There was no access to any foreign hosted websites for Iranian users on Sunday from 11:40pm in local time for less than an hour except Wikipedia and Bing search engine.

Users couldn’t access their Webmails and all SSL web address as well on Sat and Mon for all day long.

“Internet is a treat to IRI regime.” Intelligence service minister Mr Salehi said on Tue.

This assessment had many bad feedbacks from politicians in IRI parliament and the government itself.

“Internet is not a instrument of treat, Internet is the treat itself.” Deputy Minister of IRI Intelligence service said two days ago with no attendtion to all feedbacks from other politicians.

Many of authorities talked about having National Intranet instead of internet in Iran recently but none of them explained what the limitations are of “Halal internet” and “Clean Internet”.

“Connecting to internet should be as less as necessity” Ahmadi Moghdam the chief of IRI Police forces said. But he didn’t mention what “necessity point” is, neither.

Through all this all Iranians are worry about the internet situation in Iran because internet is the only way they can access to information free of censorship.

Teenage boys sitting on each other’s laps, exchanging back rubs and dolling out hugs: This was the sight that researcher Mark McCormack found when he went to a British high school to research masculinity.

It was a shocking departure from the aggressive homophobia that he himself observed as “a shy, geeky, closeted teenager” in the late ’90s and early 2000s. For his new book, “The Declining Significance of Homophobia: How Teenage Boys Are Redefining Masculinity and Heterosexuality,” McCormack spent the year observing social interactions and collecting data from three high schools in the U.K. Over and over again, he saw the same surprising scene: young straight men being physically affectionate and emotionally expressive with one another. What’s more, he found that homophobic behavior is a rarity and that when someone does express anti-gay beliefs, they “are reprimanded by other students.”

His message — which builds on that of his Ph.D. advisor, Eric Anderson, author of “Inclusive Masculinity: The Changing Nature of Masculinities” — flies in the face of a spate of horrifying stories stateside of bullied gay teens committing suicide, but McCormack says the U.S. is a decade behind the U.K. on this particular front. That said, he also believes that recent attention paid to gay teen suicides doesn’t accurately reflect the reality of homophobia in America today, or how much progress has been made: “We need to look beyond the worst-case examples to see what is happening in the majority of schools,” McCormack writes. ” We do no-one any favors if we only fight prejudice that is, for some, yesterday’s battle.”

Salon spoke to McCormack by phone from his office at Brunel University in West London about the disappearance of the insult “that’s so gay” — across the pond, at least — and why the U.S. still lags behind.

How has homophobia changed over the past couple decades in the U.K.?

In the past, homophobia has been hugely significant. Being gay was criminalized up until 1967, so it’s only in the past 45 years where it’s been possible to be openly gay. In the ’80s and ’90s, when I was growing up, there was Section 28, which prevented teachers from talking about homosexuality; they didn’t feel able to combat homophobia in schools.

It used to be in the ’80s that there was “homohysteria,” which is the fear of being socially perceived as gay. What boys needed to do was to make sure they weren’t seen as gay. It was kind of this game of tag where boys would deploy homophobia competitively because the person perceived as gay would be the person who was bullied and marginalized. What better way to prove that you’re not gay than by being homophobic yourself?

But you’ve found that that’s changed dramatically.

Only in one of the three schools I studied did I hear of any form of homophobic language, and that was heard twice by two different kids. Apart from that, homophobic language wasn’t used.

Why this dramatic change over a short period of time?

The gay rights movement has been very successful, even just in terms of gay visibility. When people see famous gay people, people whom they like who turn out to be gay, that has a huge impact. People are bigoted about people they don’t know; when you get to know gay people, the homophobia drops off.

Another key area of change is the Internet. The Internet has meant that closeted kids have the ability to make friends, to be more confident, to come out earlier. Social networking sites like Facebook ask you your sexual orientation, you click whether you’re male or female, and then you click whether you’re interested in men or women. When I was at school, that question wasn’t even asked — you were straight, or if you weren’t, you were pitied.

Part of the reason it’s spiraled so quickly is that as homophobia decreased, boys could kind of hug each other a little bit or say to their best mate that they loved them, and then they could kind of cough and talk about girls. Then they realized that actually it wasn’t disgusting or repulsive, and so that undid some of their homophobia a little bit more. It’s a virtuous circle.

What about those other letters in LGBT? How are things for lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in the U.K.?

I did focus on heterosexual people, really; the book is primarily about masculinity. So, it’s hard to say, but there’s been research out there saying that gay kids are the ones who have the best experience dealing with these issues.

