News
African LGBT activists seek international support
Advocates call for gov’t accountability during New York briefing
Liesel Theron, co-founder of Gender DynamiX in South Africa (Photo courtesy of IGLHRC)
NEW YORK — African LGBT activists on Monday called upon the international community to do more to support the continent’s gay rights movement.
Friedel Dausab, a Namibian HIV/AIDS advocate, said during a briefing in lower Manhattan that the U.S. and other governments can create spaces where LGBT rights activists “can actually come and speak to our own governments.” Gift Trapence, executive director of the Centre for the Development of People in Malawi, added embassies should engage with local advocates on the ground.
“They need to get the information from the people on the ground so they’re informed,” said Trapence.
Activists from Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Cameroon and Zambia also took part in the briefing the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission held a day before the 65th anniversary of the U.N. General Assembly’s ratification of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
They urged the U.S. and other countries to hold African governments more accountable for ongoing LGBT rights abuses.
British Prime Minister David Cameron in 2011 said his government would consider withholding foreign aid to commonwealth countries that ban homosexuality. President Obama in the same year announced the administration would consider a country’s LGBT rights record in the allocation of foreign aid.
“We’re not asking the U.K. or foreign governments to cut aid to Africa,” said Juliet Mphande, executive director of Rainka Zambia, during the IGLHRC briefing. “LGBTI individuals are also Africans, so ultimately we all benefit from that aid.”
Mphande said the U.K. and other European nations should instead begin to address the lingering effects of colonialism that brought anti-sodomy laws into African countries. These include Namibia’s law against homosexuality that has been on the books since 1927.
“What the conversation we need to start having is how the U.K. and foreign governments can start cleaning up their own mess,” said Mphande. “These penal codes that we inherited in most of the African countries are their laws.”
Rev. Kapya Kaoma of Christ Church in Hyde Park, Mass., who is from Zambia, questioned whether it was effective for President Obama to criticize the criminalization of homosexuality during a June press conference with Senegalese President Macky Sall in his country’s capital. Obama’s comments came a day after the U.S. Supreme Court found a portion of the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional and struck down California’s Proposition 8.
Kaoma said the strategy of western LGBT rights advocates to pressure government officials to publicly speak out against “what they perceive to be homophobia” does not necessarily work in Africa.
“President Obama would have achieved a lot of good if he had called the president of Senegal, brought him into a room and had spoken to him,” he said. “In the Africa context it just reinforces the myth the western world is the one which is exporting homosexuality into Africa.”
Senegal is among the more than 70 countries in which consensual same-sex sexual relations remain illegal. Homosexuality remains punishable by death in Mauritania, Sudan and portions of northern Nigeria.
Obama and the State Department have repeatedly spoken out against a Ugandan bill that sought to impose the death penalty upon anyone convicted of repeated same-sex sexual acts. The administration has also criticized Cameroon, Zimbabwe and Nigeria over their government’s LGBT rights records.
South Africa in 1994 became the first country in the world to add sexual orientation discrimination protections to its constitution. It is also among the 15 nations in which same-sex couples can legally marry.
A 2003 South African law allows trans people to change the gender marker on their identity documents without undergoing sex-reassignment surgery.
Liesl Theron, co-founder of Gender DynamiX, a South African trans advocacy group, said during the IGLHRC briefing the statute has not actually been applied. She further noted the one public hospital in the country that provides sex-reassignment surgery has a 36-year waiting list for those who want to undergo the procedure.
“As much as we have the best constitution and we have every other type of law and thing that is on the side of the citizens of South Africa to have an equal life and a better life, it’s just not the same reality for transgender people,” said Theron.
Belarus
Belarusian president signs bill to allow LGBTQ rights crackdown
Alexander Lukashenko known as ‘Europe’s last dictator’
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Wednesday signed a bill that will allow his government to crack down on LGBTQ advocacy.
The measure that Lukashenko, who is known as “Europe’s last dictator” and is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, signed would punish anyone found guilty of “propaganda of homosexual relations, gender change, refusal to have children, and pedophilia” with fines, community labor, and 15 days in jail.
The House of Representatives, the lower house of the Belarusian National Assembly, last month approved the bill. The Council of the Republic, which is the parliament’s upper chamber, passed it on April 2.
Belarus borders Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
Kazakhstan is among the countries that have enacted Russian-style anti-LGBTQ propaganda laws in recent years.
The European Commission in 2022 sued Hungary, which is a member of the EU, over its anti-LGBTQ propaganda law. Hungarian voters on April 12 ousted Viktor Orbán, a Putin ally who had been their country’s prime minister since 2010.
