Louise Casey says Birmingham demonstrations have been put in ‘all-too-difficult box’
The former integration tsar, Dame Louise Casey, has accused ministers of “radio silence” over protests against the teaching of LGBT equality at a Birmingham school.
Casey said the government had failed to act on what she described as homophobic demonstrations because it was in the “all-too-difficult box”.
Continue reading...Hidden passions add to the brutish hell of apartheid-era South African conscripts in Oliver Hermanus’s skilfully tense drama
Moffie, screening in the Orizzonti sidebar at Venice, is a tense, stealthy rites-of-passage drama from the dog days of South Africa’s apartheid regime, a tale of callow young conscripts inside a corroded old system. Set in 1981 during the country’s border conflict with communist-backed Angola, Oliver Hermanus’s film manages an unflinching portrait of a society in spasm; paranoid and brutish and largely screaming at itself. It’s a war story of sorts in which the battle has already been lost.
Kai Luke Brummer gives a fine performance as Nicholas, a willowy 18-year-old at a sun-blasted army boot-camp. Nick and his fellow soldiers are supposed to be fighting the enemy, but the only action they’re seeing is on the volleyball court, or the dorm, or sometimes in the toilet cubicle, much to the sergeant’s horror. The way the officers see it, the very worst thing a soldier can be is a “moffie”, an Afrikaans insult that the subtitles translate as “faggot”. “Moffie!” they scream – as though they regard homosexuality as a mad dog that has somehow got under the fence, or an invading swarm of wasps, liable to sting any man who isn’t properly covered up.
Continue reading...Many genetic variants each play role in homosexual behaviour, study finds
A vast new study has quashed the idea that a single “gay gene” exists, scientists say, instead finding homosexual behaviour is influenced by a multitude of genetic variants which each have a tiny effect.
The researchers compare the situation to factors determining a person’s height, in which multiple genetic and environmental factors play roles.
Continue reading...Human rights organisation says decision to remove popular Lebanese indie rock band from Byblos international festival amounts to enabling hate speech
A concert by one of the Middle East’s most popular bands, Mashrou’ Leila, whose frontman is openly gay, has been cancelled following pressure from Christian groups.
The Lebanese quartet were due to play Byblos international festival on 9 August, but the set has been cancelled “to prevent bloodshed and preserve security” according to the organisers, after critics of the band on social media threatened to attack the concert.
Continue reading...Ravers, semi-naked sun-worshippers, booming queer culture … we meet the photographers chronicling a new generation of Lebanese shaking off the trauma of civil war
‘Parties are a privileged place, a space for exploration, a time for fusion,” says photographer Cha Gonzalez. They’re also the focus of her series Abandon, which looks at the way some Lebanese people have used nightlife – and techno music in particular – as a release after the trauma of the country’s 15-year civil war, which ended in 1990. “I knew a lot of people who were either born during the war or in exile,” she says. “What was put aside during the day came to light – and their internal struggles surfaced.”
Abandon is a pertinent theme not only for Gonzalez, but for all of the 16 contributors to an exhibition in Paris called C’est Beyrouth (This Is Beirut), at the Institut des Cultures d’Islam. Gonzalez in particular seized on the city’s dance scene, and later continued the series in Paris, where she lives, because “there was something to say about countries that are very far from war as well. The war is inside us: how we feel useless, alone, bored, guilty, horny.”
Continue reading...Neural analysis finds the brains of both sexes respond the same way to pornography
The belief that men are more likely to get turned on by sexual images than women may be something of a fantasy, according to a study suggesting brains respond to such images the same way regardless of biological sex.
The idea that, when it comes to sex, men are more “visual creatures” than women has often been used to explain why men appear to be so much keener on pornography.
Continue reading...Huge crowds gather on the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots
Continue reading...Public acceptance is improving, but in some cases Chinese authorities are moving in the other direction
It was a landmark moment for LGBT rights. When Taiwan passed a law allowing same-sex couples to marry, crowds in Taipei erupted into cheers, chanting: “First in Asia”.
For those watching from across the Taiwan strait in China, where gay couples do not have that right, the moment was heartening but also profoundly sad. Matthew, 27, an LGBT activist in Chengdu, spent the day following the proceedings online on his own. A few days later he flew to Taiwan to watch two male friends register their marriage after 14 years together.
Continue reading...Could an ‘outrageously heterosexual’ father handle his eldest child coming out at 16?
Sam Khalaf and his son Riyadh used to call themselves the two musketeers. When Riyadh was growing up in Bray, south of Dublin, they were inseparable. Like twins or best friends, they say. So the Iraqi-born, Irish citizen remembers keenly the moment when he realised his eldest child had drifted from him.
“We used to go everywhere together,” 54-year-old Sam recalls. “Every weekend we’d go to a tropical fish shop and pick out which koi carp to go into our pond. The first time Riyadh didn’t come with me, he was about 15. And the lad who worked there said: ‘Where’s your mate?’ I said, ‘He’s grown up now, he’s out with his friends.’ It was a shock to the system.”
Continue reading...Pharmaceutical known chemically as bremelanotide is aimed at women with low sexual desire disorder or HSDD
Drug regulators in the United States have approved Vyleesi, the latest attempt to come up with a “female Viagra” for women with low sexual desire.
Vyleesi, chemically known as bremelanotide, is said to activate pathways in the brain involved in sexual desire, helping premenopausal women with hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD). It has been developed by Palatin Technologies and licensed to Amag Pharmaceuticals, and is expected to be available from September through select pharmacies.
