Monday, October 31, 2016

"Lexophile" is a word used to describe those that have a love for words......

"Lexophile" is a word used to describe those that have a love for words, such as "you can tune a piano, but you can't tuna fish", or "to write with a broken pencil is pointless."

A competition to see who can come up with the best lexophiles
is held every year in an undisclosed location.
Here are this year's winning submissions:

...When fish are in schools, they sometimes take debate.
... A thief who stole a calendar got twelve months.
... When the smog lifts in Los Angeles U.C.L.A.
... The batteries were given out free of charge.
... A dentist and a manicurist married. They fought tooth and nail.
... A will is a dead giveaway.
... With her marriage, she got a new name and a dress.
... A boiled egg is hard to beat.
... When you've seen one shopping center you've seen a mall.
... Police were summoned to a daycare center where a three-year-old was resisting a rest.
... Did you hear about the fellow whose entire left side was cut off? He's all right now.
... A bicycle can't stand alone; it's just two tired.
... When a clock is hungry it goes back four seconds.
... The guy who fell onto an upholstery machine is now fully recovered.
... He had a photographic memory which was never developed.
... When she saw her first strands of grey hair she thought she'd dye.
... Acupuncture is a jab well done. That's the point of it.

And finally:
... Those who get too big for their britches will be totally exposed in the end.

While the hockey world awaits its first openly gay player, an ECHL ref has opened the door

By: The Hockey News

Oct 30, 2016

Out in the Open: Hockey's first gay referee

ECHL referee Andrea Barone. Author: Tom Brummett

Andrea Barone is chasing the NHL dream as any aspiring professional referee would. That he's gay shouldn't matter. But in the slow-changing hockey, he knows it does.

BY JASON BUCKLAND
He heard it after a game in the spring, those three letters, harmless on their own but toxic when pieced together.

“Fag.”
It was April 5, 2016, at the Silverstein Eye Centers Arena in Independence, Missouri. Andrea (pronounced “Awn-DRAY-uh”) Barone, a referee in the ECHL, had just called a game between the Missouri Mavericks and Tulsa Oilers. Following a 4-1 Oilers win, tempers flared. After the final horn, the two teams began to jaw at one another. Tensions ran high, and then an Oilers player shouted it.
“Fag.”
Barone had heard this before, plenty of times. The 27-year-old has been refereeing hockey since he was 14, first as a part-time job growing up in Montreal and later, professionally, in leagues in western Canada and across the United States. He knew hockey culture. He knew words like this were bandied about it as if they upset no one. He knew most of the players he’d officiated in rinks from British Columbia to North Carolina meant nothing by them, but he also knew the sport allowed such casual bigotry to go largely unpunished.
Barone has a soft voice, a reasonable tone. He is not prone to argument. And so with this level head, on that spring evening in Missouri, he calmly approached the offending player near the dressing room after the game. Whenever he hears a homophobic slur used on the ice, Barone’s preferred method of address is to wait for a subtle moment, during a timeout or an intermission, to pull the player or coach aside and quietly tell them the language is inappropriate. “Hey,” he will caution. “You can’t call guys anything homophobic. Whether it’s fag or gay or queer, don’t make it homophobic, and don’t make it racist.”
Most times, Barone said, guys are immediately apologetic, however in Independence he met some pushback. “What’s the big deal?” the Oilers player protested following Barone’s instruction. “I don’t get it.”
Barone took a breath. “Well, I’m gay,” he replied. “I take offense to that.”
The player’s face dropped. He had no idea Barone was a rare breed in hockey, the only known openly gay man in the sport’s pro ranks, at any level and in any capacity. He had no idea Barone had staked for himself a lofty and important goal he is on track to achieving: becoming the first openly gay referee, and thus the first openly gay man, in the NHL.

