PHILADELPHIA — The U.S. State Department lifted its travel ban on Mariela Castro and has authorized Ms. Castro to visit Philadelphia to participate in Equality Forum 2013, a national and international LGBT civil rights summit with Cuba as the featured nation. Mariela Castro, daughter of Cuban President Raul Castro, accepted being a panelist on the…
PHILADELPHIA,– Equality Forum, a national and international LGBT civil rights organization, calls on the U.S. State Department to allow Mariela Castro, a Cuban LGBT civil rights activist, to visit Philadelphia for Equality Forum 2013. The State Department issued a visa to Ms. Castro to visit New York for U.N. meetings, but did not authorize Ms. Castro to travel to Philadelphia to…
With the departure of one of the U.S. State Department’s most vocally pro-gay advocates in its history, Hillary Rodham Clinton would be pleased to learn the agency has just launched a new Web site for gay travelers at http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/lgbt/lgbt_5887.html. The site is devoted to making travel as easy and as incident free for the LGBT community….
Should there be a third gender category birth certificate gender assignment? The Australian Capital Territory (ACT) is considering just that after its Law Reform Advisory Council advised the government in Canberra that gender options for birth certificates and other identity documents should include the options female, male, intersex, to be advised or indeterminate. In 2010,…
WASHINGTON (CNN) – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sustained a concussion after becoming dehydrated and fainting, a State Department official said. Clinton had been suffering from a stomach virus at the time, according to a statement on Saturday from Philippe Reines, deputy assistant secretary of state. She is being monitored by doctors and is…
Weighing in with his “expert” analysis, the Religious Freedom Coalition’s William J. Murray, speaking to the American Family Association in a recent radio interview, “explained” how and why the attacks, sieges and tragedies at several Middle Eastern sites of American embassies and consulates occurred. According to Murray, the main problem with American foreign policy is that it is overrun by elite…
In June of 2011 the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) changed its policies for transgender veterans who access veterans’ services, especially the Veterans Healthcare Administration (VHA) portion of the VA system. When the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) announced the policy change, they stated that transgender veterans would be allowed to change their genders…
If you live in the U.S. and you’re not of trans history, chances are extremely high that the federal government considers you either male or female. By that I mean that every federal agency – every executive branch department – you have dealings with will gender you as male or female, and that gender identification…
Monday, March 5, 2012, I went to the Veterans Affairs (VA) San Diego Medical Center to change my gender marker from male to female. The previous Friday, the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) informed trans veterans that the VA had clarified their policy, and were now using the U.S. State Department’s standard, developed for…
In this second part of San Diego LGBT Weekly’s look at the recent inaugural report from the United Nations Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Geneva, questions have inevitably been raised about what needs to be done on a global basis to protect LGBT people worldwide. Among its conclusions, the report…
