Delga welcomes last night's vote by the House of Lords voted to amend and improve the law on Civil Partnerships. The change means that Civil Partnership ceremonies will be able to be held in religious venues, and may include religious language. The amendment was supported by 25 Liberal Democrat peers, with no Lib Dem opposition; a majority of Tory peers voted against the amendment, and Labour's support was not unanimous. ...

Tuesday’s Gay News Post: Religion, Politics & Homophobia; When A Spouse Comes OUT; Civil Partnerships; State Dept’s HIV Plan; AIDS & HIV Research; Lieberman’s DADT Message; NY Police Sodomy Trial. Africa Watch: – Religion, politics and Africa’s homophobia — Since a Ugandan MP proposed the death penalty for some gay people, homophobia has been on the [...] ...

Anglican bishops say they'll support a lifting of the current ban on holding civil partnership ceremonies in church:  "Senior bishops in the Lords have told The Times that they will support an amendment to the Equality Bill next month that will lift the ban on civil partnership ceremonies in religious premises. The amendment would remove the legislative prohibition on blessings of homosexual couples and open the door to the registration of civil partnerships in churches, synagogues, mosques and all other religious premises. In a letter to The Times a group of Church of England clerics say today that religious ...

Stephen Baldwin, who recently captured the attention of Brits by joining Celebrity Big Brother in the UK (along with Ivana Trump, Heidi Fleiss, and Sisqo) in order to pay off debts (reportedly over $2 million to the IRS) is still preaching against homosexuality. From a profile in The Guardian: But then, the day after, we speak again on the phone and I ask him what he'd do if one of his girls came out as a lesbian and the other became a stripper. "Jesus or no Jesus, if my kid started working in a strip club, ...

Nick Clegg and DELGA are calling for Marriage Without Borders - for marriages and civil partnerships to be available in the UK to people regardless of gender, and for same-sex partnerships to be recognised throughout Europe and internationally. ...

I've already said Nick Clegg was the only one of the three main party leaders to support gay marriage, but today he has gone further and has become the first major party leader in history to proclaim his support for full rights for GLBT people in this country. Of course it's not a surprise but it is worth reminding ourselves that Tory and Labour party leaders do NOT support gay marriage nor are they willing to go as far as Nick Clegg is and finally make us equal citizens by removal the small and petty things that single us ...

Malaysia’ Human Rights Director, Dr. Kua Kia Soong calls for the Sodomy Laws to be repealed. Read more  PA: Shenandoah police are facing abuse charges. Read more  Maddow reports that The Family finally speaks out against the Ugandan Anti-Gay Bill. See Video  PM Gordon Brown stated he would push for civil partnerships in Europe. Read more  The Federal same-sex [...] ...

Every six months, it seems, actor Rupert Everett gives another interview, in which he warns of the dangers of being out in Hollywood. It's that time again. Says Everett to The Guardian: "The fact is that you could not be, and still cannot be, a 25-year-old homosexual trying to make it in the British film business or the American film business or even the Italian film business. It just doesn't work and you're going to hit a brick wall at some point. You're going to manage to make it roll for a certain amount of time, but at the first sign ...

Mary V.L. Badgett: When Gay People Get Married: New York: New York University Press: 2009. University of Massachuesetts lesbian economist Mary Badgett is one of the stars of LGBT academia, providing indispensable quantitative data to LGBT legislative reform politics. In this book, she deals with the question of LGBT relationship equality. At times, we may not fully appreciate how comparatively backward much of the United States is, compared to the rest of the western world. It has no comprehensive welfare state, no public health sector, and unmarried cohabitant rights are limited and primitive. When Badgett and her partner travelled to the Netherlands ...

This is the first in our part of the Brazil gay scene on gaypartyblog.com. Sao Paulo is the richest and most populated city in Brazil. Sounds like the perfect place to find your Latin sugardaddy doesn’t it? And where else are you more likely to do this that at the annual gay pride event. They say that the Sao Paulo gay pride event is the largest of its kind on the planet: back in 1997 there were 2,000 people attending, it hit the Guinness book or records in 2006 when 2.5 million attended and… wait for it, the 2010 event is expected ...

