EU Countries Banned From Requiring LGBT Asylum Seekers To “Prove” Their Sexuality

Europe’s top court, the European Court of Justice has blocked tests administered by European countries to determine cases of asylum seekers who say they are gay or lesbian. It has ruled that refugees who claim asylum on the grounds that they are homosexual – especially from African countries – should not have to undergo tests to prove it.

The ruling was a result of three men, including a Ugandan and one from a Muslim country, failing in their bids for asylum when a Dutch court said they had not proved their sexuality.  Read More

Fire chief suspended after distributing his anti-gay religious book

Atlanta Fire Rescue Department Chief Kelvin Cochran started a month-long suspension without pay after employees complained about the content of his self-published religious book. Among other things, the book calls “homosexuality” and “lesbianism” a “sexual perversion” morally equivalent to “pederasty” and “bestiality.” Read More

Lesbians in Kenya: The forgotten victims of AIDS

Brenda was gang-raped to ‘cure’ her of being lesbian, leaving her with HIV which she passed on to her female partner. In Kenya, health workers are often particularly insensitive and ill-equipped to serve lesbians, lacking the knowledge on how to prevent HIV transmission between two women.

‘We are told that women cannot infect each other and sometimes they even ask us about our male sexual partners,’ Brenda adds. ‘Unfortunately our society defines us and our roles from the day we are born and we are raised to actively live up to those roles or face being ostracized.’ 

It is impossible to know how many ‘corrective rape’ cases there are each year, but the phenomenon is reported by lesbians all over Africa. Read More 

South African Court Sentences Man To 30 Years In Prison For Rape And Murder Of Black Lesbian

A South African court has sentenced Lekgoa Lesley Motleleng to 30 years for the rape and murder of Duduzile Zozo, a 26-year-old black lesbian from a township east of Johannesburg.

The gruesome details of her death brought national attention to an epidemic of sexual assault targeting black lesbians in South Africa and the failure of the criminal justice system to respond to them. While there are no reliable statistics on how frequently black lesbians are targeted for so-called “corrective rape,” a 2013 study found that almost one in three lesbian or bisexual women in South Africa reported being the victims of “forced sex.”  Read More

The New Face of HIV Is Gay & Young

In a small community hall in London’s Soho, a group of young gay men gather. They are 16 to 25 years old. They come from all walks of life but they have two key things in common: They are vulnerable and they are living with HIV. Some of these young men are sex workers, homeless, and drug users. Many have been victims of sexual harassment. Others have traded sex for basic necessities to survive.

“Being homeless has made me have sex with people that can provide me with a place to sleep and this means I have little choice about the kind of sex I have,” said 16-year-old Russell.  He is, in many ways, the new face of the HIV epidemic—not just in Britain, but also across the world.  Read More

Taiwan university 'breaks gender frame' with 'Men's Skirt Month'

National Taiwan University is calling for male students to wear skirts every day in the month of December to 'break the traditional gender frame.' The Gender Workshop Society said it was launching 'Men's Skirt Month' to 'eliminate something that society had gender-kidnapped.' Read More

Lesbian's Muslim Dad Inspires With Example of Love, Acceptance

A new video challenges the idea that Islam and tolerance are incompatible. Although ultra-orthodox, extremely conservative sects of Islam dominate today's news, recently there has been a short string of headlines that reveal examples of more progressive, more tolerant practice of the one of the world's largest religions. 

The progressive values that MPV champions include gender equality, LGBT rights, freedom of expression, and freedom of (or from) belief. According to Muslims for Progressive Values founder, Ani Zonneveld, who is straight, those ideas are not new to Islam. There have long been female scholars, artists and singers in Islamic tradition, she says, and antigay laws in modern Muslim states are the legacy of British colonization.  Read More

Lesbian MEP gives Pope rainbow scarf

Ulrike Lunacek, head of delegation of the Austrian Green party, said she offered the Pope the present "for gays, lesbians, and for peace" during the European Parliament meeting in Strasbourg. Lunacek is co-president of the European Parliament Intergroup on LGBT Rights, and is the first openly lesbian politician in the Austrian Parliament. She was reportedly attacked with butyric acid as she was giving an interview during the annual Rainbow Parade in Vienna earlier this year. 

No one was injured in the attack, but Lunacek said: "These kinds of isolated cases [show] that the fight for tolerance, acceptance and respect in Austria [is] not over. People who spread fear and hate [need] to be opposed. Read More

Being gay in China: Does the rainbow flag fly free?

In this narrow Beijing hutong, the rainbow flag flies free. I'm in Two Cities Cafe, a popular meeting place for the local gay community. Here, I meet with some of the country's leading LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) advocates to learn about gay identity in China.

Unlike their counterparts in the West, China's LGBT community does not have to face down strident political opposition or right-wing religious uproar. For them, the biggest source of pressure comes from the family, brought on in part by China's one-child policy. Read More

How The Father Of Soviet Pornography Became A Crusader Against “Gay Propaganda”

The story of Vladimir Linderman's transformation from anti-Kremlin sexual radical to moralist crusader who many Latvians suspect of being a Kremlin agent isn’t really about how Linderman changed his mind about homosexuality. Rather, he says his story is about how many people living in the former Soviet Union went from being desperate to escape Moscow’s rule to yearning for its patronage. It is also a tale of how Putin used that desire to co-opt some of his most committed enemies and convince many living in the former Communist world that what once seemed so exciting about the West is now what is most terrifying about it.

“I was the father of the sexual revolution, and now I’m becoming the father of the sexual counterrevolution.” Read More

US Capital, Washington D.C. bans gay conversion therapy of minors

The D.C. Council on Tuesday voted to take a final step this year for gay rights, banning conversion therapy that seeks to turn gay teenagers into heterosexuals.

The unanimous council vote puts the District in the rare company of only California and New Jersey to ban the practice. It also raises the possibility that after legal challenges to bans in those states recently failed that similar efforts may proceed elsewhere. Read More

Gay asylum seekers fear arrest for reporting rape in Papua New Guinea

An asylum seeker on Manus Island says he has been raped twice in detention in the past four months, but fears going to the police because he has been told he will be jailed for being homosexual. Mohammad* has reported the assaults to camp security, but lives in fear of further attacks: months after being raped – on two separate occasions by two different men – the man is still living in the same compound as his alleged attackers.

Other gay asylum seekers in the detention centre say they are regularly sexually harassed and assaulted, and have contemplated suicide if they are forced to live in the PNG community. In an interview from detention, Mohammad told Guardian Australia he is regularly sexually assaulted by fellow detainees, but is too scared to report the attacks because homosexuality is illegal in Papua New Guinea and he has been told by camp authorities he will be jailed. Read More