Our Genders, Our Rights
NEW YORK, NY - - - The Issues Magazine launched “Our Genders, Our Rights,” its Summer 2009 edition. A unique combination of articles, poetry, art and videos focus on a topic that is both utterly fundamental and wildly revolutionary: gender norms and gender identity.
Top writers discuss sex-selection abortion, gender expression, “Intersex” self-identification and a first-hand account of forced sex roles inside a polygamist compound in Texas.
Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Merle Hoffman’s editorial, “Selecting The Same Sex,” provides philosophical and personal insights into the issue of sex-selection abortion.
“There is one place where the definition of gender remains binary — in the womb. When it comes to sonograms, amniocentesis and standard pre-natal testing, there are no nuances. Here, the pronouncement, ‘It’s a girl,’ can translate into fierce and instant parental rejection. The fact is that when the issue is ’sex selection abortion,’ the same sex is always being selected — female.” For Hoffman, this issue highlights questions of ethics, human rights and the moral autonomy of women.
“It’s about separating the chooser from the choice,” writes Hoffman.
In “Busting Bogus Biology and Beliefs” Mahin Hassibi notes: “For centuries, social constructs held that women owed allegiance and obedience to their husbands; children were the property of their fathers, who owned the children’s mothers.” Today, Hassibi says, discoveries in biology and reproductive technology may soon trump historical and cultural restrictions that wrongly limited women’s lives.
“My children would have undoubtedly been among the 439 seized in the raid,” writes Carolyn Jessop of the sweep through the polygamist compound. In, “American Taliban: Sect Controls Women’s Destinies,” Jessop gives an inside view of the abuse, misogyny and control of women’s bodies that continues today.
Writers also plunge into transgender concerns. “Asylum Pitfalls May Await the Transgender Applicant” by Victoria Neilson discusses the difficult process for trans applicants in the U.S. Eleanor Bader’s “Trans Health Care Is a Life and Death Matter” describes a pioneering feminist health program for trans patients in the South.
Photographic performer Tammy Rae Carland visualizes gender fluidity as the featured artist, and art editor Linda Stein conducts an interview with Elizabeth Sackler, whose passion for feminist art resulted in a new center at the Brooklyn Museum.
ABOUT US
On The Issues Magazine (www.ontheissuesmagazine.com) is a progressive, feminist, quarterly online magazine. Read more at the site — free and with archives from 1983. Merle Hoffman is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief.
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Militias target some Iraqis for being gay
“I’m not a terrorist,” he tells the Iraqi police who surround him. “I want you to know I am different. But I am not a terrorist.”
To some fundamentalist Iraqi Muslims, Ahmed Sadoun Saleh was worse than a terrorist.
He was gay. He wore his hair long and took female hormones to grow breasts. Amused by his appearance, Iraqi police officers stopped him in December at a checkpoint in a southern Baghdad neighborhood dominated by radical Shiite militias. They groped Saleh and ridiculed him.
The assault was captured on video and circulated on cellphones throughout Baghdad, says Ali Hili, founder of London-based Iraqi LGBT, a group dedicated to protecting Iraq’s gays and lesbians. Shortly after the video was made public, Hili says Saleh contacted him, fearing for his life, and asked for his help to flee Iraq.
“Unfortunately, it was too late,” Hili says. Saleh turned up dead two months later, he says.
At least 82 gay men have been killed in Iraq since December, according to Iraqi LGBT. The violence has raised questions about the Iraqi government’s ability to protect a diverse range of vulnerable minority groups that also includes Christians and Kurds, especially following the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraqi cities last month.
Mithal al-Alusi, a secular, liberal Sunni legislator, is among those who blame the killings on armed militant groups such as al-Qaeda and the Mahdi Army militia.
See Militias target some Iraqis for being gay
USA Today
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Chicago HIV report sparks reaction
The Chicago Public Health Department’s alarming report, released Friday, that suggests the HIV infection rate among gay men in Chicago is nearly 20% has drawn varied responses from Chicago’s gay and lesbian community.
