Prop 8 afternoon update: Witness says gays face job bias

(San Francisco) A political scientist testified Tuesday in a trial challenging California’s ban on same-sex marriage that gays and lesbians face significant discrimination in the workplace.

Claremont McKenna College Professor Kenneth Miller said under cross-examination that he did not know how frequently gay Americans are fired or harassed at work but …

Decision on Florida’s gay adoption ban imminent

Florida’s gays and lesbians can expect a decision by the U.S. court of appeals on the constitutionality of the state’s gay adoption ban soon, the Orlando Sentinel reports.

Martin Gill, a flight attendant who, with his partner, cares for two foster children, brought the case to court trying to overturn the …

Russian Orthodox Church embraces gays

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church says that, although the church views homosexuality as a sin, homosexuality is a personal choice.

Patriarch Kirill says gays and lesbians must not be persecuted or discriminated against in any way, though the church still opposes same-sex marriages.

The patriarch’s statements, a breakthrough for the …

A Fort Worth Task Force Demands Reform for Gays and Lesbians

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports that a task force formed in reaction to the Rainbow Lounge Raid in Forth Worth, Tex. this past June recommended on Tuesday that the city council vote for a series of reforms to give gays and lesbians equal rights.

They recommend Fort Worth amend the …

UN panel alarmed by Russian killings of gays and lesbians, others

(Geneva) Russia fails to protect journalists, activists, prison inmates, gays and lesbians and others at odds with authorities from a wide range of abuses, including torture and murder, the U.N. Human Rights Committee said Friday.

The findings came in a report by an 18-member panel of independent experts who urged the …

HRC to lobby on DOMA

HRC is planning to deliver to Congress a survey of 50,000 gays and lesbians on DOMA’s effects.

Vanasco: LGBT champion announces run for Kennedy seat

Massachusetts attorney general Martha Coakley, who filed the lawsuit against the federal government claiming that DOMA is discriminatory against gays and lesbians, announced Thursday she will run in the special election for late Sen. Edward Kennedy’s seat.

From Change.org:

In July 2009, Coakley filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government challenging the …

Danish church blesses gays

A prominent Copenhagen church blessed foreign gays and lesbians in town for the Outgames.

Group appeals to Burundi to drop law banning homosexuality

(Burundi) Human Rights Watch has appealed to Burundi to repeal a law passed in April that makes homosexuality illegal and punishable by up to two years in prison reports CNN.

In a recently released report, Human Rights Watch said that many gays and lesbians face great discrimination in the eastern African …

Militias target some Iraqis for being gay

BAGHDAD — The young man turns to the camera and pleads with his tormentors.

“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.

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