USA: Donald Trump’s HHS finalizes rule rolling back nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ individuals

With less than two weeks left in office, Donald Trump’s administration announced on Friday a new rule that narrows nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQIA individuals seeking services of health and welfare programs that are funded by the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

This rule narrows LGBTQIA non-discrimination protections that were previously in 45 CFR 75.300(c) which barred discrimination without merit based on factors such as age, disability, sex, race, color, national origin, religion, gender identity, or sexual orientation in receiving benefits of HHS programs.

One example of the new rule changing treatment for the LGBTQIA community is that the original 45 CFR 75.300(d) required grant recipients to treat same-sex marriages as valid. The newly amended rule instead permits a change in treatment of same-sex marriages based on later Supreme Court rulings.

In its 86-page release adopting the rule HHS said that they are “committed to the principle that every person must be treated with dignity and respect and afforded all of the protections of the Constitution and statutes enacted by Congress – and to fully enforcing such civil rights protections and requirements.”

HHS presented explanations for creating a rule that contradicts this statement. Their release says that if they continue enforcing the rule as currently written in § 75.300(c) and (d) they will disrupt “the balance struck by Congress with respect to nondiscrimination requirements applicable to grant recipients.” HHS also cited evidence of accommodation requests and lawsuits as proof that the current rule violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, 42 U.S.C. 2000bb–2000bb-4 (RFRA). Lastly, the release by HHS also refers to the current rule leading to a decrease in “effectiveness of Department-funded programs by deterring participation in them.”

This rule will go into effect 30 days after publication in the Federal Register.

The post Donald Trump’s HHS finalizes rule rolling back nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ individuals appeared first on JURIST – News – Legal News & Commentary.

Peter Allan Memorial Lecture: LGB Human Rights in Europe, Taiwan, and Hong Kong by Prof Wintemute

Sex change to become easier in Switzerland

Transgender and intersex people will be able to change their name and sex more easily in the official civil register following moves by the Swiss parliament. On Wednesday, the House of Representatives eliminated its last difference with the Senate to make this possible. In future, transgender and intersex people will be able to change their name and sex in the civil register without bureaucratic complications. There will no longer be any medical examinations or other prerequisites. Every year, about 40 children are born with indeterminate sex at birth. However, the law currently requires that they must be registered within three days with their sex and first name, which can only be changed later through an administrative or judicial procedure. At the same time, there are several hundred transgender people in Switzerland. Between 100 and 200 people have undergone or are considering an operation to change their sex. The last point of contention between the two houses of…

Read more: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/sex-change-to-become-easier-in-switzerland-/46228520

65th anniversary of first gay rights case under the European Convention on Human Rights