ChicagoPride.com surveyed a number of gay men on a busy Saturday night in Boystown.
From Waveland to Buckingham, the responses were varied with one common undertone that gay men no longer think HIV is a death sentence. And despite extensive media coverage on the recently release report, many were unaware of the report and its contents.
“I’m not at all surprised by these statistics.” Said thirty-something Al joined by Jared and Jamie outside of the Center on Halsted. “The fact that a lot of our own community members are not aware of their status is probably because of their fear of knowing.”
“We are very closeted in the U.S. regarding educating our youth,” added Jaime.
Some do not believe the numbers and conclusions published in the report.
“You can work the numbers however you want,” said Matthew a bartender at Buck’s. See Chicago HIV report sparks reaction
ChicagoPride.com -
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‘Two-Track’ Church Suggested by Archbishop of Canterbury
PARIS — The Most Rev. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, said profound differences among the world’s 77 million Anglicans over gay clergy and same-sex unions could divide their church into a “two-track model” yielding “two styles of being Anglican.”
The formula could avert a formal breach between liberals and conservatives but bring new strains in the relationship between the global Anglican Communion and American Episcopalians who resolved this month to open the door to ordaining openly gay bishops and to start the process of developing rites for same-sex marriages.
Archbishop Williams insisted that the issue should not be debated “in apocalyptic terms of schism and excommunication but plainly as what they are — two styles of being Anglican.”
In a lengthy message published Monday on his Web site, the archbishop offered a detailed and nuanced response to events at the Episcopal convention in Anaheim, Calif., this month when gay-rights advocates in the United States chalked up major victories over conservatives on sexual issues. The Episcopal Church is the official branch of the Anglican Communion in the United States.
The developments were seen by liberals and conservatives as likely turning points in the history of the divided Episcopal Church, reflecting the profound rifts over sexual issues within Anglicanism — the world’s third largest network of Christian churches after the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches. The differences have crystallized around the Episcopal Church’s consent in 2003 to the consecration of the church’s first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.
The Episcopalians had agreed to a moratorium on the election of gay bishops, but it was lifted at the convention in Anaheim.
The archbishop of Canterbury is the spiritual head of the Anglican Communion, which is composed of 38 provinces worldwide. The Episcopal Church claims about 2.3 million members.
In his message, Archbishop Williams repeated his view that “a blessing for a same-sex union cannot have the authority” of the full Anglican Communion, any more than a blessing for a heterosexual couple living outside marriage would have.
That, in turn, means that as long as the broader church “as a whole does not bless same-sex unions, a person living in such a union cannot without serious incongruity have a representative function in a Church whose public teaching is at odds with their lifestyle.”
The issues have confronted the archbishop with deep divisions not simply between liberals and conservatives in the United States but also across the broader church with its many followers in Africa, Britain and elsewhere. Four conservative dioceses in the United States and many individual Episcopal churches have broken away from the national denomination to forge alliances with conservative Anglican groups such as the Anglican Church of Nigeria.
Archbishop Williams said: “There is at least the possibility of a twofold ecclesial reality in view in the middle distance: that is, a ‘covenanted’ Anglican global body, fully sharing certain aspects of a vision of how the Church should be and behave, able to take part as a body in ecumenical and interfaith dialogue; and, related to this body, but in less formal ways with fewer formal expectations, there may be associated local churches in various kinds of mutual partnership and solidarity with one another and with ‘covenanted’ provinces.”
The archbishop has promoted the idea of covenant — described by some analysts as a kind of good-behavior guide for churches — to overcome the rift.
“This has been called a ‘two-tier’ model, or, more disparagingly, a first- and second-class structure,” the archbishop’s message said. “But perhaps we are faced with the possibility rather of a ‘two-track’ model, two ways of witnessing to the Anglican heritage, one of which had decided that local autonomy had to be the prevailing value and so had in good faith declined a covenantal structure.”
