Someone's sexual preference is irrelevant in Politics."

The US fast-food chain Chick-fil-A is getting grilled for the anti-gay marriage stance of its president. 

Following Dan Cathy's remarks to a Christian news organisation that he supports "the biblical definition of a family unit", politicians in Chicago and Boston have taken action against his business. Al Jazeera's Roger Wilkinson reports.

(Anwar had filed the RM50 million suit in January following Utusan’s front-page report published on Jan 15. The report referred to a BBC interview with Anwar and alleged that he had said that the laws on homosexuality in Malaysia were considered “archaic” and “not relevant”).

The “impressive” image post-the 1998 reformation Anwar resurrected to hoodwink his supporters both domestically and abroad is fast crumbling.

The fact that the law in 2004 declared Anwar a free man, enabling him to make his rounds lecturing at St Anthony’s College at Oxford, the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and at the School of Foreign Service in Georgetown University, has maybe been taken for granted by this father of six.

Now, how will Anwar explain the decline in respect for all living beings – coming from someone who once claimed to respect the fundamental rights of one and all and now a homophobic overnight? What is Anwar up to?

Anwar’s lalang stand

The change in status quo where the LGBT rights go displays Anwar’s stand, which at best can be likened to the lalang, that is, swaying from time to time.

Take the recent High Court proceeding. When asked by Utusan Malaysia’s counsel Firoz Hussein whether Malaysia should “discriminate against homosexuals,” Anwar said: “Yes”.

“We do not give space to homosexuals,” Anwar said.

Anwar went on to say that Malaysian law must be “crafted in a way we must believe in the sanctity of marriage between a man and woman…we do not promote homosexuality”.

This LGBT-bashing attitude of Anwar, whose disgraceful fall from power lives on in the minds of the rakyat, has irked Human Rights Watch.

Human Rights Watch, the world’s leading independent organisation dedicated to protecting human rights, has criticised Anwar for advocating discriminatory practices against homosexuals, calling the opposition leader’s anti-gay position “shameful” and “fundamentally wrong”.

Human Rights Watch (Asia division) deputy director, Phil Robertson, accused Anwar of playing politics with civil liberties.

“Anwar is fundamentally wrong when he maintains that it should be permissible to discriminate against homosexuals.

“While this might be a good vote-getting strategy in some parts of Malaysia, his claim shamefully runs completely contrary to the central principle of non-discrimination in international human rights law,” he had said in a statement.

Anwar a disappointment

Robertson has rightfully pointed out that Anwar’s views on gay rights were a sad reflection of Malaysian politics.

“The UN High Commissioner issued a comprehensive report in November 2011 that clearly identified the need to protect the rights of LGBT people and called on all UN member states to enact comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation that includes discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation,” Robertson said.

Anwar’s homophobic stand has also disillusioned his young supporters who dream of a nation with greater civil liberties.

One of them, Leroy Luar, expressed his view in an opinion piece posted in Malaysiakini on July 18: “A leader who makes a statement endorsing discrimination is no leader at all.”

“You, sir, who have built your cause around speaking for the downtrodden, the side-lined, the disadvantaged… [are gay rights] not a fight against discrimination?

“You, sir, are a liar. You, sir, are a disappointment. You, sir, are no different than those you vilify in your own defence. We have been betrayed,” Luar said.

kevin bone wrote: "If we want to normalize sexual preference, then we need to quit referring to it at all. To me, someone's sexual preference is irrelevant in any item that is not about sexuality."

Iceyrebel: "I prefer to look at a person's life, through their accomplishments high and low, great and small, and appreciate them for that, and without the nonsense sexual preferences thing that people seem to make too much of.."

lovetheworld82: "this is why she chose to hide her orientation for 27 years....because she didn't want to be known as the 'gay astronaut' and she didn't want to be the poster child for gay rights...she just wanted to be left alone about her personal life and focus on bringing science to the world."

It's always interesting when people say it's not important to make note of sexual orientation, or that doing so somehow reduces the person's accomplishments, because in just about every instance they really mean we shouldn't refer to homosexual sexual orientation. The comment that we need to "quit referring" to "sexual preference" doesn't acknowledge that we alway refer to heterosexuality in public figures, dead and alive, and no one urges us to "quit referring" to it. We routinely discuss husbands, wives, weddings, divorces, children, affairs and lots of other facts that affirm heterosexuality, whether the subjects want these issues discussed or not, not to mention that without a reference it's simply assumed that someone is straight.

Those who think they're not "referring" to sexual orientation when a subject is quietly gay or bisexual don't seem to realize that they actually are referring to sexual orientation by letting the subject appear heterosexual. In the case of Sally Ride, not focusing on or referring to her partner would only leave the information about her former marriage to a man and her divorce. That in fact was the crux of the battle that ensued over Ride's Wikipedia page this week.

