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Watered-down LGBTQ ‘understanding’ bill shows how far Japan’s parliament is out of step with its society – and history

Japan has a rich queer history and is seeing societal changes in favor of greater LGBTQ recognition. That said, national politicians have yet to catch…

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Rainbow ears, but is Japan's parliament listening? Lucas Calloch/@dreiimos/Unsplash

Japan has passed legislation aimed at “promoting the understanding” of members of the LGBTQ community – a watered-down bill that will do little to put the Asian country in line with fellow liberal democracies on the issue.

As many reports of the bill’s passage on June 16, 2023, have noted, Japan lags far behind other G7 countries when it comes to the legal protection of sexual minorities.

There has been less discussion of how the limits of the new law – and the prolonged battle to get it passed – highlight how national politicians are out of step with Japanese society at large.

Despite Japan’s international stereotype as a socially conservative nation – a view swayed by the political leanings of the national government – both corporate Japan and regional authorities in the country have long been out in front of parliament on the rights of LGBTQ people. Moreover, Japan’s history on same-sex relationships is decidedly more mixed than many in the country’s national politics, or in the West, would acknowledge.

Changes in society, courts and corporate Japan

The bill passed by both houses of Japan’s parliament does little to move the needle for the rights of sexual minorities in the country. There are no additional legal protections included. And a vague stipulation in the bill that “all citizens can live with peace of mind” has been criticized by LGBTQ activists for de-prioritizing the rights of sexual minorities.

The fact that even such modest proposals faced a battle to be passed is indicative of the stubbornness of the national parliament to seriously address LGBTQ rights.

Yet outside the national parliament, the political and legal struggles for equal rights for sexual minorities have achieved a series of successes in recent years in Japan, especially at the regional and municipal levels.

In March 2019, legislation banning discrimination against sexual minorities was passed in Ibaraki prefecture. A month later, a Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly law prohibited all discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. The Tokyo law also committed the city government to raising awareness of LGBTQ people and outlawed the expression of hateful anti-LGBTQ rhetoric in public.

Polling in February 2023 found that 64.3% of Japanese respondents backed laws that promoted a better understanding of sexual minorities. A similar percentage of the population also support the legal recognition of same-sex marriage.

And on the issue of same-sex marriage, it is again at the local level where strides are being made.

Several district courts have now ruled that the Japan’s ban on same-sex marriage violates Article 14 of its constitution, which guarantees equality of all people before the law.

Pushback at national level

Yet the conservative Liberal Democratic Party government of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida disagrees, pointing to Article 24 of the Constitution, which states that marriage is based only on “the mutual consent of both sexes and it shall be maintained through mutual cooperation with the equal rights of husband and wife.”

In the absence of a national law to overturn the ban on same-sex marriage, local authorities have turned to civil partnerships. Although these do not provide legal protection against discrimination more broadly, they do offer some benefits, including the option to apply for public housing.

More than 300 municipalities – representing around two-thirds of the population – already allow same-sex couples to enter partnership agreements which are recognized at the local level.

Some temples have begun to offer same-sex wedding ceremonies. While Shinto, Japan’s ancient and influential religious tradition, is perceived to be staunchly conservative, at least one Shinto sect has expressed support of the LGTBQ community.

Picking up on both public sentiment and evolving regional policies, an increasing number of corporations in Japan have begun to recognize sexual minorities as an important segment of both their staff and customers.

In 2019, a total of 200 Japanese corporations established guidelines which prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and sexual identity and extend customary benefits for marriage, childbirth and other life-changing events to same-sex couples.

Long-standing queer culture

The resistance of national politicians to establish legal protections for sexual minorities is also out of step with Japan’s long and widely acknowledged history of diverse sexual cultures.

From the Middle Ages to the end of the 19th century, an elaborate male-male sexual culture could be found among the country’s warrior class, Buddhist monks, and in the theater and entertainment world.

Warriors typically married and had children, but they also thought nothing of demanding complete devotion from their male underlings, often including sexual favors and even romance. A variant of such male-male sexual relations could also be found in Buddhist monasteries, where it was couched in spiritual terms.

This male-male sexuality did not amount to an identity; it was simply a facet of the loyalty expected from boys, desired by their masters but having little agency of their own.

Such relations were famously explored in Ihara Saikaku’s “Great Mirror of Male Love,” a collection of 40 same-sex stories published in the 17th century. The collection remained a point of reference for several generations of men: those who maintained these practices, those who strove to curtail the mainstreaming of them, and the scholars keen on studying both.

