Worldcrunch
ISTANBUL — The battle over gay rights in Turkey is now centered around a smartphone app. A Turkish court has banned the application Grindr, which gives gay men a way to meet and share information, on grounds of obscenity and misuse of personal information. The ban went into effect last month after the 14th Anatolia […]
VATICAN CITY — There’s a joke going around St. Peter’s Square: Next thing you know, to comply with his ecclesiastical vows of poverty, the pope is going to put the Vatican up for sale! That day hasn’t yet arrived, but the idea speaks as much to Pope Francis’ unpredictability as to his now famous acts […]
It’s a weekend morning. Y, a lesbian woman, changes out of her usual masculine attire and puts on an elaborate woman’s outfit to go and visit the parents of A, a homosexual man. The visit is to inform the parents that Y and A are getting married, and hope that they will approve of their […]
BOGOTA — The LGBTI community (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual/Transgender and Intersexual) in Colombia has suffered disappearances, forced migrations, mutilations, humiliation and abuse. The phrase “damaged bodies, silent crimes’ has come to be used by this community to describe their suffering often made even worse by the civil war that has torn Colombia apart over the […]
Take a tour of what the world has been saying this week…
TVNZ, NZ HERALD, FAIRFAX NZ NEWS, 3 NEWS (New Zealand) Worldcrunch WELLINGTON – New Zealand has become the first country in the Asia-Pacific region to legalize same-sex marriage. Parliament voted 77-44 late Wednesday to amend the 1955 Marriage Act to describe marriage as a union of two people regardless of their sex, sexuality or how […]
DIE WELT (Germany), HURRIYET DAILY NEWS (Turkey) Worldcrunch AMSTERDAM – Turkey has launched a campaign to retrieve Turkish children that have been adopted by gay and Catholic couples in European countries, reports Hurriyet Daily News. Currently at the center of the debate is nine-year-old Yunus, the child of Turkish immigrants in the Netherlands, who is […]
LE NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR, 20 MINUTES (France) Worldcrunch PARIS –Eight members of the feminist Ukrainian group FEMEN celebrated Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation announcement this week by disrobing inside Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. The bare-breasted activists rang the cathedral’s new bells — currently exposed in the middle of the nave — with sticks, before getting […]
OpEd: Same-sex civil unions have been defeated in Poland’s Parliament, thanks to a hard-right minority inside the ruling party. History tells us this will not stand.
SBS (Australia), WASHINGTON POST, NEW YORK TIMES (USA) Worldcrunch WASHINGTON – Barack Obama spoke for 19 minutes after taking the oath for his second term as President of the United States. The first African-American President was sworn in on Monday, which coincided with the day the nation celebrates the birthday of Martin Luther King — […]
Some provocative studies are cited as the debate heats up in France over a law to legalize gay marriage.
PARIS – To look at them, you would never know the agony these young men, relaxed and self-assured, have endured. Drinking wine and eating blinis in their comfortable Parisian apartment, Nicolas (not his real name), Bertrand, Fabrice and Damien all tell a similar story. Raised in practicing Catholic families, and believers themselves, they have taken […]