Ride's coming out in her obituary seems to have confounded journalists as well, creating jarringly uneven reporting across the media landscape. While some media organizations ignored or downplayed it, NBCNews.com published an essay from her sister, Bear Ride, who wrote, "I hope it makes it easier for kids growing up gay that they know that another one of their heroes was like them." USA Today referred to Ride's partner with no mention of sexual orientation at the outset, but published a story a day later on the debate over Ride's coming out, as did the Associated Press and some other national news outlets. But the New York Times has yet to publish anything about Ride's sexual orientation -- beyond the obituary with the statement about her 27-year relationship, and a mention in a blog post -- prompting the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation to call upon the paperto report on it:

If the New York Times is the "paper of record" then it's right now missing a crucial part of that record. It became known that American hero Sally Ride, who passed away this week, had been in a relationship with a woman for more than a quarter-century. Her sister has said plainly in interviews that her family wants part of Dr. Ride's enduring legacy to be as a hero to the LGBT community -- a member of the community that they "didn't know they had.

Sally Ride's sexual orientation does matter, and not just because LGBT activists want the world to see that there are gay people everywhere, even among America's greatest heroes.

It matters because of something called the historical record. I'm quite dumbfounded that, in a society that prides itself on historical accuracy and getting the details right about historical figures (to the point of publishing book after book about them, sometimes hundreds of years after their deaths), that anyone, including the commenters above, would say we shouldn't report on, dwell on or discuss the fact that this accomplished scientist was a lesbian or bisexual woman who was in a relationship with another woman for 27 years of her life -- a woman, Tam O'Shaughnessy, with whom Ride worked on many projects, including books.

Surely it tells us much about Ride, but it is just simply something else: a fact. And I thought we liked facts. At least it seems like we do when they are facts about all kinds of other attributes and characteristics about public figures we look back upon. We report on and sometimes discuss in depth that public figures were Christian, or Irish-American, or bipolar or collected antiques, even if they were intensely private people who may not want those facts discussed. And, as I said, we report that they were heterosexual, affirming it over and over in discussions of their relationships and families. So why is it that if they were gay there's an impulse to defer to what the public figure may have wanted rather than what the public should know?

And Ride didn't hide the fact of her sexual orientation from her family and friends during her lifetime, anyway, nor did she want it hidden from from the public in her death. Just about every article about her life's work makes mention of the fact that Ride was the first American woman in space, often in the headline. So why aren't the critics accusing the media of dwelling on the fact that she was a woman?

I'm happy Sally Ride is someone the LGBT community could hold up, and I was among the first to do so right here. But most importantly, I believe we have a responsibility to report the facts, whether people like them or not.

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick arrives to officiate the wedding of US Representative Barney Frank [Reuters]

Democratic Representative Barney Frank has wed his longtime partner, James Ready, becoming the first sitting US congressman to enter into a same-sex marriage. Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick officiated the ceremony on Sunday and added some levity by saying Frank, 72, and Ready, 42, had vowed to love each other through Democratic and Republican administrations alike. "Barney was beaming," said Al Green, a Democratic congressman from Texas who attended the ceremony. He added that Frank, a champion of gay rights and the sweeping reform of Wall Street, shed a tear during the ceremony. After exchanging their vows, Frank and Ready embraced each other, Green said. "It was no different than any other wedding I've attended when you have two people who are in love with each other," Green said. Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat and a former chairman of the powerful House Financial Services Committee, has been an openly gay congressman since the late 1980s. He is well known for his legislative acumen, including as an architect of the reforms in the Dodd-Frank bill, which US President Barack Obama signed into law in 2010 in the wake of the financial crisis following the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market. Frank's office in January announced he would marry Ready, whom he met at a political fundraiser in Ready's home state of Maine. Ready lives in Ogunquit, where he does carpentry, painting and welding work. Frank and Ready have been involved since 2007. The evening wedding took place at the Boston Marriott Newton in suburban Boston, attracting political luminaries, including Nancy Pelosi, top Democrat in the US House of Representatives, and Elizabeth Warren, who is battling Republican Scott Brown for his US Senate seat in Massachusetts. Congressional career Frank, who first won a seat in congress in 1980, has said he will retire at the end of the current term. Besides championing financial reform and the rights of fishermen, Frank has been a vocal supporter of gay rights, which have been gathering support in public opinion polls and US high courts. In May, for example, a federal appeals court in Boston ruled that a US law defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman unconstitutionally denies benefits to lawfully married same-sex couples. The ruling on the 1996 law, the Defense of Marriage Act, marked a victory for gay rights groups and President Obama, whose administration announced last year it considered the law unconstitutional and would no longer defend it. Also in May, Obama openly endorsed gay marriage, a move that will surely be a flashpoint in the upcoming presidential election. His Republican opponent, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, opposes gay marriage, saying marriage should be limited to a union between one man and one woman. Eight of the 50 states and the District of Columbia permit gay marriage. Several polls show public support of gay marriage is rising. In 2004, Massachusetts became the first state in the country where same-sex couples could be legally married. More than 18,000 same-sex couples have wed in Massachusetts since then. . READMOREhttp://muslimjournalmalaysia.blogspot.com/2012/07/fmts-jeswant-kaur-killer-instincts.html