Fridae

The Kuala Lumpur High Court will hear the judicial review application filed by committee members of Malaysia's only sexuality rights festival, which was forcibly cancelled by the police last November, on Feb 21.

Two women competing in Miss California USA this weekend are the first openly gay contestants in the pageant's 60-year history.

The Seoul Student Rights Ordinance that contains sexual orientation and gender identity protections, which are strongly opposed by religious groups, was passed on Monday.

A Malaysian man, who was reported missing as early as 2008 while he was a medical student in Ireland, is now a subject of controversy in his home country after photos of him in a same-sex civil union surfaced last week.

In its first official report on the issue, the United Nations top human rights official urged countries to abolish legal discrimination against gays, including the death penalty for consensual sex, days after the U.S. government said it would use foreign aid and diplomacy to promote gay equal rights.

The LGBT Coalition for Seoul Student Rights Ordinance is petitioning the Education Committee of Seoul Metropolitan Council to keep the clauses which will prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) in response to opposition from fundamental Christian groups who want the SOGI references deleted.

The Philippine's only political organisation for LGBTs has urged Catholic priests, who oppose the anti-discrimination bill, to "come out of their extravagant churches to see the reality – that some LGBTs are not hired to work, some are being harassed and violated and some 144 killed because of their sexual orientation and gender identity."

The Australian government has lifted a ban on certificates for same-sex couples who wanted to marry in countries which allow same-sex marriage; gay marriage conscience vote slated for 2012.

In a speech to mark Human Rights Day, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton calls protecting rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people 'one of the remaining human rights challenges.'

Elio Di Rupo is officially the world's second openly gay and first openly gay male head of government after Iceland's Johanna Sigurdardottir.