![ELIOT KAMENITZ / THE TIMES-PICAYUNE: Deon Haywood, executive director of WWAV. [img src]](http://rhrealitycheck.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/../../files/teaser-images/2012-06-04-quattrochi-187x125.jpg)
Last Friday morning at 4 AM, when most of New Orleans was sleeping, one or more arsonists torched the offices of Women With A Vision (WWAV), a group run by activist women of color. When an arsonist breaks into the offices of fierce women of color, sets fire to HIV education materials, and torches plastic replicas of vaginas and breasts, we’d say the evidence is clear. It’s a hate crime.
Weekly global roundup: A Tibetan Nun Self-Immolates; women’s rights activists are detained in Zimbabwe; gay rights under threat in Peru; and IPPF asks if we have failed at women’s empowerment and development.
When I first saw the video of a young woman attacked in a McDonald’s restroom, I was brought to tears. And then I turned to action.
Maine’s newest anti-choice legislation; Mike Huckabee wants you to forget you don’t have a job or health care and that the value of your house is plummeting – because the most important issue we face is legal abortion for women; CBS News correspondent is sexually assaulted while covering Egyptian protetsts and more.
Hate crimes against homosexuals are connected to the political, social and legal environment in which they live. And in Africa religious groups are talking about morals but simultaneously stirring hatred directly leading to violence against homosexuals.
That weak and long-suffering entity known as the Christian Right is claiming that efforts to outlaw targeted hate crimes against homosexual persons through legislation constitute “a guarded effort to ‘eradicate’ their beliefs.”
In a press release today, the International AIDS Society (IAS) urged Uganda’s political and public health leaders to oppose and reject the Anti-Homosexuality Bill presented last week in Uganda’s parliament.
Assurances that federal workplace anti-discrimination protections for LGBT people will exempt religious bodies from oversight should mollify conservatives, but they don’t.
As legal protections around hate crimes take root, right-wing groups are twisting this framework in an attempt to justify anti-gay positions.
Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Protection Act moves to Senate; Indiana legislature wraps up session; Tennessee abortion bill advances in the House; Sen. Richard Lugar will back Dawn Johnsen.
