Posts made by jagged

Letter from a Tunisian User (November 19, 2009) (Translated from the French orginal)
I’m 24 now and I don’t live in my home country Tunisia any more. When I was 18 I started to meet gays over the internet in the capital city. Later I started to meet guys outside of the capital as well. Since other Tunisian cities are actually quite small, I got arrested by the Police, who had been following me for 2 days, tracking me with my mobile phone. But like any country, there’s corruption and I was able to escape from the police and other legal bodies thanks to the terrible power of money!

Geographical Position (Source: Wikipedia)

But the most horrible thing was the reaction of my parents to this incident. They had me committed to a psychiatric clinic, to be treated like a sick person by a psychiatrist who told me that homosexuals are perverted and dangerous criminals. After 5 long months in this clinic my parents took pity on me and asked my psychiatrist to release me because this had been a good lesson for me.

But I want to make it clear. I was treated like a dog, with injections when I got fed up of being treated like a sick person. Drugs which meant I could only stay awake for 10 minutes per day. Even 6 years afterwards I have still not recovered from this experience, to me it was like slavery. Thanks all the same to the morning staff of the clinic who did not always carry out the instructions of the psychiatrist, which the nurses and doctors considered too strong for my health.

Apart from that, my parents continued to punish me, denying me a mobile phone and privacy (no key for my bedroom), no internet or pocket money and even more shocking, I was locked out of all the other rooms in the house because my Mother ordered that I should feel like I was in prison. Later I was able to leave my parents and go legally to Europe, but they believed I was cured. When I was 22 they found out I was gay via a colleague of my father. My father hasn’t spoken to me since and relations between me and my mother are very strained. My father has officially disinherited me.

So that’s my experience of Tunisia and above all of an extremely homophobic family.

R


December 10th is Human Rights Day
and the human rights of LGBT people are something that none of us can take for granted

What can you do?
Keep aware, stay vigilant and check out LGBT organisations near you to see how you can support their important work

Gay Rights are Human Rights!
More info at: hxxp://www.hrw.org/en/home

Sorry - i've only just stumbled across this and thought it worth sharing


December 10th is Human Rights Day
and the human rights of LGBT people are something that none of us can take for granted

Scott Long of Human Rights Watch knows all about this
Take a look at what he’s written

Below are many stories from chat-site users who live in countries where being gay is illegal
But we often receive reports of violence and discrimination in so-called “developed” countries too

What can you do?
Keep aware, stay vigilant and check out LGBT organisations near you to see how you can support their important work

Gay Rights are Human Rights!

LGBT rights: What are you afraid of?
by Scott Long, Human Rights Watch

Where do YOU feel safe?
You’re probably feeling pretty secure right now, typing in emoticons, invulnerable through the glass of the computer screen. So do millions of people around the world who network over the Web. It’s cheap, easy, handy—and, when you want, private.

Back in 2001, that was what a 21-year-old Egyptian I know thought too. He met a man in a chatroom who seemed infinitely attentive and kind. The man wanted to know all about my friend’s life. My friend was just coming out in a small city along the Suez Canal; he was desperate for companionship and understanding. He told his new pal everything, including the one and only sexual experience with a man he’d ever had in his short years. A few weeks later, he took a bus to Cairo to meet his new cyber-confidant, who he hoped might be the love of his life. At the rendezvous, policemen showed up instead.

They seized my friend, tortured him, produced his printed-out “confession” to that one sex act as evidence at his trial—and got him sentenced to three years in prison. The loving, curious figure he chatted with was working for the cops. The authorities feared the Internet as a threat, a new way of spreading “perversion” across the nation’s porous borders. They were dead set on punishing and rooting out those who took part.

These days, many of us feel safe in our homes or with our families. Prejudice is receding. Parents are learning to understand and accept their LGBT children. Mothers and fathers of lesbians and gays have even marched and testified on behalf of their right to marry, from South Africa to Massachusetts.

Yet a young man from Iraq told me how, when his uncles in Baghdad found out he was gay, they gathered the family together to decide how to “cleanse” the stain from the tribal honor—by killing him. They planned to take him to an ancestral village in the north, and begin the work of slaughtering him there. Warned, he fled to a nearby country, escaping only in the nick of time. But his uncles learned where he was and pursued him there. One day he saw them talking to the receptionist at his workplace, asking directions, so they could get on with the postponed murder. He only barely got away with his life.

