The U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Johnnie Carson, met with approximately 30 advocacy leaders last week to highlight the State Department’s efforts to condemn an “Anti-Homosexuality” bill that is being debated in Uganda. The briefing was organized by the Public Affairs Bureau and provided a candid recount of U.S. diplomatic efforts to speak out against this unprecedented assault on basic human rights. Read more details in the new DC Agenda.

Excerpt:

Jon Tollefson, a State Department spokesperson, told DC Agenda that Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has pledged on several occasions to the top U.S. diplomat engaged in Africa that he would stop progress on the anti-gay bill.

Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson received this assurance from Museveni on Oct. 24 during an in-person meeting with the president in Uganda and again during a phone conversation with Museveni on Dec. 4, Tollefson said.

“To have the Africa Bureau, the State Department and the White House so publicly working against homophobia, not just in Uganda, but in Rwanda, Burundi and elsewhere, is a major change of course,” said IGLHRC Executive Director Cary Alan Johnson who attended Friday’s meeting. “Ambassador Carson was unequivocal, and I believe that he will do everything in his power to help Uganda avoid this Bill.”

Photo: Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, Entebbe, July 2003. Photo by Paul Morse.

By: Ging Cristobal, IGLHRC Project Coordinator for Asia and Pacific Islands

Having been to many demonstrations, parades and rallies in the Philippines, it seemed to me that the LGBT imMORAL rally held in front of the Commission of Election office in Manila City last Wednesday, November 23, 2009 was somehow different. Despite the usual flamboyance for which LGBT demonstrations are known, most of the LGBT activists present seemed pained, aware that something quite serious and political was happening. The 150+ LGBT people and supporters, assembled in front of Manila Cathedral, one of the oldest churches in the Philippines, chanted “LGBT hindi immoral, ipaglaban ang dangal!” ( LGBT are not immoral, fight for your self-respect/dignity!)

View photos of the event »

Together with LGBT groups and supportive women’s groups, we marched through the streets of Manila to call for the accreditation of Ang LADLAD, an LGBT party seeking to run for a seat in Congress, and to remind the Philippines society that LGBTs will no longer tolerate the bigoted treatment we experience in our communities, workplaces, families, and our country.

This protest was organized to publicly oppose the homophobic and discriminatory decision made last November 11, 2009 by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to ban Ang LADLAD from running in the 2010 national elections. The Comelec vehemently stated that the application of Ang LADLAD “must fail” because the petition is “dismissible on moral grounds” since Ang LADLAD “advocates immorality and homosexuals are a threat to the youth.”

Despite the occasional surface sign of cultural tolerance, discrimination against LGBT people is still an ever-present norm here. This discrimination ranges from individual and subtle to systemic and blatant. Prejudiced and bigoted remarks and treatment are so normalized that LGBT people have learned not to contest them, hoping for some measure of respect.

But: A transgender woman is passed over for a promotion because of her gender identity or can’t find work at all; only one lesbian parent attends her child’s school activity because the parents of the other children are uncomfortable seeing two women together as parents; only one member of a couple of same sex parents can be the legal parent of their adopted child and the other must be considered, “just a friend;” a butch lesbian will have to let go of her partner’s hand once they are noticed for fear of harassment; a man shoots a lesbian in the face because she was dating his daughter; transgender women are sexually harassed while their unrepentant attackers claim they were asking for it; and gay men are arrested for vagrancy and was released after being extorted by the police.

In short, the rights of LGBT people are not consistently respected by society, and the Comelec’s decision to deny accreditation as a political party to Ang LADLAD, a party that seeks to improve the lives of LGBT people in the Philippines, makes institutional discrimination clear. This discrimination and homophobia has been encouraged by the Philippines’ conservative Catholic history and society.

The Comelec decision shows that the government endorses and adopts this discriminatory attitude. It is proof that the state sees LGBT people as second class citizens, a minority group not to be taken seriously, and a group of sinners that need to be saved from their immoral lives. Comelec has spelled out these ideas in their decision.

The LGBT imMORAL protest march shows that LGBT people want change and we want it now. Legal and political reforms are necessary, but in addition, as LGBT people living in the Philippines, we also need to push the envelope to demand respect in all aspects of our lives.

