The DOMA Project: Our Faces - Families Fight to Defeat DOMA (by gaybinationals)

“17 years ago today, the Defense of Marriage Act was introduced to Congress. (http://www.domaproject.org/2013/05/ma…)

Since it was signed into law by President Clinton it has caused immeasurable harm to lesbian and gay Americans and our families. It has destroyed marriages, torn apart families, depeleted savings, forced us to defer plans to start families, to buy a home, start a business or pursue our education. DOMA has robbed us of years of our lives, it has left us poorer, unable to care for our families, forced into exile, separated from those we love, living in fear of a deportation, hiding in a double closet and enduring a constant, crippling burden of stress that few relationships could survive.

And yet we are still here, tens of thousands of lesbian and gay binational couples, DOMA WARRIORS all of us, not waiting, but fighting. Not sitting on the sidelines, but joining a movement made by us for us. We have empowered each other, and we have created a supportive environment to share our stories and lift ourselves up. DOMA has destroyed much, but our love endures.

We have fought this fight for love, and we will win.

On the anniversary of that dark day, we’d like to extend our thanks to thousands of gay and lesbian binational couples who have joined together in the fight to defeat DOMA. We are closer than ever to winning full equality.

Support The DOMA Project: www.domaproject.org/donate

LGBT and Undocumented (by seeprogress)

“There are more than a quarter million immigrants in the United States today that are both LGBT and undocumented. These are some of their stories.

A married Ugandan gay couple have won their case to stay in Sweden. Lawrence Kaala obtained a residency permit in Sweden yesterday (28 February), after fears he would be deported back to native Uganda with its strict anti-gay laws.

Vargas testifies (by ThinkProgress TP)

Openly gay, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and undocumented immigrant Jose Antonio Vargas provides powerful testimony at immigration reform hearings.

Q.

I wonder how many opposite-sex asylum seekers have to make sex videos to ‘prove their sexuality’?

Q.

The UK has failed in protecting gay asylum seekers, according to a leading expert.

S Chelvan, a renowned lawyer reputable in asylum claims based on sexual or gender identity, has said refugees are put under increasing pressure to ‘prove’ their sexual orientation.

In a lecture to be delivered this week at the Law Society, he will say some asylum seekers are resorting to film themselves having sex just to prove they are gay to government officials.

Chelvan said: ‘Gay and lesbian asylum seekers come to the UK for protection, but a culture of disbelief sees some go to extreme lengths to prove their sexuality.

‘They find themselves in an intolerable position. It is inhumane. It is wrong.’

The UK Border Agency decided in 2010 to allow gay men, lesbians and bisexuals if they were not allowed to live openly in their country of origin.

Before 2010, those seeking asylum were often refused permission on the grounds they could behave with ‘discretion’ when returned.

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elise@huffingtonpost.com

 

WASHINGTON — Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Thursday that she will instruct immigration agents to consider same-sex relationships the same as heterosexual ones in determining whether an individual should be deported, a victory for advocates and members of Congress who worried verbal instructions could be ignored.

Although the administration had previously told reporters and others that same-sex relationships will be taken into account when making deportation decisions, putting it in writing for field officers is considered to be an important change.

“This is a huge step forward,” Rachel B. Tiven, executive director of gay rights and reform group Immigration Equality, said in a statement. “Until now, LGBT families and their lawyers had nothing to rely on but an oral promise that prosecutorial discretion would include all families. Today, DHS has responded to Congress and made that promise real.”

DHS released guidelines in 2011 instructing agents to consider a variety of factors — including family relationships, the age an individual came to the U.S. and other ties to the country — when determining whether the immigrant is high-priority for deportation.

More than 80 House Democrats, led by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.) and Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), called in late July for the Department of Homeland Security to add a specific mention of same-sex couples to its guidelines.

Napolitano responded on Thursday to that letter with individual, but identical, messages to each of those members. There will be official guidance next week to ICE offices around the country.

“In an effort to make clear the definition of the phrase ‘family relationships,’ I have directed ICE to disseminate written guidance to the field that the interpretation of the phrase ‘family relationships’ includes long-term, same-sex partners,” she wrote in the letter. “As with every other factor identified in Director Morton’s June 11 memorandum, the applicability of the ‘family relationships’ factor is weighed on an individualized basis in the consideration of whether prosecutorial discretion is appropriate in a given case.”