The message continued: “It helps to be clear about these possible futures, however much we think them less than ideal, and to speak about them not in apocalyptic terms of schism and excommunication but plainly as what they are — two styles of being Anglican, whose mutual relation will certainly need working out but which would not exclude cooperation in mission and service of the kind now shared in the Communion.”
See Anglican Sees ‘Two-Track’ Church @ New York Times
- Archbishop warns ordination of gay clergy could lead to two-tier … guardian.co.uk
- Anglican Head Warns Of Two-Tier Church After Gay Vote On Top Magazine Archbishop of Canterbury responds to General Convention actions on … Austin American-Statesman
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HBO RANKS HIGHEST IN THIRD ANNUAL “GLAAD NETWORK RESPONSIBILITY INDEX”
ABC Leads Broadcast Networks for Third Year in a Row; NBC and CBS Receive “Failing” Grades for Lack of Inclusion of the LGBT Community
Los Angeles, CA, July 27, 2009 – The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) today released its third annual Network Responsibility Index, a report that maps the quantity, quality and diversity of images of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people on television. Primetime programming on the five broadcast networks was evaluated as well as original primetime programming on 10 of the highest-rated cable networks.
HBO scored the highest rating of the 15 networks evaluated with LGBT characters on shows including True Blood, The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency and Entourage that reflect the ethnic and racial diversity of the LGBT community. Of HBO’s 14 original series, 10 included LGBT content and 42 percent of the network’s total programming hours included LGBT representation.
“This year programming was not only inclusive of LGBT people, but networks like HBO are beginning to reflect the broad diversity within our community,” said Rashad Robinson, Senior Director of Media Programs at GLAAD. “With upcoming fall programming and new storylines there is a tremendous opportunity for networks to share the stories of all members of our community including lesbian, bisexual and transgender people as well as LGBT people of color, all groups which continue to be underrepresented across all networks.”
GLAAD reviewed a total of 4,901 hours of primetime programming for inclusion of LGBT characters or issues on the five major networks (ABC, CBS, The CW, Fox and NBC) from June 1, 2008 to May 31, 2009. GLAAD also examined 1,212.5 hours of original primetime programming on 10 highly-rated cable networks. Each hour was reviewed for on-screen LGBT representations. Based on the quantity, overall quality and diversity of these representations, a rating was assigned by GLAAD’s Entertainment Media Program to each network: Excellent, Good, Adequate, or Failing.
Additional findings from the GLAAD Network Responsibility Index:
Good
- HBO and Showtime received grades of Good, with HBO leading with 42 percent of programming hours featuring LGBT representations.
- ABC, with shows including Brothers & Sisters, Grey’s Anatomy and Ugly Betty, again received the highest ranking of the five broadcast networks, earning a Good grade with 24 percent of their primetime programming hours including LGBT representations.
- The CW also received a grade of Good, with 20 percent of their primetime programming hours including LGBT representations.
Adequate
- While Fox received an Adequate, rising from last place and a Failing grade in 2008; 11 percent of its programming hours were LGBT-inclusive, yet some of those hours included problematic content.
- Among cable networks evaluated, TNT showed the largest growth, jumping from one percent of LGBT inclusive primetime programming hours last year to 19 percent. FX posted the sharpest decline, dropping 32 percent over the previous season. Both were graded
Failing
- NBC and CBS received Failing grades, for their 8 and 5 percent, respectively, of programming hours with LGBT images. CBS moved down from third place in last year’s GLAAD Network Responsibility Index to last among the five major broadcast networks.
- A&E, Sci Fi and TBS received grades of Failing.
“Television shows that weave our stories into the fabric of the series present richer, more accurate representations and are the kinds of images that help Americans understand and embrace their LGBT family members, friends and neighbors in a more meaningful way,” said Robinson.
The third annual GLAAD Network Responsibility Index was delivered to programming executives at the 15 graded networks, and GLAAD’s Entertainment Media Program will continue discussions with them to advocate for improvements in the quality, quantity and diversity of their LGBT representations.
The Executive Summary of the report can be viewed online at GLAAD.org. A PDF of the full report can also be downloaded at GLAAD.org.
