Austrian parliament OKs gay civil unions
(Vienna) Austria’s parliament passed legislation Thursday allowing homosexual couples to enter into civil unions, a move hailed by proponents as a historic win for gay rights in the country.
The bill, slated to become law Jan. 1., will give same-sex couples a series of rights enjoyed by their heterosexual counterparts, including …
Two-Thirds of GLBT Americans Think Nation Headed in the Right Direction
(Washington, DC) American GLBT adults say they are more optimistic for the future than their heterosexual counterparts.
A new national survey conducted online in mid-August by Witeck-Combs Communications and Harris Interactive shows two–thirds (67%) of GLBT adults say that things in the country are going in the right direction, compared to …
Closet Case: How Intolerance Fuels Africa’s AIDS Crisis
New research has challenged the long-standing belief that HIV and AIDS in Africa primarily affect heterosexuals. A study published on the website of the British medical journal Lancet found that men who have sex with other men are up to 10 times more likely than their heterosexual counterparts to be infected with the virus — which suggests that the fight against AIDS on the continent may be undermined by widespread homophobia.
Researchers from Oxford University, the Population Council of Ghana and the Kenya Medical Research Institute reviewed AIDS studies conducted over the past few years and concluded that male-male sex was a major blind spot in AIDS research and policy in Africa. Men having sex with other men is far more common in Africa than is socially acknowledged, owing to widespread hostility toward homosexuality, and the phenomenon there is underreported in research and largely ignored in public-health responses to the pandemic. The researchers compiled statistics from a small but growing number of studies conducted in various African countries in recent years that included estimates of HIV prevalence among men who have sex with other men. (See pictures from Africa’s AIDS crisis.)
See Closet Case: How Intolerance Fuels Africa’s AIDS Crisis
TIME
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Clinton approves partner benefits for State Dept. workers
(Washington) Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will soon announce that gay American diplomats will be given benefits similar to those that their heterosexual counterparts enjoy, according to U.S. officials.
In a notice to be sent soon to State Department employees, Clinton says regulations that denied same-sex couples and their families …
Professional groups back gay marriage BurlingtonFreePress.com
Same-sex marriage rights got an endorsement Monday from four Vermont professional organizations who cited research findings that “children of lesbian and gay parents are as likely as those of heterosexual parents to flourish.”
They also said gay and lesbian parents are as likely as their heterosexual counterparts to provide healthy environments for children and that “there is no credible scientific evidence” relating parenting effectiveness to sexual orientation.
Their statement, which comes as the Vermont legislature prepares to consider same-sex marriage legislation, was released at a news conference called by the Vermont Psychological Association, the Vermont Psychiatric Association, the Vermont Association of Mental Health Counselors and the Vermont chapter of the National Association of Social Workers.
Speaking on the organizations’ behalf, Jackie Weinstock, an associate professor in the department of integrated professional studies at the University of Vermont, said the groups wanted to “set the record straight” by rebutting contentions by gay-marriage opponents that children raised by single-sex parents fare less well than their counterparts in heterosexual families.
“No study has shown that outcomes for children of single-sex families are any less positive than outcomes for children in heterosexual families,” Weinstock said. She said contrary findings sometimes cited by opponents apply in part to children of divorced parents, not exclusively to children of single-sex parents. She acknowledged that national studies of children in same-sex parents have been limited by small research samples. See Professional groups back gay marriage BurlingtonFreePress.com
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