Continue reading...Country’s first athlete to reveal she is in a same-sex relationship on freedom, happiness and the backlash to coming out
Dutee Chand, India’s fastest sprinter and the nation’s first athlete to reveal she is in a same-sex relationship, doesn’t describe herself as gay. When the word is used during an interview with the Guardian, she breaks in. “I didn’t tell reporters I was that ... I simply said I am in a relationship with a woman,” she says.
Chand comes from a village in India where homosexuality is never talked about. Unlike urban India where there is growing acceptance among the young of notions of personal freedom, rural India remains largely entrenched in tradition, and tradition says marriage is between a man and a woman.
Continue reading...After making my home in England for 10 years, I have received a notice to leave everything I love behind
On Monday, I opened the letter I never wanted to receive. After 10 years living in the UK I was told that I am no longer welcome and should make arrangements to leave the country “without delay” or risk being deported in the middle of the night. As a gay man, whose country of birth, Kenya, persecutes homosexuals, I felt my whole world collapse around me as I read the matter-of-fact words on the Home Office headed paper.
Related: Gay rugby player faces deportation to Kenya as asylum claim rejected
Continue reading...Black Mirror is back. From an 80s lesbian romance to a murderous choose-your-own adventure, here are the essential dystopian stories you must watch before the new season drops next week
Season 2, Episode 1
Continue reading...Wild parties, stunning performances, silhouette erections and marrying Patrick Stewart twice. As the actor turns 80, friends including Derek Jacobi, Janet Suzman, Michael Sheen, Bill Condon and Stephen Fry pay tribute
Ian has been been very important in my life, even before we became good friends. When I was a young teen I remember watching Walter on the TV and being hugely affected by it. Then at Rada in the early 90s, I finally saw him live, in Richard III at the National. I was blown away. I remember him doing the opening speech while lighting a cigarette one-handed. It was brilliant, so understated. It exemplified his mastery – and his work ethic. To do something so difficult and complicated and make it look so easy. Ian has an innate sense of theatrical audacity, something I think he shares with Olivier. They both did things that would make the audience gasp self-consciously.
Continue reading...From early experimentation to long-term relationships, our erotic lives constantly evolve – here’s expert advice for all stages of life
“Nowadays many people start their sexual journey with porn,” says the sex educator and author of The Curious History of Dating, Nichi Hodgson. In fact in a recent study of 1,000 18 to 25-year-olds, 45% said that porn was their main source of sex education, while in a 2016 study commissioned by the NSPCC, more than a third (39%) of the 13 to 14-year-olds said they wanted to copy the behaviour they had seen in porn. “The upcoming age restrictions [on porn sites] will make it less likely that young people just stumble across this content, but there still needs to be a degree of shame-free porn literacy,” says Hodgson.
Continue reading...In a world that seems so at ease with sex, you’d think we were having it all the time. Think again
We owe a lot to the sex lives of Greeks. Ancient Greece gave us the origins of the names and concepts for homosexuality, homophobia and nymphomania, as well as narcissism and pederasty. The Romans talked freely to each other in toilets and were equally community-minded when it came to sex, with a reputation for lasciviousness and orgies. Georgians, we believe, were smutty, and Victorians were prudes and hypocrites. (All of these are partial truths.) We like to use sex as a mirror of an era, and to make judgments accordingly. What then, are we to make of us right now?
This is the most sex-positive age ever, right? We are liberal and comfortable with sex like no other people have ever been. Our magazines publish articles on how to get on better with your clitoris. Porn is freely available (and accessed by teenagers). Erotic books are bestsellers, however badly written. TV broadcasts shows in which the contestants are naked, or have sex in a box, or make a sex tape on camera. If sexual choice were a shop, it would be a hypermarket, with dizzyingly long aisles of every possibility: straight, gay, bi, trans, poly, fluid, each with its own culture and each widely accepted.
Continue reading...Thousands of LGBT rights supporters gather across Taiwan to celebrate the passage of legislation giving gay couples the right to marry. Taiwan is the first of any Asian state to legalise same-sex marriage, a move that will allow gay couples to enter into 'exclusive permanent unions' and apply for marriage registration with government agencies
• Taiwan becomes first in Asia to legalise same-sex marriage
Continue reading...The labels we give ourselves can be helpful but restrictive too. Let’s embrace diversity by celebrating fluid identities
We were excited young filmmakers, sitting in one of our first pitch sessions, a panel of executives lined up against us. They had flicked through our script, looked at our mood boards and praised our song choice for the sizzle reel (Man! I Feel Like A Woman). Then the question dropped: “Which one of you is the alphabet person?”
I realised I was the only one holding my hand in the air. Then the guessing game began, as the executives ran through the letters – LGBTQIA+ – until they landed on one that gave them some understanding of who I am.
Continue reading...Five lesbian and eight gay couples seek damages from government for denying them same rights as heterosexual spouses
Chizuka Oe and Yoko Ogawa have been together for 25 years, but when they submitted their marriage registration at a Tokyo town hall they knew it would be rejected.
“We were told that they cannot accept our registration because we are both women,” said Ogawa, standing in the winter sun outside the building in Nakano in western Tokyo.
Continue reading...French journalist’s book is a ‘startling account of corruption and hypocrisy’, publisher says
Some of the most senior clerics in the Roman Catholic church who have vociferously attacked homosexuality are themselves gay, according to a book to be published next week.
Eighty per cent of priests working at the Vatican are gay, although not necessarily sexually active, it is claimed in the book, In the Closet of the Vatican.
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