LGBT group steps out, marches for pride and acceptance in Pune

People from all walks of life took part in the LGBT parade, which took place in the conservative Indian city. Participants covered many stretches of the city singing songs like 'Born This Way' by international pop artist Lady Gaga', the paean for fearless love 'Jab pyaar kiya toh darna kya' and 'Hum honge kamyaab'.

"Society does not accept us, but we are asserting our right to be here in this march. We respect everyone and deserve respect," said one participant who had traveled from Mumbai. Read More 

How The Bond Between Two Gay Men Produced Some Of The Finest Poems Of WWI

The warrior-poets were among the most significant chroniclers of World War I. “If I should die, think only this of me;/ That there’s some corner of a foreign field/ That is forever England” and “In Flanders fields the poppies blow/ Between the crosses, row on row” are lines that live on in the popular imagination, 100 years after the outbreak of hostilities.

But many of the finest poems of the Great War—including “Anthem for Doomed Youth” and “Dulce et Decorum Est”—might not exist were it not for the pivotal bond between two gay men who were the era’s finest war poets: Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. Read More 

Germany’s shame: Paragraph 175 and homosexuality

Gay men were not only persecuted by the Nazis, but were revictimized when liberating armies put the men they rescued from concentration camps back into prison, Dr James Waller told a Toronto lecture hall.

The Nazis, he said, rationalized their persecution of male homosexuals on the basis of their failure to reproduce for the Aryan race, their alleged propensity to “infect” youth, and their existence as a disloyal, subversive threat to the regime. Within the span of a few years, Germany went from being the home to a 1920s Berlin that had more gay bars than 1970s New York City, to more than 100,000 gay men arrested under the newly expanded Paragraph 175.

The statistics Waller cites are grim. About half the men arrested served some sort of prison term as convicted homosexuals. Between 5,000 and 15,000 gay German men were sent to concentration camps; they are often referred to as “The 175ers.” An unknown number of gay men were institutionalized in mental hospitals, castrated or committed suicide. Read More

Study: Pro-LGBT laws spur global economic growth

A study from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Williams Institute suggests pro-LGBT laws can spur economic growth in developing countries. 

The study used the Global Index on Legal Recognition of Homosexual Orientation, a Dutch research tool from the 1960s that ranks countries on whether they have decriminalized consensual same-sex sexual acts between adults and seven other factors in relation to rights for gays and lesbians. Researchers also relied upon a preliminary transgender rights index that ranks countries on anti-discrimination laws and 15 other measures.

The Global Index on Legal Recognition of Homosexual Orientation ranks countries on a scale from zero to eight. And researchers concluded that a country’s gross domestic product was $320 — or three percent higher — for each point it gained on the index.  Read More 

Latvian Minister Declares He’s Gay, Exposing New Culture War in Europe

When Latvia’s foreign minister, Edgars Rinkevics, declared on Twitter on Thursday that he was “proud to be gay,” the announcement was welcomed there by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights activists, who have faced open hostility from social conservatives in the former Soviet republic.

In neighboring countries, contrasting reactions to the minister’s declaration — and his statement, in Latvian, that he would also work for legal recognition for same-sex couples — seemed to reveal the contours of a cultural fault line on the issue in post-Cold War Europe between West and East. Read More 

Over 50% of gay population in Taiwan have suffered partner abuse

As many as over 50 percent of gay and lesbian Taiwanese have suffered abuse at the hand of their intimate partners, and nearly 10 percent of victims have never sought outside help, a new survey conducted by The Modern Women's Foundation has suggested.

The Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline Association said that many LGBT people in Taiwan do not seek assistance in abusive situations because they are afraid of being "outed" or have no trust in formal institutions. Read More

Total of Gambia’s anti-gay arrests reaches 8

A police sweep of suspected LGBT people continued in Gambia, with a total of five men, three women and one teenage boy all in custody, according to the Fatu Radio website, run by Fatu (Fatou) Camara, a journalist and former Gambian official.

Gambia secret police reportedly went door-to-door with the teenager so he could identify more people suspected of being gay or lesbian. Read More

Cook Islands Queen: criminalising gays 'unfair'

The' queen of the Cook Islands,' Takitumu paramount chief Marie Pa Ariki says it is unfair and unjust for gay people to be treated as criminals due to who they love and how they express that love.

The Cook Islands is one of several Pacific nations which still criminalise same-sex relations between men and offer no human rights protections to those who are widely ostracised for not being born heterosexual. Pa Ariki stated: "[Gay] people are knowledgeable and contribute to society and to home life," she says. "They are human like everyone else... we are all whanau." Read More 

Steve Jobs memorial torn down in Russia after current Apple CEO Tim Cook comes out as gay

A Russian group of companies ordered the destruction of a memorial tribute to late Apple founder Steve Jobs after the technology giant’s current CEO, Tim Cook, came out as gay last week.

ZEFS, which originally had the six-foot monument in the shape of an iPhone erected outside a college in St Petersburg in January to pay homage to the achievements of Jobs following his death from cancer in 2011, has since taken the decision to dismantle it: “After Apple CEO Tim Cook publicly called for sodomy, the monument was taken down to abide to the Russian federal law protecting children from information promoting denial of traditional family values.” Read More

HSBC UK: Business leaders have ‘huge personal responsibility’ to come out

The head of UK banking at HSBC has criticised business leaders who stay in the closet, saying it’s not acceptable they “take for granted” the work being done by others on issues of equality.

Speaking at the third-annual ‘Out on the Street’ LGBT summit in London, Antonio Simoes, who revealed he was gay last year, said business leaders have a “huge personal responsibility” to come out. At the conference, Simoes also described himself as “the short, bald, Portuguese gay guy”, adding that being “authentic” makes him a “more empathetic and better leader.” Read More

Gay people in business: Out at the top

When American politicians, television presenters, and even clergy come out of the closet these days, it barely makes the headlines. But the corporate world is different: until Apple’s boss, Tim Cook, said on October 30th that he is gay, there had never been an openly homosexual CEO of a Fortune 500 company.

The crossing of this symbolic threshold demonstrates both how much conditions have improved for gay executives and how far boardrooms lag the rest of society. Read More

Can twitter be a force against HIV discrimination?

A project analysing tweets alongside take-up of HIV services in Brazil show social media can inform public health. Advertisers have seen the potential of social media for informing their work for years, but public health is only just looking into the potential for improving the impact of campaigns. Read More