Video: Seattle Gay Pride Parade 2008 (1 thru 8)

Part One


Part Two


Part Three


Part Four


Part Five


Part Six


Part Seven


Part Eight

Cuba's first gay pride parade suddenly cancelled

I have seen some talk about the new gay compassionate Cuba being all smoke and mirrors.

So when I saw this article I wasn't totally surprised.

Here's some clips from the Guardian article;

Activist Mario Jose Delgado said two organisers who were to deliver a set of demands to the Justice Ministry were detained on Tuesday.

"The president of the Cuban League Against Aids and the president of the Foundation LGTB Reinaldo Arenas in Memoriam have been arrested," Delgado said.

"They were to be here with our written demands but now we cannot carry out our activity."

At Cuba's National Centre for Sex Education, Mariela Castro's secretary, who gave her name only as Iliana, said there would be no comment on the event.

"It proves there is no true openness toward the gay community in Cuba," said Efren Martinez Pulgaron of Unity Coalition, a former independent journalist who fled Cuba nine years ago.

He said Mariela Castro's May rally and the government's recent decision to allow sex-change operations were token gestures.

GLBT Corporate Roundtable pushes for equality

By Ann Belser, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

There will be a new banner in today's Pride March.

This one represents the workers at Pittsburgh's corporations who have signed on to work to promote tolerance of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered workers.

When members of the Pittsburgh GLBT Corporate Roundtable step off with the rest of the march, it will be a step that the original organizers would not have foreseen.

In the months after Bank of New York Mellon pulled together what was thought would be a one-time-only discussion with other companies on the best practices for creating an inclusive workplace for all employees, Susan Whitehood knew she would be organizing more of them.

The topic, specifically, had to do with gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered employees. BNY Mellon, being a financial services company, was way ahead of the various manufacturing companies in Pittsburgh on providing benefits for domestic partners.

Without ever advertising or sending out any sort of notices, the members of the group now represent a dozen area employers.

full article

Binghamton Mayor raises gay flag and declares June LGBTQ month

News 10

BINGHAMTON, N.Y. -- Binghamton Mayor Matt Ryan issued a proclamation declaring June Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender-Queer Pride Month in Binghamton.

The Rainbow Flag raising ceremony on Friday kicked off a month of events to celebrate and raise awareness of LGBTQ issues.

Ryan is the first Binghamton mayor to raise the Rainbow Flag in honor of LGBTQ Pride month.

Ryan said the ceremony is a chance to celebrate contributions of the LGBTQ community and reject prejudice.

full article including video

Join Governor Gregoire at the Seattle Gay Pride Parade

Sunday, June 29th at 11AM Seattle will celebrate Gay Pride.

While at the Pride Parade keep an eye out for the Grand Marshall’s vehicle and you’ll see Governor Chris Gregoire.

Evidently the parade was a bit long last year and will be limited to 2 ½ hours this year.

Hopefully a recording of the Pride Parade will be televised for those of you unable to attend (last year 2 hours of the parade was televised). Maybe one year it will be live!

Visit the Out & Proud website for more information regarding the parade.

Tel Aviv celebrates Gay Pride and opening of Pride Center

By GAL TZIPERMAN LOTAN
The Jerusalem Post

The Pride Center is scheduled to open with an art exhibition in Tel Aviv's Gan Meir with Friday's Gay Pride Parade, and will house everything from an art gallery to plays, conferences, a café, and HIV/AIDS support groups, city council member Itai Pinkas told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.

"We conducted a survey of over 3,000 people to see if such a center is needed, who would use it and what people want to see in it," Pinkas said. He initiated the project after promising a center for the gay and lesbian community in his election campaign five years ago.

Almost all reactions so far had been positive, Pinkas said.

full article

39 years of Pride, Chicago Pride 2008, June 28th

The Chicago Gay Pride Parade is held on the last Sunday of June in Chicago, Illinois.

This year it falls on June 29th. This year will celebrate the 39th annual Pride Parade.

The Chicago PrideFest happens the preceeding day, June 28th.

For parade maps, tips and photos visit the Chicago Pride Website.

