Saturday 3/13 - SALGA Monthly Support Group Meeting

Join us on Saturday 3/13 for our monthly support group meeting.

Date: Saturday, March 13th, 2010
Time: 4pm - 6pm

Meeting location:
LGBT Center

Meeting Topic:
Healthcare

This meeting space is available for people who trace their descent from countries such as Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Tibet as well as people of South Asian descent from other regions, including but not limited to the West Indies, Africa, Southeast Asia, Canada and the U.K.

The objective of the meeting is to provide a safe space for people where they can freely discuss and share aspects of their experiences as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and questioning individuals.

Facilitators guide the meeting which provides the opportunity for open dialogue about issues important to the participants. Individuals decide on their own level of involvement.

It is the hope of SALGA that you feel welcome in this gathering and be able meet and make friends with people who can better understand, share and empathize with you.

Visit www.gaycenter.org for directions to the Gay and Lesbian Community Center.

“GENDA” Passes Assembly

ALBANY - The bill to protect transgender people under the State Human Rights Law was approved by the Assembly today by a vote of 91-40, with bi-partisan support.  The Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA) is now in the State Senate Investigations and Government Operations Committee.  If it passes the Senate, Governor David Paterson has said he will sign it into law.

“This is an important and overdue protection of human rights,” said Assembly Member Richard N. Gottfried, sponsor of bill, A.5710-A.  “The experience of transgender individuals, and the discrimination they face, are unique, and should be specifically identified and unambiguously rejected in our State’s civil rights laws, just like discrimination based on age, sex, sexual orientation, religion, race, disability, or ethnicity.”

The transgender community is not protected under current state law.

“By eliminating the fear of losing their jobs, homes, and fair treatment in communities across the state, we can make certain that every New Yorker receives equal opportunities regardless of gender identity,” said Gottfried.

Albany, Buffalo, Ithaca, New York City, and Rochester, and the counties of Suffolk and Tompkins have already enacted local GENDA laws.  Thirteen states, Washington, D.C., and over 90 other localities across the country have passed transgender-inclusive civil rights legislation.  Over 150 Fortune 500 companies, including 26 located in New York State, have policies in place to protect their transgender workers.

link: http://www.empirestatenews.net/News/20100303-3.html

Seriously Gay

Source: Times of India
LEENA GHOSH , TNN, Feb 20, 2010, 12.00am IST
As India becomes more gay-friendly, Bollywood also has stepped up to discuss gay portrayals in a serious tone.

Films like Dunno Y… Na Jaane Kyun, It’s A Man’s World and I Am Omar will show homosexual couples’ points of view and the hardships they face in a heterosexual world. They will also show how men are often exploited under different circumstances and are unable to express themselves.

Actor Kapil Sharma, who plays a wannabe gay model in Dunno Y… says, “Audiences want out-of-the-box experiences and are mature enough to accept such topics. My film’s for the niche urban crowd and has been handled sensitively. It’s a simple love story; the only difference is that it’s between two men,” he says.

In It’s A Man’s World, Mohsin Akhtar will flaunt his body and his acting skills. He feels that cineplex audiences make intelligent film choices. “Big banners are delivering more flops than hits these days, but quality products will sell. My film is engulfing and hard-hitting,” he says.
Actors are now doing comprehensive research before donning such roles. “I met a lot of gay people and attended discreet gay parties in Mumbai to observe their behaviour. I also watched movies based on this theme,” says Kapil. Mohsin interacted with male prostitutes for his role. “I met young male prostitutes at director Saurabh’s office and observed their body language,” he says.

Although director Madhur Bhandarkar cut the kissing scene between Samir Soni and his on-screen boyfriend in Fashion to avoid censorship, now directors aren’t hesitant about going all the way to show gay love on screen. According to reports, director Onir has included love-making scenes between Rahul Bose and Arjun Mathur in I Am Omar and he justifies it by saying, “Arjun plays a sex worker. So, we couldn’t do away with the physical aspect of the gay issue.” Kapil’s also seen in an intense scene in Dunno Y…, and Mohsin is shown as a playboy on his film poster.

Director Sanjay Sharma isn’t bothered about controversies or objections. “I have not included scenes to create hype. Without that intense scene, my film would’ve been incomplete,” he contends.

Clash over gay rights in SC set to snowball

Source: Hindustan Times
Samar Halarnkar
New Delhi, February 20, 2010
First Published: 21:19 IST(20/2/2010)

Using fresh arguments that range from imperiling India’s defence to making its people delusional, 14 new organisations have joined the final legal battle against the decriminalisation of homosexuality.

On Saturday, the number of petitioners in the Supreme Court - challenging the July 2009 decision of the Delhi High Court to strike down an anti-sodomy law - stood at 16 from the original two.

Two Christian church coalitions, three Muslim NGOs, two Hindu astrologers, a disciple of yoga guru Baba Ramdev, an NGO run by a former Delhi police officer, and an environmentalist, will be among those in the Supreme Court when it hears an appeal next month against the overturning of the Indian Penal Code’ section 377.

