Posters in Liverpool were destroyed after going on display in Homotopia festival’s Queer the City exhibition
Detectives are investigating after two artworks, commissioned in response to a series of homophobic and transphobic attacks in Liverpool, were destroyed. Merseyside police said they are treating the incidents as hate crime.
The artworks were vandalised within days of going on display as part of Homotopia festival’s Queer the City outdoor exhibition.
Continue reading...Ian McKellen, Stephen Fry and the former archbishop of Canterbury appear in a chummy documentary recounting the gay rights activist’s most outrageous stunts and impressive achievements
“My doctors have said very clearly: ‘No more head injuries.’” So says Peter Tatchell, one of the world’s most tenacious, divisive and necessary activists, as he prepares to fly to Moscow in 2018 to protest against state-sanctioned homophobia. The trip, which returns him to the city where he was beaten and arrested in 2007, forms one of the few present-tense sections of this greatest hits-style documentary. Tatchell has sustained numerous injuries from his lifetime of protest, though claims of memory loss are comically undermined during a kid-gloves interview with Ian McKellen. “Fifty two years of civil disobedience, Peter!” gasps the actor admiringly. “Fifty three now,” Tatchell replies, unable to resist the lure of being right.
As of this year, it’s 54. Tatchell was already an activist when he moved from Melbourne to London in 1971 at the age of 19. Among other achievements, he went on to stage the first gay rights protest in a communist country (East Germany, 1973), co-found the gay pressure group OutRage!, and attempt citizen’s arrests of Robert Mugabe (London, 1999 and Brussels, 2001). The former MP Chris Smith correctly identifies those run-ins with the Zimbabwean dictator as turning points which softened public hostility toward Tatchell.
Continue reading...Students and activists in group that British foreign ministry hopes will be ‘the first of many’ in coming months
A group of LGBT+ Afghans has arrived in Britain, the first since the Taliban’s return to power in August caused panic among gay and transgender Afghans, who feared persecution and even death under the Islamists’ rule.
The evacuation of the 29 Afghans is “hoped to be the first of many” in the coming months, Britain’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Saturday, hours after a Taliban spokesman said LGBT+ rights would not be respected.
Continue reading...At 93, the Merchant Ivory director – and oldest ever Oscar winner – reflects on enduring love, delighting in his sexuality and defying film-making expectations
James Ivory’s movies revel in the elegance of the swan and simultaneously show how frantically its feet are paddling beneath the water. In the films for which he is best known – 1985’s A Room With a View, 1987’s Maurice, 1992’s Howards End and 1993’s The Remains of the Day, a fraction of his output – we see the effort put into making those rooms look so beautiful; the human cost of controlling your emotions. Cecil (Daniel Day-Lewis) pretending to clean his spectacles after Lucy (Helena Bonham Carter) breaks their engagement in A Room With a View; Stevens (Anthony Hopkins) looking at Miss Kenton (Emma Thompson) as she takes the book out of his hand: Ivory knows that an ocean of emotions can be contained in the smallest gesture.
Ivory, 93, spends most of his time in his 6,000-sq ft home in the Hudson Valley, but when he’s in Manhattan, he stays in the Upper East Side apartment he’s had for the past half-century. He shared it with his partner, Ismail Merchant, who produced his movies, while Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, who wrote most of them, lived downstairs. But Merchant died in 2005 and Jhabvala died in 2013, so now it is just Ivory on his own. When he welcomes me inside on an unseasonably warm October day, he is chipper and bright: “This weather is wonderful, it’s like Los Angeles,” he smiles. He is, as usual, very busy.
Continue reading...Equalities minister Liz Truss will consult on plans to allow counselling for non-vulnerable adults
Consenting adults should be able to undergo so-called conversion therapy, the government has recommended.
Setting out proposals for how they plan to crack down on “coercive and abhorrent” practices that seek to change sexual orientation or gender identity, the Government Equalities Office said: “We recognise there is a plurality of experience in this area and that there are adults who seek counselling to help them live a life that they feel is more in line with their personal beliefs.”
Continue reading...Bill would have made violence against LGBT people and disabled people, as well as misogyny, a hate crime
Italy’s senate has killed off a bill that would have made violence against LGBT people and disabled people, as well as misogyny, a hate crime.