"Death to the people of Lot" (Image Source: Human Rights Watch)

Our neighborhoods for many of us are like an extended family. The bars and cafes, shops and often cruisy streets are safe zones where we can lose ourselves in familiarity and friendships. Here, we’ve built communities: people we can turn to and rely on, and places we can enter and feel welcome. These visible urban villages, these pockets of intimacy in alienating cities, show how LGBT people’s lives have indelibly marked life in the modern world.

Yet in Italy, a wave of recent violence targeted even the streets where LGBT people feel most carefree. When an attacker saw two men kiss while leaving a club in Rome this August, he knifed one of them and almost killed him. Police only arrested a suspect after days of public protests. Not long after, somebody dropped two homemade bombs in a gay-friendly Roman street; in Florence, two assailants beat up a young gay man coming from a peaceful demonstration opposing homophobia. Meanwhile, Italy’s parliament voted down two bills that would have protected LGBT people against discrimination and abuse. Some deputies said any such safeguards would simply be “special rights.”

Is it a “special right” to have the police protect you? Is it a “special right” not to fear for your lives?

At Human Rights Watch, in our Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights division, we fight against that violence—and the dangerous argument that freedoms are a privilege you have to earn. We are one of the world’s best-known and most respected international rights organizations. We are uniquely suited to defend the idea that “universal” doesn’t carry exceptions, that “equal” never means “special,” that human rights must be everywhere and always and for all. Our reporting ended the mass arrests of gay men in Egypt. We helped dozens of endangered Iraqis flee to safety from a massive murder campaign. We’ve defeated repressive laws and forced hypocrites and killers alike to back down.

Worldwide, more and more people are rising to defend their rights as LGBT people. There’s much to be done. Some 80 countries around the world cling to sodomy laws that criminalize two people who love one another. (Most of these remaining laws are relics of colonialism, although ironically leaders in Jamaica or Zimbabwe defend them as part of true “national culture.”) A few countries punish homosexual conduct with death. From Colombia to Kuwait, police harass transgender people under laws that punish “causing public scandal” or “wearing the clothes of the opposite sex.” Lesbian and bisexual women, in many countries, face discrimination under the law, forced marriages, and horrific violence from parents or spouses.

Yet activists and ordinary people stand up to the repression, with incredible courage.

In South Africa, Eudy Simelane was a popular, 31-year-old soccer player in her township near Johannesburg—and an out lesbian. In April 2008, a gang of men raped her and brutally killed her. They said the reason was she fought back "like a man."

Across South Africa, rape gangs target lesbians, dealing out sexual abuse mean to “cure” them, or murder meant to punish them for being who they are. South Africa has one of the world’s most progressive constitutions, the first ever to protect sexual orientation. But these clauses mean little where intense poverty breeds hatred and violence. South African activists, though, refuse to fall silent. At Eudy’s accused killers’ trial, hundreds of lesbians marched to remember her life, protest the violence, and demand justice. A Human Rights Watch researcher was there, and saw their passionate call for equality. Their voices sent a message across the country: lesbian women will no longer be afraid.

In Nepal, Sunil Pant started a small group to defend the health and sexual rights of men who have sex with men, and metis, a Nepali term for transgender people. He found that more than HIV and STIs endangered them, though. Police patrolled cruising areas and raided private rooms to torture and brutalize “effeminate” people they despised. Things worsened after a 2006 coup made it open season for men in uniform to terrorize anyone “different.” Despite threats and abuse, Pant and his organization kept fighting. They built alliances with human rights groups and drew international attention to the crisis. They brought a case to the country’s Supreme Court that, in an earthshaking 2007 ruling, mandated full equality for LGBT people across Nepal. And when democracy returned, Sunil Pant was elected to Nepal’s Parliament—the first openly gay lawmaker in South Asia.

