February 2, 2012
Four men in South Africa have been sentenced for the murder of a 19-year-old lesbian woman. She was stabbed and stoned to death in 2006. The court found that the girl was targeted due to her sexual orientation. Cases like this sadly are not uncommon in South Africa. The Human Rights Watch claimed that ...
January 10, 2012
Laws against acts of hatred based on sexual orientation are being tested in the first case being brought to court this week in the UK. The first case involves five men accused of handing out leaflets calling for the death penalty for homosexuals outside a Mosque. Hatred laws have included acts against homosexuals since March ...
November 11, 2011
David Kato was murdered in January this year in what was a controversial case. He was an active gay rights activist in Uganda, a country where homosexuality is illegal and where a bill is waiting to be decided on that will give the death penalty for being gay or for having HIV. Other activists claimed ...
Tags: criminalization of HIV,
David Kato,
death penalty,
Enoch Nsubuga,
gay rights,
hate crime,
homophobia,
jail,
male rape victim,
murder,
sexual assault,
Uganda
November 9, 2011
Meet Buddy and Pedro. They are two adorable little penguins at the Toronto Zoo. They also happen to be gay lovers. Zoo keepers claim they spend their nights together instead of with females and exhibit many mating behaviours and sounds. Buddy and Pedro have caused somewhat of an outrage with their homosexuality. The Toronto Zoo ...
November 9, 2011
Gay tourism in Vancouver has been banned for Chinese marketing campaigns. An agreement between the Chinese and British Columbia authorities was apparently made last year but details were only released before a recent trade envoy trip to China and were hidden away within a 60 page document. The document stipulated that, along with gambling, gay ...
November 3, 2011
Same-sex civil partnership ceremonies will be now be allowed to take place in any church in England and Wales, so long as the church agrees and is happy to do it. Gay marriage is still illegal in the UK, and until now same-sex partnership ceremonies have been purely secular, civil occasions. Whilst it seems very ...
October 25, 2011
While tolerance for the LGBT community is slowly increasing, sometimes it still seems relegated to the streets proudly bearing the rainbow flag. You expect to see gay couples in Toronto’s Church Wellesley Village, Vancouver’s Davie Village and San Francisco’s Castro District, but what about when they venture out of designated “homosexual neighbourhoods?” Well, homophobia rears ...
Tags: affection,
Castro District,
Church Wellesley Village,
Davie Village,
exhibitionism,
family friendly,
gay,
gay community,
homophobia,
homosexual,
intolerance,
kissing,
lesbians,
LGBT,
PDA,
private sphere,
public display of affection,
public sphere,
rainbow flag,
sexual orientation,
sexuality,
Tim Hortons,
TMI,
too much information,
touching,
touchy-feely
October 20, 2011
It’s Spirit Day today, a day to show support for LGBT young people by wearing purple and speaking out against bullying. We may think that the fight has been won, with so many stories about legalizing gay marriage and gay rights in the news, but as recently as this past weekend yet another gay teenager ...
Tags: bisexual,
bullying,
gay rights,
GLAAD,
homophobia,
It Gets Better,
Jamie Hubley,
lesbian,
LGBT Rights,
sexual orientation,
sexuality,
Spirit Day,
suicide,
transgender,
youth
October 19, 2011
I recently saw the question “Should free speech trump hate laws?” answered with a simple “Yes.” I think in reality the answer should be, it depends. After all, nothing tastes sweeter than forbidden fruit. I don’t think that anyone should have the right to be legally protected from being merely offended. But I do think ...
Tags: anti-hate law,
BNP,
British National Party,
equality,
extremism,
freedom of speech,
gay,
hate speech,
homophobia,
human rights,
multicultural society,
Nick Griffin,
racism
October 13, 2011
British defense secretary Liam Fox is under investigation for breaching the ministerial code. His friend and former flatmate Adam Werritty accompanied him on official visits, had regular access to the Ministry of Defense and had business cards made describing himself as Fox’s advisor. Fox is hanging on to his job with a desperation I haven’t ...