January 29, 2019

Can you be fired for being gay? Answer depends largely on where you live

Karen Pence, the wife of Vice President Mike Pence, garnered national attention this month after she returned to work at an evangelical Christian school that bars LGBTQ employees and students. While the Virginia school’s policies sparked criticism, they also highlighted the complicated patchwork of employment protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender workers across the country.

“If you are an LGBT employee in the U.S., you face a very complicated legal landscape when it comes to whether or not you can be discriminated against by a prospective employer,” Ineke Mushovic, executive director of Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ think tank, told NBC News.

This “complicated legal landscape” involves conflicting court rulings, differing interpretations of civil rights laws by federal agencies, a patchwork of state laws and carve outs for religiously affiliated organizations.

THE COURTS

For starters, there is no federal law that expressly prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. However, LGBTQ workers across the U.S. have called upon Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of “sex,” to take their employers to court.

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Check out where it is not illegal to fire GLBT people.... http://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-maps/non_discrimination_laws

January 28, 2019

Far-right Polish group leads anti-Semitic protest at Auschwitz during commemoration ceremony

Source: The Independent

Far-right Polish nationalists organised an anti-Semitic protest during a Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony at Auschwitz.

The small group of hardline activists held their demonstration inside the former concentration camp at the same time as the official Holocaust commemorations on Sunday.

The 50 protestors from the Polish Independence Movement were led by Piotr Rybak, who was once jailed for burning an effigy of a Jew.

Mr Rybak told reporters they were there to oppose the official – and historically accurate – narrative that millions of Jews were murdered by the Nazis with the active collaboration of some Poles.

"It's time to fight against Jewry and free Poland from them,” Mr Rybak said, a Polish newspaper reported.


Read more: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/holocaust-memorial-day-auschwitz-antisemitism-farright-poland-nazi-a8749816.html

January 27, 2019

International Holocaust Remembrance Day:Have you ever been to a Concentration Camp or met a survivor

On November 1, 2005, the UN General Assembly adopted resolution 60/7 to designate January 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The date marks the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau and is meant to honor the victims of Nazism. The same resolution supports the development of educational programs to remember the Holocaust and to prevent further genocide.

Resolution 60/7 not only establishes January 27 as “International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust,” it also rejects any form of Holocaust denial. The resolution encourages member states of the UN to actively preserve sites that the Nazis used during the "Final Solution" (for example, killing centers, concentration camps, and prisons.) Drawing from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the resolution condemns all forms of “religious intolerance, incitement, harassment or violence against persons or communities based on ethnic origin or religious belief” throughout the world.

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Holocaust survivor remembers: 'I was a living corpse'
Holocaust: Told in the first person
One in 20 Britons does not believe Holocaust took place, poll finds
Holocaust remembrance in Germany: A changing culture
How will generations that didn't experience the Holocaust remember it?
Far-right activity at universities rising as more young people deny Holocaust, experts warn
Nazi blueprint for North American Holocaust acquired by Canada archive
Remembering The Gay Victims Of The Holocaust, Whose Persecution Is As Relevant As Ever
Holocaust Memorial Day: How the pink triangle became a symbol of gay rights

January 27, 2019

How will generations that didn't experience the Holocaust remember it?

The Soviet Red Army liberated the most notorious of the Nazi death camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau, on Jan. 27, 1945.

This year, the United Nations and 39 countries will commemorate that date with International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

This date acknowledges the victims and survivors of the Holocaust. But, as a Jewish studies scholar, I have found it also reveals how traumatic memory works in the present and can serve as a reminder about the need for collective action.

Remembering past crimes

The United Nations memorial day connects Holocaust memory to issues in the present.

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January 27, 2019

Holocaust remembrance in Germany: A changing culture

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." This quote by Spanish-American philosopher and writer George Santayana can be found at Auschwitz concentration camp. Remembering the Holocaust has basically been a state effort in Germany for years — from bureaucrats to members of parliament. But public interest is still strong as well. Former concentration camps and other memorial sites are registering record visitor numbers.

And yet, Jewish organizations say they have seen an increase in anti-Semitism in Germany. "The remembrance world champion is losing the battle against today's hatred against Jews," says Meron Mendel, the director of the Frankfurt Anne Frank Educational Center.

That concern is backed by a recent survey from the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights in 12 European countries. It found that over the last year, Jews in Germany haven't just faced more hostility than in previous years, but also more than in other countries.

Some 41 percent of Jews in Germany said they were victims of anti-Semitic hostility, compared to an average of 28 percent in the other surveyed countries.

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January 22, 2019

Oklahoma representative proposes bill that would prohibit teacher walkouts

Source: KFOR-TV

OKLAHOMA CITY – After thousands of Oklahoma teachers walked out of the classroom last year, an Oklahoma state representative has proposed a bill that would prohibit teachers from going on strike again.

