Free Republic

Six LGBT activists have found a way to fly the Pride flag in Russia - by wearing football shirts in the rainbow colours. The country has had a law banning the spreading of "gay propaganda" among under-18s since 2013. The Pride flag is a symbol celebrating lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities, but displaying it in Russia can get you arrested. The group got together and wore their nations' football tops around Moscow. It meant the shirts of Spain, the Netherlands (who weren't in the World Cup), Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Colombia collectively made the colours of the stripes of...

Welcome to LGBTQ Wrath Month. Perhaps you are confused. “#LoveIsLove!” you tweeted. “Love wins!” you said. And you meant well. You always mean well — the beer brands that used to mock us, the banks that denied us loans. The bachelorette parties that use us as props, the straight boys who assure us they are “cool with it” but do not get why we have to be so “in your face.” So quick to fly our flag, and even quicker to take it down. But now that June’s Pride Month is over and we’ve entered the muggy July heat, we...

Controversial "gay conversion therapies" are to be banned as part of a government plan to improve the lives of gay and transgender people. A national survey of 108,000 members of the LGBT community suggested 2% have undergone the practice with another 5% having been offered it. It also found more than two-thirds of LGBT people avoid holding hands in public, for fear of negative reactions. The prime minister said nobody "should ever have to hide who they are". A 75-point plan to improve the lives of LGBT people, costing £4.5m, has been produced in response to the survey. It includes...

ENGLAND’S ‘stately homo’, Quentin Crisp, once said that “if you simply wait long enough in this life, you will find yourselves having travelled from the outskirts of acceptability to the very heart of society”. Dublin’s public face confirmed the truth of that statement this weekend. Government Buildings glowed with the rainbow colours. The tech firms around the ‘silicon docks’ had swathed themselves in Prideful slogans such as ‘love is love’ — most of them had floats in the parade. And, of course, the pubs in town had bedazzled themselves with glitter, rainbow bunting and phrases like ‘yas queen’. The hordes...

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom star Daniella Pineda says her character in the film is gay - not that you would know from watching it. She told Build that the line with the reveal was cut from the movie "for the sake of time". In the scene, she's talking to Chris Pratt's character. "I look at Chris and I'm like: 'Square jaw, good bone structure, tall, muscles - I don't date men, but if I did, it would be you'," she said. Daniella continued: "I love that I'm looking at Chris Pratt, like the hottest guy in the world and I'm...

Olly Alexander and Jade Thirlwall are among people who have expressed anger over Instagram taking down a photo of two men kissing. The photo was removed from photographer Stella Asia Consonni's Instagram feed for "violating community guidelines". Instagram says the photo was removed by mistake. "This post was removed in error and we are sorry. It has since been reinstated," says a spokesperson for Instagram. London-based photographer Stella posted the photo on Saturday 30 June and she later spoke about the photo being removed in her Instastory. The photo featured two men - Jordan Bowen and Luca Lucifer - and...

After the media decided to take Marvel executives to task for not having enough LGBTQIA representation in their live-action films, Marvel Studios runner Kevin Feige was pressured into confirming that there will be more out and about characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a means of attempting to assuage the Rainbow Reich. Speaking with The Playlist, the outlet practically coerced Feige into confirming that LGBTQ heroes or heroines will be featured in upcoming movies after they complained that Ant-Man and The Wasp didn’t feature any flamboyantly gay characters, with the outlet writing…. “The context for the interview was for...

It's not unusual for a writer to dedicate a book to their parents - but for Garrard Conley to have dedicated Boy Erased to his mother and father and thanked them in the acknowledgements is more surprising, given that it is all about what they put him through. They are the ones who told him he had to go through "gay conversion therapy" or leave the family forever. Conley had been outed to his parents by his rapist after being assaulted in college. But, to his Baptist preacher father and his mother, the crime was in him being gay. They...

New Hampshire’s Republican Gov. Chris Sununu signed into law on Friday a ban on gay conversion therapy for minors. Medical and mental health professionals — including the American Medical Association — say the practice to change a minor's sexual orientation or gender identity is proven to be ineffective and can cause psychological harm to LGBTQ youth. “Discrimination — in any form — is unacceptable and runs contrary to New Hampshire’s Live Free or Die Spirit,” Sununu said in a statement, as reported by WMUR. “If we really want to be the ‘Live Free or Die’ state, we must ensure that...

The FAI gets a lot of slack – and maybe rightly so – but they deserve a lot of credit for making a statement in their latest move. On Friday, the Irish soccer's governing body announced that the Republic of Ireland players will wear jerseys sporting the LGBT rainbow flag when they face the United States at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday night. The numbers on the back of each Ireland player's top will feature rainbow colours as opposed to the traditional white. The FAI posted an image on Twitter showing the number 4 jersey of John O'Shea, Ireland's defensive...

