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Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari(L) walks with Cameroon's President Paul Biya(R) as he arrives on an official visit to Cameroon in Yaounde July 29, 2015.The leaders of Nigeria and Cameroon pledged on Thursday to improve the exchange of intelligence and security cooperation along their border in a bid to tackle Nigerian Islamist militant group Boko Haram.Picture taken July 29, 2015.
Cameroon’s first daughter comes out, could face jail
Brenda Biya, daughter of Cameroon’s President Paul Biya, came out as a lesbian this week by posting a photo in which she is kissing her girlfriend Layyons Valença.
What’s the big deal?
Under Section 347-1 of Cameroon’s penal code, anyone in the country who “has sexual relations with a person of the same sex” faces a penalty of up to five years in prison. Biya, who lives abroad but still visits home, said she hopes her coming out will help change the “unfair” law.
The criminalization of homosexuality in the central African country was written into law before her father’s ascension to power in 1982, but don’t expect any major shifts anytime soon. In 2013, President Biya said that a “change of mind” on homosexuality was happening in Cameroon, but his government made no changes to the law or its enforcement.
And a change in leadership isn’t likely anytime soon either. Biya’s legacy is marred by the authoritariancharacteristics of his regime, and while he faces an election in 2025, he looks set to hold on to power indefinitely.
His ruling party just moved the election season around byextending the term of parliament members by a year through 2026. Opposition lawmakers called the move undemocratic since it will affect voting momentum and even candidates’ eligibility for a presidential run next year – since the electoral code requires candidates to be part of a party with government representation (or to be recommended by at least 300 dignitaries). Biya’s main opposition in the last election was Maurice Kamto, whose party currently lacks government representation after it boycotted the last municipal and legislative elections to protest for electoral reform.
If/when reelected, Biya will extend his rule to 2032 – at which point, he’ll be 98 years old (take that Joe Biden).
President Biya and the first lady have not commented on their daughter’s announcement, which will likely affect her ability to return to her home country. Activists have already filed a complaint against her to the public prosecutor,saying “no one is above the law.”
Except her father, of course.
People take part in the annual Gay Pride parade in support of LGBT community, in Santiago, Chile, June 22, 2019.
AI struggles with gender and race
Generative AI keeps messing up on important issues about diversity and representation — especially when it comes to love and sex.
According to one report from The Verge, Meta’s AI image generator repeatedly refused to generate images of an Asian man with a white woman as a couple. When it finally produced one of an Asian woman and a white man, the man was significantly older than the woman.
Meanwhile, Wired found that different AI image geneators routinely represent LGBTQ individuals as having purple hair. And when you don’t specify what ethnicity they should be, these systems tend to default to showing white people.
Generative AI tools are no better than their underlying training data. If their training data is biased, say, by having disproportionate amounts of queer people with highlighter-colored hair, it will consistently represent them as such. It’s incumbent on the proprietors of these models to both improve their training data — buying or accumulating more comprehensive datasets — but, more importantly, tweaking the outputs so they are more inclusive and less stereotypical. That requires lots of testing, and consultation with real-world people from diverse backgrounds about the harms of such representation failures.
But they need to be wary of overcorrection too: Google was recently condemned for generating Black and Asian Nazi soldiers as well as Native Americans in Viking garb. AI can’t understand the complexities of these things yet — but the humans in charge need to.Activists rallied against Premier Danielle Smith's proposed LGBTQ2S+ regulations and legislation that impacts transgender and non-binary youth, on Feb. 03, 2024, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
Culture wars target transgender rights
Conservative politicians on both sides of the border are bracing for the progressive response to legislation critics say discriminates against members of the transgender community.
In Alberta, populist United Conservative Premier Danielle Smith has introduced a series of measures she says boost parental rights and protect children. All reassignment surgeries for minors will be prohibited; puberty blockers and hormone therapies will be barred for those 15 and under, and limited for “mature teens;” parents must consent to children 15 and under altering their name or pronouns in school; while athletes assigned male sex at birth will not be able to compete in women's sports.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called Smith’s plan “the most anti-LGBT policies anywhere in the country.”
Meanwhile, in Iowa, Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds has introduced legislation that excludes transgender people from “sex-segregated spaces” and requires that they list their sex at birth on their birth certificate. A similar move to require that their sex at birth be listed on driver's licenses was defeated.
