https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-lgbt-films/judge-orders-brazil-to-reinstate-funding-for-films-in-lgbt-victory-idUSKBN1WO04U

Addressing the judges, she began: “When an employer fires a male employee for dating men but does not fire female employees who date men, he violates Title VII.

“The employer has, in the words of Section 703(a), discriminated against the man because it treats that man worse than women who want to do the same thing. And that discrimination is on the basis of sex.”

https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/10/09/supreme-court-title-vii-pamela-karlan-opening-argument-gay-lgbt/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=PNnewsletter

Today, the United States Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments in three LGBT cases for the first time since the President nominated two justices to the court, including Justice Kavanaugh. The specific question at stake in all three cases is whether it should be legal to fire employees on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. However, this is also symptomatic of a much larger, well-funded global attack on LGBTQI and women’s rights more widely.

These cases—Altitude Express Inc. v. Zarda, Bostock v. Clayton County, and R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes v. EEOC—all concern protection from discrimination based on sex under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In the Zarda and Bostock cases, Donald Zarda and Gerald Bostock—two gay men—were fired from their jobs because of their sexual orientation. In Harris Funeral Homes, Aimee Stephens—a trans woman—was fired two weeks after telling her boss she is a woman. Her boss has claimed that he would be violating “God’s Commands” by allowing Stephens “to deny [her] sex while acting as a representative of the organization.”

The Supreme Court’s decisions on these cases will not be released until well into 2020, but they are critical regardless of their outcomes. For one, the very existence of the Harris Funeral Homes case validates right wing groups’ desire to reject and erase the existence of trans people altogether. In briefs filed ahead of oral arguments, the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF)—the group representing Thomas Rost of Harris Funeral Homes—did not recognize Aimee Stephens as a woman, and in fact specifically avoided using her correct pronouns. The ADF is at the forefront of the conservative legal battle to use religious exemptions to roll-back women’s and LGBTQI rights.

If the Supreme Court rules in favor of Harris Funeral Homes, it will also indicate that the law allows employers to fire an individual in the United States simply for being trans. As Chase Strangio—Deputy Director for Transgender Justice at the ACLU and part of the counsel in the Harris Funeral Homes case—said on Twitter, “the consequences of a ruling against the LGBTQ employees will be far reaching,” and will begin the unraveling of decades of sex discrimination advances.

Right wing groups including the ADF are also using well-honed strategies of division, and they frequently use misleading rhetoric to intentionally pitt women’s rights activists against LGBTQI activists. In this case, the ADF has argued that should Stephens prevail, “equal opportunities and bodily privacy protections for women and girls will be lost.” This attempt to set women’s rights against trans, LGBQ, and intersex rights is both dangerous and false. Advancements in sex-based discrimination protections protect all, regardless of gender and sexual orientation. A decision against Stephens would suggest that anyone who does not conform to rigid, retrograde gender norms—regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation—is putting their employment on the line.

The very fact that three cases in 2019 ask whether it is lawful to fire someone simply for being LGBTQI, suggests that many believe LGBTQI people should not be entitled to the same protections against discrimination as their cisgender and/or heterosexual counterparts. This sentiment is not new. In the U.S. and in regions across the world, growing far-right anti-gender movements, which we wrote about recently, are strategically weaponizing conservative rhetoric that would have people believe that we are the enemy.

These ‘gender ideology’ movements are part of a growing, well-coordinated, funded global movement which has been designed to control our communities by restricting the rights and bodily autonomy of LGBTQI communities, women, and people of color. Their intent is to “depict efforts to expand rights for women and LGBTQI people as radical, dangerous impositions designed to eliminate all sex differences.”

The current Administration’s own ‘gender ideology’ agenda is evidenced through its growing list of efforts to rollback rights and protections for women and LGBTQI communities by proposing a ‘legal’ definition of sex based on gender assigned at birth, thereby disregarding individuals’ gender identities and expressions; banning transgender people from serving in the military; and restricting federal funding for health clinics that provide abortion referrals, just to name a few. These relentless attacks denying protection to women and LGBTQI communities are intentional and highly strategic. They are also creating the conditions for increased violence and hate against LGBTQI, Black, Brown, and migrant communities. This year alone, 19 trans women of color have been murdered around the country as trans rights continue to be stripped away in multiple policy areas.