A week after the imMORAL protest march, the Philippines LGBT community held its annual LGBT Pride March on December 5, 2009. Because of the Comelec’s decision, the parade was not only a declaration that yes, we are out and proud, but also a statement that we will continue to claim our rights. As taxpayers, as citizens of the Philippines, we deserve respect and equal treatment as enshrined in the Philippine Constitution and international law.

We will continue to fight for our rights.

Thursday, December 10th 2009 at 1:15 p.m. to 2:45 p.m.
ECOSOC Chamber, UN Headquarters, New York

Webcasts of the event are available here:
English:
http://webcast.un.org/ramgen/ondemand/specialevents/2009/se091210pm2.rm
Spanish:
http://webcast.un.org/ramgen/ondemand/specialevents/2009/se091210pm2-orig.rm

The side event will explore grave and extreme human rights violations and discrimination occurring on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Such violations include attacks on the security of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, the practice of torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment, and arbitrary arrest or detention.

Moderator:
Hans Ytterberg, Director-General, Swedish Ministry of Integration and Gender Equality

Panelists:

• Vivek Divan, Consultant with the UN Development Program, formerly with the
  Lawyer’s Collective in India, on the team that won the anti-sodomy law case in Delhi.
• The Rev. Kapya Kaoma, Anglican priest from Zambia now leading churches in the
  Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts and PRA Project Director.
• Indyra Mendoza, Director of the Honduran lesbian and feminist organization Cattrachas.
• Victor Mukasa, Program Associate, International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights
  Commission, and co-founder of Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG).
• Sass Rogando Sasot, Activist, one of the founding members of the Society of Transsexual
  Women of the Philippines.

In collaboration with a coalition of non-governmental organisations defending the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.

Today is the 21st annual World AIDS Day, held on December 1st each year to raise awareness of the global HIV/AIDS pandemic and to honor the memory of those who have died from HIV/AIDS and those who continue to live with the disease. This year’s World AIDS Day theme is Universal Access and Human Rights.

According to the World AIDS Campaign, the global incidence of HIV/AIDS is on the rise. There are over 33.4 million people living with HIV today and there were 2.7 million new cases in 2007. There were also a total of 2 million HIV-related deaths in 2007.

The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission is committed to combating stigma-based discrimination in HIV/AIDS healthcare for all people, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people.

Transgender people and men who have sex with men (MSM) are disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS across the globe. For example, according to the Centers for Disease Control, in 2005, over 71 percent of male adults and adolescents in the U.S. infected with HIV/AIDS were MSM. In Asia, MSM are 19 times more likely to acquire HIV infection than adults in the general population, and in China the odds are 45 times as high. Despite the vulnerability of high-risk LGBT populations, access to treatment, counseling, prevention and care is often denied to LGBT individuals because of discriminatory laws, policies and attitudes.

Similarly, international health care programming is not effectively targeting LGBT groups in need: In 2007, IGLHRC published a report analysing how the international funding community, governments, and NGOs fail LGBT people when HIV/AIDS programming does not address same-sex practicing people.

According to Michel Sidibé, the executive director of UNAIDS, the international community’s failure to address the health needs of LGBT people is not only a human rights travesty, but a public health crisis: “The failure to respond effectively has allowed HIV rates to reach crisis levels in many communities of men who have sex with men and transgender people.”

The World Health Organization has found that only 9 percent of men who have sex with men received any type of HIV prevention service in 2005 and UNAIDS has found that less than one percent of the HIV prevention needs of men who have sex with men were being met in 2006.

In a letter to Secretary of State Clinton sent on March 27, 2009, IGLHRC asked the Obama administration to increase funding to HIV programs for LGBT communities worldwide, and to discontinue funding anyone who perpetuates human rights abuses against LGBT people. The Global AIDS Coordinator’s office responded, affirming the administration’s commitment to addressing the HIV/AIDS needs of LGBT populations.

IGLHRC also continues to fight discriminatory laws that would accelerate the spread of HIV. Burundi is one of a few countries in Africa receiving funds from the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM) to expand their HIV intervention to include MSM. After Burundi’s National Assembly passed a provision criminalizing same-sex activity, IGLHRC and the Association pour le Respect et les Droits des Homosexuels (ARDHO) issued an appeal, asking the entire membership of Burundi’s Senate to vote against the legislation, arguing that it would accelerate the spread of HIV, by preventing MSM and other sexual minorities from accessing HIV prevention, treatment and care. On February 17, 2009, 36 out of 43 Senators voted to strike down the provision.