But in that moment, Barone had only empathy on his mind, to impart to the Oilers player the real consequences and hurt of a word still used so casually in hockey. “You could see how embarrassed he was,” Barone said. “The message was very clear at that point why that was wrong.”
------
He heard them in the atrium, the bullets whizzing by, the eruption of the shooter’s rifle. It was Sept. 13, 2006, at Dawson College in Montreal, the site of one of Canada’s most infamous mass shootings.
Andrea Barone was there.
Barone was raised in Quebec, a jock in a family that cared little about sports. He worked out, and he played hockey. When he wasn’t on the ice playing, he refereed. So immersed in the customs of the sport, he knew them backward and forward.
He attended Dawson to study social science, and on that day he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. From about 25 feet away, Barone laid eyes on the shooter, who entered the school and opened fire. Barone dropped to the floor, chaos igniting around him. He crawled to a place where it was safe to stand, then rose to run. But then he saw her: 18-year-old Anastasia De Sousa, the lone casualty of the attack, face down on the ground, being tended to by a police officer.
Barone slowed. “I didn’t see her face,” he said. “I just knew it was a girl. A cop was kneeling next to her, taking her pulse. There was just blood pouring out of her abdomen, a pool of blood around her.” As Barone lingered near the dying woman, the officer screamed at him to run, to get out, to find safety and find it fast.
That day, Barone escaped the shooter’s rampage, but the killer stayed with him for many years after. The trauma was so great, it was more than six months until Barone says he was “functional” again, longer still – up to four years, by his gauge – until he had finally emerged from the fog of the attack. “Those are the lost years,” he said.
It was during this dark time Barone realized he was gay. Raised in rinks and arenas, Barone observed a youth hockey culture so relaxed in its homophobia that he never once questioned his own sexuality. “It was very isolating,” he said. “It wasn’t a friendly environment to be around. That in itself kind of never let me even think of the idea I might be gay. It wasn’t like I knew I was gay and hid it. It was, I legitimately had no idea I was gay.”
Coming out was the next step. But how? Barone had since moved across Canada, to Vancouver, and though his family and friends were supportive people, he worried over the right way to tell them. In the fall of 2011, he decided to flood them with phone calls, one after another, giving the news to each of them in rapid succession and praying it would go well.

I can’t wait till the day when this actually isn’t a big deal and teenagers aren’t committing suicide

One of the friends he called was Andrew Dulgar, a close pal from high school. “I was completely blindsided,” Dulgar said. “I’m like, ‘That is awesome, man! Are you serious?’ ” Barone replied that he was, that he really was gay. Dulgar, still shocked, had but one message for his friend: “Lets get you a boyfriend, then!”
His family, father Remo, mother Beba and brothers Marco and Luca, who later came out as gay himself, immediately had his back, and now it was time for Barone to navigate how to come out to his sport. Years went by as Barone refereed junior hockey in B.C., not hiding his sexuality to those who wondered but not being totally open about it, either. The challenges were clear, and the questions were large. How would the hockey world treat Barone if it learned his sexuality?
Late last year, after he had moved to Nashville to work the SPHL, Barone realized his own significance in the sport. Nowhere in pro hockey, he understood, was there an openly gay man (Brendan Burke, the late son of Calgary Flames president of hockey operations Brian Burke, was likely the closest person to fit the bill.) Barone had a chance to become the first, not to serve himself but to become a pioneer of sorts for others in the sport to follow.
In December, he penned an article for Outsports, detailing his own crisis in coming out, his ambition to reach the NHL as a referee, and the honest, gritty work that still needed to be done in changing a homophobic hockey culture. “As much progress that has been made,” he wrote, “the sports world is still unfamiliar territory for the LGBTQ community.”
Barone’s story did not quite join the national discussion, but it made important waves, nonetheless. It caught the eye of Stephen Walkom, the NHL’s senior vice-president and director of officiating, who learned then of Barone’s quest to reach the league. More than that, Barone received countless emails from parents and athletes, some of them openly gay and some of them closeted still. In ranks as high as the NCAA, swimmers and rowers and hockey players discussed their own stories with Barone. “The most humbling ones are, ‘I read your article. I’m going to come out now,’ ” Barone said. Those gestures floor the young referee even today.

