Petrelis Files

Release of State Dept's Human Rights Report & Gays

Number of times the words gay, lesbian, bisexual, homosexual, HIV, AIDS, transvestite, transgender, or sexual appears in the transcripts of the U.S. State Department's special press briefings in the past four years upon the release of its annual human rights report: 0.

As a blogger who has been denied media credentials by the public affairs office, and is in San Francisco, I'm putting out a call to reporters and pundits in DC to make plans to be at State's briefing room on March 8, which is when the 2005 report is expected to be released. Gay journalists must get into the press conference and raise our issues.

Many of us in the gay community over the past year have renewed or developed interest in helping our brothers and sisters abroad who face defamation and death every day. We've expressed outrage at Iran's hanging of gay teenagers, the arrest and threatened medical experiments on gays in the United Arab Emirates, and Polish gays denied the rights to assemble in the streets.

And lots more must be done. We American gays must build on whatever actions we took in 2005 to benefit gays beyond U.S. borders, which is where this human rights report plays a vital role.

The annual State report has been used in some countries by local activists to generate debate in the press about the status of gay persons and also by gay asylum seekers as documentation of the persecutions they must endure if returned to the homophobic country of origin.

Let's all think about how to maximize far-reaching benefits for gays around the globe when the latest human rights report comes out next week.

To familiarize yourself with the gay citations from the 2004 report, which covered dozens of countries, please read the excerpts that I posted to my blog. We'll see how the new report stacks up against the detailed attention to antigay violations in the 2004 version. (Scroll down.)

Attention must be paid to the plight of gays worldwide suffering, and dying, because governments disrespect the human rights protections of sexual minorities, and the comprehensive and influential U.S. human rights report is a great tool for shining a light on the all too often under-reported antigay abuses.

Here are the most recent special briefings held by State when the annual report was released: 2001, 2002, 2003,
2004.