WikiLeaks and LGBT Community

1. WikiLeaks, the transparency website founded in 2006 by Julian Assange, (who currently lives in London, where he fled after Sweden issued a warrant for his arrest based on sexual assault allegations.) Wikileaks has waded into the waters of partisan politics with its release of thousands of private emails from Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign. There’s a principled argument for this kind of radical transparency. Assange himself made it more than a decade ago on his then-blog: “The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and.”The reality, however, is that some secrets exist for a reason. While Assange may be basking in the limelight for embarrassing Clinton these past two weeks, some of his recent actions may have caused significant collateral damage — particularly to members of the LGBT community.
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3. In July, WikiLeaks published documents from inside the regime of Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, following a failed attempt at a coup. That leak, however, included the private information of thousands of Turkish women, including their home addresses. In publishing Saudi Arabian diplomatic cables, the site outed two male teenage rape victims in Saudi Arabia, and published the name of a man imprisoned for “sexual deviation.” One survivor was reportedly “raped by a man while abroad” and one was “so violently raped [that] his legs were broken,” the cables said, according to the Associated Press. 
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5. WikiLeaks’ methods were criticized by exiled whistleblower Edward Snowden, who exposed the NSA’s controversial metadata program in a 2013 leak. “Democratizing information has never been more vital, and WikiLeaks has helped,” Snowden has said. “But their hostility to even modest curation is a mistake.” The Washington Post later argued that WikiLeaks operates under a “reckless just-publish-everything mentality,” acting with a blatant disregard for the civilians caught in the crosshairs.
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7. When it comes to reporting on LGBT lives, redacting sensitive information is extremely important. The practice of outing, revealing someone’s sexuality before the individual is willing or able to come out publicly, has been criticized by LGBT activists as an invasion of privacy, but this is only part of the story. Outing can cause severe psychological harm, it can lead to youth being expelled from their homes, and it can even get someone killed. It destroys lives. And yet WikiLeaks’ mantra of radical openness has seemingly begun to filter down to the culture at largeIn 10 countries around the world, being LGBT is not only a crime —  it is punishable by death.
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9. Nations mandating the execution of LGBT people include Yemen, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Iran and Saudi Arabia, the same country where WikiLeaks forced gay men out of the closet. In March, Okaz, a newspaper in Jidda, reported that Saudi officials have recently sought to make discussing one’s sexuality on social media a death penalty offense. This decision follows a recent uptick in sting operations targeting gay men, with 35 criminal prosecutions for sodomy in a six-month period.
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11. In July, 19-year-old Hassan Afshar became the latest LGBT person put to death in Iran. Iranian officials claimed that the teenager, still in high school at the time of his arrest, raped another young man, even though Afshar’s parents insisted the sexual encounter was consensual. The distinction didn’t matter. The young man, who was denied access to a lawyer, was hanged July 18. Since 1979, reports estimate that  4,000 to 6,000 LGBT Iranians have been sent to the gallows because of their sexuality.
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13. Cases like Hassan’s have become more common in recent years, as LGBT people have been subject to an international backlash from conservative groups following recent gains in equality. In Indonesia’s Aceh province, ruled by sharia law, citizens are subjected to 100 lashes if found guilty of same-sex intercourse. The country’s high court is set to rule on whether to bring the penalty against homosexuality nationwide, which could mean up to 15 years in prison for those convicted. Ahead of that decision, Indonesia has sought to block access to all gay hookup apps, including Grindr, Blued and BoyAhoy.
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15. Even in the U.S., LGBT-identified people may choose not to disclose their sexuality to office mates or supervisors, in fear of being the victim of workplace discrimination. According to UCLA’s Williams Institute, between 15% and 43% of LGBT people have faced on-the-job harassment, with transgender employees most vulnerable. Despite the passage of marriage equality in 2015, you can still be fired in 28 U.S. states for being LGBT. These include Kansas, Mississippi, Idaho and Indiana.
16. Being outed can lead to job loss, but for youth, it can even mean living on the street — or worse. The Williams Institute of UCLA School of Law reports that 40% of homeless-youth service providers’ clients identify as LGBT, and a majority of them were kicked out of their homes because of their orientation or gender identity, the report says. 
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18. LGBT youth who face rejection from their community are 8.4 times more likely to attempt suicide than those who experienced acceptance. Nineteen-year-old Tyler Clementi, then a student at Rutgers, brought national attention to this issue in 2010 after his roommates filmed him having a sexual encounter with another man. Clementi, who was still coming to terms with his sexuality, took his own life after the video was put online. Sensitive subject matter requires great sensitivity.
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20. WikiLeaks’ mission is to expose government wrongdoing and corruption through radical transparency, promoting a culture of greater accountability. By forcibly outing LGBT people, though, the site has done the opposite—helped bigots, bullies and oppressive regimes everywhere.Hillary Clinton will likely recover just fine from these leaks and from future data dumps. Not everyone may be so lucky.