------
He heard it following his coming out to the hockey world: who cares?
An innocent question, but a loaded one, too, supportive in one context and dismissive in another. Who should care about Andrea Barone’s sexual orientation? The answer is nobody and everybody, all at once.
In one sense, yes, Barone concedes, that he is gay should not matter. In a perfect world, it should not be news. It should not be something he needs to disclose. In that regard, who cares indeed?
But hockey is not a perfect world, and to close the book on the sport as if it is already as inclusive as it needs to be is small-minded. People do care about Barone – not because he is gay, but because he is trying to become the first openly gay man in a league that has none of them. “You may not care personally (that I’m gay), but people should care for the closeted athletes who have no idea what’s going on,” Barone said. “Their personal life is upside down. It gives them exposure that there are people like them in sports.”
Asking “who cares?” with a wave of the hand and an uncaring tone, Barone said, undermines the struggle of gay people trying to make it in sports. “I can’t wait till the day when this actually isn’t a big deal and teenagers aren’t committing suicide,” he said.
There is hope. Though the NHL has no known openly gay men in its most visible roles, other sports leagues do, most notably to Barone’s pursuit in MLB (longtime umpire Dale Scott came out publicly in 2014) and in the NBA (referee Bill Kennedy did the same last year.) To Barone, that the NHL cracked down so swiftly on a potential anti-gay crisis last spring, when Blackhawks forward Andrew Shaw was suspended and fined for using a homophobic slur during a playoff game, showed the league is just as ready as others for the presence of an openly gay referee. “(We) believe our officials should be judged on their skill level, character and work ethic,” Walkom said. “Not on their sexual orientation.”
For now, Barone climbs the ranks. He is a rising force as a referee, promoted last year to work the ECHL, where he will call this season with hopes to reach the AHL soon. From there, the only way up is to the biggest pro hockey league there is.
One step at a time, Barone sees the sport changing, its homophobia easing, even if it has a far ride to go until it has ceased completely. Barone can only keep reaching for the NHL, sharing his story, taking comfort in the words many players have shared with him since he came out publicly last year. “Hey, man,” they will say out on the ice, in that phrasing fit just for the sport. “What you’re doing takes a lot of balls. Keep it up.”
This is an edited version of a feature that appeared in the Season Preview issue of The Hockey News magazine. Get in-depth features like this one, and much more, by subscribing now.

Sunday, October 30, 2016

The gay people pushed to change their gender

By Ali Hamedani BBC Persian

Iran is one of a handful of countries where homosexual acts are punishable by death. Clerics do, however accept the idea that a person may be trapped in a body of the wrong sex. So homosexuals can be pushed into having gender reassignment surgery - and to avoid it many flee the country.

Growing up in Iran, Donya kept her hair shaved or short, and wore caps instead of headscarves. She went to a doctor for help to stop her period.
"I was so young and I didn't really understand myself," she says. "I thought if I could stop getting my periods, I would be more masculine."
If police officers asked for her ID and noticed she was a girl, she says, they would reproach her: "Why are you like this? Go and change your gender."
This became her ambition. "I was under so much pressure that I wanted to change my gender as soon as possible," she says.
For seven years Donya had hormone treatment. Her voice became deeper, and she grew facial hair. But when doctors proposed surgery, she spoke to friends who had been through it and experienced "lots of problems". She began to question whether it was right for her.
"I didn't have easy access to the internet - lots of websites are blocked. I started to research with the help of some friends who were in Sweden and Norway," she says.
"I got to know myself better... I accepted that I was a lesbian and I was happy with that."
But living in Iran as an openly gay man or woman is impossible. Donya, now 33, fled to Turkey with her son from a brief marriage, and then to Canada, where they were granted asylum.

It's not official government policy to force gay men or women to undergo gender reassignment but the pressure can be intense. In the 1980's the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa allowing gender reassignment surgery - apparently after being moved by a meeting with a woman who said she was trapped in a man's body.
Shabnam - not her real name - who is a psychologist at a state-run clinic in Iran says some gay people now end up being pushed towards surgery. Doctors are told to tell gay men and women that they are "sick" and need treatment, she says. They usually refer them to clerics who tell them to strengthen their faith by saying their daily prayers properly.
But medical treatments are also offered. And because the authorities "do not know the difference between identity and sexuality", as Shabnam puts it, doctors tell the patients they need to undergo gender reassignment.
In many countries this procedure involves psychotherapy, hormone treatment and sometimes major life-changing operations - a complex process that takes many years.
That's not always the case in Iran.
"They show how easy it can be," Shabnam says. "They promise to give you legal documents and, even before the surgery, permission to walk in the street wearing whatever you like. They promise to give you a loan to pay for the surgery."
Supporters of the government's policy argue that transgender Iranians are given help to lead fulfilling lives, and have more freedom than in many other countries. But the concern is that gender reassignment surgery is being offered to people who are not transgender, but homosexual, and may lack the information to know the difference.
"I think a human rights violation is taking place," says Shabnam. "What makes me sad is that organisations that are supposed to have a humanitarian and therapeutic purpose can take the side of the government, instead of taking care of people."
Psychologists suggested gender reassignment to Soheil, a gay Iranian 21-year-old.

