NewsWrap for the week ending July 19, 2014

SUMMARY

Hope Shot Down - Renowned Dutch HIV/AIDS researcher/activist Joep Lange and at least a few fellow scientists/activists traveling to the annual International AIDS Conference in Melbourne perish in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine …

Wooing and Courting - the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturns Oklahoma's ban on civil marriage for same-gender couples, a circuit court judge declares Florida's ban unconstitutional, the U.S. Supreme Court decides not to force Utah to recognize the marriages of more than a thousand lesbian and gay couples who legally wed in the state during a brief time when that was possible, and Colorado's Supreme Court orders the Denver County clerk to stop issuing marriage licenses to same-gender couples, but doesn’t stop fellow rogue clerks in Boulder and Pueblo counties from continuing to do so …

Equality-Adjacent - Croatian lawmakers overwhelmingly approve a bill to create marriage-like but less-than-equal "life partnerships" for gay and lesbian couples …

The High Price of Persecution - Malawi's Justice Minister tell a U.N. human rights panel that her government has told police to stop arresting gay people, who can be and have been punished with up to 14 years in prison at hard labor -- but financial constraints seem to have been the practical motivation …

Closing the Books - Singapore's National Library Board takes heat for ordering the removal and destruction of all copies of the true-life penguin story "And Tango Makes Three" and two other LGBT-themed children's books ….

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NewsWrap for the week ending June 19, 2010

Summary: Closing arguments cap the closely-watched federal trial in San Francisco challenging the constitutionality of California's marriage equality-banning Proposition 8 ... U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development requires funding applicants to comply with state and local laws banning anti-LGBT bias ... U.S. Department of Justice says that gays and lesbians abused by their domestic partners are protected under the Violence Against Women Act ... U.S. State Department issues new guidelines removing reassignment surgery as a precondition for the issuance of passports to trans people in their self-identified gender ... U.S. Food and Drug Administration panel recommends maintaining a ban on gay men donating blood, while policies about such donations in France, Germany, Canada, Australia, Japan, Sweden, Spain, and Italy are reviewed ... Statistics Canada reports a doubling of anti-queer hate crimes from 2007 to 2008, while the government of Puerto Rico creates a commission to examine anti-queer violence and how to curb it ... a painting of the Pope with a gay male couple riles Roman Catholic Church officials in Ireland and around the world.

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