Brazil's Supreme Court Rules Homophobia Is a Crime

Brazil Supreme Court.

As Brazil's horrid right wing president, Jair Bolsonaro, takes steps to wage war on LGBT Brazilians much as Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, has waged war on LGBT Americans, the Brazil's Supreme Court has voted that homophbia and anti-LGBT discrimination is a crime.  Both Trump and Bolsonaro are motivated against LGBT citizens for the same reason: they depended on the support of far right Christians for their election to office and they need the same ignorance and hate embracing "Christians" to maintain whatever popular support they continue to enjoy. That said, Bolsonaro is much more cut out of the same cloth as Mike Pence - a man some think is a deeply closeted and self-loathing gay. How the Court's ruling will impact Bolsonaro's wave of attacks at LGBT rights remains to be seen, but hopefully LGBT rights will prevail over Bolsonaro's campaign of anti-LGBT hatred.  Aljazeera looks at the Court's ruling.  Here are excerpts:

A majority in Brazil's Supreme Court has voted to make homophobia and transphobia a crime, like racism, a decision coming amid fears the country's far-right president will roll back LGBT social gains.

Six of the Supreme Federal Tribunal's 11 judges have voted in favour of the measure. The five other judges will vote in a court session on June 5, but the result will not be modified. The measure will take effect after all the justices have voted.

Racism was declared a crime in Brazil in 1989 with prison sentences of up to five years. The court's judges ruled that homophobia should be framed within the racism law until the country's Congress approves legislation specifically dealing with LGBT discrimination.

Brazil's Senate is dealing with a bill to criminalise discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender with sentences of up to five years.

"Racism is a crime against flesh and blood, whether it is a member of the LGBT community, a Jew or an Afro-descendant," justice Luiz Fux said Thursday. The court's judges said the ruling was to address an omission that had left the LGBT community legally unprotected.

While same-sex marriage is legal in Brazil, it is still a dangerous country for members of the LGBT community and has a large evangelical movement often critical of gay rights. According to the rights group the Grupo Gay da Bahia, 420 LGBT people were killed across Brazil in 2018, while at least 141 have been killed so far this year.
 President Jair Bolsonaro, a former army captain who assumed office on January 1, has a history of offensive comments about gay people, black individuals, women and other minorities, openly acknowledging he is a homophobe. He has said he would rather have a dead son than a gay son.

The ruling "comes at a very good moment, when we have a head of state who is LGBT-phobic," said Bruna Benevides, president of the Niteroi Diversity group. "The Supreme Court assumed the responsibility to protect us."

Would that the U.S. Supreme Court would hand down such a ruling.  The situation in Brazil is a reminder that regardless of the country, right wing Christians are an evil and a threat to the rights of both minorities and the secular majority.

Trifecta of Hate: Chick-Fil-A, National Christian Foundation, and Brazilian President Meets with Hate Groups

Today was a trifecta when it comes to exposing the anti-gay and anti-LGBT hatred that passes as supporting "Christian" hate groups and rallying Christofascists to bolster raw political power based on the hatred of others. The first piece was actually not anything news wise since Chick-Fil-A has been financing anti-gay hate groups for years and those in the know who value themselves or their LGBT friends have avoided Chick-Fil-A for that very reason.  Nonetheless, today's news confirms that Chick-Fil-A's claims that it had changed its bigoted ways was and remains a deliberate lie. Out Magazine has details.  Here are excerpts:

Chick-fil-A is serving up more than just poultry. The Georgia-based fast-food chain, which has claimed in the past that is has no social or political agenda, has donated more than $1.8 million to a trio of groups who have records of anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination, according to newly released tax filings, ThinkProgress reports.

The company’s 2017 tax filings show that the company gave over $1.6 million to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, $6,000 to the Paul Anderson Youth Home and $150,000 to the Salvation Army, each of which is an increased donation from the previous year.

The Fellowship of Christian Athletes is a Christian sports ministry that requires strict “sexual purity” and bars its employees from any “homosexual acts.” Paul Anderson Youth Home is a Georgia-based Christian residential home for troubled youth that, according to Think Progress, teaches those living there that homosexuality is wrong and that same-sex marriage is “rage against Jesus Christ and His values.” Though the Salvation Army claims that it does not discriminate against LGBTQ+ people, it has a history of referring LGBTQ+ people to conversion therapy.

Chick-fil-A does not have a nondiscrimination policy that includes explicit protection for employees based on gender identity or sexual orientation. In 2012, Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy said that America is “inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say we know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage.”

The company has claimed in the past that it would stay out of politics and focus on chicken and that they would cease donations to anti-LGBTQ+ groups.

Mr. Cathy, like it would seem most evangelical Christians, sees himself as exempt from the Commandment against lying and bearing false witness. But Chick-Fil-A has company when it comes to being a modern day Pharisee best defined by lying, hypocrisy and hatred towards others.   The lesson is that, if one wants to give to charities, pick one that is non-religiously affiliated (locally, the Hampton Roads Community Foundation is a good option).  Here is part of the expose on the National Christian Foundation:

The nation’s eighth-largest public charity is pouring tens of millions of dollars each year into a number of mostly anti-LGBT hate groups, a Sludge investigation shows. . According to the three most recent available tax filings—which cover 2015-17—it has donated $56.1 million on behalf of its clients to 23 nonprofits identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as hate groups.

“I certainly don’t know of any public disclosures of funds to hate groups at levels anywhere near this,” Heidi Beirich, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told Sludge. “It’s pretty astounding and certainly concerning.”

The far-right evangelical National Christian Foundation (NCF), which offers Christian donors “expert guidance and creative giving solutions,” is the fourth-largest donor-advised fund by 2017 revenue in the U.S., having raised over $1.5 billion that year.In 2017, NCF’s donation to anti-LGBT, anti-Muslim, and anti-immigrant hate groups rose to over $19 million.

