Calling all Europeans: important LGBT survey

This is the deal: if you're not directly concerned, pass it on!

 

Take part in the biggest ever European LGBT survey.

The results of the survey will be published on the webpage of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) in the first half of 2013.

If you know of others who might be interested in taking part in the survey, please do forward the link. We would especially like to encourage older lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender persons to take part in the survey too.

List of organisations:

Please click here to see a list of relevant organisations that might provide you with further assistance if you have been discriminated against or have been victim of crime.                                       

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• New survey about LGBT life in the EU! (queerlandia.com)
• Stop the violence against lesbian, bisexual and transgender women! (lgbt-ep.eu)
• Homophobic MEPs quizz Commission on equality funding (lgbt-ep.eu)
• European Parliament calls on Nigeria to stop persecuting LGBT people (lgbt-ep.eu)

A first time I could have done without

It's been a hot day in a busy, dusty town. We're all desperate for a cool drink before dinner and, as luck would have it, there are quite a few decent cafés nearby. The three of us find a table in the shade and wait for a waiter or waitress to take our order. Nothing happens.

We are being ignored completely. Nobody so much as glances at us, except a man who looks like a tramp but is probably the owner, from his demeanour. From where I am sitting I can see him talking to the barman, who is giving us some very nasty looks. We're not going to get served.

Fine, we'll pass it on. We know quite a few people in town, funnily enough. We find a small fast-food restaurant where the friendly, hard-working Muslim staff are quite happy to serve Anne-Marie, who has only just started transition and doesn't pass well at all.

She's used to it, poor soul. It's the first time in my whole life I have seen vicious small-minded bigotry at work. I think what made it worse is that they can't have missed her collecting funds for AIDS research in the square outside throughout the entire afternoon.

Just Plain Sense: Till Political Convenience Do Us Part (reblog)

Christine Burns has just published a very important article about marriage (and civil partnership) equality rights for all, gay and straight, in the UK. You should read this. It's important.

The coalition government has begun a three month public consultation on equal civil marriage for same sex couples.

Central to this debate is the argument that having two kinds of legal partnership -- civil partnership for same sex couples and marriage for heterosexual ones -- is divisive and discriminatory. Why, if they are meant to be the same thing, should this difference persist? And, if they're not the same thing, does this imply that one is inferior to the other?

The government proposes to make civil marriage (the legal part of what heterosexual couples currently sign up to) available to same sex couples as well. They're not proposing to impose changes on the religious aspects of marriage.

At the same time the coalition proposes to retain civil partnership for same sex partners who don't want the new option, but not to open it to opposite sex couples.

Arguments against all aspects of these proposals will consume the media during the consultation period, and undoubtedly again when a Bill is debated in Parliament.

All this noise threatens to erase the viewpoint of one group whose rights could be the "collateral damage" in whatever accommodation is made. These are the people whose interests I want to discuss.

READ THE REST HERE: Just Plain Sense: Till Political Convenience Do Us Part

Related articles

• Civil partnership =/= marriage (freethoughtblogs.com)
• Stonewall publishes draft marriage equality bill (pinknews.co.uk)
• Equal Marriage Consultation: Time to get the old Stylus Out :) (researchingreform.wordpress.com)
• Now you have your say on plans for Gay Civil Marriage Equality (queeringthechurch.com)