Uganda’s “Kill The Gays” Bill reintroduced without death penalty

Uganda’s highly controversial Anti-Homosexuality Bill has been reintroduced by its author, David Bahati, according to the BBC.

The original bill was introduced in 2009 and resulted in international media cry before being shelved in 2011.

Homosexual acts are already illegal in Uganda, but the bill aims to increase the penalty to life in prison.

Originally, the legislation proposed the death penalty for those who engage in gay sex where one participant is under the age of 18, disabled, or HIV-positive. The death penalty has been removed from the revised version of this bill.

Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill is not only a threat to gays, but to anyone who is aware of individuals participating in homosexual acts and doesn’t report them to authorities.

Ever since the bill was introduced, gay people in Uganda are increasingly facing harassment and threats.

(Photo: AP)

LGBTQ Tumblr blog highlight: homohelp

Equalitopia sits down with homohelp, a Tumblr blog whose concept is quite simple: brightly colored images featuring tips about everything LGBTQ-related. These tips range from inspirational to sarcastic to witty.

Homohelp started less than three months ago and now its posts are receiving hundreds and even thousands of reblogs. Recently, homohelp was added to Tumblr’s new LGBTQ section of the “Spotlight” directory.

Equalitopia: What was your initial inspiration for starting homohelp?

Homohelp: Honestly? It was just boredom and an attempt to get a cheap laugh just to see who was reading. The first handful of posts really weren’t very good, in my opinion. They were very cringe-worthy, and some were downright offensive. (Some people will argue that homohelp is still offensive, but I don’t think any of our posts now are as bad as some of our very first posts.)

Equalitopia: What are you aiming to accomplish with the blog?

Homohelp: At this point, we’re trying to encourage people to realize that just because people are not-straight doesn’t mean that they’re totally different people from those who are. The comment I see more than any other one (Which happens to be my least favourite, actually.) is something along the lines of “Uh… Why is this called homohelp? Straight people do this, too.” I always get really frustrated reading that, because I never wanted to make a blog that excluded anyone, including straight people. I’ll be the first to admit that homohelp is essentially a ripoff of a certain other “tips” blog about male siblings. I could never personally connect with that one, because I don’t think I have much swagg, but you don’t need to be a “bro” to appreciate that blog, and you don’t need to be a homo to appreciate homohelp.

Equalitopia: You started homohelp less than three months ago and now your posts are receiving hundreds and even thousands of reblogs. How did you establish that audience?

Homohelp: I have no idea, actually. I’m still surprised everyday to see how many people are supporting this blog. I never really bothered with trying to get more people to follow the blog. I’ve never asked anyone to do promotions for it and I use the same handful of tags for every post. Really, all I do is write the posts and hope somebody is reading them. Any success we’ve had with the readers is thanks to our readers themselves. They’ve been the ones spreading the word about homohelp, and we’ve received some really nice messages. It’s kind words from our readers that really keep motivation up for this. There have been a few times where I’m totally stumped for posts and think about just taking a break for a while, or giving up all together, but I can’t do that at this point. I feel like I’d be letting people down, which is the last thing I want to do.

Equalitopia: How many people are behind homohelp? Who are they?

Homohelp: I always feel really silly answering this, because I’ve always referred to homohelp as a “we.” Technically, I’m the only person behind homohelp at this point, but I still refer to it as a “we.” The blog encourages readers to submit their ideas for posts to us, so I would feel really silly referring to homohelp as just me, because it’s not. Even a good chunk of the posts I write are inspired by comments on past posts or messages from readers, and I feel like I would take credit away from them if I just referred to myself when talking about the blog. homohelp is more than just me, it’s everyone writing into us and reading our posts and sharing our words. 

Equalitopia: What’s your personal favourite homohelp?

Homohelp: I think I have to go with #32. (never act out of spite. it is always wrong, no matter what the cause. even if you’re being bullied or teased, remember that you are above petty actions, and that you are a better person than anyone who’s ever tried to hurt you.) It definitely doesn’t represent the tone of the blog now, and it’s not worded quite as well as it should be, but it’s my biggest moral guideline. If there is any one message I could get out to the entire world, it would be that. I see so many people saying that things will get better and you can get even with the bullies from high school, and tons of bullshit that never made any sense to me. The minute you stoop down to the level of bullies and try to get even, you ARE a bully, and everyone should aspire to be better than that. I always thought one of the things our community was pushing for was an end to hate, and when you fight hate with more hate, you don’t get rid of it, you just make more.

Equalitopia: What are your favorite LGBTQ-related Tumblr blogs?

Homohelp: I don’t actually follow very many blogs. (I don’t think I’ve been fully swept into the Tumblr craze yet.) I do enjoy reading gaywrites, I think they do a good job at finding which news stories deserve highlighting, and lgbtlaughs, because they make me giggle every day.

Equalitopia: Anything else you’d like to add?

homohelp: Thank you so much to everyone who’s been reading this blog. (And also to you, Equalitopia!) So many of you have been so supportive of this, and it really does mean so much to know that we’ve been able to help people in any way at all.

Also, somebody also wrote into us once and accused homohelp of being “a bunch of gay-hating, condescending lesbians,” which to my knowledge is not the case, so I just want to clear that up.

