Indonesia’s religious leaders declare war on “LGBT propaganda” to return to 'normalcy'.

Indonesia’s religious leaders declare war on “LGBT propaganda” to return to 'normalcy'. (Asian News).

Leaders from Indonesia’s religious groups have waded into the debate over the place of the LGBT community in society.

In a joint statement issued on Thursday, the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), the Indonesia Catholic Bishops’ Conference (KWI), the Council of Buddhist Communities (Walubi) and the Confucian Supreme Council of Indonesia (Matakin) rejected all forms of propaganda in favour of LGBT legalisation, stating that LGBT behaviours are a “social illness” that violates religious teachings and principles of the Constitution.

For MUI leader Yusnar Yusuf, not encouraging LGBT values and behaviors is key to helping LGBT people get "back on track to normalcy".

Putting limitations on the promotion of LGBT activities would act as a form of "treatment" in encouraging the elimination of any tendencies toward deviant sexual behavior.

"It is important now to invite everyone to think positively about them in that they are sick people who need to be healed," Yusnar said at a press conference on Thursday.

Although religious leaders also condemned all forms of violence against gay people, they joined government in calling for a stop to foreign funding for NGOs that promote LGBT rights.


The government’s policy is to tolerate homosexuality as a prerogative of some people in society (who must be protected as citizens), but to ban public campaigns that seek to influence other people to adopt that lifestyle.

The controversy over homosexuality came to the fore after the Support Group and Resources Centre (SGRC) applied for a permit to operate at the University of Indonesia, which the Minister of Research, Technology and Higher Education, Muhammad Nasir, turned down.

For its part, the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission (KPI) announced new regulations – discriminatory according to their critics – that ban all forms of communication on TV, radio, or other means of communication that promote LGBT activities.


The government has also blocked popular microblogging website Tumblr, claiming it contained pornography and promoted LGBT relationships.

LGBT refugee shelter to open in Berlin after a considerable number of attacks against LGBT migrants.

LGBT refugee shelter to open in Berlin after a considerable number of attacks against LGBT migrants. (RT).

An LGBT-only dormitory is set to welcome 120 homo- and transsexual refugees in the Treptow-Köpenick borough of Berlin in March, local media report. The move comes amid a considerable number of attacks against LGBT migrants reported in refugee shelters.

From August to December 2015, the Lesbian and Gay Federation in Germany (LSVD) - the largest non-governmental lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights organization in the country - received information on 95 accounts of violence towards LGBT refugees. The majority of those cases took place in asylums, local media report.

The number of LGBT asylum seekers in Berlin is estimated to be around 3,500. They are considered to be a group in need of special protection, and are therefore supposed to be provided with accommodation in hostels. However, every second LGBT refugee is denied this opportunity, according to Joana Hassoun, a LSVD representative.

“We are sure that this dormitory is necessary,” Marcel de Groot, director of the LGTB consultancy Schwulenberatung Berlin, said, as quoted by Die Welt. His organization will be in charge of running the dormitory as soon as its construction is completed.

“We are optimistic that it will be finished in March,” a spokesperson for Berlin's Senate Department for Labor, Women's Affairs and Integration said on Monday.

The German capital will become the country’s first federal area to house this type of shelter.
A scandal over cases of sexual abuse by refugees and police cover-ups is gathering pace across Europe.


Related: Pro Turkish 'Islamist' AKP Female supporter: "LGBT shouldn't be allowed on the streets"

Germany - Three North African men suspected of stoning transgender women in Dortmund.

Germany - Three North African men suspected of stoning transgender women in Dortmund. (Jpost).

Three young men from North Africa sought to stone two transgender women in the western German city of Dortmund on Sunday.

According to a report on Friday on television station SAT1.NRW, the men attacked Yasmine und Elisa, two transgender women, near the city’s main train station.

“Within seconds we were tossed around…and they took stones from a gravel bed on the corner and threw them at us,” said Elisa.

A police car at the train station appeared as the stoning attack unfolded and arrested the men.

