LGBTQ

32 Ugandan gay men, refugees in Kenya, were arrested in Nairobi on 8 February, were held in a cell at Kabiria Satelite Police Station until being eventually releaed at 7pm on Monday 10 February, after negotiations with lawyers working with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The men were arrested at a gathering they had organised to send-off one of their friends scheduled for resettlement to a safe country, free from anti-gay persecution. Neighbours of the residence where the party took place had called the police, asking them to investigate the “suspicious” gathering of “non...

Attacks on LGBT people in Russia have increased as much as tenfold since the Russian Duma voted in June of 2013 to outlaw “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations among minors.” A recent Human Rights Watch report documented physical attacks, abductions, aggressive harassment and verbal abuse of LGBT people and activists in 16 Russian cities. LGBT employees working with children were routinely sacked from their jobs if their sexual orientation became known. Another report, by a Russian LGBT-rights group, reported 300 homophobic attacks during 2014, a tenfold increase compared with the...

The former deputy leader of UKIP, Lord Christopher Monckton, has said that gay men have “20,000 sexual partners” and “lead miserable lives”. While he is obviously a total clown, he is also a hereditary peer and used to advise Margaret Thatcher. It is worrying that someone who still has some power, and used to have a lot, would say such blatantly absurd garbage about LGBTQ people. Nigel Farage has distanced himself from Monckton by asking: “How many other parties have an MEP who describes himself as ‘spectacularly homosexual’ and a ‘great big screaming poof’? David Coburn MEP’s words – not mine...

Films about scientists are a rare occurrence and films about mathematicians are even rarer; it’s not hard to see why. For every Good Will Hunting, there are many more films that are quite unbearable to view, such as the vastly overrated A Beautiful Mind about the life of John Nash. But the Imitation Game is a surprisingly well-made take on the life of the father of computer science, Alan Turing. Predictably the film was lacking in the concrete mathematics, with only vague references to how exactly the Enigma machine worked, or how Turing’s machine was able to crack the code. The film can’t be...

I was born in 1974 and grew up in the north east of England in the 70s and 80s. Part of a properly matriarchal family, my mother was one of six sisters, their deceased father and their mother had been solid Labour supporters. I was told stories by Lesley (my mother) of them stitching rosettes for the party when they were young “until their fingers bled” — there may have been some exaggeration, maybe not! There were also socialist feminist politics about — my auntie Anna had been involved in Scarlet Women, a socialist feminist zine, copies were knocking about the house. We had posters of Victor...

The men’s rugby club at the London School of Economics has been disbanded, after circulating a sexist, classist and homophobic leaflet at this year’s freshers fair. The text of the leaflet mocks students at “poly” universities, describes women as “mingers” and “trollops” and says that the club will not tolerate “outright homosexual debauchery”. But this is not the first time the team has ran into trouble with the students’ union over offensive behaviour. As statement from the LSE student union shows the club have previously been known to dress as Guantanamo Bay detainees and imitate praying as...

The writer, Stephen Beresford, first heard the story of LGSM from a friend. He told a pre-screening audience that it inspired him greatly — the film is clearly a work of care and love. The characters are the real members of LGSM. Mike Jackson and others input into the writing and production, infusing the personalities, lives and experiences of the LGSM activists. Refreshingly, Beresford does not consider it necessary to provide background to justify the miners’ strike; it is accepted in the film that the strike was valid. That lesbians and gay men and miners share a common enemy in the ruling...

Have you ever walked down a street, seen a stranger looking depressed, and felt a painful tug of the heart? Have you ever read or watched the news and recognised a truth to the world, that it is founded on inequality and injustice and breeds unnecessary human suffering, and not been able to turn away then and thereafter? For as long as I can remember, I’ve had this. I’ve had empathy, connection, insight, and yearning for change. Indeed, what else is there to making a socialist? Perhaps, our own biographies. I grew up in a British Asian household with regular visits to and from the wider...

How did you get to where you are today as an LGBT activist and out bisexual woman? It has been an interesting, tasking, journey towards self-awareness. It is also a journey that has involved studying society and finding my place in it. It is a continuous journey and one where I have to constantly remind myself that I have a right to be who I am in a world that is desperate to make me into what they would rather I be. I started being politically and socially aware of my human rights at an early age. I was born in Nigeria in the mid-70s and grew up in a society that was marred with constant...

As the Commonwealth Games gets underway in Glasgow, various LGBTI rights groups have been raising awareness about the oppression of LGBTI people in the countries taking part. In 42 out of the 53 Commonwealth countries, same-sex relationships are a crime. In northern Nigeria, some states have the death penalty. The Commonwealth Charter does not mention LGBTI rights. Edwin Sesange, from the Out and Proud Diamond Group, writes in Gay Star News, 'This isn't about abstract “laws”. Legislation wrecks LGBTI people's lives, even leaving some of them dead. Millions of our [LGBTI] brothers and sisters...