We All Deserve Justice
You don’t have to be a human rights activist to know that being lesbian, gay, bisexual, or trans can get you killed pretty much anywhere.

Tragically, we can cite numerous examples: the 2012 assassination of LGBT activist Erick Alexander Martinez Avila in Honduras; the brutal 2013 murder of Eric Lembembe, an activist and openly gay man in Cameroon; and just weeks ago, the sickening murder of Jennifer Laude, a trans woman in the Philippines.

In addition, there are the countless nameless cases — the depressing statistics in numerous reports by local and international human rights groups, as well as the United Nations.

Commonly, those responsible for the violence are rarely brought to justice. Prosecutions occur only (when they do) after long and sustained pressure by LGBT activists who are putting their own lives and liberty at risk in this cause.

Yesterday, the United Nations sought to remedy this situation.

The U.N. General Assembly’s main committee dealing with human rights adopted an updated version of a biannual resolution to demand justice for all killings based on discriminatory grounds, including murders motivated by a person’s real or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity. Only one country voted against the resolution–the Pacific island of Kiribati, although its no vote was later sought changed to “abstain.” The 2012 version of the resolution had had 35 cosponsoring countries–this year, it had almost twice as many, at 63.

The vote reflects an evolution in thinking that has become a broad consensus among the world’s nations: No one should be killed because of who they are, and murders and extrajudicial killings should be promptly and independently investigated.

This view alone, though, misses an important nuance of the process around the resolution’s adoption.

During the negotiations over the resolution, a group of countries led by Egypt and Saudi Arabia proposed to eliminate language referring to the groups of people who, research shows, are most at risk of being killed.

The text these countries wanted to delete made reference to those subject to racially motivated violence; persons belonging to national or ethnic; religious and linguistic minorities or those targeted because of their sexual orientation or gender identity; persons affected by terrorism or hostage-taking or those living under foreign occupation; refugees; internally displaced persons; migrants; street children; members of indigenous communities; human rights defenders; lawyers; journalists; demonstrators; and those targeted for reasons related to “honor.”

On the surface, it might seem reasonable to eliminate specificity in a resolution dealing with extrajudicial killings writ large. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and others, argued that getting rid of the specific groups in the text would open it up for a broader interpretation.

Experience shows otherwise. At IGLHRC we know full well that unless people targeted for violence because of real or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity are explicitly included in protection efforts, they will be left out.

This is for example clear in a new publication by IGLHRC and its partners, MADRE and the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq. The publication, When Coming Out is a Death Sentence, exposes grave human rights violations and brutal violence against LGBT Iraqis, where killings based on sexual orientation and gender identity go unpunished. Last June, for example, two adolescent boys thought to be gay were killed and beheaded in Baghdad, their heads tossed in the garbage. No one has been prosecuted.

Justice is often equally elusive for the other categories mentioned in the resolution adopted yesterday at the U.N. Therefore, last week, 30 human rights organizations joined together to protest elimination of the specific language, sending a direct plea to all U.N. member states to protect the right to life for all through voting against the proposal from Egypt and others.

Fortunately, the plea was heard, and the proposal to eliminate targeted protections was rejected by an 82-53 vote.

Importantly, the real target of the proposal was not the list as such, but rather just one subgroup within it: individuals killed because of real or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity. This became very apparent in the debate preceding the vote on the resolution and the proposed change, in which a small handful of countries desperately attempted justifying why they would eliminate protections for human rights defenders and those under foreign occupation just to avoid extending those same protections for LGBT populations.

Let us be clear. What Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the 51 other countries who voted to exclude vulnerable groups from the resolution were saying, is that some people don’t deserve justice. Those people include Erick Martinez, Eric Lembembe, Jennifer Laude, and countless other LGBT persons and activists killed because of who they are.

The U.N. resolution sends a signal across the world: no matter who we are, who we love, or where we live, we deserve justice.

www.huffingtonpost.com/marianne-mollmann/we-all-deserve-justice_b_6194964.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices

LGBT Community Observes Transgender Day of Remembrance

Today marks Transgender Day of Remembrance.
HRC.org

www.hrc.org/blog/entry/LGBT-Community-Observes-Transgender-Day-of-Remembrance?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed

Country Star Billy Gilman Comes Out, Says Ty Herndon Inspired Him

Let it be known that November 20 will from here on be known as country music’s official coming out day. Hot on the heels of Nashville superstar Ty Herndon’s public acknowledgment that he’s a happily-partnered gay man, country performer Billy Gilman has been inspired to do the same. Gilman, 26, first garnered attention as the youngest person to score a top 40 country hit (he was 12 at the time) with the single “One Voice,” has followed Herndon’s lead and posted a video online in which he acknowledges he’s a gay man with a partner of five months.

