Your voice(s) would be incredibly important to add to our chorus of support.  We just need to have written testimony submitted by this Sunday at 5pm and it takes no time at all to write. That’s tomorrow, so please jot something down if you can.

Here is a link to the Be an Advocate! page with hints on how to craft testimony, talking points for the bill, etc. http://www.ctequality.com/talk-to-lawmakers/

You can contact Pat directly through facebook or email: patrickcomerford1050@gmail.com (please put ctEQUALITY in the subject header).

This is such a crucial time for us, and we know that the Family Institute of CT will be our there at the hearing, so every voice counts…

[Read more →]

http://hondurasresists.blogspot.com/2009/12/walter-trochez-active-member-of.html

Walter Tróchez, the human rigths defender, member of the gay, lesbian, trans and bisexual community and active member of the National Front of Resistance Against the Coup d’Etat, was killed this morning. Below there is a denunciation from the human rights organization CIPRODEH, a press release from Feminists in Resistance, and a denunciation written by Walter before he died about the repression against the LGBTQ community in Honduras under the de facto government. Killing of human rights defender Walter Tróchez On December 4th the human rigths defender, member of the gay, lesbian, trans and bisexual community and active member of the National Front of Resistance Against the Coup d’Etat Walter Tróchez was kidnapped and savagely beaten around the Obelisco Park of Comayaguela by four masked men who came in a gray pickup truck without plates, presumably from the police investigative unit (DNIC) (a vehicle of similar description that he had denounced a few months back had been watching his home, forcing him to move).

[Read more →]

The following statement is from our comrades at SRLP and also available online at http://srlp.org/fedhatecrimelaw

For the reasons stated below, we believe that a law that links our community’s experiences of violence and death to a demand for increased criminal punishment, as well as further funding for imperialist war, is a strategic mistake of significant proportion.

In October 2009, President Obama signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act into law.  This law makes it a federal hate crime to assault people based on sexual orientation, gender and gender identity by expanding the scope of a 1968 law that applies to people attacked because of their race, religion or national origin. In support of this goal, it expands the authority of the U.S. Department of Justice to prosecute such crimes instead of or in collaboration with local authorities.  The law also provides major increases in funding for the U.S. Department of Justice and local law enforcement to use in prosecuting these crimes - including special additional resources to go toward prosecution of youth for hate crimes. [Read more →]

Charter Oak Cultural Center

21 Charter Oak Ave

Hartford CT

6-8 pm, August 21st

“Queering the Immigration Discussion”

All over the country, including Connecticut, our government sponsors the break-up of families, the displacement of people, and the forced removal of workers from hope itself. This takes the form of immigration law and is manifested most brutally in agencies such as ICE. But the queer community has its own unique problems within the framework of the immigration debate. This event promises to highlight those problems. Come join Queers without Borders and the Workers Solidarity Alliance of Connecticut for a panel discussion on queer immigration issues! Food and drinks provided.

Panelists include:

Nancy Naples–Feminist sociologist and professor at the University of Connecticut

Virge Carstens–NLG lawyer specializing in immigration, and queer immigration issues in particular

Jerimarie Liesegang–From the CT TransAdvocacy Coalition, Queers without Borders, and the Workers Solidarity Alliance of Connecticut

Our monthly QWB meeting will be held Sunday August 2nd, 5pm-ish at Charter Oak Cultural Center, 21 Charter Oak Ave in Hartford. Everyone is invited! <3

On 10-14 June 2009 an international conference for boosting LGBT tourism to Israel, called iPride, was held in Tel Aviv. Following it two iPride guests, Ed Walsh and Heather Cassell, published articles in The Bay Area Reporter (BAR), encouraging tourism to Tel Aviv. Ayala Shani, a transgender woman living in Tel Aviv, who met those reporters in person and was mentioned in one of the articles, would like to encourage people not to tour Israel - but instead, to support the Palestinian Call to boycott it.

This article was originally published in BAR, but after a while removed from their site.

How would you respond if South Africa’s then apartheid regime was to promote one of its “black-free” areas as a gay and lesbian tourism travel destination? Wouldn’t you be outraged if along with it, the apartheid regime’s advocates would launch a sophisticated racist propaganda presenting it as actually very liberal and open-minded? This is practically what happens these days with Tel Aviv and its promotion as a gay and lesbian tourist destination.

