LGBTQ+ Rights Worldwide

What the fuck is a Jeremy Clarkson and why should anyone care

Apparently he was on a show about cars, according to the other wiki. He also dreams of having boobs.

edited 28th Jan '16 9:11:03 AM by Morgikit

Oh man. A show about cars.

That makes him an expert. My bad. Makin' room for the pros now.

Well, it was sort of about cars.

Wasn't he fired for assaulting his boss?

Yep he was fired from the BBC, but Amazon gave him a new show anyway.

I will say that he did acknowledge that assaulting his boss over not getting a steak for dinner was an asshole thing to do and that the situation was one of his own making. Some of his fans didn't even manage that.

edited 28th Jan '16 7:42:02 PM by Silasw

From a post in The Global Refugee Wave and Migrant Crisis thread:

Did they consider that homosexuals can adopt and thus build families?

At best, I could see this happening to a country trying to raise its birth rate...

Now I want to do a 'Jeremy Clarkson or TERF' quiz...

I don't know enough about Clarkson to tell if it's intentional or not, but I can't be alone in suspecting that the article actually has the opposite message of what you'd think at first glance, can I?

At the end, it basically goes "But none of the above really matters anyway."

Jeremy Clarkson is an utter buffoon but you can't help but feel that his heart is in the right place.

So, in one week Switzerland will hold a vote on a referendum named Für Ehe und Familie – gegen die Heiratsstrafe to change the Swiss constitution to guarantee that married couples and unmarried ones are treated equally in terms of taxes.

Thing is, the definition of "married couple" in the proposed text does explicitly apply to "woman and man". Meaning that this initiative would install an explicit discrimination against same sex couples in the constitution.

(Currently, Switzerland does not have full same sex marriage, but since another referendum in 2005 we have "registered partnership" which does have some but not all privileges of ordinary marriage)

So currently gay couples can't get married except in that weird way that is more or less the same thing with a different name because apparently calling it marriage is the important bit, and they're proposing making it constitutional that the tax laws treat them as if they were married, but if they do then they'll never be able to let them get married properly because they've worded it such that they only get the same treatment if they aren't?

I can see how this could end up being a mess.

Currently married couples often pay more taxes than non-married ones because their wealth is counted together, pushing them in a higher income class. However, they pay less in insurances. So they already have to pay less overall than non-married couples.

This initative has failed - 49.2% votes in favour.

Yay! Sounds bad that the vote was so close though.

It may also had received a majority of cantons - Ständemehr - in support.

What does that mean, for those of us that don't live there?

Initiatives in Switzerland need two majorities - a nationwide majority (Volksmehr) and a majority of all cantons^note Not all cantons are counted equally: Two cantons are split in two sub-cantons each, each of which counts as half a canton voting in support (Ständemehr).

Seems like this initiative failed the Volksmehr part.

Ah, a regional balancing measure I see?

Surprised at that, to be honest. Would have thought it to be the other way around. *shrugs*

Dare I ask how Fribourg voted? (I'll go look, actually... And, while I'm doing that, may's well check on St Gallen and Appenzell for kicks.)

Cross-posting from the British Politics Thread:

Kezia Dugdale - the Scottish Labour leader - revealed her partner is a woman in an interview. This means that Scotland is now the country with the most LGBT+ political party leaders in the world, with 4/6 (Conservatives, Greens, UKIP are the others).

That's a pretty impressive statistic. And yes, you did read that right, our centre-right and far right party leaders are led by an openly gay woman and man respectively.

Nice to see Scotland flying such an impressively progressive flag!

edited 2nd Apr '16 3:16:20 AM by EruditeEsotericist

What's the LGBT makeup of the Scottish Parliment? I know that Westminster is the most LGBT at in the world.

I'm not sure, but Scotland must be close to Westminster. Not many countries can say that their two main right wing parties are led by openly LGBT people (one a woman, at that)

Putting this one here rather than in Video Games due to its relevance. Baldur's Gate, that classic RPG, has a new expansion pack after 17 years. And it is getting horrendous reviews - because it introduces a transgender character (I'm aware the article title uses the wrong term).

Sickenng to see such a horrible reaction, that exposes just how homophobic the gaming community remains. Tread carefully reading the article unless you have a very good A/C, as those comments (as in, the reviews that are quoted in the body article text) do not make easy reading.

edited 5th Apr '16 10:29:27 AM by EruditeEsotericist

I be be carful with the gaming press, they have a tendency to amp up, seek out and bullshit about social issues being the reason for bad games failing. The gaming press are in bed with developers something big, this may well be genuine but be very wary with games journalists.

If nothing else I'm curious as to who the hell decided to imbed the video of some assholes being an asshole into their article, link it as a source, don't imbed the dam thing and give the assholes more views, that's seems a lot like the Sun/Mail with the "we're sorry but these pictures are so scandalous that we just had to show you them".

Also note how they admit that on the on largest online gaming platform the game has positive reviews, also the one platform where you have to own the game. That indicates that the actual gamers may well be happy with the game and have no issues with the inclusion of a transgender character, however the Internet assholes brigade are their own force and not always gamers.

edited 5th Apr '16 11:12:54 AM by Silasw

While browsing through the Steam reviews, I noticed that a lot of the flak the expansion gets is for lots of bugs and "bad writing" in general - and yes, some of them cite the transgender character as an example of the latter. Not even the character herself, but the way she's written seems to be a problem for some users. I can't really judge if the character is really badly-written or feeling shoehorned (mostly because I'm not an authority on how to write transgender characters in a good way) but there seems to be a lot of cherry-picking going on in regards to the user reviews the author chose for his article.

edited 5th Apr '16 11:20:42 AM by DrunkenNordmann