In the U.S., we’ve had a terrible spate of stories about gay teens committing suicides. Is the situation that different in the U.K.?

There are two different issues here. The first is that the spate of suicides has become the media narrative; maybe it was guilt from not covering it 20 years ago. While [these stories are] terrible, and they show that homophobia is still out there, they aren’t evidence of increased homophobia.

The other thing I would say is that America is a country of polarities. The U.S. is further behind but things are changing; homophobia isn’t socially acceptable in the way that it used to be.

Why do you think the U.S. is so behind on this front?

It’s an interesting question. I think what the U.S. had in a much bigger way than the U.K. was the evangelical Christian movement, which really did politicize it. They used it as a wedge issue to get money to exert influence. AIDS also had a bigger impact in the United States; I don’t mean in terms of numbers of deaths but in terms of the stigma that AIDS is a gay disease.

One of the interesting things about the U.S. is that you now have over 5,000 gay-straight alliances, and we really don’t have them in the same way in the U.K. At some schools in the U.S., you’ve got active, powerful gay-straight alliances with out and proud gay kids, and then you’ve got other schools where that doesn’t happen and there’s quite a bit of homophobia. So there’s that issue again of there being polarities.

When would you say that homophobia peaked, culturally speaking?

It was pretty much 1987, 1988. It was the time of the AIDS epidemic. Before then, gays were considered the perverts, the people we didn’t know, and AIDS brought the recognition that it was the man you worked with that died of AIDS, it was Mark Hudson, it could be anyone. That’s when homo-hysteria really kicked in.

You argue in the book that in some cases, we’re fighting “yesterday’s battles.” Can you give an example?

Like the issue of [the phrase] “that’s so gay,” actually not all kids hear that as homophobic, while most adults do. There’s this big push saying that we’ve got to combat [such language] — well, I fully agree that it’s heteronormative, it promotes straightness in some ways, but it’s not the battle we should be fighting. We’re at the stage where most progressive people, particularly in the U.K., need to push much more for talking about different families in schools, recognizing gay history, that kind of thing. The battle we should be fighting is about sex education, looking at some of these issues more openly, more broadly.

Source: Salon

"We are pleased that the New Jersey Superior Court will allow us to show how civil unions fail to provide to same-sex couples the equality promised by both the New Jersey Constitution and the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution," said Jon Davidson, legal director at Lambda Legal.

"Having both a state and federal equal protection claim will only make our case stronger. We look forward to presenting a complete record of the discrimination that New Jersey's same-sex couples and their children face because of their relegation to civil unions rather than marriage."

"Civil union consigns New Jersey's same-sex couples to second class status and it continues to harm families. New Jersey's exclusion interferes during medical crises, leads to the denial of health insurance, and contributes to discrimination even in funeral homes. These families need marriage equality and should not have to live with a law that treats them as inferior," Davidson said.

"We are gaining momentum in New Jersey and there is no turning back," said Steven Goldstein, chair and CEO of Garden State Equality, the statewide LGBT equality group and lead plaintiff in the case. "The majority of voters are in favor of marriage equality, the legislature is in favor of marriage equality -- and now we intend to show that both the state and federal constitutions bar the second class treatment New Jersey is now providing."

Last June, Lambda Legal filed a lawsuit for marriage equality arguing that barring same-sex couples from marriage and relegating them to civil union violates the constitutional rights of those couples and their children. In November, the Court ruled that Lambda Legal could proceed to court on a claim that civil union violates the state Equal Protection Clause. Today's ruling will allow Lambda Legal to proceed with both a state and federal equal protection claim.

Plaintiffs

Garden State Equality, New Jersey's largest LGBT civil rights organization, with more than 89,000 members, is an organizational plaintiff in the case.

The plaintiffs include: Daniel Weiss, 47, and John Grant, 47, of Asbury Park, who have been together for four years; Marsha Shapiro, 57, and Louise Walpin, 58, of Monmouth Junction, who have been together for 22 years and raised four children; Cindy Meneghin, 54, and Maureen Kilian, 54, of Butler, who were high school sweethearts and have been together for 37 years, raising two children; Tevonda and Erica Bradshaw, both 37, of North Plainfield, who have an infant son and have been together for more than four years; Marcye and Karen Nicholson-McFadden , 48 and 45 respectively, of Aberdeen, who have been together for 21 years and have two children; Keith Heimann, 53, and Tom Davidson, 49, of Shrewsbury, who this year celebrated their 25th anniversary together , and have two daughters; Elena and Liz Quinones, 33 and 45 respectively, of Phillipsburg, who are raising four children and have been together for nine years.

