Losing a job over gay rights

[forest444]

Buenos Aires Herald
Published February 19, 2015
By Vera Von Kreutzbruck

A row over press freedom and gay rights has erupted in Colombia after a journalist, Yohir Akerman, was “asked to resign” after publishing a column in defense of the LGBT community. Writing in the conservative El Colombiano newspaper based in Medellín, Akerman leapt to the defense of the non-heterosexuals, weighing into a debate over gay rights by declaring that "God is wrong for seeing homosexuality as an illness, as it says in the Bible."

The night before the publication of his last column, El Colombiano editor-in-chief Martha Ortiz asked the journalist to tone his piece down, arguing “it could offend readers” for being “disrespectful.” Akerman refused and warned his boss that if the newspaper didn’t publish it verbatim, he would send them a resignation letter, the journalist told the Herald in a telephone interview yesterday.

The newspaper did publish the column — but it also cost him his job. Akerman found out he had been removed, he says, after his column appeared with a note from the publisher at the end, which read “we publish and accept his resignation.”

Akerman wrote the column in response to a controversial “medical report” prepared by the Faculty of Medicine at the Universidad de La Sabana, a private, religious university with close ties to an ultra-conservative faction of the Roman Catholic Church called Opus Dei. In the document, signed by faculty director Alvaro Enrique Romero Tapia, it declared that the behavior of gays is “abnormal” and concluded that such people have an “illness.”

At: http://buenosairesherald.com/article/182381/losing-a-job-over-gay-rights

[Smarmie Doofus]

1. Where'd g-d do his internship, I wonder.

>>>>Akerman leapt to the defense of the non-heterosexuals, weighing into a debate over gay rights by declaring that God is wrong for seeing homosexuality as an illness, as it says in the Bible.>>>>

g-d diagnoses illnesses now? Where does the bible say *that*? ( I'm afraid to ask.)

I didn't realize the level of discussion in Argentina on this topic was so LOW.

[forest444]

2. This was a case in Colombia.

That was part of his own editorial in response to the study, and the article merely cited him.

I'm familiar with Argentina, and right-wingers there do in fact share many of the same bigoted tropes their U.S. counterparts hold dear - including, racism, snobbery, and yes, the belief that God hates homosexuals (the Buenos Aires Herald is not among them).

Fortunately, those types are in the minority these days. Argentina in fact was only the tenth country in the world - and the first in Latin America - to legalize same-sex marriage on a federal basis. The law was passed by Congress (2010) and signed into law by the current president (Cristina Kirchner) - and she did so just months before her reelection campaign.

There were scattered protests at the time, mainly organized by the fascist Catholic lay organization, Opus Dei (the same ones that control the Colombian university that published the study mentioned earlier); but most of Argentine society accepted it as a reasonable - even overdue - change.

[Smarmie Doofus]

3. Perdoneme. Colombia; not Argentina.

Still surprised but not quite so.

[forest444]

4. My bad; I was sloppy

It was a wordy article, and while selecting the salient points I should have mentioned Colombia in the title ("losing a job over gay rights" could mean almost anywhere, as we all know).

That said, it's worth remembering that Colombia has become one of the dangerous places on earth for a journalist - LGBT-friendly or not. https://cpj.org/americas/colombia/

And for teachers and labor leaders? Fuhgetaboutit! http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/colombia/120207/colombia-unions-teachers-violence