A Japanese woman in a white hat.
Writer and and same-sex marriage campaigner Yoshiya Nobuko. Kamakura Museum of Literature archives/Wikimedia

Meanwhile, the push for same-sex marriage predates that of many of the liberal democracies in which it is now established. In 1925, the Japanese writer Yoshiya Nobuko first pursued a traditional marriage with another woman and the legalization of such unions. Yoshiya was unsuccessful, but instead adopted her partner so that she’d be a legal member of her household.

At that point, same-sex sexuality had become the object of medical diagnosis and “treatment.” But same-sex acts were only subjected to a ban for a short period, from 1872 to 1880.

‘Press on till Japan changes’

Similar to the U.S., the LGBTQ movement in Japan has gained momentum over the last half century.

In the 1980s, the HIV/AIDS crisis instigated major strides in activism. Newly founded LGBTQ organizations in Japan worked to reframe how people thought about sexual minority rights, emphasizing that they were human rights. In 1997, one such group, OCCUR, won its first high-profile case, resulting in the end of restrictions on gay individuals’ presence at a youth hostel in Tokyo.

In the wake of that landmark case, OCCUR also successfully prompted the Japanese Society of Psychiatry and Neurology to drop “homosexuality” from its diagnostic manual and instead acknowledge that homosexuality is not a perversion, sexual orientation is not a disorder, and homosexuals do not simply “perform the opposite role of one’s sex.”

OCCUR was also the driving force behind the first Tokyo Gay and Lesbian Pride Parade, in 1994, which advocated acceptance with slogans such as “Japan with a big heart.”

This year, the Tokyo Rainbow Pride event – Asia’s largest Pride event – returned to full capacity for the first time in four years, after pandemic disruptions.

Its theme is “Press on Till Japan Changes.” Society already is – the question is will the national government follow.

Sabine Frühstück does not currently receive funding from external sources. Due to her research areas, history and ethnography of modern and contemporary Japanese culture, she has personally known some of the individuals that this article concerns although none of the individuals that are mentioned by name.

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US Spent More Than Double What It Collected In February, As 2024 Deficit Is Second Highest Ever… And Debt Explodes

US Spent More Than Double What It Collected In February, As 2024 Deficit Is Second Highest Ever… And Debt Explodes

Earlier today, CNBC’s…

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March 12, 2024

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US Spent More Than Double What It Collected In February, As 2024 Deficit Is Second Highest Ever... And Debt Explodes

Earlier today, CNBC's Brian Sullivan took a horse dose of Red Pills when, about six months after our readers, he learned that the US is issuing $1 trillion in debt every 100 days, which prompted him to rage tweet, (or rageX, not sure what the proper term is here) the following:

We’ve added 60% to national debt since 2018. Germany - a country with major economic woes - added ‘just’ 32%.   

Maybe it will never matter.   Maybe MMT is real.   Maybe we just cancel or inflate it out. Maybe career real estate borrowers or career politicians aren’t the answer.

I have no idea.  Only time will tell.   But it’s going to be fascinating to watch it play out.

He is right: it will be fascinating, and the latest budget deficit data simply confirmed that the day of reckoning will come very soon, certainly sooner than the two years that One River's Eric Peters predicted this weekend for the coming "US debt sustainability crisis."

According to the US Treasury, in February, the US collected $271 billion in various tax receipts, and spent $567 billion, more than double what it collected.

The two charts below show the divergence in US tax receipts which have flatlined (on a trailing 6M basis) since the covid pandemic in 2020 (with occasional stimmy-driven surges)...

... and spending which is about 50% higher compared to where it was in 2020.

The end result is that in February, the budget deficit rose to $296.3 billion, up 12.9% from a year prior, and the second highest February deficit on record.

And the punchline: on a cumulative basis, the budget deficit in fiscal 2024 which began on October 1, 2023 is now $828 billion, the second largest cumulative deficit through February on record, surpassed only by the peak covid year of 2021.

But wait there's more: because in a world where the US is spending more than twice what it is collecting, the endgame is clear: debt collapse, and while it won't be tomorrow, or the week after, it is coming... and it's also why the US is now selling $1 trillion in debt every 100 days just to keep operating (and absorbing all those millions of illegal immigrants who will keep voting democrat to preserve the socialist system of the US, so beloved by the Soros clan).

And it gets even worse, because we are now in the ponzi finance stage of the Minsky cycle, with total interest on the debt annualizing well above $1 trillion, and rising every day

... having already surpassed total US defense spending and soon to surpass total health spending and, finally all social security spending, the largest spending category of all, which means that US debt will now rise exponentially higher until the inevitable moment when the US dollar loses its reserve status and it all comes crashing down.

We conclude with another observation by CNBC's Brian Sullivan, who quotes an email by a DC strategist...