Meet all the plaintiffs and their families HERE.

Background

In 2002, Lambda Legal filed a historic case, Lewis v. Harris, seeking marriage equality on behalf of seven New Jersey couples. The case reached the New Jersey Supreme Court in 2006. The high court ruled unanimously that same-sex couples must be provided all the benefits and responsibilities of marriage, although it declined to mandate that marriage was specifically required, and gave the state legislature 180 days to provide equality. The legislature hastily passed a civil union law in December 2006, and began issuing civil union licenses to lesbian and gay couples in February 2007.

In December 2008 the Civil Union Review Commission, appointed by the legislature pursuant to the Civil Union Act itself, issued its unanimous final report documenting how civil union falls short of providing the court-mandated equality for same-sex couples. In January 2010, days before the legislative session ended, the New Jersey Senate voted on and failed to pass a marriage equality law. On March 18, 2010, Lambda Legal filed a motion in aid of litigants' rights asking the New Jersey Supreme Court to intercede and order marriage to secure compliance with its original mandate of equality for the Lewis v. Harris plaintiffs, but in July 2010, the New Jersey Supreme Court denied the motion, requiring further proceedings to develop a record in Superior Court.

Source: SDGLN

Overall men have significantly more heart attacks, but under the age of 55 women are more likely to die from one.

Without displaying the classic chest pain symptoms of a heart attack, researchers say some women may not be getting the right kind of treatment.

The study looked at patients seen at more than 1,000 hospitals.

The research found that among younger women - those aged under 55 - the differences in symptoms with men of the same age were striking.

Overall, 42% of women did not experience chest pain compared with 30% of men.

And once admitted, the study found that women were more likely to die than men from the same age group.

Some 14% of women died compared with 10% of men.

The study adds to evidence that women can experience quite different symptoms to men.

Time is critical

The authors, writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, said: "Optimal recognition and timely management of myocardial infarction (MI), especially for reducing patient delay in seeking acute medical care, is critical.

"The presence of chest pain/discomfort is the hallmark symptom of MI.

"Patients without chest pain/discomfort tend to present later, are treated less aggressively, and have almost twice the short-term mortality compared with those presenting with more typical symptoms of MI."

Heart attacks among younger women are relatively rare.

In fact the average age of women admitted to hospital in the study was 74, compared with 67 for men.

Cathy Ross, senior cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, said a heart attack did not necessarily mean dramatic and excruciating chest pains.

"Symptoms vary; for some the pain is severe and yet others may feel nothing more than a mild discomfort or heaviness. The most important thing to remember is if you think you're having a heart attack, call 999.

"Younger women may need to heed that advice more than most because they appear to be less likely to have chest pains.

"Their symptoms can be overlooked by inexperienced medical staff because heart attacks in young women are rare.

"More research will hopefully identify why there are such variations in the way heart disease affects men and women."

Dr Kevin F Fox, a consultant cardiologist at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and speaking for the Royal College of Physicians, said that overall the number of heart attacks and associated deaths were falling, but that when young women had heart attacks the outcomes were not good.

"The paper has shown that women, and in particular younger women, under 55 years of age, often do not have the typical presenting symptom of chest pain compared to men when they have a heart attack.

"Although heart attack survival is improving overall, doctors, health care professionals and the public need to be aware and vigilant that women can have a heart attack without the typical chest pain that we all think of as the main symptom."

The US researchers describe the results of their work as "provocative" and urge further study, but say that for the moment there should be no change in the public health message that chest pain and discomfort could be symptoms of a heart attack.

Source: BBC News

The offences are said to have happened in and around Rochdale, Greater Manchester, in 2008 and 2009.

Liverpool Crown Court heard how the men, aged between 22 and 59 and from Oldham and Rochdale, "acted together to sexually exploit the girls".

All deny conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with a child under 16.

Rachel Smith, opening the case for the prosecution, said one 13-year-old fell pregnant to one of the defendants and had an abortion.

She said another girl felt flattered by the attention but that she quickly became regularly heavily drunk, depressed and "incapable of getting herself out of the situation".

Another teenager recalled being raped by two men while she was "so drunk she was vomiting over the side of the bed", she added.

Miss Smith said: "No child should be exploited as these girls say they were."

