Hateful rhetoric against transgender people is culminating in physical attacks, Sheffield LGBT charity warns
Heather Paterson, CEO of Say It Sheffield, says the language seen used against trans people is similar to that seen in the 1980s against gay and lesbian people, and is culminating in physical attacks and abuse. “In the past few years, there has been a lot of stirring up in the media about transgender and […]
Wish It Was a Coming Out: older gay people in Italy – in pictures
Photographer Melissa Ianniello’s long-term project investigates the double taboos of homosexuality and old age in Italy. The subjects of her intimate portraits are a group of gay men and lesbians between 60 and 90 years old, captured as couples or alone in their own homes
Hollywood Boulevard ‘All Black Lives Matter’ street painting will stay permanently to honour the Black queer community
The huge, LGBT-inclusive ‘All Black Lives Matter’ installation on Hollywood Boulevard is being made permanent to commemorate the history-making march in Los Angeles. Tens of thousands of people joined the march on June 14 to protest the brutal murders of two Black trans women, Dominique “Rem’Mie” Fells, 27, and Riah Milton, 25. The block-long message […]
Neither boy nor girl, it’s ‘not a sin sweetheart’
THRISSUR: A lullaby album for an intersex child, authored by transgender poet Vijayaraja Mallika, has gone viral on social media. “Shaapamalla, papamalla, omane nee, ente jeevithathil vannudhicha bhagyatharam, aadyatharam nee (not a curse or sin, my sweetheart, you are my lucky star, you are my very first star),” the mother in the song assures the […]
Intersex Children in Uganda Face Rejection, Violence
KAMPALA, UGANDA — No one wanted to name Nakitto Flavio’s baby. At a traditional ceremony, the infant’s aunt refused because the newborn’s sex was unclear. Flavio’s husband wouldn’t do it either. In fact, he declared the child cursed and left the family. Flavio’s anguish is common for Ugandan parents of intersex children, who are often […]
Beyond ‘he’ and ‘she’: 1 in 4 LGBTQ youths use nonbinary pronouns, survey finds
One in 4 LGBTQ youths use pronouns other than he/him or she/hers, according to a survey released Wednesday by The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization. The survey of about 40,000 LGBTQ young people ages 13 to 24 found that 75 percent of those who use pronouns other than the gender […]
Erased From the Trump Administration’s Draft of Key Foreign Aid Policy: Any Mention of LGBT People
The lead U.S. foreign aid agency has proposed a new policy on gender and women’s empowerment that eliminates any mention of transgender people or contraceptives, running counter to its own long-standing practices in deciding what programs to support. The draft policy released by the U.S. Agency for International Development on Wednesday was billed as an […]
Holland, Michigan adopts anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ, others
After a seven-hour meeting that went into the night and included several hours of impassioned public comment, Holland City Council voted 8-1 early Thursday morning to approve an ordinance protecting LGBTQ individuals, among others, from discrimination. The new local law expands the city’s existing protections against discrimination in housing on the basis of age, race, […]
A London court has set a date to finally decide on same-sex marriage in Bermuda
The final fate of same-sex marriage in Bermuda will be decided by a court in London – which has now set a date for the hearing. The Privy Council is the final court of appeal for multiple British Overseas Territories and former colonies. So the decision could set a precedent changing the law in far […]
Germany plans equal rights for lesbian co-mothers
A German parentage law package close to being submitted to cabinet would give a child born into a lesbian setting two mums, the biological mother and her female partner, German media reported on Friday. In a brief quote posted on her ministry’s website, Justice Minister Christine Lambrecht said the focus must be on the child’s […]
WEAR IT PURPLE DAY APPROACHES
In the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, separation from community support structures has been one of the greatest struggles that Rainbow people have faced. It’s hard to watch the world burning, and it’s harder when you feel you’re watching it alone. However, in times like these, it’s important to remember that while we may be […]
OVER 60 INCIDENTS OF ANTI-LGBTQ VIOLENCE IN ASYLUM CENTERS; GOV’T CALLED TO DO SOMETHING
More needs to be done to combat anti-LGBTQ violence in asylum centers in the Netherlands, according to foundation LGBT Asylum Support. The foundation received over 60 reports of discrimination, threats, and violence against asylum seekers from the LGBTQ community since June. In a letter to State Secretary Ankie Broekers-Knol of Justice and Security, the foundation […]
Turkey’s media authority fines TLC TV over program featuring LGBTI+ parents
The Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK) has fined five broadcasters for various reasons. The TLC TV was imposed a monetary penalty fined over its “Extraordinary Pregnancies” program for “depicting homosexual relationships as normal.” The program that presented two women as parents having a child was “against the society’s spiritual values” and “harmed gender roles […]
Chinese LGBT group ShanghaiPRIDE halts work to ‘protect safety’
ShanghaiPRIDE, one of China’s longest running gay pride groups, said it was cancelling all activities and events for the foreseeable future, citing the need to protect the “safety” of its people and prompting a chorus of regret on social media. Homosexuality is legal in China, which until 2001 had classified it as a mental disorder. […]
Capitalism Made Gay Identity Possible. Now We Must Destroy Capitalism.