(c) Paul Johnson,

http://echrso.blogspot.com/

65th anniversary of first gay rights case under the European Convention on Human Rights Posted: 08 Dec 2020 03:17 PM PST This month marks the 65th anniversary of the first decision taken on a case concerning sexual orientation discrimination brought under the European Convention on Human Rights. The case originated in an application, lodged with the (now abolished) European Commission of Human Rights, by a man (Mr W.B.) who was in prison in Germany. Mr W.B. was in prison following his conviction for “homosexual offences”. Mr W.B. submitted his application to the Commission on 10th October 1955 (three months after the Commission become able to receive individual applications in July 1955) and the Commission gave its decision on 17th December 1955. The Commission declared Mr W.B.’s application inadmissible. W.B. v The Federal Republic of Germany – the case and the applicant When Mr W.B. lodged his application with the Commission he was serving a fifteen-month term of imprisonment in Germany for “two cases of homosexuality” contrary to Paragraph 175 of the German Criminal Code. Mr W.B.’s offences were said to have involved “attempted serious homosexuality” contrary to Paragraph 175a of the Criminal Code. These provisions of the Criminal Code were in force in the form enacted by the National Socialist German Workers’ (Nazi) Party in 1935 and criminalized sexual acts between men. During the Nazi era, these provisions underpinned the arrest and prosecution of tens of thousands of gay men, thousands of which were imprisoned, tortured and murdered in concentration camps. Following the end of Nazi Germany, and the subsequent establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), these provisions remained in force at the time that Mr W.B. was convicted. What do we know about Mr W.B.? The only things that we can know about Mr W.B. are from the very brief account provided by the Commission – the extent of which runs to one side of typed A4 paper. The Commission’s case file will undoubtedly contain more extensive information but all of the Commission’s files are confidential and cannot be accessed. I have been unable to locate domestic records, but I do know that the court records concerning Mr W.B.’s conviction have been destroyed. We don’t know how old Mr W.B. was at the time he was in prison. All we know is that when he made his application to the Commission, Mr W.B. had served thirteen months in prison and, by the time the Commission issued its decision, he would have been just about to reach the end of his sentence. One thing we can say about Mr W.B. is that he must have had some legal awareness, some knowledge, of the Convention and the Commission. The Commission was newly established, and he took the initiative of submitting a complaint to it. We have no idea why he did this, but we must assume that he became aware of the existence of the Commission and, looking to it as a sort of international court of appeal, tried to use it to challenge both his conviction and his sentence. We don’t know whether Mr W.B. had legal assistance. Although it later became common for people in prison to write to the Commission without the assistance of a lawyer, in 1955 this was certainly very novel. What was the nature of Mr W.B.’s offences? We do not know the exact nature of Mr W.B.’s offences, because no details are given in the Commission’s published decision. The key provision under which Mr W.B. was convicted, Paragraph 175, criminalized “unzucht” between males. The word “unzucht” is difficult to translate because, similar to the word “buggery” in English law, its meaning is fixed to a historical and cultural context. The nearest translation might be “fornication”, but it could also be translated as “lewdness”. Essentially, what Paragraph 175 enforced was a total prohibition of same-sex sexual acts between men. Mr W.B. was also convicted under Paragraph 175a which made provision for so-called “serious” cases of fornication or lewdness between males, which fell into four classes: the use of compulsion by one male on another to commit a sex offence; an abuse of dependence (such as in employment) by one male upon another; seduction by a male over 21 of a person under 21; and public displays of sexual acts, including soliciting. In terms of the “two cases of homosexuality” that Mr W.B. was said to have engaged in, we can assume that he had committed a sexual act with one or more persons. However, we cannot know the precise details of “serious homosexuality” that Mr W.B. was said to have “attempted”. Mr W.B.’s complaint to the Commission Mr W.B. complained to the Commission about both his conviction and the legislation under which it was secured. He invoked a wide range of Articles of the Convention (Articles 2, 8, 14, 17, and 18). The Articles chosen by Mr W.B. show him to be a very creative interpreter of the Convention. The use of Article 2, in particular, is striking because it suggests that Mr W.B. was interpreting the “right to life” in the broadest sense of that term. Under Article 8, Mr W.B. complained that Paragraphs 175 and 175a infringed the “right to privacy”; under Article 8 taken in conjunction with Article 14, he complained that, to the extent that Paragraphs 175 and 175a were limited to men, this infringed “the principle of sexual non-discrimination”. The Commission’s decision The Commission focused on the complaints made under Articles 8 (right to respect for private and family life) and 14 (prohibition of discrimination). In respect of Article 8, the Commission briefly stated that “the Convention permits a High Contracting Party to legislate to make homosexuality a punishable offence” because “private and family life may be the subject of interference” by the laws “dealing with the protection of health or morals”. In respect of Article 14, the Commission stated that the Convention “does not exclude the possibility of a High Contracting Party differentiating between the sexes in the measures it takes with regard to homosexuality for the protection of health or morals”. On this basis, the Commission declared the application inadmissible, as manifestly ill-founded. The importance of Mr W.B.’s case Although the Commission rejected Mr W.B.’s application – thus resulting in a personal failure for him – it did establish something important. When declaring the application inadmissible, the Commission, under old Article 27 § 2 of the Convention, had the capacity to declare it to be:  incompatible with the provisions of the Convention, manifestly ill-founded, or an abuse of the right of petition. In specifying that Mr W.B.’s application was “manifestly ill-founded” the Commission implicitly established the principle that a complaint about the criminalization of homosexual acts was not “incompatible with the provisions of the Convention” (or, indeed, “an abuse of the right of petition”). This was a success of sorts because, in future, it meant that applicants could be reassured that their complaints about sexual orientation discrimination fell within the ambit of Convention rights and that states had to provide a justification for an inference with the rights in question. Therefore, although the Commission was prepared to accept that Nazi-formulated law was compatible with the Convention, its rejection of the complaint produced what can be seen as a victory for lesbian and gay human rights because it provided a framework for future complaints. Mr W.B.’s case established that there were two major battles that had to be waged: first, the Commission had to be persuaded that a person’s right to engage in private, consensual and adult same-sex sexual acts must supersede concerns about public health or social morality; and, second, the Commission had to be persuaded that differentiating between people on the grounds of their sexual orientation, to single them out for criminal regulation, amounted to discrimination contrary to Article 14. In simple terms, Mr W.B.’s case became the key reference point – it was the case that had to be overturned and defeated in order to establish a human right to engage in same-sex sexual acts.  Year after year, decade after decade… The Council of Europe regarded the decision on Mr W.B.’s case as a sign that the Convention was working appropriately. Less than a year after the decision, the Directorate of Human Rights, in an effort to allay “certain fears … that recognition of the right of individual recourse to an international tribunal might lead to abuse”, cited it as evidence that “the European Commission of Human Rights now seems equipped to ensure observance of the fundamental rights and freedoms essential to the satisfactory operation of European democratic regimes, without thereby opening the door to abuses prejudicial to the effectiveness of its work and to the legitimate interests of governments.” But year after year, decade after decade, following Mr W.B.’s case, gay men submitted applications to the Commission complaining about cruel laws that criminalized same-sex sexual acts. Finally, twenty-six years after the decision on Mr W.B.’s case, the European Court of Human Rights established that the complete criminalization of same-sex sexual acts between men amounted to a violation of Article 8 of the Convention. Knowing our history, protecting our rights Understanding the history of the development of LGBT human rights under the Convention is not a dry academic exercise. Rather, it is – in my view – a vital and necessary component of protecting the human rights we enjoy today, and ensuring those rights survive in the future. The human rights LGBT people enjoy today in Europe arose from struggle and suffering. Real people, like Mr W.B, who were imprisoned for being gay, suffered greatly, and struggled to use the law to change the world they lived in. The human rights we enjoy today are not guaranteed. We could, at any moment, go back to living in a time like the one Mr W.B. lived in. We need to, therefore, guard our precious rights, and ensure they continue to exist. One way of doing this is to understand the history of how our rights emerged and developed. Understanding our history equips us with knowledge of what is at stake, and what will happen if we let our rights be diminished. For a condensed overview of the development of LGBT rights under the Convention, see here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2927098