Apartheid’s New Clothes
Zionist propaganda has been engaged for years in promoting Israel as open and liberal through images of a flourishing gay and lesbian community as opposed to racist depiction of Palestinian society as flat and demonic. The subtext (and many times explicit text) of such propaganda refers to the Israeli society as western and enlightened in order to enable identification with it within the western world. Thus, it proceeds through ignoring Israel’s continuous violent assault, dispossessing and oppression of Palestinians within a racist segregation system (apartheid), whether they are gay or not - or otherwise referring to parts of it as “predicament” or “situation”.

StandWithUs (SWU), a US based Zionist organization affiliated to Israel’s Foreign Ministry, has taken this propaganda a step forward, combining it with promotion of gay and lesbian tourism to Israel. In June 2009 a Tel Aviv conference called iPride was launched by SWU, inviting “prominent figures” within gay and lesbian communities throughout the western world to participate in a three day seminar as well as in Tel Aviv’s pride parade. [Read more →]

A new list was created to facilitate relations between LGBTQI people and their friends around the world interested in solidarity with Palestinians by learning, promoting and actualizing the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel.

About The BDS Initiative
The Nakba (1948’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine during the formation of Israel) still occurs for 61+ years to this very day. Millions of Palestinian are living as stateless refugees. Gaza is the world’s largest open prison, forcefully separated even from the West Bank. The West Bank itself is divided into separate segregated areas, sometimes even sole cities - by the apartheid wall, apartheid (Jewish only) roads, and a set of blockades and checkpoints.

[Read more →]

In framing the title/subject of this piece it is not my intent to spell out a detailed critical analysis of an LGBTQ movement in this brief essay, though rather, as best as I can from my perspective, initiate a framework for such an analysis and most importantly hopefully engender a collaborative dialogue on this subject.

The basic premise of this analysis frames itself around the value and effectiveness of a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (add your own other labels) community to rally around the implicit connotation of a full LGBTQ equality movement.  Is this a movement to secure full equality for all diverse genders and sexualities? Is this a movement demanding true sexual and gender revolution or simply sexual and gender reforms?  Is this a movement that truly represents all peoples and diversities within the LGBTQ communities? Or is this a movement to assure full equality within the heterosexual framework of western culture?

I hear many times and from many people that yes the LGBT Equality movement stands for full and diverse equality.  Sadly after many years as a minority trans activist working within this LGBTQ equality movement, I have come to learn that the answer for me is no.  From my perspective, it is by no stretch of the imagination an LGBTQ equality movement in the sense of any true revolutionary movement. [Read more →]

Originally posted at http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2009/06/105851.html

Gang of queers force Nazi out of Albany Pride march.

We found 41 year old “Spanish Blue Blood,” a self proclaimed
“stormtrooper” of the National Socialist Movement and senior moderator
of the NSM’s official party forum, sitting on a bus bench waiting for
a crew that never showed. The second he saw us he split for the street
but didn’t get far til we caught up with him and gave him what he
deserved.

“Spanish Blue Blood,” who lives in the Colonie area of Albany, had
been trying for weeks to draw up enough people to stage a counter
protest of Albany’s Capital Pride march but apparently he couldn’t
even get a single person out. He recently celebrated his 41st birthday
on June 9th so we delivered some belated gifts-in the form of tightly
balled fists. The gang beat him until the cops showed and we made our
way back into the park with no arrests.

-A motley crew of queers, anti-fascists, and anarchists

if you haven’t seen this video on You Tube, definitely watch it here.  Lyrics follow the vid.

“Homophobia” is a song from Chumbawamba’s album Anarchy, concerning the topic of modern homophobia.

Homophobia lyrics
Up behind the Bus-stop in the toilets off the streets
There are traces of a killing on the floor beneath your feet
Mixed up with the piss and beer are bloodstains on the floor
From the boy who got his head kicked in a night or two before [Read more →]

Contact:
Cindi Creager
Director of National News
(646) 871-8019
creager@glaad.org <mailto:creager@glaad.org>
Richard Ferraro
Director of Public Relations
(646) 871-8011
ferraro@glaad.org <mailto:ferraro@glaad.org>
June 2, 2009— In a lengthy May 28 tirade on the Rob, Arnie & Dawn in the Morning radio show heard in Sacramento, California on KRXQ 98.5 FM and Reno, Nevada on KDOT 104.5 FM, hosts Rob Williams and Arnie States verbally attacked transgender children. While discussing a recent story about a transgender child in Omaha, Nebraska and her parents’ decision to support her transition, the two hosts spent more than 30 minutes explicitly promoting child abuse of and making cruel, dehumanizing and defamatory comments toward transgender children. [Read more →]