By far the biggest recipient of NCF donations is Alliance Defending Freedom, a large network of Christian extremist lawyers who have supported criminalizing homosexuality, sterilizing transgender people, and claimed that gay men are pedophiles. The group recently came out against congressional Democrats’ Equality Act, which would ban discrimination against LGBTQ Americans.

Anti-LGBT hate group Family Research Council, which has attempted to tie gay men to pedophilia for many years, accepted over $5.3 million from NCF from 2015-17.

Both organizations “spread vicious propaganda and disinformation, othering and maligning members of the LGBTQ community, which is a key reason they are rightly considered hate groups,” said Stroop.

The last piece of this trifecta of hate is the meeting of Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro and a who's who of Christian hate merchants, including Virginia Beach's never ending embarrassment, Pat Robertson who has a long history of lying about gays, blacks and minorities while enriching himself by preying on the ignorant and gullible.  Here are excerpts from Right Wing Watch:

Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s right-wing president, visited President Trump in the White House on Tuesday and followed up his official business with a Christian Broadcasting Network interview and meeting with conservative religious leaders, including CBN’s Pat and Gordon Robertson. U.S. right-wing leaders had supported Bolsonaro’s campaign and celebrated his election as an answer to prayer.

At a Rose Garden press conference with Trump, Bolsonaro said, “Brazil and the United States stand side-by-side in their efforts to ensure liberties and respect the traditional family lifestyles and respect to God, our creator, against the gender ideology and the politically correct attitudes and against fake news.” 

CBN noted that Bolsonaro “has surrounded himself with well-known Brazilian evangelicals,” including influential pastor Silas Milafaia, who told CBN he believes Bolsonaro is God’s chosen man to lead Brazil. He praised Bolsonaro for opposing abortion and the “privilege” of the LGBT movement. CBN also reported on Bolsonaro’s meeting with evangelical leaders, which included the Robertsons, Ralph Reed, Steve Strang, Penny Nance, Jonathan Falwell and Harry Jackson. “The American delegation prayed for Bolsonaro and promised to stand with his administration as he fights to protect Brazil’s Christian heritage and family values.”

As RWW reported last summer, Bolsonaro’s campaign got a boost from right-wing activists in the U.S., including former White House adviser Steve Bannon and former Rep. Michele Bachmann.

Bolsonaro’s far-right record and rhetoric has demonstrated contempt for women, LGBTQ people, the media, and democratic values. And shortly after his inauguration he began issuing executive orders and taking other actions going after the people he had targeted in his campaign rhetoric: the LGBTQ community; indigenous people

Bolsonaro meeting with American Christofascist leaders.

As noted before, often I feel like I am witnessing a reprise of the 1920's and 1930's when fascist dictators rose to power and American Nazis even held a huge rally in Madison Garden in New York City.  Then as now, most people seem to be oblivious to the growing menace to the civil rights and ultimately, their personal safety. If Trump secures re-election in 2020, I think it will be time to emigrate and ry to take my children and grand children with me.  

The Catholic Church's Accelerating Collapse in the Developed World

While arch-conservatives - extremists, if you will - in the Catholic Church reel from the Irish vote to repeal that nation's strict bans on abortion, the Church is not faring well in other parts of Europe.  Indeed, the only semi-bright spot is Poland where politicians are using Catholicism as part of the white Polish nationalist agenda. In America, Catholic Church membership is ostensibly holding steady for at least two reasons: (i) unless one actively takes them self off of church rolls, you remain in the headcount forever, and (ii) the huge influx of Hispanic immigrants is masking the decline of the traditional American Catholic demographic. The bad news for the Church is that younger Hispanics are leaving the Church like their Millennial counterparts, thus making it crucial for additional new immigrant to fill the places being left by those leaving the Church. Why the global collapse of the Church outside of the developing world?  A piece in the New York Times notes two causes: (a) the sex abuse scandal that shows no signs of going away, and (b) the Church's refusal to embrace modern knowledge and science, especially in the realm of sexuality.  The latter phenomenon is exemplified by right wing Catholics at sites such as "Lifesite" and "Church Militant" rallying to "experts" deemed crackpots by sane, mainstream medical and mental health experts.  The Irish Times looked at one of these, in my view, nutcase "experts." Here are excerpts:

Dutch psychologist Dr Gerard van den Aardweg. . . . said: “Homosexuality is presented by the majority of the media as a question of unjust discrimination of people who in themselves are just a little bit different by nature ... denied rights the majority enjoy. This is absolutely absurd and completely nonsensical.” The event was organised by the Catholic Alliance for the Defence of the Family and Marriage group.

Global organisations with a global sexual ideology wanted “to deal a blow to normal marriage and the family and to this end they use the homosexual movement, the sexual rights movement”, he said. . . . He claimed many scientific institutions have been taken over by “active militant gays” who produce information to further the gay cause. He also said it was not true that homosexuals are born gay.

Many gay people were “comparable with alcoholics or other persons who are addicts but they have the feeling it’s my fate”, he said. . . . He also claimed the Nazi party was “rooted” in homosexuals. . . . . He said wealthy organisations were interested in imposing homosexuality on the world and included the abortion movement, feminism, and freemasonry international.”

It used to be evangelical groups that trotted out such "experts," but increasingly the Catholic Church is embracing such extremists.  It's little wonder Millennials in particular are exiting from the Church.

But back to the Times piece.  Here are highlights on the Church's collapse in Europe and accelerating drift toward ultimately being Africa centric:

In August, Pope Francis will return to Ireland for a World Meeting of Families event attended by the church’s most committed anti-abortion activists. But they will find themselves, after Saturday’s historic repeal of an abortion ban in a landslide vote, in a country that is clearly part of Europe’s secular sprint out of the Roman Catholic fold.

