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While some places in Latin America have made great strides in terms of promoting gay rights, such as legalizing same-sex marriage in Mexico City and Argentina, others remain far behind the curve.  According to an email being circulated by the site Change.org,  ”ex-gay clinics” in Ecuador use methods akin to torture in attempts to cure people of their homosexuality.

According to the petition, one woman was kept in a clinic over 18 months in which:

“[D]octors” and guards shackled Paola for weeks on end, sexually assaulted her and threw urine and buckets of cold water on her.

As reported in the Advocate, females are particularly at risk to be checked into these clinics by their own parents:

These clinics have also imprisoned gay, bisexual, transgender, and cross-dressing people, to a lesser extent than lesbians, “probably because they get to leave the family earlier than girls,” said Velasquez. “The girls have all told the same thing: They are threatened with rape or raped, handcuffed, starved and forced to dress like prostitutes.”

To help the LGBT community in Ecuador avoid this type of mistreatment, Fundacion Causana, a women’s group from Quito, has started a petition urging the Ministry of Health to close all such clinics in the nation.  Find out more at Change.org.

[Photo By Change.org]

Note To The LA Times: I’m A Mexican Genius
Ceviche A La Mexicana
Obama Admin Makes Secure Communities Mandatory
Latina Lesbians Deal With Racism, Homophobia And More

I now realize how naïve my left-sided, LA politics have made me. They do not mean much outside of California, particularly when it comes to gay marriage. I learned this the hard way on a recent trip to the far reaches of New Jersey, where this especially rang true.

My friend and I were visiting her sister in Newark and we both had allowed time to get the better of us. It was 1 a.m. and we were standing around at the Newark station trying to find an entrance. Apparently the station closes up most of its doors after midnight in order to get everyone to enter through a more centralized location.

We were soon joined by a frightened young man. He wore summer clothes and spoke with an effeminate voice that was complimented with head and wrist shakes. He wanted to stay close to us because he claimed we were the only normal-looking people still left in the station. He told us he was in Newark visiting his boyfriend, but could not stay in his apartment because his boyfriend’s brother had shown up unexpectedly.

We reached what we thought was the centralized location. There was a young police officer chatting up even younger scantily-dressed women. The girls took deep puffs of their cigarettes and exhaled a sense of desperation that I could feel in my bones.

My friend and I argued over who should ask the police officer to confirm the location of the centralized entrance. My friend thought that the police officer would not take her seriously enough while I knew not to ask because nothing good can come from interrupting someone trying to get their romantic overtures on. This goes doubly when the person attempting to find convenient romance is holding a gun. The young man that was traveling with us grew tired of our bickering and decided to take the initiative to inquire. That did not go well. It went something like this:

“Excuse me… Excuse me, officer…”

“What did you just say?”

“Um nothing, I said excuse me.”

“No, no! You said something!”

“I just wanted to know…”

“Well boy, I’m going to show you… how you done messed up.”

My friend grabbed on to my forearm and guided me into the train station. According to the way it was explained to me, it wasn’t about what the young man said, it was about the way he said it. He would have avoided himself the headache if he would have simply “butched-up” his voice. Apparently this is an overreaction to neighboring New York’s reaction to allow same sex marriage.

The weird thing is that I never thought I would miss Los Angeles as much as I did. I even missed the Los Angeles Police Department. I do not remember hearing them terrorizing many people after neighboring states repealed laws.

I do not think that I will be returning to Plainfield, New Jersey anytime soon. I felt the same hopeless way I feel when I cross the border in Tijuana and there is someone being held up by immigration officials. I am too soft to exist out there. I can keep my head in the sand, but I do not know for how long.

Follow Oscar Barajas on Twitter @Oscarcoatl

[Photo By Ryan Vaarsi]

The Top 10 Latino Ethnic Groups In The US

Less Than 6 Million Latino Adults Have A College Degree

Civil Rights Groups Take Georgia Immigration Law To Court

Crude oil prices are rising, given the unrest in the Middle East, this will translate to higher gas prices.

Congress is figuring out how to fund government for a while before they come to a final budget agreement; part of it will have lawmakers lose their paychecks in the case of a government shut down.

California’s attorney general is seeking to resume gay marriage in that state.

Libya is still in chaos, with current leader Muammar al-Qaddafi, vowing to fight to “the last man.”

The Pope has taken it upon himself to forgive all the Jews for killing Jesus.

[Photo By Beyond Forgetting]

Wisconsin lawmakers have agreed to put an end to debating the bill that would strip state employees of collective bargaining rights, a vote could come as soon as noon.

GOP budget cuts would drag down the economy, according to a new analysis.

Oil prices surpassed $100 a barrel Thursday, prompting a huge spike in gas prices, partly due to the unrest in Libya and the Middle East.

Gay and lesbian federal employees will no longer be discriminated against, as the Obama Administration said it will no longer uphold the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as between a man and a woman only on a federal level.

There may be a genetic basis to PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder, which often affects veterans and others exposed to extreme trauma.