Uganda’s proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill would effectively ban any kind of community or political organizing around non-heteronormative sexuality and would seriously compromise HIV prevention activities and treatment in Uganda, which rely on the ability to talk frankly about sexuality and provide condoms and other safer-sex materials.

November 20th, 2009 marks the 10th annual Transgender Day of Remembrance. On this day we remember those who have been killed by hatred and prejudice against transgender people and raise public awareness to combat violence against transgender people.

On this Transgender Day of Remembrance, we also celebrate the tremendous work of transgender activists and human rights defenders committed to promoting and protecting the human rights of transgender people. This is a powerful opportunity to insist that transgender rights are human rights, and that all members of the global community have an obligation to stop violence against transgender people.

Every year, transgender people face the omnipresent threats of murder, violence, imprisonment, and pervasive discrimination. The tragic deaths of over 200 trans people reported in the last two years alone-and the countless others that go unreported around the world–are sobering reminders of transgender people’s vulnerabilities to individual and state-sponsored violence and discrimination because of their gender identity and gender expression.

Between January 2008 and June 2009, according to the Trans Murder Monitoring Project, the highest rates of murder reports of transgender people came from the Americas: 82 murders were reported from Brazil, 20 from Venezuela, 16 from the US, 11 from Colombia, 10 from Guatemala, 10 from Mexico, 5 from Honduras, 4 from Venezuela, 3 from Argentina and 3 from the Dominican Republic. Murders of transgender people have also been reported in seven European countries in the same period (Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Serbia, Russia and Turkey), four Asian countries (Iraq, Malaysia, Singapore and India), and two Oceanic countries (Australia and New Zealand).

It is vital that States address and end the impunity for violence against transgender people such as the recent brutal murders of Kenia Mayli, Jessica Andreina, and Sabrina Garcia Cajas in Guatemala, the murder of Xiomara Duran in Caracas, Venezuela, the attacks on a transgender man, Ian Breppe, in La Matanza, Argentina and the attacks on Clara Andrade Galdames and Grace Morales León in Valparaíso City, Chile.

Governments must not only investigate these crimes fully and fairly, but also actively employ measures and programs that will prevent violence and discrimination against transgender people in the future, such as training police to protect and work respectfully with LGBTI communities.

State-sponsored persecution of transgender people must also cease, including the ongoing harassment of trans activists by the police in Delhi, India and the recently intensified police harassment of transgender and transsexual persons in Turkey using the Law of Misdemeanours to legitimize fines, detentions, evictions, extortion, and violence.

In addition to the direct threat of violence, transgender people around the world face extensive discrimination in every sphere of life, including in access to basic human necessities such as education, housing, and health care. In 2008, for example, police in Bangalore, India sent a notice, accompanied by verbal threats, requiring 40 homeowners in Bangalore to evict 100 hijras who rented rooms or apartments from them and in October 2009, Jose Garcia, a 19-year-old student in Belmopan, Belize, was expelled from school because he dressed and acted in what was considered to be a feminine manner.

Transgender activist Nairobi Castillo, from the Dominican Republic, also emphasizes the significant difficulties of transgender people in accessing health care in the video to the left:

The health issue is one of the most serious we have in our country. We don’t have primary health service for trans women. When a trans woman goes to a hospital she is treated like an alien from space.

States can fight this discrimination with laws and policies that respect the gender identities of all people.  For example, states can require workers and professionals at hospitals to call trans, transgender, travesti, and transsexual patients by their chosen names.

Everyone has the right to life under international human rights law. No one should be arbitrarily deprived of life because of gender identity. Everyone, regardless of gender identity, has the right to security of the person and to protection by the State against violence or bodily harm, whether inflicted by government officials or by any individual or group. Everyone is entitled to enjoy all human rights without discrimination on the basis of gender identity. Laws should prohibit any such discrimination and guarantee to all persons equal and effective protection against any such discrimination.

To ensure the human rights of transgender people, the international community must continue to pressure governments to uphold their national and international human rights obligations and to respect, protect, and promote the lives and dignity of transgender people everywhere.

The Current, a radio show in Canada hosted by Anna Maria Tremonti, did a piece on the current situation of LGBT people in Uganda in light of new proposed legislation that would further criminalize homosexuality and create penalties for people who support the rights of LGBT people.