'Raped and assaulted'

The court heard that some of the girls were raped and physically assaulted and some were forced to have sex with "several men in a day, several times a week".

Miss Smith said the girls were given alcohol, food and money in return for sex but that there were times when violence was used.

The court was told that some of the defendants also took payments from other men to whom they supplied the girls for sex.

The girls involved were not in school regularly and often "drank and smoked and hung around with little to do".

They knew the men by nicknames such as "Master" and "Tiger", the court was told.

Miss Smith said they were the "sort of children who were easy to identify, target and exploit for the sexual gratification of these men".

The court heard the men knew each other and two of them worked in takeaways in Heywood, Rochdale, called Tasty Bites and the Balti House.

Both takeaways are now under new ownership.

Four of the men worked as cab drivers at local taxi firms, one was a student and four were jobless.

Kabeer Hassan, 24, Abdul Aziz, 41, Abdul Rauf, 43, Mohammed Sajid, 35, Adil Khan, 42, Abdul Qayyum, 43, Mohammed Amin, 44, Qamar Shahzad, 29, Liaquat Shah, 41, and Hamid Safi, 22, have all pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with a child under 16.

A 59-year-old man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, also denies the same charge.

Trafficking charge

He also denies two counts of rape, aiding and abetting a rape, one count of sexual assault and an allegation of trafficking within the UK for sexual exploitation.

• Mr Hassan, of Lacrosse Avenue, Oldham, and Mr Shahzad, of Tweedale Street, Rochdale, also deny rape.

• Mr Aziz, of Armstrong Hurst Close, Rochdale, denies two counts of rape and one allegation of trafficking for sexual exploitation.

• Mr Khan, of Oswald Street, and Mr Rauf, of Darley Road, both in Rochdale, have also pleaded not guilty to trafficking for sexual exploitation.

• Mr Sajid, of Jepheys Street, Rochdale, denies trafficking, two counts of rape and one allegation of sexual activity with a child.

• Mr Amin, of Falinge Road, Rochdale, denies sexual assault.

• Mr Shah and Mr Safi, both of Kensington Street, Rochdale, each denied two counts of rape and Mr Safi has also pleaded not guilty to trafficking.

Mr Aziz, Mr Khan, Mr Safi and the 59-year-old are currently in custody.

Mr Qayyum, of Ramsay Street, Rochdale, and the rest of the defendants are on bail.

The court heard that on one occasion the 59-year-old man met two girls at a takeaway where they were given food and vodka.

He demanded sex from one 15-year-old, saying: "It's part of the deal because I bought you vodka, you have to give me something."

Miss Smith said the girl refused and he raped her.

The jury also heard that in about August 2008 Abdul Aziz "took over" from the 59-year-old and started taking girls to various locations where they would have sex with older men.

One of these locations was a flat in Jephys Street, Rochdale, where Mohammed Sajid and Mohammed Shazad lived, where a "group of men" would always be waiting to have sex with them.

Source: BBC News

Some days the American common sense deficit seems worse than others, and such was the case when XXL published a video interview with the rapper Too $hort, titled “Fatherly Advice From Too $hort — Lesson Three: The Birds & The Bees.” Which in this case apparently means advice for boys who are starting to be attracted to girls on how to “take it to the hole.” And more importantly, suggesting that groping girls and pushing them up against walls is the quickest route to male sexual gratification. As disgusting as schooling young people in sexual assault is, and as horrifying as the thought is that such advocacy of assault would constitute “fatherly advice”—and XXL has apologized profusely for posting the video, as well they should—Too $hort’s apology may be even more revealing.

“When I got on camera I was in Too $hort mode and had a lapse of judgment. I would never advise a child or young man to do these things, it’s not how I get down,” he said in his apology. “Although I have made my career on dirty raps, I have worked over the years to somewhat balance the content of my music with giving back to the community. Just coming from a man who wants to see young people get ahead in life, I’m gonna do my best to help and not hurt. If you’re a young man or a kid who looks up to me, don’t get caught up in the pimp, player, gangster hip-hop personas. Just be yourself.”

First, there’s the idea that it’s totally fine to advocate molesting young girls as long as you’re in character, because no harm can possibly be done from giving that advice. Even if it’s very, very clear that advice is comedic or performative (something that might be less clear in an interview than in a song), that still suggests that something that actually happens to women and is completely and utterly awful is hilarious to contemplate—even when the “joke” isn’t well-crafted, or crafted at all to reveal the ugliness of such attitudes.