Half of Americans in Gallup's 2018 Values and Beliefs poll say that being gay or lesbian is a trait from birth, easily eclipsing the 30% who believe it is a product of upbringing and environment. This is consistent with findings over the past few years. Another 10% say both explanations play a role, while 4% attribute being gay to something else and 6% are unsure. When Gallup first asked this "nature vs. nurture" question in 1977, a majority of U.S. adults (56%) said being gay or lesbian was due to people's upbringing and environment, and only 13% saw it as...

The number of Hollywood films featuring LGBTQ characters plummeted nearly 40 percent in 2017 compared to the year prior, an annual survey of the major movie studios by GLAAD said on Tuesday. The group found that just 14 wide releases from the majors, as well as offerings from their indie divisions, were inclusive of queer identities in 2017, a drop from 23 films in 2016. Only 12.8 percent of studio films contained characters who identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual or queer — the lowest percentage of LGBTQ-inclusive major studio releases since GLAAD began tracking in 2012. Trans characters were absent...

U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher told a group of Realtors last week that homeowners should be able to refuse to sell their property to gays and lesbians, a statement that cost him the support of a key national Realtor group. “Every homeowner should be able to make a decision not to sell their home to someone (if) they don’t agree with their lifestyle,” Rohrabacher told an Orange County Association of Realtors delegation at a May 16 meeting in Washington, D.C., according to Wayne Woodyard, a former Orange County Realtor president who was at the event. On Thursday, Rohrabacher confirmed the accuracy...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The percentage of American adults identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) increased to 4.5% in 2017, up from 4.1% in 2016 and 3.5% in 2012 when Gallup began tracking the measure. The latest estimate is based on over 340,000 interviews conducted as part of Gallup's daily tracking in 2017. Gallup's LGBT estimates are based on those respondents who say "yes" when asked, "Do you, personally, identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender?" Extrapolation to the latest census estimate of adults 18 and older in the U.S. suggests that more than 11 million adults identify as...

An Oregon school district reportedly forced an LGBTQ student to read passages from the Bible as a form of punishment The World in Coos Bay, Ore., reports that the student's allegations were detailed by the Oregon Department of Education (ODE) in a March 6 letter to North Bend School District Superintendent Bill Yester. The ODE is investigating claims that an LGBTQ high school student was forced by a school administrator to read the Bible while they were being “disciplined,” according to The World. It reported that ODE officials are investigating whether the forced Bible reading violated the student's First Amendment...

Columbus, Indiana hosted its first LGBT pride festival April 14, and by all accounts, it was a success. The event was planned and spearheaded by a high school student named Erin Bailey who began planning the event as a school project. More than 1,000 people reportedly attended, and the town’s population of 47,000 welcomed them generously with rainbow banners in the streets. The Human Rights Campaign, an LGBT rights organization, supported, promoted and attended the event as well. When the event was first announced in late March of this year, it received recognition from dozens of international media outlets that...

“Queer rights activist” and “biblical scholar” Matthew Vines “reinterpreted” Scripture verses that typically condemn homosexuality in an LGBT-“affirming” reading of the Bible at Harvard University, the Crimson reported. Who is Vines?Vines is a prominent speaker on pro-gay topics in the context of Christianity and authored “God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships.” The book’s controversial content resulted in WaterBrook Multnomah — which shared staff with the book’s publisher Convergent — resigning its membership with the National Religious Broadcasters in 2014. What did he say at his Harvard talk?During his talk Saturday, Vines “discussed six...

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) grilled Secretary of State nominee Mike Pompeo during his Senate confirmation hearing Thursday about Pompeo's stated opposition to gay marriage. Booker was referring to a speech Pompeo made in 2015 while he was a Kansas congressman, which cited a prayer delivered by the Rev. Joe Wright. "America had worshiped other Gods and called it multiculturalism. We’d endorsed perversion and called it an alternative lifestyle,” Pompeo said. "Those are your words," Booker said to Pompeo. "Is being gay a perversion?" Pompeo replied by stating he had a "clear view" on whether gay marriage was "appropriate" while he...

Metro police have arrested a pastor accused of molesting several children across two decades while he was leader of a South Nashville congregation. Matthew Dennis Patterson, known as Denny, served as pastor of Nolensville Road Baptist Church for more than 20 years. He resigned on Sept. 24. Days later, members of the congregation came to the police precinct on Harding Place with complaints about his requests to "engage in strange activities" with children, authorities said. Children at the church told adult members that Patterson had asked them to sit on his face and stomach, sometimes in their underwear, according to...

A tweet posted by Argentina's government office for human rights has been mocked online. The tweet reads: "Whatever your orientation, we're all part of the sexual diversity.#MakingVisible." It is followed by a picture with the motto: "Heterosexuality is part of sexual diversity." Many readers reacted with incredulity and asked if the official government account had been hacked. Others posted memes of people rolling their eyes. https://twitter.com/SDHArgentina/status/978255505209643008/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Fnews%2Fworld-latin-america-43557526 Most pointed out that a campaign to make people more visible is usually aimed at minorities and not those who are in the majority. Twitter user @agostinaaznar wrote [in Spanish]: "I've never been discriminated...