Gilman tells viewers that it was “difficult for me to make this video not because I’m ashamed of being a gay male artist or a gay artist or a gay person. But it’s pretty silly to know that I’m ashamed of doing this knowing that because I’m in an genre and industry that is ashamed of me for being me. That said, I want to say that all of the country artists that literally I grew up with – Keith Urban, Vince, Lee Ann Rhimes and all of these wonderful friends of mine have been nothing but supportive. Not that they knew but they’ve just been such wonderful people.”

With the C&W floodgates now wide open, who do you think will come out next?

Watch Gilman’s video below.

Jeremy Kinser

feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/czKXQp1hwBo/country-star-billy-gilman-comes-out-says-ty-herndon-inspired-him-20141120

Towleroad Guide to the Tube #1643

Kyler Geoffroy

www.towleroad.com/2014/11/towleroad-guide-to-the-tube-1643.html

90,000-Plus and Counting: Petition to Cancel Duggars' Show Gains Momentum

Signatures have increased hourly after publicity about the petition to cancel 19 Kids and Counting because of the Duggars’ anti-LGBT stances.

read more

Dawn Ennis

www.advocate.com/politics/media/2014/11/20/90000-plus-and-counting-petition-cancel-duggars-show-gains-momentum

Trans Legal Trailblazers Macy and Glenn Speak Out for Sweeping Educational Efforts
Last week I described the bandwagon effect as the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) joined Freedom to Work, Gender Rights Maryland, the Transgender Law Center, TrueChild and the LGBT legal organizations in recognition of the sweeping national impact of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s Macy v. Holder decision on the trans community’s inclusion under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. This positive change was provoked by comments made by EEOC Commissioner Chai Feldblum to BuzzFeed reporter Chris Geidner in response to a graphic created by the National LGBTQ Task Force that stated unequivocally that such broad protections do not exist.

This week I would like to follow up and flesh out the importance of a comment made by Tico Almeida of Freedom to Work in that same BuzzFeed piece:

I would like to see the big national LGBT organizations use their ample budgets on a public education campaign to promote the historic nature of the Macy decision so that more LGBT Americans will know that the EEOC is open for business and willing to help.

“In [the vacuum of] space no one can hear you scream.”

Similarly, in the vacuum of national advocacy, when those with the broadest reach don’t use their resources and platform to educate and inform, it will be as if those protections do not exist, or they will exist only for the few lucky enough to have discovered the truth on their own.

I asked Mia Macy, the complainant in the case that bears her name, about her thoughts regarding her case and its impact over the ensuing 30 months. This is her response:

Macy v. Holder is the federal protection so many in the LGBT community have been dreaming of. Not only does it protect transgender individuals it protects anyone, regardless of sexual orientation, including those non-conforming to gender stereotypes. It has paved the way for two executive orders and changed this country forever. LGBT groups should have been rallying behind and celebrating this decision. Instead they decided to support a bill [ENDA] that was dead in the water.

I’ve sacrificed so much, this has always been about getting the word out. For many transgender individuals, employment is life or death. Suicides and misery from losing a job or not willing to risk coming out. Macy v. Holder is the only recourse for transgender employees discriminated against, in all fifty states. It’s not just a federal worker protection! Contact your local or state EEOC office for more information. You have recourse, you have a voice, you matter. This case is not just a landmark decision, it has devastated my chances to ever find work, and left me shunned by the very people I swore to protect.

Clearly Mia has been devastated, as well as confused by the lack of engagement of our national organizations. Over the past two years she has been a guest panelist, speaker, and interviewee multiple times, yet little action has resulted.

I was curious about what another of our courageous legal trailblazers, Vandy Beth Glenn, thought as well. She was the complainant in a case brought against her employer, the Georgia General Assembly, which ended up in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2011. That circuit, which covers Alabama, Georgia and Florida, ruled in her favor on the basis of the 14th Amendment, as well as citing the importance of Title VII. Vandy Beth shared:

When I testified before the House Education and Labor Committee in 2009 on the need for ENDA, I was certain it would become federal law by the end of the year. Five years later, I no longer expect it to happen at all.

Fortunately, in December 2011 I won my federal lawsuit, Glenn v. Brumby, without help from ENDA. Mine was an equal protection claim under the 14th Amendment, but in her ruling, 11th Circuit Judge Rosemary Barkett wrote “discrimination against a transgender individual because of his or her gender non-conformity is gender stereotyping prohibited by Title VII and the Equal Protection Clause.” In short, discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, and therefore is illegal under Title VII.