.. which lays out the proposed Biden budget as follows:

The budget deficit will growth another $16 TRILLION over next 10 years. Thats *with* the proposed massive tax hikes.

Without them the deficit will grow $19 trillion.

That's why you will hear the "deficit is being reduced by $3 trillion" over the decade.

No family budget or business could exist with this kind of math.

Of course, in the long run, neither can the US... and since neither party will ever cut the spending which everyone by now is so addicted to, the best anyone can do is start planning for the endgame.

Tyler Durden Tue, 03/12/2024 - 18:40

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Buried Project Veritas Recording Shows Top Pfizer Scientists Suppressed Concerns Over COVID-19 Boosters, MRNA Tech

Buried Project Veritas Recording Shows Top Pfizer Scientists Suppressed Concerns Over COVID-19 Boosters, MRNA Tech

Submitted by Liam Cosgrove

Former…

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March 12, 2024

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Buried Project Veritas Recording Shows Top Pfizer Scientists Suppressed Concerns Over COVID-19 Boosters, MRNA Tech

Submitted by Liam Cosgrove

Former Project Veritas & O’Keefe Media Group operative and Pfizer formulation analyst scientist Justin Leslie revealed previously unpublished recordings showing Pfizer’s top vaccine researchers discussing major concerns surrounding COVID-19 vaccines. Leslie delivered these recordings to Veritas in late 2021, but they were never published:

Featured in Leslie’s footage is Kanwal Gill, a principal scientist at Pfizer. Gill was weary of MRNA technology given its long research history yet lack of approved commercial products. She called the vaccines “sneaky,” suggesting latent side effects could emerge in time.

Gill goes on to illustrate how the vaccine formulation process was dramatically rushed under the FDA’s Emergency Use Authorization and adds that profit incentives likely played a role:

"It’s going to affect my heart, and I’m going to die. And nobody’s talking about that."

Leslie recorded another colleague, Pfizer’s pharmaceutical formulation scientist Ramin Darvari, who raised the since-validated concern that repeat booster intake could damage the cardiovascular system:

None of these claims will be shocking to hear in 2024, but it is telling that high-level Pfizer researchers were discussing these topics in private while the company assured the public of “no serious safety concerns” upon the jab’s release:

Vaccine for Children is a Different Formulation

Leslie sent me a little-known FDA-Pfizer conference — a 7-hour Zoom meeting published in tandem with the approval of the vaccine for 5 – 11 year-olds — during which Pfizer’s vice presidents of vaccine research and development, Nicholas Warne and William Gruber, discussed a last-minute change to the vaccine’s “buffer” — from “PBS” to “Tris” — to improve its shelf life. For about 30 seconds of these 7 hours, Gruber acknowledged that the new formula was NOT the one used in clinical trials (emphasis mine):


“The studies were done using the same volume… but contained the PBS buffer. We obviously had extensive consultations with the FDA and it was determined that the clinical studies were not required because, again, the LNP and the MRNA are the same and the behavior — in terms of reactogenicity and efficacy — are expected to be the same.”

According to Leslie, the tweaked “buffer” dramatically changed the temperature needed for storage: “Before they changed this last step of the formulation, the formula was to be kept at -80 degrees Celsius. After they changed the last step, we kept them at 2 to 8 degrees celsius,” Leslie told me.

The claims are backed up in the referenced video presentation:

I’m no vaccinologist but an 80-degree temperature delta — and a 5x shelf-life in a warmer climate — seems like a significant change that might warrant clinical trials before commercial release.

Despite this information technically being public, there has been virtually no media scrutiny or even coverage — and in fact, most were told the vaccine for children was the same formula but just a smaller dose — which is perhaps due to a combination of the information being buried within a 7-hour jargon-filled presentation and our media being totally dysfunctional.

Bohemian Grove?

Leslie’s 2-hour long documentary on his experience at both Pfizer and O’Keefe’s companies concludes on an interesting note: James O’Keefe attended an outing at the Bohemian Grove.

Leslie offers this photo of James’ Bohemian Grove “GATE” slip as evidence, left on his work desk atop a copy of his book, “American Muckraker”:

My thoughts on the Bohemian Grove: my good friend’s dad was its general manager for several decades. From what I have gathered through that connection, the Bohemian Grove is not some version of the Illuminati, at least not in the institutional sense.

Do powerful elites hangout there? Absolutely. Do they discuss their plans for the world while hanging out there? I’m sure it has happened. Do they have a weird ritual with a giant owl? Yep, Alex Jones showed that to the world.

My perspective is based on conversations with my friend and my belief that his father is not lying to him. I could be wrong and am open to evidence — like if boxer Ryan Garcia decides to produce evidence regarding his rape claims — and I do find it a bit strange the club would invite O’Keefe who is notorious for covertly filming, but Occam’s razor would lead me to believe the club is — as it was under my friend’s dad — run by boomer conservatives the extent of whose politics include disliking wokeness, immigration, and Biden (common subjects of O’Keefe’s work).

