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LGBTQ YA by the Numbers: Gender and Genre

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After seeing an ask about speculative fiction with LGBTQ+ protagonists on the Gay YA tumblr a few weeks ago, I got curious, so I did what I often do in circumstances like these: I went through the masterlist to figure out just how much LGBTQ+ speculative fiction was on it. Thinking about speculative fiction numbers got me thinking about other numbers, so I thought it might be interesting to do a gender breakdown as well. This turned into a slightly more involved project (“more involved” meaning “I had to count more books”, basically). These numbers are based on the list as it stood on 21 April, 2015; they would look (slightly) different if recalculated today.
Totals
I’m going to go down the list from most books to least books.
Gay: 315 books

  • male author: 174.5 (55.4%)
  • female author: 130.5 (41.4%)
  • non-binary author: 0 (0%)
  • multi-author anthology: 7 (2.2%)
  • anonymous: 1 (0.3%)
  • I couldn’t find out: 3 (1.0%) (two books by M.C. Lee and one by R.J. Seeley)

While a majority of books about gay male characters are written by men, a significant portion of them are written by women (a far, far greater percentage than the numbers for books about lesbians written by men, as we’ll see in a moment).
That said, my initial perception that the majority of the books in the Gay section of the masterlist were written by women was, obviously, very wrong — it’s clear I fell victim to the 17%/33% fallacy (if you’re reading this, are a man, and haven’t heard about this, I’d highly recommend reading the article; it really opened my eyes to the limitations of my perception and is the reason that in contexts like this my approach is to actually count so I have accurate numbers instead).
I’d be very interested to hear from authors about why they chose to write the stories they wrote (as opposed to writing stories about non-straight female characters).
Lesbian: 203 books

  • male author: 13 (6.4%)
  • female author: 172 (84.7%)
  • non-binary author: 1 (0.5%) (S.J. Adams)
  • multi-author anthology: 15 (7.4%)
  • I couldn’t find out: 2 (1.0%) (two books by Ari Bach)

These percentages become even starker if you exclude the anthologies: over 90% of the non-anthologies were written by women.
Bisexual: 81 books

  • male author: 21.5 (26.5%)
  • female author: 58.5 (72.2%)
  • non-binary author: 0 (0%)
  • multi-author anthology: 1 (1.2%)

A further breakdown of the bi books by the gender of the bi character (and character gender vs. author gender) would be very interesting, but that will have to wait for another time.
Transgender: 38 books

  • male author: 6.5 (17.1%)
  • female author: 26.5 (70.0%)
  • non-binary author: 2 (5.3%) (one book by Sassafras Lowry and one by Rae Spoon)
  • multi-author anthology: 3 (7.9%)

The same note as for the bi books applies here, as well.
Asexual/Aromantic: 19 books

  • male author: 2 (11%)
  • female author: 17 (89%)
  • non-binary author: 0 (0%)
  • multi-author anthology: 0 (0%)

Caveat: the ace/aro section of the masterlist includes non-YA books, in deference to the rarity of ace/aro representation in YA, so take these numbers with a grain of salt.
Intersex: 6 books

  • male author: 0 (0%)
  • female author: 6 (100%)
  • non-binary author: 0 (0%)
  • multi-author anthology: 0 (0%)

There are so few books with intersex characters. Hopefully that will change in future.
Genre
I’ve included a gender breakdown here, as well. For the purposes of this list, I counted all forms of speculative fiction: high fantasy, urban fantasy, paranormal stuff, science fiction, postapocalyptic and/or dystopian books, magical realism, etc. Not included are things like thrillers, historical fiction, sports books, and the like. Again, I’m going to go through by number of books.
Gay: 76 (24.1% of total)

  • male author: 39 (51.3% of genre)
  • female author: 33 (43.4% of genre)
  • multi-author anthology: 2 (2.6% of genre)
  • I couldn’t find out: 2 (2.6% of genre) (two books by M.C. Lee)

Lesbian: 58 books (28.6% of total)

  • male author: 3 (5.2% of genre)
  • female author: 48 (82.8% of genre)
  • multi-author anthology: 5 (8.6% of genre)
  • I couldn’t find out: 2 (3.4% of genre) (two books by Ari Bach)

Bisexual: 40 (49.4% of total)

  • male author: 5 (12.5% of genre)
  • female author: 35 (87.5% of genre)

Asexual/Aromantic: 17 books (89% of total)