Gay identity became possible thanks to capitalism’s emancipatory side: its liberation of the individual from material dependence on the family. But that sexual freedom wasn’t automatic — it required decades of militant struggle. Today, we need more such struggles to combat the oppressive aspects of capitalism, which keep gay and straight people alike from living […]
Beverley Ditsie: the South African woman who helped liberate lesbians everywhere
Beverley Ditsie first understood what the word “gay” meant while listening to Boy George. She was a teenager in the South African township of Soweto in the early 1980s, obsessed with the UK’s New Romantic movement. In South Africa, people were speculating about the singer’s sexuality, as they were all over the world, and when […]
Hungary’s Orban calls for central Europe to unite around Christian roots
Central European nations should unite to preserve their Christian roots as western Europe experiments with same-sex families, immigration and atheism, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Thursday. Orban, a nationalist who has been in power for more than a decade, was speaking at an event to inaugurate a monument commemorating the Treaty of Trianon, […]
‘The volume has been turned up on everything’: Pandemic places alarming pressure on transgender mental health
The surgery was supposed to be a turning point. Brenda Emery spent a year preparing for the vaginoplasty. To save up for it, she took jobs in food service straight out of college and moved in with her mother. She talked at length to therapists and medical experts to make sure the procedure to modify […]
Ugandans face summons over LGBT torture charges
A Ugandan town councilman and a Ugandan prisons officer have been summoned to face criminal charges of torture and inhuman and degrading treatment connected to the arrest of 20 men at an LGBT homeless shelter in March and their imprisonment for 50 days. The 20 arrested members of LGBT advocacy group Children of the Sun […]
LGBTQ+ People In Beirut Are Suffering As Lebanon Continues to Bleed
Lebanon, a country ravaged by war for 15 years, had its most devastating blast on August 4, 2020. The blast killed 180 people, injured more than 6,000, and has rendered 350,000 people homeless. The blast that is being reported to have created seismic waves equivalent to a 3.3 magnitude earthquake felt as far as one […]
SOUTH AUSTRALIAN BAN ON CONVERSION THERAPY TO BE SHAPED BY SURVIVORS
Following Queensland’s banning of conversion therapy last week, Star Observer spoke to South Australia’s Shadow Human Services Minister, Nat Cook, about her draft bill to ban conversion therapy in South Australia and what can be learnt from Queensland’s legislation. Last month, Adelaide media outlet InDaily reported that under new legislation being proposed by Nat Cook, […]
Belarus’ marginalised queer community ‘will still face hatred and violence after Lukashenko’s regime is over’, activist warns
A queer activist in Belarus has warned that even if efforts to remove despot Alexander Lukashenko prevail, the country’s LGBT+ community faces a long road to liberation. Belarus has been gripped by protests since the official result of an August 9 election allegedly returned Lukashenko to a sixth term in office, with an overwhelming – […]
Donors free trans woman from jail in Cameroon, help her in new career
C., the trans woman in eastern Cameroon who is being helped by this blog’s Not Alone Project, has been released from prison early and is preparing for training as a hairdresser, a career that she hopes will replace the income she previously earned as a sex worker. C. had been sentenced to a year in […]
Nollywood demonises queer people
In 2014, the former president of Nigeria Goodluck Jonathan passed into law a Bill that became the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act. The passage of the law gave way to heightened attacks on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) people by mobs who said they were working for the president. Over the past six years, […]
Will SAPS finally release LGBTIQ hate crimes stats?
South African Police Commissioner Khehla Sithole has indicated that the SAPS is committed to releasing crime statistics that specify LGBTIQ hate crimes. But are these even being recorded as such? On Friday, Sithole, alongside other senior officials such as Police Minister Bheki Cele, addressed the media at the release of the quarterly crime statistics. The […]
Czech Republic in danger of following in the homophobic, transphobic footsteps of Poland and Hungary, campaigner warns
After years of progress towards equality across Europe, LGBT+ campaigners across the continent have faced a bruising few years – with politicians in Poland openly stoking anti-LGBT+ hatred to their own ends, while in Hungary the right-wing government led by Viktor Orban is legally erasing recognition of transgender people. In the Czech Republic, campaigners are […]
Ancient Viking warrior given a hero’s burial may have actually been ‘transgender, non-binary or gender fluid’
Three years ago, the ornately dressed remains of a high-status Viking warrior from the mid-900s were discovered alongside swords, spears and two slaughtered horses in Birka, Sweden. Following studies, it was assumed that the remains of the Viking warrior were those of a female – a finding that threw into question a once commonly-accepted view […]
Poland: LGBT+ activists and nationalists face off
Hundreds of Polish nationalists and defenders of gay rights faced off in central Warsaw on Sunday, amid a deteriorating situation for the country’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT+) community. Both groups shouted abuse at each other in front of Warsaw University’s main gate. A line of police officers separated them. The nationalists burnt a […]
An inclusive move: Reserved seats for transgenders in Kolkata
Kolkata’s transgender commuters will now have designated seats in some of the city’s public buses. The movement to reserve at least one bus seat for the third gender was officially launched on Sunday. The person behind the idea is 23-year-old Sobhan Mukherjee, who was nicknamed “Kolkata’s padman” two years ago for setting up sanitary napkin […]
UK Black Pride ‘celebrates black queer voices’ as coronavirus forces 15th anniversary event online
UK Black Pride – Europe’s largest celebration for LGBTQ people of African, Asian, Caribbean, Latin American and Middle Eastern descent – didn’t let a little thing like a global pandemic stop celebration of its 15th anniversary on Sunday. Instead, the festivities moved online, with a variety of performances, DJs sets and speakers taking part via […]