Then, there’s the idea that private conduct is, if not more impactful than the product you sell and the entertainment industry helps you distribute widely, at least balancing it out. I think it’s great if stars want to give back to their communities. But they’re kidding themselves if they think it’s some sort of spiritual tithe for disseminating ideas that at best are demeaning and at best could contribute to someone justifying themselves when they assault someone.

Source: Think Progress

A woman who has never gone public with her name, and thus can be identified only as “Ms. C,” as in court papers, and who suffered from a rare form of cancer, won her case in the human rights court after she couldn’t find an Irish doctor willing to tell her if her life was at risk if she continued her pregnancy.

In response to the ruling, the Irish government has set up an expert group that includes prominent obstetricians, psychiatrists and lawyers to advise it on its options. Members of the group, who all declined to be interviewed for this article, must report back to the government by summer.

The European ruling, coupled with the dwindling power of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, has campaigners for abortion rights hopeful that change may be afoot.

Catholic morality has influenced Irish social policy in the past, but Prime Minister Enda Kenny’s speech attacking the Vatican last summer following another damning report on clerical sex abuse, and the subsequent shuttering of the Irish Embassy to the Holy See, marked a sea change in the relationship between church and state.

Abortion was illegal in all circumstances until the situation was thrown into confusion after the “X” case in 1992, when a 14-year-old girl was prevented from leaving the country to have an abortion after she became pregnant from rape.

Twenty years ago this month, the Irish Supreme Court ruled that there was a constitutional right to an abortion where there was a “real and substantial risk” to the life of the mother (the girl involved was suicidal). Despite debate in the news media to mark the 20th anniversary, no legislation has been drawn up to outline when a woman is entitled to a legal abortion in Ireland, so the law remains unclear.

Women like “Ms. C” who seek abortions for health reasons join the estimated 150,000 Irish women who have traveled to Britain to obtain an abortion since it was legalized there in 1967.

Last year, a woman named Michelle Harte, who was terminally ill with cancer, went public with her story, highlighting how Irish abortion laws affect women with serious health issues. She traveled to Britain after being denied permission for a legal abortion in Ireland. Speaking to The Irish Times, she recalled being physically helped onto the plane. “Anyone else who was even half as sick as I am shouldn’t have to uproot themselves and fly over to England. It’s not fair, and it’s not humane.” Ms. Harte has subsequently died.

Last November, Dr. Mark Murphy, a general practitioner and medical trainer, published a survey of 500 active general practitioners and 250 in training. His results suggested that attitudes in the medical community were shifting, although it remained hard to generalize. He said 52 percent of the 750 respondents favored abortion rights, 24 percent believed abortion should be allowed only in a narrow set of circumstances and 11 percent supported a complete ban.

“Doctors are pro-choice because they see the impact the law is having on Irish women,” said Dr. Mary Favier, a spokeswoman for the advocacy group Doctors for Choice. “Historically, Irish doctors have not covered themselves in glory in what they have said to women who have had abortions, or the role they have taken in the media, but that has changed dramatically in the last 20 years.”

The Irish public has moved away from conservative values on a range of issues like homosexuality, divorce and same-sex civil partnerships since the 1990s, but how this more liberal attitude is shaping the abortion debate is unclear.

Opinion polls vary greatly depending on who commissions them. A 2011 survey from an anti-abortion group asserted that 61 percent of respondents wanted constitutional protection for the unborn, while a 2010 poll from a group supporting abortion rights claimed that 75 percent wanted Irish abortion laws to be liberalized. Anti-abortion groups are confident that their views are still held by a majority in Ireland.

“There is deep-seated opposition to abortion in Ireland,” said Niamh Ui Bhriain of the Life Institute. “If pro-abortion campaigners believe that Irish people are behind a move to legalize abortion, bring on the referendum.”

In an increasingly secular Ireland, the influence of the Vatican is in decline, and a litany of sex abuse scandals have left the public deeply disillusioned with the Catholic Church.

While not the sole reason for opposition to abortion, Ireland’s Catholic bedrock has traditionally been a factor behind its abortion laws.

Patsy McGarry, religious affairs correspondent with The Irish Times, said attitudes toward abortion had changed in recent years. “Undoubtedly the decline of the Catholic Church has loosened up opposition to abortion,” he said in an interview. “The church’s stance on abortion is very clear, very rigid. There are thousands of women in Ireland, indeed tens of thousands, who have had abortions, so there is a more nuanced position on the matter than there was in the 1980s.”

