Did you know that PFLAG--Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, one of the premiere support groups for relatives of non-heterosexuals--has a Chinese branch now? I didn't until I came across an Economist article describing the latest progress in gay rights in China ( Read more... )

I've blogged in the past about Guido Westerwelle, Germany's out Foreign Minister. Towleroad today pointed to a news story suggesting that the Belarusian president used Westerwelle's sexual orientation to try to trigger a diplomatic incident following the suppression of free elections.

Last November in Minsk, Belarusian President Alexander ( Read more... )

• 80 Beats observes the discovery of a star in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way, that's the most massive star discovered to date with a mass three hundred times that of our sun.
• At the Everyday Sociology Blog, Janice Prince Inniss writes about the rising rates of intermarriage in the United States, with Asians and ( Read more... )

• Acts of Minor Treason's Andrew Barton points out that genes aren't everything, that the environment (in its broadest sense) controls the expression of genes in any species.
• blogTO's guest writer Matthew Harris summarizes the controversy surrounding the Bohemian Embassy condo development on Queen Street West.
• Centauri Dreams speculates about the idea ( Read more... )

John Lorinc's Globe and Mail article on the emergence of out politicians in Canada is worth reading in full. Unfortunately, most of it is behind the paper's subscription firewall.

When Toronto mayoral candidate George Smitherman kissed his spouse, Christopher Peloso, before a bank of cameras this week, he announced his campaign with a public ( Read more... )

Buju Banton, a Jamaican reggae star perhaps best known outside reggae fandom for homophobia, whether the murderous sentiments expressed in songs like "Boom Bye Bye" ("World is in trouble/Anytime Buju Banton come/Batty bwoy get up an run/At gunshot me head back") or for his joining in a mob assault on gay men in Jamaica, has been arrested on cocaine ( Read more... )

Noreen Fagan writes in Xtra! about how many same-sex binational couples, and not only in the United States, move to Canada as the only way that they can keep their families together.

I walked with purpose, my boots hitting the floor in a tempo that echoed my urgency. My mouth was dry and anxiety had sunk into the creases on my face. My family ( Read more... )

Over at France's Cité Gay, a writer asks ("Le Pacte Civil de Solidarité (Pacs) fête ses 10 ans," ""The PACS celebrates its 10th birthday) what the PACS, a " form of civil union between two adults (same-sex or opposite-sex) for organising their joint life [that] brings rights and responsibilities, but less so than marriage," is like now. Right- ( Read more... )

Slap Upside the Head always has wonderful links. Catholic Vote Action, it seems, is unhappy about a pro-same-sex marriage television advertisement in Maine, the state preparing for a referendum on same issue. Why?

Catholic Vote Action, a religious political group based in Chicago, is demanding that an ad supporting equal marriage rights in the ( Read more... )

• blogTO reports that Church Street restaurant Zelda's has moved away on account of too-expensive rents.
• Excitingly, Centauri Dreams talks about a model of the Europan interior ocean that allows for the possibility of large amounts of oxygen dissolved in that moon's water, creating the possibility for macroscopic life, not just microorganisms.
• Crooked ( Read more... )