KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – Malaysian police have cancelled an annual gay rights festival, after Muslims called for it to be banned. The Seksualiti Merdeka (Sexuality Freedom) festival has been held in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, since 2008, but has suffered increasing criticism by politicians and religious leaders as it gains awareness. A senior police official…
The Uganda cabinet sealed the fate of a controversial bill that would make homosexuality punishable by death in the country. Cabinet members barred legislators’ attempts to reintroduce the measure last week, citing that the country already has “sufficient law to take care of all crimes envisaged by the proposed anti-homosexuality bill.” Several Members of Parliament…
President Sebastian Pinera of Chile proposed legislation Tuesday that aims to guarantee the legal recognition of gay civil unions throughout the country. If the measure becomes law, gay couples will be afforded a number of rights currently reserved for opposite-sex married couples, such as social benefits and inheritance rights. According to the Associated Foreign Press…
Several prominent gay rights activists were arrested Friday after attempting to deliver a petition against Moscow Pride violence to representatives at the Parisian Russian Embassy. Activists Louis-Georges Tin, Nikolai Alekseev, Chad Meacham and Audrey Grelombe were among those taken into custody on the grounds that they were participating in an unauthorized protest outside the embassy…
Lee Hall, the writer behind the popular film and musical hit “Billy Elliott,” has responded with frustration and disappointment to the cancellation of his new opera after school officials pulled 300 primary school students from the production due to gay references in the libretto. The opera, entitled “Beached” and scheduled to open on June 15…
A state judge in Sao Paulo has ruled in favor of what the court claims is Brazil’s first legal gay marriage. Judge Fernando Henrique Pinto issued a decision Monday declaring that two men may convert their civil union into marriage, potentially paving the way for a change in the country’s current policy limiting official recognition…
One week before the St. Petersburg Gay Pride parade, scheduled this year for June 25, Russian anti-gay organizers staged a rally in St. Petersburg petitioning city hall to ban LGBT groups from city-sanctioned activity. The violently anti-gay rally, which involved participants draping a coffin in a rainbow flag and then destroying and discarding it in…
The Associated Press reports today that the United Nation’s main forum on human rights has voted in favor of creating a panel to review anti-LGBT discrimination worldwide. The forum voted late yesterday on a groundbreaking resolution presented by South Africa to establish the LGBT anti-discrimination panel. Among the 47 Human Rights Council members, 23…
Yet another male blogger has confessed to writing under a fictitious lesbian identity. Bill Graber, 58, announced yesterday that he started the lesbian news site Lez Get Real under the name Paula Brooks – a name belonging to his wife, who remained unaware of her husband’s online identity theft throughout the site’s three-year history. Graber,…
After a week’s worth of media speculation regarding the identity of supposed lesbian blogger Amina Arraf, the real author of ‘A Gay Girl in Damascus’ has come forward, incurring criticism and frustration from Syrian LGBT activists and commentators alike. MSNBC reports that Tom MacMaster, a 40-year-old American graduate student at the University of Edinburgh in…
