Fridae

Following his widely reported comments on April 21 about homosexuality and whether current gay sex laws should be retained in Singapore, Reuters news agency asked Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew about whether he thought the government should repeal its gay sex law.

Was MM Lee Kuan Yew asking a rhetorical question when he said, "Why should we criminalise it [homosexuality]?" Singapore's pioneer gay activist and Fridae columnist Alex Au picks his remarks and related media reports apart.

Nearly a decade after his widely quoted remarks about the gay issue in Singapore in a 1998 CNN interview, former PM Lee Kuan Yew again commented on the issue over the weekend - this time acknowledging that homosexuality might be genetically determined and questioned the city-state's ban on sex between men.

What do you do when a family member of the boyfriend has passed on? Do you attend the wake? Do you go for the burial? Jonathan Zhang recounts his recent experience of being there for his boyfriend and his family after the passing of his boyfriend's grandmother.

Solos - undoubtedly the most sexually explicit gay movie to be made in Singapore - will not be screened at a local film festival as censors demand three cuts to the 77-minute dialogue-less film.

Gay men - who constitute 7.3 percent of the total HIV/AIDS sufferers in China estimated to number 650,000 in 2005 - will be the first group enlisted to help in a government-initiated program.

The Iraqi lesbian and gay community and NGOs dealing with gay issues are calling for urgent action to protect gays and lesbians in the country as more than 30 gays were found tortured and mutilated Baghdad in recent months.

Organisers of the Hong Kong Lesbian and Gay Film Festival are calling for entries for its 2007 short film contest to increase awareness of HIV/AIDS among gay men in the territory.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned that gonorrhoea is now among the "superbugs" resistant to common antibiotics.

He's cute, has a good sense of humour; and is still single. Meet 27-year-old Didier Zheng who's the host of China's first gay Internet TV show. He tells Fridae in an exclusive interview about the government's restrictions on the show and the observations he has gleaned while hosting.