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Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said of the roughly 9,000 asylum claims approved by the Immigration and Refugee Board every year, a few hundred are related to sexual orientation.

Photograph by: Fred Chartrand, The Canadian Press, Postmedia News

Canada has likely welcomed more than 100 gay refugees from Iran since taking on gay rights in 2009, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said Friday after his government announced that standing up for gay rights on the inter-national stage would be among Canada’s foreign policy priori-ties going forward.

In a speech before the Montreal Council on Foreign Relations, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird discussed a range of human rights topics, including Canada’s efforts to combat forced marriages among young girls and the global criminalization and persecution of homosexuals.

A week after severing relations with Iran by pulling Canadian diplomats from Tehran and sending Iranian diplomats in Canada packing, Baird also offered kudos to Kenney for “working to make Canada a safe haven for Iran’s persecuted gay community.”

Kenney said Canada’s efforts included getting about 800 resettled refugees a year out of Turkey, virtually all Iranian.

“One of the things I did was to increase our resettlement tar-get for refugees out of Turkey in general, partly to respond to the particularly acute resettlement needs of gay Iranian refugees but also other Iranian refugees like dissidents, journalists, Christians and Baha’is, all of whom face persecution,” Kenney said in an interview with Postmedia News.

Homosexuality is punishable by death in Iran, and many gays and lesbians have fled to neighbouring Turkey. There they can file a claim with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which then works with countries like Canada on resettlement.

But while Turkey is tolerant towards homosexuality, Kenney said many nonetheless face “secondary persecution” there. Since learning of the issue from the Toronto-based Iranian Railroad for Queer Refugees, a group that supports and advocates on behalf of gay Iranian asylum seekers, Kenney has also instructed staff to ensure UN officials know that Canada is prepared to “fast-track” those in “urgent need of resettlement.”

For a little over a year, Canada has also been assisting sponsored gay refugees with resettlement costs, he said.

He is aware of a small number of sponsored gay refugees also coming from East Africa. Of the roughly 9,000 positive asylum claims approved, Kenney said a couple hundred are likely related to sexual orientation.

  Leatitia Nanziri says if she’s forced to go home to Uganda she could be stoned to death because of her sexual orientation. (CBC)

A Toronto woman is fighting to stay in Canada, saying her life would be in danger if she is deported back to Uganda because she is a lesbian.

Leatitia Nanziri says if she’s forced to go back to Uganda she could be stoned to death. But the Canadian government has refused her claim and says it doesn’t believe she is a lesbian.

She is scheduled to be deported Aug. 4.

“They do mob justice, by stoning you…or bringing the tire of the car,” she said. “They bring it and light it and they put it on you until you melt into ashes.”

Disputes on sexuality

Nanziri first fled Uganda, where homosexuality is illegal, in 2004.

She told CBC News that she was outed by her girlfriend’s father, then police officers beat and raped her in November 2003 and January 2004.

She says she was six months pregnant from a forced sexual encounter by the time she landed in Toronto in June 2004. When she arrived in Canada she filed a claim for refugee status but was refused.

She then filed a humanitarian and compassionate claim in 2005, which was refused earlier in 2012.

Some of the dispute regarding her sexual orientation comes from the fact Nanziri then had a second child with a man. Nanziri says she had hoped it would make her life easier and she would no longer be alone.

“I’d never been happy…he promised me heaven on earth,” she said.

However, her partner left her when he found out about her sexual past, she said.

Her last option is to get a stay of removal, which is being filed today in federal court. If a federal court judge believes her, it means the removal order will go away.

Nanziri’s lawyer, Asiya Hirji, said her children, eight-year-old Mathias, and Mary are entitled to remain in Canada.

“They should be entitled to have their mother with them,” she said.

If deported, Nanziri says she must take the children with her, because she has no family to leave them with in Canada.

“They cannot stay here,” she said. “Stay here with who? They don’t have anybody but me. I am their mother and their father, they depend on me.”

Citizenship and immigration officials have yet to respond to questions from CBC News about the case.

