The 13 new constables have overcome society’s prejudice to win a place at Chhattisgarh’s training academy
The top police officer in Chhattisgarh state, Durgesh Awasthi, has nothing but praise for his new recruits. He suspects, he says, some of them will prove to be “the best cops” the force has ever enlisted.
“They are sensitive, have a high emotional quotient and know not just how the other half lives but what it’s like being on the other side of the law,” said Awasthi.
Continue reading...From Gus Van Sant to Maryam Keshavarz, Terence Davies to Andrew Haigh, film-makers and writers recall the charged scenes that moved and inspired them – and even helped nudge them out of the closet
Gus Van Sant, director of My Own Private Idaho, Good Will Hunting, To Die For, Milk
Continue reading...The actor and comic on making her female pronouns permanent, shouting down abuse, enduring a marathon a day – and running for Labour
Eddie Izzard doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about. In December, it was reported that the standup comic/actor/campaigner/endurance runner had adopted the pronouns “she” and “her” and wanted to be “based in girl mode” from now on. Well, it hardly came out of the blue, she says today. Izzard had spent the past 35 years building up to it, and when she did finally make the announcement it happened by chance.
A few months earlier, Izzard had been a guest on the Sky Arts series Portrait Artist Of the Year, and was asked, for the first time, which pronouns she preferred. She replied “she and her” and never gave it another thought. By the time the programme was broadcast, Izzard had forgotten about the conversation. And suddenly she was headline news.
Continue reading...From the Godfathers of Arabic rap to the father of Ethio-jazz, Grammy-winning producer Ian Brennan guides a tour through global music’s greatest
This week I wrote about the glaring lack of international inclusivity in the Grammys’ newly redubbed global music (formerly world music) category.
In the category’s 38-year history, almost 80% of African nations have never had an artist nominated; no Middle Eastern or eastern European musician has ever won; every winner in the past eight years has been a repeat winner; and nearly two-thirds of the nominations have come from just six countries (the US, the UK, Brazil, Mali, South Africa, India). The situation shows little signs of improving.
Continue reading...As the George Floyd murder trial opens in Minneapolis, the city councillor talks about coming out as trans, the prejudices she has had to overcome – and how policing must change
Andrea Jenkins lives just a few blocks away from 38th and Chicago, the crossroads in Minneapolis where George Floyd was killed on 25 May last year. She spent two decades of her life working to revitalise the community there, and kicked off her 2017 campaign for the city council’s Eighth ward in an arts centre a few yards away.
After Floyd’s death, when the crossroads became a space for collective mourning, Jenkins visited every day. But in the midst of a bitter Minneapolis winter and with the neighbourhood reeling from the long-term effects of Floyd’s death, Jenkins hasn’t been in months.
Continue reading...Rita Ora is among the performers at the 43rd annual parade, held at the Sydney Cricket Ground
Continue reading...Archbishop of Canterbury says Henry Ndukuba’s comments that homosexuality should be ‘expunged’ are unacceptable
The archbishop of Canterbury has issued a rare public condemnation of a fellow Anglican primate who described homosexuality as a “deadly virus” which should be “radically expunged and excised”.
Justin Welby, who is the leader of the global Anglican church, said the comments made by Henry Ndukuba, the archbishop of Nigeria, were unacceptable and dehumanising.
Continue reading...Group of 67 high-profile figures say they are ‘deeply disturbed’ by recent closure of LGBTQ+ centre in Accra
Some of the UK’s most prominent people of Ghanaian heritage have joined together to condemn their former homeland for its stance on gay rights in what will be seen as an extraordinary show of diaspora power.
The influential names in fashion, film and media, including Idris Elba and the Vogue editor-in-chief, Edward Enninful, have signed an open letter in support of Ghana’s LGBTQ+ community. Naomi Campbell, although, not of Ghanaian heritage, has also put her name to the letter.
Continue reading...Unanimous decision by highest court hailed a step towards acceptance of LGBT+ people
A Malaysian man has won a landmark court challenge against an Islamic ban on sex “against the order of nature”, raising hopes for greater acceptance of gay rights in the mostly Muslim country.
In a unanimous decision, Malaysia’s top court ruled on Thursday that the Islamic provision used against the man was unconstitutional and authorities had no power to enact the law.
Continue reading...Founder says community centre in Accra was closed pre-emptively to protect its staff
A community centre for LGBTQ+ people in Ghana has been closed, following a wave of protest against the rights of sexual minorities in the country.
In recent weeks government ministers and religious groups had demanded the closure of the centre, intended to be a safe space for LGBTQ+ people to meet and find support. Yet since the opening in January of the centre in the capital, Accra, many people have received death threats and online abuse.
Continue reading...Campaigners say veterans should also get compensation for injustice they suffered and pensions restored
Thousands of British military personnel who were dismissed because they were homosexual will be able to have their service medals restored if they had been taken away when they were kicked out of the armed forces.
Gay rights campaigners welcomed the move as the “first step on a journey” but said that issues such as enduring criminal records, lost pension rights and still blemished service records now needed to be dealt with by the Ministry of Defence.
Continue reading...From designing rugs in Paris to painting visions of human suffering … the origins of some of the 20th century’s most iconic artworks
Francis Bacon didn’t just create some of the most unforgettable images of the human figure in 20th-century painting. He created “Francis Bacon”, a legendary persona: big beast of the London art world, wild man and bon vivant, whose raw painterly gift – he is one of only three British artists to be given two retrospectives at the Tate Gallery in their lifetime – was matched by his appetite for champagne, gambling and rough sex with East End crooks. His death in 1992 triggered a run of tell-all biographies, including first-hand accounts by his friends. What further revelations, you wonder, can there be?