Listen to the report on The Current’s website.

The Current’s summary: Pt 3 – Gays in Uganda
A proposed new law would require Ugandans to report gays and lesbians to police. The proposed law has left the LGBT community outraged but also afraid.

Anna spoke to Julius Kagwa from SMUG, the blogger from GayUganda, Jeff Sharlet who wrote “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power” and Monica Mbaru, IGLHRC’s Africa Program Coordinator.

Find out more about IGLHRC’s work in Uganda »
Take action to protest this new homophobic legislation »

Caster Semenya has done the unthinkable in women’s sports: she runs “like a man.” Besting her sister runners by a longshot in the 800 meters in the World Championships in Berlin a few weeks ago, she drew the instant condemnation that girls across the decades have drawn whenever they are too smart in class, too forceful in the board room, too strong in the gym, or too accomplished in the workplace.

You don’t have to be a world class runner to recognize this moment – whether you came into womanhood at the height of the women’s movement or the hip-hop era, not much has changed. Women exceeding gendered expectations of achievement are often forced out of the game at the suggestion that their drive to accomplish exceeds the boundaries of genteel femininity. The only worse epithet than being called a “feminist” these days is to be called a man.

From Babe Zaharias to Hillary Clinton, women who refuse to be limited by what-has-been must endure a public that is deeply ambivalent about women trailblazers.

She also stands in a long line of gender variant people who threaten the very definitions of “man” and “woman” and call into question the ways that we organize our sports, our toy stores, and even the pink and blue cribs in our nurseries.

Over and over this week, I have read various commentary that distinguishes between “sex,” a supposed biological fact and “gender” which is socially constructed. The Olympic committee, according to this wisdom, must conduct a multi-layered examination – physical, psychological, and hormonal – to determine if Semenya is “objectively,” “biologically” female. For while the characteristics we arbitrarily assign to masculine and feminine genders obviously vary greatly across cultures, races, and centuries, the biology of sex is put forth as a fixed, unwavering truth.

All of which is non-sense. Social beings embedded in certain cultures, traditions, and scientific eras create the list of “qualifiers” for being biologically female or male. I find it interesting that I couldn’t find the all-important “list” in any of the dozens of articles I read this week on Semenya’s trial. A vagina apparently isn’t sufficient to qualify a person as biologically female. Testosterone figures into the calculus – how much is too much? There’s a mysterious, undefined psychological aspect to the testing. What characteristics trump others in the quest to qualify as biologically female?

Shortly after the medal ceremony, Semenya submitted herself to a public exam on her “sex,” dimming a moment that should have been a shining celebration of her stunning achievement. In response, the South African government, family and friends stood behind their gender non-conforming daughter, noting that a long history of racialized sexism in the Olympics includes a chapter in which efforts were made to separate all Black women athletes from competing against their white counterparts because Black women were regarded as not-quite-female due to their race.

While whispers of high levels of testosterone and ambiguous genitalia light up the blogosphere, we must ask ourselves – why isn’t anyone listening to Caster Semenya? She was raised a girl, has competed as a girl for years before this great victory on the international stage, and most importantly — Semenya identifies as a woman.

If there’s no other lesson that the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights movement has taught the larger culture over the past forty years, I hope it is this one: the right to self-determination is paramount. Gender variant people around the world are watching Semenya’s struggle with a mixture of pride, anxiety and hope. No authority – religious, parental or in this case Olympic – should trump one’s right to self-determination, identity and expression.

by Jamie Grant
Director of the Policy Institute at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force

The night before Budapest’s LGBT Pride march, the tension was real. Annual LGBT Pride festivals have been held no fewer than 14 times in this Eastern European city, but in 2007 and 2008, marchers were verbally and physically attacked by counter-demonstrators—skinheads and far-right extremists—and assaulted with eggs, firecrackers and petrol bombs. Riot police used water cannons and tear gas to separate rioters from marchers and detained 45 people. At least eight people were wounded in the clashes, including two policemen. Demonstrators charged that police were not adequately prepared and had not provided enough protection.

