Vitit Muntarbhorn, an international law professor from Thailand and the first-ever United Nations (U.N.) Independent Expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, has resigned effective October 31. In a September 8 letter to the U.N. Human Rights Council, he regretfully cited illness and family obligations as the reasons for stepping down.
Edith Windsor, the gay-rights activist whose landmark case led the Supreme Court to grant same-sex married couples federal recognition for the first time and rights to a host of federal benefits that until then only married heterosexuals had enjoyed, died on Tuesday in Manhattan. She was 88.
Key West’s gay-owned Island House resort — one of the most famous men’s resorts in Florida — sustained damage from Hurricane Irma, but is working to repair and reopen. Island House is currently closed and assessing the damage caused by the mammoth storm, which battered the Florida Keys on Monday. Most of the resort thankfully survived Irma’s impact, though much of its beautiful foliage was torn to shreds by the wind and rain.
While progressives in Los Angeles have been focused on the potential deportation of 800,000 undocumented DREAMers and President Trump’s order to eliminate the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DADA) program in six months—which California Attorney General Xavier Becerra filed suit to stop on Monday – there are thousands of refugees with proper documentation who are being stopped from legally immigrating to America.
Today, HRC Foundation released a new report, Trump’s Administrative Abuse and the LGBTQ Community, highlighting the Trump-Pence administration’s highly unusual and abusive efforts to quietly roll back critical protections, programs and services for the LGBTQ community by bypassing longstanding administrative policies and customs for instituting such changes.
In what is becoming a routine pattern, the Trump administration has hired yet another individual with a history of anti-LGBTQ statements to fill a high-profile position. Mercedes Schlapp, a frequent conservative pundit on Fox News and the wife of American Conservative Union Chairman Matthew Schlapp, will join the White House Press Office in a senior role, as Politico reported.
The right of lesbian couples and single women to have access to assisted reproduction was “a matter of social justice” and will likely be legislated next year, a French government minister said on Tuesday. The move would mark a significant extension of gay rights in France, where violent protests preceded the legalization of same-sex marriage and adoption by homosexual couples in 2013.
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