Across Western Europe, the church’s once mighty footprint has faded, in no small measure because of self-inflicted clerical sex abuse scandals and an inability to keep up with and reach contemporary Catholics. Church attendance has plummeted, parishes are merging, and new priests and nuns are in short supply. Gay marriage is on the rise, and abortion is widely legal.

Francis is not sounding the alarm or calling the faithful to the ramparts. He seems resigned to accept that a devout and Catholic Europe has largely slipped into the church’s past. . . . . Instead, he has shifted his focus on the faith’s future to the global South . . . .  This turn has drawn criticism from conservative Catholics like those in the Continent’s most faithful country, Poland, who have allied with a nationalist government to keep out migrants.

The challenge for Francis is to keep the present decline of the church in Europe from becoming a preview of its future in South America and Africa. . . . . Inoculating the Southern Hemisphere from the growing scourge of sex abuse scandals, spreading secularism and out-of-touch clergy that devastated Catholicism in Europe is no easy task and will require much of the pope’s attention.

The church’s looming problems outside Europe’s borders don’t stop with sexual abuse. In Latin America and Africa, where the future of the church seems most promising, there are also signs it is losing ground in a bustling religious marketplace. In Brazil, which has the world’s largest Catholic population, evangelicals preaching prosperity gospels are giving stiff competition to Catholicism, which is projected to become a minority faith in 2030. 

In wealthy Europe, though, the church’s woes show few signs of abating. . . . In Italy, many Catholic parishes are now operated by clergy born outside the country. In mostly Catholic Luxembourg, the government, led by a gay prime minister, abolished religious teaching in state schools in September. In 2012, the Archdiocese of Vienna consolidated its 660 parishes into 150. 

Only one-in-five Catholics attend Mass in Spain now. In France, it’s one in 10. In the Netherlands, Mass attendance among Catholics is down to about 5 percent. In Germany, financial contributions to the church have thinned.

By most measures, Poland is the most faithful Catholic country in Europe. About 40 percent of Catholics attend Sunday Mass . . . . But there is also a more contemporary convergence between the traditional Christian values that John Paul promoted and the nationalism of President Andrzej Duda’s governing Law and Justice Party, which opposes Francis’ calls to accept migrants and to combat global climate change.

If the landslide vote in Ireland bothered Francis, he didn’t show it on Sunday afternoon. He smiled broadly as he blessed tens of thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square and urged them to pray for Africa.  Kilvia Passos, 47, cheered the pope as she held a flag of her native Brazil, the country with the world’s largest Catholic population. She said despite the growing competition of evangelicals there, the country still felt deeply Catholic. But so, until a few decades ago, did Ireland and the rest of Europe.

As a former Catholic very familiar with the Church's 11th century dogma on sexuality and the family, I do not believe the future will be kind to Catholicism which increasingly requires and ignorant, uneducated population to thrive.  Relying on lunatic "experts" will not stop the ongoing collapse in Europe and, I suspect soon, America.  

Mexico’s Revenge on Trump - and His Supporters

While Donald Trump's attacks on Hispanics and non-whites in general has played well with the most most ignorant - evangelical Christians are the least educated of any religious group in America - and racist/xenophobic elements of his base, the economic results could prove catastrophic if Mexico decides to exact revenge against Trump's America.  Already, talk of Mexico shifting its agricultural purchases to Argentina and Brazil has Mid-West farmers sweating bullets at the prospect of severe economic and financial damage.  Indeed, the repeal of NAFTA, one of Trump's favorite whipping boys, does not play well in these farming states. But Mexico's revenge could prove even more damaging.  In addition to Mexican intelligence services ending their cooperation with their American counterparts - something that could increase illegal immigration into America - Mexico could tilt toward China as its new found favorite trading partner.  Needless to say, the ignorant, loud mouthed, bullying, narcissist in the White House has never thought of these types of  consequences.  A long piece in The Atlantic looks at the Mexican revenge Trump may be setting into motion. Here are highlights:

When donald trump first made sport of thumping Mexico—when he accused America’s neighbor of exporting rapists and “bad hombres,” when he deemed the country such a threat that it should be contained by a wall and so clueless that it could be suckered into paying for its own encasement—its president responded with strange equilibrium. 

Since then, the Mexican political elite has begun to ponder retaliatory measures that would reassert the country’s dignity, and perhaps even cause the Trump administration to reverse its hostile course. With a presidential election in just over a year—and Peña Nieto prevented by term limits from running again—vehement responses to Trump are considered an electoral necessity. Memos outlining policies that could wound the United States have begun flying around Mexico City. These show that Trump has committed the bully’s error of underestimating the target of his gibes. As it turns out, Mexico could hurt the United States very badly.

The Mexico–U.S. border is long, but the history of close cooperation across it is short. As recently as the 1980s, the countries barely contained their feelings of mutual contempt. Mexico didn’t care for the United States’ anticommunist policy in Central America, especially its support of Nicaraguan rebels. In 1983, President Miguel de la Madrid obliquely warned the Reagan administration against “shows of force which threaten to touch off a conflagration.” 

The grandiose promise of trade is that it binds countries together, breeding peace and cooperation. This is a risible overstatement when applied generally to the world. But in the case of the countries separated by the Rio Grande, it has proved wondrously true. A generation after the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement, the United States and Mexico couldn’t be more interdependent. Anti-Americanism, once a staple of Mexican politics, has largely faded. The flow of migrants from Mexico to the U.S. has, more or less, abated. Economic ties have fostered greater intimacy between intelligence services and security agencies, which are today deeply enmeshed in each other’s business. 

But the Trump administration has come dangerously close to trashing the relationship—and, in the process, unleashing a terrifying new reality.

