On all continents individuals and their families are forced to flee their homes on account of their sexual orientation or gender identity. While all refugees are vulnerable, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) refugees face particular challenges in accessing assistance and asylum procedures. They also experience instances of violence as a cause of flight or while in countries of first asylum. Human Rights First (HRF) highlighted many of these challenges earlier this month in a policy paper presented at a Roundtable discussion convened by the UN Refugee Agency - UNHCR - on Asylum Seekers and Refugees Seeking Protection on Account of their Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity. HRF's paper includes a comprehensive set of recommendations directed at UNHCR and States.
Human Rights First welcomes the statements issued after the Roundtable by the U.S. Department of State and UNHCR on the need to improve protection of LGBTI refugees.
In its statement, UNHCR recognized that laws which criminalize same-sex relations in many countries - whether they are enforced or not - pose difficulties for LGBTI refugees, and that these refugees face heightened risks of discrimination in urban settings and refugee camps. In response to these concerns, UNHCR stated it will revise its policies to recognize the particular vulnerabilities of LGBTI refugees, dangers that exist at every stage of the displacement cycle. UNHCR's Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, Ms. Erika Feller, also reiterated UNHCR's commitment to undertake this task during the Agency's Executive Committee meeting held last week in Geneva. Similarly, UNHCR called upon states to recognize the needs of people persecuted because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
The United States welcomed UNHCR's efforts in this area and acknowledged that LGBT individuals "face serious threats in countries of asylum, where they may be isolated and reluctant to seek help." The U.S. went on to positively affirm that "ensuring LGBT refugees receive the protection and assistance to which all refugees are entitled is a priority." In addition, it stated its commitment to support UNHCR as it integrates LGBT issues into its protection policies and tools, including the Age, Gender and Diversity Framework. This is used by UNHCR and its partners to identify priority needs and corresponding responses.
These statements are consistent with a number of recommendations put forward by HRF in its policy paper presented at the UNHCR Roundtable. The paper, and Human Rights First's related press release, urges that LGBTI refugees be recognized by UNHCR as persons with specific needs, and that UNHCR issue practical guidance to ensure LGBTI refugees are able to access services, support and asylum procedures on the basis of equality and with dignity. Many of these points also follow recommendations presented by a number of refugee protection and gay rights groups to the U.S. Secretary of State in March.
What happened in Geneva this month was a significant step forward in the effort to better protect and serve the needs of LGBTI refugees, but more work is needed to ensure implementation of reforms on the ground. In the coming months, HRF will continue to both monitor progress toward this end and will continue to advocate for safeguards to protect LGBTI refugees.
Elena Kagan's Supreme Court confirmation hearings kicked off on Monday. Her nomination has been met by glum resignation on the left and indifference on the right, as Adam Serwer notes in the American Prospect. Kagan is hoping to replace the Supreme Court's most prominent liberal, Justice John Paul Stevens, who stepped down earlier this week. Progressives are counting on Kagan to shore up the pro-choice faction on the court.
Kagan has never been a judge and she hasn't published very many academic law opinions. As a result, the confirmation process is leaning heavily on her counsels to President Bill Clinton as a White House adviser, her clerkship with legendary liberal Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, and her stint as Dean of Harvard Law School.
RH Reality Check has video of a key exchange in Kagan's confirmation hearing yesterday, in which Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) pressed Kagan on her views about life and health exemptions for the mother within abortion bans.
"Do you believe the constitution requires that the health of the mother be protected in any statute restricting access to abortion?" Feinstein asked Kagan.
"Senator Feinstein, I do think that the continuing holding of Roe and Doe v. Bolton is that women's life and women's health have to be protected in abortion regulation," Kagan replied.
That's a good start, but it's hardly the ringing endorsement of choice that progressives would have hoped. Kagan went on to talk the special case of "partial birth abortion bans," which she encouraged Bill Clinton to support while he was president. "Partial birth abortion" isn't even a medical term. It's a marketing term coined by anti-choicers in their bid to chip away at Roe v. Wade. For pro-choicers, it's disappointing to see Kagan uncritically buying into that frame.
