The Gay and Lesbian Victory Institute co-organized what it described as the “first-ever gathering of LGBT political leaders” from the region alongside Promsex and Caribe Afirmativo, LGBT advocacy groups from Peru and Colombia respectively. Gay and Lesbian Victory Institute President Chuck Wolfe said:
“The LGBT community is global, and there is a growing need for out people around the world to become engaged as public leaders in their own communities.” Read More
Author Chetan Bhagat has spoken about India’s anti-gay law to say that it contradicts the country’s culture:
"Section 377 is not an Indian law but an inheritance of British law. The same law existed in over 40 colonies of the British empire. Most have junked or modified it to decriminalise homosexuality.
We have held on to it as if it is part of India’s cultural heritage, whereas it is nothing but a relic of an unscientific, Victorian past. Of course, the final question is this: Why should the selfish, non-homosexual, growth-seeking Indian care? Well, we should." Read More
Member of the Chilean Navy, 24-year-old Mauricio Ruiz has come out as gay and says his superiors support him. He told the press conference that, as a gay man in the armed forces, he had ‘no reason to hide.’ ‘In life there's nothing better than to be yourself, to be authentic, to look at people in the eye and for those people to know who you are.’ Read More
As part of an ongoing series looking at gay rights around the world, DailyXtra talks with one of Kenya’s highest profile LGBT activists. Monica Mbura is a Kenyan judge who is one of the few out lesbians in the country. Watch Now
An overwhelming majority of Chinese young people are fine with gay people, according to a recent survey conducted by internet giant Baidu, the Chinese version of Google and Wikipedia, and asked 7,000 internets users born in the 1990s their views on love, friendship, consumption, family and employment. Read More
York Chow, chairperson of Hong Kong Equal Opportunities Commission, said "In mapping out our approaches to promote LGBTI rights, we should look at what has been done in other jurisdictions. This symposium is an important opportunity for mutual learning, with the goal to achieve equal opportunities for sexual and transgender minorities." Read More
Denmark has become the first European country to allow legal change of gender without a medical expert statement. In one leap, Denmark has changed its law on trans rights, taking it from a country where transgender people were forced to undergo sterilisation in order to be legally recognised as a different gender, to one of the most progressive countries on the issue in the world.
Unlike in most of the countries that allow new gender recognition, trans people in Denmark now do not even need a medical expert statement, but can simply self-determine. But there are still 20 European countries where sterilisation is a requirement, including much of Eastern Europe. Read More
Officer Mikayla Connell became the first out transgender person to graduate from the San Francisco Police Academy. "There aren't that many transgender police officers, either female-to-male or male-to-female," explained Connell. "And the more we have, I think the better connection the department is going to have to the transgender community." Read More
"Any kind of injustice bothers me--bothers me deeply,” Yvonne McCalla Sobers said. A small woman with light gray hair, she is a dynamic force. As an LGBT activist in Jamaica, a battlefield country with the sixth highest homicide rate in the world, she faces violent intolerance rooted in national homophobia. Watch now
The research department of the Iranian Parliament has found that four out of five young adults in the Islamic republic are sexually active and 17% with people of the same sex despite the country imposing the death penalty for homosexual acts. Read More
Iran’s Judiciary Chief Sadeq Amoli Larijani categorically dismissed the allegations by some western advocates of Human Rights that Iran executes people for being homosexuals. Meanwhile several human rights groups are reporting: Four prisoners were hanged in public this August. According to the official website of the Iranian judiciary two of the men had been accused of sodomy and "illegal sex between people of the same sex practices." Read More (french) Read More (english)
From legalizing abortion to transsexual rights, marginalized groups in Uruguay have united to become a formidable force for change. While President José "Pepe" Mujica and his Broad Front coalition have been making international headlines for sweeping reforms, less well known is that 3,000 civil society activists have been the driving force behind the country's makeover. "Just 10 years ago, these laws would have been unthinkable," Michelle Suárez, a member of the LGBT group Ovejas Negras, or Black Sheep Read More
Landmark report on LGBT rights in Cambodia presents facts, experiences, and recommendations. According to the report’s author, Vicente Salas, “Cambodia is a neutral country for LGBT persons: neither punitive nor positively affirming”. While LGBT behaviour is not criminalized in Cambodia, as it is elsewhere, Cambodian laws and policies are also silent about LGBT persons and rights Read More