The Chinese invested heavily in places like Peru, Brazil, and Venezuela, discreetly flexing soft power as they funded new roads, refineries, and railways. From 2000 to 2013, China’s bilateral trade with Latin America increased by 2,300 percent, according to one calculation. A raft of recently inked deals forms the architecture for China to double its annual trade with the region, to $500 billion, by the middle of the next decade. Mexico, however, has remained a grand exception to this grand strategy. 

Mexico also happens to be the one spot in Latin America where the United States would respond with alarm to a heavy Chinese presence.

That sort of alarm is just the thing some Mexicans would now like to provoke. What Mexican analysts have called the “China card”—a threat to align with America’s greatest competitor—is an extreme retaliatory option. Former Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda told me he considers it an implausible expression of “machismo.” Unfortunately, Trump has elevated machismo to foreign-policy doctrine . . . And while a tighter Chinese–Mexican relationship would fly in the face of recent economic history, Trump may have already set it in motion.

The painful early days of the Trump administration have reminded Mexico of a core economic weakness: The country depends far too heavily on the American market. “Mexico is realizing that it has been overexposed to the U.S., and it’s now trying to hedge its bets,” says Kevin Gallagher, an economist at Boston University who specializes in Latin America. “Any country where 80 percent of exports go to the U.S., it’s a danger.” . . . . The presence of Trump, with his brusque talk of tariffs and promises of economic nationalism, makes that an urgent task.

Until recently, a Mexican–Chinese rapprochement would have been unthinkable. . . . . But China has played the long game, and its patience has proved farsighted. The reason so many Chinese are ascending to the middle class is that wages have tripled over the past decade. The average hourly wage in Chinese manufacturing is now $3.60. Over that same period of time, hourly manufacturing wages in Mexico have fallen to $2.10. Even taking into account the extraordinary productivity of Chinese factories—not to mention the expense that comes with Mexico’s far greater fidelity to the rules of international trade—Mexico increasingly looks like a sensible place for Chinese firms to set up shop, particularly given its proximity to China’s biggest export market.

Let’s pause to consider the illogic. Trump says that China is a grave threat, both militarily and economically. He has accused China of “rap[ing] our country.” That’s not the way most analysts would put it, but a fairly broad bipartisan consensus holds that China’s expansionism should be contained and its mercantilism checked. Barack Obama’s vaunted “pivot” to Asia tried to keep China’s neighbors from succumbing to its gravitational pull. Thanks to Donald Trump, China is now better positioned to execute the most difficult maneuver in its own, North American pivot—pushing the U.S. and Mexico further apart.

What seems more likely is that relations between the security agencies will slowly decay, as trust between the two countries evaporates and warm feelings give way to tensions.

Trump’s rush toward hard-line immigration policies could yield a grim bonanza of other unintended consequences. Mass deportations of Mexicans could uproot hundreds of thousands and deposit them on the other side of the border, forcing their reintegration into lives they left, many of them long ago. Perhaps the Mexican economy, the 15th-largest in the world, has the capacity to absorb these refugees from Trump’s America. But it’s equally easy to imagine a scenario in which they inundate the labor market. And even that possibility doesn’t begin to capture the likely economic costs of deportation. The Mexican economy would be deprived of the remittances that immigrants send back to their relatives. It’s hard to speak hyperbolically about the importance of these transfers—in 2016, Mexican Americans sent $27 billion back to their Mexican families, more than the value of the crude petroleum Mexico exports annually. 

[W]ith Trump’s angry talk and the Mexican resentment it stirs, the best hope for the persistence of this improved relationship is inertia—the interlocking supply chain that crosses the border and won’t easily pull apart, the agricultural exports that flow in both directions, all the bureaucratic cooperation. Unwinding this relationship would be ugly and painful, a strategic blunder of the highest order, a gift to America’s enemies, a gaping vulnerability for the homeland that Donald Trump professes to protect, a very messy divorce.

The perverse part of me would love to see Mexico shift its agricultural product purchases from Mid-West sources.  The cretins in these states who put Trump in office deserve to suffer greatly.  As for the rise of China-Mexico relations, if it happens, it will be the fault of Der Trumpenführer.

The Fruits of Religion: Mother Stabs Son to Death for Being Gay

Some people wonder why I find myself increasingly hostile towards religion, especially fundamentalist Christianity.  The  recent murder of a 17 year old teen boy in Brazil (pictured above) demonstrates the manner in which Christianity all too often justifies hatred and violence against others. Yes, Islam carries a similar hatred of gays as well.  The irony, of course, is that both Islam and Christianity derive their anti-gay animus from the Jewish Old Testament. As the book "The Origins and Role of Same-Sex Relations in Human Societies,", the end product of over ten years of historical research, documents, the harsh condemnation of homosexuality in Western society is a relatively recent phenomenon, unique among world societies throughout history, and that the spread on anti-gay animus and homophobia around the globe was the result of the efforts of Christian missionaries.   Stated another way, take away religious doctrine and homophobia and anti-gay hatred go away.   Yes, there are some "good Christians," but most do far too little to oppose their anti-gay co-religionists.  A piece in LGBTQ Nation looks at the horrific murder of Itaberli Lozano in two pieces, one here and the other here.  Here are excerpts:

A 32-year-old supermarket manager from a town near Sao Paolo, Brazil, confessed to stabbing her 17-year-old gay son Itaberli Lozano to death last week.  The body was found a week after the murder, burned and buried in a cane field.

The mother, Tatiana Lozano Pereira, 32, claims that Lozano used drugs and brought men home. The teen’s uncle Dario Rosa denies that, saying that Lozano was hard-working and educated, according to G1. Rosa believes that Lozano Pereira killed her son because he was gay and says that this is the first time she accused her son of drug use.