Oh! And I don’t know if this is tacky or not, but our merchandise store is opening this week! We’ll be selling four different t-shirts for now, and 25% of all proceeds will be donated right to GLSEN, so I hope people check that out, because it’s all for a good cause.

• Visit homohelp
• Follow homohelp
• Know an interesting LGBTQ Tumblr blog that should be interviewed? Suggest it!

Tumblr adds LGBTQ section to new “Spotlight” directory

Equalitopia and a number of other LGBTQ blogs have received invites to be featured in the LGBTQ section of Tumblr’s new Spotlight directory, which replaces the old directory. Upon its launch, it did not include an “LGBTQ” category.

Aside from the new look and lack of user recommendations, the new directory is very similar to the old. A few categories were removed while a numer of new ones were added.

Currently featured in the LGBTQ directory are: I’m A PFLAG Mom, Art of Transliness, genderqueer, TRANS, KNOW Homo, Gender Magick, You Know You’re Trans* When…, Soffa Support, homohelp, Queer Secrets, the gang’s all QUEER, Fuck Yeah FTMs of Color, HOMOGROUND, LGBTQ GMHA, Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme, and Equalitopia.

Users can recommend categories or blogs to be featured by emailing editors@tumblr.com.

What do you think of the new directory?

(Equalitopia’s directory image resource via SneakyTomato)

Unfair Adoption

An illustration by Michael Dimotta for Instinct Magazine.

Tumblr launches new tag system, #LGBTQ featured

Today, Tumblr expanded their tag system, creating a new way to discover content. Among the listed 25 “popular tags” is #LGBTQ.

The system highlights Tumblr’s popular tags and allows users to browse content among that tag. The tags are switched out periodically based popularity, and some high-traffic tags become trending tags—for example, ”Egypt” and “Libya.”

What sets this apart from systems like Twitter’s Trending Topics is that the content listed under these tags are chosen by selected “editors.” These editors are users who are chosen by a semi-automated process. According to the FAQ, Tumblr’s bot identifies users who post popular content about a topic. Users from this list are then selected to be editors. Every 1-4 weeks, editors are switched out.

The new tag system is an innovative way to discover content and crowdsource the task of featuring content, and incentivize that process.

Tumblr explains that this new feature fixes the limitation of the Tumblr Directory:

“It’s hard to organize Tumblr blogs by topic. A single one of your blogs may include your personal updates, your art, your opinions, and a YouTube video of a cat speaking Japanese, all in a single day. This has been a real limitation of the current Tumblr Directory. So, for the last few weeks we’ve been experimenting with some brand new tools for exploring Tumblr.”

Currently, editors of the #LGBTQ tag are imaylikemychardonnay, kristinnoeline, hunsonisgroovy and dannielle. Top contributors (users who have been featured the most by editors) are rising, franfine, everyoneisgay, sincerelyconcerned and fuckyeahlgbt.

Facebook adds new relationship statuses: civil unions, domestic partnerships

Today, Facebook added the two options to the “relationship status” section of profiles. Users are now able to specify that they are in a civil union or domestic partnership.

According to Mashable, the update is effective immediately for U.S. residents, and will be rolled out to other countries soon. These options will not appear in countries where same-sex marriage is already legal.

In an email to Mashable, a Facebook representative stated:

“This has been a highly requested feature from users. We want to provide options for people to genuinely and authentically reflect their relationships on Facebook.”

Current relationship statuses include single, in a relationship, engaged, married, it’s complicated, in an open relationship, widowed, seperated, and divorced.

ACLU and Yale launch campaign to stop censoring LGBT websites in schools

ACLU has teamed up with Yale Law School to launch the “Don’t Filter Me” campaign, which aims to stop censorship of websites in public high schools.

The ACLU blog post reports that some schools have been blocking LGBT-related websites such as the GSA Network and the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN).

These schools even allow students to access to anti-LGBT sites that condemn LGBT people or urge LGBT people to try to change our sexual orientation. The ACLU describes this as viewpoint discrimination.

ACLU asks students to report unconstitutional web filtering at their schools by filling out a form at action.aclu.org/dontfilterme.

(Image credit: aclu.org)

Celebrate Valentine’s Day by purchasing a $3 marriage equality donation for $1

Fab.com is celebrating Valentine’s Day by “selling” $3 donations to Freedom To Marry for just $1.

Once purchased, Fab.com will make a $3 donation to Freedom To Marry on the purchaser’s behalf. The deal ends at midnight (PST) tonight.

According to the press release, “if a buyer gets three of their friends to also buy this deal, Fab.com will up their matching donation to $5 for the initial buyer. The deal ends at midnight tonight.”

Fab.com launched “The Big Gay Deal of the Day” on February 1st, a daily deal service similar to Groupon—but targeted to gays. Since its launch, the service has offered deals such as gay-themed magazine subscriptions, DVDs, vacation packages and other products.

Freedom to Marry is the United States’ leading marriage equality campaign.

Purchase a donation

Editorial disclaimer: Dan Leveille, the author of this post, is a Junior Advisor at Fab.com.

Do Ask, Do Tell

Do Ask Do Tell, an illustration by trivophotography, in Equalitopia’s deviantART group. The piece is made with white china marker and Prismacolor pencils on 16” x 20”  black textured paper.

This is my illustration to repeal “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.” I came up with the concept and stuff months before the vote, and funny that it was repealed right when I was starting to work on this.