Then his family put him under immense pressure to go through with it.
"My father came to visit me in Tehran with two relatives," he says. "They'd had a meeting to decide what to do about me... They told me: 'You need to either have your gender changed or we will kill you and will not let you live in this family.'"
His family kept him at home in the port city of Bandar Abbas and watched him. The day before he was due to have the operation, he managed to escape with the help of some friends. They bought him a plane ticket and he flew to Turkey.
"If I'd gone to the police and told them that I was a homosexual, my life would have been in even more danger than it was from my family," he says.
There is no reliable information on the number of gender reassignment operations carried out in Iran.
Khabaronline, a pro-government news agency, reports the numbers rising from 170 in 2006 to 370 in 2010. But one doctor from an Iranian hospital told the BBC that he alone carries out more than 200 such operations every year.
Many, like Donya and Soheil, have fled. Usually they go to Turkey, where Iranians don't need visas. From there they often apply for asylum in a third country in Europe or North America. While they wait - sometimes for years - they may be settled in socially conservative provincial cities, where prejudice and discrimination are commonplace.
Arsham Parsi, who crossed from Iran to Turkey by train in 2005, says that while living in the city of Kayseri, in central Turkey, he was beaten up, and then refused hospital treatment for a dislocated shoulder, simply because he was gay. After that he didn't leave his house for two months.

Image caption Arsham Parsi on the train track that brought him to Turkey

Later he moved to Canada and set up a support group, the Iranian Railroad for Queer Refugees. He says he receives hundreds of inquiries every week, and has helped nearly 1,000 people leave Iran over the past 10 years.
Some are fleeing to avoid gender reassignment surgery, but others have had treatment and find they still face prejudice. Parsi estimates that 45% of those who have had surgery are not transgender but gay.
"You know when you are 16 and they say you're in the wrong body, and it's very sweet... you think. 'Oh I finally worked out what's wrong with me,'" he says.
When one woman called him from Iran recently with questions about surgery, he asked her if she was transsexual or lesbian. She couldn't immediately answer - because no-one had ever told her what a "lesbian" was.
Marie, aged 37, is now staying in Kayseri after leaving Iran five months ago. She grew up as a boy, Iman, but was confused about her sexuality and was declared by an Iranian doctor to be 98% female.

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"The doctor told me that with the surgery he could change the 2% male features in me to female features, but he could not change the 98% female features to be male," she says.
After that, she thought she needed to change her gender.
Hormone therapy seemed to bring positive changes. She grew breasts, and her body hair thinned. "It made me feel good," she says. "I felt beautiful. I felt more attractive to the kinds of partners I used to have."
But then she had the operation - and came away feeling "physically damaged".
She had a brief marriage to a man but it broke down, and any hope she had that life would be better as a woman was short-lived.
"Before the surgery people who saw me would say, 'He's so girly, he's so feminine,'" Marie says.
"After the operation whenever I wanted to feel like a woman, or behave like a woman, everybody would say, 'She looks like a man, she's manly.' It did not help reduce my problems. On the contrary, it increased my problems...
"I think now if I were in a free society, I wonder if I would have been like I am now and if I would have changed my gender," she says. "I am not sure."
Marie starts to cry.
"I am tired," she says. "I am tired of my whole life. Tired of everything."
Watch Ali Hamedani's report on Our World at 16:10 and 22:10 GMT on Saturday 8 November and 22:10 GMT on Sunday 9 November on BBC World News. Assignment is on BBC World Service from Thursday.

