H&M to release LGBTQ pride collection to “celebrate diversity”
Following its racism scandal in January, global retailer H&M will be releasing a clothing collection to celebrate LGBTQ Pride. The 70s-inspired Pride clothes will be launched on 31 May and will include a range of items – such as t-shirts, shorts, jeans, caps and socks – featuring rainbow colours, prints and slogans. A photo and […]
Rowan Smith | Proudly gay former Anglican Dean of Cape Town dies
Tributes are pouring in for Rowan Smith, the groundbreaking and iconic gay former Dean of St George’s Cathedral in Cape Town. Smith passed away at the age of 74 on Wednesday after a long hospitalisation following a fall in which he broke his hip at the cathedral on Good Friday. While he appeared to be […]
UN rights chief | Myth that LGBTI equality is “Western agenda”
Ahead of Africa Day, the UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, Andrew Gilmour, says that LGBTI equality is not about imposing an agenda but about stopping discrimination. Gilmour addressed the issue at The Economist’s Pride and Prejudice conference in London on Thursday. The event looked at the economic and human costs of discrimination against the […]
New South African gay film ‘Kanarie’ is making waves (Watch)
In the wake of Inxeba, South African queer filmmaking is on a high with the upcoming debut of Kanarie, a gay coming-of-age musical drama set in apartheid South Africa. The film’s first trailer has just been released and it’s sparking interest and excitement around the world. Kanarie (Afrikaans for Canary) tells the story of an 18-year-old […]
Polyamorous relationships and the law in South Africa
We’ve all heard the saying “two’s a company, three’s a crowd.” And, while most people are happy having one significant other, others don’t find a relationship with three, four (or more) partners that crowded. Progressively, people around the word, and in South Africa are embracing polyamorous relationships. Recently, a British therapist named Mary Crumpton made […]
Hollywood | Alarming drop in LGBTQ film characters
Media lobby group GLAAD says that only 14 (12.8%) of the 109 releases from major Hollywood studios in 2017 included LGBTQ characters. That represents a significant decrease from the previous year (18.4%, 23 out of 125), and the lowest percentage of LGBTQ-inclusive major studio releases since GLAAD began tracking this in 2012. Not one of […]
US | Major court victory for transgender students
Gavin Grimm, who’s become a symbol of transgender activism in the US, has scored a victory in the fight for equal access to bathrooms in schools. On Tuesday, a federal court in Virginia rejected the Gloucester County School Board’s attempt to dismiss the transgender former student’s discrimination case against it. Grimm sued the school district after […]
Kenya | Former prime minister calls for unbanning of lesbian film
Kenya’s former prime minister and current opposition leader Raila Odinga has called for the acclaimed Kenyan lesbian love story Rafiki to be unbanned. Last month, Kenya’s notoriously homophobic film classification board (KFCB) blocked the film from being screened in the country ahead of its historic premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, a first for Kenya’s […]
Conversion therapy survivor speaks out in powerful video
A young American woman has recounted the experience of being abused in an effort to force her to change her sexual orientation. In a video released by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), Alex Cooper described what happened when she came out as lesbian to her religious Mormon family at the age of 15. Her parents […]
Gay Kenyan author Binyavanga Wainaina to marry in SA
Acclaimed Kenyan author Binyavanga Wainaina, who made waves when he came out as gay in 2014, has announced that he will marry his partner in South Africa next year. A clearly love-struck Wainaina confirmed earlier this month on social media that he and his as-yet-unnamed boyfriend had gotten engaged. “I asked my love for his […]