There has long been a concern that joining the European Union would eventually lead to more liberal abortion legislation. When Ireland signed the Maastricht Treaty in 1991, it inserted a clause to safeguard Irish abortion laws from E.U. interference.

For anti-abortion groups, the European human rights court ruling has confirmed their fears, particularly when the country as a whole is beholden to international financial help to keep afloat.

“At this time, when the E.U. and I.M.F. are actually running our country and we have lost every bit of sovereignty, the last thing people want is an outside agency making an intrusive judgement,” said Ms. Bhriain. “What we are seeing here is abortion campaigners using external courts in a bid to have abortion imposed on Irish people. If our laws make us different from everyone else in the European Union, I am glad of that difference.”

Source: New York Times

As countries in South Asia take strides toward legalizing homosexuality and even same-sex marriage, queer South Asians in Canada say their community continues to face a unique set of issues.

“There are many challenges that aren’t fully addressed in the mainstream — double and sometimes triple intersections of discrimination,” says Alex Sangha, the founder of Sher Vancouver, a British Columbia-based social and support group for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and intersex South Asian people and their allies.

“There’s so much stigma, there’s so much shame, there's so much work that needs to be done in terms of raising awareness and creating a healthy environment for gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgender youths and minorities to come out.”

Sangha’s own coming out experience was difficult, which he attributes in part to internalized homophobia and in part to familial and cultural pressure.

“It's very hard to come out. I came out to my mom when I was 20, and it was actually my mom who asked me, ‘Are you gay?’ And I said I was bisexual because I was too embarrassed to be gay,” says Sangha.

El-Farouk Khaki, a gay and Muslim Toronto immigration lawyer who has been recognized for his work against racial discrimination in the queer community, and homophobia in the Muslim community, also found the experience difficult.

“A really big issue in many traditional cultures is giving your parents grandchildren. It's a cultural expectation and it's not just South Asians, it’s not just Muslims, and so being an only child made it particularly difficult for me,” says Khaki, who came out in his late teens and early 20s.

“In the South Asian community, which has become more conservative rather than opening up, you're dealing then with language issues, religious issues, and then there's racism and xenophobia,” says Khaki. “There remains this marginalization process within Canada as well, which does affect the coming out process and the integration of LGBT people from South Asia and other racialized minority communities.”

These cultural expectations, along with others that Sangha says include heterosexual marriage, children, respect, and family honour, can impede on individual personal freedoms. However, Khaki stresses that these expectations are not unique to South Asian queer people.

One of the most effective ways of combating traditionalism is through awareness. While the possible solutions are multi-faceted, inter-community interaction is key.

“When people came from traditional backgrounds, they may not know very many queer folk. So where is that point of reconciliation, and how and where and when does that come about? Particularly in North America, fostering interactions between communities is really important,” says Khaki.

One of the ways to do that is through community groups. Khaki is the founder of Salaam, a social and support group for queer Muslim people that has opened conversations about the intersection of race and sexuality.

“I started Salaam as a queer Muslim,” says Khaki. “I was often alone when it came to being one of the few people of colour within a queer crowd, and certainly within Muslim crowds nobody was out, so there was nobody else I could really connect or identify with. When I moved to Toronto in 1989, I started to meet for the first time other LGBT-identified Muslims, and even though intellectually I knew I was not the only one, it had never translated into a sense of community or a social space before.”

As a way of creating and sharing community, Khaki has hosted the Salaam/Peace Iftar dinner during Ramadan since 2003. The dinner, which is attended by queer and straight Muslims and non-Muslims and has grown from 130 participants to over 300, is an opportunity for such interaction.

“It's a bridge builder, and people get to know other people and get to shed their prejudices and get to break bread with people who they wouldn't normally have broken bread with. I think events like that create these points of engagement,” says Khaki.

Community outreach, particularly for youths, is also important. Sher Vancouver runs the Dosti Project, through which outreach workers visit schools to speak about being gay and South Asian. Though the project is no longer funded by the federal government and currently operates on a reduced scale, Sangha says the response from students has been positive.

“They were incredibly supportive, and I see a big change happening in the next generation and the generation after that because I'm already seeing it in this generation. It's good for people to come out and speak about these issues because it helps reduce the stigma, the discrimination, the alienation, the isolation that South Asians who are gay and lesbian face,” says Sangha.

Another way to create engagement and spread awareness is through art. Farzana Doctor, a Toronto-based social worker and author of the novels Stealing Nasreen and Six Metres of Pavement, says that art provides a means of discussing topics that might be off-limits otherwise.

