LGBTQ Rights UK

8 Key excerpts on "LGBTQ Rights UK"

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  LGBT Rights

  World Study

  • (Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • The English Press

    (Publisher)

  ________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ Chapter-3 LGBT Rights in the United Kingdom LGBT rights in the United Kingdom Location of the United Kingdom ( dark green ) – on the European continent ( light green & dark grey ) – in the European Union ( light green ) — [ Legend ] Same-sex sexual activity legal? Legal since: 1967 (England and Wales), 1981 (Scotland), 1982 (Northern Ireland) Age of consent equalised since 2001 for whole UK Gender identity/expression Right to change legal gender since 2004 Recognition of relationships Civil partnerships since 2005 Same-sex marriages conducted elsewhere are recognised as UK civil partnerships Adoption Joint and stepchild adoption since: ________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ 2005 (England and Wales), 2009 (Scotland) Military service Gays and lesbians allowed to serve openly since 2000 Discrimination protections Sexual orientation and gender identity protections LGBT rights in the United Kingdom have gone from being totally non existent at the time of the formation of the United Kingdom, to the decriminalisation of sexual activity between males over the middle to late 20th century, and from then greater support of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights, in the early years of the twenty-first century. In 1707, English law identified anal intercourse and bestiality as offences punishable by hanging as a result of the Buggery Act 1533. Discrimination on the basis of both sexual orientation and gender identity is illegal in housing, employment and the provision of goods and services, and Her Majesty's Armed Forces allows LGBT individuals to serve openly. Same-sex couples have had the right to adopt since 2002 and to enter into civil partnerships since 2005. The Gender Recognition Act also gave transsexuals the right to change their legal gender. However, same-sex marriage is not recognised in the United Kingdom.

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  Basically Queer

  An Intergenerational Introduction to LGBTQA2S+ Lives

  • Claire Robson, Kelsey Blair, Jen Marchbank, Claire Robson, Kelsey Blair, Jen Marchbank, Shirley R. Steinberg(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers

    (Publisher)

  The UN Human Rights Commission then urged all countries to pass laws protecting LGBT rights. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_ by_country_or_territory). In 2016, the most recent United Nations report says Introduction to the History of the Queer Movement CYNDIA COLE, VAL INNES, AND ELLEN WOODSWORTH 42 | CYNDIA COLE , VAL INNES , AND ELLEN WOODSWORTH Sexual Orientation Laws in the World—Overview. Copyright 2016, International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association. http://ilga.org/ downloads/03_ILGA_WorldMap_ENGLISH_Overview_May2016.pdf. INTRODUC TION TO THE HISTORY OF THE QUEER MOVEMENT | 43 “that lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender people are victims of ‘pervasive violent abuse, harassment and discrimination’ in all regions of the world and cites hundreds of hate-related killings.” The report goes on to make “more than 20 rec- ommendations including urging all countries to ban so-called ‘conversion therapies’ intended to ‘cure’ homosexual attraction as well as involuntary treatment, forced sterilisation, and forced genital and anal examinations.” In addition, the report “calls for changing laws to remove offences relating to consensual same-sex conduct, investigating and prosecuting alleged hate crimes and prohibiting incitement of hatred and violence on grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity” (https:// www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/02/lgbt-people-suffer-widespread- violent-abuse-discrimination-new-un-report?CMP=sharebtnfb). Also in 2016, the UN New Urban Agenda for inclusive cities called for recognition of LGBTQ citizens, “but a group of countries including Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia successfully excluded LGBTQ rights” (https://www. theguardian.com/cities/2016/oct/19/un-new-urban-agenda–inclusive-cities- lgbtq-rights-habitat-3?CMP=share_btn_fb). In North America, the position of homosexuals in the decades prior to the unleashing of the lesbian and gay liberation movement of the 1970s was grim.

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  Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans People (LGBT) and the Criminal Justice System

  • Charlotte Knight, Kath Wilson(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  1998 ).

  The Equality and Human Rights Commission was launched in 2007 and replaced organisations such as the commission for Racial Equality and the Equal Opportunities Commission. Its task is to promote fairness and promote equality across seven strands, one of which is sexuality (Government Equalities Office, 2013 ). The twenty-first century has seen real changes in legislation that redress most of the inequalities faced by the LGBT community, and in the next section some of the key legislative areas of change since the passing of the Human Rights Act (1998) have been set out. One significant change is the wide range of support these changes have enjoyed across political parties and organisations.

