Tuesday, May 19, 2009

International Day Against Homophobia Celebrated Sunday




From Agence France Presse:

MONTREAL - The International Day Against Homophobia, initiated by a Quebec organization, will be celebrated in more than 50 countries Sunday, decrying discrimination against gays and lesbians.

Five countries punish homosexual acts with death, said its website.

In 2003, Emergence launched a national day against homophobia in Canada, which caught on internationally in the past three years.

May 17 was chosen because it was on this date in 1990 that the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses. The acronym IDAHO is often used to delineate this day.

"These last three years, we've seen new initiatives all over the place," McCutcheon told AFP.

"But there's still a lot of work to do," he said.


See that picture I posted up top? That's a gay rights march in Cuba led by President Raul Castro's daughter. Considering even Cuba, a place where gays were once fiercely persecuted, has come this far, I think it's looking brighter all the time for gay rights.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wish you'd mentioned transphobia, which was the main focus of this year's efforts.