Tens of thousands march for gay rights in Taiwan

 

AFP | AsiaOne | October 25, 2014

Local participants pose for photos during the annual gay parade in Taipei on Oct 25, 2014.

TAIPEI – Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Taipei on Saturday for Asia’s largest gay rights parade, with many urging parliament to push through a controversial bill recognising same-sex marriage.

Supporters from Taiwan and abroad waved placards reading “equal marriage rights” and “support gay marriage” as they marched through the capital for the 12th annual “Walk in Queers’ Shoes” parade.

Gay and lesbian groups in Taiwan, one of Asia’s more liberal societies, have been urging the government for years to legalise same-sex marriage.

Parliament started reviewing a bill on the issue last year.

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US to Recognize Same-Sex Marriage in 6 More States

Associated Press | South Florida Gay News | October 27, 2014

The federal government is recognizing gay marriage in six more states and extending federal benefits to those couples, Attorney General Eric Holder announced Saturday.

Gay marriage recently became legal in Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, North Carolina, West Virginia and Wyoming.

The government’s announcement follows the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision earlier this month to decline to hear appeals from five states that sought to keep their marriage bans in place. It brings the total number of states with federal recognition of gay marriage to 32, plus the District of Columbia.

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Alabama woman denied visitation rights to children she parented with former lesbian partner

David Hudson | Gay Star News | October 27, 2014

An appeals court in Alabama has overruled an earlier ruling that granted child visitation rights to a woman who parented three children with her former same-sex partner – deciding that the woman should never have been allowed to adopt the children in the first place.

The two women – identified only as E.L and V.L – were in a relationship together between 1995 and 2011.

Following artificial insemination treatment, E.L gave birth to a child in 2002, followed by twins in 2004.

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Ted Olson: US Has Passed ‘Point Of No Return’ On Gay Marriage

On top Magazine | October 27, 2014

Ted Olson, who successfully argued the challenge to California’s gay marriage ban, Proposition 8, says in a new interview that it’s unlikely that the Supreme Court would rule in favor of state marriage bans.

The Supreme Court this month refused to hear appeals in cases challenging bans in five states, allowing lower court rulings striking down state bans to take effect. The high court also refused to halt an appeals court’s ruling declaring such bans invalid from taking effect. The decisions effectively increased the number of states where gay couples can marry from 19 to 35, though three states have yet to comply. Gay couples can also marry in the District of Columbia.

“I do believe this is a point of no return. I do not believe that the United States Supreme Court could rule that all of those laws prohibiting marriage are suddenly constitutional after all these individuals have gotten married and their rights have changed,” Olson told USA Today‘s Susan Page, host of Capital Download. “To have that snatched away, it seems to me, would be inhuman; it would be cruel; and it would be inconsistent with what the Supreme Court has said about these issues in the cases that it has rendered.”

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Compare How U.S. Responds to the Killing of American Kids Based on Identity of the Killers

Glenn Greenwald | The Intercept | Reader Supported News | October 27, 2014

ast Wednesday in Jerusalem, a three-month-old American baby was killed, and eight other people injured, when a car plowed into a crowded sidewalk; the driver, a 20-year-old Palestinian named Abed a-Rahman a-Shaludi, was killed by police when he tried to flee the scene. The family of the driver insisted it was an accident, but Israeli officials immediately called it a “terrorist act.” Some Israelis speculated that it was in retaliation for the killing in the West Bank of a 5-year-old Palestinian girl days earlier by an Israeli settler who ran his car into her (and another Palestinian girl, seriously injured) and then fled the scene (Palestinian officials denounced that incident as “terrorism”).

Yesterday, a soldier in the Israeli military shot and killed a 14-year-old boy in the West Bank who was participating in a protest against the 5-decade Israeli occupation. The boy, Orwah Hammad (pictured above at his funeral), was a U.S. citizen as well as a Palestinian; he was born in New Orleans and moved with his family to the West Bank when he was 6. The IDF claimed he was throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers and that another man was preparing to throw a Molotov cocktail, and that this justified the live ammunition they fired.

The U.S. State Department issued a statement about the two incidents. Here’s the one it issued about last week’s Jerusalem incident where the Palestinian driver killed the American baby, issued on the very day the incident took place (i.e., prior to any investigation):

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Is Obama Stalling Until Republicans Can Bury the CIA Torture Report?

Dan Froomkin | The Intercept | Reader Supported News | October 27, 2014

ontinued White House foot-dragging on the declassification of a much-anticipated Senate torture report is raising concerns that the administration is holding out until Republicans take over the chamber and kill the report themselves.

Senator Dianne Feinstein’s intelligence committee sent a 480-page executive summary of its extensive report on the CIA’s abuse of detainees to the White House for declassification more than six months ago.

In August, the White House, working closely with the CIA, sent back redactions that Feinstein and other Senate Democrats said rendered the summary unintelligible and unsupported.

Since then, the wrangling has continued behind closed doors, with projected release dates repeatedly falling by the wayside. The Huffington Post reported this week that White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, a close ally of CIA Director John Brennan, is personally leading the negotiations, suggesting keen interest in their progress — or lack thereof — on the part of Brennan and President Obama.

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ISIS prison nightmare: Ex-hostages describe how jihadists tortured captives before beheading them

An image grab taken from a propaganda video, uploaded on June 11, 2014 by jihadist group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), allegedly shows ISIL militants gathering at an undisclosed location in Iraq’s Nineveh province (AFP Photo/-)

Rukmini Callimachi | The New York Times | Raw Story | October 27, 2014

The story of what happened in ISIS’ underground prisons is one of excruciating suffering. The hostages were routinely beaten and subjected to… 

The hostages were taken out of their cell one by one.