The International Queer Solidarity Network calls for a European mobilization, with support from the United States, that will stand in solidarity with Queer Bulgaria. On June 28th 2008, neo-Nazi groups aggressively attacked the first LGBTQ Pride march in Sofia, Bulgaria. A week before the march, the Bulgarian National Alliance, the most visible nationalist organization in the country, called for a “week of intolerance.” The BNA strongly encouraged nationalistic groups to organize themselves against the right of the queer community in Bulgaria to peacefully march, which resulted in loosely organized violence during the festivities.

BNA members and other neo-Nazis threw molotov cocktails and small explosives at the participants of the Pride march. Fortunately, no injuries were reported. However, more than eighty skinheads, including Boyan Rasate (head of the BNA) were arrested for their attempted harm and direct violence toward pride participants. This year neo-Nazi groups are once again organizing themselves against the march and Bulgarian queers’ ability to defend their human rights. The Bulgarian government not only tolerates but also encourages such attitudes. Two of the parties in the Parliament of Bulgaria are nationalistic and one of them, Ataka, called for “the men to beat up the gays.”

In addition, the Prime Minister of Bulgaria and head of the “socialist” party, Sergei Stanishev, subtly, through hidden sparks of hatred, said that he did not like the “manifestation and demonstration of such orientations.” Even though the rights of LGBTQ people in Bulgaria are protected by the constitution, this is yet more empty rhetoric in the hands of the powerful. The queer community refuses to give up its rights to a free assembly. There will be another Pride march on the 27th of June 2009. Let’s unite and stand together against the homophobic and transphobic state of Bulgaria and growing neo-Nazism in Europe.

The International Queer Solidarity Network calls for a European mobilization, with support from the United States, that will stand in solidarity with Queer Bulgaria. For more information on how you can help you can contact: iqsn@riseup.net or sofiagaypride2009@gmail.com If you cannot attend the Pride, visit www.iqsn.org for more information on how you can help.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6oz3yeW5yo

e-mail: iqsn@riseup.net

Dear Friends and Allies,

This is a draft of a statement I’ve written as some kind of “about us” for QWB, coming out of the brief opinion piece I posted recently about taking it to the next level. We will be meeting on Sunday at 5:30pm at Metropolitican Community Church, 155 Wyllys St to discuss this more. If you can’t make it, please post your reactions and we will take them into account.

The idea behind this is something that is comprehensive, sets us apart, and is written in accessible language.

• We are a collective of people with diverse backgrounds, ages, identities and a variety of progressive political outlooks. We are committed to creating a welcoming space for political action with a solid foundation of respect.

• We want a free world based on equality, education and healthy relationships. We believe in each person’s right to free expression of gender and sexuality, based on the desires of the consenting individual, not by other peoples’ definitions and prejudices.

• We oppose the violence and discrimination in our communities, workplaces and schools against anyone regardless of their sexuality, disability, gender, ethnicity, race, spirituality or national origin. We will stop all efforts to terrorize us into submission here in Connecticut, elsewhere in the United States, and around the world–we are here, there and everywhere.

• We seek to build grassroots power to directly confront injustice and inequality. We seek to create new liberating cultures based on the value of difference, free of domination and ignorance.

• We reject injustice in all its forms, be it military occupation, police brutality, [fascist?] mob violence or corporate tyranny. We take sides. We fight for concrete improvements in the quality of life for all poor and working people, winning demands from the ruling class, and never collaborating with them. We want Queer Revolution for a better tomorrow.

Written by Dykonoclast

At 9AM on Tuesday April 28th, somewhere between 50-70 people came to the iconic Park Street Church across from Boston Common to attend an Exodus Ministries training.  Attendees watched a video wherein ‘former homosexuals’ and ‘former lesbians’ spoke of the power of god to heal ’sexual brokenness’ and restore heterosexual desires to the most fallen of souls.  During the ‘male homosexuality’ portion of the training, ‘former homosexual’ Jeff Buchanan shared his experience of having turned from his homosexual past, as well as the causes of male homosexuality, which include resentment of male authority and lack of bonding with fathers.  [Read more →]