WEBINAR: LGBT Victimization in the US

We hope you can join us as we discuss a recent Williams Institute analysis of the 2017 National Crime Victimization Survey, the first national dataset to examine the rates of victimization among LGBT people compared with their cisgender, heterosexual counterparts. Panelists will address the importance of the findings, the threat to continued data collection on LGBT victimization, and the work of the Anti-Violence Project, a 40-year-old LGBT community organization dedicated to organizing, education, policy, and research.

RSVP Today

Co-Geschäftsleiter*in Deutschschweiz 60-100% bei der LOS

Die Lesbenorganisation Schweiz LOS vertritt seit über 30 Jahren die Anliegen von lesbischen, bisexuellen und queeren Frauen in der Schweiz. Sie setzt sich für ihre politische und gesellschaftliche Gleichberechtigung ein und fördert ihre Sichtbarkeit und Vernetzung. Gemeinsam mit unseren Partnerorganisationen engagieren wir uns für die gesamte LGBTIQ-Community.

Die LOS sucht per 1. März 2021 oder nach Vereinbarung ein*e
Co-Geschäftsleiter*in Deutschschweiz 60-100%

In dieser Position gestaltest du zusammen mit der Co-Geschäftsleiterin Romandie und dem ehrenamtlichen Vorstand die Aktivitäten, den Auftritt sowie die inhaltliche und strategische Ausrichtung der LOS und entwickelst diese weiter. Dabei laufen bei dir als Hauptverantwortliche*r für die Geschäftsstelle alle Fäden zusammen.

Alle weiteren Informationen finden sich in der Stellenausschreibung im Anhang.

Die Vorstellungsgespräche findet am 25. und 26.1 in Zürich oder Bern statt. Bei Bedarf findet ein zweites Gespräch am 28. Januar statt. Bitte halte diese Termine frei.
Wir freuen uns auf deine Bewerbung mit den üblichen Unterlagen bis zum 20.01.21 an Laura Eigenmann, laura@los.ch.
Weitere Auskünfte erteilt Dir gerne Kathrin Meng unter kathrin@los.ch oder auch telefonisch unter 079 364 20 22.

Attachments and links

• LOS_Stellenausschreibung_GL_Deutsch_def.pdf (PDF, 174 KB)

Save the date and submit your applications for the ILGA World Conference 2022

Originally planned for November 2021 and postponed due to Covid-19 uncertainty, the ILGA World Conference 2022 will take place from 2 to 6 May 2022 in Los Angeles, CA, United States, hosted by the It Gets Better Project under the theme LGBTIQ Youth: Future Present Change. LGBTI human rights defenders and activists are eligible to apply for a scholarships before 17 January 2021 and submit a session proposals by 10 January 2021.