Only one person, film director and Rajya Sabha MP Shyam Benegal, has quietly joined the original petitioner, Delhi NGO Naz Foundation, in support of gay rights in the Supreme Court.

With the government saying it will not oppose the Delhi High Court judgement, which experts consider legally strong, the new opponents are readying a range of fresh arguments:

· “Medical opinion” that only the vagina has the muscles required for sex, not the anus (Utkal Christian Foundation, Cuttack)

· Expanding the constitutional right to non-discrimination to include sexual orientation could lead to demands for job reservations (Apostolic Churches Alliance, Thiruvananthapuram)

· Indian cultural morality maybe ready for homosexuality in “50 or 100 years”, not today (Raza Academy, Mumbai)
Chairman of the Jammu and Kashmir Panthers Party, Prof Bhim Singh, said in his petition that the Delhi High Court ruling would be “a disaster for the Indian defence forces and the security of the country… in deserted areas”.

“Seedlings of homosexuality developed among the (European and US) soldiers during the first and the second world war when they had to stay back in the forests and the hills for years without having any access to meet their sexual desires,” said Singh, whose party otherwise fights for the reorganisation of J&K.

“My challenge of the (Delhi) high court judgement is that it should not have relied on foreign judgements,” said Mushtaq Ahmed, counsel for Mumbai’s Raza Academy, a 32-year-old Islamic advocacy group. “We can’t impose a foreign cultural morality today.”

From Cuttack, B D Das, counsel for the Utkal Christian Foundation, a coalition of Orissa churches, said the decriminalisation of homosexuality had already led gay couples to request church marriages.
“Of course we have not given permission,” said Das, referring to homosexuality as a “biblical sin”.

“Earlier, it (gay marriage) was criminal, so they would not dare to ask.”
Recognising these widespread sensitivities, normally vocal gay, lesbian and transgender activists are staying under the radar. They will stick to the high court’s stress on constitutional rights of an individual over public morality and not expand arguments to subjects like marriage and employment.

“Our energies are focused on safeguarding the decision in the Supreme Court,” said Gautam Bhan, spokesperson of “Voices against 377″, a coalition of gay rights organisations.

The old arguments, made by former right-wing Member of Parliament B.P. Singhal and an NGO called the Joint Action Council, Kannur (in Kerala), have been reformulated as well. These focus on the religious opposition to homosexuality, threat to “public morality” and what opponents argue is its “unnatural” nature.

“(The) High Court decision will protect consensual unnatural sexual acts even when they are obtained by fraud, deceit, misrepresentation, causing fear, intoxication or due to unsoundness of mind,” argued S K Gupta, a disciple of yoga guru Ramdev, and representative of Delhi’s Patanjali Yogpeeth.

The Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Rights (DCPCR), run by former police officer Amod Kanth, said the high court had not considered adoption of children by homosexual couples and the concept of family and parenthood.

“The judgement will cause ‘value disorientation’ and torment children,” said DCPCR secretary R C Gupta, “leading to identity crisis, social physical and psychological maladaptation in society.”

“It is an established medical theory that AIDS spread in human beings through monkeys in African countries. Though not established, there are certain theories that state that unnatural sex with animals can be one of the causes.

“It is submitted that unnatural acts always come with curse from nature, as AIDS in the present form and therefore it deserves to be curbed with strong hands (sic).”

Against:
Apostolic Churches Alliance
All India Muslim Personal Law Board
S K Gupta, Patanjali Yogpeeth
B Krishna Bhat, environmentalist
Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Rights
Utkal Christian Council
Krantikari Manuvadi Morcha Party
Tamil Nadu Muslim Munnetra Kazhagam
Suresh Kumar, Mukesh Kumar Koushal, astrologers
(does not include all petitioners)

For:
Naz Foundation
Shyam Benegal, film director

NRI inspired American army gay policy

Source: Hindustan Times
Anirudh Bhattacharyya, Hindustan Times
New York, February 04, 2010
First Published: 00:24 IST(4/2/2010)

Even as U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen told a Senate Armed Forces Committee that the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy about gays serving in the U.S. military should end, a young Indian-American Air Force officer played a significant role in influencing the decision.

Colonel Om Prakash, who works in the Defence Secretary’s office, had written an essay, The Efficacy of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, for the Pentagon’s Joint Force Quarterly in 2009.

More significantly, that essay, written while he was at the National War College in Washington, DC, won the Secretary of Defence’s National Security Essay Competition for 2009 and was reviewed in advance by Adm. Mullen’s office.

The Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell or DADT policy was introduced in 1993 when Bill Clinton was the American President as a compromise to allow gays to serve in the U.S. Armed Forces. Before that homosexuals were proscribed from the services.

In the study, Col. Om Prakash wrote, “after a careful examination, there is no scientific evidence to support the claim that unit cohesion will be negatively affected if homosexuals serve openly. In fact, the necessarily speculative psychological predictions are that it will not impact combat effectiveness.”

Priyanka Mitra of the South Asian Lesbian and Gay Association said that she “was extremely delighted” that a serving officer from the community was “playing such an important part in the civil rights struggle of LGBT people.”