5 THINGS TO KNOW

An anti-LGBT agenda is at the heart of Russian elections.

A quick search recently for LGBT news on Yandex – the largest Russian search engine – threw up a very depressing list: “Users are outraged by the new LGBT-friendly ad for iPhone”, “Russian actor gets kicked out after supporting LGBT people”, “Berlinale-2018: perverts and russophobes are occupying modern cinema”.

5 THINGS TO KNOW

The LGBT communities’ uncomfortable relationship with lending.

Sticker shock is a real problem in the world of higher education funding, especially when recent graduates look at their student loan balances for the first time. Many regret taking out those loans to pay for college, but LGBTQ borrowers feel that regret more than the average borrower. In fact, according to a recent survey, 60 percent of LGBTQ borrowers…

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Fighting Irish: Battle for LGBTQ inclusion in St. Patrick’s Day parades continues.

A sea of green hats, shamrocks and bagpipes flowed through the streets of Staten Island last week, but the rainbow flag was not among them. Every year since 2011, the Pride Center of Staten Island has been denied entry into the annual Staten Island St. Patrick’s Parade.

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Unanimous vote in favor of Michigan transgender woman is groundbreaking.

A landmark legal decision for transgender rights was issued last week. A unanimous three-judge panel of the federal Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals — covering Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee — ruled that Michigan RG & GR Harris Funeral Homes violated federal civil rights laws when they fired Aimee Stephens for a being a transgender woman.

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World-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, a long-time campaigner for LGBT rights, has died.

The British scientist was diagnosed with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a rare form of motor neurone disease, at 21, and given two years to live. The condition left him wheelchair-bound, able to speak only with a voice synthesiser, but over the next half-century, Hawking became world-famous as he transformed our understanding of physics.

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Brands making big mistakes with their LGBTQ strategies.

Samsung got so much warm-and-fuzzy buzz with ads showing how Gus Kenworthy, the proudly gay U.S. skier, kept in touch with his far-away boyfriend that it’s easy to overlook one of the most ground-breaking things about the campaign. It ran in March, linked to the Olympics, boldly defying the usual we-run-our-gay-ads-during-Pride-month thinking.