  • male author: 1 (6% of genre)
  • female author: 16 (94% of genre)

As above, these statistics are perhaps a bit dubious considering that the masterlist includes non-YA books with ace/aro characters.
Transgender: 9 books (23.7% of total)

  • male author: 2 (22% of genre)
  • female author: 7 (78% of genre)

Intersex: 2 books (33% of total)

  • female author: 2 (100% of genre)

There are so few of these that these statistics mean nothing, basically.
Comments
Excluding asexual/aromantic and intersex on the grounds that there are too few of them to make any real judgments, the percentage of genre fiction is pretty consistently around 25% for gay, lesbian, and trans books.
So what’s up with the bi books? I mean, that’s awesome if you’re looking for speculative fiction about bi characters (and really, is anyone not?), but still: almost 50% of the books on the masterlist about bi characters are speculative.
This raises two questions that are two sides of the same coin: first, why is it that we can more easily imagine bi characters in speculative contexts than in the real world? And, relatedly: why is it that gay, lesbian, and trans characters are limited (relatively speaking) to realistic (or at least grounded in the real world) fiction?
I think the answers to those questions are related in much the same way the questions are:

  • the dominant narrative about LGBTQ+ youth is the coming out story, prototypically about gay men, lesbians to a lesser extent, and more recently trans people (cf. Casey Plett’s excellent commentary on the “Rise of the Gender Novel“). Bi young people don’t fit as neatly into this narrative, so fewer versions of it are written.
  • by the same token, the dominant narrative about LGBTQ+ youth is the coming out story about gay men, lesbians, and trans people. Speculative fiction plots don’t tend to leave as much room for this as realistic fiction does, so less speculative fiction about these groups is written because it’s harder to fit that dominant narrative into speculative stories.

The (relative) overrepresentation of bisexuality in speculative fiction worries me: it’s already easy enough for realistic media to refuse to say the word “bisexual”. Moving to a fantasy world where contemporary labels for sexuality aren’t used or don’t apply can be liberating, but it can also be an uncomfortably convenient way to not engage with real-world questions about identity.
The (relative) underrepresentation of gay, lesbian, and trans characters in speculative fiction has been extensively discussed elsewhere, and I don’t have much to add that hasn’t been said elsewhere, better, before. Speculative fiction allows members of marginalized groups to imagine possibilities for themselves beyond what the dominant group(s) acknowledge, and that’s incredibly important (N.K. Jemisin has an amazing essay on representation that you should go read immediately).
This is not at all to say that realistic fiction isn’t important, because it is. If we take one thing away from this post, let it be that there just isn’t enough LGBTQ+ YA being published. The Gay YA Masterlist is not a complete list, by any means, but it’s fairly comprehensive, and it’s also short enough that it’s not unreasonable for me to sit down and count every book on it. Malinda Lo estimated in 2013 that only “1.9% to 2.4% of YA books published in 2013 include LGBT main characters or are about LGBT issues”.
Realistically, there just aren’t enough LGBTQ+ YA books being published for any of these numbers to be more than vaguely suggestive of questions or trends. How meaningful is it to say more books about bi characters in speculative contexts are being published when only a handful of books about bi characters are released every year? Or that there are “too many” coming out stories when major publishers released only 24 LGBTQ+ YA books total in 2014?
We desperately need more stories. In N.K. Jemisin’s words (seriously, read the essay I linked to above):

We all have futures. We all have pasts. We all have stories. And we all, every single one of us, no matter who we are and no matter what’s been taken from us or what poison we’ve internalized or how hard we’ve had to work to expel it —
 
 
— we all get to dream.
Nathaniel | May 28, 2015 at 6:00 am | Categories: Guest Blogs, Updates and Announcements | URL:http://wp.me/p1tHav-Bv

Policing Board publishes update reports on LGB and Transgender human rights recommendations

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Following the publication in 2012 of the Human Rights Thematic Review on the policing with and for people who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual (LGB) and/or Transgender, the Policing Board has now published two reports on how the 18 recommendations made by the Review are being implemented by the PSNI.

The Review looked at how the PSNI engage with LBG and Transgender individuals across a range of circumstances – as members of the public generally; as victims of crime; as suspects; and as employees or potential employees.

Chair of the Policing Board Anne Connolly said:  “The Board recognises the positive progress made by the PSNI in this area since we published our Thematic Review in 2012.  We know, however, that many LGB and Transgender people in Northern Ireland continue to be the target of hate crimes which can have a devastating impact upon their lives, their families and the wider community. Hate crime is a wider societal issue that cannot be tackled by the police alone yet the police play a critical role in a victim’s experience.

