Posters featuring Black same-sex couples are going up on high streets across London, PinkNews reported. The campaign from gay men's health charity GMFA is aimed to reach out at the city's queer Black and minority ethnic ( BAME ) community, who are often not represented in public-health campaigns. The ads—developed by BAME gay and bisexual men for BAME gay and bisexual men—aim to increase levels of HIV testing in the community, bearing the message "I test for HIV because it looks after both of us. Testing is easy and confidential."
A gay clergyman who the Church of England prevented from taking up a job in the NHS as a hospital chaplain after he married his partner has lost his case against discrimination, The Guardian reported. Canon Jeremy Pemberton, who has been a priest for more than 30 years, went to the court of appeal to challenge earlier rulings against him. It rejected his claim, saying the church had applied "its sincerely held beliefs in a way expressly permitted by … the Equality Act."
A Chinese film festival has pulled Oscar-winning Call Me By Your Name from its program, Instinct magazine noted. Sony Pictures Entertainment, the film's distributor, shared the news with Reuters that its film was taken off the roster of the Beijing International Film Festival. The film was set to play along other international films like Lean on Pete and The Square. Call Me By Your Name follows the budding romance between a 17-year-old Jewish-Italian boy ( Oscar-nominated Timothee Chalamet ) and an archeology student in his mid-twenties ( played by Armie Hammer ).
Sweden has become the first country to offer compensation to transgender people who were forcibly sterilized, with a vote passing in parliament, according to PinkNews. In 2013, Sweden ended a law that made forced sterilization compulsory for trans people in order for the state to recognise their gender identity. The Swedish parliament voted to pay 225,000 SEK ( $25,000 ) to each trans person affected during the 41 years the law was in place.
In Australia, Victoria has urged Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to help other states crack down on gay conversion therapy, describing it as "insidious bullying" and "dangerous quackery" that should be tackled as part of a national mental health strategy, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. However, the Turnbull government has declined to cooperate, saying that conversion therapy—which involves trying to change or suppress a person's sexuality or gender identity—is an issue for states to address.
A Conservative British peer has introduced a bill seeking to allow equal marriage in Northern Ireland, The Times reported. The region remains the only part of the UK that does not allow marriage between same-sex couples. Love Equality, a campaign group, is lobbying Westminster to legislate for marriage equality because of the lack of a Northern Ireland executive.
Ra'anana became the first city in Israel to have an openly gay mayor, when Eitan Ginzburg completed his first full day of work on the job, The Jerusalem Post reported. Ginzburg, 41, has been on the Ra'anana city council for 15 years, including most of the past six years as a paid deputy mayor. He was elected by the city council to take over as mayor when veteran Ra'anana Mayor Ze'ev Bielski left to lead the National Housing Authority.
In Kenya, a court of appeals ruled that forced anal examinations are contrary to the law, according to a press release from OutRight International. Forced anal examinations have largely been used to "prove" if a man is gay in countries where homosexuality is criminalized. The case came to the courts after two suspected gay men were arrested in 2015 and forced to undergo both anal examinations and HIV tests, in order to determine if they had engaged in consensual intercourse. The men were represented by the National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission ( NGLHRC ) in Kenya, an LGBTIQ organization providing pro bono legal services to the community.
Thousands have marched against a European initiative that aims to protect women—because they feared it could legitimize transgender people and same-sex marriage, PinkNews reported. The Istanbul Convention, which came into force in 2014 and has been signed by 46 nations ( as well as the European Union as a whole ) was created around the concept of "preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence." The protesters in central Zagreb, Croatia, were rallying against the agreement because of the convention's definition of gender.
Two months after Toronto police arrested alleged serial killer Bruce McArthur, the police services board announced there will be an external review into how missing-persons investigations are handled, DailyXtra.com reported. "For Toronto's LGBTQ community, this has been a very difficult time and I know that many are very upset and many are still grieving," Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders said at a board meeting. Outside of Toronto police headquarters where the meeting was held, protesters demanded that Saunders resign. However, some members of the LGBT community believe that a full public inquiry should also take place.
A far-right Canadian activist who claimed "Allah is gay" said she was slapped with a lifetime ban from coming to the UK after she was accused of distributing racist material, The Daily Mail noted. Lauren Southern came under fire in February after she was caught handing out leaflets in Luton that proclaimed "Allah is a gay God" and "Allah is trans." Although the 22-year-old said it was only a "social experiment," she was detained in Calais when trying to re-enter the UK on March 13, and was questioned over the posters.
Thierry Fremaux has shaken up protocol at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival in France, eliminating morning press screenings of films before their evening premieres and banning selfies on the red carpet, Page Six noted. Under the new plan, critics and journalists will see films in the Debussy theater at the same time that guests inside the main auditorium watch the evening world premieres. The change was made to boost the prestige and weight of gala premieres.
