Harry's Place

This is a cross-post by Paul Canning

This horrific image, which I make no apologies for posting, comes from the Ugandan Parliament.
The Ugandan lesbian activist Kasha Jacqueline posted it on Twitter. It is an example of the sort of disgusting anti-gay crap being distributed to Ugandan Members of Parliament. Kasha said it left her “sobbing” and pleading [...]

Often religious figures, when asserting that homosexuality is sinful, contrive to do so in a comparatively soft and reluctant way, perhaps reminding the listener or reader that we all probably fall short of ideal behaviour in some aspect of our lives, and that this particular issue should not be scrutinized disproportionately. Not so the forthright [...]

Hugo Chavez’s anointed successor as president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, will stand for election next month against Henrique Capriles, who lost to the terminally-ill Chavez last October.
Supposedly socialist chavistas attacked Capriles– an unmarried straight Catholic– as a gay Jew.
But Chavez had enough sense not to suggest these things himself– unlike Maduro.
Inaceptables las palabras de [...]

I last mentioned Cardinal Keith O’Brien here when I explained why he had been nominated for Stonewall’s Bigot of the Year award – a contest he later won outright:
Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the UK’s most senior Catholic has described gay marriage as a “grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right” and has campaigned vigorously against [...]

A comment in Comment Is Free today by Charlie Condou, who plays “Marcus Dent” in the British soap opera Coronation Street”,  has prompted me to say something about the issue of religious opt out.  He said:
There remains the problem of the opt-out: individual churches can “opt out” of gay marriage on grounds of religious “conscience”. Does this mean that if we get [...]

There is nothing beautiful about the Sapphire Salon and should be driven to bankruptcy.
The people who own it should be scratching their heads, driving themselves mad with worry about how they’ll pay the rent as the dust piles up on their salon chairs.
Why? Well, the salon refused a booking by a gay couple. They quite literally turned [...]

Following in the wake of regional anti-LGBT legislation, Russia’s Duma looks set to make similar laws binding at a national level.  Depressingly, only one parliamentarian voted against this measure at its first reading on Friday, and 86% of Russians apparently support the bill. 
The draft law, submitted in March 2012, details that the “promotion of homosexuality” [...]

Dropping the death penalty component to the upcoming anti-homosexual bill – but retaining the implicit approval for life threatening violence and intimidation – has not molified funding groups towards Ugandan institutions.
Britain’s only private university, the University of Buckingham previously had been in partnership with the newly-formed Victoria University in Kampala, and accreditted most of its [...]

A lot of what Biscuit Barrel (the commenter formerly known as Flaming Fairy) predicted in the New Year thread seemed entirely plausible:
My prediction is that here in the UK, equal marriage will become a reality and the sky won’t fall in as a result. Boy will still meet girl and marry her, but all that [...]

One of the most repeated arguments against allowing people of the same sex to marry is that this will involve a “redefinition” of marriage. This is a nonsensical argument.
When a gay couple announce they’re getting married and to expect a wedding invitation in the post, their friends and family do not stare uncomprehending into the [...]