Out In The Mountians : News - The Rest of Our World

California Senate OK’s LGBT History Requirement

Sacramento, CA - The California Senate in May approved a measure that would require textbook publishers to include the history and contributions of LGBT people.
      The outcome of the bill is unclear as it must be approved both by the state assembly and by Gov. Schwarzenegger, who has not taken a public position on the bill, the Los Angeles Times said. the measure passed 22-15, with all 14 republicans opposed.
     The report said that the proposed new law, believed to be the first of its kind in the U.S., was supported by the majority of senators because “more role models could help reduce the social estrangement and high suicide rates of gay and lesbian students.”
     If passed, the law would have a tremendous impact nationally as California schools represent a big portion of the textbook market, the newspaper said.

HIV Activists Protest Illegal Testing

New York - The HIV Law Project, NY Civil Liberties Union and other groups have written the State Department of Health threatening a lawsuit unless it stops HIV testing without the required informed consent, said a report from the ACLU in May.
      They said the Health Department has used the “false threat of an emergency” to undercut required consent to testing and safeguarding medical privacy, the report said.
     The state has, instead, usedthe threat of a “super bug” infection several times since last summer to extend the emergency measures.
     The report also cited a survey finding “gross inadequacies” in several clinics: including some clinics that were unable to assist Spanish-speaking callers, services not being made available at all of the east Harlem clinics, and two clinics that did not offer rapid HIV testing.

New Hampshire Court Sides with LGBT Employees

Merrimack County, NH - The Merrimack Superior Court last month agreed with Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD) that “the college system discriminates against its gay and lesbian employees when it denies them benefits that are available to their married coworkers,” according to a GLAD press release.
Patricia Bedford and Anne Breen, employees of the state’s college system, together with GLAD filed Bedford and Breen v. New Hampshire Technical College System in an effort to gain benefits they were denied, such as family leave, health insurance and bereavement leave, even though those benefits were available to their married co-workers.
GLAD expects the state to appeal the decision.

Government Spies on Law Students

New York City - Outlaw, a LBGT law student group at New York University, has learned that the Department of Defense has targeted the group by characterizing it as “potentially violent.”
The group protested the presence of military recruiting on campus because the U.S. military violates the University’s employment policy, which prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation in recruiting and hiring, according to the SLDN, an organization that defends military personnel affected by the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. The government admitted it was spying on the group in February 2005 after learning there would be a protest at NYU Law School against the presence of military recruiters on campus. according to the SLDN, the DoD was concerned because the protest “may involve outlaws.”
The NYU Student Bar association subsequently passed a resolution condemning the spying, and plans to file a Freedom of Information Act request to find out the extent of the surveillance, the SLDN said.

Palestinian Lesbian Receives Human Rights Award

New York - The 2006 Felipa de Souza award will go to Rauda Morcos, an activist who helped found a Palestian lesbian organization in Haifa, Israel, and created a website that links Palestinian lesbians who live in Israel and the occupied territories, the International Gay and Lesbian Human rights commission announced last month.
Morcos is reported to be the only open lesbian member of ASWAT, the organization she helped found that has organized support groups for lesbians in Haifa, Jerusalem and Tel-aviv.

LGBT Citizens Target of Increased Violence

Iraq - The murders of a gay man and a transsexual are among recent incidents of LGBT-related violence in war-torn Iraq that some say have grown worse since the U.S.- led invasion of the country in 2003, a BBc report said in April.
One gay man fears leaving his home because he could be killed, he told a reporter. His friend, a transsexual, was killed several months before on her way to a party, he said. activists say violence has increased due to the rise of fundamentalist Islam, which views homosexuality as a sin. The BBC report quoted a website published under the auspices of the ayatollah that said “those who commit sodomy must be killed in the harshest way.”
A gay man who spoke to the BBC said “Saddam was a tyrant, but at least we had more freedom then. Nowadays, gay men are just killed for no reason.”

Gay Veterans to Appeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Decision

Washington, DC - A gay veterans group, the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, or SLDN, has announced it will appeal their case intended to overturn the military’s policy that has resulted in the discharge of thousands of GLBT veterans from military service.
The lawsuit against the government on constitutional grounds was dismissed by the District court for the District of Massachusetts in April, US Newswire reported. “Overturning ‘Don’t ask, Don’t tell’ will be a watershed moment for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans just as racial integration of our armed services was a pivotal moment in the civil rights fight for African-Americans,” US Newswire quoted SLDN executive Director C. Dixon Osburn.
“When our federal government stops discriminating, state governments, local governments, private corporations and the courts and 25 million veterans from every corner of american will follow suit ... then, we will have won the battle.”

State Bill to Protect GLBT Seniors

Sacramento, CA - A bill that would require the California Department of aging to serve the GLBT population in a variety of programs has been passed overwhelmingly by the assembly committee on aging and Long Term Care and now moves to the appropriations committee, Echelon Magazine reported in April.
Advocates said that while California leads the country in protecting GLBT families, more needs to be done to help seniors who do not reap the benefits of marriage, the report said.

School Survey: Policies Help Reduce Bullying

Washington, DC - While harassment against LGBT students remains a serious problem in the nation’s schools, specific policies addressing sexual orientation and gender identity or expression may reduce such incidents, according to the 2005 National School Climate Survey released in April.
      Verbal and physical harassment were commonplace in schools last year, according to the study compiled by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). LGBT students, as a result, were five times more likely than other students to skip class and perform less well in school. Anti-bullying policies and supportive staff helped students feel safer, achieve a higher grade average and even increased the likelihood they would go on to college, according to the survey.
     States with “generic” antibullying laws and states with no such laws experienced comparable high rates of verbal harassment, the study said. However, when policies specifically prohibited harassment against certain groups, the numbers changed.
      “States with inclusive policies that specifically enumerate categories including sexual orientation and gender identity, however, have significantly lower rates of verbal harassment (31.6 percent vs. 40.8 percent),” GLSEN said.

Compiled this month by Editor Lynn McNicol

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