Title X and the Gag Order
Jodi Jacobson discusses Kagan's record on choice issues in greater detail at RH Reality Check. She notes that the Center for Reproductive Rights reviewed Kagan's record and raised many questions about her views on abortion. On the bright side, CRR believes that Kagan would have struck down the Title X gag rule. Title X was established in 1970 to provide public funding for reproductive health care, including birth control.
In 1988, the Secretary of Health and Human Services imposed a so-called "gag rule" that prevented doctors from talking about abortion and required them to refer patients to services for the welfare of "the unborn." Kagan argued in a 1992 law review article that the gag order violated the First Amendment because the government was trying to silence one point of view while promoting another.
However, in a memo for Justice Thurgood Marshall, Kagan said it was "ludicrous" that a lower court found that the Eighth Amendment guarantees elective abortions for women in prison. Kagan disagreed with the lower court's finding that elective abortions are "serious medical needs."
Obamacare all over again
A Supreme Court confirmation hearing is like Shark Week on the Learning Channel. Chum's up!
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) criticized Kagan for rejecting the fringe legal theory of "tentherism," a position that opponents of health care reform have used to argue that Obamacare is unconstitutional. As Ian Millhiser observes in AlterNet, it's ironic that Sessions also criticized Kagan as an incipient "activist judge." Embracing "tentherism" would be nothing if not judicial activism. It's extremely unlikely that any tenther-based challenge would make it to the Supreme Court.
Outside the Senate chamber, anti-gay activist Peter LaBarbera is demanding to know whether Dean Kagan schemed to allow transgender people to use the bathroom of their choice, reports Stephanie Mencimer of Mother Jones.
Some Republican senators questioned Kagan about her decision to bar military recruiters from school-sponsored recruiting events at Yale Law School over Don't Ask Don't Tell. On the outside, a Yale grad and Republican activist named Flagg Youngblood has taken to the talkshow circuit to complain about how he had to attend ROTC drills at another school. It's not clear why any of this is Kagan's problem, seeing as she was Dean of Harvard and took a much weaker stance on military recruiting.
That's not cooling Youngblood's apocalyptic anti-Kagan rhetoric, though, Adam Weinstein reports in Mother Jones. "In the last 18 months, the president and his plotting comrades have dragged the United States to the edge of Constitutional oblivion. America's in the eleventh hour, and Elena Obama must be stopped from pushing us over the cliff," Youngblood recently proclaimed.
Part of the plan
Meanwhile in Nevada, Republican Senate hopeful Sharron Angle is in hot water for asserting that women who get pregnant through rape must be forced to give birth because these pregnancies are all part of God's plan. Good catch by Vanessa Valenti of Feministing.
"You know, I'm a Christian, and I believe that God has a plan and a purpose for each one of our lives and that he can intercede in all kinds of situations and we need to have a little faith in many things," Angle said in an interview with a conservative broadcaster in January.
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The problem I always have with boycotts is where they end. Rarely when someone, be it a citizen activist or a large organization, announces a boycott do they simultaneously announce an end point. Then, over the years, they either forget about it altogether or something more important comes up as a reason to ignore it, and no one cares anymore. I'm thinking about all this as I saw this post from Bil Browning at The Bilerico Project, an LGBT-focused blog:
Uniting the T and the LBG
Filed by: Bil Browning
April 27, 2010 5:00 PM
Last year I celebrated my birthday in Washington DC with hundreds of friends and readers at the National Equality March. This year, I'll be celebrating in Phoenix, Arizona, and, of course, you're all invited.
I'll be a plenary speaker at the Transform Arizona conference this year on October 16. Presented by TransMentors International, Phoenix Pride & H.E.R.O., this Arizona gathering has become on of the most respected transgender conferences in the nation. Transmentors sponsors these conferences around the nation; New Hampshire, Oregon and Florida will also host Transform conferences this year.
