5 THINGS TO KNOW Archives | Page 2071 of 2097

Gay Olympian Ian Thorpe weighs in on the Australian gay marriage debate.

August 13, 2017 compassq Comments Off

SWIMMING great Ian Thorpe has had a spray at Canberra politicians berating them for not “doing their job” when it comes to same-sex marriage. The Olympian, who came out as gay in 2014, told news.com.au he feared a “heated” debate in the run up to a postal plebiscite could see some young people struggling with their sexuality pushed further into the closet. On Sunday, Thorpe threw his weight behind the campaign for a yes vote for same-sex marriage. Joined by his partner Ryan Channing, he headed down to Sydney’s City2Surf fun run to encourage people to ensure their details were current on the electoral roll.

Ex-Muslims in Britain fight for LGBT rights.

August 13, 2017 compassq Comments Off

The Council of ex-Muslims of Britain will challenge Islam and any other religion for persecuting minorities, including the LGBT community, Jimmy Bangash, the spokesman for the controversial group, said during a debate on RT. The group made headlines in the UK after its members joined an LGBT parade in London on Tuesday. Their least controversial banners at the event read: “We’re here. We’re kaffir [unbelievers]. Get used to it,” “Celebrating apostasy,” “Make LGBT rights universal” and others, accompanied by a list of Muslim states that punish homosexuality by the death penalty.

Gay Russian violinist’s beautiful life in Chicago.

August 13, 2017 compassq Comments Off

One day this spring, Artem Kolesov set up a video camera in the Chicago townhouse where he lives, sat down in a chair and started talking to the young gay people of Russia. “Yesterday I turned 23 years old,” he began. He went on, in Russian, to tell the story of growing up as the fourth of six brothers in a small town, an hour’s drive from Moscow, where his father was a deacon and his mother was a youth pastor at the Pentecostal church.

The President’s weakening authority over the military.

August 13, 2017 compassq Comments Off

“Our opponents, the media, and the whole world will soon see, as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned,” presidential adviser Stephen Miller told the nation on February 13. Rarely has a prophecy been quite this wrong.

5 THINGS TO KNOW

5 THINGS TO KNOW FOR AUGUST 12, 2017

August 12, 2017 compassq Comments Off

A history of the gay marriage debate in Australia.

August 12, 2017 compassq Comments Off

It’s been quite a week in Australian politics. You might have heard that the Turnbull government (a coalition of the centre-right Liberal Party and slightly further-right-but-mostly-rural National Party) have been debating marriage equality and have launched something called a postal-plebiscite. To understand why this is a Big Complicated Deal, we have to go back to 2004. Before 2004, the Marriage Act (1961) of Australia did not take note of gender when establishing the federal definition of marriage. In 2004, long term Liberal Prime Minister John Howard passed the amendment to the Marriage Act with the express purpose of ‘[ensuring] that same sex marriages are not recognised as marriage in Australia’. At the time, no major Australian political party endorsed marriage equality, and no […]

Why the VA transgender student dropped his appeal.

August 12, 2017 compassq Comments Off

Gavin Grimm, the Virginia transgender student who took a bathroom case to the United States Supreme Court, dropped part of his case Friday, after years of high-profile litigation that could have marked the first transgender case to be heard by the high court. Papers were filed in Richmond just before 4 p.m. to drop the appeal seeking an immediate end to the Gloucester County Virginia school district’s bathroom policy.