UN: 50M Asian women at risk for HIV
The UN released a report that estimates 50 million women in Asia are at risk for HIV.
Tags: 50 Million, 50m, Asia, Asian Women, hiv, Women At RiskUN says 50 million women in Asia risk HIV
(United Nations) An estimated 50 million women in Asia are at risk of becoming infected with the HIV virus from their husbands or long-term partners, according to a U.N. report published Tuesday.
The report produced by the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, known as UNAIDS, and its partner organizations said …
Tags: 50 Million, aids, Asia, hiv, Hiv Aids, Hiv Virus, Partner Organizations, Risk, Term Partners, Unaids, United NationsReport Warns Murder Rate Against Transgendered People Is Rising
A new report has found an estimated 200 transgendered persons were murdered from January 2008 to June 2009; which is enough to say that every three days a transgendered person is killed somewhere in the world.
The project was started by the international group Transgender Europe (TGEU) and the journal ‘Liminalis’ in an effort to track and combat violence committed against the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and questioning (LGBT) community.
The project compiled at least 121 murder cases from 2008 and another 83 murder cases for the year-to-date. Preliminary results show that the murder rate for transgendered people is a global problem, effecting North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceania.
“Furthermore that the number of reports of murdered trans people is increasing in the last years,” the report warns. “The majority of cases have been reported from Latin America and North America.”
The report shows Brazil is by far the most dangerous place in the world for the transgendered community. In 2008, 59 people were murdered while another 23 murders were reported so far this year. Last year, 16 transgendered people were murdered in the United States, the second most dangerous place on Earth.
While the report is an effort to document all crimes, even its authors admit to the limitations of compiling a survey while countries continue to avoid reporting hate crimes.
See Report Warns Murder Rate Against Transgendered People Is Rising
AHN
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Margaret Cho: First Woman to Appear in Gay Adult Mag
Comedian Margaret Cho has been a pop culture pioneer for many years. She has raised the profile of Asian-Americans and women in entertainment, and has been a tireless campaigner for gay rights.
Tonight, Cho is guesting on E!’s Chelsea Lately to spread the word about her latest first: premier female cover model for the newest issue of gay adult magazine Unzipped. See video from the photo shoot below.
See Margaret Cho: First Woman to Appear in Gay Adult Mag Gay Wired
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India: Legal gay sex ruling challenged
A landmark ruling that legalized gay sex between consenting partners in India was challenged Thursday in the country’s high court, lawyers said.
The supreme court issued a notice to the nonprofit Naz Foundation that had won a lower-court verdict after a seven-year legal fight to decriminalize gay sex.
Notices also were issued to the federal government and the New Delhi high court, which ruled last week that consensual sex between partners of the same gender was legal.
An astrologer filed a petition challenging the ruling. The petitioner argued that no constitutional right is violated by the Indian penal code’s Section 377, which had outlawed gay sex, said his lawyer Praveen Agrawal.
The petition also cited Indian culture and health as grounds for seeking a stay on last week’s ruling, he said.
The supreme court posted the next hearing for July 20.
Last week’s ruling meant the law — Indian penal code section 377, which had previously criminalized consensual homosexual acts between adults — was partly struck down but remains in place as far as forced homosexual acts are concerned.
The verdict affects law enforcement all around India because it deals with a law enacted by the federal parliament.
See India: Legal gay sex ruling challenged
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Hindu guru claims homosexuality can be ‘cured’ by yoga
The world’s most popular Hindu guru, Swami “Baba” Ramdev, has claimed homosexuality can be “cured” by yoga in a petition to India’s Supreme Court.
The television guru whose yoga programmes are watched by an estimated 85 million people throughout the world, made the claim in an appeal to the overturn a ruling last week which legalised homosexuality.
He has warned he will launch nationwide protests if the ruling is not struck down and said all of India’s main religions regarded homosexual acts as sins.
In his petition, he argued that homosexuality was a curable disease and that sufferers could seek a cure.
“It can be treated like any other congenital defect. Such tendencies can be treated by yoga, pranayam and other meditation techniques,” he said.
Pranayam are a series of breathing exercises which include hyperventilation, a slow release of breath while chanting “Om”.
His followers have said there are particular yoga positions which also help prevent sexual urges.
The overturning of India’s law criminalising homosexuality was welcomed by India’s gay community and by campaigners, including several leading designers and Bollywood stars.
See Hindu guru claims homosexuality can be ‘cured’ by yoga
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Religious groups in India have warned they will…
Religious groups in India have warned they will oppose any move to legalize homosexuality as the federal government prepares to hold talks on a law that classifies same-sex acts as crimes.
