International

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Mob Trash University in Hunt for ‘Gay’ Man

  A mob in Senegal have “burned” and “ransacked” buildings at a university in search of a gay student. The crowd formed last Tuesday at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, after one student accused another of hitting on him in the showers.  Amateur footage showed the group going around various buildings of the institution, shouting “you homosexual” and telling the victim of their attacks to show his face to the camera. When the man was able to escape, the group turned violent burning and trashing various buildings. A security guard at the university said hoards of young men gathered […]

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Hungary Slammed After Blocking Europe-wide Agreement on LGBT Rights

  A number of MEPs have condemned Hungary’s decision to block a Europe-wide agreement on LGBT rights. The Dutch government, which currently holds the EU Presidency, had tabled a draft agreement at the Council of the European Union this week, which called on the European Commission to tackle homophobic and transphobic discrimination, promote measures to advance LGBTI equality, and step up efforts to collect data on the treatment of LGBTI citizens.  The agreement has been welcomed by the majority of member countries – with conservative countries including Latvia, Lithuania and Poland dropping their initial reservations. However, the agreement was vetoed […]

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Gay Adoption Comes to Portugal As Parliament Overturns Presidential Veto

Portugal legalized same-sex marriage in 2010, but a right-leaning Parliament who prevented couples from adopting made the country an outsider in the marriage equality movement. The 2015 elections ushered in what’s called the Left Bloc majority in the Portuguese Assembly and the Bloc made the adoption bill one of their first priorities since being sworn in. Together with members of the ruling coalition, the gay adoption bill was passed in December of 2015, but the out-going president vetoed it in late January. 116 votes in favor were needed for a successful overturn of the veto and the undeterred members of […]

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Gay Weddings To Begin in Greenland on April 1st

Following unanimous approval in both the Greenlandic and Danish Parliaments, the same-sex marriage and adoption bill was given the ceremonial Royal Assent on Wednesday. The island’s new Civil Code will become gender-neutral and couples will begin marrying the day the law comes into force on April 1st. Greenland’s Bishop had been looking forward to couples being allowed to marry in the local Church since the bill was first proposed in 2014. The bill repeals the registered partnership law adopted from Denmark in 1996 and expands full adoption rights to all couples. Previously, only stepchild adoption was allowed since 2009. The […]

Italians Protest to Urge Govt to Grant Gay Civil Unions

Tens of thousands of people demonstrated Saturday in nearly 100 cities across Italy to urge the government to permit gay and lesbian couples to have civil unions and legally recognized families. Mirco Pierro, 39, rallied in front of the Pantheon in Rome with his partner and twin infants, saying he wanted “to defend the rights of our children, not just our rights.” Pierro and his partner were married in Los Angeles but their union is not recognized in Italy and only one of them has parental rights. “They are here. They exist, they are part of our families, and it […]

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GUYANA: Recently Elected President David Granger Proposes Decriminalizing Homosexuality

  In what could be considered an encouragement for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community, President David Granger has said that he is prepared to respect the rights of any adult to indulge in any practice which is not harmful to others.This revelation was made on Thursday last when the President engaged reporters following his weekly televised show “The Public Interest” which is aired on the state-owned National Communications Network (NCN). It comes against the backdrop of countless calls for the reexamination of laws which discriminate against persons comprising the LGBT community. According to the Head of State, […]

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Pride Radar – A Growing Number of Prides Around the World

  Since InterPride started its Pride Radar initiative in 2012, almost 800 Pride celebrations have been identified around the world. InterPride’s Vice-President and author of the 2014 and 2015 Pride Radar report Frank van Dalen and his team are discovering new Prides on a weekly basis. “With the global Pride movement growing, we see new Prides coming up in hostile environments, but also in smaller cities in the Western world” van Dalen says. At the same time the distribution of Prides does reflect the social and legal climate for LGBTI-people around the world. Many Prides are expectedly held in relatively […]

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Gay Chinese Man Sues Government Over Denial of Right to Marry Partner

A gay man in the central Chinese province of Hunan has filed a lawsuit against the government for refusing his application to marry his male partner, in a move that has been hailed as a major test case for LGBT rights in the country, his lawyer told RFA on Monday. Sun Wenlin, 26, filed the complaint against the Furong district civil affairs bureau in Hunan’s provincial capital Changsha earlier this month, challenging the bureau’s refusal to allow the couple to register their marriage. Sun is arguing that current Chinese marriage law refers to the union of “husband and wife,” but […]

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INDIA: Gay Sex To Remain Illegal

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor’s private member’s bill to decriminalise gay sex was rejected in the Lok Sabha on Friday, with the former minister saying it was “surprising to see such intolerance”. Tharoor had proposed to amend Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which criminalises homosexual acts between consenting adults. The Supreme Court had ruled in 2013 that only Parliament can change Section 377, which prohibits “carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal”, and is widely interpreted to refer to homosexual intercourse. A lower court had overturned this section of the code in 2009. […]

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Gay Men Fear Vicious Persecution And Death Under ISIS

Before a crowd of men on a street in the Syrian city of Palmyra, the masked Islamic State group judge read out the sentence against the two men convicted of homosexuality: They would be thrown to their deaths from the roof of the nearby Wael Hotel. He asked one of the men if he was satisfied with the sentence. Death, the judge told him, would help cleanse him of his sin. “I’d prefer if it if you shoot me in the head,” 32-year-old Hawas Mallah replied helplessly. The second man, 21-year-old Mohammed Salameh, pleaded for a chance to repent, promising […]

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