanto reiteradas decisões de tribunais em vários estados, inclusive no Paraná, já vêm entendendo que as uniões homoafetivas têm caráter familiar e podem ser comparadas às uniões estáveis heteroafetivas.

A escritura está sendo chamada de escritura de convivência homoafetiva, e vem sendo feita por vários tabelionatos em Curitiba e região metropolitana sem maiores problemas.

Geralmente é feita no mesmo dia, bastando apenas os companheiros comparecerem portando RG e CPF originais e duas testemunhas (que não sejam parentes próximos).
Envio em anexo uma lista dos tabelionatos que realizam tal procedimento.

Os links abaixo são de duas decisões judiciais. A primeira é do Tribunal de Justiça do RS e ressalta que a união homoafetiva deve ser entendida nos moldes da união estável heterossexual. Já a segunda é do Tribunal de Justiça do PR e afirma que a competência para julgar pedidos de reconhecimento de união homoafetiva é da Vara de Família, pois tal união é considerada uma entidade familiar. Nestes mesmos sites é possível achar outras decisões similares.

http://www.tj.rs.gov.br/site_php/jprud2/ementa.php
http://www.tj.pr.gov.br/consultas/jurisprudencia/JurisprudenciaDetalhes.asp?Sequencial=1&TotalAcordaos=9&Historico=1&AcordaoJuris=736438

O Clube Curitibano está para decidir a possibilidade de permitir a inclusão do companheiro homoafetivo como dependente, permitindo este que frequente o local. No link a seguir consta notícia que saiu no site do Ministério Público do PR:
http://200.189.113.39/mppr/noticiamp.nsf/9401e882a180c9bc03256d790046d022/cc7cbd0386216797832574cc0064a26f?OpenDocument

Mesmo que o clube vote pela negativa do pedido, ainda é possível ingressar com ação judicial, pois tal decisão seria inconstitucional.

Após a realização da escritura, aconselho que o senhor a leve até o Clube Curitibano a fim de tentar a permissão do acesso do companheiro ao clube.
Caso a resposta seja negativa, entre em contato novamente conosco pois aí resta ingressar com as medidas cabíveis (mediação ou ajuizamento de ação judicial).

Qualquer dúvida estou à disposição para maiores esclarecimentos.
Boa sorte!

Atenciosamente,

Caprice C. Jacewicz
Advogada - Centro de Referência GLBT - Grupo Dignidade
OAB/PR 31.531

Fonte: Toni Reis (Presidência ABGLT)

(Brazil) Paraga Gay em Piracicaba

noreply@blogger.com (''Entre Aspas'') — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 14:36:00 +0000

É Agoraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Piracicabaaaaaaaaaa. Pois é meus amores, mais uma parada do Movimento GLBT em vista, desta vez em Piracicaba.

Eu particularmente amo a parada de Piracicaba pela visibilidade que ela dá à todos que participam. Na edição passada, dia 17/11/07, tivemos um público de mais de 6 mil pessoas com a organização da ONG CASVI ( Centro de apoio e solidariedade á vida) que é a mesma ONG que organiza este ano no dia 7 de Dezembro.

A parada tem com tema este ano “ Por um estado Laico de fato - Homofobia MATA!” o que quer dizer que todos nós, independente de religião, raça, credo ou qualquer outra coisa, somos pessoas como quaisquer outras.

As pessoas tem a tendência de achar que para Gay é “MICARETA!”, ou festa ao céu aberto, onde tudo pode naquele dia... Mas o fato é que graças a Deus e muito da organização da Parada, nossa parada de Piracicaba é considerada pela associação da parada de São Paulo como uma das mais politicamente corretas em clima de militância e do porque estamos aqui.

Com movimentos como este pretendemos apresentar na câmara dos vereadores um projeto que pune à nível municipal toda forma de discriminação por orientação sexual, pois apesar de existir a lei 10.948 do estão de São Paulo toda cidade deve ter uma lei para o município, e é este nosso foco e intuito para este ano também.

Esperamos um publico de mais ou menos 20 mil pessoas, onde na Parada haverá distribuição de brindes, shows de artistas convidadas de outras cidades e muita coisa boa para fazer mais uma vez de Piracicaba uma parada Maravilhosa.

Quero agradecer a ONG Casvi pelo convite para ser novamente a Apresentadora OFICIAL da Parada e contamos com a presença de todos vocês neste dia que é mais que uma festa e sim um ato político de cidadania para toda a população GLBT.

Anote ai: Dia 7 de Dezembro na Praça da Paz em Piracicaba ao lado do supermercado BIG as 13h concentração.

Venha lutar pelos seus direitos iguais e não especiais...

Bjs e mais bjs Priscilla Drag

Fonte: Priscilla Drag