US: Cities with anti-LGBT laws can't host NCAA tournament events anymore

The NCAA Board of Governors voted Wednesday to require cities to prove they can provide an environment free of discrimination before they can host any event, including the men's and women's basketball Final Fours.

The move is a response to several states establishing laws that allow business owners to deny services to individuals based on sexual orientation and gender identity, the NCAA said in a statement.

“The higher education community is a diverse mix of people from different racial, ethnic, religious and sexual orientation backgrounds,” said Kirk Schulz, president of Kansas State University and chairman of the Board of Governors. “So it is important that we assure that community – including our student-athletes and fans – will always enjoy the experience of competing and watching at NCAA championships without concerns of discrimination.”  Read more

China: For Gay Chinese, getting married means getting creative

Every time Benjamin Zhang talks about marriage, he uses the following words in abundance: "job," "duty," "my parents," "problem," and "urgent".

"The most urgent matter for me now is to find a spouse. I'm not young anymore. I see my peers getting married one by one and having kids, and I have nothing. I just feel very dejected," said the 31-year-old native of the northeastern city of Harbin -- who also admits he loves children and hopes to have his own one day. "When I'm married and have a child, I'd have done my job as a son. That's most important for me."

Benjamin shares the anxiety of millions other bachelors in China, where it's almost a given that people of a marriageable age set off to start a family.

But unlike most of them, Benjamin is looking for a lesbian wife. Benjamin is gay, and he's trying to obtain a xinghun - a new Chinese term coined to describe a "cooperative marriage" between a gay man and a lesbian woman. The marriage, essentially, is a sham: both the husband and wife continue to have their own same-sex partners and may not even live together. Read more via the Atlantic 

Germany: Gay Vulture Couple Attempts to Start A Family by Incubating An Abandoned Egg

Zoo officials at the Tierpark Nordhorn observed a female vulture "sitting in a strange position" when suddenly, she dropped her egg in mud under a tree. They believed she had no intention of building a nest for it.

The egg was then placed in temporary incubation before it was given to a pair of male vultures, Isis and Nordhorn. The couple promptly sat atop the egg, in an attempt to incubate it to hatch.

According to ENEX, the gay vultures have already built a nest in preparation of raising a family before even adopting the abandoned egg.

However, zoo officials said they were not sure which male vulture at their zoo is the biological father, or if the egg was even fertilized. Read/Watch more

Lebanon: Pro-LGBTQ band says they were told they’d never perform in Jordan again

Lebanese rock band Mashrou’ Leila is known for its socially active lyrics. But the group was banned from playing in Jordan, just a few days before their scheduled concert in Amman, the band said in a statement on Facebook.

The Beirut-based rock quintet is known for its support of political and religious freedom and endorsement of gender equality and sexual identity. That led them to be dubbed “the soundtrack to the Arab Spring,” according to Vice.

The band said that the official, written justification they were provided as to why the April 29 concert was canceled was because the performance would have gone against what the Ministry of Tourism viewed as the “authenticity” of the venue. Read more

Beyond Binary across the world

In communities around the globe, non-binary people are rejecting the categories of ‘male’ and ‘female’, and attempting to redefine gender identity. Queer, gender-queer, gender-fluid, gender-variant, third gender – these are all terms non-binary people use to describe themselves.

In Beyond Binary, for the Identity Season on the BBC World Service, Linda Pressly hears stories from activists who are part of this contemporary movement, and from those simply trying to live free from the constraints of the expectations of gender. And she travels to Thailand and Canada to find out more about gender non-conformers in ancient cultures. Read/Watch more

Canada: Intersex filmmaker on growing up not knowing what you are

When Alec Butler was born in 1959 it was assumed Alec was female. But after being brought up as a girl, Alec - now an award-winning writer and film-maker - realised they were intersex, someone whose anatomical, hormonal or genetic sex is neither completely male nor female.
I was about 12 when it really hit. I started to grow a beard and I had a period. So it was really confusing for me. My parents were a little freaked out.