The German media as a general rule do not disclose the last names of victims to protect their privacy. The three men are between 16 and 18 years-old and are known to the authorities because of theft and assault arrests.

The Dortmund police official Kim-Ben Freigang said the suspects told the police that “such persons must be stoned.“

German media reported that one suspect said "You whores must be stoned."

Yasmine installed a security camera at her residence where she lives with Elisa after the attacks.  “That was barbaric what they did. They are barbarians,” Yasmine said.

Lethal homophobia is widespread in the Arab world and Iran. A 2008 British Wikileaks dispatch noted that the Islamic Republic of Iran executed “between 4,000 and 6,000 gays and lesbians” since the Islamic revolution in 1979. Hmmm.....Importing their values and Enriching the German Culture. Read the full story here.

 

LGBT-Muslim Solidarity campaign in East London after suffering abuse from fellow Muslims.

LGBT-Muslim Solidarity campaign in East London after suffering abuse from fellow Muslims.(petertatchellfoundation).

Unite against all hate. Oppose homophobia. Support LGBT Muslims. Wednesday 21 October, 12 noon-2pm, Whitechapel tube station

A new LGBT-Muslim Solidarity campaign is being launched by the Peter Tatchell Foundation, to engage with Muslim & other communities. It will start with a street stall outside Whitechapel tube station, London, on Wednesday 21 October, from 12 noon - to 2pm.

The stall will include LGBT Muslims and non-Muslims and will involve direct dialogue with people in the local community. We’ll be inviting the public to stop and chat with us - and offering them leaflets about LGBT and Muslim issues, including leaflets from the LGBT Muslim organisation Imaan,Naz and Matt Foundationand from other Asian LGBT groups.

“Our initiative has been prompted by requests from East London LGBT Muslims who have suffered abuse and harassment, often from fellow Muslims. They’ve asked us to come to East London to challenge homophobic prejudice,” said Peter Tatchell, Director of the human rights organisation, the Peter Tatchell Foundation.

“The aim of this campaign is to reach out, create dialogue and bring the Muslim and LGBT communities together, to oppose the prejudice, discrimination and hate crime that both communities experience. We want to support and empower LGBT Muslims, to give them a voice and visibility - and to tackle anti-LGBT prejudice in the Muslim community and anti-Muslim prejudice in the LGBT community. Our goal is unity and solidarity to oppose all hate.

This is the first phase in our LGBT-Muslim solidarity campaign, aimed at building bridges between Muslims and non-Muslims, for our common good,” he said.

Ejel Khan, a gay Muslim and social activist, and a participant next Wednesday, said:

“It is imperative that our LGBT Muslim voices are heard and that we engage with the mainstream Muslim community. I’ve spoken in some mosques on LGBT issues but many mosques still don’t acknowledge and support their LGBT worshippers. That needs to change.”

Sohail Ahmed, who is gay and from a devout Muslim family, will also be on the stall next Wednesday. He added:

"As a gay Muslim myself, I always feared that Muslims and non-Muslims alike would view me negatively for being both Muslim and gay. I thought that mentioning I'm gay would make me and my religion look bad and that everyone would judge me as being a 'fake Muslim.'

I felt so alone and thought that no one would understand me. I never told anyone. This campaign has the opportunity to change lives, and even save some. I wish I had come across something like this during my darkest moments as a young gay Muslim. No one deserves to be alone and unsupported, especially not LGBT Muslims, who often go through extreme difficulties because of their sexuality, faith and ethnicity."

Video - Hillary Clinton on Gay Marriage in 2004.

Video - Hungarian Imam Ahmed Miklós Kovács: Homosexuals Are the Filthiest Creatures

During a Friday sermon on July 10, 2015, Imam Ahmed Miklós Kovács, Vice President of the Hungarian Muslim Community, stated that homosexuals are "the filthiest of Allah's creatures," and that Muslims "must never accept this disease."He instructed followers not to paint their Facebook image with rainbow colors.