The 315-member senate voted by 154 to 131 on Wednesday to block the debate on the law, named after the gay centre-left Democratic party (PD) legislator Alessandro Zan and previously approved by the lower house of parliament in the face of months of protests from far-right and Catholic groups.
Continue reading...Increasingly, authoritarians are likening ‘genderism’ to ‘communism’ and ‘totalitarianism’
In June, the Hungarian parliament voted overwhelmingly to eliminate from public schools all teaching related to “homosexuality and gender change”, associating LGBTQI rights and education with pedophilia and totalitarian cultural politics. In late May, Danish MPs passed a resolution against “excessive activism” in academic research environments, including gender studies, race theory, postcolonial and immigration studies in their list of culprits. In December 2020, the supreme court in Romania struck down a law that would have forbidden the teaching of “gender identity theory” but the debate there rages on. Trans-free spaces in Poland have been declared by transphobes eager to purify Poland of corrosive cultural influences from the US and the UK. Turkey’s withdrawal from the Istanbul convention in March sent shudders through the EU, since one of its main objections was the inclusion of protections for women and children against violence, and this “problem” was linked to the foreign word, “gender”.
The attacks on so-called “gender ideology” have grown in recent years throughout the world, dominating public debate stoked by electronic networks and backed by extensive rightwing Catholic and evangelical organizations. Although not always in accord, these groups concur that the traditional family is under attack, that children in the classroom are being indoctrinated to become homosexuals, and that “gender” is a dangerous, if not diabolical, ideology threatening to destroy families, local cultures, civilization, and even “man” himself.
Continue reading...Slew of walkouts by tech workers, unthinkable mere years ago, shows workers ‘now understand their labor power’, expert says
Employees at Netflix halted work on Wednesday and staged a protest outside the company’s Los Gatos, California, headquarters to condemn the streaming platform’s handling of complaints against Dave Chappelle’s new special.
The actions – which hundreds participated in – are the latest in a string of highly visible organizing efforts in the tech sector, as workers increasingly take their grievances about company policies and decisions public.
Continue reading...In a country where gay sex is against the law, it can be almost impossible for the LGBT community to access services tackling domestic violence – and during the pandemic, lockdowns saw abuse soar
All photos by DeLovie Kwagala
* Names have been changed. Since these interviews took place all the subjects have ceased living with their abusers and are finding ways to heal
Continue reading...Sir David Amess, who has died aged 69 after being stabbed while holding a constituents’ surgery at a church in Leigh-on-Sea, was the Conservative MP for Southend West in Essex. Though he spent more than half his life in the Commons without ever attaining ministerial office, the likelihood is that he would not have wanted it any other way.
He devoted his career to the promotion of his constituencies – first Basildon, then from 1997 Southend West – and to dealing with their voters’ concerns. He had a high local profile and was always willing to meet constituents, advertising his regular weekly surgeries in advance.
Continue reading...The US transportation secretary and his husband recently adopted newborn twins and praised ‘an administration that’s actually pro-family’
US transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, who has been on paternity leave since mid-August with newborn twins, called right-wing attacks on his paternity leave “strange” and from “a side of the aisle that used to claim the mantle of being pro-family”.
Buttigieg – who is gay – was the subject of criticism from Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Thursday, who belittled the secretary’s paternity leave while making homophobic comments and criticizing the administration for supply chain woes.
Continue reading...Fresh from winning gold in Tokyo, the diver answers readers’ questions on everything from gay role models to his passion for knitting and the secrets of his success
Tom Daley, Britain’s most decorated diver, grew up in the spotlight. He was 14 when he made a splash at his first Olympics, in 2008, and at 15 he became a world champion. This year in Tokyo, at his fourth Games, he finally won a longed-for gold, with his synchronised diving partner, Matty Lee. In 2013, Daley came out – a rarity among professional sportspeople – and he has become a campaigner for LGBTQ+ rights. Now 27, he is married to the screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, with whom he has a three-year-old son.
In a new autobiography, he describes struggles with injury, debilitating anxiety and coping with the death of his father, his biggest champion. Here, one of Britain’s best-loved athletes gamely answers questions from our writer and Guardian readers on all of the above, as well as his other great passion: knitting.