In a strange twist of circumstances, a heterosexual couple interested in obtaining a civil union in the UK has been barred from doing so. The reason? Civil unions are only for gay people. Heteros can only be “married” and only by a member of a church.The couple is supported by Peter Thatchell, one of the UK’s most prominent gay rights activists. No civil union for straight pair Image courtesy of BCCnews A heterosexual couple have been refused permission to register for a civil partnership. Tom Freeman and Katherine Doyle said they want to challenge “discriminatory” UK laws which restrict civil partnerships to ...

In Vienna, Austria’s centre-right government agreed to pass new legislation that will  allow civil partnerships for LGBT couples. However, there will be no ceremonies at the civil registry’s office. The compromise was achieved after weeks of wrangling between the ruling Social Democrats and their conservative coalition partner in government. It will give LGBT couples equal pension and alimony rights. However, there will continue to be uninclusive adoption and artificial insemination laws for gay couples, said Justice Minister Claudia Bandion-Ortner. The conservative People’s Party  fought attempts to allow civil partnership ceremonies at the civil registry’s office, where civil partnerships will occur. They will be registered at a municipal office or  magistrate’s ...

UK Census may ask about sexual orientation. Sarah Palin’s Gay Friend? ENDA Committee vote postponed. Albania: Man Allegedly Murdered Woman Because She Was Trans And some good news: Austria to allow civil partnerships for gays ...

We seek them out so you don't have to. This is our weekly non-exhaustive round up of upcoming LGBT programmes on the radio and television. Inclusion of a programme is not a recommendation.Some of the programmes listed below will be available online on the respective network's websites.Enjoy!Owt on’t’telly?A round up of LGBT progs and personalities on British TV.Warning: Emmerdale is running a story about a woman faking domestic abuse to seek attention. You might like to complain to ITV1. In the past Emmerdale has had a major lesbian character: Zoe. She came out, chucked her girlfriend, went mad, turned ...

Have you signed Andrew Falconer's petition to enable civil partnerships to be conducted in churches and other religious venues? Time is running out as the deadline for this petition is this Friday, 30 October. ...

When you spend time reading GLBT related news stories, you become somewhat immune to the bile and filth that spews from the bigoted and homophobic from around the world. So the real surprise I got from the Jan Moir/Twitter controversy of the last few days is this: How do people not realise this is just your run of the mill tabloid stuff? That might sound very blasé about a something so nasty as her piece on Stephen Gately. But it's true. The Daily Mail, the Express, The Sun/NotW and the others all print this sort of stuff daily. Has ...

So.Jan Moir is now in full-denial mode, describing complaints of homophobia in her "tawdry gossip for celebrity-snuff fans" column as as "mischevious" and the product of an orchestrated campaign. She's pushing back with the support of the Mail's own PR firm.The Daily Mail itself is also pretending this is business as normal: the removal of ads from Moir's page is apparently little more than when ads for power companies are (for example) removed from stories about the possible dangers of power masts, though in this case it seems to be that Moir's work is incompatible with advertising for products ...

UPDATEDJan Moir, a columnist for the right-leaning British paper Daily Mail, has penned a disgusting homophobic opinion column about late Boyzone star Stephen Gately, whose sudden death over the weekend was announced to be the result of natural causes. Moir has come under fire for using the occasion of Gately's death to slam the gay "lifestyle" and the "happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships". Writes Moir:"Something is terribly wrong with the way this incident has been shaped and spun into nothing more than an unfortunate mishap on a holiday weekend, like a broken teacup in the rented cottage. Consider ...

The Daily Mail, a daily British tabloid newspaper has published a disgusting homophobic piece about the death of Boyzone singer Stephen Gately. The tabloid calls Gately's story "A strange, lonely and troubling death" The piece has attracted outrage and thousands of complaints to the tabloid, with two topics trending on twitter about the newspaper. While all media and police accounts point to his death as being a tragic natural consequence, the Daily Mail decides to blame his death on his "dark appetite" for homosexuality.The newspaper uses this tragic death of a talented singer and gay rights hero, ...

Disclosure: I'm a Liberal Democrat (American readers will read that somewhat wrongly I suspect!). As someone who considers himself a libertarian I believe the Lib Dems are the closest fit for my political beliefs, and whilst I don't subscribe to all their policies I would be very happy to see a Lib Dem Government. I've hated the Tories pretty much all my adult life, a consequence I suspect of being a child of Thatcher's Britain and being gay. Also I think that the fact that the most important "issue" to me is not healthcare or the economy but basic human ...