LAGOS, Nigeria –Pride celebrations start this week in Uganda, fully funded by more than 2,500 members of All Out, a global movement for the rights of LGBT people. The event, themed “Standing together!”, will culminate with a Pride march in Kampala Saturday, Aug. 6. “As a gay man living in a country where my love…
The Initiative for Equal Rights in partnership with Asurf Films Limited has released the trailer for a short film themed around the traumatic experiences arising from socially constructed expectations imposed on persons who self identify as lesbian, gay and bisexual. The movie narrates the realities faced by LGBT persons in the Nigerian society where heteronormative…
The World Congress of Families’ has announced that it will host its next annual summit in Salt Lake City, UT in the fall of 2015. In addition, the group is holding its traditional pre-summit planning meetings in Salt Lake City on October 22 and 23 of this year. Labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, The World…
LGBTQNation.com is reporting that Ethiopia, the most populous landlocked nation in the world with 93 million people, has created legislation that would make same-sex acts an unpardonable offense. “Ethiopia’s Council of Ministers last week endorsed the measure that would amend the country’s Pardon and Amnesty Law that lists homosexuality along with other offenses as a…
A group of Jesuits from the New York-based magazine America: The National Catholic Review have written an editorial calling out Catholics who promote, agree with or turn a blind eye to punishing new laws being enacted throughout Africa. “Gay and lesbian people in these countries are living under a sword of Damocles, constantly afraid that…
WASHINGTON – The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), has called on U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to recall the nation’s ambassadors to Uganda and Nigeria. HRC argued that urgent consultation is required before regular diplomacy can proceed with nations that recently enacted some of the world’s most virulently anti-LGBT laws. “The Ugandan and Nigerian governments’…
NEW YORK–The American Jewish Committee (AJC) has publicly deplored the treatment of gays in Nigeria. The harassment, imprisonment and torture of gays, sanctioned by a Nigerian law enacted last month, was the focus of a major front-page story in yesterday’s New York Times. “Nigeria’s unforgiving attitude towards gays violates the most basic human rights of individuals,” said Eliseo Neuman,…
Novelist, short story writer, author and journalist Binyavanga Wainaina declared his homosexuality this past week in a short story entitled I am A Homosexual, Mum to protest the passage of anti-gay laws in Nigeria. Wainaina, the founder of the Nairobi-based literary network Kwani, writes, “”I, Binyavanga Wainaina, quite honestly swear I have known I am a…
LOS ANGELES, — Dr. Rizi Timane, minister, social worker, and outspoken advocate for the LGBT community, has issued the following statement on Nigeria’s criminalization of gay marriages and civil unions: I grew up in Nigeria. In Lagos, to be exact. And I have known since I was eight years old that I am transgender. I was born as a…
NEW YORK, – United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has spoken out about a new anti-homosexuality law in Nigeria, saying he feared it may fuel prejudice and violence, as he voiced the strong hope that the constitutionality of the legislation can be reviewed. The Same-Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act, signed into law earlier this month, introduces a wide range…