Why You Shouldn't Let Your Dog Lick Your Face

If you're a dog owner (or lover), you've probably let Fido smother you in kisses a.k.a. tongue licks. And sure, you probably know it's not the best idea (bad bacteria and all that) but you don't care because you love your dog.

There are new reasons why you really shouldn't let your pooch lick your face

UN elects 14 countries to three-year terms on Human Rights Council

Saturday 29 October 2016 at 4:01 PM ET by Ram Eachambadi

© WikiMedia (U.S. Mission Geneva/ Eric Bridiers)

[JURIST] The UN General Assembly [official website] on Friday elected [press release] 14 member-states by secret ballot to serve three-year terms on the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) [official website] beginning January 1. The newly elected countries include Brazil, Croatia, Egypt, Hungary, Iraq, Japan, Rwanda, Tunisia and the US. Countries re-elected for an additional term were China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the United Kingdom. Maldives was not considered because it had already served two consecutive terms on the HRC. The remaining 33 states will continue in their capacity as members.
The HRC is a UN body created in 2006 and charged with the responsibility to promote and protect all human rights [official backgrounder] around the globe and comprises a total of 47 elected member states. Council seats are allocated [UN News Centre report] on the basis of equitable geographic distribution to countries in Africa (13), the Asia-Pacific region (13), Eastern Europe (6), Latin America and Caribbean (8), Western Europe and others (7). Elections are held annually with the terms of many states expiring in 2017 and 2018. Last week the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed outrage [JURIST report] over the human rights crisis in Syria, stating that, "[t]he violations and abuses suffered by people across the country, including the siege and bombardment of eastern Aleppo, are not simply tragedies; they also constitute crimes of historic proportions." Earlier this month a spokesman from the UN Human Rights office said the High Commissioner is "seriously concerned" [JURIST report] about human rights violations in India-administered Jammu and Kashmir.

God's Plan For Ageing

Most seniors never get enough exercise. In His wisdom God decreed that seniors become forgetful so they would have to search for their glasses, keys and other things thus doing more walking. And God looked down and saw that it was good.

Then God saw there was another need. In His wisdom He made seniors lose coordination so they would drop things requiring them to bend, reach & stretch. And God looked down and saw that it was good.

Then God considered the function of bladders and decided seniors would have additional calls of nature requiring more trips to the bathroom, thus providing more exercise. God looked down and saw that it was good.

So if you find as you age, you are getting up and down more, remember it’s God’s will. It is all in your best interest even though you mutter under your breath.

Nine Important Facts To Remember As We Grow Older

Nine Important Facts To Remember As We Grow Older

#9 Death is the number 1 killer in the world.

#8 Life is sexually transmitted.

#7 Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.

#6 Men have 2 motivations: hunger and hanky panky, and they can't tell them apart. If you see a gleam in his eyes, make him a sandwich.

#5 Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day. Teach a person to use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks, months, maybe years.

#4 Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in the hospital, dying of nothing.

#3 All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to criticism.

#2 In the 60's, people took LSD to make the world weird. Now the world is weird, and people take Prozac to make it normal.

#1 Life is like a jar of jalapeno peppers. What you do today may be a burning issue tomorrow.

Saturday, October 29, 2016

Council demands to know if you are straight, gay, lesbian or transgender - before it does your recycling

08:26, 29 Oct 2016
Updated 08:47, 29 Oct 2016
By Jim Hardy , Stephen Jones

Suffolk County Council is asking householders about age, race, religion and what sexual orientation they are - along with disabilities, including whether they are HIV+

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16 comments

The council wants to know your sexual orientation - to do your recycling

A council want to know if people are straight, gay , lesbian or transgender - before it does their recycling.
Public-spirited residents who recycle tin cans, empty bottles and old newspapers to help the planet have reacted with outrage.
In a survey about opening hours and the way the recycling centres are laid out, Suffolk County Council (SCC) has also asked householders to detail their age, race, religion and what sexual orientation they are.
There are also being asked questions about disabilities - including whether they have HIV.
Although the survey said declaring yourself to be straight, gay or transgender is an 'optional' question, many people have taken to social media to complain about it being asked at all.