Therefore, I don’t find O’Keefe’s visit to the club indicative that he is some sort of Operation Mockingbird asset as Leslie tries to depict (however Mockingbird is a 100% legitimate conspiracy). I have also met James several times and even came close to joining OMG. While I disagreed with James on the significance of many of his stories — finding some to be overhyped and showy — I never doubted his conviction in them.

As for why Leslie’s story was squashed… all my sources told me it was to avoid jail time for Veritas executives.

Feel free to watch Leslie’s full documentary here and decide for yourself.

Fun fact — Justin Leslie was also the operative behind this mega-viral Project Veritas story where Pfizer’s director of R&D claimed the company was privately mutating COVID-19 behind closed doors:

Tyler Durden Tue, 03/12/2024 - 13:40

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Association of prenatal vitamins and metals with epigenetic aging at birth and in childhood

“[…] our findings support the hypothesis that the intrauterine environment, particularly essential and non-essential metals, affect epigenetic aging…

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March 12, 2024

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“[…] our findings support the hypothesis that the intrauterine environment, particularly essential and non-essential metals, affect epigenetic aging biomarkers across the life course.”

Credit: 2024 Bozack et al.

“[…] our findings support the hypothesis that the intrauterine environment, particularly essential and non-essential metals, affect epigenetic aging biomarkers across the life course.”

BUFFALO, NY- March 12, 2024 – A new research paper was published in Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as “Aging (Albany NY)” and “Aging-US” by Web of Science) Volume 16, Issue 4, entitled, “Associations of prenatal one-carbon metabolism nutrients and metals with epigenetic aging biomarkers at birth and in childhood in a US cohort.”

Epigenetic gestational age acceleration (EGAA) at birth and epigenetic age acceleration (EAA) in childhood may be biomarkers of the intrauterine environment. In this new study, researchers Anne K. Bozack, Sheryl L. Rifas-Shiman, Andrea A. Baccarelli, Robert O. Wright, Diane R. Gold, Emily Oken, Marie-France Hivert, and Andres Cardenas from Stanford University School of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Columbia University, and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai investigated the extent to which first-trimester folate, B12, 5 essential and 7 non-essential metals in maternal circulation are associated with EGAA and EAA in early life. 

“[…] we hypothesized that OCM [one-carbon metabolism] nutrients and essential metals would be positively associated with EGAA and non-essential metals would be negatively associated with EGAA. We also investigated nonlinear associations and associations with mixtures of micronutrients and metals.”

Bohlin EGAA and Horvath pan-tissue and skin and blood EAA were calculated using DNA methylation measured in cord blood (N=351) and mid-childhood blood (N=326; median age = 7.7 years) in the Project Viva pre-birth cohort. A one standard deviation increase in individual essential metals (copper, manganese, and zinc) was associated with 0.94-1.2 weeks lower Horvath EAA at birth, and patterns of exposures identified by exploratory factor analysis suggested that a common source of essential metals was associated with Horvath EAA. The researchers also observed evidence of nonlinear associations of zinc with Bohlin EGAA, magnesium and lead with Horvath EAA, and cesium with skin and blood EAA at birth. Overall, associations at birth did not persist in mid-childhood; however, arsenic was associated with greater EAA at birth and in childhood. 

“Prenatal metals, including essential metals and arsenic, are associated with epigenetic aging in early life, which might be associated with future health.”

 

Read the full paper: DOI: https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.205602 

Corresponding Author: Andres Cardenas

Corresponding Email: andres.cardenas@stanford.edu 

Keywords: epigenetic age acceleration, metals, folate, B12, prenatal exposures

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About Aging:

Launched in 2009, Aging publishes papers of general interest and biological significance in all fields of aging research and age-related diseases, including cancer—and now, with a special focus on COVID-19 vulnerability as an age-dependent syndrome. Topics in Aging go beyond traditional gerontology, including, but not limited to, cellular and molecular biology, human age-related diseases, pathology in model organisms, signal transduction pathways (e.g., p53, sirtuins, and PI-3K/AKT/mTOR, among others), and approaches to modulating these signaling pathways.

Please visit our website at www.Aging-US.com​​ and connect with us:

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For media inquiries, please contact media@impactjournals.com.

 

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###

Journal

Aging-US

DOI

10.18632/aging.205602

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Associations of prenatal one-carbon metabolism nutrients and metals with epigenetic aging biomarkers at birth and in childhood in a US cohort

Article Publication Date

26-Feb-2024

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