  Recent Key Legislation

  The following list of legislation applies to LGBT people in a range of ways. Legal protection against discrimination has come slowly, but in recent years it has gathered pace and breadth with a substantial number of acts or regulations being passed:

  • Data Protection Act 1998;
  • Gender Reassignment Regulations 1999;
  • Sex Discrimination (Northern Ireland) Order 1976 (1999);
  • The Sex Discrimination (Gender Reassignment) Regulations (N. Ireland) 1999;
  • The Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2003;
  • The Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004;
  • Gender Recognition Act 2004;
  • Gender Recognition (Exceptions to Offence of Disclosure) Order 2005;
  • The Civil Partnership Act 2005;
  • The Equality Act 2006 (Access to Goods, Services and Facilities);

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  Sexuality, Morals and Justice

  • Nicholas Bamforth(Author)
  • 1997(Publication Date)
  • Continuum

    (Publisher)

  6 It is not wholly surprising, therefore, that some of the Front's demands, on both sides of the Atlantic, were expressed in the language of 'rights', even though these were conceived of as a different sort of rights from those subsequently claimed as 'gay rights' by reformist groups. 64 3 UNDERSTANDING LESBIAN AND GAY RIGHTS Whatever its precise origins, the idea of 'lesbian and gay rights' is widely used today -mainly by less radical campaigning groups - in the context of, among other issues, civil rights and law reform. 7 Inheritors of the liberationist tradition tend, nowadays, to use the language of 'queer', although talk of 'rights' can still be associated with such an approach. 8 Given the widespread perception and discussion of law reform as a 'lesbian and gay rights' issue, it is therefore helpful to analyse this phrase in greater depth before conducting a detailed analysis, in later chapters, of philosophical justifications for law reform. Getting to grips with 'lesbian and gay rights' is in fact a surprisingly difficult task: for it is, like many political catch-phrases, a rather loose umbrella term concealing a variety of connected ideas which, once identified, will reveal rather more than the original phrase itself. The argument in this chapter will proceed in four stages. First, the word 'rights' will be analysed, in order to demonstrate that calls for 'lesbian and gay rights' may in fact be invoking one or more of three senses of 'rights'. Second, the debate between essentialist and constructionist theorists of sexuality will be examined, highlighting some difficult definitional problems concerning the 'lesbian and gay' half of the phrase 'lesbian and gay rights'. Third, an attempt will be made to explain why particular rights count as 'lesbian and gay rights' rather than rights of any other sort.

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  The Politics of LGBTQ Rights Expansion in Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Javier Corrales(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  6 Explaining the Rise of LGBTQ Rights The literature on LGBTQ rights has focused on not just documenting the history of LGBTQ rights movements, but also explaining it. Two questions in particular have been central. First, what was different about the post-2003 period relative to the previous ones? In the 1980s–90s, for instance, there was democracy and LGBTQ movements had ties with other social movements, parties, and inter- national organizations, yet rights expanded slowly or not at all, whereas, in the most recent period, rights expanded rapidly. And second, why has the current expansion been so uneven, with some rights expanding in some areas and not others, and in some cases and not others? The following section reviews the strengths and weaknesses of various arguments offered. 6.1 Relaxations in the Religious Barrier An important argument to explain the expansion of LGBTQ rights has to do with a change in religious attitudes. Two changes in religious conditions may have facilitated the expansion of LGBTQ rights in this period: the rise of irreligiosity and the rise of light Catholicism. Irreligiosity refers to people who do not describe themselves as religious or identify with any particular religion (including atheists or agnostics) (Somma et al. 2017). In some countries, they represented more than 10 percent of the population in 2013 (Argentina, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Uruguay) (Latinobarómetro 2014, Somma et al. 2017). They tend to be liberal on issues of sexuality. Light Catholicism refers to the rise of people who still identify as Catholic but are more relaxed about official church doctrine, especially concerning sexuality. 22 Politics and Society in Latin America Light religiosity is significantly more prevalent among Catholics than Evangelicals (Corrales and Sagarzazu 2019).

