Midterm blues, Kansas victory and gay conversion

Your Daily Package of newsy and naughty bits from around the world


Republicans win, gays lose (United States)

A sound victory for the Republicans in Tuesday’s midterm elections was generally bad news for gay people. Now that Republicans control the Senate, Salon notes that marriage equality will no longer have majority support there. Mike Michaud, the gay candidate for the Maine governorship, lost narrowly. One of the gay Republican hopefuls for the House, Richard Tisei, has lost, while the other, Carl DeMaio, has a small but indecisive lead. Texas, Kansas, Florida and Oklahoma all elected predictably anti-gay governors. In one bright spot, Maura Healey has become the first gay American attorney general, in Massachusetts.

Gay marriage ban struck down in Kansas

And Kansas joins the club. A federal judge has confirmed a higher court’s ruling that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. Gay couples in Kansas should be able to marry on Nov 11. Kansas’s attorney general says he will appeal the ruling, but he’s probably out of luck: the 10th Circuit Court of Appeal, which serves Kansas, has already ruled that such laws are unconstitutional.

Read more at The Kansas City Star.

Olympic rower Robbie Manson is gay (New Zealand)

New Zealand Olympic rower Robbie Manson has come out publicly in OutSports and writes about how he used athletics to cover up his sexuality. “In a strange way, I looked down on other people who were gay, and to a degree felt sorry for them, thinking to be gay was to be ‘less than,’” he writes. “I knew I was gay too, and I hated myself because of it.”

Read more at OutSports.

Iranian gay people pressured to change gender

Iranian authorities do not recognize homosexuality, but they do recognize that a person may be “trapped” in the body of the opposite sex. As result, the BBC reports, many gay people are pressured into sex reassignment treatments, including hormones or surgery, they don’t really want. Some gay people are forced to flee the country to avoid surgery.

 

Read more at the BBC.

Gay rights group: Conversion therapy is torture (Switzerland)

An American gay rights group will make the case to the United Nations Committee Against Torture that conversion therapy, efforts to change a person’s sexual orientation through psychological intervention, amount to torture. The committee is holding a month-long discussion on torture in Geneva.

Read more at The Washington Times.

Photo Credit: Maura Healey

maurahealey.com

Niko Bell

Niko Bell is a writer, editor and translator from Vancouver. He writes about sexual health, science, food and language.

Read More About:
Politics, Power, Blog, News, The Daily Package

Keep Reading

The new generation of gay Conservative sellouts

OPINION: Melissa Lantsman’s and Eric Duncan’s refusals to call out their party’s transphobia is a betrayal of the LGBTQ2S+ community

Over 300 anti-LGBTQ2S+ bills have been introduced this year. This doesn’t mean we should panic

OPINION: While it’s important to watch out for threats, not all threats are created equally. Some of these bills will die a natural death

Xtra’s top LGBTQ2S+ stories of the year

The best and brightest—even most bewildering—stories from a back catalogue brimming with insight

Elon Musk and Texas attorney general Ken Paxton are suing Media Matters. Here’s why queer and trans people should care

OPINION: When politicians and the rich leverage the power of the state to quell dissent, we all lose