LGBT Challenges Ahead

The Supreme Court’s 5 to 4 ruling in favor of marriage equality, bringing into law the “fundamental right to marry” for same-sex couples across the United States was a landmark decision. The LGBT community and its allies had spent decades fighting for it and many feared it would never come.

Marriage equality supporters spent Pride weekend rejoicing. But the road to full equality remains long, and there are still many serious issues facing the LGBT community. The issues—violence, employment discrimination, poverty and health care—can be addressed now that marriage equality has been achieved.

Lesbian, gay and transgender people, especially those of color, experience violence at disproportionately high rates compared to heterosexuals. According to the FBI, bias against sexual orientation and gender identity accounted for more than 21% of hate crimes reported in 2013, with sexuality the second most common single-bias category following race. The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs found that while transgender survivors and victims represented only 19% of anti-LGBT violence reported to the organization, transgender women of color accounted for 50% of homicide victims. Seven transgender women of color were murdered in the United States during January and February (2015) alone, which is nearly a murder a week.

A 2013 Pew Research Center survey found that 21% of the LGBT adults surveyed said their employer treated them unfairly because of their sexuality or gender identity. Another report, authored the National Black Justice Coalition and other groups, found that nearly 50% of black LGBT people have experienced employment discrimination. Rates are significantly higher for transgender workers – some 90% of trans people have reported experiencing on-the-job harassment or mistreatment, while 47% said they were fired, not hired or denied a promotion because of their gender identity.

While 22 states have passed laws making job discrimination due to sexual orientation illegal – 19 also include gender identity – LGBT workers still lack federal protection. The Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA, has been introduced in nearly every Congress since 1994, but the hotly contested federal bill didn’t make any headway until 2012, when the Senate for the first time passed the legislation. Still, it failed to make it to the president’s desk.

Research shows that anti-LGBT discrimination has harmful effects on LGBT workers’ economic wellbeing, leading to high rates of unemployment, homelessness, poor health and food insecurity. Pew found that LGBT workers are more likely to earn less annually compared to the general U.S. population. And the transgender discrimination survey found that trans respondents are nearly four times more likely to earn below $10,000 a year than the average American. A 2009 Williams Institute report also found that same-sex couples are two times more likely to live in poverty that different-sex couples, while single LGB adults are 1.2 times more likely to be poor than their straight counterparts.

Social and systematic discrimination, as well as inadequate health care access, contribute to health disparities for the LGBT community. According the Fenway Institute, LGBT people are more likely that straight people to report unmet health needs and have difficulty accessing care and obtaining insurance, when leads to higher rates of disease, chronic illness, drug use, mental illness and obesity among the population. These disparities are exacerbated for the transgender community. The Transgender Law Center found that, in the private market, the pervasiveness of gender identity discrimination in insurance, denial of insurance coverage and transgender-related health care exclusions keep transgender and gender non-conforming people from accessing medically necessary care such as mental health services, surgery and hormone therapy.