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  The Lesbian and Gay Movement and the State

  Comparative Insights into a Transformed Relationship

  • David Paternotte, Manon Tremblay(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  12 United Kingdom_ Changing Political Opportunity Structures, Policy Success and Continuing Challenges for Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Movements Kelly Kollman & Matthew Waites DOI: 10.4324/9781315556178-13

  Introduction

  The United Kingdom (UK)1 entered the second decade of the twenty-first century with an extensive set of legal mechanisms to promote the formal equality of lesbians, gay men and bisexuals (LGB). Social movement organizations have played a crucial role in fostering a rather dramatic expansion of LGB rights in the UK since 1997. These legal reforms include the equalization of the age consent, the creation of civil partnerships, the legalization of adoption for same-sex couples, and the creation of a public sector ‘equality duty’ by the Equality Act in 2010.2 But despite these recent policy successes the country often has lagged behind its West European neighbours both in terms of implementing legal protections and developing grassroots movement organizations.

  1 The UK is made up of four different regions: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. This chapter largely focuses on developments at the national level in the UK, i.e. organizations’ influence on the national parliament in Westminster. Since devolution in 2000 the Scottish parliament has gained considerable power to implement and enforce human rights and family policy; the Welsh and Northern Ireland assemblies are much weaker. Where space allows we try to mention separate developments that have taken place in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.

  2 The Labour government also increased the legal recognition of transgender people, see especially the Gender Recognition Act 2004

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  LGBTQ Life in America

  Examining the Facts

  • Melissa R. Michelson, Brian F. Harrison(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • ABC-CLIO

    (Publisher)

  2 LGBTQ Political and Legal Treatment Over Time

  When people think about the beginning of the fight for equal rights for the LGBTQ community, the first thought for many is the riots at the Stonewall Inn in New York City in 1969. While Stonewall was a pivotal and important part of LGBTQ history, Q8 notes that it did not mark the very beginning of the contemporary LGBTQ rights movement. There are other important aspects of LGBTQ political and legal treatment over time that have often gone unnoticed and this chapter provides key insights into the evolution of political and social debates regarding LGBTQ issues in our time.

  Q9 delves into the claim that some of the strongest opponents of LGBTQ rights are, in fact, closeted LGBTQ people themselves. Several questions investigate the notion that equal rights for LGBTQ people will infringe on other important American rights. A perceived tension between religious freedom and LGBTQ rights, one that has lingered for decades, is addressed in Q10. The claim that granting LGBTQ rights will result in other consequences like legalized bestiality and necrophilia is addressed in Q11. Q12 investigates the rate of hate crimes against LGBTQ people over time. Finally, Q13 summarizes the ways that LGBTQ people continue to experience legal discrimination in the United States.

  Q8: DID THE GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT BEGIN AT STONEWALL IN 1969?

  Answer: No. The Stonewall Riots that occurred in New York City in 1969 are considered the symbolic launch of the modern gay rights movement but gay and lesbian organizations in the United States have been fighting for equality since at least 1924. In fact, important events prior to the Stonewall Riots give key context to how and why the riots took place.

  The Facts:

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  International Human Rights

  A Survey

  • Cher Weixia Chen, Alison Dundes Renteln(Authors)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  The 1992 Amendment to the Equal Employment Opportunity Act prohibits discrimination on the grounds of sexual orien- tation (Harel, 1996). In 2008, Israel’s Attorney General Menahem Mazuz issued a legal opinion allowing same-sex couples to adopt jointly, following a landmark decision by the High Court of Justice (Levush, 2008). Another notable exception is the Iranian official position towards trans- gender rights. The government passed a law allowing patients to undergo gender affirmation surgery in the mid-1980s. This has led to the emergence of a visible transgender community in Iran, but many families still reject their transgender members (Bagri, 2017; Jafari, 2014; Najmabadi, 2014). Reportedly, however, this surgery is often not consensual, as the govern- ment strongly prefers for gay men to agree to surgery and at which point their relationships are not considered homosexual in nature (Human Rights Watch, 2010). During the past two decades, increasing activism for LGBTQ+ rights transpired in the region (Human Rights Watch, 2018b; Schulman, 2012). According to Human Rights Watch: In a few places, like Egypt and Morocco, sexual orientation and gender identity issues have begun to enter the agendas of some mainstream human rights movements. Unlike in earlier years, there are lawyers to defend people when they are arrested and voices to speak up in the press. These vital developments were not won through identity politics. Those have misfired disastrously as a way of claiming rights in much of the Middle East; the urge of some western LGBT activists to unearth and foster “gay” politics in the region is potentially deeply counterproductive. Rather, the mainstreaming was won largely by framing the situations of LGBT (or otherwise-identified) people in terms of the rights violations, and protections, that existing human rights movements understand. (2009, p. 18) 525 14.5 LGBTQ+/Sexual Minorities and Human Rights Law

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