“I think that creative expression can be a powerful way of talking about queer and trans identities in any community, a way of bringing to light taboo subjects and stigmatized identities,” says Doctor. “These discussions make visible what is so often invisible. This is particularly important for younger or closeted people in our communities who might not know that queer and trans South Asians exist. It's important that those of us who are privileged enough to come out, to write, make films and music about queer and trans life, do so. We need many more people to take up these conversations. I especially feel that trans issues need to be discussed more in South Asian communities, as well as other communities.”

Doctor’s work addresses disaporic South Asian people, immigration, sexuality, loss, and redemption. However, while she notes that her personal experiences influence her focus, they are not the sole force behind it.

“My personal experiences definitely influence these themes, because all of my writing is filtered through me. I'm a child of immigrants, queer, South Asian. I've suffered loss in my life. I've wanted to write stories that matter to me, and to other people like me. On the other hand, many of these themes are fairly universal, and I think non-queer and non-South Asian people can relate as well,” says Doctor.

Joshua Vettivelu, a Toronto-based artist, also uses art as a lens for his experiences. His work appeared in Khush: A Show of Love, an exhibition at the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives last summer that focused on Khush, an organization that supported queer South Asian people in Toronto from 1987 to 1992. In Vettivelu’s performance piece, he covered his face with hot wax and tried to rip it off, and washed his hands in glitter to highlight how multiple identities intersect.

“It's about the intersection of race and desire and sexuality as a kind of identity,” says Vettivelu. “I think that when you're put in a non-normative body, you're given a worldview that you know is different than a dominant one. For me, it's a natural evolution to turn to art and to turn to theory like this to talk about my experiences because it's one medium in which there isn't a dominant way of speaking, so you can break away from language linked to oppression.”

Source: Xtra

It's an issue that raises ethical questions, and some experts urge caution in treating children with puberty-blocking drugs and hormones.

An 8-year-old second-grader in Los Angeles is a typical patient. Born a girl, the child announced at 18 months, "I a boy" and has stuck with that belief. The family was shocked but now refers to the child as a boy and is watching for the first signs of puberty to begin treatment, his mother told The Associated Press.

Pediatricians need to know these kids exist and deserve treatment, said Dr. Norman Spack, author of one of three reports published Monday and director of one of the nation's first gender identity medical clinics, at Children's Hospital Boston.

"If you open the doors, these are the kids who come. They're out there. They're in your practices," Spack said in an interview.

Switching gender roles and occasionally pretending to be the opposite sex is common in young children. But these kids are different. They feel certain they were born with the wrong bodies.

Some are labeled with "gender identity disorder," a psychiatric diagnosis. But Spack is among doctors who think that's a misnomer. Emerging research suggests they may have brain differences more similar to the opposite sex.

Spack said by some estimates, 1 in 10,000 children have the condition.

Offering sex-changing treatment to kids younger than 18 raises ethical concerns, and their parents' motives need to be closely examined, said Dr. Margaret Moon, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics' bioethics committee. She was not involved in any of the reports.

Some kids may get a psychiatric diagnosis when they are just hugely uncomfortable with narrowly defined gender roles; or some may be gay and are coerced into treatment by parents more comfortable with a sex change than having a homosexual child, said Moon, who teaches at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics.

It's harmful "to have an irreversible treatment too early," Moon said.

Doctors who provide the treatment say withholding it would be more harmful.

These children sometimes resort to self-mutilation to try to change their anatomy; the other two journal reports note that some face verbal and physical abuse and are prone to stress, depression and suicide attempts. Spack said those problems typically disappear in kids who've had treatment and are allowed to live as the opposite sex.

Guidelines from the Endocrine Society endorse transgender hormone treatment but say it should not be given before puberty begins. At that point, the guidelines recommend puberty-blocking drugs until age 16, then lifelong sex-changing hormones with monitoring for potential health risks. Mental health professionals should be involved in the process, the guidelines say. The group's members are doctors who treat hormonal conditions.

Those guidelines, along with YouTube videos by sex-changing teens and other media attention, have helped raise awareness about treatment and led more families to seek help, Spack said.

His report details a fourfold increase in patients at the Boston hospital. His Gender Management Service clinic, which opened at the hospital in 2007, averages about 19 patients each year, compared with about four per year treated for gender issues at the hospital in the late 1990s.

