Hate Is Increasing Around The World

Headlines around the world are showing an increase of attacks against LGBTQ+ people much of I if not sanctioned by the government than the government just has blinders and ignores it.

New Right-Wing Groups Confront Armenia’s Revolutionary Government
Lobe Log
By Joshua Kucera and Ani Mejlumyan
July 19, 2019

A group that recently emerged in Armenia has a familiar list of enemies: LGBT advocates, the European Union, George Soros. Its members are fond of wearing black shirts and trumpeting aggressive, conservative views.

That orientation at first glance appears to put the group, Adekvad, squarely in the European far-right movement. The far right also has risen in neighboring Georgia, taking advantage of the same conditions now present in Armenia: a liberalizing government and a socially conservative population.

But the picture in Armenia appears to be more complicated. Many doubt the sincerity of Adekvad’s professed beliefs, suspecting that the group is secretly supported by Armenia’s former authorities, or Russia, or both, merely to sow havoc. Adekvad’s leaders, meanwhile, insist that they are simply providing an alternative voice for Armenians disaffected with the new regime.

Whatever the case, its emergence has roiled the Armenian political scene, raising the specter of a dirtier, more confrontational brand of politics.

Down in  Brazil the Trump want-a-be Bolsonaro the president of Brazil has taken a strong anti-LGBTQ+ stance which was rebuffed by their Supreme Court.

‘Anyone could be a threat’: In Bolsonaro’s Brazil, LGBT people take personal defense into their own hands
The Washington Post
By Terrence McCoy
July 22, 2019

RIO DE JANEIRO — Miguel Doldan couldn’t get the thought out of his head: People wanted him dead. The passersby on the streets, the riders on the bus — they looked friendly, but many of them, he often reminded himself, had voted for President Jair Bolsonaro, the right-wing politician who said he’d rather have a dead son than a gay one.

Brazil was no longer the country he thought it was. And Doldan — a trans man increasingly aware that he was only 5 feet 4 inches tall and 121 pounds — needed to learn how to fight.

He found what he was looking for down a darkened street in central Rio, where the only light one recent evening came from an open-air gym. There was a group of a dozen or so people — gay or transgender all — who were training to meet the violence they increasingly fear they’re likely to face in Bolsonaro’s Brazil.

In a country with one of the world’s highest rates of violence against gay and transgender people, where social media is deluged with homophobic rants, some LGBT people no longer trust the state to protect them — and are now taking personal defense into their own hands. Martial arts classes for LGBT people are being taught in some of the country’s biggest cities — in Rio, Sao Paulo and Porto Alegre. Some in the community say they’ve considered arming themselves.

“The country has changed,” said Doldan, 28. “Before, there was a sense that there were institutions that could help you. Judges, police, justice officials — you could rely on them. But now people feel comfortable saying things they wouldn’t have before and more comfortable doing things they used to not.”

With Trump and the Republicans packing the courts with anti-LGBTQ+ judges who put the Bible before the Constitution and police that show off their MAGA hats, the Washington Post reported...

More than a dozen officers from the San Antonio Police Department will face punishment for wearing Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” hats in a video tweeted out Tuesday by the Republican nominee, the city’s police chief said.

We could be heading in that direction.

In Europe the European Court of Human Rights issued this decree,

Russia Fined for Anti-LGBT Actions
European Court Finds Russian Authorities Discriminated Against LGBT Groups
Human Rights Watch
By Kyle Knight
July 17, 2019

The European Court of Human Rights ruled this week that the Russian government must pay 42,500 euros in damages to three lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights groups for having refused their registration in recent years.

From 2006 to 2011, Rainbow House, the Movement for Marriage Equality, and the Sochi Pride House attempted to register their respective organizations with Russian authorities. The government denied their applications, claiming the organizations “will destroy the moral values of society” or “undermine [Russia’s] sovereignty and territorial integrity…by decreasing its population.”

Most perniciously, in denying Movement for Marriage Equality’s registration, the government construed LGBT rights activities as “gay propaganda,” and said the organization’s work amounted to “extremist activities.”

