An Oasis of Freedom Grows in Burma
QUESTIONS of identity have always been front and center in Myanmar, otherwise known as Burma. After Burma’s independence from British colonial rule in 1948, numerous armed conflicts broke out between…More
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South Korean Group Creates a Literary Award
FEW PEOPLE expected the announcement last year of the creation of an LGBT literary award in South Korea, the first such book prize in the “Confucian cultural sphere,” which…More
Cuban Agonistes
A PAIR of itinerant fishermen on a makeshift raft snag what looks like a drowned man floating face-down in the Bay of Havana. As they unhook the rotting corpse,…More
Ruling in India Not the Last Word
“NO GOING BACK!” The message was clear after the Supreme Court of India’s decision to recriminalize homosexuality by reversing the judgment of the Delhi High Court that decriminalized adult…More
Witness to a Genocide in the Making
AS A GAY VIDEO HISTORIAN, I hate being late, because documenting the “before” is just as important as the actual event and the aftermath. So I was pissed off…More
Saudi Arabia: Shari’a Law Meets Reality
THE FOLLOWING is based upon my personal observations of Saudi Arabian society as an English language teacher over a four-year period. Throughout my time in Saudi I lived in…More
Bangladesh: Activism Struggling to Be Born
Bangladesh is overwhelmingly Islamic (at ninety percent of the population), and there is little tolerance for homosexual behavior, which can be subject to brutal punishment.
MoreFrance v. the UK: Two Paths to Marriage Equality
THE FRENCH like to make fun of the British, joking about their repressed ways in matters of the heart. But when it came time to debate same-sex marriage, it was France that betrayed a deeply conservative streak in sometimes violent protests, while the British showed themselves to be modern and tolerant.
MoreIsrael: Equal Rights As Workaround
As in the United States, where ten states and the District of Columbia have marriage equality, Israel has marriage equality of an indeterminate nature, but in a different way. Same-sex couples in Israel cannot get married on Israeli soil. But if they travel abroad to marry in jurisdictions that allow them to, the Israeli government will then register their marriages in Israel.
MoreMalawi: Churches Stand in the Way
EARLY IN 2010, a legal trial in Malawi made international news when two individuals were sentenced to fourteen years in prison for holding a traditional engagement ceremony or ‘chinkhoswe.’ The couple were a transgender woman named Tiwonge Chimbalanga and a man named Steven Monjeza, whose act of mutual devotion was deemed an ‘unnatural offense’ under Malawi’s highly ambiguous criminal code …
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