The mounting evidence that points to an unfair "community evaluation" for .GAY has reached fever pitch since the Council of Europe added a human rights perspective to the discussion in a newly published report to ICANN. How and when ICANN will respond remains to be seen.

Over the past several months ICANN has been taken to task on the .GAY case, with claims that the LGBTQIA supported application from dotgay was not treated in accordance with ICANN's bylaws and specifically non-discrimination commitments. Ample evidence supporting these claims was presented in multiple reports and the ICANN Board has since requested review of materials used to deny community priority to .GAY. dotgay has previously asked to review similar materials the Board is currently looking to review, but access was denied by ICANN.

As dotgay and the gay community await resolution from the organization responsible for the entire domain name system (DNS), it warrants reiterating that ICANN has proclaimed a commitment to human rights and a responsibility to serve the public interest. If in fact the "interest" of the global LGBTQIA population supporting a community-operated .GAY is overlooked, then who's interests does ICANN actually serve?

To support ongoing advocacy efforts dotgay has established a crowdfunding campaign on Generosity where you can easily contribute.

Key human rights implications from the Council of Europe report which are actionable by the ICANN Board to produce a resolution in support of a community-operated .GAY include:

- ICANN must protect public interest values through community domains, like .GAY
- ICANN's commitments to human rights requires that it support community domains, like .GAY
- ICANN's gTLD program improperly fails to conform with human rights principles

The entire expert opinion is available HERE.