Some good news round ups

Austria approved a bill to allow civil unions! It’s not perfect of course - and we should not settle or stop at cut-price almost marriages because that message is so destructive - but it’s a step forward.

Argentina’s woman of the year is a Trans woman congratulations Ms. Romero!

Despite some grossly homophobic campaign against her Annise Parker won the race to be mayor of Houston. Houston is now the largest US city with an openly gay mayor Double congratulations Ms. Parker.


Closer to home we have:

Lillian Ladele, the marriage registrar who wants to... uh, stop doing her job but still get paid has lost another appeal (of course, Christian organisations, full of love and money, are determined to keep funding her quest for bigotry, to deny GBLT people access to government services and to apply a religious test to government access). Thankfully, the courts are reluctant to agree that government employees should decide who has access to government services based on the prejudices of their religion - because that would be very very very very silly.


Fellow homophobe, Richard Leonard, has been evicted after making life hell for his neighbours with homophobic abuse. This is extremely important - such abuse is intolerable and unacceptable and we need to make that unequivocally clear.

It’s important to remember how little our lives are valued

To remind us why we fight and why we have to fight. To remind us that we are not safe. It’s important to remember that for so many our very lives and physical safety are worth nothing. It’s important to remember that when we’re pushing for gay rights we’re pushing for our very right to exist and exist as people.


Gay rights activist in Honduras assassinated in drive by shooting. A very brave man - he had been assaulted and persecuted before and now he is dead - at the age of 25. Sadly such violence in Honduras is horrendously common - there are places where our lives are worth less than nothing, where our deaths are celebrated and our pain considered laudable.

Speaking of which, 12 gay men face execution for homosexuality in Iran. 8 of them are teenagers. Kids. They’re killing kids for being gay. Gods preserve us from bigots who care so little for life. Such is how little our lives are valued. Uganda isn’t the only nation seeking to wipe us off the face of the world - not by a long shot.

And talking of Uganda. Many people breathed a sigh of relief that Uganda was dropping the death penalty clause for their horrendous homophobia bill. Don’t take your eyes away yet. That is in no way certain and the proposer of the bill and his supporters want to kill gays still. Don’t let one vague report counter the actuality of what is being pushed - they just want us to look away while they hide the bodies.

Sadly this is a problem that is spreading, Homophobia in government is increasing in Rwandar and there is talk of introducing a law criminalising homosexuality. In Nigeria, where homosexuality is already criminalised and faces brutally harsh punishment in the northern provinces, there is talk of expanding the persecution.

In South Africa (and elsewhere, so very sadly) Lesbians are being raped to ‘correct’ them so low are their bodies valued and so much are they hated that these repellent views are held.

Here we have our lives ended with little state intervention or actually by the state. Here we have a clear message of how little our lives are worth - and it is exacerbated by the world’s general indifference. There are no moves for sanctions or penalties for a nation that does or tries to massacre or torture us wholesale. Aid and trade does not stop just because it happens over the bloodied corpses of homosexuals. Relationships do not sour because of our spilled blood - our lives have no value to far too many.

And in no way is that limited to developing nations, though they may have the most repellent laws and consent to persecution on their books.

First - remember that homosexuality has only been decriminalised in the western world relatively recently. In the UK, we were criminalised in 1967. In parts of the US it was criminalised in some states as late as 2003. 2003 - think about that. And there are still people like this out there, among us I’ve just spent 2 weeks arguing with homophobes DEFENDING the Ugandan kill-gays bill. Don’t say it can’t happen here. Don’t say there aren’t people here that want this



In Utah a gay man was brutally and horrifically beaten to the point where he needed reconstructive surgery on his face by a gang of men. A gang of men attacked him because he was gay. The sentence? A year. This tells you how much gay lives are worth to that court.

In New York a gay man was beaten by bouncers for daring to dance with his partner. Apparently we’re forbidden to dance with our partners unless we’re in a gay bar.

Would you beat ANYONE over who they were dancing with? It takes so little for the homophobes to violently attack us.

In Texas an 18 year old gay men is kidnapped and sexually assaulted. The perpetrators are arrested (though oddly slowly) but the bail is set at a ridiculously low level.

In London, David Kilcullen has been found guilty of murdering one member of a gay couple and brutally assaulting the other. I will watch for his sentencing - but again we saw the damned gay panic defence raised in a court room. Again we had the idea that this could be a justification for violence against us and it wasn’t just laughed down, even if little credence was given to it.


To these people our lives are worth nothing. The sad thing is - I’m not entirely sure the powers that be disagree with them

A grim reminder that the hatred

An Anglican Vicar, in the UK, sees the point in Uganda's law. You see, the fact that Ms Ladele wants to impose her religious views on people accessing government services means that Ugandans should look at the terrible state we have reached (preventing civil servants applying their bigotry to their jobs! How shocking!) and of course that would prompt not only keeping homosexuality illegal - but also punishing gays with life imprisonment and execution

I say again, the victories to secure our existance are relatively recent. There are still truly hateful bigots like this man left in the country pushing against our rights to exist and survive, championing the desire to hate, fighting for bigotry in law and through the nation. That is deeply frightening and reminds us that we can't stop working to protect ourselves



To add to further grief Rwandar is likely to vote on criminalising homosexuality. Yet more religious ties with the west. We have a long way to go for freedom and equality - or even the right to exist.