President Barack Obama will put an emphasis on the importance of LGBT rights in his state visit to Kenya, he told the BBC.
Despite several trips to Africa during his presidency, this it the first time the President has visited Kenya — the birthplace of his father — while in office. In an interview with the BBC ahead of his trip, Obama made clear that he would be raising the issue of LGBT rights with Kenya’s president, despite protests from some politicians in the nation.
“The deputy president in Kenya, who you’re going to meet, Mr Ruto, he said, ‘We have heard that in the US they have allowed gay relations and other dirty things,'” BBC correspondent Jon Sopel told the President.
“Yeah. Well, I disagree with him on that, don’t I?” Obama responded. “And I’ve had this experience before when we’ve visited Senegal in my last trip to Africa.
“I was very blunt about my belief that everybody deserves fair treatment, equal treatment in the eyes of the law and the state,” he continued. “And that includes gays, lesbians, transgender persons. I am not a fan of discrimination and bullying of anybody on the basis of race, on the basis of religion, on the basis of sexual orientation or gender.”
The President declared that LGBT rights would be “front and center” as part of his agenda, alongside Kenya’s treatment of women and girls. Mr. Obama emphasized his personal connection to the nation, which fueled a desire to see greater equality in the region.
“As somebody who has family in Kenya and knows the history of how the country so often is held back because women and girls are not treated fairly, I think those same values apply when it comes to different sexual orientations,” he said.
The President won’t have an easy task ahead of him in convincing Kenyans that LGBT rights are an important part of improving their nation. A UN report determined that homosexuality is “largely considered to be taboo and repugnant to [the] cultural values and morality” of Kenya. Sex between men is illegal, punishable by up to 21 years in prison, while transgender individuals are often subject to stigma and violence from the general public.
In one of the stranger crime sprees of Pride Month, a masked man on an electric unicycle is reportedly stealing Pride flags across Longmont, Colorado.
Since Memorial Day weekend -- just ahead of Pride Month -- the man has vandalized homes by bending flagpoles and tearing down flags.
Sheryl Colaur, one of the victims, told the Longmont Daily Times-Call that at least 10 -- and possibly as many as 15 -- of her neighbors in Longmont's Harvest Junction Village neighborhood have had their Pride flags stolen, allegedly by the same man.
D.C. police are searching for three men who allegedly hurled anti-trans slurs at 43-year-old Cayla Calhoun before brutally attacking her and leaving her with serious injuries.
Calhoun, a sommelier and bartender at Annabelle restaurant, left work around midnight on June 29 and stopped at the Golden Age, a nearby bar, for a quick beer, according to The Advocate.
After leaving Golden Age, Calhoun rode a Onewheel electric board through Georgetown and along Rock Creek Parkway. Near the National Mall, three men on scooters emerged and began shouting anti-LGBTQ slurs at her.
A fundamentalist church in Indianapolis is defending a June 29 sermon in which a lay preacher urged congregants to pray for LGBTQ people to die and suggested they kill themselves.
The remarks, delivered by Stephen Falco during a “Men’s Preaching Night” at Sure Foundation Baptist Church, included multiple homophobic slurs, biblical references, and rants against Pride Month, LGBTQ rights, and what he called “disgusting” and “evil” behavior, according to TheIndianapolis Star.
"Why do I hate sodomites, why do I hate f****ts? Because they attack children," Falco ranted in the sermon, video of which was posted to Sure Foundation Baptist Church's YouTube channel. "They're coming after your children, they are attacking them in schools today, and not only schools, in public places, and they're proud about it!
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