India’s Hindu nationalist main opposition has in the meantime called for a national debate on the legislation that law minister M. Veerappa Moily last week said would come up for a discussion within the government.
“This is a sensitive issue and warrants a debate within the Indian society at large before arriving at any decision,” said Sidharth Nath Singh, spokesman for the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party.
An Indian court is due to give its judgment on a petition filed by a nonprofit group that has challenged the anti-gay provision of the penal code.
In a news conference last week, Moily refused to spell out his government’s stand on it because it awaits judicial determination. But his comments that the federal home minister was “contemplating” a meeting with his Cabinet colleagues on the law drew widespread coverage in the largely conservative country.
“Hope floats at rainbow parades,” read a caption on a front-page picture from a gay parade in New Delhi in Monday’s Times of India newspaper.
Participants in that march demanded repeal of Section 377 of the penal code, which criminalizes private consensual sex between adults of the same gender in the country. 
Watch a New Delhi march in support of gay rights »
Religious leaders, however, oppose any suggestion to scrap 377, describing homosexuality as “unnatural.”
“We are against calling homosexuality a criminal activity, but we are certainly in principle against legalizing it, because that would mean the state endorsing same-sex relationships,” said Babu Joseph, spokesman for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India.
Homosexuality “violates fundamental norms of a family,” he said.
See India faith leaders: Anti-gay law must stay CNN International
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Hungarian tourist killed gay man with banjo, court told
Wellington - A Hungarian tourist killed a 69-year-old gay man he met in a bar by beating him with a banjo and ramming the handle down his throat, police alleged when his murder trial opened in Auckland on Monday. Ferdinand Ambach, 32, a dive master, pleaded not guilty in the Auckland High Court to murdering Ronald James Brown in December 2007. Prosecutor Nick Williams told the court that Ambach had been in New Zealand a month when the pair met in a bar before going back to Brown’s flat in the Auckland suburb of Onehunga, the New Zealand Herald reported on its website.
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A gay marriage poll released by the L.A. Times reveals that a yawning racial chasm exists over the issue. Pollsters found that a substantial majority in a sampling of 1,500 registered voters in Los Angeles — 56 percent — favored legalizing same-sex marriage, while only 37 percent opposed it. However, after parsing the demographics, vivid ethnic demarcations emerge. (See L.A. Weekly reporter Patrick Range McDonald’s extensive coverage of the growing outreach by pro-gay-marriage advocates into both the ethnic and agrarian communities of California.)
Caucasian voters favor legalization by a huge 68 percent margin, with 27 percent opposing it. The breakdown among African Americans is substantially, if not quite completely, reversed: 54 percent oppose gay marriage, with 37 percent supporting it. (Conflicting points of views in the local African American community have been glimpsed on the L.A. Sentinel’s opinion page, with lesbian commentator Jasmyne A. Cannick for gay marriage and conservative columnist Firpo Carr condemning it.)
Meanwhile, the Times reports that Latinos are evenly split, with 45 percent supporting and 46 opposing same-sex weddings. It is the swing Latino electorate that advocates on both sides will seek to win over in an anticipated 2010 ballot rematch of Proposition 8. See
Poll Finds Racial, Ethnic Divides Over Gay Marriage
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California gay marriage fight goes to Chinatown
The path to gay marriage in California may start in Chinatown.
After a double defeat at the voting booth and in court, gay advocates are reassessing their plans to push for legal same-sex marriage in the most populous U.S. state.
The new drive, focused on getting the issue on the ballot again as soon as November 2010, is more personal and reaches farther beyond the liberal confines of San Francisco’s Castro or Los Angeles’ gay heartland West Hollywood.
Lost in the 2009 election wreckage for gays was the marriage campaign’s relative success in Asian communities, which have swung toward support of same-sex marriage at a faster rate than the rest of California and have become a model for other groups.
Asian Americans have been building grass-roots support in Chinatown, Little Tokyo, Filipinotown for four years. Gays, lesbians and straight allies have talked about the often-taboo topic of homosexuality, set up booths at festivals, harangued non-English language media to change coverage and lobbied elected officials for support.
“What we felt we had to do is talk to people who aren’t on our side. So that’s why we do these crazy things like walk through the streets of Chinatown as part of the New Year’s Parade. That’s why we go out to festivals from Little India to Little Tokyo and talk to complete strangers,” said Marshall Wong, co-chair of Asia Pacific Islander group API Equality.
See
California gay marriage fight goes to Chinatown
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