The Official LGBTQ Thread

Natalie

Natalie

Insect of Terror
Staff member
So we all knew it was only a matter of time before I opened this thread. I'll try to be as objective as possible about it and not too 'yay gay' about this. But since we're all a little tired of the gun discussion I figured another topic that's been talked about a lot recently should be fun.

The countries that now allow same-sex marriage are those in dark blue: Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Iceland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, South Africa, Sweden,Uruguay. You can as of today add France to that list as well.

Same-sex marriages are recognized in those countries that are turquoise: Aruba, Brazil Curaçao, Israel, Mexico, Sint Maarten.

Same-sex marriages have been approved by the high court but haven't been implemented yet in Nepal.

The UK government has announced the intention to legalize it.

U.S. states that allow same-sex marriage are Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont, and Washington...plus the District of Columbia and 3 Native American tribes. There will be a vote on it in Rhode Island soon.

Of course, with gay marriage there will come gay adoptions and gay divorces, and there are debates to be had there. Today though, I'm happy with the trend that's playing out across the globe.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22261494


World_marriage-equality_laws.svg
 
Good for France! But why the FUCK is Germany grey? Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia - I get it. But Germany? Finland? Australia?
 
I'm afraid the days where we'll allow it are far far away. I'm ashamed of how the majority of people in my country see sexual orientations other than heterosexuality, make fun of them, consider it a disease. I'm sure our government is the same, too.
 
Support for gay marriage is on the increase in the UK, and civil partnerships have been around for a few years now. The biggest stumbling block is the Church of England, which is very closely linked to the state. There's lots of opposition from within the CofE.
 
@Perun, Uruguay, for a number of reasons, seems like a good place to be. Montevideo might not be same class as other South American capitals, however Buenos Aires is just across the bay ;)

You can count out Roman Catholic Church consent for gay marriages in European countries. That kind of thing is possible in South America, they exercise lower level of bilateral "cooperation" with Vatican. Croatia, on the other hand, signed accords that gave massive control over our daily life to Holy See. I wouldn't care a bit what those voodoo clowns have to say, if they didn't have indirect legislative control in countries like mine. Unfortunately LGBT marriages aren't going to be legalized here any time soon. Church has massive political power, but what's most important, they maintain their dogmatic bubble with a lot of dumb general public stuffed inside.

It's absurd to talk about legalizing something that shouldn't be illegal in first place. I get the drift - people have eaten bullshit about evil homosexuality for decades, so an acclimatisation period is a wise measure - media coverage, parades, and then full legalization. Took decades in some countries, from first protests to final law acts. Anyways, why is it even mentioned (sexuality) in laws? Even if we include homosexual and trans-gender people, and level their rights with ones enjoyed by heterosexuals, we're still excluding whatever might be left. Because when we explicitly define, we're separating. Delete, and rewrite - marriage is between two citizens. No more than that. And all the types of crimes against this and against that - delete that also. An act of hatred is an act of hatred, against a person of other sexuality, other skin color, other nation, other religion, other musical choice, other football club affiliation...it should all be unified, and heavily sanctioned.

On the other hand, it's 26th of April 2013, and we're talking about giving two people permission to do whatever they want to do with themselves. Doh.
 
Ey mate. Haven't really realized how much time had passed since I posted here. Had some business related turmoil since February, thankfully it's going to work itself out.

P.S. wiki LGBT rights in North Korea. Interesting stuff. It seems like embodiment of what I've talked regarding how laws should be written. Since we're talking about DPRK, application of those laws remains a mystery. On the other hand, a paranoid defensive society of 20 million people, rattling swords with far, far bigger adversaries, needs complete national cohesion to exist. They haven't got enough manpower for gay witch hunt, because they could potentially sever off a significant number of people. Iran, OTOH, doesn't really care, they got plenty.
 
Not about gay marriage but today for the first time a professional athlete of four biggest sports in the US announced that he was gay. Kudos to Jason Collins.
 
Announcing, of course. Why would I congratulate him for being gay, it'd be like congratulating someone for having brown hair.
 
Brown hair is genetic. I realize this is a sensitive issue that is subject to some debate, but if being gay is genetic, wouldn't one expect Jason Collins' identical twin brother, Jarron, with whom he shares the exact same genetic code sequence, to be gay too? If so, Jarron likely would have come out of the closet too in support of his brother. What is the research on gay twins, and if a twin is no more likely to be gay if the other twin is gay, then what does that say about the theory that homosexuality is genetic?

This follows the coming-out announcement of Kwame Harris, who acknowledged his homosexuality shortly after retiring from pro football. Ah, Stanford, America’s premiere institution for gay scholar athletes. I'm not sure that's really gonna help recruiting...
 
From my understanding of the biology of homosexuality, there is some basis for believing it is genetic but not only that...that it might mostly be epigenetic. That is, cues from the environment come in and are picked up by the genome, which then triggers certain genes to be expressed (or switched off). There is some research into gay twins, where there is a higher likelihood that both twins will be gay than just one of them, but I need to find sources for it so don't quote me. And I believe there is even research about siblings showing that it is more likely that a younger male sibling will be gay than an older male sibling (and this has something to do with the hormones in the womb). For women, of course, it is not so 'straight'forward (ha). It is hard to say, however, that it is exclusively genetic...like most things with humans, I should think its a combination of genetic, environmental, and cultural factors.
 
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