In a private room, their captors asked each of them three intimate questions, a standard technique used to obtain proof that a prisoner is still alive in a kidnapping negotiation.

James Foley returned to the cell he shared with nearly two dozen other Western hostages and collapsed in tears of joy. The questions his kidnappers had asked were so personal (“Who cried at your brother’s wedding?” “Who was the captain of your high school soccer team?”) that he knew they were finally in touch with his family.

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Christian Right’s Historical Repetition – CAUTION: BEWARE OF [HOMOS]

Kapya Kaoma | Political Research | October 20, 2014

Rev. Dr. Kapya Kaoma is PRA’s Senior Religion and Sexuality Researcher. He was the original researcher to expose the ties between U.S. right-wing evangelicals and the anti-LGBTQ legislation in Uganda, and has testified before Congress and the United Nations. He is the author of “Globalizing the Culture Wars” and “Colonizing African Values,” and appears as an expert voice in the 2013 documentary God Loves Uganda. He received his doctorate in Ethics from Boston University.

On Saturday, August 30, 2014, I approached the Nelson Mandela Capture Site and Museum in South Africa. Mandela was arrested here in KwaZulu-Natal, and sentenced to life imprisonment at Robben Island. As I walked around these hallowed grounds, surrounded by the history of apartheid and oppression—it strongly dawned on me that human liberation has a cost, which only some people must pay.

 

Visiting the site with me were 39 scholars, religious leaders and civil society leaders, who had joined me in South Africa for a three day consultation on human sexuality. These distinguished leaders came from around the continent and the diaspora, representing Uganda, Kenya, Malawi, Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Cameroon, Lesotho, South Africa, and Tanzania. We had chosen South Africa because it is the first and only country in Africa to grant equal rights to sexual minorities.

Walking onto the Mandela capture site with Prof. Sylvia Tamale, Prof. Esther Mombo, Dr. Musimbi Kanyoro, Dr. Nyambura Njoroge, and Dr. Manasseh Phiri was no small honor; their wisdom and courage have pioneered women’s liberation and the fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa. And standing next to them, courageous young scholars like Dr. Ezra Chitando, Dr. Nyeck Sybille, Dr. Masiiwa Ragies Gunda, and others were equally inspirational. These are the leaders and scholars who give me hope that someday all people of Africa will be treated equally, who had inspired me to help organize the Conference on Human Sexuality so that African scholars could discuss the treatment of LGBTQI people without Western influence.

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Solar Power Is Contagious: Installing Panels Often Means Your Neighbors Will Too

Brad Plumer | Vox | Reader Supported News | October 27, 2014

olar power still generates just 0.4 percent of America’s electricity. But it’s expanding at a shocking rate, with a new rooftop system installed every four minutes. There are lots of reasons for that, from lower costs to federal subsidies to innovative financing schemes.

But here’s another unexpected factor: Solar power appears to be contagious. Yes, contagious. If you install solar photovoltaic panels on your roof, that greatly increases the odds that your neighbors will, in turn, install their own panels.

That’s the upshot of a fascinating new paper in The Journal of Economic Geography looking at the growth of rooftop solar power across Connecticut. Rooftop solar took hold in a few initial spots back in 2005 — when the state first started offering solar subsidies. Rooftop systems then spread out from those clusters over time in a “wave-like centrifugal pattern”:

The growth of solar power in Connecticut, 2005-2013

The researchers, Marcello Graziano of the University of Connecticut and Kenneth Gillingham of Yale, tried to figure out why solar power would expand in this way. Maybe solar power was just concentrating in large population centers. But this turned out not to be true — in fact, solar power was growing more rapidly in small- and medium-sized population areas.

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The Truth Behind America’s Most Famous Gay-Hate Murder

A basket of flowers hangs from the fence where Matthew Shepard was left tied and beaten. (photo: Steve Liss/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images)

Julie Bindel | Guardian UK  | Reader Supported News | October 27, 2014

Matthew Shepard’s horrific death at the hands of redneck homophobes shocked America and changed its laws. Now a different truth is emerging, but does it matter? Julie Bindel reports

 

he horrific killing of Matthew Shepard in 1998 is widely seen as one of the worst anti-gay hate crimes in American history. Matthew was beaten by two assailants, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson. They pistol whipped him with a gun then tied him to a fence in freezing conditions and set fire to him before leaving him to die.

The attack became a cause célèbre: it precipitated a national backlash against hyper-macho culture and tacit tolerance of homophobia. As a result of Matthew’s death, many good things have happened for the gay community. The play The Laramie Project has toured the US and many other countries, telling Matthew’s story and encouraging campaigns against bigotry. Politicians and celebrities pledged support and funding to combat anti-gay hate crime. The Shepard family have become campaigners for gay rights. Judy and Dennis Shepard run the Matthew Shepard Foundation, which funds educational programmes and an online community for teens to discuss sexual orientation and gender issues. There have been numerous documentaries, dramas, books and events based on the story.

The men responsible for his death were convicted of first-degree murder and given two life sentences. They were not charged with a hate crime, as that wasn’t possible under Wyoming’s criminal law. But after lengthy wrangling in congress, President Obama finally signed the Matthew Shepard Act in 2009, a law which defined certain attacks motivated by victim identity as hate crimes.

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