Moscow gays outfox police

times10.ca

Despite the banning of their protest for the third year in row and attempted pre-emptive arrests by the authorities, Moscow Lesbians and Gays successfully held Pride with widespread coverage by alternative, prominent international and some mainstream Russian media.

The authorities, neo-fascists and religious zealots took the bait that Pride was going to take place as a picket in front of notoriously anti-gay Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov’s City Hall.

While riot police were busy blockading City Hall and arresting some of the fascists and religious fanatics who showed up to physically stop Pride, Alexeyev had secretly spirited the media to a nearby monument to the great 19th Century Russian gay composer Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky, where Pride was successfully held with widespread coverage.

full article

Canada: Annual tri-Pride Outdoor Festival June 1

by Barbara Aggerholm
Record Staff
The Record

Tri-Pride festival returns with family-friendly event at Victoria Park on Sunday

An annual tri-Pride festival at Victoria Park, celebrating sexual diversity and families, is returning this Sunday after a year's hiatus.

What: Annual tri-Pride Outdoor Festival
Who: For everyone; family-friendly event
When: Sunday, June 1
Time: 12:30 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Where: Roos Island, Victoria Park, Kitchener
Admission: Free

Features: Live stage performances on stage at the Roos Island outdoor gazebo throughout the day, including Kelly and the Kelly Girls, Charlena Russell, Kate & Moxy, S&M, the Ote'a Tane Hawaiian Male Dancers, Miss Drew & Crew; a vendor village; volunteer-supervised kids-only activity centre; silent auction with proceeds going to tri-Pride; licensed area; barbecued food.

more information

25 Years of Pride

By Karen Robes, Staff Writer
Press-Telegram
Long Beach, CA

LONG BEACH - Vanessa Romain remembers the challenges of putting on the first Long Beach Lesbian and Gay Pride Festival and Parade.

Back then, Long Beach was a closeted community and some feared the event would be a fiasco and bring negative attention to the beachside town.

"It was a struggle not only for us to make it happen but also for people to come out and participate," said the festival co-president and a 25-year volunteer.

full article

Youth commission to honor Boston Pride, PFLAG leaders

by Laura Kiritsy
Editor-in-chief
Bay Windows

The Friends of LGBT youth will honor Boston Pride Committee President Linda DeMarco and Greater Boston PFLAG Executive Director Pam Garramone at this year’s Sunset Soiree at the Hotel Marlowe in Cambridge on May 8.

full article

Thailand's gay history preserved

By Isabel Berwick

In 1983 I was an Australian PhD student visiting Thailand to do research on Buddhism when, by chance, the first Thai-language gay magazine appeared on the newsstands. I bought it, and since then I have built up a personal collection of about 2,000 Thai gay magazines. Now, with funding from the Australian Research Council, I am developing an archive in Bangkok of gay culture and literature.

I am doing this to give something back to the Thai gay and transgender community, whose members I have been interviewing and studying for the past 25 years. I am an associate professor in Thai history at the Australian National University, and the archive will help younger gay and transgender people in Thailand, now in their 20s and 30s, who want to study their own history. The magazines are a unique record of how gay culture has developed in Thailand.

My aim is to develop the Thai Queer Resources Centre as an archive that can eventually be donated to a university in Thailand for safekeeping. There's a rich history in these magazines, and apart from a few private collectors in Thailand, no-one has kept them. The police regularly destroy gay magazines - as supposedly pornographic - and mount raids on newsstands.

The previous political regime of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra had conservative moral policies, and magazines and other gay businesses were often raided. Somewhat ironically, since the military coup that overthrew Thaksin in September 2006, the climate for homosexual people has improved markedly. There's been a boom in gay businesses, including new gay magazines.

full article

Positive points for National Coming Out Day

More than half of straight Americans back equal treatment for gays, and seven out of 10 said they have spoken out for the homosexual community in the face of verbal attacks, a poll said Thursday.

So much uproar today about Dear Abby at the PFLAG conference. I think it's great! Kudos for the new PFLAG concept of Straight For Equality.








But I'm a bit more excited about the "GAY? FINE BY ME" T-Shirt movement.

Not so long ago a Ithaca High School sophomore was sent home for wearing the "GAY? FINE BY ME" T-Shirt. Since then the T-Shirt has gained phenomenal popularity.