Residents have reacted with outrage after being quizzed by the council

Ian C asked the council: "What does it matter how many transgender individuals recycle their rubbish?"
Alison M posted: "I can understand why Suffolk County Council need to know whether disabled people use their sites, but as for sexual orientation, it is no one's business."
The recycling survey is not the first time Suffolk County Council has poked its nose into people's personal habits and background.
Similar questions were included in a survey about the Orwell River Crossing in Ipswich and about the plans for a new bus station in Sudbury.

Should authorities need to know such detail to process your old tin cans?

A council spokesman denies it is prying, and said the answers were needed "to find out about the diversity of those who contributed".
He said it was "entirely optional whether people filled in that part of the survey and their answers to the rest of the questions would be considered anyway".

He added: "It is important to know what people with disabilities or illnesses think about our services and it is important that we try to encourage diversity.
"We need to know that not everyone is the same."
The council told social media critics: "SCC understands that you may feel these questions are intrusive and highly personal. The information you submit is voluntary but it does make a difference."

People still don't seem convinced - among other social media comments today, 'Suffolk Exlie' posted: "The only question out of that list that is of any relevance is disability - can someone whose disability restricts their mobility use the facilities at the site?"
Time Traveller added: "I object to being asked my ethnicity and sexual preferences on a survey where this shouldn't be an issue, so every time I see one I fill it in with incorrect details (which makes it even more meaningless)."

Gaz Beadle urges gay footballers to "have the balls" to come out

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gaytimes.co.uk - In an opinion piece for the Daily Star, the reality TV personality condemned homophobia in sport, particularly football, and questioned why gay players don’t feel comfortable or safe enough to come...

ILGA releases new results of global attitudes survey on LGBTI people

The ILGA-RIWI Global Attitudes Survey on LGBTI People in partnership with Logo surveyed nearly 100,000 individuals in 65 countries

18th October 2016 06:43
Daniele Paletta | World

attitudes_lgbti_survey_personal_political

The cover of "The Personal and the Political: Attitudes towards LGBTI People around the World" report (ph. Tongzhi Hotline)

Geneva, October 18 – Today, the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA) shares the second round of results of the ILGA-RIWI Global Attitudes Survey on LGBTI People in partnership with Logo.

This is a new annual survey to gather credible data on public attitudes to particular issues related to sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics on every continent, and this release comes just a few days ahead of World Statistics Day to be celebrated on October 20.
Developed in cooperation with the Canadian technology company RIWI Corp. and in partnership with the US entertainment brand Logo, the survey collected answers to 31 questions from 96,331 online individuals in 65 countries. Significantly, the survey reached environments highly hostile to LGBTI people, such as Saudi Arabia and Iraq, resulting in the largest investigation of attitudes towards LGBTI people around the world ever conducted.

Click here to download the report:
The Personal and the Political: Attitudes towards LGBTI People around the World

While the first report, released in May 2016, looked at sexual orientation as its predominant subject, this second output, titled The Personal and the Political: Attitudes towards LGBTI People around the World, allows a deeper analysis into global attitudes also to gender identity, gender expression and to a lesser extent, intersex issues. It also shows relevant differences in how people respond at a personal level to encountering LGBTI people or issues, when compared to more ideological or political attitudes they may hold.
At a global average, for example, this survey shows that 67% of the world (strongly or somewhat) agrees that human rights should be applied to everyone regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity or expression.

“All the countries surveyed returned results over 50% in favour of this proposition, even those considered among the most hostile to sexual and gender minorities,” comments Aengus Carroll, co-author of the research. “This clearly demonstrates that countries’ legal policy and international practice can be very contradictory when compared to attitudes declared by their citizens.”