District of Columbia
Gay D.C. police lieutenant arrested on child porn charges
Matthew Mahl once served as head of LGBT Liaison Unit
D.C. police announced on April 14 that they have placed one of their lieutenants, Matthew Mahl, on administrative leave and revoked his police powers after receiving information that he was arrested in Maryland one day earlier.
Although the initial D.C. police announcement doesn’t disclose the reason for the arrest it refers to a statement by the Harford County, Md. Sheriff’s Office that discloses Mahl has been charged with sexual solicitation of a minor and child porn solicitation.
“On Tuesday, the Harford County Sheriff’s Office contacted MPD’s Internal Affairs Division shortly after arresting Lieutenant Matthew Mahl,” the D.C. police statement says.
“The allegations in this case are extremely disturbing, and in direct contrast to the values of the Metropolitan Police Department,” the statement continues. “MPD’s Internal Affairs Division will investigate violations of MPD policy once the criminal investigation concludes,” it says.
“MPD is not involved in the criminal investigation and was not aware of the investigation until yesterday,” the statement adds.
Mahl served as acting supervisor of the MPD’s then Gay & Lesbian Liaison Unit in 2013 when he held the rank of sergeant. D.C. police officials placed him on administrative leave and suspended his police powers that same year while investigating an undisclosed allegation.
A source familiar with the investigation said Mahl was cleared of any wrongdoing a short time later and resumed his police duties. Around the time he was promoted to lieutenant several years later Mahl took on the role as chairman of the D.C. Police Union, becoming the first known openly gay officer to hold that position.
NBC 4 reports that Mahl, 47, has served on the police force for 23 years and most recently was assigned to the department’s Special Operations Division.
Records related to Mahl’s arrest filed in Harford County District Court, show Sheriff’s Department investigators state in charging documents that he allegedly committed the offenses of Sexual Solicitation of a Minor and Child Porn Solicitation on Monday, April 13, one day before he was arrested on April 14.
The court records show he was held without bond during his first appearance in court on April 14. A decision on whether he would be released while awaiting trial or continue to be held without bond was scheduled to be determined during an April 15 bond hearing. The outcome of that hearing could not be immediately determined.
National
Demonstrators disrupt OMB director hearing over PEPFAR
Capitol Police arrested five protesters
A group of protesters interrupted Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought during his testimony before Congress on Wednesday.
Vought was at the Cannon House Office Building to give testimony to the House Budget Committee.
Committee Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) began the hearing by touting what he described as economic accomplishments of the Trump-Vance administration’s economic accomplishments. Ranking Member Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) disputed those claims in his opening statement.
Boyle went on to admonish Vought for not attending a committee hearing in the previous year.
Vought, the “Project 2025” architect, was invited to speak after Arrington and Boyle made their statements.
Shortly after Vought began reading his statement, Housing Works CEO Charles King stood up in the gallery and began shouting, “PEPFAR saves lives: spend the money!”
The U.S. Capitol Police moved quickly to escort King from the room. Other activists began chanting with King as they unfolded signs bearing a picture of Vought’s face and statements such as, “Vought’s cuts kill people with AIDS,” and “Protect PEPFAR from Vought.”
The group of HIV/AIDS activists included independent activists, former U.S. Agency for International Development and PEPFAR staff, members of Health GAP, Housing Works, and the Treatment Action Group. Six activists were escorted from the hearing and the U.S. Capitol Police detained five of them.
The HIV/AIDS treatment activists protested at the hearing in response to the dismantling of global health programs, including PEPFAR, a federally-funded program credited with saving millions of lives from HIV/AIDS, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.
“Russell Vought is directly responsible for illegally withholding Congressionally appropriated funds for PEPFAR and related global health initiative,” King said in a statement provided to the Washington Blade. “These funding disruptions have already contributed to preventable deaths and threaten to reverse decades of progress in the fight against HIV worldwide. Enough is enough. Congress must ensure Vought stops this deadly sabotage.”
Belarusian president signs bill to allow LGBTQ rights crackdown
‘The Pitt’ stars discuss what season two gets right about queer representation
My family voted for Trump and I cut off contact
Queery: Meet artist, performer John Levengood
Project GLOW celebrates LGBTQ acts
Trump budget targets ‘gender extremism’
Comings & Goings
Minimal version of ‘Streetcar Named Desire’ heading to Dupont Underground
Viktor Orbán ousted in Hungarian elections