The 14th Annual GLAAD Where We Are On TV report on diversity will be issued in September 2009. This analysis will examine LGBT inclusion as well as the gender and race/ethnicity of all scripted characters scheduled to appear during the 2009-2010 season.
About GLAAD
The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) is dedicated to promoting and ensuring fair, accurate and inclusive representation of people and events in the media as a means of eliminating homophobia and discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. For more information, please visit www.glaad.org.
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Diocese of Niagara to offer same-sex blessings
As of Sept. 1, the diocese of Niagara will allow its priests to bless same-gender couples who have been civilly married.
Niagara becomes the second diocese in the Anglican Church of Canada, after the Vancouver-based New Westminster, to offer a sacrament for same-sex blessings. (The diocese of New Westminster, which allowed same-sex blessings in 2002, currently limits the rite to eight parishes.) The issue of same-sex blessings continues to deeply divide Anglicans in Canada as well as worldwide.
“The Niagara Rite is intended for the voluntary use of priests who wish to offer a sacrament of blessing regardless of the gender of the civilly married persons…” the diocese of Niagara said on its Web site, www.niagara.anglican.ca
The rite may also be used for the blessing or renewal of vows for couples “celebrating a significant moment in their married life together,” said an introduction to the Niagara Rite.
The approval of the rite came five years after the diocesan synod of Niagara passed a motion allowing civilly-married gay couples, “where at least one party is baptized,” to receive a church blessing. The diocesan bishop at that time, Ralph Spence, had refused to implement the motion. In January 2008, a similar motion was approved by Niagara’s diocesan synod, and this time, Bishop Spence gave his approval, but said he reserved the right to determine when the same-sex blessings would move forward.
Last fall, Bishop Spence’s successor, Michael Bird, informed a meeting of the Canadian house of bishops that he intended to develop the rite, saying, “I believe we are among those who have been called by God to speak with a prophetic voice on this subject.”
Under a list of protocols outlined by Bishop Bird, a cleric who wishes to offer the Niagara Rite must contact the bishop’s office “so that a conversation can take place between the bishop and the cleric involved.” The cleric is expected to provide details about the couple the cleric intends to bless “and should be prepared to have a conversation about the response of the parish to the blessings,” the list added. “A date for such a blessing should not be confirmed with the couple until after this conversation with the bishop has taken place.”
A parish is not required to get the approval of its vestry before it can offer such blessings.
Two other dioceses – Montreal and Ottawa – have also informed the house of bishops about their intention to move ahead with same-sex blessings. At that meeting, the house of bishops issued a statement saying that a “large majority” of its members could affirm “a continued commitment to the greatest extent possible” to a moratorium on the blessing of same-sex unions. But it acknowledged that the moratorium, which had been sought by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the primates of the Anglican Communion, would be difficult for some dioceses “that in confidence have made decisions on these matters.”
The issue of whether dioceses can offer same-sex blessings is likely to be revisited at the 2010 meeting of General Synod, the governing body of the Anglican Church of Canada. In 2007, General Synod had agreed that blessing rites for gay couples are “not in conflict” with core church doctrine, but refused to affirm the authority of dioceses to offer them. General Synod delegates had also voted to study revising the marriage canon (church law) to allow priests to marry all legally qualified persons. Marriage for gay people has been legal in Canada since 2005.
Last spring, Council of General Synod (CoGS), the church’s governing body in between General Synod meetings, decided not to ask General Synod 2010 to amend the marriage canon to allow for the marriage of same-sex couples. The decision was made after the faith, worship and ministry committee, which was asked by CoGS to prepare “a theological rationale to allow for the marriage of all legally qualified persons,” said that it found the request problematic. Janet Marshall, committee chair, told CoGS that some members felt uncomfortable about being asked to create a rationale for only one side of the argument.
See Diocese of Niagara to offer same-sex blessings
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Higher level of abuse among same-sex couples than straight ones, Hong Kong study
In harm’s way: Higher level of abuse among same-sex couples than straight ones, Hong Kong study
Four times as many individuals in a same-sex relationship than in a straight one have reportedly been victimised by physical assault, according to a landmark study by the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) and the Women Coalition of HKSAR.