When people know each other first-hand, a de-stigmatising effect is often produced, countering the stereotyping too often perpetuated by religious and political leaders, as well as in media. At the global level, 46% of respondents know someone lesbian, gay or bisexual, while only 28% of respondents directly know someone who does not identity with the gender they were assigned at birth, or identifies as transgender.
Data also seem to show that wide awareness of issues related to sex characteristics, or intersex, still needs to emerge in societies, as 38% of respondents have no opinion on whether children whose sex characteristics are unclear at birth should be surgically assigned a gender by medical professionals, and not by a person looking after the welfare of the child.
Other data seem to show a significant bridge between what people feel is permissible at the personal level and the laws that govern sexual behaviour and expression: 38% of respondents globally feel that adults should be allowed to have private, consensual same-sex relationships. Interestingly, when extending the question to a matter of law (‘Should being lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans or intersex be a crime?’), it is seen that only 26% feel that such behaviours or expressions should be criminalized.

“Public attitudes in both hostile and friendly nations are not as extremely negative as might have been feared,” commented Renato Sabbadini, Executive Director at ILGA. “However, this does not erase the fact that violence and discrimination inflicted on sexually and gender diverse people all around the world continues unabated, and indeed is increasing in places. Too often we still see sexual and gender minorities being convenient scapegoats for leaders who are looking for support from more conservative sectors of their society.”

Proponents of traditional values often attempt to denaturalize diversity by framing it as something chosen or adopted in a person, rather than being an innate attribute. At the global level, only one quarter (23%) of respondents seem to feel people are ‘born that way,’ and only 21% of the world either ‘strongly’ or ‘somewhat’ disagree that gender is assigned at birth and always fixed.
On the other hand, though, it is evident that attitudes are changing: 52% of respondents either strongly or somewhat agree that bullying of LGBT young people is a significant problem; 65% of respondents globally have ‘no concerns’ if their neighbour were gay or lesbian (with extremes ranging from a 43% found in Africa to the 83% recorded in Oceania). Virtually identically, at the global level 64% of respondents would have no concerns if they were unable to identify their neighbour’s gender at first sight.

“Sexual and gender minorities are often the first casualty when traditional values are being appealed to,” comment Ruth Baldacchino and Helen Kennedy, Co-Secretaries General at ILGA. “This is why this global survey, with its evidence-based and non-anecdotal data, is a powerful tool for the advancement of human rights of LGBTI people around the world: it offers significant opportunity to inform the public about actual prevailing attitudes, and thereby assist not only LGBTI human rights defenders, but also agencies and governments, as well as regional and international organisations, in the efforts to reduce stigmatization of LGBTI people. Information and knowledge can indeed contribute to changing the world and the lived realities of many people worldwide who are still facing human rights violations.”

Key figures:
96,331 respondents completed the full battery of 31 questions on perceptions of LGBTI people. Data were collected from 65 States. The analysis focused on the 54 of them with more than 700 respondents each: 9 African States (eight of them criminalising States), 15 from Asia (of which six are criminalising States), 16 from the Americas (two criminalising States), 12 from Europe, and two States from Oceania. The survey went out in 22 languages, and was live for 60 days.
Methodology:
The survey fielding approach for this study used RIWI Corp.’s (www.riwi.com) patented Random Domain Intercept Technology™, which targets random Web users around the world, including remote locations, who are surfing online through an anonymous opt-in survey. More detail on the global RIWI survey system, which collects no personally identifiable information, may be found here: http://riwi.com.

Trump Supporters Vandalize Openly Gay Candidate’s Home With 'Death Threat'

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Homophobia in sport: Most fans 'would welcome gay players'

Homophobia in sport: Most fans 'would welcome gay players' - BBC survey

From the section Sport

Most sports fans in England, Wales and Scotland say they would be comfortable with their club signing a gay player, according to a BBC Radio 5 live survey.

