Japan’s bridal industry starts accepting LGBT couples

The bridal industry in Japan has started accepting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) couples as understanding of sexual minorities increases in society.

Hotel Greges in the city of Munakata, Fukuoka Prefecture, which offers bridal services as part of its operations, has been conducting a training program for its staffers, inviting as a lecturer a transgender man who will marry this autumn.

In a survey of 70,000 people ages 20 to 59 conducted by the ad agency Dentsu in April, 1 in 13, or 7.6 percent, said they are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.  Read More

A Canadian history of AIDS activism

Thirty years ago, a dramatic movement erupted on the Canadian scene as people with AIDS demanded treatment, an end to stigma and a host of revolutionary innovations, many of which we take for granted today.

That period of AIDS activism is now the subject of a major historical investigation that is plumbing the memories of those who were involved at the time. The AIDS Activist History Project, headed by Carleton University sociologist Alexis Shotwell, has begun interviewing AIDS activists across Canada and collecting documentary materials. Her research partner is Gary Kinsman, retired Laurentian University sociologist and one of Canada’s leading scholars on LGBT history. Read more

Sweden: National all-LGBT handball team

Known for its revolutionary attitude on LGBT issues, Sweden has yet another breakthrough to report – for the first time in history, a national federation will sponsor an entirely LGBT team in the sport of handball. 

On June 10, the “Stockholm Snipers” were declared to be an official team by the country.
Led by team founder Andreas Carlsson, the organization will make their first public appearance on August 5-9, competing in the EuroGames Stockholm 2015.

Carlsson’s reasoning behind establishing the sports group was to provide LGBT athletes with an outlet, where they would be accepted for their sexualities and skills on the court. He also intended to set an example for the younger generation of players, encouraging them to be content in coming out. Read More

Get To Know The Badass Queer Women In The 2015 World Cup

The Women’s World Cup is well underway, with the quarter finals occurring this week. There were many footballers out and proud in the women's 2015 World Cup, including Abby Wambach who celebrated the US 5-2 victory over Japan in the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup final, running to the sidelines to share a kiss with her wife. Read more

Nigeria: Football team Falcons openly discuss faith, but not sexuality

For Nigeria's women's national soccer team, the word "inclusive" has different meanings. Nigeria is a deeply faithful team, praying in small groups on the field before beginning warm-ups for each match and dropping to their knees to do the same following goals they score, including both Muslim and Christian faiths. Yet, a source says that at least two players who would be on the team for the 2015 World Cup are not because they are thought to be gay.

"If a player comes out and says, 'I'm gay,' then the trouble doesn't just start and end with the player," the source tells Wahl. "It goes all the way back to the family: parents, sisters, brothers, cousins, everything. One person just sparks off a chain reaction. That's why it's so tough."

Asked about the topic in a press conference on Monday, Okon said he does not address sexuality within the team. "I don't know what you mean by 'homosexual,' he said. "I don't deal with personal lives. I think of the game proper. I only think of what they do on the pitch. That is what concerns me."  Read More

Op-ed: Trans, Intersex Visibility and the Myth of Scarcity

The recent media focus on Caitlyn Jenner’s coming-out as a trans woman seems to celebrate her conformity to binary gender standards. But that media spotlight has illuminated some existing tensions among and between trans and intersex communities. As transgender civil rights have progressed and positive media attention increased in the past year, so have concerns about scarcity of coverage for the differing issues of each community. Inflamed tensions between the trans and intersex communities are even more deeply rooted in the common misconceptions that intersex and trans people often have about each other.

Specifically, the celebration of a particular type of gender-affirming surgery as liberating, brave, and beautiful can be triggering and even offensive to many intersex people. In many cases, intersex advocates are fighting for the right to not be involuntarily subjected to surgeries many trans people find medically necessary to live authentically. Opposing involuntary gender-assignment surgeries is central to the intersex awareness and advocacy movement.

By contrast, the common but mistaken assumption that all transgender people actively seek out similar surgeries as gender-affirming treatment has been promoted to oppose “transgenderism,” as if it were a choice or a social movement. Read More

US: History of the US government’s cruel, malicious campaign against gay Americans

In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered the dismissal of every single gay person working for the federal government. For the next several decades, the FBI’s sex deviate program investigated all employees suspected of being gay, collecting evidence on their sex lives and turning it over to the Civil Service Commission—which promptly fired them. Gay men were routinely entrapped by police officers, and politicians used knowledge of their enemies’ sexuality for blackmail.

This horrible history has largely been swept under the rug. But Michael Isikoff’s new documentary Uniquely Nasty unearths some of the government’s worst abuses against gay people, including blackmail that led to a senator’s suicide. Read More

Germany: Museum launches show on 150 years of gay history

Germany's main national history museum on Wednesday launched an exhibition tracing 150 years of gay history in the country, including the first uses of the term "homosexual," the brutal Nazi-era repression of gays and gradual moves toward legal equality starting in the 1960s.

The exhibition at the German Historical Museum in Berlin, which is staging it together with the capital's privately run Gay Museum, has been four years in the planning but is opening amid a new debate in Germany over whether to allow full-fledged marriage for same-sex couples. Read More

Zimbabwe: Transgender woman speaks on her fight against abuse

In Zimbabwe the idea of having a family member who transits from being a man to a woman (transgender) is unheard of and considered a taboo. Robert Tapfumaneyi spoke to Tatenda Karigambe who has since gone to have a sex change operation at a cost of about $80,000 to hear of some horrible moments, humiliation and discomfort she has suffered, the deep violation of her rights and how she has overcome them:

People have a lot of perceptions. When I read local newspapers I hear someone saying the transgender disease has hit our country; it's because people don't know and they don't understand it, it's like seeing a tree in a desert, it becomes very strange.

But we need to educate people so that they understand because daily our rights are being violated...Some accuse us of being swayed by Western influence; that is very wrong, transgender is also here in Zimbabwe. Make yourself known, make your voice loud, be proud, stay strong; that will bring out what I personally call gender identity revolution where we say the whole family of Zimbabwe be it black or white, be it heterosexual, be it transgender, we just speak in one voice of love and understanding. Read the full interview 

Cameroon: LGBTI rights leader faces police shakedown

The president of the LGBTI rights group Humanity First Cameroon returned from a trip yesterday to find a police sergeant waiting for him with death threats and a demand for money in exchange for his freedom.

Returning shortly after midnight at the end of a trip to Europe, Jules Eloundou was accused of homosexuality. The friends who came to pick him up were detained and assaulted. The police demanded bribes, hurled abuse, and beat the three men before eventually releasing them. Read More

UK: Hate crime is everyday reality for rural LGBT people, study says

LGBT people in Britain’s rural towns and villages are being bullied relentlessly because of their sexuality, leaving some too scared to leave the house, according to an expert in hate crime.

Stevie-Jade Hardy, a lecturer at the University of Leicester’s Centre for Hate Studies and the author of a report on hate crime, said harassment and verbal abuse was an everyday reality for many lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Hardy pointed to national figures that suggest eight in 10 LGBT people have been verbally abused or harassed and one in 10 has been physically assaulted.  She said LGBT people felt they were more likely to be the victim of hate crime if they were “noticeably different”, potentially making those in villages particularly vulnerable.

“Within rural locations those differences are maybe magnified, and so young people will often target someone who they see as being different in that context. People are actually scared to go out into their garden to enjoy the sun; some people had taken some practical steps like having CCTV put into their house.  Read More