The Equality Forum, the nation’s premier LGBT rights summit, has announced that former Houston Mayor Annise Parker will give the keynote address at the dedication of the Barbara Gittings Residence as a historic marker. The dedication will take place at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, July 26, in Philadelphia, which coincides with the week that Democrats will hold their national convention to nominate Hillary Clinton as their presidential nominee.
“As the nation’s first openly LGBT mayor of a major American city, former Houston Mayor Annise Parker is the right person to be dedicating this historic marker to the ‘Mother of the LGBT civil rights movement,'” Malcolm Lazin, founder and executive director of the Equality Forum, said in a statement.
Gittings, who passed away in 2007, lived in Philadelphia with her partner, Kay Lahusen, and was the editor of The Ladder, the first nationally distributed lesbian magazine, which was published by the Daughters of Bilitis, an organization to which Gittings belonged. Along with Frank Kameny, she organized the Annual Reminders at Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, a series of pickets by LGBT organizations, which helped launch the LGBT civil rights movement. Gittings also successfully campaigned to urge the American Library Association include gay and lesbian books in the nation’s card catalogues and libraries. Working with Kameny, she also challenged the American Psychiatric Association for its designation of homosexuality as a mental illness, eventually getting the organization to no longer classify same-sex attraction as a disease.
The dedication of Gittings’ residence will feature a special performance by the Anna Crusis Women’s Choir, the oldest existing feminist choir in the United States. Gittings was previously a member of the choir.
The dedication will be the first of two held that week in Philadelphia. On Wednesday, July 27, Equality Forum will hold a dedication and award ceremony at the Arch Street Meeting House. The house was the site of the Philadelphia Conference, where 300 activists from around the country gathered in February 1979 to organize the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. The march, which included more than 100,000 people, took place on Oct. 14, 1979, bringing the LGBT rights movement to the attention of the wider public.
A city that adopted an anti-drag ordinance that technically criminalized gay existence will pay $500,000 as part of a settlement with the American Civil Liberties Union, which sued the city on behalf of a pro-LGBTQ organization.
The Murfreesboro, Tennessee city council initially approved the "decency ordinance," which intended to prohibit drag performances on public property and prohibit people from engaging in "indecent behavior" or displaying "indecent material" in public -- all in the name of protecting minors from age-inappropriate content.
Violators would be banned from sponsoring events in public spaces for a period of two to five years.
A gay airline employee with dual Mexican and British citizenship was jailed in Qatar on charges related to homosexuality. He is being subjected to treatment that amounts to torture, according to his relatives.
Manuel Guerrero was Acting Head of Product Development and Service Design at Qatar Airways. The 44-year-old was detained on February 4 in Qatar's capital, Doha, after falling prey to an entrapment scheme on Grindr.
"Qatar police used a false Grindr profile to contact Manuel and invite him to participate in a meeting with other people from the LGBT community in the city of Doha," Guerrero's brother, Enrique, told the British newspaper The Mirror. "Manuel was supposed to meet a person he thought he had arranged an appointment with on the night of February 4 but instead encountered police officers who were waiting to arrest him."
A Houthi court in Dhamar, Yemen, has sentenced nine people to death on homosexuality charges, with seven to be executed by stoning and two others by crucifixion, according to the international rights organization Amnesty International.
That same court, located in northern Yemen, has also sentenced 23 other men to prison sentences ranging from six months to 10 years on various charges, including homosexuality, "spreading immorality," and "immoral acts."
Meanwhile, a second court, in the city of Ibb, has sentenced 13 students to death and ordered three others to be flogged for "spreading homosexuality."
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