Today, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius spoke before the World Health Assembly on the topic of of the LGBT community’s access to healthcare around the world. Echoing State Secretary Hillary Clinton’s remarks last year at the United Nations, Sebelius said that “everyone has a basic right” to healthcare and barriers that discriminate against people for their sexual orientation or gender identity must be broken down:

SEBELIUS: This can take the form of outright discrimination, like when people are given substandard care or are turned away from a hospital or local clinic because they happen to be lesbian or gay.

Often, the barriers are more subtle, like when doctors and nurses don’t take the time to understand the health needs of their LGBT patients

In other cases, health care providers violate patient confidentiality and disclose the sexual orientation of their LGBT patients. This can put LGBT people who are not “out” in their communities, at risk of discrimination, social exclusion, physical violence, or even death. And it leads many LGBT people to risk traveling to distant care facilities in order to prevent this from happening.

Because of this, LGBT populations are often invisible and unacknowledged. But they are there, in considerable numbers, in every country in the world.

Sebelius also acknowledged that she’s all too familiar with these barriers “because they still exist in my own country.”

Brad Dacus, Pacific Justice Institute

The Pacific Justice Institute, a California-based Christian legal defense organization, has partnered with groups that promote ex-gay therapy like NARTH to oppose a California bill that would limit how the dangerous treatment could be provided in the state. In an interview on Friday, the Institute’s Brad Dacus told talk show host Janet Meffered that discredited ex-gay therapist Joseph Nicolosi has been effective in over 80 percent of cases, arguing that homosexuality is a “path of death and destruction”:

MEFFERD: Brad, is there overwhelming evidence that reparative therapy is a fraud?

DACUS: Actually it’s contrary, there’s overwhelming evidence that reparative therapy actually works. It’s not 100% because you have individual will and every person has their own issues. But Dr. [Joseph] Nicolosi and other famous psychiatrists who have treated this, thousands and thousands of patients, report a very high success rate, I know it’s at least over 80 percent, I believe it’s 80-85 percent success rate. These are people who leave the lifestyle, get married to people, have children, and enter heterosexual relationships. It’s a big mass of deception that they are trying to carry out at the expense of many hundreds of thousands or millions of youths who will be led down a path of death and destruction, unfortunately, if they get away with this.

Listen to it:

Dacus, an attorney, went on to explain that “the homosexual lifestyle gives…boys an average lifespan of the age of 40″ and is “worse than being a chain cigarette smoker.” He also suggested that being gay is the consequence of sexual abuse or poor bonding with their father.

Equating homosexuality with “death and destruction” presents a hefty bias to Dacus’ other claims, and it’s unsurprising that his “evidence” carries no weight. When the American Psychological Association resolved that ex-gay therapy is ineffective and harmful, it was only after a systematic review of the available literature. One of the most prominent studies used to support ex-gay therapy was just disavowed by its primary researcher, who apologized to the gay community for promoting its faulty results. Even anti-gay researchers at Pat Robertson’s Regent University admitted in their research that the “ex-gays” they studied who were now in opposite-sex marriages still had the same same-sex orientation as before their therapy.

There is no data to support any claim of sexual orientation change success, let alone 80-85 percent. Such “results” are likely hearsay from Nicolosi himself, who is probably afraid that the California legislation will impede his ability to continue profiting off of internalized anti-gay stigma.

Charles Worley

North Carolina Pastor Charles Worley shared with his congregation this weekend how he thinks the country should deal with the scourge of gay men and lesbians: Lock them into a pen with an electrified fence, drop food down to them, and because they can’t reproduce, they will die out.

The Pastor’s leper colony-esque proposal came in response to the president’s endorsement of same-sex marriage, which he said “anybody with any sense” would be against. Worley explained that the idea of two men kissing makes him “pukin’ sick,” so he developed a proposal to “get rid of all the lesbians and queers”:

WORLEY: I figured a way out — a way to get rid of all the lesbians and queers. But I couldn’t get it passed through Congress. Build a great big large fence, 150 or 100 miles long. Put all the lesbians in there. Fly over and drop some food. Do the same thing with the queers and the homosexuals. Have that fence electrified so they can’t get out. Feed ‘em, and– And you know what? In a few years they’ll die out. You know why? They can’t reproduce.

Watch it:

These comments are in line with other anti-gay religious leaders in the state, like Sean Harris, who said parents should “crack” their children’s “limp wrist.” Harris walked back his statements, but Worley emphasized in his speech that he did, in fact, “mean to say that.”

Jenna Talackova made a little bit of history this weekend. After successfully challenging the Miss Universe Canada pageant to welcome transgender contestants such as herself, she placed in the top 12 finalists and tied for Miss Congeniality. Some were concerned her story was stealing the spotlight, but the controversy also brought more attention to the pageant in general. Talackova was unfazed by the loss, telling CNN she was unconcerned about whether or not her gender identity affected the judges’ decision:

TALACKOVA: Who’s to say? I think I worked very hard. All of us ladies worked so hard and we gave it our best shot. The judges see something in those top five, and that’s fine. I wouldn’t have changed anything. [...] I’m a little tired, but I’m not down. For a couple of seconds, I was a little bummed out, but after, like, a couple of minutes I was just extremely happy. I was so proud of myself. I made sure I did my best performance.

If the photos of her competition are any indication, she truly shined, proving there was never a good reason to keep her out of the pageant to begin with:

Gay activist Svyatoslav Sheremet after he was attacked by conservative protesters.

Just 30 minutes before LGBT activists were about to embark on Ukraine’s first-ever pride parade, Kiev police advised organizers to abandon the march. They claimed that 500 ultra-conservative counter-protesters with seemingly violent intent were en route to interrupt the celebration. Amnesty International’s Ukraine campaigner, Max Tucker, explained that the Kiev police had no intention to protect the organizers:

TUCKER: It has been clear from the start that the Kyiv police department did not want this march to go ahead. Their reluctance to commit to the event and to put adequate security measures in place to protect demonstrators left organizers fearing for their safety. The Kyiv authorities and police must work harder to ensure next year pride participants can feel confident they will be protected.

Though widespread violence was averted by the parade’s cancellation, the day did not end without conflict. Just after meeting with the media, Svyatoslav Sheremet, head of the Gay Forum of Ukraine, was brutally attacked by three of the conservative counter-protesters. His assailants fled when they realized the attack was being filmed, and the resulting image has since gone viral (click to see it full-size):

Of additional concern in Ukraine is proposed legislation to ban any materials “promoting homosexuality,” which would limit the country’s protections for public morals, print media, television and radio broadcasting, and publishing and the Criminal Code. The free expression limitations mirror those recently passed in St. Petersburg, Russia and advancing in other Russian states and perhaps also nationwide.