Hop Against Homophobia and Transphobia 2013

Welcome to the Hop Against Homophobia and Transphobia (HAHAT) 2013! 

Today, May 17th, is the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (also known as IDAHO). Groups around the world will be celebrating the day in various ways and you can follow it all through the IDAHO page: http://www.dayagainsthomophobia.org/

We, nearly 180 writers, publishers, reviewers, and cover designers of LGBT books want to make an effort as well by sharing messages with our readers and other blog visitors. We did this last year and decided to do it again after a huge success. We encourage you to visit all the hop locations. There will be an LGBT-related prize at each stop.

Thanks for stopping by!

David Bahati, Author of Uganda's "Kill the Gays" Bill.

In addition to yesterday's post about the "Kill the Gays" bill in Uganda, there are excellent Youtube videos of MSNBC's Rachel Maddow's interview with David Bahati, the author of the bill. These are from last year when David Bahati came to the USA to try to find understanding among the Americans (as in, educating USA about the necessity of this bill). 

Part 1

David Bahati "doesn't hate the gays, he loves them", but he has to "protect the children" (by, apparently, having the gays killed or imprisoned for life). He also claims that people are coming into the schools with foreign money to try to entice the children into becoming gay:

Link to video 1

Part 2

Listen to his consistent "reasoning" that they're doing this "to protect the children" (especially when he can't come up with a good answer for her excellent questions):

Link to video 2

Part 3

He never provided that evidence he said he would (we half expected some made-up reports). He also claims that the Bible is clear on what happens to sinners. He, however, does not seem to realize that by killing people (sinners or not) makes him into a sinner. He doesn't realize either that by making a judgement call as severe as deciding upon whether a person should live or die, he's taking the role of God and thereby sinning heavily. Apparently David Bahati doesn't care if he makes it to Heaven or not (whether or not Heaven exists):

Link to video 3

Again, we urge people to sign the petitions (found at the bottom of this post). Please try to prevent this genocide of LGBT people (and their friends, tenants, and anyone who are even suspected of being homosexual) in Uganda. Please help prevent this witch hunt. 

(Edited to change the videos to links, because the page load was too heavy).

Witch Hunt in Uganda: "Kill the Gays"

Free stock image by Jason Aaberg.

Many may already have heard this, but a horrible bill is being pushed through the Ugandan Parliament and is expected to go into effect this December. They call it a Christmas gift to the Ugandan nation. The bill's been referred to as "Kill the Gays". This is not only terrible, horrible news for the LGBT community, but also disastrous to humanity and human rights. 

The quote below is from a news article in perezhilton.com:

The law will redefine the criminalization of same-sex relationships by dividing homosexuality into two categories (aggravated homosexuality and the offense of homosexuality), and assigning new, outrageous penalties to these "crimes."

"Aggravated homosexuality" is defined as gay acts committed by parents or authority figures, HIV-positive people, pedophiles and repeat offenders. If convicted, they will face the death penalty.

"Offense of homosexuality’" includes same-sex sexual acts or being in a gay relationship, and will be prosecuted by life imprisonment.

Several European countries have threatened to cut aid to Uganda if it passes. Still, somehow the Speaker considers the passage of this Bill a "Christmas gift" to the population.

A further listing of offences can be found on OpEdNews.com. 

Death penalty:

- to repeat offenders of homosexuals acts

- to people who engage in homosexual acts with a minor

- to people who are suspected of "aggravated homosexuality" and have HIV

Prison sentence:

- to those suspected of homosexual activity

- to those who do not report homosexual activity within 24 hours

- to those suspected of "promoting" homosexuality

- to anyone who aids and/or abets a homosexual (e.g. renting to a homosexual)

In addition:

- all people suspected of homosexual activity and arrested must undergo HIV testing.

- former residents suspected of homosexuality may be extradited and sentenced.

That's a witch hunt!

Here are more news articles on this matter:

AVAAZ.org

GLAAD

Americablog.com

So, what can you do? You can spread the world, spread petition links, and not let this go quiet. We may not be able to change everyone's mind in Uganda, but we might be able to help pressure the president to veto the bill. 

Here are some signature links:

The U.S. has already threatened to end all financial aid to Uganda if the bill passes, but according to this article, it may take a while. To help push it forward, please sign this petition to the White House.

AllOut.org is (when this was written) aiming for 250.000 signatures. Roughly a 100.000 to go.

Ask Citibank and Barclay's to publicly condemn the bill.

Care 2 Causes

If you know of more links, please post a link and we'll add them here.

After-Hop Post 1 of 2

We want to thank everyone who signed up and posted their messages about homophobia and transphobia. The posts were mind-blowing and we think it would be a shame for them to pop down the list as time goes by, so we're working on a separate page on this blog with a direct link to every message*. We're also pulling out quotations from some of the posts**.

During this hop, we (the organizers) experienced this wonderful feeling of closeness in our colleges for four days. It felt amazing. The M/M writing community really did band together and stood strong, and therefor we feel that both objectives were reached: to spread awareness of homophobic discrimination and to stand together as a community of M/M writers, reviewers, publishers (and readers!).

We also want to thank the visitors for stopping by. Not only did they show interest and get involved, but their points of view, opinions, and encouragement were extremely thought-provoking and often heartfelt.

Thanks everyone for a very successful hop. We hope to see every last one of you next year :)

- Hop Organizers

*If someone doesn't want their message on the page, please let us know and we'll remove it.
**Again, if someone doesn't want their quote up, please let us know.

Hop Against Homophobia 2012

Welcome! 

