Reflecting on Pride Day, Reverend Gene Robinson, the recently retired IX Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire, insists that America has a duty to help provide safe haven for oppressed gays abroad:
The LGBT people I know are horrified at what is happening to their brothers and sisters around the world, most recently in Uganda, Nigeria, the Middle East, and Russia. We are often gripped by a sense of helplessness. After all, what can I do about such oppressive policies and actions overseas? While we may not be able to stop the repressive actions of anti-LGBT regimes, we can mobilize to care for those oppressed and threatened LGBT people who make it to the United States.
Immigration Equality, a terrific group on whose board I am proud to sit, is doing just that. It has, in fact, been a fascinating few years for that organization. For two decades, we had done our best to help bi-national couples persecuted by Bill Clinton’s Defense of Marriage Act, and HIV-positive individuals targeted by Bill Clinton’s HIV Travel Ban. But in 2008, the Bush administration finally reversed the law targeting foreigners with HIV (it functionally ended under Obama) and last year, the Windsor decision destroyed DOMA, which prevented the federal government from recognizing bi-national gay marriages.
Suddenly, we were exhilaratingly adrift. Some of us thought briefly of closing the whole thing down … until something new began to happen. Immigration Equality had always provided free legal services to those seeking asylum because of homosexuality (with a 99 percent success rate). The Obama administration gave gay refugees a much more solid standing (thanks, Hillary) … and, in the wake of the wave of anti-gay initiatives across the globe, suddenly the asylum cases took off. The numbers have quadrupled in the last few years, as governments as vicious as Jamaica’s and Russia’s and Uganda’s and Nigeria’s began to target gay people for lynching, imprisonment or indescribable harrassment. These are the best of times for gay people on the planet, and the worst times as well.
In one corner of the world, Bel Trew looks at lesbian, gay, and trans Egyptians living under Sisi:
Since the military overthrew Morsi last July, rights groups have recorded the worst state crackdown on the LGBT community since the days of Hosni Mubarak.
Back in 2001, 52 gay men were arrested on a party boat on the Nile and tried for “public depravity”. Twenty-three were sentenced to hard labour in prison. In 2004, a 17-year-old student was handed a 17-year jail sentence for posting his profile on a gay dating site.
In the last 10 months, dozens have been arrested and at least 18 homosexual and transgender people have been jailed under the country’s draconian legislation criminalizing “sexual deviance,” “debauchery” and “insulting public morals.” The prison sentences have ranged from 3 to 12 years. “We are not even sure if we have documented all the cases,” said Dalia Abdel-Hamid, from Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR). “We know the actual number is higher.”
Josh Scheinert glances elsewhere around the globe:
When the Indian Supreme Court recriminalized consensual sex between two adult men in December 2013 (it was de-criminalized by the Delhi High Court in 2009), it contrasted gay men with straight men with the wording “as compared to normal human beings.” … In Jamaica, the LGBTQ population is denigrated and dehumanized in popular media in ways that would shock the most impartial of observers. Last year, a transgendered teenager was murdered by a mob. In Cameroon, men are imprisoned for sending text messages to one another that say, “I love you.” Last year, a leading gay rights activist was found tortured and killed in his home.
And in Uganda, which often attracts much of the attention when it comes to global LGBTQ rights, the government just declared 38 human rights organizations illegal on the grounds that they “promote homosexuality.” This is the latest development in a country where leading LGBTQ activists are outed in the media, and where one of those outed was found murdered in his home in 2011.
John Oliver devoted a sizable chunk of his latest show to Uganda’s anti-gay pogrom and American Christianist Scott Lively‘s role in it:
The Dish 