Her story changed when it was found that in December Lozano reported his mother to local authorities. He also posted a message on Facebook on December 26th accusing his mother of hiring several boys to beat him.

Last Friday, two teens were arrested in connection with the Lozano’s murder. They confessed that they were hired to attack Lozano, but they claim that it was the mother who stabbed her son to death in the end. She says she hired them to give her son “a lesson” and that when she saw that her son was dying, she stabbed him because she thought it was better to end his life, according to Blasting News.

Prosecutor Wanderley Baptista of Trindade Junior says the crime was committed because of homophobia. He cites a December 27th Facebook post from Itaberli where the teen says he was beaten by his mother for being gay and kicked out of her home. Itaberli’s uncle also says that the boy was murdered for his sexuality.

Carolina Aram, a lawyer with Brazilian Bar Association’s Commission on Sexual Diversity, said she has evidence that homophobia was the motivation behind the crime that she obtained from neighbors, and that Itaberli had already been the victim of a homophobic hate crime, according to G1. She will deliver the evidence to the judge.

Take a good look at Itaberli's face.  He died because of religious based hate.  While most parents fundamentalist Christians do not murder their children, let's not forget that 40% of homeless teens are LGBT, many thrown out of their homes by their "godly" parents. Fundamentalist religion, be it Christian or Muslim, is a surge on mankind that needs to be eradicated from the face of the Earth.

Where Life Is Getting Worse for LGBT People

As LGBT Americans gather for Thanksgiving this year, in many cases a pall will color the celebration as we await for the other shoes to fall in the wake of Donald Trump's election and the elevation of homophobes and Christofascists to positions where they can harm and undermine the lives of the LGBT community.  Sadly, this trend is not unique to America and defeating it will require renewed resolve and efforts to resist and defeat the pestilence of fundamentalist religion and the hatred that it promotes.   As we have seen over and over again, religion is the principle threat to human rights and a never ending justification for evil and hatred. A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the negative, animus inspired trend in other parts of the world.  Here are highlights:

The moral arc of history bends toward justice. Right?

Not necessarily, especially when it comes to justice for LGBTQ people and other sexual and gender minorities. Here in the United States, recent gains are now imperiled by the upcoming Trump presidency. And around the world, there are many places where, contrary to Dan Savage’s popular video series, it is steadily getting worse.

Consider three very different examples: Brazil, Indonesia, and Nigeria. Three continents, three different cultural and religious contexts, different forms of government with different kinds of leaders. And yet, in all three, a steadily worsening situation for LGBTQ people.

1. Brazil

For sexual and gender minorities, Brazil has long experienced the best of times and the worst of times. The country is cosmopolitan, libertine, and legally progressive, with laws against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI in international human rights parlance).

But Brazil is also the deadliest place in the world to be gay. An astonishing 1,600 people have died in anti-LGBTQ hate attacks over the last four and a half years—nearly one person every day.

[A] primary reason is the export of U.S.-based homophobia. Evangelicals have risen from 5 percent of the Brazilian population in 1970 to nearly 25 percent today, and their leaders—many trained in the United States—have exported the U.S. Christian right’s extreme homophobia to the Brazilian context.

They are also in Brazil’s congress. The “parliamentary coup” that removed liberal president Dilma Rousseff from office was accomplished with back-benchers affiliated with evangelical Christian groups.

Now, with the conservative government led by Michel Temer (and his all-male cabinet), those factions are in power. Investigative journalist Joao Ximenes Braga told The Daily Beast that the Temer government has already shut down human rights programs in the country and that members of his coalition have called for a repeal of laws protecting LGBTQ people.

[W]ith Brazil’s right wing in power, the precarious situation of LGBTQ people in the country is threatened still further.

2. Indonesia

Indonesia is half a world away and threatened by right-wing Islam, rather than right-wing evangelical Christianity—but some of the patterns are eerily familiar.

According to a recent report by Human Rights Watch, 2016 has marked a turning point in the country. “Beginning in January 2016,” the report said, “a series of anti-LGBT public comments by government officials grew into a cascade of threats and vitriol against LGBT Indonesians by state commissions, militant Islamists, and mainstream religious organizations. That outpouring of intolerance has resulted in proposals of laws which pose a serious long-term threat to the rights and safety of LGBT Indonesians.”

The severity and swiftness of the persecution . . . . is particularly surprising for Indonesia, which prides itself on its moderate form of Islam. In the past, anti-LGBT acts were largely confined to militant Islamists, even though anti-gay sentiment is widespread.

But this was different. Government officials have called for LGBT organizations to be banned from campuses and for LGBT people to be banned from holding office. One minister called being LGBT “a disease of the chromosome, and it should be treated.” . . . Meanwhile, a group of conservative law professors has filed a court case attempting to force the criminalization of same-sex sexual behavior. A paramilitary training program with 1.8 million participants declared homosexuality to be one of the nation’s enemies.

What’s behind the flareup? Activists say the abrupt shift in government rhetoric is “cower[ing] in the face of militant Islamists.” And indeed, the rightward drift in Indonesian political life—not entirely unlike that in Brazil—appears to be part of the reason for the change in official rhetoric, with the attendant consequences felt in the streets of Jakarta. Ironically, Indonesia’s relatively tolerant indigenous form of Islam is being supplanted by fundamentalist Islam brought in from outside—yet the Islamists claim to be protecting Indonesian culture.

3. Nigeria

Nigeria is the most populous nation in Africa, with 173 million people. And in 2014, it passed one of Africa’s worst anti-gay laws, the so-called Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act.
On paper, the SSMPA merely prohibits anything that could support same-sex marriage. In reality, however, it’s known as the “Jail the Gays Law” and has been used as a pretext for horrifying violence, state-sanctioned or state-tolerated, against LGBTs.