They took me to some doctors, but no-one knew about being intersex in the small town where I grew up in Canada. One doctor said, "We're going to have to put her in a mental institution until she learns how to dress like a girl and put on makeup." This was at the age of 12, when even most genetic girls aren't being forced to do that. Luckily my parents were outraged and they said, "We're not going to do that. We're just going to love you, and you can choose how you want to be." That was a gift. Lots of intersex kids don't have that. Read more

How Prince Led the Way to Our Gender Fluid Present

The world has known few superstars whose personas could match the gender-fluid extravagance of Prince, who died on Thursday at age 57. The pop and R&B icon inlaid his albums with brazen pansexuality and gender norm coquetry—provocations made all the more potent by his staggering talents as a singer, hook-writer, and guitar shredder. Years before the leaders of the gay and lesbian community began to embrace a more nuanced, less binary notion of queerness—and decades before transgender and genderqueer politics became mainstream topics of interest—Prince presented a living case study in the glorious freedom a world without stringent labels might offer. 

“I’m not a woman. I’m not a man. I’m something that you’ll never understand,” Prince sang on 1984’s “I Would Die 4 U.” He was right—few could claim to fully grasp Prince’s easy embodiment of both maleness and femaleness. His schooled evasion of conventional classifiers made him endlessly fascinating. The cover of his 1988 album Lovesexy offers a classic expression of the seemingly incongruous yet thrilling gender bricolage at which he excelled. Read more via Slate

Philippines: Why call centers might be the most radical workplaces

You may not realize it, but the person on the other side of your customer service phone call might be transgender. On calls, Filipino workers can safely adopt women’s voices, names, and clothing, all while earning a decent wage. But their success at work doesn’t protect them from the discrimination they face outside of it.

In the Philippines, call centers have become havens for gender-nonconforming people, a place where they can experiment with their gender presentation and identity. Since most of the labor takes place over the phone, employees assigned male at birth may adopt traditionally feminine names, take on a “female voice,” or wear women’s clothing while talking to customers, a freedom that would be impossible in most other industries in the country.

For decades, beauty parlors were a rare refuge where gender-variant Filipinas could openly work, at the expense of low wages. But today “call centers are the new beauty parlor,” said Naomi Fontanos, the head of a major Philippine transgender organization and herself a former call center worker.  Read more via Buzzfeed

Wheaties box to feature openly gay Olympic diver Greg Louganis

Thirty-two years after winning his first two of four Olympic gold medals, openly gay American diver Greg Louganis will grace a Wheaties cereal box. 

Wheaties' decision comes after an online petition to get Louganis, 56, on the iconic orange box amassed more than 40,000 signatures. Julie Sondgerath, who created the petition, was inspired after watching the HBO documentary “Back on Board: Greg Louganis.”

“From the moment I hit send on the petition, I knew this was possible,” Sondgerath said, via the New York Times. “Having an authentic conversation with (General Mills) was helpful and was potentially a catalyst to genuinely think about it.”

General Mills, which will reveal Louganis’ box on Tuesday along with boxes featuring former Olympic champion hurdler Edwin Moses and swimmer Janet Evans as part of a legends series, denied the petition played a role in its decision. Read more  

Antarctica: is the 'World’s First LGBT-Friendly Continent’

Antarctica is known for frigid temperatures, parading penguins and now... being “the world’s first LGBT-friendly continent”?

That’s right — at least if Planting Peace has anything to say about it.

The non-profit advocacy organization, which created the pro-queer rainbow Equality House adjacent to the Westboro Baptist Church compound in Topeka, Kansas, recently traveled across Antarctica carrying a Pride flag in a symbolic effort to declare full human rights for all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people living in or visiting Antartica. The gesture is also meant to raise awareness about securing equality for queer people on a global level.

Read more via Huffington Post

US: Bruce Springsteen Cancels North Carolina Concert Over Anti-LGBT Law

North Carolina’s controversial new anti-LGBT law doesn’t sit well with Bruce Springsteen. 

The Boss, 66, has been thrilling audiences across the country on The River Tour with his E Street Band since the start of the year. Although he and his bandmates had been slated to perform at the Greensboro Coliseum on April 10, Springsteen announced Friday that he was canceling the show following North Carolina’s passage of House Bill 2, or HB2, last month. 

Springsteen blasted the new legislation, which Gov. Pat McCrory signed into law March 23, in a lengthy statement on his official website April 8. 

“HB2 — known officially as the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act — dictates which bathrooms transgender people are permitted to use,” Springsteen wrote in the statement. “Just as important, the law also attacks the rights of LGBT citizens to sue when their human rights are violated in the workplace. No other group of North Carolinians faces such a burden.”

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