Video game tournament briefly limits gay and trans women
One more thing to add to the list of lesbian superpowers: extraordinary video-game skills. Garena, an e-sports organizer for the popular game League of Legends, decided to limit the number of gay or trans women on each team in one of its all-women tournaments to prevent an “unfair advantage.” After the ensuing uproar, Garena withdrew the rule and said all gamers who identify as women would be able to participate.
Indian lesbian hotline jammed by male callers
A helpline for lesbians in Chennai, India, has the unusual problem of being swamped by male callers. According to volunteers, some men call out of curiosity or to play a prank, while others try to get contact numbers for lesbians. More than 80 percent of callers to the line are men.
Read more at the Times of India.
Alabama to begin same-sex marriage Feb 9
A federal court of appeals has ruled that Alabama can no longer delay allowing gay people to marry, setting the stage for marriages to begin on Monday, Feb 9. Alabama will be the first state in the traditional Deep South to see same-sex marriage, unless the state government recieves an unlikely intervention from the US Supreme Court.
UK Labour Party wants zero tolerance for anti-gay bullying
The UK’s minority Labour Party says schools should have a zero tolerance policy toward gay bullying, including suspending students for calling each other “gay” on the playground. Labour’s shadow education secretary, Tristram Hunt, says that gay bullying is “damaging the life chances” of gay students and that the education system has still not recovered from anti-gay policies of the 1980s.
Puerto Rican priest was a gay pornstar
A Puerto Rican priest has declined to resign after his history in gay porn was revealed online. Pastor Jose Santiago says he was transformed by God and is now married to a woman. “In those days I was gay and participated in homosexual activities, but God touched me, God transformed me, God gave me a woman who loves me and she loves my past,” he says. “It’s a part of a life that is over.”
Florida court to decide whether gay sex is “intercourse”
The Florida Supreme Court will have to decide whether gay sex counts as intercourse, a confusion stemming from a state law that defines intercourse as between a man and a woman. A gay Florida man was charged with lying to his partner about his HIV status, but the case was dismissed by a trial judge who pointed out that gay men could not, by definition, have intercourse, and thus could not break the law.
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