The Lesbian News Stack 2010 - August 25

By maxime68 on Wednesday, August 25, 2010 - 22:13

Get ready for another fresh pile of political news with a focus on European LGBT content, e.g. why Europe might get equal rights via a case of labor law.

The World

LGBT Danmark, The Danish National Organisation for Gay Men, Lesbians, Bisexuals and Transgendered persons, published a strategy for working outside of Europe, incl. the global South.

Europe

It looks as if there was a high possibility that lesbian and gay couples could soon have access to the same benefits as heterosexual couples, applicable across all member states of the European Union. This is a request made by Niilo Jääskinen, Advocate General with the European Court of Justice, following the complaint of a gay man from Hamburg, who currently receives a lower pension than his heterosexual colleagues. According to Niilo Jääskinen this is in breach with the European anti-discrimination directive and he is even convinced that it doesn’t matter if the member country has existing legislation for same-sex unions or not.

This almost sounds too good to be true.

Armenia / UK

The British Council - Armenia were contacted already earlier this year on the topic of sponsoring the openly homophobic radio station Radio Van. Back then, it seemed as if their tagline the Council is committed to Equal Opportunity and Diversity was important to them as they had the station remove lots of homophobic references from their webpage. Broadcasting was not monitored though and presenters and the head of the station were free to continue their discriminatory rants. And the British Council – Armenia only recently proudly announced a new cooperation with said radio station (via Unzipped: Gay Armenia).

Belgium

Cops and queers, do they exclude each other or is it possible for a gay man to survive and thrive in the testosterone laden working environment of being a police officer? The Belgian police wants to know more about it and has started an investigation into these questions in order to promote diversity.

Finland

A study interviewing about 1.000 persons found out that the majority of them, 54%, are in favor of gender neutral marriage.

France

Le Monde, a French daily paper, got hold of a confidential report ordered by the minister of Education, who made the fight against discrimination his top priority. Overall the report says that all forms of discrimination at school that were looked into are being banalized. This applies to disability, sexism, sexual orientation and origin (via Yagg).