New legislation proscribing a minimum penalty of life in jail for sex is being debated in parliament; US evangelists are said to main activists behind the measure.
The following is a media statement issued by 16 human rights and civil society organisations at the Commonwealth People’s Forum (CPF), a gathering of civil society organisations that meets in advance or and sends a statement to the Commonwealth Heads of Governments Meeting.
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.
Desmond Sim's poolside drama The Swimming Instructor makes its way north to the Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre from Dec 3-13 after being stage thrice in Singapore.
Ahead of the biennial 2009 Commonwealth Heads of Government Summit to be held Nov 27-29, representatives of gay groups from ten countries including Singapore, Malaysia and India are attending a parallel conference called the Commonwealth People's Forum with the aim of campaigning for the repeal of sodomy laws - a very common feature of ex-British colonies. Alex Au writes from Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad and Tobago.
After weeks of heated debate about the separation of church and state an alliance between various Filipino LGBT organisations and youth groups brought their grievances to the headquarters of the Philippine Commission on Elections (Comelec) Wednesday morning and demanded a recent discriminatory ruling be struck down. Laurindo Garcia reports from Manila.
Circumcision may protect gay men who are exclusively insertive for anal sex from infection with HIV, an Australian study published in the November 13th edition of AIDS suggests.
The International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) has issued an action alert to demand that the Philippines Commission on Elections (Comelec) grants the immediate accreditation of an ‘LGBT political party’ Ang LADLAD so that its member(s) can run for a seat in the Lower House of the Philippines Congress in the May 2010 national elections.
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