http://nytimes.com/2010/01/06/us/06gender.html

US Job Site Bans Bias Over Gender Identity

By Brian Knowlton
Published: January 5, 2010

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has inserted language into the federal jobs Web site explicitly banning employment discrimination based on gender identity.

The protection is expected to apply to the small Transgender population — people who identify their gender differently from the information on their birth certificates — and it merely formalises what had been increasingly unchallenged government practice over several years.

But civil liberties and gender rights groups welcomed it on Tuesday as the clearest statement yet by the Obama administration that such discrimination in the federal workplace would not be accepted.

Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Centre for Transgender Equality, said, “The largest employer in the country is doing what all the other large employers in the country are doing, so that’s really great news.”

But the new standard brought instant criticism from cultural conservatives.

“We at the Family Research Council oppose including gender identity as a category of protection,” said Peter S. Sprigg, senior fellow for policy studies.

Mr Sprigg said his group believed that what it calls “gender identity disorder” should be “treated with therapy to help people be comfortable with their biological sex rather than affirming and celebrating and protecting those who want to deny their biological sex.”

When the administration foreshadowed the change back in June, it was thought the guidelines would be in an updated federal handbook for managers and supervisors. Their inclusion instead in the equal-employment opportunity notices on http://usajobs.gov/ , the federal jobs site, was viewed as even more significant.

“This is frankly a bigger deal,” said Christopher E. Anders, senior legislative counsel for the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union.

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8438865.stm

US Lifts HIV/AIDS Immigration Ban

The US has lifted a 22-year immigration ban which has stopped anyone with HIV/AIDS from entering the country.

President Obama said the ban was not compatible with US plans to be a leader in the fight against the disease.


President Obama wants the US to be a world leader on HIV research

The new rules come into force on Monday and the US plans to host a bi-annual global HIV/AIDS summit for the first time in 2012.

The ban was imposed at the height of a global panic about the disease at the end of the 1980s.

It put the US in a group of just 12 countries, also including Libya and Saudi Arabia, that excluded anyone suffering from HIV/AIDS.

The BBC's Charles Scanlon, in Miami, says that improving treatments and evolving public perceptions have helped to bring about the change.

Rachel Tiven, head of the campaign group Immigration Equality, told the BBC that the step was long overdue.

"The 2012 World AIDS Conference, due to be held in the United States, was in jeopardy as a result of the restrictions. It's now likely to go ahead as planned," she said.

In October, President Obama said the entry ban had been "rooted in fear rather than fact".

He said: "We lead the world when it comes to helping stem the AIDS pandemic - yet we are one of only a dozen countries that still bar people with HIV from entering our own country."