This year, march organizers were buoyed by an amazing video message from U.S. celebrity Whoopi Goldberg and a statement of support signed by 13 foreign embassies, including South Africa and the United States—two countries often conspicuously silent on international LGBT issues. A representative of the Dutch Gay and Lesbian Police Officers’ Association, who was coincidentally staying at the same guesthouse as me, had come a few days earlier to train Hungarian LGBT leadership on responding to hate crimes during a Pride march.

I woke up early on the morning of the march, wanting to be alert and prepared for whatever the day might hold. I walked the length of the march corridor, watching workers set up two-meter tall fencing along the whole route. Hundreds of policemen, in full Kevlar riot gear and gas masks, were deploying along the main maarch route and the side streets feeding onto Andrassy Street, one of Budapest’s main boulevards.

The march was scheduled to start at 1 pm. The organizers—Rainbow Pride Hungary—recommended that children, people with disabilities and the elderly not attend the march for their own safety. The crowd seemed small at the starting site. Fewer than 200 of us milled about in a small space between the fences that had been set up in the impressive Hösök Ter (Heroes Square). Hungarian activists had chosen the starting site and the march route to forge a historical connection to the heroes of the Hungarian Revolution against Soviet domination. The nervousness in the small crowd was palpable—a balloon popped and everyone jumped. But the crowd was nothing if not committed and there was a sense of determination and maybe just a bit of the stoic realism for which Eastern Europe is famous.

The march stepped off fashionably late. But by 1:30 the ubiquitously unflappable club anthems were booming from huge speakers on the lead truck and we were marching. The crowd had swelled to 2,000 by the time we were a third of the way down the march corridor. I was proud (and relieved) to be marching side-by-side with Juris Lavrikovs of Latvia, and Paata Sabelashvili, of Georgia, two gay men who are on the staff and board (respectively) of ILGA-Europe. In addition to being lovely, committed, sophisticated activists, these guys were also a lot of fun to spend the day with. ILGA-Europe is a tremendously important organization, based in Brussels and providing support to the LGBT movement in Europe.

A scene from Budapest Gay Pride 2009. Photo by Cary Alan Johnson, IGLHRC. View more images from the march »

As the march moved through the streets of Budapest, I learned the importance of the term “throwing distance.” The police had established the march corridor so that anti-gay demonstrators were corralled on the side streets, at all times at least a city block from the marchers. I had to strain to hear their taunts. Some gay men I met later at the guest house told me that the demonstrators numbered no more than 200, seemed disorganized and aimless, and that their taunts seemed less directed at the LGBT community than at some nameless, faceless threat to Hungarian nationalism. The media reported that anti-gay demonstrators burned a rainbow flag, and several dozen were arrested for disorderly conduct during the course of the day. One British national was reported to have been attacked by skinheads.

The police seemed committed to ensuring that the violence of previous years would not be repeated. But for most of the activists that I met, there was a sense that while the security was appreciated, we had been cut off from the rest of the city. We may have been out of the closet, but we weren’t necessarily in the streets. One of the goals of LGBT Pride should be increased visibility—that’s the difference between a Gay Pride march, which invites, cajoles and demands a political interaction from spectators, and a Gay Pride parade, which is mainly a celebration of pride and done for our own self-actualization and enjoyment.

But still the march was great. At 49, I thought I’d lost my gusto for the very special ping that comes from marching down the middle of a street and claiming my queerness in the company of my fellows. There’s still something wildly empowering about it. Special recognition must go to some of our steadfast allies. Amnesty International’s delegation was strong and visible, as was the Hungarian Humanist Movement. For the most part, these two groups are key allies of the LGBT movement worldwide.

The march ended in a small park called Diak Ter, and again the organizers wisely decided to not hold a big rally or party that could have ultimately become a target for skinheads intent on finding an outlet for misdirected anger. Instead, dozens of well-trained volunteers carefully dispersed the crowd toward public transportation hubs. Katherine Fobear, a very cool young American from Detroit, who is studying lesbian social anthropology in Amsterdam and had come to Hungary for Pride, informed me that a lesbian volunteer had been one of the few casualties of the day. Three skinheads caught this woman, still wearing her Pride T-shirt, on her way to the train and assaulted her. We’re trying to get in touch with Labrisz, the Hungarian lesbian group (www.labrisz.hu) to get more information on her well-being.