Read more about the Conference.

Canadian Métis federation votes for non-binary gender option on citizenship cards in ‘respect of basic human rights’

Read: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/12/21/non-binary-gender-citizen-cards-manitoba-basic-human-rights/

USA: North Carolina appeals court rules same-sex partners eligible for domestic violence protections

The Court of Appeals of North Carolina ruled Thursday that people who are or have been in a dating relationship with a same-sex partner are equally protected against domestic violence as persons in opposite-sex relationships placed in a similar situation. North Carolina was the only US state where such protection had been unavailable.

The case arose when the plaintiff, a woman, filed for issuance of a Domestic Violence Protective Order (DVPO) pursuant to Chapter 50B of the North Carolina General Statutes (NCGS) against another woman with whom she had been in a dating relationship. The trial court rejected the complaint, stating that under Chapter 50B of the NCGS, only persons in opposite-sex dating relationships could claim protections against domestic violence. The decision of the trial court was appealed citing violations under the Constitution of North Carolina as well as the Fourteenth Amendment, an appeal which resulted in the court’s Thursday decision.

The court ruled that Chapter 50B of NCGS was violative of the due process clause, the plaintiff’s fundamental rights to personal safety and liberty, as well as the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The court observed that the classification made under NCGS singled out people belonging to the LGBTQ+ community, served no government interest and was violative of the objective with which the statute was enacted, failing even the lowest level of scrutiny test.

While relying on the Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, the court also observed that discrimination based on one’s sexual orientation or gender identity was not possible without discriminating against the person based on their “sex.” Accordingly, it held that Chapter 50B of NCGS was a specific violation of the Equal Protection Clause.

The post North Carolina appeals court rules same-sex partners eligible for domestic violence protections appeared first on JURIST – News – Legal News & Commentary.

20 August 2021: WorldPride 2021 Summit in Malmö

Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Victor Madrigal-Borloz, UN Independent Expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity and Alice Bah Kuhnke, member of the European Parliament have confirmed their participation in the Refugees, Borders and Immigration Summit taking place next year in Malmö during WorldPride.

With more than 70 countries still criminalizing same-sex relationships many LGBTI+ people are affected by human rights abuse and persecution in their home countries. LGBTI+ migrants, asylum seekers and refugees are often forgotten in the debate on migration and the challenges faced by LGBTI+ people.

During Copenhagen 2021 – WorldPride and EuroGames a whole day is dedicated to these issues during the international Refugees, Borders and Immigration Summit. On August 20 several hundred activists, politicians and representatives of human rights organizations will meet at Malmö Live to discuss the situation and rights of LGBTI+ refugees.

“We at UNHCR welcome the opportunity to bring greater attention to the tragic experiences of LGBTIQ+ people forced to flee their countries simply because of who they are.   Copenhagen 2021 will present an important moment for experts, activists and decision makers from around the globe to listen to the experiences of those forced into exile because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, and to work with them to alleviate their suffering and find solutions to their plight,” said Filippo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

The Summit is organized by Malmö Pride and the City of Malmö in collaboration with Rainbow Railroad, ORAM, UNHCR, the Council of Europe, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Event in Skåne. It will be live-streamed to reach the largest possible audience. This approach means organizers can easily adapt if COVID19 restrictions prevent the physical event from taking place.

An important part is to draw attention to refugees’ lived experiences. People who have fled oppression and persecution due to sexual orientation or gender expression will be telling their stories at the Summit.

“I myself am a refugee and today I work to strengthen rights of LGBTI+ people. I hope that the summit will be a platform to make our stories visible. We want to show that we are more than numbers and statistics, that everyone has their own story,” said Karl Yves Vallin, project manager at RFSL Newcomer Malmö.

The Summit is the official closing event of the Human Rights Forum, an important part of the WorldPride program. Co-hosts are Alice Bah Kuhnke, co Vice-President of the Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament and former Swedish Minister of Culture and Democracy, and Ulrika Westerlund who has been working for LGBTI+ rights, equality and human rights for over 20 years.

”LGBTI+ refugees are some of the world’s most vulnerable persons. As an elected politician it is my duty to listen to their stories. The Summit is a fantastic opportunity to listen and learn, but also to pave the way to move forward,” Alice Bah Kuhnke said.

Other Summit participants are Flavia Piovesan, IACHR Commissioner and Rapporteur on the Rights of LGBTI Persons and Michael O’Flaherty, Director of the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights.

It is part of the Human Rights Forum (16-22 August 2022)

More: https://copenhagen2021.com/human-rights/