Formally called the law “aimed at protecting children from information promoting the denial of traditional family values,” the “gay propaganda” law – a classic example of political homophobia – bans the “promotion of nontraditional sexual relations to minors,” a reference universally understood to mean a ban on providing children with access to information about LGBT people’s lives. The ban includes, but is not limited to, information provided via the press, television, radio, and the Internet.

Government sanctioned hate is spreading.

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Updated July 24

The Polish government and the Catholic church are helping the anti-LGBT groups…

How did violence against LGBTQ people in Poland get so aggressive suddenly?
The violence we saw last weekend against Pride marchers has been building for the past year.
LGBTQ Nation
By Rémy Bonny
July 23, 2019

In the last year, the homophobic discourse within Polish politics has risen considerably and several high-ranking government officials made anti-LGBTQ statements.

The prominent Polish LGBTQI-activist Dominik Kuc told me a few months ago, PiS (the ruling, rightwing Law and Justice Party) was searching a new enemy of the state. With the previous general elections in 2014 – their common enemy were Muslim migrants. Since almost no migrants with a Muslim background came to Poland, they could not use this strategy again. That’s why they’ve chosen for LGBTQ people this time.
[…]
With the help of the Catholic Church, PiS has set up an election campaign strategy on fighting LGBTQ people.

Also with the recent violence during the Pride in Bialystok, PiS is accused of being behind the aggressors. The mayor of Bialystok, Tadeusz Truskolaski, announced that he will ask the prosecutor’s office to start an investigation on the involvement of local PiS members in the violent protests of last weekend.

And now the new British Prime Minster Boris Johnson is anti-LGBT

New UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson refuses to apologize for homophobic comments
He compared gay sex to having sex with animals, used anti-gay slurs, and mocked same-sex couples, but it's your fault if you took him wrong.
LGBTQ Nation
By Alex Bollinger
July 23, 2019

Boris Johnson just won the Conservative Party’s leadership contest and will be the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. But LGBTQ activists are already asking him for apologize for his long history of homophobic comments.

The organization LGBT+ Conservatives has called on Johnson to apologize for using the phrase “tank-topped bumboys” to insinuate that a political rival is gay in a 1998 Telegraph column.

“As a journalist he used some distinctly hurtful and unhelpful language, and that has dented the confidence of many in the LGBT community,” said Colm Howard-Lloyd, the chair of the organization. “I expect him to address that at an early opportunity.”

But Johnson’s homophobia wasn’t limited to that one column. In a 2000 column, he decried the idea of children learning about LGBTQ people.

Folks it is becoming down right scary out there and governments look for scapegoats!

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But We don't have to go far to find hate.

Naugatuck stands up against hate
WTNH
By LaSalle Blanks News8 Reporter
July 22, 2019

NAUGATUCK, Conn. (WTNH) — Neighbors in Naugatuck are turning an act of hate into a bigger act of love and support.

About two weeks ago, Chris Ritton-Stokes, who shares a home with his husband and little girl, became the target of hate when someone drove by and yelled a homophobic slur at him.

It hurt.

“I felt like I was 12 years old again,” Ritton-Stokes said. “I was back in high school, back in middle school being bullied.”

Ritton-Stokes wrote about the incident on Facebook. What happened next surprised, shocked, and touched him. His neighbors banded together and started flying Pride flags on their homes. Then, more and more people on other streets did, too.

Down in New York City a lesbian couple was attacked and beaten.

New York Lesbian Couple Bashed, Called “Dude,” in Brutal Hate Crime
One woman's head was slammed repeatedly on a concrete walkway.
NewNowNext
By Brandon Voss
7/20/2019

Police in New York have launched a hate crime investigation after a Long Island woman was assaulted in the street with her girlfriend, Newsweek reports.

Suffolk County Police are offering a $5,000 reward to anyone who can provide information leading to an arrest in connection with the incident, which occurred July 7 in Patchogue.

Kimberly Page, 30, said she and her girlfriend were in an alleyway near the Patchogue-Medford Library when they were approached by a group of four men. One of the men allegedly made lewd comments to her girlfriend, questioning why a woman would want to be with another woman.
[…]
Both Page and her girlfriend were taken to Long Island Community Hospital in Patchogue. Page suffered injuries to her head, face, and knee during the assault.

The short term prognosis is bleak.