Continue reading...‘Discriminatory’ banning of I Am Samuel, about a gay man’s struggles with his sexuality, criticised by activists and producers
Activists and film producers have criticised a decision by the Kenya Film Classification Board to ban a documentary that tells the story of a Kenyan man struggling with his sexuality.
They said banning the 52-minute film, I Am Samuel, amounted to “discrimination and persecution” of LGBTQ+ people.
Continue reading...‘Marriage for All’ proposal backed by 64.1% of voters in nationwide referendum
Swiss voters have decided by a clear margin to allow same-sex couples to marry, in a referendum that brings the Alpine nation into line with many others in western Europe.
Official results showed the measure passed with 64.1% of voters in favour and won a majority in all of Switzerland’s 26 cantons.
Continue reading...Gay and trans people in Afghanistan already faced stigma, but now even a call from an unknown number sparks fear
Laila, a transgender woman in Afghanistan, rubs her eyes to wipe tears away. “I am terrified. It’s like a nightmare. I don’t feel safe even in my room. I’m scared of the Taliban. When I see them I feel they will know who I am and they will come to beat me, kick me or send me to prison.”
After the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August, Laila is far from an isolated case. Rehmat, a gay man, said: “Our lives are in danger. We are afraid of having mobile phones. I get afraid when I receive calls from unknown numbers, worried that it might be the Taliban.”
Continue reading...She explored her gender and sexuality in the 20s, defied segregation in the 40s and inspired Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Now, a film is bringing her trailblazing achievements to light
It seems inconceivable that someone like Pauli Murray could have slipped through the cracks of US history. A lawyer, activist, scholar, poet and priest, Murray led a trailblazing life that altered the course of history. She was at the forefront of the battles for racial and gender equality, but often so far out in front that her contributions went unrecognised.
In 1940, 15 years before Rosa Parks, Murray was jailed for refusing to move to the back of a bus in the Jim Crow south. In 1943, she campaigned successfully to desegregate her local diner, 17 years before the Greensboro lunch counter sit-ins of 1960. Her work paved the way for the landmark supreme court ruling Brown v Board of Education in 1954 – which de-segregated US schools – to the extent that Thurgood Marshall, a lawyer for the NAACP civil rights group, called Murray’s book States’ Laws on Race and Color “the bible for civil rights lawyers”.
Continue reading...A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms from Thailand to Texas
Continue reading...LGBTI protests against hate crime in Spain will still go ahead
A Spanish man who said he had been attacked by a masked gang who subjected him to a homophobic assault at knifepoint and carved the word “faggot” into one of his buttocks has now told police that his injuries were consensual.
The apparent attack, which was alleged to have taken place in the central Madrid neighbourhood of Malasaña on Sunday afternoon, shocked Spain and came amid a rise in hate crimes – and just two months after a gay man was beaten to death in the northern city of A Coruña.
Continue reading...The National party’s opposition to the bill outlawing conversion therapy is anti-children – a ban would send a message to all queer people that they are valid
New Zealand’s National party promised grassroots activists that they would vote in favour of banning conversion practices, but last month they were the only party to vote against a bill doing just that. We, the queer community, were blindsided by their new position and hurt by the numerous National MPs who had promised us we could trust them to be allies.
National party leader Judith Collins maintains that the party supports a ban on gay conversion practices but is concerned that the current bill could criminalise parents who counsel their children and has labelled the proposed bill “anti-parents”. As a survivor of conversion practice, I believe National’s position is anti-children.
Continue reading...The actor’s latest project is a book to teach teenagers their rights. Here, she sits down with four young people to hear what they’re fighting for
• Read an interview with Jolie here
Angelina Jolie How do you feel the older generation are handling things?
Christina Adane, 17, a British anti-poverty campaigner, originally from Ethiopia If you’d asked me a year ago, I’d have said they had failed us and left us with a bunch of problems. I still feel that way at times, but I think cross-generational communication is crucial when fighting issues like racial and climate justice. It’s easy to fall into the mentality of us v them, youth v old people in power. But loads of older people want to help us. So it’s about connecting with decision-makers and ensuring they are listening, so they can represent us where we are not represented – in government, at meetings at the top of companies. We need to work with the older generation.
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