Transgender activists in Iowa compared the proposed legislation to requiring gay people to wear a pink triangle during the Holocaust. Others have pointed out that the birth certificate provision is a violation of privacy in a state that bars governments from disclosing medical information on IDs, including COVID-19 vaccination status.
Democratic Rep. Sharon Stechman, in Iowa’s General Assembly, summed it up well: “I can think of a million other things we should be doing besides going after 0.29% of our population.”
Pope Francis leads the Angelus prayer from his window, at the Vatican, December 17, 2023.
Catholic priests can now bless same-sex couples, with a big caveat
The Vatican on Monday announced that Pope Francis has granted formal approval for Catholic priests to bless same-sex couples – but it must be clear that such blessings are not part of the ritual of marriage or in connection with a civil union.
The new guidance marks yet another departure from long-standing Vatican policy under Pope Francis, who has taken a number of steps to make the Roman Catholic Church and its 1.3 billion members more tolerant toward the LGBTQ community.
As he pushes for more progressive policies, Pope Francis has often clashed with the more conservative wing of the Catholic Church – particularly in the US. In August, the Pope ripped into what he described as the “backward” attitude of conservative American Catholics.
The Catholic Church is not the only Christian institution facing divisions over issues pertaining to the LGBTQ community. A quarter of the United Methodist Church’s congregations in the US – primarily conservative-learning churches – have left the denomination amid debates surrounding its LGBTQ policies. The massive exodus from the United Methodist Church comes as many more liberal congregations ignore the denomination’s official ban on same-sex marriage and on openly LGBTQ clergy.
Leo Varadkar, Ana Brnabić, Edgars Rinkēvičs, Xavier Bettel
Current world leaders who are openly LGBTQ+
As of June 2023, it's still rare for a head of government to be openly LGBTQ+. Here are the four leaders currently in office or elected to the top job.
Edgars Rinkēvičs
Edgars Rinkēvičs.
NATO
Country: Latvia
Position: President-elect
Edgars Rinkēvičs was the first government official to come out in Latvia, tweeting in 2014, "I proudly announce I am gay ... Good luck all of you." When he takes office in July, he will be the first openly gay president in the Baltic nations.
Xavier Bettel
Xavier Bettel
Country: Luxembourg
Position: Prime Minister
Xavier Bettel, Luxembourg's PM since 2013, has said, “Being gay is not a choice, but not accepting it is a choice. Homophobia is a choice, and we have to fight against it!” He married his civil partner in 2015, becoming the first serving leader in the European Union to wed someone of the same sex.
Leo Varadkar
Leo Varadkar
Country: Ireland
Position: Taoiseach (Prime Minister)
Leo Varadkar took office in June 2017, two years after he came out as gay prior to Ireland's referendum legalizing same-sex marriage. He is the first openly gay Irish PM. “I feel privileged to be gay in Ireland. We should not forget that only 30 of the 190 countries in the world have marriage equality. In 70 countries, it’s still criminalized,” says Varadkhar.
Ana Brnabić
Ana Brnabić
Country: Serbia
Position: Prime Minister
When Ana Brnabić took office in June 2017, she became not only Serbia's first gay prime minister but also its first female PM. “Serbia is changing and changing fast, and if you will, I am part of that change, but I do not want to be branded ‘Serbia’s gay PM’. The message we need to send is about competence, professionalism, and trustworthiness,” Brnabić said.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed HB 7, known as the “stop woke act,” in Florida, on April 22, 2022.
Ron DeSantis and the latest battle over Black history
As Black History Month begins today in the US, the country’s latest culture war battle is about … Black history.
On Wednesday, the College Board, a national nonprofit that sets educational standards for colleges, is set to release the framework for a new Advanced Placement course in African American history.
The course has been in the culture war crosshairs since Ron DeSantis, the popular conservative governor of Florida, last week nixed a pilot version of the curriculum from his state’s public high schools, saying it violates his 2022 “Stop WOKE ACT,” which aims to limit the teaching of progressive ideas such as “Critical Race Theory.”
If you’re unfamiliar with the US education system,AP programs are college-level courses for high school students.
If you’re unsure what Critical Race Theory is, it’s an academic approach that argues that racial hierarchies and discriminatory norms have shaped our social, legal, and economic systems, and that racism remains woven into those systems even in the absence of explicitly racist laws.
At issue in Florida are several sections of the AP course that draw on critical theory approaches to address criminal justice, the experiences of non-heterosexual Black people, and reparations for slavery.
