Berlin renamed a stretch of the Spree River in honor of a gay-rights activist persecuted by the Nazis in the 1930s as the city's biggest hospital opened an exhibition devoted to the sex researcher. A stretch of the Spree River in central Berlin was named after gay-rights activist and sexual researcher Magnus Hirschfeld in a dedication ceremony on Tuesday, May 6.   On the same day 75 years ago, the Nazis plundered his offices and later burned hundreds of his books.   Hirschfeld had founded the world's first institute dedicated to fighting discrimination against homosexuals. He went into exile in ...

Seventy-five years ago, the Nazis ransacked the offices of German sex-researcher and gay-rights activist Magnus Hirschfeld, seizing hundreds of books that were burned in a towering pyre four days later. To mark the day Tuesday, Berlin dedicated a stretch of the Spree river to Hirschfeld, while the city's Charite hospital opened a new exhibition of his work called "Sex Burns." The tributes to Hirschfeld are "a clear acknowledgment for gays that a persecution has taken place and that reparation is necessary," said Alexander Zinn, head of Germany's Lesbian and Gay Association, at the dedication ceremony.  See 2 tributes ...

On April 19, gay rights activist Jiří Hromada was nominated by the Czech Republic's Green Party as their candidate for the Senate, a nomination which has already sparked plenty of controversy, according to the Prague Post: "Following reports of his nomination, news servers such as Novinky and Aktuálně.cz had to shut down online discussions because they were full of homophobic and vulgar comments. The right-wing extremist National Party immediately issued a press statement branding Hromada a 'homosexual deviant.' Despite years of hard work by many gay and lesbian activists, it seemed from such reactions that homophobic feelings are still ...