For Being Gay

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) - First the police targeted the gay men, then tortured them into naming dozens of others who now are being hunted down, human rights activists said, warning that such persecution will rise under a new Nigerian law.

The men's alleged crime? Belonging to a gay organization. The punishment? Up to 10 years in jail under the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act, which has elicited international condemnation for criminalizing gay marriage, gay organizations and anyone working with or promoting them.

In this instance, authorities responded to an unfounded rumor that the United States had paid gay activists $20 million to promote same-sex marriage in this highly religious and conservative nation, according to an AIDS counselor, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear that he would be arrested.

The police have now arrested 38 men and are looking for 168 others, according to Aken'Ova, whose organization is helping provide legal services to the men. The AIDS counselor said he has helped secure bail for some of the 38 detainees. They both said dozens of homosexuals have fled Bauchi in recent days.

Shawn Gaylord of Human Rights First, a Washington-based organization, said he was alarmed by the reports of torture and arrests.

"When discriminatory bills like this are passed, we are always concerned that they set the stage for violence and ill-treatment in society even when they are not enforced," Gaylord said in a statement. "But the fact that this law is being enforced so quickly and forcefully demonstrates the full extent of Nigeria's human rights crisis."

While harsh, Nigeria's law is not as draconian as a bill passed last month by legislators in Uganda that is awaiting President Yoweri Museveni's signature. It provides penalties including life imprisonment for "aggravated" homosexual sex. Initially, legislators had been demanding the death sentence for gays.

The Nigerian law provides penalties of up to 14 years in jail for a gay marriage and up to 10 years' imprisonment for membership or encouragement of gay clubs, societies and organizations. That could include even groups formed to combat AIDS among gays, activists said.  Read more:

Out of the Closet

Law enforcement in Baton Rouge have reportedly been using an invalid, unconstitutional law to target and arrest adult gay men, according to a new report.

The Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office sting was revealed on Saturday by the Baton Rouge Advocate, which investigated the arrests of at least a dozen Louisiana gay men since 2011 who agreed to consensual gay sex with undercover officers. In all of the cases, the men were arrested under the state's anti-sodomy law, which was struck down as unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2003 ruling in Lawrence v. Texas.

Technically invalid yet still on the books, the state's "Crime Against Nature" law prohibits “unnatural carnal copulation by a human being with another of the same-sex or opposite-sex or with an animal” along with “solicitation by a human being of another with the intent to engage in any unnatural carnal copulation for compensation,” according to Louisiana legislature.

“This is a law that is currently on the Louisiana books, and the sheriff is charged with enforcing the laws passed by our Louisiana Legislature,” Casey Rayborn Hicks, a Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman, told the Baton Rouge Advocate. “Whether the law is valid is something for the courts to determine, but the sheriff will enforce the laws that are enacted.”

However, the Advocate also revealed that none of these cases had been prosecuted by District Attorney Hillar Moore III, whose office could find no evidence of any crime being committed by any of the arrested men.

While Hicks argued that the fact that the men agreed to sex in a public park made their actions illegal, Equality Louisiana’s Bruce Parker told MSNBC.com that this claim carried little legitimacy as no sex ever actually happened in the park and most of the men intended to have sex at a private residence.

“They started a conversation and the officer invited him back," Parker said. "That’s a conversation that could happen anywhere. It’s the equivalent of me asking you out in a Post Office.”

BUT…

As bizarre as all this may seem…

What does the POPE say?

And…  why would this be important?

Because, Catholics represents 18% of the global population…

The Pope did not change any official Catholic position when he recently stated that gays should not be marginalized or judged. But the effects of his words could be transformational in parts of the world where homophobia is institutionalized.

Change in the Vatican has always moved at glacial pace. But when it does happen, it often starts in small ways in local parishes. “A shift like this could affect everything from the kinds of homilies preached at Sunday Mass, to how much leadership bishops take on anti-LGBT equality measures, to whether bishops speak out when laws making homosexuality a capital crime are being considered,” explains Marianne Duddy-Burke, executive director of LGBT Catholic organization DignityUSA. And, she continues, the pope’s example matters greatly for gay Catholics, especially those in the least accepting environments.

The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with 1.2 billion members. The Catholic hierarchy is led by the Bishop of Rome, known as the Pope, and includes cardinals and bishops. The Church teaches that it is the one true church divinely founded by Jesus Christ.  It also teaches that its bishops are the successors of Christ's apostles,  and the Bishop of Rome, as the successor of Saint Peter, has supreme authority over the Church. The Church maintains that the doctrine on faith and morals that it presents as definitive is infallible. There are a variety of doctrinal and theological emphases, including the Eastern Catholic Churches, the personal ordinariates and religious communities.

