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Worlds

by Bob Vitale

Apart Progress for LGBT People Isn't a Worldwide Trend

The world is moving in two directions when it comes to LGBT rights.

We celebrate victories marriage rights in more places and increasing legal respect for transgender people and cheer first-ever Pride celebrations in places where movements are still forming. We feel optimism when political and religious leaders retreat from harsh rhetoric and show a change of heart.

But it's also the worst of times in many places and for many LGBT people.

About 2.7 billion people that's 38 percent of the world's population live in 80 countries where homosexuality is a crime. In 10 of those countries, it's punishable by death.

One organization has estimated that a transgender person is murdered somewhere in the world every three days. Four trans Ohioans have been killed in the last 18 months. 20 august 2014

"The world is really being pulled in two directions," said Ty Cobb, director of global engagement for the Human Rights Campaign, the biggest LGBT civil rights group in the United States.

"And the gulf between these two directions is getting wider than ever before."

Forty-five countries will be represented at the 2014 Gay Games in Cleveland and Akron, said spokeswoman Lisa Sands. The 8,000-plus participants include LGBT people from Liberia, Malaysia, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United Arab Emirates, where homosexuality is illegal.

There are also participants coming to Ohio from Russia.

Cobb, who came to Columbus in July to speak about LGBT rights worldwide at an event hosted by the Columbus Council on World Affairs, said progress in some parts of the world is being used to harm people in other countries.

At a typical American lunchtime business gathering, as people poked at their salads and passed the rolls, Cobb pointed out that his talk would subject him to arrest in Russia, where federal law now categorizes discussion about civil rights or even tolerance as propaganda designed to undermine the nation's traditional values.

But anti-LGBT extremism is very much an American export, Cobb said.

Scott Lively, whose California ministry has been classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, has pushed propaganda laws worldwide and helped launch Uganda's drive for legislation that would have imposed the death penalty against gays and lesbians.

A compromise for the law now in place includes a life sentence.

According to the HRC, Americans also have worked with anti-LGBT lawmakers and ac-

tivists in Australia, Belize, Croatia, France, Jamaica, Nigeria, Poland, Ukraine and the United Kingdom to fight civil-rights legislation for LGBT people or to aid other efforts against them.

A 2012 report by University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus, dismissed as "entirely unbelievable" by the federal judge who struck down Michigan's same-sex marriage ban in March, has made the rounds in many of those countries. Regnerus never studied gay families, but his report concluded they're bad for children.

"We've heard a lot of that at home, but all of it is seen as extreme at this point," Cobb said of the anti-LGBT message from Christian conservatives.

"It's not [dismissed] where these people are traveling," he added. "They've taken their sham science and hateful rhetoric to places overseas.

Good News

Bangladesh: Created a third-gender identity option, but only for transgender women known in South Asia as hijras.

Brazil: The top court ruled in favor of marriage equality in May 2013.

France: Parliament voted in favor of marriage equality in April 2013.

Germany: Became the first European nation where intersex newborns may be registered as neither male nor female.

Nepal: Created a thirdgender identity category on its government documents.

Netherlands: Rescinded a law requiring people to get sterilized before they could change their gender on government IDs.

New Zealand: When law-

Bad News

Brunei: Adopted Islamic sharia law announced in October and effective in May that means gay and lesbian people can be stoned to death.

Croatia: Voters banned same-sex marriage in December, but lawmakers approved civil unions in July.

India: The nation's top court reinstated a law against homosexuality in December.

Kuwait: The country's public-health director said in October that his agency planned to somehow use "clinical tests" to stop gay and trans people from en-

The most tolerant nation on Earth? Spain, according to an April survey.

makers voted for marriage equality in April 2013, the gallery broke out into "Pokarekare Ana," a traditional Maori love song. (Search for it on YouTube and try not to cry.)

South Korea: A court ruled that transgender people can change their legal gender status without gender-confirmation surgery.

Sweden: Rescinded a law requiring people to get sterilized before they could change their gender on government IDs.

United Kingdom: The British Parliament voted for marriage equality in England and Wales. Lawmakers in Scotland followed suit in February.

Uruguay: Same-sex couples, who were granted the right to civil unions in 2008, were extended full marriage rights as of August 2013.

tering the country. He said the tests also would be used in Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Nigeria: Toughened a longstanding law against homosexuality with 14-year prison sentences for gay people and 10 years for anyone who supports an LGBT group.

Russia: Enacted a law in June 2013 that bans all forms of public support for LGBT rights and acceptance. In July 2013, lawmakers barred adoption of Russian children by samesex couples.

(Source: Equality Rising: HRC Global Equality Report 2014)

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