Cook Islands: Drag pageant returns

The Cook Islands have revived its popular transgender pageant the Mizz Jewel competition after a 10 year break as part of a campaign to decriminalise homosexuality.

Organiser Valentino Wichman, who has been awarded a 2016 Commonwealth Queens Young Leaders Award for service to gay rights activism in the Cook Islands, says it's about celebrating diversity and embracing differences.

"I would say socially we are generally accepted but there is still that legal aspect hanging over our heads," he says.

"For us it's about trying to educate them (the public) that we are part of society and we come from normal families."

Hundreds of people packed the national auditorium for the show which featured a dazzling array of talent, evening wear and a creative section. 

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The vatican’s ban on romantic gay drama ‘Weekend’ appears to have backfired

A Vatican ban on romantic gay drama film Weekend appears to have backfired after the film posted the highest per-screen-average takings as it opened in Italy this weekend.

The independent British film, directed by Looking’s Andrew Haigh and released in the UK back in 2011, was restricted to just ten cinemas in the country after the Italian Bishop’s Conference Film Evaluation Commission branded the story about a burgeoning gay romance “indecent” and “unusable”.

Weekend was consequently shunned by the more than 1,100 Catholic Church-owned cinemas, which make up the bulk of Italy’s network of independent movie theatres – but the ban appears to have backfired after the film pulled in more than $6,221 per screen on its opening weekend, well ahead of the The Divergent Series: Allegiant’s second-highest per-screen average of $4,217. Read more via Attitude

Saudis seek virtual freedoms denied in real life

When it comes to freedoms, human rights organisations will tell you Saudi Arabia doesn't have the best track record. And perhaps because compared to elsewhere there is limited personal freedom, defiance across the region has gone digital.

In this part of the BBC's special series "Saudis on social" we tell the stories of three anonymous accounts on Twitter which all tell of searching for virtual freedom in Saudi Arabia. But what impact does this secret life have on those who live this way?
Read via BBC & Watch the videos

Australia: Bullied kids sacrificed to conservative right

On the National Day of Action Against Bullying on Friday, the Coalition government scaled back the anti-bullying Safe Schools program it launched just two years ago. Following a month of campaigning from The Australian and 18 months of campaigning from the fringe group the Australian Christian Lobby, the government has announced plans to change the Safe Schools Coalition program.

In the face of complaints from backbenchers including Cory Bernardi and George Christensen, Education Minister Simon Birmingham last month appointed respected University of WA Professor Bill Louden to review the program, which was launched by then-education minister Christopher Pyne in 2014. The Safe Schools Coalition program is now implemented at 526 schools across Australia and comprises resources created for schools to reduce bullying of LGBTI students.

The review, released on Friday, broadly found the content in the program to be “suitable, educationally sound and age-appropriate” for schools but recommended changes to some of the lessons in the “All of Us” resource for teachers.

Conservative MPs called on Birmingham to suspend funding of Safe Schools while a full parliamentary inquiry was conducted. Christensen didn’t get his review, but he told reporters on Friday the government’s decision was “better than an inquiry” and would strip the “queer theory” and “sexual liberation” ideals from classrooms:

“Effectively, gutting the program of all of the concerning content is what I wanted at the end of the day or the program shut down. It’s fundamentally changed now to is going to be an anti-bullying program that doesn’t have all of the extra stuff in it that I found of concern and parents and grandparents found of concern so I’m comfortable.” Read more via Crikey

This Photographer Is Asking People To Pose Nude In The Name Of Body Love

Anastasia Kuba/Hanna Quevedo / Via nothingbutlight.io

This is artist Anastasia Kuba. A former topless dancer, Kuba had a revelation in her mid-twenties about how society ties the idea of worth to physical appearance, and began using photography to make a change. This spawned Nothing but Light, a project in which Kuba photographs volunteers in the nude to help them reconcile their relationships with their bodies. 

Kuba’s subjects are a mix of folks she knows, and ones she’s found through social media — which, to her delight, have turned out to be an amazing array of people. Read more via Buzzfeed (nsfw)

Malaysia: Religious police clamping down on LGBTI Muslims sparks off online debate

A documentary on Malaysia’s religious police to clamp down on LGBTI Muslims in the country has sparked off an online debate on the treatment these individuals receive.
 
The documentary ‘Unreported World – 2016’, produced by London-headquartered Channel 4, is slated to air on Friday night – but the channel has already released a snippet online on its Facebook page.  Watch the video here
 

The snippet has sparked off a fury of online debate. As of press time, the post has received over 2900 reactions and has been shared nearly 7000 times. While some netizens are in support of what the religious police does, some are in vehement disagreement with the act.  Read more via Gay Star News 

How Mormonism is creating an increasingly toxic environment for Its LGBT youth

Last November, the church enacted a worldwide policy that mandates church discipline (the process that precedes excommunication) for all LGBT members married to someone of their same gender; it also bans children of LGBT individuals from certain saving rites, including baptism, until those children turn 18 years old — and only then if they publicly disavow the relationship of their LGBT parents.

Although the new policy provoked thousands of straight and LGBT Mormons to officially resign from the church and untold others to walk away or diminish their involvement, the leadership of the church has persistently doubled down.

