Discussion

=Discussion=

we should each write 500 words!!!!!!!!! james and becky: please put your research in written essay form by midnight Tamara, please write more for the intro and try to go for 250 words at the intro and conclusion!

tell your findings & discuss them! POST your findings AND write out what it this data/statistics mean


 * JESSIE AND JAMES (yeah yeah pokemon): Homosexualism in different continents: North America, Africa, Asia, South America, and Middle East/Africa. Find statistics (regarding acceptance or punishment/penalty, marriage, adoption, AIDS) and research on how different cultures view homosexualism.

According to http://www.samesexmarriage.ca/equality/world.html and http://ilga.org/ilga/en/index.html interactive map, same-sex marriage is allowed in Canada, Mexico, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, South Africa, Norway, Argentina (first country in Latin America to recognize it), and the USA states of Massachusetts and California.

http://ilga.org/ilga/en/index.html interactive map: Adoption by gay couples is allowed in: Denmark, South Africa, Argentina, Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Spain, Belgium, and the UK. Major countries where Gays or Lesbians not allowed to/banned from serve(ing) in the armed forces: USA, Barbados, Cuba, Jamaica, Iran, Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya, Namibia, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, North Korea...mostly African, Asian and Middle Eastern countries. Female to Female relationships: imprisonment (less than 10 years) in Morocco, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Algeria; imprisonment (of more than 10 years) in Bangladesh; death penalty in Iran. Male to Male relationships: fines in Angola and Mozambique; imprisonment (more than 10yrs) in Guyana, Papa New Guinea, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Libya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi, Bangladesh, Malaysia, and United Arab Emirates; imprisonment (less than 10yrs) Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Guinea, Senegal, Cameroon, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Swaziland, Syria, Oman, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan,Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Bhutan, Myanmar, and Indonesia; death penalty in Mauritania, Nigeria, Sudan, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, and Iran.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35890027/ns/health-aids/ "New HIV infections are increasing among homosexuals, drug users and prostitutes who don't seek help because of laws that criminalize these practices, the head of the U.N. AIDS agency said. Michel Sidibe, the head of UNAIDS, said Monday "it is unacceptable" that 85 countries still have laws criminalizing same sex relations among adults, including seven that impose the death penalty for homosexual practices....bad laws are being introduced by countries making it impossible for these at risk groups to have access to services....about 33 percent of new HIV infections are in men having sex with men, a significant increase...in the Caribbean where most countries don't have repressive laws, only between 3 and 6 percent of HIV infections are in male homosexuals....in the United States, where laws are not restrictive and the gay community was the first to tackle AIDS, Sidibe said it is "shocking" that more than 50 percent of new HIV infections last year occurred among homosexuals. And he said in the 19-25 age bracket the infection rate was even higher...."After almost no cases a few years ago we are seeing again this new peak among people who are not having access to all the information... Of the 16 million people in the world who are injecting drugs, almost 3 million are HIV positive, and among them less than 4 percent have access to treatment and less than 8 percent have access to services, Sidibe said. "It's the same for men having sex with men," he said....a prevention revolution" including a campaign in major cities around the world...."

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/archive/ldn/2009/aug/09082609 "The CDC had already [|revealed] last year that approximately 53% of the estimated 56,300 new HIV cases in 2006 were in homosexual men, with the African American population being particularly affected."

http://www.unaids.org/globalreport/Global_report.htm "an estimated 5.6 million people living with HIV in 2009, South Africa's epidemic remains the largest of the world...Increasing evidence indicates that unprotected paid sex, sex between men, and the use of contaminated drug-injecting equipment by two or more people on the same occasion are significant factors in the HIV epidemics of several coun- tries with generalized epidemics. Together, those modes of transmission are believed to account for about 33% of new HIV infections in Kenya and almost 40% in Ghana, for example....Available evidence suggests that in sub-Saharan Africa, as elsewhere in the world, the majority of men who have sex with men also have sex with women." - PAGE 16 (chapter 2) has graph of gay sex in sub saharan africa - same idea goes for Asia (pg20) - gay sex not as responsible for new infections in eastern europe and central asia - pg31: Concentrated epidemics—primarily among men who have sex with men in central and south america, 1/3 of the proportion of the population living with HIV in Central and South America that live in Brazil. - p35 in north america and western/central europe: Resurging epidemics among men who have sex with men: number of HIV diagnoses among men who have sex with men rose by 86% between 2000 and 2006 - pg40 SEX BETWEEN MEN IS HEAVILY STIGMATIZED IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA AND IS A PUNISHABLE OFFENCE IN MANY COUNTRIES. HIV services for men who have sex with men tend to be limited (112). Evidence indicates that men who have sex with men bear a disproportionate share of the HIV burden in at least some countries.


 * BECKY: USA: Don't Ask Don't Tell, teen suicide/celebrity PSAs, ties in with bullying(?)...

-**Don't Ask Don't Tell**

1)Initiated by President Carter and implemented by President Reagan, this policy had been under attack by gay and lesbian military personnel since its inception as discriminatory 2)Clinton pressed on, and on 29 January 1993, he suspended the former policy that banned gay and lesbian personnel from service outright. 3)Daniel Choi (hunger stike until President Obama ends DADT and adds a non-discrimination policy to the [|military code].)
 * [|"'Dan Choi Handcuffs Himself to White House In Don't Ask Don't Tell Protest'"]. [|Huffington Post]. March 18, 2010 . [].

4)In December, Congress voted to end the 17-year old "don't ask, don't tell" policy that prohibited military service by anyone who was openly gay or bisexual. President Obama applauded the vote, which he had long urged, and signed the bill on Dec. 22.

-**Bullying at School** 1) Participants described whether they had ever been verbally harassed (eg, being called the Japanese equivalents of “fagot”, “homo”) or bullied in school by others because of being perceived as gay or homosexual. Participants indicated whether they had ever attempted to commit suicide. They completed four validated measures of psychological health. Anxiety was measured using the Japanese version of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI),[|16] adapted from the original STAI measure[|17]; scores >44.0 indicated high levels of anxiety in Japanese samples (http://jech.bmj.com/content/60/11/962.full?rss=1)

2)A survey of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered adults’ experiences of bullying at school (N = 190); a survey of the psycho-social correlates and long-term effects of bullying with a sub-sample of 119 participants; and, finally, a small number of in-depth interviews with 16 participants. Participants’ experiences of bullying in school were long-term (mean: 5 years) systematic, and were perpetrated by groups of peers rather than by individuals. Participants were unlikely to report incidents of bullying either to teachers or to someone at home

http://www.gaypridebrazil.org/sao-paulo/events/history.asp "Vote against Homophobia: Defend Citizenship!” 3.3 million people.
 * JESSIE: São Paulo, Brazil: host of biggest gay pride parade in the world....San Fran, Argentina.
 * 14th Parade – June 6, 2010**