[Photo By jronaldlee]

Univisión recently posted the most ridiculous poll on their website, asking whether it would be okay for a priest to call gays derogatory names. Blabbeando took screen shots of the poll in question, Univisión removed it after GLADD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) found out from Blabbeando and apparently it’s been removed.

A telenovela of ignorance! The back story was that a Catholic Bishop in Peru called gays “maricones” on Peruvian TV, so Univisión asked its web visitors whether this was correct, only problem is that by the time they did so the Bishop had apologized.

The actual poll asked, “¿Es correcto que un obispo llame ‘maricones’ a los gays?” (“Is it appropriate for a Bishop to call gays “faggots”?). Univisión helpfully provided five answers for its poll takers: a) Yes, there is freedom of expression; b) No, it’s an insult; c) Clergy should not give an opinion on social issues; d) Yes, it is a defense of a religious perspective and e) No, and it should be penalized.

The point that Blabbeando’s Andrés Duque makes is that Univisión has a history of posting these types of homophobic questions on its polls and the company should know better. Previously a similar online poll asked whether football (soccer) was compatible with homosexuality. Last time I checked there were plenty of Latino gays and lesbians and pretending like they don’t exist, or watch Univisión.

[Photo By Josep Ma. Rosell]

Monica Marquez became the first Latina, and openly gay, member of the Colorado Supreme Court Saturday. She’s super smart, educated at Yale and Stanford, and her father, retired Colorado Supreme Court Judge José D.L. Marquez, swore his daughter in. Marquez is 41, in a relationship and her father became the first Latino appointed to the Colorado Court of Appeals.

I think this is a huge step because Colorado always seems to be on the precipice between crazy anti-Latino politicos like Tom Tancredo and very pro-Latino ones like Ken Salazar. The fact that Marquez will be on the Supreme Court is a big deal for Latinos in that state because, as issues like Prop. 8 in California have shown, these types of courts wield a lot of power and affect many people.

Having a Latina lesbian on the Supreme Court could, at least hopefully, inform important decisions in Colorado that would not only affect Latinos in that state now, but for years to come. Congrats to Marquez and we look forward to watching her career and future.

[Image Via Huebi]

If you’ve been at all interested or influenced by the Latino media in your life, you have to know about Ricky Martin.  Not only was one of the original Latino heartthrobs of my generation, but he was really famous after the World Cup song.  Well, turns out Ricky Martin was gay the whole time, he’s known since he was at least four years old but hid it from his family and friends in order to continue with his career.

I think it’s important to take an aside when discussing Ricky Martin’s emergence from the closet to look at how many Latinos relate to homosexuality.  The sad thing is, if we were all honest with ourselves, we all have a relative who we suspect to be gay, but the fact remains that inherent in a lot of Latinos’ culture is strong homophobia.

Think about it.  The words “joto” and “maricón” are used very flippantly to describe all sorts of “bad” or “inferior” behaviors.  Imagine that the next time you were using those words, you were saying them in front of your tío or tía or primo who is gay and who has been afraid to tell anyone for years — precisely because of what people like you DO say.

Ricky shares some similar sentiments.  He’s written a book called, “Me” and has been doing promotional press for it.  Here are a few excerpts from the book.

He told Access Hollywood:

“‘Today, I’m not afraid of fear.  I am in touch with my emotions — more than ever. Today, my priority [is] my children…It was really intense for me to start having conversations with God, when according to the man-made laws in my religion – to be homosexual is evil. You know, it’s not right, so you struggle…There [were] many times when I went to bed hating myself – when I went to sleep at night, saying like, ‘You are not – you are not a good person.’”

Ricky was lucky because his parents were much more accepting than many Latino parents, he recalls:

“‘My mother asked me once,‘Baby, are you in love?’ And I was like ‘Yeah mom, I am in love… in fact I am heart-broken. I am in love.’ And she asked me ‘Is it a man?’ And I said, ‘Woah, this is gonna be easier than what I thought.’ And I said ‘Yes mom, it’s a man.   I was extremely surprised and then she said ‘Come on, give me a hug. You are my son and I love you and I will always be here for you.  So it was very beautiful and then my father — he’s a psychologist… And he kind of told me… ‘You don’t have to say a word. I love you and I just want you to be happy.’”

Here’s a vide of him talking to Oprah, there are more videos of the interview at the link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZiNJa5bgEQ

[Image via lander2006 and videos via NYFreeThinker]

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As a student of the social sciences, I am currently working on several research projects, one of which involves Latino gay men.

Unhappily for me, trying to find resources about this demographic that doesn’t revolve around HIV/AIDS, drugs and risky sexual behaviors has proven to be just short of impossible.

Searching academic databases yields all the same types of articles: preventing drug use, risky sexual behaviors and HIV/AIDS transmission. Really? There’s nothing else worth studying about Latino gay men?

Apparently, academics have caught up to the rest of the country in how highly they esteem Latinos. We’re just a bunch of dirty, drug-addled, infested cochinos. Hooray for us!