Last March, the Oklahoma Education Association announced that it was seeking a $10,000 pay raise for Oklahoma teachers over three years, a $5,000 pay raise for support professionals over three years, a cost-of-living adjustment for retirees, and the restoration of funding for education and core government services.

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House Bill 2214 would make it illegal for “the board of education or school district employees…to strike or threaten to strike or otherwise close schools or interfere with school operations as a means of resolving differenced with the board of education, the State Department of Education, the State Board of Education, the Legislature or any other public official or public body.”

If a person violated the law by engaging in a strike, they “shall be denied the full amount of his or her wages during the period of such violation.”

The bill goes on to say that if the person is certified by the State Board of Education, “such certificate shall be permanently revoked.”


Read more: https://kfor.com/2019/01/22/oklahoma-representative-proposes-bill-that-would-prohibit-teacher-walkouts/

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We just replaced the "worst governor" in the US, Mary Fallin and replaced her with an even more right-wing POS, Kevin Stitt who is mission is not to make the state function correctly, but to "Align ‘With What G-d Is Doing in Oklahoma’".

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!

January 21, 2019

Egypt sentences TV host to year in prison for interviewing gay man

Source: The Independent

An Egyptian TV host has been sentenced to one year in prison after interviewing a gay man on his talk show.

Mohamed al-Gheiti, who previously expressed his stance against homosexuality, invited the man to discuss his lifestyle on air in August 2018.

The move led to the Misdemeanors Court in Giza charging him with promoting homosexuality, incitement to debauchery and immorality and contempt of religion. He was also fined 3,000 Egyptian pounds (£130.25).

According to The Egypt Independent, lawyer Samir Sabry filed the case against the TV host with the attorney-general, saying he has violated the basic rules, laws and religious constants.

During the controversial interview, the gay guest, whose face was blurred to protect his identity, revealed he was a sex worker and openly discussed his relationship with another man.


Read more: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/egypt-mohamed-al-gheiti-prison-sentence-gay-guest-interview-lgbt-religion-a8738206.html

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WOW! Now that homophobia is affecting heterosexuals (it always has), I wonder if it will make difference in a positive direction. J/K

January 21, 2019

Auschwitz victims laid to rest in UK synagogue ceremony

The remains of six Holocaust victims murdered at Auschwitz have been buried as the UK’s chief rabbi urged an end to an “increase in antisemitism”.

About 50 Holocaust survivors joined hundreds of other members of the Jewish community at the United Synagogue New Cemetery in Bushey, Hertfordshire, for the funeral service.

During an address, Ephraim Mirvis warned antisemitism was on the rise and unchecked hate speech could “easily be translated into hate crime”.

The ashes and bones of the six unknown victims were sent from Auschwitz to the Imperial War Museum in London in 1997. Scientific tests later discovered they were the remains of five adults and one child, but nothing else is known about them.

The funeral service was the first for Holocaust victims to be held in the UK. After a 40-minute service, a small coffin, which held the remains of all six victims, was carried to its plot where it was buried with earth from Israel. The survivors and other mourners lined up to throw earth on to the coffin.

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January 9, 2019

The Trump administration is planning a far-reaching rollback of civil rights law

An internal Justice Department memo directed senior civil rights officials to examine how disparate impact regulations can be changed or removed, the Washington Post reports.

Disparate impact is the idea in civil rights law that a rule might be discriminatory even if it doesn’t have that intent.

For example, the Obama administration reached a settlement with the Lodi Unified School District in California after it found that several seemingly neutral policies – like allowing schools within the district to set their own disciplinary policies, and schools with a higher percentage of African American students having tougher punishments for the same disciplinary incidents – resulted in a negative impact on black people, even though Obama administration lawyers never proved a racist intent.

“Disparate impact is a bedrock principle,” said Kristen Clarke, executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “Through the courts, we’ve been able to marshal data and use the disparate-impact doctrine as a robust tool for ferreting out discrimination.”

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January 3, 2019

Inside Gab, the alt-right's social media network that is awash with antisemitism

If you thought Twitter and Facebook were awash with antisemitism, you clearly have not spent much time on Gab.com, the favoured social media platform of the extreme-right and neo-Nazis.

Over two hours of research, the JC catalogued posts accusing Jews of carrying out the September 11 terror attacks — and one which alleged that Jewish people “are in a hurry to implement a final solution on all whites”.

The site gained popular attention in October, after it emerged that Robert Bowers, the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting suspect, was a user. Minutes before the worst atrocity against Jews in American history unfolded, a post appeared on his account that ended with the chilling words: “I’m going in”.

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One particular trend, referred to as “Name the Jew”, has won popularity on the site in recent months.

Started by white supremacist Patrick Little, who recently ran for a US Senate seat in California, participants are encouraged to publicly shame Jewish people on the site. According to some reports, Gab has since expelled him.


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