Fridae

Film Censors last week announced its decision to not only rate The Kids Are All Right R21, but also confined it to one print for the whole of Singapore, effectively making it impossible to screen the movie at more than one cinema at a time. Alex Au takes a closer look at the censors' claim that the film “normalises” the “homosexual lifestyle”.

A lawyer in Singapore who intends to challenge the constitutionality of Section 377A may be unable to do so if the challenge is dismissed on the basis that the charge brought against his client has been amended. Alex Au considers the issues.

Gay advocacy group People Like Us calls for entries for the second Rascals Prize competition, a S$2,000 biennial award for the best piece of research on the subject of lesbians, gays, bi-sexuals and transgender (LGBT) and Singapore.

Different spaces and even a different context of the use of the spaces have different behavioural conventions inscribed on them, and people have generally come to respect the prevailing convention. Should the police leave cruising grounds alone if the unwitting public is very unlikely to stumble on any activity?

Prominent Singapore blogger and gay activist Alex Au notes that the police is back to entrapping gay cruisers after not having done so in 16 years, and explains how the police decoy in such instances could be said to have given consent (even if non-verbal) to be approached.

Portugal's President Anibal Cavaco Silva has announced he will set aside his "personal convictions" and ratify a law that legalises gay marriage in the predominantly Catholic country, making it the sixth European country to do so.

The Anglican Global South, which John Chew, head of the Anglican Church in Singapore, now also leads has basically just one raison d'etre: to stoke the fire of intolerance against gay people. And why is the Singapore Anglican Church even in the Global South network?

Alex Au meets with Argentinian activist Marcelo Ferreyra and finds out more about the fight for same-sex marriage in Buenos Aires, where a court in the Argentinian capital made a precedent-setting decision to affirm a gay couple's right to be married under the city’s laws. "This is a fruit of a long period of organising and campaigning, news of which has rarely come to Asia," Au noted.

Alex Au speaks with Stefano Fabeni, the Director of Global Rights' LGBTI Initiative; Joel Simpson, Guyana's Society Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination (SASOD); and other activists at the Commonwealth People's Forum who are working to highlight LGBT-related concerns in former British colonies that have inherited Victorian-era sodomy laws from the former colonising power.

Barbados Minister for Family, Youth and Sports recently announced that gays, lesbians, and transgenders will be protected under legislation against domestic violence. Writing from Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad and Tobago where the Commonwealth People's Forum was recently held, Alex Au meets with Elizabeth, a MTF transgender from Barbados and finds out more about her country.