The report details 97 girls and boys treated between 1998 and 2010; the youngest was 4 years old. Kids that young and their families get psychological counseling and are monitored until the first signs of puberty emerge, usually around age 11 or 12. Then children are given puberty-blocking drugs, in monthly $1,000 injections or implants imbedded in the arm.

In another Pediatrics report, a Texas doctor says he's also provided sex-changing treatment to an increasing number of children; so has a clinic at Children's Hospital Los Angeles where the 8-year-old is a patient.

The drugs used by the clinics are approved for delaying puberty in kids who start maturing too soon. The drugs' effects are reversible, and Spack said they've caused no complications in his patients. The idea is to give these children time to mature emotionally and make sure they want to proceed with a permanent sex change. Only 1 of the 97 opted out of permanent treatment, Spack said.

Kids will more easily pass as the opposite gender, and require less drastic treatment later, if drug treatment starts early, Spack said. For example, boys switching to girls will develop breasts and girls transitioning to boys will be flat-chested if puberty is blocked and sex-hormones started soon enough, Spack said.

Sex hormones, especially in high doses when used long-term, can have serious side effects, including blood clots and cancer. Spack said he uses low, safer doses but that patients should be monitored.

Gender-reassignment surgery, which may include removing or creating penises, is only done by a handful of U.S. doctors, on patients at least 18 years old, Spack said. His clinic has worked with local surgeons who've done breast removal surgery on girls at age 16, but that surgery can be relatively minor, or avoided, if puberty is halted in time, he said.

The mother of the Los Angeles 8-year-old says he's eager to begin treatment.

When the child was told he could get shots to block breast development, "he was so excited," the mother said.

He also knows he'll eventually be taking testosterone shots for life but surgery right now is uncertain.

The child attends a public school where classmates don't know he is biologically a girl. For that reason, his mother requested anonymity.

She said she explained about having a girl's anatomy but he rejected that, refused to wear dresses, and has insisted on using a boy's name since preschool.

The mother first thought it was a phase, then that her child might be a lesbian, and sought a therapist's help to confirm her suspicion. That's when she first heard the term "gender identity disorder" and learned it's often not something kids outgrow.

Accepting his identity has been difficult for both parents, the woman said. Private schools refused to enroll him as a boy, and the family's pediatrician refused to go along with their request to treat him like a boy. They found a physician who would, Dr. Jo Olson, medical director of a transgender clinic at Children's Hospital Los Angeles.

Olson said the journal reports should help persuade more doctors to offer these kids sex-changing treatment or refer them to specialists who will.

"It would be so nice to move this out of the world of mental health, and into the medical world," Olson said.

Source: ABC News

After courting the votes of a couple delegates initially opposed to the measure, House members voted 72-67 to pass the bill. An initial vote count suggested the measure passed with 71 votes, leaving out an affirmative from Delegate John Bohanan.

Next up is the Senate, which handily passed a similar bill last year. Gov. Martin O'Malley sponsored the bill and has pushed for gay marriage to be legalized. Approval would make Maryland the eighth state plus the District of Columbia to legalize the marriages, although opponents have vowed to petition the measure to referendum.

"Today, we took a giant step toward marriage equality becoming law — and we are in this position due to the unwavering leadership and resolve of Governor O'Malley, Speaker (Michael) Busch and our legislative allies," Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement released Friday.

An amendment from Delegate Tiffany Alston, a Prince George's Democrat who previously opposed to the bill, was accepted by the members, a move opponents suggested secured her vote. It would keep the law from going into effect until any litigation related to a potential voters' referendum on the measure is processed.

The body also added an amendment Thursday evening, altering the effective date from October to January 2013.

Delegate Wade Kach, a Republican from Baltimore County, said earlier in that day that his support was contingent upon that amendment.

Throughout the week, several key lawmakers, including Kach and Republican Delegate Robert Costa, made pronouncements that after personal consideration they would support the legislation.

Opponents say the bill does not adequately protect religious freedoms and would force educators to teach about gay marriage in public schools.

Delegates rejected amendments to create civil unions, allow parents to opt out of education programs that address same-sex relationships, limit marriage for gay couples over 18 and to put the measure directly on the ballot.

Opponents argued that Democrats rushed the measure through without proper consideration of amendments once they knew there would be enough votes.

"We should not use brute force strength on such a weighty issue," said minority leader Anthony O'Donnell, R-Calvert.

Earlier in the week, opposition lawmakers criticized proponents for dragging their feet on the measure in order to have enough time to secure votes.

Source: ABC News