This year's theme is "Uniting the T and the LBG" I'll be speaking about the importance of trans allies.
Fellow speakers include Allyson Robinson of the Human Rights Campaign, performance artist Peterson Toscano, author/editor Matt Kailey, Ernesto Ortiz from 1VCC & Phoenix Pride, and Anthony Barreto-Nedo of T.O.P.S.
Predictably, a number of commenters attacked Bil for going to Arizona, to which he replied:
I feel okay working with TransMentors on this one. Usually I get paid to give speeches, etc, but this one is a freebie. I feel okay about going to Arizona for this speech, not because I think their government is on the right track, but to support the Arizona trans community - who are rising up to support the coalition of people fighting the law. After all, what could be a better vision of "The role of trans allies" than the coalition building they are doing right now?
What I think is that if this conference took place five years from now and the law were still in place, no one would give a damn. Boycotts tend to lose their sexy action potential as time goes on. But it's this year, so it presents a conundrum. Is that fair? No, and and it's obviously a difficult decision for Bil.
What it brings up is prioritization. If Arizona became a swing state in 2012 and were critical to Obama's victory, I'd bet anything he'd go, and a lot of people would support that, too. If I were in Bil's shoes, I would probably go, not because I don't care about supporting allies and boycotts, but because there are other critical issues out there to work on, and because if I had to weigh the relative activism impact of Bil not going in support of a boycott versus going and lending an important voice to this critical topic, I would choose the latter. While there's something to be said for supporting allies whenever possible, boycotts should not be inviolable in a broader progressive movement. Activists have to weigh the impact of their actions on a case-by-case basis, and with careful consideration.
This week in a San Francisco Federal District Court, a legal odd couple will be on display. Attorney David Boies, who represented Al Gore before the U.S. Supreme Court in the infamous 2000 case ofBush v. Gore, and conservative attorney Ted Olson, who represented George W. Bush, are joining forces to overturn California's Proposition 8. It will be their contention that the initiative passed by voters in 2008 banning same-sex marriage in the Golden State violates the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses of the U.S. Constitution, singles out gays and lesbians for a disfavored legal status, and discriminates on the basis of gender and sexual orientation.
Regardless of which side prevails, experts agree the case is likely to be appealed all the way to the highest court in the land.
As is the tradition every year with the HRC national dinner, a lot of bitter criticism comes out about the group. I debunked the "they haven't done anything" argument last week. Today I want to write about a segment of the gay community whose influence we must all fear: the Rich, White Gays (RWGs).
You see, many in the LGBT community (examples here, here and here) have criticized HRC as a group made up entirely of RWGs, and that we should dislike HRC, their money, and their support because of the RWGs. In fact, the HRC headquarters was actually vandalized yesterday for the same reason.
Allow me to do my best to disabuse you of the notion that HRC, via the scary RWGs, are destroying all of Gayopolis (h/t Queer as Folk):
1. Corruption. In any discussion of financial support leading to certain policies, there should be an A->B argument, such as Max Baucus takes millions from insurance companies->his doing their bidding in Congress. Is this the case with the RWGs and HRC? Has HRC been particularly dismissive of poor LGBTers, or people of color, or lesbians/bisexuals/transgender individuals? It doesn't seem that way. Here in DC alone, I regularly see HRC's support everywhere in the community for non-RWGs, financially sponsoring everything from Sexual Minority Youth Assistance League brunches to the Mautner Project, an organization focusing on lesbian health. They also were the only LGBT organization to purchase sponsorship at Netroots Nation last year. These are all organizations whose constituencies are predominantly some or all of the characteristics of non-rich, non-white, non-gay male.
Legislatively, last time I checked (aside from the T issue in ENDA, which I and many others supported as a strategic measure), HRC hasn't been pushing legislation that only benefits, rich white gay men.
