Category: Around the World

This truly amazes me. A court in Pakistan has decided that if a transman has not had bottom surgery, he is still a woman. This is surprising to me mostly because the decision meant that a lesbian couple ended up in jail – whereas if he HAD had the bottom surgery, he would be a [...]

Last November, South Africa became the first country in Africa – and the fifth in the world – to legalize gay marriage. The measure received an overwhelming vote in Congress, with 230 ayes to 41 nays. But even though same sex couples can legally get married in South Africa, culture still dictates otherwise. South Africa [...]

Brenda Gazzar has written an article about Palestinian lesbians in Israel, including an interview with the founder of Aswat, which is the only group of its kind there. I was surprised to read that an Arab community leader said “we do not oppose their personal choice” – I had thought lesbianism was a punishable offense [...]

I received an e-mail from MKPR, a New York-based public relations firm that represents a number of organizations in the queer domain, including FabFemme, which hosts events for lesbian and bisexual women. The e-mail told me about a recent panel at Sundance that put clergy together with queer directors and actors for a discussion. The [...]

An interesting twist from Great Britain: Sisters demand same-sex couple rights. Two elderly sisters are taking the British government to the European Court of Human Rights, saying that they are being discriminated against because they are single. They’ve been trying since 1976 to get inheritance law changed, because as of now if either of them [...]