My friend from the Dutch LGBT police officer’s association suggested that while the Hungarian police had done a good job, more effective crowd control techniques would have enabled them to contain the protesters rather than the marchers, while still maintaining order and security. Perhaps the relative success of this year’s march will allow both the organizers and the police to feel more secure about their ability to protect the marchers when they are in closer proximity to their opponents. Maybe next year the march can be a more interactive dialog between LGBT people, our supporters, and the small minority still obsessed with shouting down freedom.

IGLHRC’s Executive Director, Cary Alan Johnson, will march in Budapest’s 2009 Gay Pride parade, which will be held on September 5th in the Hungarian capital. Cary’s report, along with multimedia files from the event, will be posted on IGLHRC’s blog next week.

Last year’s pride parade in Budapest turned violent when right-wing extremists attacked marchers with stones and Molotov cocktails, and clashed with security forces. During those riots, eight people were injured; police took forty-five people into custody and used water cannons and tear gas to break up the neo-Nazi assailants.

Watch images from last year’s gay pride in Budapest, including scenes of violence, on Youtube:

In the days prior to this year’s pride parade, tensions have been growing between both sides of the debate. On August 28th, thirteen embassies in Hungary issued a joint press release to express their “support for and solidarity with” the event. The countries whose missions supported the march are Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The statement of thirteen embassies came on the same day as Ilona Ekes, a member of the Hungarian parliament’s Human Rights, Minorities and Religious Affairs Committee, called on police to ban the gay parade, and instead organize a social and professional dialogue on homosexuality, which she referred to as a “mental injury.”

Earlier last month, renowned American comedian Whoopi Goldberg posted a Youtube message in support of the gay pride parade in Budapest. Whoopi’s message, addressed to the Hungarian people, can be viewed below:

Yesterday I had a very interesting conversation with a police officer who works with refugees in Kayseri. I asked her about the relationship between the local police and members of the LGBT refugee community. She said that the police have only one problem with the refugees: “Some of them dress very provocatively. Their hairstyles, their heavy make-up and their revealing clothes make the locals uncomfortable.” Then she paused for a few seconds and said, “Even I, as a female police officer, will be harassed if I wear flashy lipstick. People around here are very hospitable, but traditional.”

I shared the police officer’s concerns with a group of Iranian refugees that I met last night. They disagreed: “I can’t even wear sunglasses. They think sunglasses are too erotic,” one gay man commented. Another said: “I tried. I swear I tried to look like the locals. But they can spot us a mile away. As soon as they notice we don’t walk like macho straight men, they start chasing us and laughing at us.”

A transgender woman told me that:

Every time I walk down the street, schoolboys throw trash at me. And once, when I was walking downtown, the police wanted to arrest me because they said I looked like a Russian prostitute. Police officers made fun of me and called me names. As they were forcing me into their car, I screamed and hit them with my handbag. I said: “You have no right to treat me like dirt because I am trans.” Finally, other officers intervened. They said it was a case of mistaken identity and I could go. I complained about how I was treated by their colleagues. They told me: “Quit making a big deal out of it. Nothing happened. They didn’t rape you, did they? Now go home!”

A social worker from a local NGO that supports refugees tells me how difficult it is to get assistance for LGBT Iranians:

We have a couple of well-organized faith-based Islamic charities. They mainly support the local needy population but occasionally also reach out to refugees…. The party line is that they don’t discriminate but when I send gay people their way, they say: “We will review you case and call you back.” Then after giving them a good run around, they say: “Sorry, we have no resources”…. I had one case of an Iranian gay man who really needed help. I told him go to those charities, but act straight so they might feel sorry for him and give him some help. It worked.

The local NGO does what it can to coordinate the minimal local support that is available and distribute it among the refugees. But with only one full-time staff member, the organization is ill-equipped to deal with the needs of close to 1,000 refugees in Kayseri.

As I get ready to leave this beautiful city and its forgotten refugee population, I can’t help wonder who, in Turkey, will look out for my fellow LGBT Iranians. To many locals, they are a bunch of moral degenerates en route to the sinful West. To many Turkish officials, they are a financial burden only adding to the problems of this country’s fragile economy. To many local and international relief and refugee agencies, they are yet another part of the endless flow of migrating people needing assistance. But to me, they are decent, inspired, and extremely courageous human beings. Despite on-going challenges, they have consistently fought for dignity and human rights. And they are willing to keep fighting as long as needed. I should know; I am a gay Iranian refugee myself.

Hossein Alizadeh