This immediately became a binding precedent, protecting transgender and gender nonconforming public-sector workers, like me, in Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. Four months later, in 2012, the EEOC cited my case’s ruling in its opinion for Macy v. Holder, extending Title VII employment protections to all employees. It’s illegal, everywhere in the U.S., to fire an employee for being transgender, or even for being an effeminate man (gay or straight) or a masculine woman (lesbian or straight). I’m proud of the role I played in making this happen.

It occurred to me at the time that the presumption that men want to date women and women want to date men is a form of gender stereotyping, and that these precedents would someday be used as an argument to extend Title VII employment protection to gays and lesbians as well as transgender people…. Full employment equality may come to the full LGBT spectrum sooner than anyone has predicted.

I don’t know why so many LGBT groups have been so shy about celebrating this fact.

So here’s an opportunity for our national full-service advocacy and education organizations to step up and create real change in the lives of those transgender people who need the most help. This is an opportunity to educate the general population that discrimination on the basis of gender identity and expression, which encompasses tens of millions of people, is illegal and harmful to the bottom line. This is an opportunity to humanize and overcome ignorance and fear so that there is no desire to deny employment in the first place, or to obstruct trans persons from using their skills to make this a stronger and more equitable country.

I don’t mean to focus on HRC, but a few months ago President Chad Griffin went on the record with a great speech to the trans community at Southern Comfort, where he said:

I promise you here, with my sweet Southern mom and all of you as my witness, that we won’t stop fighting until everyone in this room and everyone across this country has the equal protection, equal opportunity, and equal dignity that we all deserve as human beings.

It’s now incumbent upon HRC and its sister organizations to take up that fight to ensure that “everyone in this room and everyone across the country has the equal protection, equal opportunity and equal dignity” inherent in Title VII and the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment. The fight can no longer be fought in silence.

www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-beyer/trans-legal-trailblazers-macy-and-glenn-speak-out_b_6186450.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices

Woman Claiming To Be Michael Phelps’ Intersex Lover Says She Can’t Stop Vomiting Over Media’s Coverage Of Her

A woman claiming to be Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps’ intersex lover says the media’s portrayal of her has caused her to cry for hours and throw up “everything in her system.”

“I was born intersex and named David Roy Fitch at birth,” 41-year-old Taylor Lianne Chandler (pictured) announced on her “official” Facebook page earlier this week. “But the time I could walk and talk I made it clear I was a girl and dressed as one. In my early teens I was medically diagnosed and went on testosterone blockers, at 15 estrogen enhancers. My birth certificate was modified along with my name while I was a teenager, prior to any corrective surgery.”

According to Chandler, she and Phelps initially connected on Tinder back in September. She says she did not tell him about having transitioned before they hooked up together.

“One thing led to the next,” she said, “and we made love during halftime. Later, we had sex again. The intimacy with him was amazing! It was the first time in my life that someone has made me feel like a true woman.”

Since going public with her story, Chandler has made headlines around the world, and she hasn’t been humble about sharing the articles written about her. A quick scroll through her Facebook page displays an endless stream of tabloid stories and other write-ups about her alleged fling with Phelps.

Some of the stories, however, have not been so kind.

Chandler says she’s appalled by the way some media outlets are covering the story, particularly their incorrect use of male pronouns. Being referred to as a man, she claims, has caused her to vomit uncontrollably.

“In a world of educated people that had all the facts of intersex and what it means and then to sell a magazine say [sic] Michael Phelps is dating a MAN,” she said. “I have cried now for an hour, thrown up anything in my system till I dry heaved. I just can’t believe this is happening in 2014!”

She continued: “I am Taylor Lianne Chandler; I have always been a female regardless of labels and personal opinions. I am not transsexual and I have never identified with the moniker transgender, but intersex is certainly on the spectrum of gender along with them.”

Phelps has yet to respond to the rumors.

Related stories:

Drake Loves Getting Rim Jobs, Plus Six Other Celebrity Fetishes “Exposed”

PHOTOS: Swimming Wonderboy Suffers Humble Defeat

Disney Star Dylan Sprouse Plus Six Other Male Celebs With Nudie Pics

Graham Gremore is a columnist and contributor for Queerty and Life of the Law. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

Graham Gremore

feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/P02QN_FBMMc/woman-claiming-to-be-michael-phelps-intersex-lover-says-she-cant-stop-vomiting-over-medias-coverage-of-her-20141120

News: Elizabeth Warren, Uber, Zac Efron, Gay Genes, Ryan Gossling

Kyler Geoffroy

www.towleroad.com/2014/11/news–3.html