Fridae

After a 17-year wait, ILGA, which was the first international LGBTI organisation to get ECOSOC consultative status in 1993 but only to lose it the following year, has finally regained its status.

The head of Singapore delegation, Minister of State for Community Development, Youth and Sports, Halimah Yacob reiterated that the government has no plans to repeal the law against male-to-male sex when asked to clarify the status of lesbians in Singapore.

“You have to love someone to suck someone,” says Scud (real name Danny Cheng Wan-Cheung), director of Love Actually... Sucks! Scud shares his views on love, his film, and his struggles with censors in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Meanwhile, a release date has not been set as the Hong Kong censor has demanded 11 cuts, and Taiwan authorities five.

Many LGBT individuals are conflicted between their sexual orientation and religious beliefs. The Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) finds this conflict needless. Fridae's Raymond Ko speaks to Rev. Elder Nancy Wilson of the MCC about her church and her life when she was in Hong Kong last week.

What does it mean for the Singapore government to tell the UN that the "principle of equality of all persons before the law is enshrined in the Constitution of the Republic of Singapore, regardless of gender, sexual orientation and gender identity" when the specific terms are not found in the Singapore constitution?

A 3-member team from Sayoni, a queer women's group in Singapore, is in New York to present a report to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) for the first time.

A 26-year-old transgender, who took her case to court after the National Registration Department refused to update her name and gender on her identity card despite having undergone a complete sex reassignment surgery, has lost her case.

Ladlad, a LGBT political party, has called the regulation which bans gay and lesbian prison wardens from frisking and conducting strip searches on jail visitors of the same sex “a clear case of discrimination”.

The contributions of slain San Francisco politician Harvey Milk and the Stonewall riots in New York City in 1969 that helped launch the LGBT rights movement will soon be taught in California classrooms alongside well known activists such as Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks who are credited for making a lasting impact on civil rights in the United States.

Author and Professor of Anthropology Evelyn Blackwood offers a compelling view how lesbian butch-femme couples in the city of Padang, West Sumatra negotiate their transgressive identities and desires, and how their experiences speak to the struggles of sexual minorities elsewhere in Falling Into The Lesbi World, the fifth volume in the Queer Asia Series.