{"id":12297,"date":"2019-09-12T15:57:05","date_gmt":"2019-09-12T10:12:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/?p=12297"},"modified":"2019-09-12T15:57:05","modified_gmt":"2019-09-12T10:12:05","slug":"bhutans-lgbt-community-celebrate-after-homosexuality-is-decriminalised","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/bhutans-lgbt-community-celebrate-after-homosexuality-is-decriminalised\/","title":{"rendered":"Bhutan&#8217;s LGBT community celebrate after homosexuality is decriminalised"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Kathmandu (Pahichan) September 12 &#8211; Bhutan&#8217;s LGBT community celebrated after the tiny Himalayan kingdom&#8217;s parliament became the world&#8217;s latest to decriminalise homosexuality.<\/p>\n<p>The lower house overwhelmingly voted late Friday to repeal two sections of the 2004 criminal code which made &#8220;unnatural sex&#8221; illegal.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A lot of us cried,&#8221; said Tashi Tsheten of Rainbow Bhutan that represents the country&#8217;s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are a small and marginalised community and when our rights are discussed in parliament, it makes us extremely happy,&#8221; Tashi said.<\/p>\n<p>The law had never been used, but Finance Minister Namgay Tshering, who submitted the recommendation to repeal sections 213 and 214 of the penal code, said they had become &#8220;a stain&#8221; on the country&#8217;s reputation.<\/p>\n<p>Namgay Tshering said the sections had become redundant since Bhutan became a constitutional monarchy in 2008. &#8220;There is a high degree of acceptability of the LGBT community in our society,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/plugins\/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FLGBTbhutan%2Fposts%2F2278516355597801&amp;width=500\" width=\"500\" height=\"529\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The minister added that he was optimistic that the code sections would be definitively scrapped when the upper house in the country of 750,000 people votes on Monday.<\/p>\n<p>Tashi said some ministers had been social workers with contacts in the LGBT community and Prime Minister Lotay Tshering is a surgeon. &#8220;So we had lot of hopes in this government.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>There is no annual Gay Pride rally or other public display in Bhutan.<\/p>\n<p>LGBT Bhutan said a lot more work needed to be done to change social attitudes and spread awareness of the challenges faced by members of their community.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have a big number of people supporting the LGBT people but still, a lot more is to be done \/talked about,&#8221; the group posted in a message on Facebook.<\/p>\n<p>Tashi said although there was a general acceptance of transgenders, especially in rural areas, they still face much discrimination, especially in schools.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There are lots of barriers and our education system does not understand LGBT,&#8221; Tashi said, adding that most LGBT youths drop out of school.<\/p>\n<p>Once the bill is passed by the National Council, the upper chamber, it will be sent for royal assent.<\/p>\n<p>Source : SBS News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kathmandu (Pahichan) September 12 &#8211; Bhutan&#8217;s LGBT community celebrated after the tiny Himalayan kingdom&#8217;s parliament became the world&#8217;s latest to decriminalise homosexuality.<br \/>\nThe lower house overwhelmingly voted late Friday to repeal two sections of the 2004 criminal code which made &#8220;unnatural sex&#8221; illegal.<br \/>\n&#8220;A lot of us cried,&#8221; said Tashi Tsheten of Rainbow Bhutan that represents the country&#8217;s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.<br \/>\n&#8220;We are a small and marginalised community and when our rights are discussed in parliament, it makes us extremely happy,&#8221; Tashi said.<br \/>\nThe law had never been used, but Finance &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":12298,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,8,621,490,11],"tags":[1443,524],"class_list":["post-12297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-current-issue","category-human-rights","category-news","category-slider","category-world","tag-gay-pride","tag-lgbt"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12297"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12299,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12297\/revisions\/12299"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}