It found 82% of supporters would have no issue with a gay player.
However, 8% of football fans said they would stop watching their team.
Last week, Football Association chairman Greg Clarke told MPs he was "cautious" of encouraging a player to come out because they may suffer "significant abuse" from fans.
Speaking to BBC Radio 5 live on Wednesday, Clarke said he stood by his "personal view" that "vile abuse" from a "small minority on the terraces" must be solved before any gay footballers "take that risk" to come out.
"If they want to take that risk I would respect them and support them," said Clarke. "But we can't promise to provide them at the moment with the required protection. We need to redouble our efforts to provide that safe space."
Clarke added that he hoped to achieve that in a "year or two".
In an online survey of more than 4,000 people - 2,896 of whom were sports fans - commissioned by Afternoon Edition and carried out by ComRes, 71% of football fans said clubs should do more to educate fans about homophobia.
And 47% of all sports fans - 50% of football supporters - say they have heard homophobic abuse at matches.
Former Premier League striker Chris Sutton told Afternoon Edition that Clarke had "taken the easy way out" by being "dictated to by 8% of cavemen".
Sutton, who played for Norwich, Blackburn, Chelsea and Celtic, said: "Coming out wouldn't be a problem in the workplace. Working at a football club is just like anywhere else. Players I played with wouldn't bat an eyelid.
"This 8% shouldn't be allowed in football grounds. By not taking it on, the 8% are the winners in all of this. Greg Clarke should be taking these people on.
"It's bonkers in our society that people like this can dictate whether someone can come out or not."

5 live polled more than 4,000 people into attitudes about homophobia in sport

Simone Pound, head of equality and diversity at the Professional Footballers' Association, told BBC Sport the PFA and the FA were not "blaming any one particular group" for a lack of visibly out gay players.
"I have worked in the game for over 15 years and I have certainly seen a shift in the culture as well as greater understanding and acceptance of LGBT people," she said.
"Coming out is a personal journey that is up to each and every individual. The PFA will continue our work tackling homophobia until someone does come out and thereafter."
An FA spokesman said it "welcomed the statistics" as a "sense check" on homophobia. It said it takes "strong action" against anyone found guilty of "homophobic, biphobic or transphobic abuse".

What else did the survey say?

On Wednesday, gay rugby league player Keegan Hirst, 28, guest edits a special Afternoon Edition programme on homophobia in sport on BBC Radio 5 live from 13:00 BST.
The survey of fans of 11 different sports also found:

More sports fans (12%) would feel uncomfortable with a rival player joining their club than a gay player (8%)
7% of sports fans would stop watching their team if they signed a gay player
57% of sports fans believe gay players should come out to help others do the same
18% of sports fans believe gay players should "keep it to themselves"
15% of sports fans think having a gay player on a team would make other team-mates feel uncomfortable
50% of football fans say they have heard homophobic abuse, 51% have heard sexist abuse and 59% have heard racist abuse

Are there any gay footballers?

Justin Fashanu became the first player in England to come out as gay in 1990, but took his own life in 1998, aged 37. No male professional player has since come out while playing in England.
Former Germany and Aston Villa player Thomas Hitzlsperger became the first player with Premier League experience to publicly reveal his homosexuality, in January 2014, after he had finished playing in England.
American ex-Leeds United winger Robbie Rogers announced his retirement at the same time as revealing he was gay, saying it was "impossible" to come out and remain in the game, although he subsequently returned to football with American team LA Galaxy.
Former England women's captain Casey Stoney was the first active footballer to come out in England since Fashanu, in February 2014.
Swedish lower league player Anton Hysen, son of former Liverpool player Glenn Hysen, publicly announced his homosexuality in an interview with a Swedish football magazine in 2011.

How does the UK compare globally?

Out On The Fields, a two-year global study of homophobia in sport, examined the experience for players and spectators in English-speaking countries including the UK, United States, Canada and Australia.
Study manager Erik Denison said "rates of homophobia in sport were rampant right around the world".
He told BBC Radio 5 live that the UK had "many more" young people willing to come out to their team-mates than in other countries, but that LGBT spectators felt they were "not very safe" at sporting events in comparison.
He said: "What was a bit alarming in the UK was that young people were more likely than older generations to say that they had personally been targeted by homophobia in the form of slurs, bullying, and assaults."

My tweet was 'totally wrong'

Coventry City defender Chris Stokes was banned, fined and sent on an FA education course after tweeting the word "faggots" when commenting on a Chelsea-Tottenham Premier League match in May.
He apologised, immediately removed the tweet and told BBC Radio 5 live that "what I said was totally wrong".
The 25-year-old added: "Nowadays, how the world is, it is a great time for someone who is gay to come out.
"They would get the full support from the changing room - and hopefully the full support of people in the stand."
Listen to Keegan Hirst on Afternoon Edition from 13:00 BST on Wednesday, 26 October.

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