Most of the surprises in this landmark new biography of Bacon, the first for 25 years, concern his early life and career, which turn out to have been – at least outwardly – embarrassingly conventional. Born in Dublin in 1909 to Anglo-Irish gentry, Bacon grew up in a series of big country houses, with dashes to England during the Irish revolutionary period. He was severely asthmatic. One of his childhood memories was being shut into a dark cupboard by a housemaid for long periods; he said that the feeling of asphyxiation resembled an asthma attack. He also remembered the entire family hiding in their locked rooms at night, in dread of a visit from the IRA. Suffocation, confinement, a sense of terror – the foundations of Francis Bacon, man and artist, were being laid.
Continue reading...How well does the Russell T Davies drama capture the 1980s Aids crisis? Influential queer figures who lived through it and in its wake – including Owen Jones, Rev Richard Coles, Lisa Power and Marc Thompson – give their verdicts
A joyful yet devastating series centred on a group of friends whose lives are changed irrevocably by the HIV/Aids epidemic, It’s a Sin is not only the most talked-about TV show of 2021 so far, but also Channel 4’s most watched drama series in its history. Russell T Davies’s 80s-set series has started conversations around Britain about the realities, both political and personal, of living through the HIV/Aids crisis, led to an increase in people getting tested for HIV, and helped raise awareness about preventive medication (PrEP) and the effective treatment now available for people living with the virus.
To discuss these topics, we convened a roundtable discussion with influential queer figures who lived through the crisis, and those who have grown up in its wake. Taking part in the conversation are Lisa Power, a co-founder of LGBT charity Stonewall who also volunteered for Switchboard during the Aids crisis; the Rev Richard Coles, the vicar of Finedon in Northamptonshire and former member of the pop group the Communards; Marc Thompson, an HIV activist, the director of the Love Tank CIC and the co-founder of PrEPster; Guardian columnist and author Owen Jones; Omari Douglas, who plays the character Roscoe in It’s a Sin; and Jason Okundaye, a writer and the co-founder of Black & Gay, back in the day, a digital archive honouring and remembering black queer life in Britain.
Continue reading...Kaja Kallas, 43, took power on Tuesday after the previous coalition collapsed due to a corruption scandal
Estonia’s first female prime minister has promised to implement changes in both style and substance in the governance of the Baltic nation, as she takes charge after two years in which a far-right party was in the ruling coalition.
Kaja Kallas, a 43-year-old lawyer and head of Estonia’s Reform party, was sworn into office on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Men in Aceh province were detained by vigilantes before being caned in public
Two gay men in Indonesia’s Aceh province have been publicly caned 77 times each after they were reported to police by vigilantes who raided their apartment.
Human rights groups have condemned the spectacle, which was watched by dozens of people in the capital Banda Aceh, as brutal and medieval.
Continue reading...Fine from by the Norwegian Data Protection Authority is 10% of Grindr’s global annual revenue
Grindr has been fined 100m krone (£8.6m) by the Norwegian Data Protection Authority after an investigation revealed the dating app was sharing deeply personal information with advertisers, including location, sexual orientation and mental health details.
The fine is 10% of Grindr’s global annual revenue and is particularly high because of the personal nature of the information shared.
Continue reading...Fairytale anthology Wonderland Is for Everyone must now carry warning that its stories contain ‘behaviour inconsistent with traditional gender roles’
Hungary’s government, which has made hostility to LGBT people a central part of its rightwing agenda, on Tuesday ordered a publisher to print disclaimers identifying books containing “behaviour inconsistent with traditional gender roles”.
The government said the action was needed to protect consumers, after Labrisz, an association for lesbian, bisexual and trans women, published a fairytale anthology titled Wonderland Is for Everyone, which included some stories with LGBT themes.
Continue reading...The Years & Years frontman is starring in Russell T Davies’ new drama about the Aids crisis. He talks about bulimia, his ‘dark’ clubbing days – and how he learned to enjoy filming sex scenes
Olly Alexander was so certain he was destined for success that he saw a therapist to help him prepare for his future fame. It was 2014 and his band Years & Years had just signed to Polydor when he visited the shrink.
“I said: ‘The album’s coming out and I really want it to be successful,’ and he said: ‘What happens if it isn’t?’ I said: ‘Well, that’s not an option because I have planned it in my diary since I was a teenager.’”
Continue reading...The actor and singer on RuPaul’s Drag Race, learning how to be loved, and why no actor could play him in the film of his life
Born in Pennsylvania, Billy Porter, 51, studied drama and moved to New York in 1991 to appear in Miss Saigon. He went on to star in Kinky Boots, winning the 2013 Tony award for best actor in a musical, and a Grammy for the soundtrack. In 2018, he was cast in Netflix’s Pose, which will return for a third series. He is married and lives in New York state.
What is your greatest fear?
That I will be forgotten and my legacy won’t matter.
Among those honoured are health and social care workers, Covid response volunteers, virus experts and fund-raising centenarians
Hundreds of key workers and community champions who battled the pandemic have been recognised in the New Year honours list for the UK which celebrates people’s extraordinary response to the Covid-19 crisis.
Lewis Hamilton, the Formula One driver, and the cinematographer Roger Deakins are among the celebrities knighted, while the architect David Chipperfield gets the Companion of Honour. The actor Toby Jones and Jed Mercurio, creator of the TV series Line of Duty, are given OBEs for services to drama. On being made a dame for services to drama the actor Sheila Hancock said she feared she was “slightly miscast”.
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