"I AM" is a Kenyan hip hop group, consisting of rappers Sue Timon, Grammo Suspect and singer Miss Isle, whose "main agenda" is to be LGBTQ activists. Check it out
Students at Japan High School Switch Uniforms With Opposite Sex
A high school in Japan’s Yamanashi prefecture has come up with a unique way for its students to see their world from a different perspective. Fuji Hokuryo High School this week held what it calls a “Sexchange Day,” in which nearly 300 of its students traded uniforms with the opposite sex and attended classes.
“This is a project for students to observe things differently” without being bound by their gender, Hirofumi Miyashita, the school’s vice principal, told Japan Real Time. Read More
Thailand launches world's first transgender modeling agency
A Thai modeling agency has launched the first transgender model division in the world.
The Bangkok-based Apple Modeling Agency announced the division on Tuesday (11 November) and has 18 transgender girls on its books. Apple is one of the leading and largest modeling agencies in the southeast Asian country. Read More
The International Olympic Committee Comes Out Against Anti-Gay Discrimination
At long last the International Olympic Committee will change the wording of the Olympic Charter to include protection from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. This development was part of 40 recommendations published today ahead of next month’s IOC meeting in Monaco, where IOC President Thomas Bach’s “Agenda 2020” process will conclude with significant changes to the bidding process for and organization of the Olympic Games. The change in language is significant. Read More
How The Bond Between Two Gay Men Produced Some Of The Finest Poems Of WWI
The warrior-poets were among the most significant chroniclers of World War I. “If I should die, think only this of me;/ That there’s some corner of a foreign field/ That is forever England” and “In Flanders fields the poppies blow/ Between the crosses, row on row” are lines that live on in the popular imagination, 100 years after the outbreak of hostilities.
But many of the finest poems of the Great War—including “Anthem for Doomed Youth” and “Dulce et Decorum Est”—might not exist were it not for the pivotal bond between two gay men who were the era’s finest war poets: Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. Read More
Germany’s shame: Paragraph 175 and homosexuality
Gay men were not only persecuted by the Nazis, but were revictimized when liberating armies put the men they rescued from concentration camps back into prison, Dr James Waller told a Toronto lecture hall.
The Nazis, he said, rationalized their persecution of male homosexuals on the basis of their failure to reproduce for the Aryan race, their alleged propensity to “infect” youth, and their existence as a disloyal, subversive threat to the regime. Within the span of a few years, Germany went from being the home to a 1920s Berlin that had more gay bars than 1970s New York City, to more than 100,000 gay men arrested under the newly expanded Paragraph 175.
The statistics Waller cites are grim. About half the men arrested served some sort of prison term as convicted homosexuals. Between 5,000 and 15,000 gay German men were sent to concentration camps; they are often referred to as “The 175ers.” An unknown number of gay men were institutionalized in mental hospitals, castrated or committed suicide. Read More
Latvian Minister Declares He’s Gay, Exposing New Culture War in Europe
When Latvia’s foreign minister, Edgars Rinkevics, declared on Twitter on Thursday that he was “proud to be gay,” the announcement was welcomed there by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights activists, who have faced open hostility from social conservatives in the former Soviet republic.
In neighboring countries, contrasting reactions to the minister’s declaration — and his statement, in Latvian, that he would also work for legal recognition for same-sex couples — seemed to reveal the contours of a cultural fault line on the issue in post-Cold War Europe between West and East. Read More
Steve Jobs memorial torn down in Russia after current Apple CEO Tim Cook comes out as gay
A Russian group of companies ordered the destruction of a memorial tribute to late Apple founder Steve Jobs after the technology giant’s current CEO, Tim Cook, came out as gay last week.
ZEFS, which originally had the six-foot monument in the shape of an iPhone erected outside a college in St Petersburg in January to pay homage to the achievements of Jobs following his death from cancer in 2011, has since taken the decision to dismantle it: “After Apple CEO Tim Cook publicly called for sodomy, the monument was taken down to abide to the Russian federal law protecting children from information promoting denial of traditional family values.” Read More
Gay people in business: Out at the top
When American politicians, television presenters, and even clergy come out of the closet these days, it barely makes the headlines. But the corporate world is different: until Apple’s boss, Tim Cook, said on October 30th that he is gay, there had never been an openly homosexual CEO of a Fortune 500 company.
The crossing of this symbolic threshold demonstrates both how much conditions have improved for gay executives and how far boardrooms lag the rest of society. Read More
Activist Chalwe Charles Mwansa on LGBT activism in Zambia
While lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights in some sections of the world have progressed in recent years, equality remains elusive in other parts of the world, such as Zambia. The paramount issue on the table, with regard to LGBT rights, is how we create an African-centered dialogue that tackles the social and political issues that currently drives homophobia across the continent. Read More
The State of LGBT Equality in Africa
Arctic Russia's LGBT community speaks: 'the danger is everywhere'
Members of the LGBT community in Murmansk speak out about living in a country where the government has declared them an enemy of the state. One organization is reaching out to help youth and adults overcome the stigma and prejudice of homosexuality and live openly. But some are finding escape from Russia is the only way to gain freedom.
My translator, Maria, trails off. “We have…a fancy word for ‘gay guy’ in Russian,” she explains, hesitating, trying to find the English equivalent for me.
“Faggot,” says a woman in a black checked shirt wearing a yin and yang necklace. But that’s actually the polite translation. “Pederast” is one of the most offensive words in Russian to use when talking about the LGBT community. If you trace back its roots, the exact English translation is child rapist. Read More