Video - Imam Slams Homosexuals in Friday Sermon at the Hague, Adds: Unveiled Women Hurt Men's Feelings

Pro Turkish 'Islamist' AKP Female supporter: "LGBT shouldn't be allowed on the streets"

Pro Turkish 'Islamist' AKP Female supporter: "LGBT shouldn't be allowed on the streets". (BB).

The AKP rejects allegations of divisiveness, saying it represents all of Turkey’s citizens, according to a response to Bloomberg questions from its media office on Wednesday. Criticism of some of the opposition parties’ individual candidates is only meant to point out contradictions and hypocrisy in their campaigns, it said.

In Kurdish regions in the east, Erdogan strode across podiums with a Kurdish-language Koran in hand, a controversial act in a country where the president’s oath binds him to safeguard “the principles of the secular republic.” He warned crowds that opponents are anti-Muslim and worshippers of an ancient religion with origins in Iran.

“We have documents of them teaching Zoroastrianism in the mountains,” Erdogan shouted at a rally in Kars, northeast Turkey, on Tuesday, linking the HDP to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which is outlawed and listed as a terrorist organization. “These people have no relationship whatsoever with Islam. My pious Kurdish brothers won’t get behind them.”

In a speech to bus drivers at the drivers' federation in Ankara on May 28, Erdogan painted the HDP as hypocritical by pointing out that it had chosen an openly homosexual candidate for the western city of Eskisehir.

“I don’t exploit the feelings of my Kurdish brothers in the east and southeast, then clink glasses with White Turks in Istanbul,” Erdogan said. “We’re not the ones running a so-called mufti in Diyarbakir and a homosexual in Eskisehir.”

A mufti is an Islamic scholar, while the term “White Turk” generally refers to secularist, upper-class Turks. Baris Sulu, the HDP’s 37-year-old candidate in Eskisehir, said Turkey had outgrown that intolerance and such remarks were signs that the opposition was on the right path.

“Gay citizens live in this country and have for years,” Sulu, an architecture student who works for a transsexual advocacy group, said in a phone interview last week. “This is not an LGBT issue, it’s a human rights issue,” he said, using the abbreviation for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender.

Yet the AKP message has resonance among some Turks. Cigdem Alpaslan, a home-maker in Ankara who’s the same age as Sulu, said she agreed with the party on homosexuality.

“I swear our president and the AKP are right,” Alpaslan said. “Forget about these types getting into parliament. They shouldn’t even be out on the streets.” Hmmmm.....Has of course nothing to do with Islam.

Gay activists inform Moscow Mayor's Office on holding Conchita Wurst march of bearded women, men.

Gay activists inform Moscow Mayor's Office on holding Conchita Wurst march of bearded women, men.(RBTH).

Moscow gay activists have sent a notification to the Moscow Mayor's Office on holding the Conchita Wurst March of Bearded Women and Men, the GayRussia.ru portal reported.

"According to the application filed, the event should be held on Tuesday, May 27 - on the day of the 21st anniversary of cancelling criminal prosecution for voluntary homosexual relations in Russia," the statement said.

The march was announced to be held at the pedestrian section of Tverskoy Boulevard from Pushkinskaya Square to Nikitskiye Vorota Square between 1 and 2 p.m. with up to 100 participants, the portal reported.

"Many lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) activists want to use the image of Conchita Wurst during the coming 9th annual gay parade planned for Saturday, May 31. Due to this, the application to hold the Conchita Wurst march of bearded people open the gay parade season and will become a trial balloon in our relations with the Moscow Mayor's Office this year," the portal quoted founder of the Moscow gay parade movement Nikolai Alexeyev as saying.

"Bearded lady" Conchita Wurst (a.k.a. transvestite Tom Neuwirth) won the Eurovision 2014 musical contest held in Copenhagen on May 6-10, having received 290 points.Hmmmm.......боже мой.

Related:

Eurovision’s bearded lady gets conservative Russians hot under the collar

Video - Human Rights Watch compiles clips of homophobic violence in Russia.

Video - Human Rights Watch compiles clips of homophobic violence in Russia.Read the full story here.