From the March-April 2012 issue of News & Letters:

Queer Notes

by Elise

A California Girl Scout put out a YouTube video asking the public to boycott Girl Scout cookies because she objects to a troop admitting a Transgender girl. While three Louisiana troops disbanded over the issue, a national Girl Scouts spokeswoman for the 100-year-old organization said to the Washington Post: the Girl Scouts “prided itself on being an inclusive organization serving girls from all walks of life….We handle cases involving transgender children on a case by case basis with a focus on ensuring the welfare and best interests of the child in question and the other girls in the troop as our highest priority.”

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Kuwaiti police justify torturing and sexually abusing Transgender women because of a 2007 law which makes it a crime to imitate the opposite sex. Even males dressed in male clothing have been arrested by police, forced to dress in female clothing and then police report they were arrested in that attire. Human Rights Watch documented these abuses in their report “‘They Hunt Us Down For Fun’: Discrimination and Police Violence Against Transgender Women in Kuwait.”

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Discrimination against LGBTQ people by the owners and operators of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) housing and their lenders is now prohibited beginning in March. GLBTQ individuals in, or perceived to be in, Queer relationships will be included in the definition of family. HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan made these liberatory announcements in late January.

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One week after Uganda’s anti-homosexuality bill was re-introduced, Ugandan police raided a workshop for LGBT human rights defenders. Women Living Under Muslim Laws’ Violence is Not Our Culture Campaign vehemently protested the raids ordered by Minister for Ethics and Integrity Simon Likodo. Kasha Jacqueline Nabagasera, founder of Freedom and Roam Uganda, the only Lesbian organization in Uganda, was arrested.