DeSantis’ critics say he is censoring certain subjects for political reasons and that he is unfairly singling out African American studies for special scrutiny. A court has already partially blocked application of the Stop WOKE Act over free speech concerns, and Florida students backed by a prominent civil rights attorney have already threatened to sue DeSantis over the AP decision. On Tuesday, DeSantis doubled down, announcing that he now wants to prohibit state universities from spending money on “diversity, equity, and inclusion” initiatives, which aim to broaden the racial and ethnic backgrounds of the student body and staff.
DeSantis, one of America’s foremost conservative culture warriors, says he’s preventing he “indoctrination” of students with ideas that he and his supporters say foment social conflict rather than national unity. Florida’s existing African American history requirements, he points out, already include a focus on the legacies of slavery and racism.
The intrigue: What will the final version of the course look like? The College Board, which took several years to develop the course, has reportedly said it won’t make changes based specifically on Florida’s reaction. If that’s true, the culture war battle lines will be as crisply drawn as ever.
One thing is certain: The move to ban the course is good politics for DeSantis if he wants to inherit — or swipe — the mantle of GOP leadership from Donald Trump ahead of the 2024 presidential election. Arecent poll shows nearly 80% of Republicans oppose teaching “Critical Race Theory” and that 43% oppose teaching about racism at all.
Small wonder that DeSantis’ fellow Republican, Nikki Haley, who harbors higher office ambitions of her own, weighed in with a tersely tweetedswipe at CRT herself earlier this week.
What do you think? Is DeSantis protecting kids from indoctrination, or is he censoring legitimate academic viewpoints? Let us know here (**hides under desk**) – and if you include your name and location, we might publish your response.
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French President Emmanuel Macron
Hard Numbers: Macron’s pension fireworks, US and Europe’s inflation woes, Russia’s LGBTQ crackdown, Big Tech’s bad week
65: French President Emmanuel Macron plans to implement pension reform and deliver on his vow of raising the retirement age by three years to 65 by 2031. Expect uproar! If there’s one thing the French hate more than politicians, it’s government interference with the national pension scheme.
7: The weekly rate on 30-year fixed mortgages in the US topped 7% on Thursday – a two-decade high – as a result of the US Federal Reserve's continued effort to rein in inflation. Meanwhile, facing similar inflationary pressure, the European Central Bank on Thursday raised interest rates by 0.75 percentage points. Some analysts believe the bank will soon pump the brakes on steep hikes, fearing Europe’s sluggish growth prospects.
400,000: The Russian Duma looks set to pass a law banning so-called “LGBTQ propaganda,” with offenders facing fines of up to 400,000 rubles ($6,500) and non-Russians facing the risk of expulsion. This builds on a 2013 bill that made sharing information about LGBTQ lifestyles with children a criminal offense.
550 billion: It has been a horrible, no good, very bad week for Big Tech, which has seen more than $550 billion wiped away in shared market value after companies including Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft recorded weak seasonal earnings. One of the biggest losers was Meta, which saw its stock market value plummet this year as Wall Street lost faith in Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse.A model of a natural gas pipeline, a Euro banknote and a torn EU flag placed on a Russian flag.
Hard Numbers: EU gas price dip, Swedish camera thieves, Myanmar festival attack, Qatar vs. LGBTQ
100: The cost of burning natural gas to produce a megawatt hour of electricity in Europe has dipped below 100 euros ($99) for the first time since Russia began cutting supplies to the EU earlier this year. Experts say milder-than-expected weather and topped-up storage units are to thank for the price relief. Can it last?
160: Swedish police are investigating at least 160 recent midnight thefts of speed trap cameras on public roads. No one is sure who’s doing it, but the fact that thieves are routinely making off with specific camera parts has given rise to a weird theory: Is heavily sanctioned Russia behind the heists as a way to get dual-use technology for its drones?
60: Myanmar’s military junta sent fighter jets to attack a festival held by the ethnic separatists of the Kachin Independence Army, killing as many as 60 of the group’s members late Sunday. Since seizing power almost two years ago, the dictatorship has faced stiff resistance from an array of ethnic militias.
6: Authorities in Qatar, where homosexuality is illegal, have detained and abused at least six LGBTQ Qataris for “immoral activity” since 2019, according to Human Rights Watch. The 2022 FIFA World Cup begins in the Gulf kingdom next month.