Religious Right Wrong (again)

Back in 2001 there was a court case. The religious right, in attempt to stop abortion, published the names of all Doctors who performed abortions. Their right to do so is part of our First Amendment right to free speech which was upheld by a San Francisco federal appeals court.

Of course the backlash of such did occur when "Jesus" killed two and injured seven in an abortion clinic attack.

One of their most recent "articles" claims freedom of speech is under attackin the USA. Claiming Europe is passing legislation which will criminalize speech against homosexuals and the USA is one step away! Of course the "article" doesn't link to proof of this claim.

So I looked around a bit. Indeed a French politician did get fined for an outburst in court, stating that “homosexual behaviour endangers the survival of humanity” and that “heterosexuality is morally superior to homosexuality”. This was a court case where he was being sued by 3 gay organizations.

France has a very strong hate crimes code. Nothing near what we have, or are proposing, in the USA.

I doubt France cares much about the religious rights' opinion. But it is nice to see the religious right reach out to the International Community in such a loving and giving way.

October 11: National Coming Out day and Cyndi Lauper

PFLAG Launches 'Straight for Equality' on October 11

Cyndi Lauper will be urging straight America to speak out for Gay friends.

From October 11-14, hundreds of families and allies of GLBT people will be in Washington D.C., for the PFLAG National Convention, presented by IBM.

The national event marks the official launch of Straight for Equality, an entirely new project that aims to motivate the vast audience of fair-minded Americans who wish to more actively support equality in their daily lives.

Straight for Equality empowers people who may not have GLBT family members but who nonetheless want to curb homophobia in their daily lives. From speaking up when hearing an anti-gay joke, openly supporting equality in your work place to taking action to change anti-GLBT policies.

The PFLAG National Convention also will feature special guests such as the world's most widely syndicated columnist, Dear Abby, and the first-ever openly gay Episcopal Bishop V. Gene Robinson.

Taiwan has largest Asian gay pride parade

Taipei - Taiwan will hold a government-funded gay carnival this weekend and Asia's largest gay pride march on October 13, the Taipei City Government and gay rights groups said on Monday.

The carnival will be held this weekend with 12 Taiwan and foreign gay films being shown at the Honglou Theatre in central Taipei, Jason Yeh, a city official, told a news conference.

'Gay groups from Singapore, Japan and Hong Kong will participate in the march. There will also be individual homosexuals from other countries attending the march,' he said.

Tolerance for homosexuals has grown in recent years in Taiwan, but Taiwan gays and lesbians are still fighting for equal rights, especially the right to get married.

HRC back-to-school reception in Washington DC

Last night, HRC hosted its 2nd annual back-to-school reception for GLBT and straight supportive college students coming or returning to the Washington, DC area.

Candace Gingrich (pictured on left), our senior youth outreach manager who hosted the event, wrote about last night's fun.

Canada: "Guerilla Gays" take over straight bars

Over 100 queer people and supporters took over a straight bar in Ottawa on Sep 14 as part of a new activist group, Guerilla Gay Fare.

At a Capital Pride event in August, Tim Campbell witnessed some hostility towards gays at a queer party hosted in a non-queer venue.

Campbell read about the guerilla gay group concept in a Capital Xtra editorial, and he decided to create a Facebook group called Guerilla Gay Fare. The group quickly grew to over 600 members in just over two weeks.

"All of them were really happy to have us, they said 'you guys are welcome to party here, this is a great thing,'" says Campbell. While the concept is new to Ottawa, guerilla gay bar groups have existed for the past few years in several cities, including New York, Los Angeles and Washington DC.

http://www.xtra.ca/public/viewstory.aspx?AFF_TYPE=2&STORY_ID=3617&PUB_TEMPLATE_ID=1

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Feel free to post articles yourself.

For any of you who are so inclined,feel free to post articles and/or opinions of your own.

-tom

Gay-rights protests shake up reggae industry

In the wake of gay-rights protests surrounding three major dancehall reggae concerts in New York in recent weeks, promoters, performers and their labels are noting a detrimental effect on bookings and endorsements in the United States and Europe for dancehall artists, who play a style of reggae that incorporates hip-hop and R&B.

http://www.reuters.com/article/musicNews/idUSN0921667620070910?pageNumber=1
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