Nor was the SSMPA a backlash against the United States—or to same-sex marriage, which no one has advocated for in Nigeria. Rather, Christian LGBT activist Davis Mac-Iyalla told The Daily Beast, the real battle is religious in nature. African Anglican Church leaders, “tainted” by the Episcopal Church’s support for LGBT people, took a hard line in order not to seem more lenient than Muslims (Sharia governs 12 Nigerian states and punishes homosexuality by imprisonment, caning, or stoning).

“It is time the international community take a pause on its relationship with Nigeria,” Alimi said, “and demand a detailed evaluation of the Nigeria human rights record as it concerns LGBT people. The picture is more bleak than we imagined.”

While the husband and I are thankful for the good things in life that we enjoy, we also understand the precarious nature of our rights and safety.  Be thankful, but be prepared to fight and resist.  

The city of Fortalez, Brazil is sponsoring a group gay marriage on June 28, see article in Portuguese. The cerimony will allow 50 couples to get married and each couple is allowed to invite up to 10 guests.  The ceremony is part of the growing acceptance of same sex marriage across South America.  Here is a Google translation of a portion of a piece in O Povo online:

A Second mass LGBT wedding with open enrollment will take place in Fortalez, Brazil.  The ceremony, which in 2014 married 60 people (30 couples), will be held in the Children's Park in Fortaleza Center. 

The second collective homoafetivo wedding Fortaleza is receiving applications until June 8. This time will be 50 LGBT couples participating in the ceremony.

Each couple will be entitled to buffet and decoration, and may invite 10 people to attend the event, which will take place on 28 June. The date registers the World LGBT Pride Day and Municipal Awareness Day and LGBT Citizenship.

Progress continues despite the efforts of the Roman Catholic Church and other reactionary, backward looking religious denominations.

America's Highly Inefficient Health Care System

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As longer term readers know, I am a proponent of a single payer health care system for America.  A new Bloomberg study confirms that Americans pay for - much more in many cases - for a far less efficient health care system than the majority of modern nations.  Admittedly, my view is soured by my time doing legal work for a health care system and seeing almost daily how providing quality health care was a low priority compared to playing monopoly wars with other health care providers and devising ways to bind doctors to particular hospitals for patient referral purposes.  The map above compares different nations on the level of efficiency of their health care systems.   Here are highlights from a Huffington Post story:

As supporters and opponents of the Affordable Care Act debate the best way to overhaul a clearly broken healthcare system, it's perhaps helpful to put American medicine in a global perspective.

The infographic [above] is based on a recent Bloomberg ranking of the most efficient countries for healthcare, and highlights enormous gap between the soaring cost of treatment in the U.S. and its quality and effectiveness. 

It's remarkable how low America places in healthcare efficiency: among the 48 countries included in the Bloomberg study, the U.S. ranks 46th, outpacing just Serbia and Brazil. Once that sinks in, try this one on for size: the U.S. ranks worse than China, Algeria, and Iran.

But the sheer numbers are really what's humbling about this list: the U.S. ranks second in healthcare cost per capita ($8,608), only to be outspent by Switzerland ($9,121) -- which, for the record, boasts a top-10 healthcare system in terms of efficiency. Furthermore, the U.S. is tops in terms of healthcare cost relative to GDP, with 17.2 percent of the country's wealth spent on medical care for every American.

In other words, the world's richest country spends more of its money on healthcare while getting less than almost every other nation in return.

The systems that rank highly on Bloomberg's list are as diverse as the nations to which they belong. The unifying factor seems to be tight government control over a universal system, which may take many shapes and forms -- a fact evident in the top-three most efficient healthcare systems in the world: Hong Kong, Singapore, and Japan.

Ranking third on Bloomberg's list, the Japanese system involves universal healthcare with mandatory participation funded by payroll taxes paid by both employer and employee, or income-based premiums by the self-employed. Long-term care insurance is also required for those older than 40. As Dr. John W. Traphagan notes in The Diplomat, Japan controls costs by setting flat rates for everything from medications to procedures, thus eliminating competition among insurance providers. While most of the country's hospitals are privately owned and operated, the government implements smart regulations to ensure that the system remains universal and egalitarian.

Meanwhile, Singapore's healthcare system is largely funded by individual contributions, and is often hailed by conservatives as a beacon of personal responsibility. But as conservative David Frum notes, the system is actually fueled by the invisible hand of the public sector: individuals are required to contribute a percentage of their monthly salary based on age to a personal fund to pay for treatments and hospital expenditures. In addition, the government provides a safety net to cover expenses for which these personal savings are inadequate. Private healthcare still plays a role in Singapore's system, but takes a backseat to public offerings, which boast the majority of doctors, nurses, and procedures performed.

The truth is, America's system is seriously  broken yet the GOP seeks to destroy Obamacare and in the process throw millions of Americans to the wolves.  The hypocrisy is off the charts because meanwhile, the GOP base claims to be worship the Gospel message.

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The Decline of American Society and the Revolt of the Global Middle Class

As the parent of three adult children it is interesting that none of my children expect to do as well financially or to have the life style that my late parents achieved.  Admittedly, my parents died as millionaires, but neither I nor my siblings can be assured of the same financial success in our lifetimes and for our children the deck is stacked even more decidedly in favor of the truly wealthy as social mobility in America falls behind that of Europe and wealth disparities exceed those of former banana republics.  It is little wonder why the Republican Party is faring poorly with younger voters.   But the phenomenon is not limited to  America as we see unrest in Brazil and Turkey and other nations as well.  Sadly, the status quo favors the few and the rest of us are increasingly expected to be satisfied with the table scraps that are left over.  A piece in The Guardian looks at what has happened to America.  Here are highlights:

In or around 1978, America's character changed. For almost half a century, the United States had been a relatively egalitarian, secure, middle-class democracy, with structures in place that supported the aspirations of ordinary people. You might call it the period of the Roosevelt Republic. Wars, strikes, racial tensions and youth rebellion all roiled national life, but a basic deal among Americans still held, in belief if not always in fact: work hard, follow the rules, educate your children, and you will be rewarded, not just with a decent life and the prospect of a better one for your kids, but with recognition from society, a place at the table.