While these cases have only begun to attract mainstream media attention over the last couple of weeks, they are being cited as the single most important set of explicitly LGBT cases to reach the Supreme Court because they encompass both sexual orientation and gender identity, and so potentially impact the livelihoods of all LGBTQI people and women in the United States. That they have even made it to the Supreme Court is evidence of the growing tide of discrimination against women and LGBTQI people. These rulings directly address discrimination based on sex and will also have implications for sex-based discrimination protections for all women more generally, who regularly face workplace discriminations.

Over forty years ago, Astraea’s founding mothers understood that the struggle for women’s rights was and is intimately linked to the struggle for LGBTQI rights. Then and now, these struggles and the threats against them have been global in nature, and activists around the world continue to resist far-right gender ideology movements as a matter of survival. These are not just battles taking place “over there,” but here in our own backyards, in the United States legal system and in our ongoing culture wars.

What we have learned from movements in other countries is to push back against these anti-gender, right-wing forces, women’s rights and LGBTQI rights movements must come together. Our struggles are inherently connected, and connection and solidarity will fortify us to combat the attacks on all our bodies, lives, and freedoms. Astraea has always prioritized shifting power and resources to grassroots feminist, LGBTQI movements working in solidarity all over the world, understanding that it is through resourcing and working at the very junctions that abnegate power, freedom, and rights, that we can support movements to bring about the most meaningful, and lasting change. After all, there is no freedom for some at the expense of others.

In Solidarity,

Sandy Nathan
Interim Executive Director, Astraea Foundation

https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/10/07/conversion-therapy-cure-gay-judge-minors-florida-tampa-christian-homosexuality/

The Utrecht University Faculty of Law, Economics and Governance seek to fill a position for a Postdoctoral Researcher in the field of EU Gender Equality Law. The successful candidate will be part of the coordination team of the gender stream of the European network of legal experts in gender equality and non-discrimination. The primary task of the network is to gather reliable expert information on legislation, case law and national developments to enable the Commission to fulfil their role as guardian of the treaties. Read more and apply by 13 October.

On 3 September, the registration of LBQ women’s organisation Feminita has been denied again by an appeal court in Kazakhstan. “It feels like they are constantly searching for grounds to stop our work,” Zhanar Sekerbaeva, co-founder of Feminita, said to Human Rights Watch. Feminita members have experienced discriminatory treatment by the authorities before. In 2019, the authorities denied Feminita permission to organise a march for International Women’s Day multiple times. In 2018, Sekerbaeva was detained, charged with “minor hooliganism,” and fined $30 because she organised a photo shoot that she said was intended to destigmatize menstruation.
Read more about the arbitrary and discriminatory decision of the court.

After yearlong debates in France, often very hateful and harmful for lesbians and single women, the victory has finally come on 27 September. The National Assembly approved the new bioethics law extending the right to use IVF methods to lesbian and single women. ILGA-Europe want to congratulate all the activists who have fought hard and tirelessly for this over the years. We regret that trans men are excluded from the law. The law adopted still has to be approved by the upper house before going into effect.
Read more about the new bill.

In January 2018, two young women were filmed kissing at a cinema in Almaty by a man, Eldar Mamedov who posted the video to Facebook. The faces of both women were fully identifiable and they were subsequently recognised on the streets and received death threats, calls for violence and other hate speech. On 30 July this year, the Supreme Court found in favour of the women, saying that everyone has the right to privacy, personal and family secrets, protection of one’s honour and dignity.

This is a critical time for the EU Commission to adopt a comprehensive LGBTI strategy

Europe is at a dangerous crossroads and that’s why this is a critical time for the Commission to adopt a comprehensive LGBTI strategy over the next five years, say ILGA-Europe in the media release on 17 September. An EU LGBTI strategy, adopted and owned by the political leadership of the European Commission would give a very important political sign that the EU will not only continue but also strengthen its work on protecting and advancing the human rights of LGBTI people in the European Union. Also, it will help all Directorate Generals of the European Commission to feel empowered to ensure full implementation of existing commitments and to plan proposals and actions that will advance LGBTI human rights and equality.
Read more about our call for an EU-level LGBTI strategy.

By Christy Mallory and Brad Sears

An estimated 113,000 LGBT adults live in Oklahoma. There are approximately 74,000 LGBT workers age 16 and older in the state.

Oklahoma does not have a statewide law that expressly prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, leaving LGBT residents vulnerable to discrimination. Researchers estimate that local ordinances protect about 29% of Oklahoma’s workforce from employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Local ordinances also protect only about 3% of adults from this type of discrimination in housing and public accommodations.

Read the press release

Read the report