Just For Being Different

Danielle Powell (right) and her spouse Michelle Rogers...

Danielle Powell was close to getting her bachelor's degree when she was kicked out of her university for being gay in 2012, and now says the only way the school will transfer her credits to another school is if she agrees to pay $6,300. In response, Powell has launched an online petition to pressure the school to forgive the debt.

Powell was a student at Grace University in early 2011 when she began her first same-sex relationship. Up until that point, neither she nor her then-girlfriend identified as lesbian. When Grace, a religious university in Omaha, Neb., found out about the relationship through a spiritual adviser at the school, they brought Powell before a judiciary board to decide whether she should be allowed to stay enrolled.

Michael James, executive vice president at Grace, said that the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act prevents them from discussing any student's particular case. But he did confirm the student handbook states that "Any student involved in sexually immoral behavior, including premarital sex, adultery, and homosexual acts, is at minimum placed on University probation and may be subject to a Judiciary Hearing."

Powell said the board asked her why she did what she did and whether she was remorseful, treating her, in her words, "like a sexual predator." The university ultimately decided in March 2011 to suspend her and not allow her to finish the semester. Powell said she was also told she now owed Grace just over $6,000 after an academic scholarship she'd been awarded was revoked.     Read more:     

Coy Mathis

A Colorado civil rights panel has ruled that a suburban Colorado Springs school district likely discriminated against a 6-year-old transgender girl when it prevented her from using the girls' bathroom at her elementary school.

Coy Mathis's family raised the issue after school officials said the first-grader could use restrooms in either the teachers' lounge or in the nurse's office, but not the girl's bathroom at Eagleside Elementary School in Fountain.

Kathryn and Jeremy Mathis have said the district's decision would end up stigmatizing their daughter, who they said had come out of her shell when they began to allow her to live as a girl, instead of a boy.

The Colorado Division of Civil Rights found probable cause of discrimination in a letter dated June 18. The New York-based Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund announced the ruling in favor of Coy on Sunday.

Since they filed their complaint, the Mathises have moved to the Denver suburb of Aurora, and Coy was homeschooled. It wasn't immediately clear whether the family would enroll her in the new district.

Fountain-Fort Carson School District 8 has declined to discuss the case. The district, however, can seek arbitration or a public trial, said Cory Everett-Lozano, a spokeswoman with the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies.

The Mathis' attorney, Michael Silverman, said it wouldn't make any sense for the school district to fight the ruling since Coy and her family are no longer in the district. "Our hope is that the case ends here," Silverman said.

School districts in many states, including Colorado, allow transgender students to use the bathroom of the gender with which they identify. Sixteen states, including Colorado, have anti-discrimination laws that include transgender people.   Read more:   

Beheadings Must Stop

A joint Saudi committee composed of representatives of the ministries of interior, justice and health is mulling the replacement of beheading with firing squads for capital sentences due to shortages in government swordsmen, Saudi daily Al-Youm reported on Sunday.

The committee argued that such a step, if adopted, would not violate Islamic law, allowing heads – or emirs – of the country's 13 local administrative regions to begin using the new method when needed.

"This solution seems practical, especially in light of shortages in official swordsmen or their belated arrival to execution yards in some incidents; the aim is to avoid interruption of the regularly-taken security arrangements," the committee said in a statement.

The ultra-conservative Gulf kingdom beheaded 76 people in 2012, according to an AFP tally based on official figures. Human Rights Watch (HRW) put the number at 69.

Rape, murder, apostasy, armed robbery and drug trafficking are all punishable by death under Saudi Arabia's strict version of Sharia, or Islamic Law. So far this year, three people have been executed.

The beheading issue has always been a source of tension between Saudi Arabia and the international community.

Last month, Saudi Arabia slammed international reactions to its beheading of a Sri Lankan woman convicted of killing her employer's baby.

Riyadh "deplores the statements made... about the execution of a Sri Lankan maid who had plotted and killed an infant by suffocating him to death one week after she arrived in the kingdom," a government spokesman said.

The case sparked widespread international condemnation, including from rights groups that said she had only been 17 years old when she was charged with murdering the baby in 2005.

The case soured the kingdom's diplomatic relations with Sri Lanka, which on Thursday recalled its ambassador to Saudi Arabia in protest.

The UN's main human rights body on Friday expressed "deep dismay" at the beheading, while the European Union said it had asked Saudi authorities to commute the death penalty. Riyadh, however, rejected the statements as "external interference" in its domestic affairs.

Saudi Arabia "respects... all rules and laws and protects the rights of its people and residents, and completely rejects any intervention in its affairs and judicial verdicts, whatever the excuse," the spokesman said.