2. Financial support. Like with its support of SMYAL and the Mautner Project, lots and lots of organizations rely on HRC for financial support. HRC also puts tens of thousands into political support- in direct contributions, sending staff, and other ways- into political campaigns, like the 2005 Maine non-discrimination ballot initiative, this year's Maine marriage campaign, Referendum 71 in Washington, Prop 8, electing LGBT members of Congress, and more. Yet I know many people who cheer HRC's contributions to non-profits and political campaigns turn around and make the RWG argument.
But is this different than anywhere else? Many foundation boards are entirely rich and white. Many individual donors who give money in LGBT politics are rich, white and gay. Should the money be rejected because of the race and class from which it comes?
I also view HRC as a kind of aggregator for donors. Is it better there be no HRC Dinner at all, where non-profit executive directors go principally to get access to the RWGs to get additional direct financial support? Is it better for a non-profit like SMYAL to not get any money from HRC, and for its tiny staff to spend even more time and resources on development work, rather than helping underprivileged youth of color?
3. Hypocrisy. At the same time folks trash HRC's RWG demographic, they celebrate RWGs. Bruce Bastian is a classic example. Bruce, a Utah native and former Mormon missionary, co-founded WordPerfect and is on Fortune 500's list of richest people in the country. He is widely respected as one of the most inspiring and generous donors in the LGBT movement. I see praise heaped upon him in many quarters, as I should.
Bruce has also given millions to HRC. He is on the HRC Board of Directors. I went to the HRC Dinner last year, where he was the guest of honor, feted and given an award.
If anything, Bruce is the Rich White Gay incarnate, but he is praised, while the organization doling out his money to causes we all hold dear is demonized as "you're rich, white and gay, so you suck!!". Huh?
4. Diversity. In a perfect world, every foundation and political action group and non-profit would be a mix of races, classes, and colors. I would hope that HRC and lots of other groups are more diverse- economically, racially, and in terms of sexual orientation. That's not the case, and I don't think that will ever be. So why are we making race-based and class-based attacks on organizations that support the rest of the community? It's not like HRC is the only one. I live in DC, one of the gayest cities in the country, with a majority-black population. Yet I go to events all all the time- benefit galas, LGBT performing arts, sporting events, political group meetings, bars, you name it- that are almost entirely middle-to-upper-class, white and gay. I have friends who tell me the same in other cities. Yet I don't hear the kind of vitriol thrown at the sponsoring institutions like I do HRC.
I don't pretend to be an expert on the financial makeup of the LGBT community, but I don't think the class, economic, and sexual orientation structure of HRC- or the other events I mentioned- is because they're some kind of racist, classist, LBT-hating group. I think it's because there aren't exactly tons and tons of rich LBTs or people of color, particularly POCs who are "out". Is this HRC's fault?
And a greater amount of HRC's programming- like this Ya Es Hora program- involves HRC Steering Committee partnering with local volunteers to help low-income Hispanics apply for citizenship. One colleague related how the Houston chapter volunteers were nearly all people of color, and split male/female with one transgender individual. HRC has also had several female executive directors and diversity within its staff and board.
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Again, I wish organizations were more diverse in many ways. I was not happy there was a lack of diversity in local DC planning meetings for the National Equality March. But I don't get why hurling criticism at those that aren't, and can't do a whole lot about it, and do a ton of good, accomplishes anything.
Like the "they haven't accomplished anything" argument, the RWG criticism of HRC isn't entirely grounded in reality or fairness. I don't think HRC has done everything entirely right, but if you're going to make a criticism, at least do it in the interest of good faith, not for the sake of finding a mean adjective to slander them with.
For today's story, we will travel far afield from the typical domains of politics or science or law that have so often provoked our thinking into an often overlooked area of human relations:
To which gender do you belong?
It's a simple question, or so common sense would tell us-either you're male, or you're female.
As it turns out, things aren't quite so simple, and in today's conversation we'll consider this issue in a larger way. By the time we're done, not only will we learn a thing or two about sex and gender and sexuality, we'll also learn how to offer a community of people a level of respect that they often find difficult to obtain.
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