Gay rights campaigners raised the alarm today after Cameroon arrested 10 women on suspicion of being lesbians.
Canada: Alberta doctors continue to bill province for treating homosexuality as a mental disorder: here.
Know Thine Enemy! The 16 worst anti-gay moments from last week: here.
Related articles
Dear Kitty. Some blog 
Teachers and students challenge homophobia
It is sad that Michael Gove appears to be giving the green light to homophobia in schools.
By arguing that schools are exempt from the Equality Act, he is trying to turn back the clock while schools around the country are celebrating diversity for February’s LGBT History Month.
Teachers have been using lessons, assemblies and activities to help LGBT staff and students feel safe and welcome.
Students in some schools are feeling confident about coming out and are supported by their classmates—something unthinkable a few years ago.
Craig Parr, South London
Schools are important places to challenge homophobia.
Stonewall, the LGBT campaign group, reports that at least 65 percent of LGBT students suffer some form of abuse. But teachers can support students who might identify as LGBT and question negative attitudes towards students’ sexualities.
Students and teachers at my school changed the atmosphere around homophobia in February. Some students took assemblies themselves.
In one assembly a student came out as gay.
At the end several Muslim girls wearing the hijab ran up and hugged her—defying the views of gay writers such as Johann Hari that “exactly zero percent of Muslims” are pro gay rights.
To anyone watching it was clear that the Muslim girls saw the LGBT students in the context of their own experience of oppression and supported them.
LGBT History Month culminated in a concert organised by and for students which featured over a dozen acts, black and white, gay and straight. They brought the house down.
What better way is there to trash prejudiced assumptions about what different groups of young people might think? It created an atmosphere of acceptance, respect and pride, and it affected everybody present.
Not every person’s prejudice might have disappeared, but the idea of being free to express yourself regardless of your sexuality became part of the mainstream of school life.
There is a long way to go in the struggle for LGBT rights. But last month showed the potential to challenge homophobia. It’s time to put the fallout from Section 28 in the dustbin of history once and for all.
Name withheld, North London
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=27657
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Liberia becomes latest African country seeking to criminalize homosexuality; 2 new bills
ROBBIE COREY-BOULET Associated Press
6:54 a.m. CST, March 1, 2012
MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) — Two new bills introduced into Liberia’s legislature would make the country the latest on the African continent to punish homosexuality with possible jail time.
Liberian law currently does not explicitly address homosexuality. “Voluntary sodomy” is a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in prison, but there have been no recent convictions, according to the most recent U.S. State Department Human Rights Report.
A bill introduced by Rep. Clarence Massaquoi, which is currently being reviewed in committee, makes “same-sex sexual practices” a second-degree felony, punishable by up to five years imprisonment.
It also would apply to anyone who “seduces, encourages (or) promotes another person of the same gender to engage in sexual activities.”
“Homosexuality is not part of our existence as a people,” Massaquoi said in an interview at his legislative office. “We have never been like that.”
It comes on the heels of a bill introduced early in February by former first lady, Senator Jewel Taylor, making same-sex marriage a first-degree felony, with sentences ranging up to 10 years in prison.
Members of the underground gay and lesbian community say their security situation has worsened, and that they have recently been subjected to regular threats and occasional violence.
“Liberia has made considerable progress in consolidating democracy over the last five years, but the proposed bill to increase penalties for consensual same-sex activity is a regrettable step backward,” said Corinne Dufka, Human Rights Watch’s senior West Africa researcher. “Such laws not only violate the right to privacy and to nondiscrimination, they also serve as a distraction from addressing the many real problems facing Liberia, such as strengthening the judiciary, addressing poverty and ensuring good economic governance. ”
Contempt for homosexuals has led to anti-gay legal measures elsewhere in Africa. Last year, Nigeria’s Senate voted in favor of a bill that would criminalize gay marriage, gay advocacy groups and same-sex public displays of affection. A newly added portion of the bill levels 10 years in prison for those found guilty of organizing, operating or supporting gay clubs, organizations and meetings.
And in 2009, a Ugandan legislator introduced a bill that would impose the death penalty for some gays and lesbians. The bill was reintroduced last month, though its author has said the death penalty provision will be dropped.
In January, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said African nations should stop treating gays as “second-class citizens, or even criminals.” Ban told African leaders that discrimination based on sexual orientation “had been ignored or even sanctioned by many states for far too long.”
The push to criminalize homosexuality in Liberia comes amid an increasingly virulent national conversation about gay rights that has occasionally spilled over into violence.
A newly former gay rights advocacy group, known as the Movement for the Defense of Gays and Lesbians in Liberia (MODEGAL), began campaigning to legalize same-sex marriage in January.
Leaders of MODEGAL have been chased off university campuses by angry mobs on two separate occasions. Leroy Archie Ponpon, the group’s head, was ferried away from a radio station by police on Feb. 23 after hundreds of people gathered to protest his appearance on a breakfast program.
The debate also comes as a number of government officials have spoken out against gay rights in recent weeks. House Speaker Alex Tyler said in January that no bills endorsing gay rights would be advanced during his tenure.
Liberia’s press secretary Jerolinmek M. Piah has said that President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf will not sign into law any bill supporting same sex marriage. “This government opposes gay rights,” he said.
Sirleaf has not commented herself on the recent anti-gay bills, which would have to be approved by both the Senate and the House of Representatives before landing on her desk.
Local newspapers began publishing anti-gay editorials in December, not long after US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced a government-wide policy to push for the decriminalization of homosexuality overseas.
Liberian media outlets have consistently reported that the policy calls for the revocation of foreign assistance in countries that don’t guarantee gay rights, despite assurances from U.S. officials to the contrary. Liberia receives more than $200 million annually from the U.S. government.
The U.S. Embassy in Monrovia has remained silent on the issue, even as gay rights campaigners have come under attack.
In an interview last week, outgoing US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said she was concerned that further comment from the Embassy might only inflame anti-gay sentiment, especially in light of “occasionally irresponsible” reporting by local media.
“I can’t be guaranteed that a public statement that we give will be put out in the way that we want the statement put out,” she said.
But Massaquoi confirmed that he had met privately with U.S. officials, who he said expressed “concern” over his bill while stressing that foreign assistance to Liberia would not be conditional on gay rights.
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