While many Mormons obediently (if quietly and little grudgingly) support church leaders, some vulnerable LGBT members are seeing no other way out than to take their own lives. In late January, church-owned Deseret News reported that there were claims of 32 LGBT Mormon youth taking their own lives; the group Mama Dragons (an organization of LDS mothers of young LGBT members) now report that figure may be as high as 43. Read more via Huffington Post

US: Anti-Gay attacks continue in Dallas

Last week, we told you how LGBT Dallas residents are taking matters into their own hands in the wake of a recent string of violent anti-gay attacks in the city’s Oak Lawn neighborhood.

About 20 new recruits have signed up for the Dallas Police Department’s Volunteers in Patrol program since more than a dozen anti-gay attacks were reported last fall. However, police still haven’t made any arrests in connection with those incidents, and the volunteers’ presence apparently has done little to quell the wave of violence against LGBT people in the city’s gay entertainment district.

John Anderson, the volunteer featured in our report, says there have been at least five additional attacks against LGBT people in the last three weeks in Oak Lawn. But none of the victims have reported the crimes to police.  Read more via Towleroad 

Canada: How this indigenous youth is making sex education sexy

Growing up, Alexa Lesperance saw low youth attendance at sexual health education events in her Naotkamegwanning First Nation in northwestern Ontario. High rates of sexually transmitted diseases and infections, suicides and teen pregnancy characterize some Indigenous communities but, Lesperance discovered, there's often little to no engaging education to address the problem.

So at just 17 years old, she hatched a plan and, with the Native Youth Sexual Health Network behind her, she made sex education sexy. And so far, it's been the most popular project the Network has seen.

Lesperance's Sexy Health Carnival has been to over 30 Indigenous communities and draws anywhere from 80 to 1,200 people.

At a carnival in Naotkamegwanning First Nation, a young Anishinaabe mom pushes a stroller through a gymnasium packed with tables cloaked in bright cloths and giant colorful displays behind them. Teens around her giggle as they compete for prizes. She's smiling as she makes her way to a booth that offers games and space for little ones while the parents walk freely around. Then she heads over to a red display and a sign posing the question, "How can you protect yourself?" Underneath that is another sign reading, "Our culture is strong; break the silence, talk about HIV."

"Learning should be pleasurable. It's not just Sexual Health 101, like 'This is how you put on a condom,'" Lesperance says from Ottawa, where she attends Carleton University with the goal of attending medical school to become a health practitioner providing culturally safe care for her nation.

For young people who have gone through standard sex ed in high school, where putting a condom on a banana is boilerplate, the Sexy Health Carnival is a game changer. It may look like just a lively trade expo of sorts to adults looking in, but its engaging questions and disarming activities make it magnetic to youth.

An Indigenous teen throws a dart at a wall of balloons and when a red one pops, a card inside is revealed with a question he must answer – "True or false, is oral sex risk free?" Another balloon bursts, revealing another question – "Can you get HIV from a toilet seat?" For Alexa, it is all part of making awkward and uncomfortable subjects more approachable, and fun. Read more via Globe and Mail

China: No sex, drugs, witches or gays: Banning ‘morally hazardous’ content from TV

What do teenage romance, extra-marital affairs, reincarnation and homosexuality have in common? They’ve all been banned from Chinese television dramas.

Crime shows that reveal police strategies and tactics have also been banned so that criminals can’t use the information to ‘up their game’.

The government’s ‘General Principle of Television Drama Production Content’, released in December, serves as a “professional guideline” for industry experts, according to Li Jingsheng, chief of television drama under the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television. Read more

Ukraine: Far-Right homophobic thugs attack LGBT Equality Festival in Lviv

The Equality Festival events planned in Lviv were disrupted and activists effectively – and with violence – driven out of the city.  The police did not detain any of the young far-right thugs in masks who first harassed activists, then surrounded the hotel and attacked a coach with Equality Festival activists.

The LGBT initiative Equality Festival had planned an Equality ‘Quest’ on March 19, as part of various anti-discrimination, pro-tolerance events over the weekend.  The quest was to go around places linked with ideals of equality and freedom within the city. During the early hours of Saturday morning, the Lviv District Administrative Court passed a ruling banning all events in the area where the Equality Festival quest had been planned. Having been forced to give up street events, the organizers hoped to at least hold the exhibition of anti-discrimination posters, film viewings and a literary evening.  

The activists were basically barricaded in the hotel because of the far-right thugs outside.  Then within hours of the Festival beginning, the hotel had to be evacuated due to a bomb alert. Fortunately nobody was hurt, and the activists have now safely left the city. Read more via KHPG

Australia: Safe Schools stoush highlights deep divisions in Coalition

A stoush over Safe Schools has highlighted deep divisions within the Coalition as some MPs air their grievances with the anti-bullying program while others throw their support behind it.

A review into the program was ordered by the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, late last month after backbench unrest about its content. The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, said: “I think it’s beyond a joke that Mr Turnbull is fanning the fires of the lunar right of his political party.

“Mr Turnbull has to show leadership. His mistake was not in slapping down this issue earlier. Now he has a standoff between an insurgent rightwing backbench and his minister for education.”

Conservatives within the Coalition say the anti-bullying campaign, which aims to stamp out homophobia and transphobia, undermines a parent’s ability to teach their children about gender and sexuality.  

 Read more via the Guardian