DJ’s life threatened

Radio star and gay icon (sic) Chris Needs has revealed he has received death threats because of his sexuality, according to This is South Wales.

Gay Activist admits being unaware that Mr Needs was a gay icon, so the article’s in-depth profile of Mr Needs was very welcome. Years after getting a lift in Richard Burton’s car as a youngster, Needs started in showbusiness as a keyboard player. When Welsh language TV Soap Pobol y Cwm needed an actor to play the part of a hairdresser in 1995, he decided he fitted the bill and was invited to the audition, but ended up playing a detective. He has thousands of radio listeners and more than 50,000 members of the imaginary Chris Needs Friendly Garden.

Getting a lift in Mr. Burton’s car? Didn’t Elizabeth Taylor object?

MPs vote against religious lobby in free speech row

MPs last night defeated an amendment by 342 votes to 145 which would protect free speech for bigots in the bill designed to protect gays and lesbians from homophobic hatred. The House of Lords had required the amendment but for the fourth time in succession, MPs threw it out, reports Pink News.

This is yet another set back for the anti-gay religious lobby who are trying everything to claw back the progress we have made in securing what are, after all, only the same rights as everyone else. They want to be able to slag us off with impunity. MPs do not agree.

Gay families under the microscope

Both the New York Times and USA Today have been looking at gay families, gay marriage, and gays adopting or otherwise caring for their children.

Both are good articles.

Gay couples: A close look at this modern family, parenting, USA Today

What’s Good for the Kid, New York Times

Texting leads to blackmail

A man who has not been named has been blackmailed for thousands of pounds after sending explicit text messages to another man. Two men have been jailed for the blackmail attempt.

On May 23, the blackmailers turned up at the victim’s home, “punched and slapped” the victim and his partner, then left with £300 and one of the men said he would be back for a further £5,000 – which he collected from the couple during a meeting at a pub car park on May 26.

When the blackmailer turned up at the couple’s door again on June 12, demanding another £5,000, they decided to report what was going on to the police. Both admitted blackmail. Mr Recorder Lodge jailed McAthey for six months and Mercer for 18 months.

He said “Blackmail is a serious, mean and dishonest offence. It occurred because you McAthey had offered to do some work for the man and you exchanged phone numbers. In the course of drunkenness by him the man text you and lots of other people with sexual innuendo. You were ridiculed by your friends about the homosexual invitations and that instigated this.”

I was hoping the 1967 Act had despatched the routine blackmail of men for being gay, to the rubbish dump, but it appears not so.

Be careful who you text;
Don’t text if you have been drinking;
Call the Police immediately – blackmail is a very serious offence;
NEVER GIVE ANYBODY ANY MONEY.

How dangerous is it to live in Liverpool for gays?

The Liverpool Echo has been investigating homophobic crime in Liverpool following the recent well-attended protests against homophobia. They found more cases ranging from teenagers to a man of sixty who is terrified and trying to leave the city.

Gay rights approved by Washington state voters

Gay rights have been approved by voters in Washington state, US but by a tiny margin, reports the Associated Press.

With about 72 percent of the expected vote counted Thursday in unofficial returns, Referendum 71 was leading 52 percent to 48 percent, with a margin of about 60,000 votes.

20 Years On from the fall of the Wall; 20 Years Wasted

Its 20 years since the Iron Curtain fell and you are probably fed up with the repeats of the wall falling on television. But twenty years after the fall of communism there are still parts of Europe which retain anti-gay laws, like the Baltic States. AFP has been doing a survey.

Uncredited and untitled Photo: AFP/Google News

“Homophobia is taking a new turn. It’s becoming institutionalised,” Vladimir Simonko, head of the Gay League in the Baltic state of Lithuania, told AFP.

Get out of my cab darlings

A gay couple got tossed out of a taxi in New York after the cabbie spied them hugging in the back of his vehicle, reports Edge Boston. New York?

Facing gay relationships in Kenya, where homosexuality is still illegal

Homosexuality is still illegal in Kenya, but that doesn’t stop Kenyans coming to the UK and getting hitched here. Thats what Daniel Chege Gichia and Charles Ngengi have done and it has caused a stir back home in Kenya; and now the Kenyan government is planning to find out how many gay and lesbian people there are in Kenya despite the fact that homosexuality is still illegal.

Love will always find a way.

Our fragmented history

Writing in the Belfast Telegraph, Sean Og Garland asks why Belfast’s museum does not put on an exhibition of LGBT history, like the British Museum has done.

And the Museum of London. And many others.

The thing is: you need to get involved: if you don’t ask, you don’t get; if there hasn’t been an exhibition locally, form a local LGBT history society, find our historical fragments and put them together, and involve your museum more closely in our community. February is LGBT history month in the UK so there is time…