In Nigeria in 2006, when the president proposed a draconian anti-homosexuality law that would punish even two men or women holding hands, lesbian and gay activists fought back. They brought feminists, human rights groups, and international allies into a coalition to shame the government for its repressive move. Given only 48 hours’ notice to prepare for a parliamentary hearing—meant to show massive religious support for the bill—they rushed to the capital from all corners of the nation. When officers tried to bar them from entering the Parliament building to speak, they pressed their way through.

These Nigerian activists’ testimony at the hearing proved the nation did not speak with a single voice. They showed lawmakers that the world was watching. And they stopped the bill in its tracks.

Their courage should be a model for us.

You can stand up too. Support Human Rights Watch and its work on LGBT human rights. Learn about what courageous LGBT movements around the world are doing. We no longer need to be frightened of repression and violence. We stand with thousands carrying on the struggle. We can shame and stop the homophobes and torturers, our abusers and accusers.

What are you afraid of?
Scott Long
Program Director - Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Rights
Human Rights Watch


December 10th is Human Rights Day
and the human rights of LGBT people are something that none of us can take for granted

What can you do?
Keep aware, stay vigilant and check out LGBT organisations near you to see how you can support their important work

Gay Rights are Human Rights!
More info at: hxxp://www.hrw.org/en/home

hehe luv em :drool:

aww he's awesome
and after his struggles in life
such a great success story
a real powerful "up yours" to the bullies of his past
:hug2:

aww everyone's after BIG cocks
no wonder me lil average dont get sucked enough

any offers? ::)

lol

not quite so smooth goin to sing
but i'll give it a go lol

aww poor santa :cry2:

as long as he still visits england
although he hasnt been to see me in years :cry2:

just the one wud make sore
just imagine them all queuing up for a go
  :crazy2:
lol

alan valdez - sexy beast ::)

luv sexy pits

mmm… artistry of love/passion :cheesy2:

and here's an added slide show for you

hXXp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJ3SbheUuwk&feature=player_embedded

Edit: Live link disabled.

cont. :cheesy2:

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Duane Michals (b. February 18, 1932) is an American photographer. Largely self-taught, his work is noted for its innovation and artistry. Michals' style often features photo-sequences and the incorporation of text to examine emotion and philosophy, resulting in a unique body of work.

Michals grew up in McKeesport, Pennsylvania. In 1953 he received a B.A. from the University of Denver. In 1956 he went on to study design at the Parsons School of Design with a plan to becoming a graphic designer, however he did not complete his studies. In 1958 while on a holiday in the USSR he discovered an interest in photography. The photographs he made during this trip became his first exhibition held in 1963 at the Underground Gallery in New York City.

For a number of years, Michals worked in commercial photography, working for Esquire and Mademoiselle, and he covered the filming of The Great Gatsby for Vogue (1974). He did not have a studio. Instead, he took portraits of people in their environment, which was a contrast to the method of other photographers at the time, such as Avedon and Irving Penn.

In 1968 Michals was hired by the government of Mexico to photograph the 1968 Olympic Games. In 1970 his works were shown at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. The portraits he took between 1958 and 1988 would later become the basis of his book, Album.

In 1976 Michals received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Michals also produced the art for the album Synchronicity (by The Police) in 1983, and Richard Barone's Clouds Over Eden album in 1993.

More Craig Malozzi

Via: DNA Magazine Photographer: David Arnot

Once again Fantastics Mag has done it again. Just when you think they can't come up with more hot images - they go and bring out pics like these. Craig Malozzi (21) from Pennsylvania is a total stud. He has been photographed by Les Byerley as is featured on Fantastics Mag.

cont.  :cheesy2:

Antonio Garcia is a relative newcomer to the fashion industry but he has already had photographs published in several magazines, catalogues and calendars and he has also taken part in some important runway shows in Spain. He is a keen sportsman and loves everything related to sport. He has worked with photographers Mark Leigthon, Andres Ramirez, Alberto Peregrino, Mark Montovio, Gonzalo Bernard, David Ruiz, Jose Cuenca and Manuel Barca to name but a few. He recently returned from taking part in an international contest where he took the award of Best Physique and 1st Runner Up and he is now in Bulgaria taking part in the final of Best Model of the World which will take place on 11th December.

Enjoy!

haha ditto