By Tom Godfrey ,Toronto Sun

First posted:Saturday, March 17, 2012 05:26 PM EDT| Updated:Saturday, March 17, 2012 05:38 PM EDT

Gay resistance: The couple, in an emotional letter that was presented to court, claimed they would be killed if turfed to Israel for being a same-sex Muslim couple.

TORONTO - A Muslim lesbian couple who claim they will be killed if deported to their native Israel due to their sexuality is being given a second chance to remain in Canada.

Iman Musa and Majida Mugrabi, of Toronto, arrived in Canada from Tel Aviv in 2007 and filed unsuccessful refugee claims that were appealed to the Federal Court of Canada.

Judge Roger Hughes on March 8 granted the couple another hearing by an Immigration and Refugee Board based on new information that shows one of Mugrabi’s cousin confessed to the “honour killing” of his sister 12-years ago.

The couple in an emotional letter that was presented to court claimed they would be killed if turfed to Israel for being a same-sex Muslim couple.

“We have a same sex relationship, which is forbidden back home,” the couple wrote. “We have dishonoured our families by running away to try and start a life with each other.”

The couple, through their lawyer, Daniel Kingwell, said they were pleased by the court’s decision but still fear for their lives.

“As Muslim women, we don’t have any rights in our families,” the couple wrote. “The fact that we are lesbians does not help.”

The letter claimed Mugrabi’s grandfather is a Muslim sheikh, who “repeatedly threatened to kill her.”

“Same sex relationships are not permitted or accepted in all Arabic countries,” they said. “There are many stories about honor killing and we are victims of this.”

They said same-sex relationships is banned by most Muslims worldwide.

“Musa’s brother has threatened to kill her if she does not leave her lesbian relationship and marry a male,” the women alleged. “There are several police complaints regarding the threats of her brother.”

Kingwell said the women will be killed if deported to Israel.

“The situation is not the greatest for gays or lesbians in some Arab countries,” Kingwell said on Saturday, adding many “honour killings” occur from family members who slay their same-sex or gay relatives.

“This couple face a real threat from Muslims in a Conservative country,”

Kingwell said. “It is not often the court will overturn a decision as this.”

No date has been set for a new hearing.

Pinal County AZ Sheriff and Congressional candidate Paul Babeu

Nick R. Martin February 18, 2012, 3:54 PM   

Updated: February 18, 2012, 5:01 PM

While saying for the first time publicly that he is gay, rising Republican star Sheriff Paul Babeu used a dramatic news conference on Saturday in Arizona to angrily deny allegations that had been leveled against him by an ex-boyfriend in a newspaper report a day earlier.

“I’m here to say that all these allegations that were in one of these newspapers are absolutely, completely false,” the sheriff said while while surrounded by a number of his deputies and fellow elected officials. “Except for the issues that refer to me as being gay. Because that’s the truth. I am gay.”

The well-known border hawk and Congressional candidate was hit late Friday with accusations from a Mexican immigrant who said he dated the sheriff for years and was threatened with deportation if he ever told anyone about their romance.

The accusations were first reported by the Phoenix New Times newspaper and came complete with text messages reported to be from the sheriff and compromising photos of him.

At the news conference, Babeu, who is single with no children, confirmed he had a romantic relationship with the man, who has so far only been identified as “Jose.” However he denied Jose’s claims that threats had followed their breakup.

“At no time did I or anyone who represents me ever threaten deportation. Ever,” Babeu said, adding that he had no reason to believe Jose was in the country illegally. “Everything that I understand is that he’s in legal status here.”

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Rachel Maddow interviews Pulitzer Prize winner Jose Vargas who recently came out as an illegal immigrant. Jose came out as gay when he was still in high school.

Q.

soupsoup:

In April 2008, I was part of a Post team that won a Pulitzer Prize for the paper’s coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings a year earlier. Lolo died a year earlier, so it was Lola who called me the day of the announcement. The first thing she said was, “Anong mangyari kung malaman nang tao?”

What will happen if people find out?

I couldn’t say anything. After we got off the phone, I rushed to the bathroom on the fourth floor of the newsroom, sat down on the toilet and cried.

Remarkable story of coming out both as gay and as undocumented.

Q.