LGBTQ+ Rights Worldwide

Good fucking God, I hope that isn't true.

Sigh...I was wondering when this would happen with an actor I actually respected.

It's most likely true but it's also not really an LGBT rights issue

That doesn't, but the backlash likely will, because Takei's more-or-less seen as the face of the LGBT Community, at least in the U.S., and there's no telling what or how people will react to this, since this will definitely make people against LGBT rights feel vindicated and give them more ammo to continue demonizing LGBT people as pedophiles and rapists.

Yeah, the worst part about this whole thing is that right-wing assholes will use this to justify their homophobia, even though as we've seen it's an issue that transcends sexual orientation. And good god, but I hope nobody tries to sweep this shit under the rug because 'it makes our side look bad" like some people were doing with the Cosby allegations. Because the last thing it needs to be seen as is condonement.

Right-wing politicians plot to derail LGBT rights even if Australia votes Yes to same-sex marriage

...Because fuck democracy, amirite?

“Yeah, the worst part about this whole thing is that right-wing assholes will use this to justify their homophobia,“

Well no. The worst part is still that a dude woke up to find his friend trying to rape him.

Not in a utilitarian sense.

Of course it sucks for the guy Takei tried to rape but I mean in general, including Spacey's bullshit "coming-out". Hence my use of the word "whole".

In happier news, results of the Australian Same-Sex marriage survey are in and the answer is Yes!

Of 79.5% of eligible voters who returned their ballots on time, 61.6% voted yes and 38.4% voted no. The 36,686 invalid or unclear ballots were essentially rounding error.

Moving forward there are two separate bills in Parliament that were waiting for the results. One, co-drafted by backbenchers from both Labor and Liberal parties and backed by the Labor party, the Greens and the Yes campaign exempts religious ministers and organisations from having to perform same-sex marriages and that's about it. The other bill extends those exemptions to civil celebrants and other businesses such a caterers, bakers, florists etc and is worded so vaguely that it's critics say that it effectively strips Australia's LGBTI community of their existing anti-discrimination protections. The good news is that the Prime Minister has said he will fight that bill or any attempts to add riders and modifications to the other bill. And given that while his own party is divided, Labor and the Greens (more important in the Senate than the House), it will have the numbers to pass fairly quickly.

And as this news is still breaking (the official announcement was 45 minutes ago as of typing this sentence) we just go more news on breakdown by states. New South Wales (my home state, but not where I currently live) was the only state or territory to return less than 60% yes vote (57.8%) while the Australian Capital Territory (who had previously voted to legalise same-sex marriage but had that law overturned by Parliament under the Howard Government) returned a whopping 74% yes. Everyone else returned results somewhat between 60% and 65%.

As this is just in and previously Turnbull had said that if there is a Yes result that he wants to pass legislation before Parliament goes on break on December 7th, stay tuned.

Damn, beat it to me Anyway, congratulations to all you members of the gay community in Australia who are now equal to any other countryman and cheers on the country as a whole and its voters, who overwelmingly saw past the bullshit of the "No" campaign and voted for what's right.

edited 14th Nov '17 3:58:26 PM by Grafite

Isn't the massively pro discrimination one kind of unconstitutional?

This is all excellent news coming out of Australia.

Great to see them joining the rest of the Anglosphere.

From what I understand, Australia doesn't have its Bill of Rights ingrained in the Constitution, so it would "only" violate standard law. Which could be amended to allow for such discrimination, but I don't see that coming.

EDIT: Actually, they don't have a federal bill of rights (few at the state level though) at all, so its all tied up in convention, Common Law precedent and not causing the public to riot I guess.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_rights#Exceptions_in_Western_democracies

edited 14th Nov '17 5:18:05 PM by Rationalinsanity

Yeah, those anti-discrimination laws aren't part of the Constitution. If they passed at best you'd have a case where two different sets of federal laws conflict with each other and it would be up to the Parliament (via revising the laws) or the courts (via judicial ruling) to resolve the conflict.

Australia doesn't have a Bill of Rights at all..

The campaign for this vote was toxic. The result is a relief. Government should get on with making it law without weird concessions to bigots.

The Australian Senate moves fast when it wants to. The good version of the same-sex marriage bill has already been submitted for debate before the senate starting tomorrow (Australian Eastern Daylight Time). While originating from a Liberal backbencher it was co-sponsored by eight other Senators from Labor, the Greens, Nick Xenophon's party and Derryn Hinch (technically he has a party, but it's named after him and he's the sole sitting member).

(From the same article) The No Campaign's bill is effectively dead in the water with no chance to gain support from the Liberal Party (it would have to wait till the 27th and the next party meeting by which the good version will already be up for debate). Instead they will focus on attaching amendments to the existing bill. The Green's however have said they're not going to have a bar of it and as far as they're concerned the current bill has made all the concessions that they're willing to and Malcom Turnbull has already spoken out in favour of it as it stands and has effectively called amending or delaying the bill as the M Ps and Senators who supported the No Campaign being sore losers.

On the lighter side, proving Australian's can always find something to complain about, people are saying that Australian Statistician David Kalisch's speech leading up to the announcement of the results was too long.

Thank god the Senate can rise above party politics crap, and not for the first time. When they designed our political system they got the Senate right!

I'm pretty sure s116 includes stuff about "cannot impose a religion" which is what I was getting at before.

I think that's one of the very few protections normally included in those sort of things that explicit in the Constitution. It took a High Court ruling to confirm that the Australian Constitution has an implicit protection for Freedom of Speech, but it's not actually spelled out directly.

However the No campaign are hiding behind that freedom of speech and freedom of religion protections, essentially claiming that anti-discrimination legislation hinders their religious freedoms. However as noted previously it is sufficiently vaguely worded that it would strip heterosexual couple of anti-discrimination protections related to religious beliefs.

At least one Liberal senator has actually doubled down on that claiming that a Jewish backer should be able to refuse to make a wedding (or other celebratory occasion) cake for a Muslim couple and vice versa.

So... yeah, they're basically want to enshrine protection for bigotry into law.

I should have known it would be fucking Kevin Andrews, that guy loves basking in his own intolerance.

The Canadian government will be apologizing to LGBTQ 2 S members of the public service, the RCMP and the Armed Forces were who persecuted or fired for their sexuality or gender identity. The actual events mostly ended in the 90s, and the government plans to settle out of court in a related class action suit.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/lgbt-canada-apology-trudeau-house-of-commons-1.4409596

Good for them.

There was movement in the Senate For word had passed around That Stephen Smith's Same-Sex Marriage Bill was up for a vote...

... and I'm stopping there before I mangle Banjo Paterson's poetry any further.

So basically good news. The bill passed with (and this is the important part) no amendments added, six Liberal Party Senators (including three sitting Ministers), siding with the Greens, Darren Hynch, NXT, the Greens and most of the Labor senators (barring a few abstentations) to give it a solid majority. It gets debated before the House of Representatives next week.

But before that things got weird with Pauline Hanson (who abstained because her ammendments got voted down without even being read) and several Liberal Senators trying to make an issue about who does and does not recite along with the reading of the Lord's Prayer when the Senate opens their days business.

FIFA warns LGBTQ soccer fans to be careful traveling to Russia for the World Cup in 2018. It will give a guide telling them what behavior not to do and where not to do it.