This unwritten contract came with a series of riders and clauses that left large numbers of Americans – black people and other minorities, women, gay people – out, or only halfway in. But the country had the tools to correct its own flaws, and it used them: healthy democratic institutions such as Congress, courts, churches, schools, news organizations, business-labour partnerships.

The large currents of the past generation – deindustrialisation, the flattening of average wages, the financialisation of the economy, income inequality, the growth of information technology, the flood of money into Washington, the rise of the political right – all had their origins in the late 70s.  ..

The institutions that had been the foundation of middle-class democracy, from public schools and secure jobs to flourishing newspapers and functioning legislatures, were set on the course of a long decline. It as a period that I call the Unwinding.

Once American pre-eminence was challenged by international competitors, and the economy hit rough seas in the 70s, and the sense of existential threat from abroad subsided, the deal was off. Globalisation, technology and immigration hurried the Unwinding along, as inexorable as winds and tides. It is sentimental at best, if not ahistorical, to imagine that the social contract could ever have survived – like wanting to hang on to a world of nuclear families and manual typewriters.

But there was nothing inevitable about the aftermath – an unmanaged free-for-all in which unemployed workers were left to fend for themselves, while corporate raiders bought the idle hulks of the mills with debt in the form of junk bonds and stripped out the remaining value. It may have been inevitable that the constraints imposed on US banks by the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 would start to slip off in the era of global finance. But it was a political choice on the part of Congress and President Bill Clinton to deregulate Wall Street so thoroughly that nothing stood between the big banks and the destruction of the economy.

Much has been written about the effects of globalisation during the past generation. Much less has been said about the change in social norms that accompanied it. American elites took the vast transformation of the economy as a signal to rewrite the rules that used to govern their behaviour: a senator only resorting to the filibuster on rare occasions; a CEO limiting his salary to only 40 times what his average employees made instead of 800 times; a giant corporation paying its share of taxes instead of inventing creative ways to pay next to zero. There will always be isolated lawbreakers in high places; what destroys morale below is the systematic corner-cutting, the rule-bending, the self-dealing.

It is little wonder that many younger voters have little faith in America and the future.  But the phenomenon is not limited to America as noted in a piece in The Atlantic which notes that what has happened in America is happening elsewhere - e.g., Brazil and Turkey.  Here are excerpts from that article:

From Turkey to Brazil to Iran the global middle class is awakening politically. The size, focus and scope of protests vary, but this is not unfolding chaos -- it is nascent democracy. Citizens are demanding basic political rights, accountable governments and a fairer share of resources.  

Overall, though, Americans jaded about world affairs should see the activism as positive. The protesters are performing the same role as middle classes have in developed nations. As their standard of living rises, so do their expectations of government.

The political dynamic in each country is different, of course. In Turkey, the protests are not the equivalent of the Arab Spring demonstrations that toppled governments across the Middle East. Nor are they simply a pitched battle between religious conservatives and secular liberals. Instead, they are deeply Turkish -- and hugely important.

Brazil presents a different dynamic.The ruling Workers' Party is left-leaning and its economic reforms have helped the poor and middle class. But now a souring economy, corruption scandals and $12 billion in government spending on 2014 World Cup stadiums has sparked one million people to take to the streets.

Marcelo Ridenti, a leading Brazilian sociologist, said reduced inequality and increased education have raised expectations. The number of university students in Brazil, for example, doubled from 2000 to 2011.

"This generates huge changes in society, including changes in expectations among young people," he told the New York Times . "They expect to get not only jobs, but good jobs."  

Pro-reform and urban Iranians frustrated with the country's weak economy, isolation and conservative monopoly on power apparently handed Rohani the presidency. Rohani may prove to be more conservative than expected, but his victory prompted thousands of Iranians to take to the streets.

"I am hopeful about the future," Hoda, a 26-year-old who asked that her last name not be used, told Reuters. "Hopeful that we will have more social freedoms, more stability in Iran, better relations with other countries and hopefully a much better economy.".

[O]bservers see parallels between Brazil's protests, India's anti-corruption movement , austerity protests in Europe, the U.S. Occupy Movement and similar demonstrations in Israel. 

First, the explosive spread of social media played a role in the movements. Networks of like-minded people were able to immediately communicate with one another -- and potential recruits. Some online information has been false orrestricted, but technological change has unquestionably sped up the pace of political organizing.

Second, all three movements are demanding basic individual rights and accountable government. They want non-corrupt leaders who respect their right to protest, gather and speak freely. From minority rights in Turkey, to fair elections in Iran, to better policing, healthcare and transit in Brazil, protesters want improved governance. 

That's right. These overseas movements want many many Americans want. especially an accountable government.  Barack Obama and Congressional Republicans, are you listening??  History has a lesson: when the majority of citizens are finding it harder and harder to survive, their interest in supporting the current political structure declines and governments fall, be it in ancient Rome or elsewhere.rest in supporting the

How Did Latin America Become More Gay Friendly Than the USA?

This blog has noted a number of times that it is somewhat mind boggling that a number of nations in South America have become more accepting of gay rights and gay marriage than the United States of America, the alleged "land of liberty" and home of "religious freedom" for all, which in fact puts the religious views of conservative Christians ahead of the rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.  A piece in the New York Times pointed out to me by a blog reader in The Netherlands looks at this surprising twist of circumstance which one can only hope will change with the rulings of the Supreme Court this week. Here are some article excepts:

How can we reconcile these developments with the stereotype of Latin culture as a bastion of religiosity and machismo? How is it that the continent the Catholic Church looks to as its future (along with Africa) is home to what is said to be the largest gay-pride celebration in the world, in São Paulo, Brazil? 