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Gay marriage and the date debate
Nearly nine months after California voters banned same-sex marriage in the state, gay marriage supporters are ready to ask them to overturn Proposition 8. They’re just not sure when to ask: In November 2010 or November 2012. Choosing a date involves more than sifting through the polling, community meetings and consultants’ reports that have filled the time since last fall’s election with soul-searching and finger-pointing among supporters, culminating in a meeting of the movement’s leaders Saturday in San Bernardino. Generating enthusiasm for a grassroots campaign will also be a heart-based decision, one that has split same-sex couples even in Kern County, where 75 percent of voters backed Prop. 8. Bakersfield resident Jade Haley wants an initiative in 2010. Her partner Alee Gamino thinks that’s too soon. Gamino’s Catholic mother still refers to Haley as “she” and has no contact with them as a couple, who are raising Gamino’s teenage daughter from a previous relationship. On Sundays, Gamino, 34, goes to church twice. She attends a Catholic service solo with her mom in the morning and goes to a Metropolitan Community Church with her partner in the evening. “The churches have thousands and thousands of people ready to go against us,” said Gamino. She looked at 70 people who came to a Unitarian Universalist Church on Thursday to talk about the movement’s next step. “All we have is what’s in this room.” Still, Gamino was among only a dozen people at the Bakersfield meeting called by Marriage Equality USA who supported waiting until 2012. The sentiment for a vote next year echoed one at a similar gathering in San Francisco, while gatherings in liberal bastions such as Oakland and Berkeley leaned toward 2012. “The reaction was really mixed,” said Pam Brown, Marriage Equality USA’s political director, who compiled information from the organization’s “Get Engaged” tour of 40 California cities over the past several weeks. “A lot of people who wanted to wait until 2012 wanted to see what the plan was first before they committed.” A nonbinding straw poll of leaders gathered Saturday in San Bernardino to plan the movement’s next step found that 93 people voted to go in 2010, 49 in 2012 and 20 were undecided. Organizers expect to officially decide when to return to the ballot in a couple of weeks. If they decide on November 2010, the deadline to have ballot language submitted to the attorney general is Sept. 25. This month, several groups of same-sex marriage supporters said not enough has been done to address the faults of last year’s campaign in time to mount a winning drive next year.Churches’ influence
Faults not addressed
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Homosexuals dispel myth of “progressive”
Each year in Germany, from the end of June through August, gay and lesbian rights’ activists celebrate the “Stonewall” uprising - named after a gay bar on Christopher Street in New York, where homosexuals fought back against police brutality in 1969.
Participants in the German parades known as “Christopher Street Day” join other activists around the world who take to the streets to demonstrate gay pride and demand greater freedoms.
Some of those freedoms would include expanded civil rights. In Germany, civil unions, for instance, have been permitted among same-sex couples since 2001, but full marriages are not. Homosexual couples therefore do not enjoy the same rights as married heterosexual couples when it comes to taxes, retirement, civil servant benefits, or adoption law.
For more on gay and lesbian rights and the community in Germany, click on the links below, or listen to this week’s “Living in Germany” program to hear a more personal account of a homosexual civil union.
DW-WORLD.DE
Audios and videos on the topic
See Homosexuals dispel myth of “progressive” Germany Deutsche Welle
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Gays and lesbians more likely to smoke (by quite a bit), study shows
mong homosexuals: 37% of women smoke; 33% of men smoke.
Among heterosexuals: 18% of women smoke; 24% of men smoke
These figures come from researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Published in the August issue of Tobacco Control, they’re based on a review of 42 studies about tobacco use among sexual minorities. (The heterosexual numbers are from the National Health Interview Survey.)
It’s not that the finding that gays and lesbians are more likely to smoke is new. According to the summary of an earlier report from the CDC, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine in 2001:
See Gays and lesbians more likely to smoke (by quite a bit), study shows Los Angeles Times
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