Fridae

What was to be China's first gay pageant was shut down by the police an hour before it the event was due to start. Fridae's Beijing correspondent Dinah Gardner reports.

Despite being shunned by his community, the devout Muslim and PhD candidate in Economics began a new area of study in Islam and homosexuality, and hopes for Muslims to rethink the possibility of consensual, supportive relationships as opposed to violent homosexual rape which he says is what the frequently referred to story of Lut (or Lot) in the Qur'an is about.

The international Federation of Gay Games seeks to raise an additional US$20,000 to send another 10 athletes and artists from Indonesia, Jamaica, Mexico, Pakistan, Philippines, South Africa, and Sri Lanka (on top of the 34 who have already secured funding) to the 2010 Gay Games in Cologne, Germany.

A LGBT organisation in Mongolia has finally succeeded in having its application to be officially recognised accepted by the government after at least ten attempts.

Twenty-six year old Evan Low is believed to be the United States' youngest openly gay mayor and also one of the youngest Asian American mayors in the country.

Hong Kong’s first Mr Gay pageant attracted six brave men – four local, a Filipino and an American – who not only had to show their wares in swim, sports and formal wear; and had to charm the judges and the crowd. 

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.

PositiveVoices.Net will be launched in mid-2010 to provide a safe haven for the HIV-positive gay men and other MSM on the internet.

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.

Over 90 representatives from 12 countries attend the first ever regional consultation on MSM HIV/AIDS care and support held last week in Bangkok.