The church’s presence in Latin America is undeniable, but its influence on social policy is nothing like that of conservative Christian evangelicals in the United States, nor have the rising numbers of Pentecostals been obsessed with homosexuality like their conservative counterparts up north. Mexico, for instance, has long emphasized separation between church and state and recognizes only civil marriage — that is, clerics can officiate at weddings, but are not empowered to legally marry couples.

Political history is another factor. Since the 1970s, protest movements helped end military dictatorships or long periods of one-party rule; this democratic opening empowered left or center-left governments that have strongly emphasized human rights and individual freedom.

The recent expansion of same-sex marriage rights has come about in part through alliances of left-of-center legislative majorities with progressive executives, like Mayor Marcelo Ebrard of Mexico City, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of Argentina and President José Mujica of Uruguay. In addition, as in the United States, judges have played an important role in advancing the cause of gay equality, as evidenced this week in Brazil, where the National Council of Justice, which oversees the judiciary, ruled that notary publics may not refuse to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies. 

So to understand why the politics changed, we must also look to society. .  .  .  .  In the 1990s, I interviewed dozens of Mexicans, straight and gay, in Guadalajara, the country’s second largest city. They spoke about how they wanted their lives to differ from their parents’.  .  .   .  .  This desire for individual autonomy — which in some ways lagged behind the sexual revolution in the United States — extended to gay and lesbian people.

Mexican media, which reaches even remote rural hamlets, features telenovelas that portray homosexuality in frank (if melodramatic) terms and talk shows where tolerance is a sign of cosmopolitan modernity. 

These developments not only undermine stereotypes about machismo, but also the assumption that the prominence of Catholicism makes progressive change impossible. Same-sex marriage is legal in Belgium, Portugal and Spain, and Ireland recognizes civil unions. As the United States Supreme Court debates same-sex marriage, perhaps it should consider the precedent set by other nations of the Western Hemisphere.

Should the Supreme Court fail to rule broadly for gay marriage, to me it will be yet further proof that the image that America seeks to project to the rest of the world is a lie and a farce.  As long as ignorance and bigotry based religious beliefs are allowed to trump the Constitution's guaranty of equality for all Americans, hypocrisy will be the main attribute of the USA.  It does not practice what it preaches.  Why should African nations and Islamic nations listen to America on gays rights issues when America itself still allows widespread discrimination and legal inequality?  Virginia is a prime example of this hypocrisy.

Is Pope Francis Waving a White Flag on Gay Marriage?

The Roman Catholic Church does not have a good track record on accepting new scientific knowledge or dealing well with objective reality.  Over the course of history, the Church has been wrong more often than it has been right.   The Vatican anti-gay jihad is but the latest of many Church efforts to hang on to ignorance and bigotry even as the world at large moves onward.  In a column in Huffington Post Michelangelo Signorile speculates that Pope Francis may be moving towards accepting reality on gay marriage: it is a battle the Church is going to lose and that cutting losses may be the better course of action.  That's not to say Francis will not face major blow back from hysterical bigots like William Donohue of the so-called Catholic League or the self-enriching hate merchants at the National Organization for marriage.  Here are column excerpts:

This week we saw reports about Pope Francis cryptically acknowledging the existence of a "gay lobby" in the Vatican, about which he supposedly believes something has to be done. But if I were on a crusade against gay marriage, like Maggie Gallagher or Brian Brown of the National Organization for Marriage (both devout Catholics), I don't think I'd be very happy with this pope so far. In fact, I'd say he stinks.

Let's put all of this in some perspective. In the time since Francis became pope, France became the largest predominantly Catholic country to pass marriage equality, right in the Vatican's backyard. In the U.S., three states, including Rhode Island, which has the highest percentage of Catholics in the country, passed marriage equality. Predominantly Catholic Mexico continues to move forward on the issue in the courts, and Brazil's National Council of Justice green-lighted gay marriage in that country, which would become the largest country in South America and the largest predominantly Catholic country in the world to allow gay marriage. Another Latin American country near the Argentine pope's old stomping grounds, Uruguay, passed marriage equality in recent months, as did New Zealand.

And Pope Francis had nothing publicly to say about any of it. Zero. Zilch. Nada. He was busy washing the feet of the poor and tweeting about how selflessness is a virtue. Go figure.

Back when Spain passed marriage equality in 2005, Pope Benedict whirled himself into a frenzy, railing against it regularly. He told Catholic officials there that any support of the law would cost them their jobs and told secular public servants who are Catholic to flout the law and refuse to marry gays.


Francis just doesn't seem as if he wants to be out front on this issue. That was even clearer when Francis met this morning with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, who'd railed against gay marriage in the United Kingdom, which is about to pass marriage equality. According to the Associated Press:

In his remarks to Welby, Francis said he hoped they could collaborate in promoting the sacredness of life "and the stability of families founded on marriage." ...

Significantly, though, Francis didn't specify that marriage should be based on a union between a man and woman, which is how Benedict XVI and John Paul II routinely defined it in a way that made clear their opposition to same-sex marriage.

Vatican officials said Francis' phrasing was a diplomatic attempt to make his point without making a provocative pronouncement....

I'm not saying Francis is anywhere near there (though he did reportedly support civil unions, as I noted in a post a couple of months back). But having harshly railed against gay marriage back when he was in Argentina, only to lose that battle, he may be seeing that the handwriting is on the wall and that he's got better things to do with his time. And that can only be seen as a loss for Maggie Gallagher and other anti-equality advocates who hoped the pope would loudly lead their crusade.