LGBQ teens are more vulnerable to planning or attempting suicide, according to a research letterpublished Tuesday in the journal JAMA.
Source- CNN
LGBQ teens are more vulnerable to planning or attempting suicide, according to a research letterpublished Tuesday in the journal JAMA.
Source- CNN
Americans’ religious faith greatly shapes their views of whether moral issues or practices are acceptable or not. In general, Jews and those with no religious preference are more liberal than Protestants, Catholics and Mormons in their views on various moral issues. These differences are most apparent on abortion and, to a lesser extent, doctor-assisted suicide and animal cloning. Catholics join with Jews and nonreligious Americans in saying gay-lesbian relations and out-of-wedlock births are morally OK.
Source: Gallup (emphasis added)
The behaviour was observed by scientists during a research trip to the Rwandan section of the Virunga mountain range in central Africa.
The wild mountain gorillas, observed by a team led by Dr Cyril Grueter of the University of Western Australia, are believed to gain pleasure from having sex and may do it when they have been rejected by males.
While many species of male primates are well known to engage in homosexual behaviour, females have been subject to far less attention. Female gorillas have also been observed having lesbian sex in Uganda, but the data has not been published or subject to scrutiny.
Source: The Independent
Extract from on women and development issues in Africa (emphasis added) “Repositioning culture for development: women and development in a Nigerian rural community – Community, Work & Family – Volume 18, Issue 3”
From a general perspective, advances in Internet technology and the field of medical surgery have affected the concept of woman. Through medical surgery, transgenderism provides evidence that the idea of womanhood is no more static. It has widened the biological identity that defines the woman by pushing the concept of woman into a state of flux. Furthermore, the Internet provides a platform for flexible woman identity. In online communities, a man can adopt the identity of a woman at any time, for an indefinite or a specific period. Such a person can participate, interact and make decisions concerning women in the cyberspace. This is possible in webinars, non-video web conferences and social networking websites. In situations like these, it can be difficult to ascertain males or females because biological identities are concealable behind computer screens. Therefore, it is reasonable to argue that the biological concept of woman is no more the same everywhere. It is wider in legal systems with established sex reassignment cultures. From the aspect of community, it is broader within the cyberspace than in the real world. Considering this changing context of woman, one may view woman as anyone identified to be legally or biologically a female gender of adult age in any society. This very broad definition recognises that the concept of woman is no more entirely biological issue, but has stronger legal (sex reassignment rights) undertones. It recognises the transgender (or transsexual) and virtual woman, as well as the biological woman as a part of womanhood. It recognises that people’s gender can possibly be altered during their lifetimes. It even takes into account, the geographical perspective of womanhood. For instance, a transgender woman in Germany may not be accepted as a woman in Nigeria due to differences in legal and social systems. That means – a man in one country can be a woman in another. About this issue in Africa, there is a lack of data available on transgender populations due to lack of endorsement of gender alteration by National governments. The only exception is South Africa, whose law, Alteration of Sex Description and Sex Status Act of 2003, recognises sex reassignment, and its Constitutional Court has indicated that sexual orientation includes transsexuality. In Nigeria, just as in many African countries, the legal system is transphobic. However, this issue is worth mentioning. Although transgender women may be invisible in Nigerian communities today, overtime or as the legal systems change, communities may face the challenges of incorporating them in women’s community development affairs. This status of the issue in Africa means that the changing concept of woman has community development implications only in countries like South Africa.
Since our research focuses on Nigeria, we take a more traditional view of a woman’s identity – that is, the biological, social roles and cultural perspectives of womanhood. This is in accordance with the situation of women in Nigerian societies. We have adapted to this concept of woman because it matches the traditional view of womanhood in Nigerian rural communities. Within this context, women are at the heart of the social construction of the family. Their reproductive capacity and marital status is important in community development (Okejiri, 2012). In addition, there are behavioural and cultural conditions that guide the identity of womanhood. These social conditions shape women’s identity in Nigeria.
24 JANUARY 2014 | BY ANDREW POTTS
The Australian Institute of Family Studies has released a report on the well being of children raised by gays and lesbians and found they did just as well as those raised by heterosexual men and women.
The Australian Institute of Family Studies is the Australian Government’s key research body in the area of family well being and provides an evidence base for developing policy supportive of the well being of families in Australia.
The report was authored by Dr Deborah Dempsey – a Senior Lecturer in Sociology in the Faculty of Life and Social Sciences at Melbourne’s Swinburne University of Technology.
‘Research to date considerably challenges the point of view that same-sex parented families are harmful to children,’ the report found.
‘Children in such families do as well emotionally, socially and educationally as their peers from heterosexual couple families.’
‘Some researchers have concluded there are benefits for children raised by lesbian couples in that they experience higher quality parenting, sons display greater gender flexibility, and sons and daughters display more open-mindedness towards sexual, gender and family diversity,’ the report found.
The popular perception that gay relationships don’t last is not surprising, but it’s a myth. We all know that same – sex relationships face difficulties not encountered by our opposite – sex counterparts, arising from some measure of public disapproval, hostility or active discrimination or even violence, and from the greater difficulties in arranging the emotional and legal support of family and community in marriage ceremonies and contracts. So the misperception that our relationships are fragile, and the companion allegation often heard from our opponents that gay men are doomed to unhappiness, is not surprising – but is contradicted by the evidence.
The latest study to show this result comes from the UK Open University, widely reported this week in the British press. This research, based on a survey of 5000 people, including in-depth follow – up interviews with 50 of the participants, examined much more than just the sexuality of the couples, which explains the headline of the report in the Independent:
The key to a happy relationship? Be gay. Or childless. Or make tea
Gay couples are likely to be happier and more positive about their relationships than heterosexuals, according to a major study by the Open University published today
However, they are less likely to be openly affectionate towards each other – holding hands in public, for instance – because they still fear attracting disapproval.
The study of 5,000 people – 50 of whom were later followed up with in-depth interviews – aimed at finding out how modern couples keep their relationships on track through life’s difficulties.
It found that simple things – like making a cup of tea in the morning and taking it up to them in bed – were the most treasured by couples as examples of intimacy rather than more dramatic gestures such as declaring “I love you”.
It was on the relative happiness of people within different types of relationships that the survey threw up the most interesting insights into modern day life, however.
“LGBQ participants (lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer) are more generally positive about and happier with the quality of their relationship and the relationship which they have with their partner” the research concludes.
“Heterosexual parents are the group least likely to be there for each other, to make ‘couple time’, to pursue shared interests, to say ‘I love you’ and to talk openly to one another.”
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High-risk children adopted from foster care do equally well when placed with gay, lesbian or heterosexual parents, UCLA psychologists report in the first multi-year study of children adopted by these three groups of parents. The psychologists looked at 82 high-risk children adopted from foster care in Los Angeles County.
Of those children, 60 were placed with heterosexual parents and 22 were placed with gay or lesbian parents (15 with gay male parents and seven with lesbian parents).
Source: — ScienceDaily