The House of Representatives in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico is likely to vote this week on an amendment to the island’s penal code that would strip sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression from the 2004 hate crimes statute, according to Michael Lavers of EDGE Boston.

The proposed changes, approved last week by the Puerto Rican Senate, would also eliminate hate crimes protections for people victimized on the basis of religious beliefs and ethnicity. Leaders of Puerto Rico’s LGBT and Dominican communities held a joint press conference yesterday to criticize the legislation, which is being considered in an extraordinary session convened by Governor Luis Fortuño.

According to Pedro Julio Serrano of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, LGBT-identified Puerto Ricans face violence on an “epidemic” scale. In July, Serrano reported that twenty LGBT people have been murdered in Puerto Rico since January of 2010. The 2004 penal code requires the authorities to investigate whether the killings were motivated by the victims’ sexual orientation or gender identity; however, Lavers writes that the Puerto Rico Department of Justice’s own reports reveal that “prosecutors have yet to convict anyone of a bias-motive crime on the island.”

Puerto Rico joins a growing list of places around the world where LGBTs face orchestrated legislative bullying, including Nigeria, Russia, Uganda, Ukraine, and Zimbabwe.

Another day, another anti-gay Republican caught being kind of gay:

Senator Robert Arango, who was the Vice Chairman of George W.Bush and Dick Cheney’s Puerto Rico re-election committee in 2004, has been supposedly identified by the Puerto Rican TV show Dando Candela for placing naked pictures of himself on the popular gay social network application Grindr.

When asked about the pictures, Arango reportedly did not deny or confirm that it was him. The Latin news site Gunabee reports that the senator told the Dando Candela show, “You know I’ve been losing weight. As I shed that weight, I’ve been taking pictures. I don’t remember taking this particular picture but I’m not gonna say I didn’t take it. I’d tell you if I remembered taking the picture but I don’t.”

Arango’s alleged photos and possible posting on a same sex site may come as a surprise since the senator has been a vocal enemy against gay marriage and rights in San Juan. The site “JoemyGod” reported that he voted to ban gay marriage in 2009 (the bill failed), opposes civil unions, and used a duck to make fun of a campaign opponent in 2004 (labeling someone a duck is a homophobic slur used in Puerto Rico).

Hahah, “I can’t tell you if that’s me or not, I don’t know what I look like really?!” Yes, sir, and do you use Grindr? But no, the fact that Arango has been using Grindr is not a “surprise” to anyone who understands the insane correlation between public anti-gay views and secret gayness. It’s kind of a thing with our opponents.

[h/t JM Ashby @ Bob Cesca's joint]

UPDATE:  Okay, so yeah, I kinda missed how truly awesome this story was as I was skimming and posting it earlier.  Arango, as we see above, claimed that he was documenting his weight loss in his Grindr pictures, which really doesn’t explain the picture of his anus.  This has led one of Dan Savage’s commenters to term posting pictures of one’s own butthole on a dating site a “Puerto Rican Diet Plan.”  Congratulations, former Senator Arango, on your trim, toned anus.

Of course they do.

Ricky Martin, who announced he was gay in March 2010, is being blasted for his sexuality in a series of homophobic slurs coming from clergy in his native Puerto Rico.

Martin, in the midst of his Music+Soul+Sex tour, was called out in separate interviews by two major Puerto Rican church figures, On Top Magazine reports. Cardinal Luis Aponte Martinez of San Juan urged Martin in an interview with Primera Hora last week to stop promoting his homosexuality.

“Personally, I admire Ricky for the great artistic gifts the Lord has endowed him, but please, for the love of his children, for whom I imagine he wants the best, try to set an example to our youth of the great values we all share, besides sex,” the Cardinal said.

Uh, it has very little to do with sex, but with sexuality, which is actually a different subject. I would not expect a Cardinal, forced into [assumed] celibacy by his career choices, to be an expert on sexuality, so this may be new information for him.

This comes on the heels of an even harsher rant from Pastor Wanda Rolon, the head of a large northern Puerto Rican church.

“[Ricky Martin] wants to take people to hell!” she wrote on her Facebook page. “RM is its ambassador.”

Wanda is dramatic! I would imagine, though, that Ricky Martin is a pretty confounding figure for closed-minded religious leaders to deal with. He’s got a beautiful family, loves his kids, is quite talented, seems by all accounts to be an overall nice guy, and so on; he’s everything that wingnuts lie to themselves and say that gay people are not. He’s an example of why wingnut messages about gay people just don’t play with our increasingly globalized, technologically savvy younger generations. They know better than to buy into the religious hatred, because they’ve seen with their own eyes that it isn’t valid or true.

Your blogger also likes to have an excuse to post pictures of Ricky Martin. Just sayin’.

This is precisely the sort of crime that the federal Hate Crimes Prevention Act was intended to punish:

According to TowleRoad:

Over the weekend the brutalized body of gay teen George Steven Lopez Mercado was found by the side of a road in Puerto Rico. The police investigator suggested that he deserved what he got because of the “type of lifestyle” he was leading.

As a result of police attitudes, the chance for successful prosecution and conviction is almost nil.

If the investigator and his superiors do not prosecute this murder to the fullest extent of the law, then the “law enforcement” officials of Cayey, Puerto Rico, should be held accountable under the federal Hate Crimes Prevention Act for failure to carry out their duties. And the perpetrator of this murder should be punished just as severely as if he had murdered someone on the basis of the victim’s religion or race.

Roughly translated, activist Pedro Julio Serrano said: “It is inconceivable that the investigating officer suggests that the victim deserved his fate, like a woman deserves rape for wearing a short skirt. We demand condemnation of this investigator and demand that Superintendente Figueroa Sancha replace him with someone capable of investigating this case without prejudice.”

Humanity Calling Randy Thomas: Do you still think that antigay crimes like this should be protected by the police, Exodus, and Focus on the Family in the name of political correctness?

UPDATE: Edge reports this evening:

Puerto Rico’ Civil Rights Commission and Puerto Rico Para Todos, a local activist organization, have asked the Puerto Rico Police Department to take disciplinary action against Rodriguez. The PRPD has removed the investigator from the case, but local activists plan to protest outside the territorial capital in San Juan on Thursday. They also plan to hold a vigil later this
week.

The Puerto Rican government added sexual orientation to its hate crimes laws in 2002, but Serrano complained local police have not used it to prosecute those accused of anti-gay violence. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has announced it will take jurisdiction over the case if local investigators conclude L??pez’ killer or killers murdered him because of his sexual
orientation.