Salon: Queer rights are human rights: Fighting for freedom is polarizing the world

In much of the world, gay rights, and recognition of sexual and gender diversity, appear to be progressing. In Europe, the United States, Latin America and Australasia, acceptance is growing of the idea that queer rights are human rights. Still, in large parts of the world, people face rape, murder and torture if they are perceived to be openly homosexual or transgendered. [...]

The global situation suggests increasing polarization, both between and within states. As the authors of a 2016 report on state-sponsored homophobia point out, some Latin American countries have been leaders in legal recognition of queer rights, yet “the region shows the highest levels of violence and murder against LGBTI population, and in the most of the cases [sic] impunity is the rule.”

Progress is always ambiguous: South Africa has constitutional recognition of the need to prevent discrimination based on sexuality, and has legalized same sex-marriage; Australia has neither. Yet the real-life experience of most queer South Africans is almost certainly more difficult than for most Australians. [...]

Governments and religious leaders both create and reflect public opinion, and there are few issues where different attitudes are as stark. Research suggests that more than 80 percent of the population of some western countries accept homosexuality, whereas the figure drops below 10 percent across much of Africa and the Middle East. [...]

In 2016, the U.N. Human Rights Council appointed an “independent expert” to find the causes of violence and discrimination against people due to their gender identity and sexual orientation, and discuss with governments how to protect those people. At its best, the United Nations can create what U.S. scholar Ronnie Lipschutz called “an incipient global welfare system,” able to provide global norms and rules, and to prevent local opposition to basic human rights principles. U.N. resolutions can be used by local activists in lobbying governments, and an increasing number of U.N. agencies, led by UNDP and UNESCO, are incorporating queer issues into their agendas.

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The Guardian: Do you live in a Trump bubble, or a Clinton bubble?

I can totally understand why the New York Times has departed from its usual practice. As it argued in an editorial, Trump is “the worst nominee put forward by a major party in modern American history”. He is a threat to civil peace at home and the country’s standing abroad. An Italian friend compares it to the reaction of the newspaper La Repubblica when faced with the resistible rise of Silvio Berlusconi.

Unfortunately this taking sides may reinforce a structural trend that is itself corrosive of US democracy. The most characteristic American argument for free speech and for what we still anachronistically call a free “press” – as explicitly mentioned in the first amendment – is that this is necessary for democratic self-government: only if citizens can hear all the relevant arguments and evidence, as ancient Athenians did when they gathered on the Pnyx at the foot of the Acropolis, will they be able to make an informed choice and therefore meaningfully be said to be governing themselves. First voice, then vote. So you have to hear the arguments and evidence from both sides.

But in this respect Monday’s television duel between the two candidates is the exception that proves the rule: a brief moment of shared experience in the public square. The rest of the time, American voters are off in their own echo chambers, hearing views that reinforce their own.

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Al Jazeera: Israel's strip searches at airports 'illegal'

The practices occur at Israel's international Ben Gurion airport, as well as at many foreign airports where Israeli security officials are entitled to carry out pre-flight checks on behalf of Israeli carriers.

In addition to being forced to undress for body searches, Arab passengers are often detained in secure rooms in the departure area before their flights and escorted on to planes by security staff in full view of other passengers. They may also have their hand luggage confiscated.

However, it is the first time it has been suggested that Israeli security staff are carrying out procedures that break Israeli law. Nadeem Shehadeh, an Adalah lawyer, told Al-Jazeera the organisation had written to Israel's attorney general, Avichai Mandelblit, and the Israel Airports Authority demanding that strip-searches and security escorts be stopped immediately. [...]

Shlomo Harnoy, a former senior officer with Israel's secret intelligence service, the Shin Bet, which oversees airport security checks, told the Jerusalem Post newspaper in July that Israel was "unique" in profiling passengers. Israel's supreme court refused last year to outlaw racial profiling, though it expressed discomfort with the policy and urged the Airports Authority to find technological solutions to lessen its impact.

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Alternet: A 50-Year Civil War That Killed Over 250,000 and Devastated Colombia Has Finally Reached a Peace Agreement

Tension sits heavy across sections of Colombia. Polls suggest that the majority of the population will vote to ratify the peace deal. Exhaustion is the mood. Colombians want the war to end. This was not a war with a frontline necessarily, although there were frontlines between the FARC areas and the government zones. This was a war across the country, with precious resources squandered in the battle and fear pervasive even far from the battlefield. [...]

Tension sits heavy across sections of Colombia. Polls suggest that the majority of the population will vote to ratify the peace deal. Exhaustion is the mood. Colombians want the war to end. This was not a war with a frontline necessarily, although there were frontlines between the FARC areas and the government zones. This was a war across the country, with precious resources squandered in the battle and fear pervasive even far from the battlefield. [...]

But there is no guarantee that the referendum on October 2nd will pass. Santos was the Defence Minister under former President Álvaro Uribe, who left office in 2010. Uribe is leading the charge against the deal. He is now a Senator, whose Democratic Centre party hopes for a defeat of the referendum. Uribe believes that the Colombian state should not negotiate with the FARC. Amnesty for fighters should be off the table, and indeed, the full force of the Colombian army – backed by the United States – should crush the FARC. Uribe shares a great deal with Sri Lanka’s Mahinda Rajapaksa, who prosecuted a war unto the death against the Tamil Tigers. Rajapaksa set aside the peace process in Sri Lanka that began in 2002. He then turned to his military to destroy the Tigers. The UN Report on the Sri Lanka’s government’s war showed that it was almost genocide. It makes for difficult reading. It is what Uribe hopes for Colombia.

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Advocate: Insightful Poll Reveals Who Opposes LGBT People on Two Big Issues

The survey is also enlightening because it explains what makes people want to deny service to same-sex couples getting married. It’s not an issue of civil rights. To them it’s a “moral” issue. Pew found that among the 35 percent of people who still say homosexual behavior is morally wrong, a whopping 76 percent said businesses should be able to refuse wedding services to same-sex couples.

The moral questions on these issues are more complicated if a person knows someone who is LGBT. Pew found that those who don’t know a gay person are more likely to be OK turning away same-sex couples. The difference was most sharp on the question of access to bathroom. “Knowing someone who is transgender is closely linked with views on the use of public restrooms,” Pew wrote in its analysis of findings. “Most people who personally know someone who is transgender say that transgender people should be allowed to use public restrooms that match their current gender identity (60%).” The problem is only three in 10 Americans said they knew a transgender person.

There was another way to predict whether a person would support refusing service: look at their political party registration. Republicans said businesses should be able to refuse service by a 71-26 margin. On access to restrooms for trans people, Republicans opposed it 67-30.

While Jews and Catholics and those unaffiliated with any religion were more likely to say businesses should be required to serve everyone (64 percent, 54 percent, and 65 percent, respectively), Protestants went in the other direction. Just 36 percent were opposed to discrimination. Then among Protestants, race played a factor, with black churchgoers evenly split on the question, while white churchgoers lined up strongly against serving everyone no matter their sexual orientation. Not surprisingly, white evangelical Protestants were most likely to support refusing service (77 percent).

That phenomenon largely held up on the issue of bathroom access, with one exception. Catholics are evenly split on that question, with 47 percent backing access and 50 percent opposed.

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