Homophobic discrimination is a serious issue in every single country on this planet, no matter how big or small. Some countries are more advanced in GLBTQ rights, while in some countries the penalty for being a GLBTQ person is death. All over the world, GLBTQ people are shunned by society, beat up, tortured, raped, and stripped of human rights in various ways. What makes people believe that they have the right to strip someone of their human rights is beyond us.

The Hop Against Homophobia is an attempt by over 250 m/m authors, reviewers and publishers to stand together and create awareness of homophobia. Each participating blog will feature a message on homophobic discrimination in its various forms. The date, May 17th, was chosen in honor of the International Day Against Homophobia and we're hoping to get people more involved with this day by inviting them to our blogs, where the visitors have a chance to win prizes.  

To the side of this blog are links to various organizations and foundations that fights homophobic discrimination. We encourage you to visit these sites and see what they're all about. Also, if you have more links you'd like to see on that list, please do share :)

So please, stop by the blogs, read the messages and leave comments :) Please also stay tuned for our after-hop message next week.

---

Disclaimer: Every blog participant is responsible for his/her own giveaway. The Hop Against Homophobia organizers will not be held reponsible if someone doesn't choose a winner or if someone fails to deliver their prize.

HAH Featured on Kool Queer Lit Today

Hi guys,

One more day! 

We just wanted to point out that Hop Against Homophobia is being featured on Kool Queer Lit today. Please stop by if you're interested in reading more about the hop.

Almost Time!

Image

It's almost time! We wanted to mention a few things before we begin. There's a yahoo group for this event and everyone is welcome, as long as they're not looking to cause trouble. We also have a facebook page and a Twitter account.

We've received a lot of emails from the participating blogs and many are all set to go and people are excited.

Registration is still open and will remain so until the end of the hop. If your blog is eligible and you'd like to join, there's a small blue sign-up button below the purple names. 

We would very much appreciate any kind of exposure during this event, so please spread the word :)

The Purpose of This Hop

It has been brought to our attention that the purpose of this hop was never actually stated in the hop info on this site. We assumed that the purpose was a given (due to the name): To bring awareness to homophobia. However, since the creation of this hop, the purpose has become twofold: To bring awareness to homophobia and to stand together as an m/m writer community to fight of discrimination against the m/m genre. We have spread this purpose in interviews, personal email recruitment and in other announcements, but it was never stated on this blog site. We hope to rectify that with this post.

The blogs taking part in this will discuss homophobia in their hop entry. Originally we thought that we wouldn't get many sign-ups, so we added this text "as little as mention it - your choice" in the info post, because we wanted good exposure to the blogs that would talk about homophobia. In our informational email message going out this week, we will emphasize this part of the hop, as it has always been the purpose: to talk about homophobia. A lot of the participants have already stated in messages to us that they know what they're going to write about, so we're confident that most will want to spread a message (and everyone will, in the following hops, as that little text won't be included in the future). Some of it will be about the real problem, some will be about people's own experiences, and some will be about how homophobia has been successfully fought.

That said, we were outraged when a chapter in the Romance Writers of America excluded m/m romances from one of their contests because it felt "icky" to the judges. It was a big part in us wanting to make this hop large-scale and make a loud splash. We're not members of RWA, so this did not affect us directly, but we were still outraged. What the chapter of RWA did was discriminate against our genre and the subject it centers around: men loving men. The RWA chapter was being homophobic. They ended up cancelling the contest after an uproar, but it was clear by their excuse that there's a lot of work to be done for people to accept m/m fiction as something just acceptable as other fiction. This is why we added the second purpose: to stand together as m/m an m/m writing community and bring about awareness of our books and their subjects. 

Is it morally wrong to use the International Day Against Homophobia in relation to this hop? We believe not. Being excluded for the sole reason that our work contains love between two men is wrong and homophobic, and we have a right to fight to make sure it doesn't happen again. This may seem trivial to some people, in comparison to other homophobic issues, but to us this is very important (and no, not for sales - if money was all we were after, we'd be writing mainstream YA).

Is it wrong to use prizes to get people to our blogs? We think not. We think it's a great way to get people to stop by in hope that they'll take interest in the issue and become more aware. We could have made a hop where there were no prizes involved - just us spreading a message - but we believe that this way, we will get more people over. A lot of people - including m/m readers - don't even know that there's such a thing as an International Day Against Homophobia. A lot of people - including m/m readers - don't even know that there's such a thing as an International Day Against Homophobia.

People may not agree with this method, but it is within their rights to disagree. People's opinions will always differ. A couple of days ago, we learned that there are people who have posted a message saying how terribly wrong this hop is - and by reading the post these people made, they were right. It did look terribly wrong. Had we not been involved in this hop ourselves, we would have been outraged. The informational post on "What is a Blog Hop" was badly written: it started off explaining in general what a book blog hop is, but then, as the post wore on, it started to get into the details of this specific hop. That has been rectified now, and only speaks of what a book blog hop is, in general. The biggest mistake, however, was that our purpose was not clearly stated in the informational post. We know that no matter what we say, we won't change the minds of most of these people. All we can do is be open, honest, and sincere in what our purpose has been all along. We can pull up links, dated back in February, to show that we've been spreading this purpose over the internet. Erica can send these links through emails, if people contact her personally.

We acknowledge these mistakes. The main purpose of this hop has never been to sell our books. People can chose to believe that or not - again, nothing we can say will change the minds of those who do think we're just here to sell our books - so all we can do is write this post and hope that most people will see that we're not doing something wrong here.

So again, in short: This hop is about spreading awareness of homophobia and to stand together as an m/m writer community against discrimination of what we write about.


Erica, K-Lee and NJ.