Despite increasing budgetary pressures, the police must therefore continually seek to improve their response, to bring more offenders to justice and to build confidence in people to report incidents and we welcome the fact that tackling hate crime is a strategic priority for PSNI.”

Ends
For further information, please contact the Northern Ireland Policing Board’s Communications Office on 07801738795.

Notes to editors

  1. To view the update report on LGB people click here and the for update report on Transgender people click here.
  2. To view the 2012 report, click here.
  3. In recognition of the fact that gender identity is in no way connected with or related to sexual orientation, a commitment was made in the thematic review that any further reporting on transgender issues would be separate from LGB. Thus two update reports have been produced, one reporting on policing with and for transgender individuals and one reporting on policing with and for LGB individuals.

Notes to editors ends.

Same-sex marriage in the UK and Ireland

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Same-sex marriage in the UK and Ireland by Gavin Boyd, Policy and Advocacy Manager of The Rainbow Project.
The cause of marriage equality for same-sex couples has been growing globally for a number of years with many European and Latin American countries moving quickly to legislate and with legislation and strategic litigation furthering the cause in the United States. The passing of same-sex marriage legislation in England, Scotland and Wales coupled with the passing of the marriage referendum in the Republic of Ireland has left Northern Ireland as the only region within the UK or Ireland which neither conducts nor recognises same-sex marriages.
These legislative changes which are happening around the jurisdiction of Northern Ireland have led to an increase in speculation as to how or when equal marriage can be introduced. In light of the successful marriage referendum in the Republic of Ireland, many activists and politicians have intimated that a similar campaign could introduce equal marriage in Northern Ireland.
It is, however, important to remember that the referendum in the Republic was used because it was the only way to introduce equal marriage. Had the responsibility to introduce fallen to Dail Eireann, equal marriage would have already been introduced because all of the main political parties supported its introduction. However, the understanding of the government and its legal advisors was that the constitution of the Republic would have to be amended to allow for same-sex marriage and only a national plebiscite or referendum could amend the constitution in this way.
As UK has no written constitution there is not the same tradition of referenda to amend or create laws. In the UK, Parliament is sovereign and referenda are not legally binding. Although referenda may indicate public support for an issue, Parliament still has the authority to give effect to the will of the public or legislate in another way. The Rainbow Project believes that a referendum is not the solution to marriage inequalities in Northern Ireland. We know that there would not be the same consensus among political parties as there was in the Republic, likely leading to a more divisive and contentious campaign, without a certain outcome, which would still have to be voted on by the Northern Ireland Assembly. As the Northern Ireland Assembly has now failed four times to introduce marriage equality, we see no reason that a referendum result would compel those members, who are intractably opposed to its introduction, to vote for a marriage equality bill, even if it was supported by the public.
Due to the barriers which exist to a legislative solution to marriage for same-sex couples in Northern Ireland, The Rainbow Project has turned to strategic litigation.  When same-sex marriage became lawful in England and Wales in March 2014, we understood that although couples from Northern Ireland could legally marry in England or Wales, they would only be recognised as civil partners when they returned to Northern Ireland. To us, this creates an anomalous situation where someone has their relationship reclassified against their will when they move to another part of the same state i.e. the United Kingdom. We are of the opinion, that if someone is married in the UK, then they are married everywhere within the UK and that any attempt to reclassify their relationship is an unlawful invasion of their rights to privacy, family life and marriage.
To this end, we are now supporting a couple who were lawfully married in England in 2014 who are seeking to have their marriage recognised in Northern Ireland. We are asking the family court to make a declaration of marriage; essentially stating that their marriage was lawfully conducted and that their marriage remains lawful in Northern Ireland. The role of The Rainbow Project in this test case is to source and support the clients. Our external solicitor had prepared the papers, sought counsel, and engaged with PILS to secure funding for the challenge.
Our clients wanted to be married, they did not want to enter a civil partnership. Had they wanted a civil partnership, they could have entered into one in Northern Ireland. The best option for them was to get married in England, as many people from Northern Ireland do.  When they came back to Northern Ireland their relationship was downgraded to a civil partnership. We do not think that this is reasonable. We do not feel that this achieves any kind of legitimate state interest and we strongly feel that there is a public interest in ensuring that a person’s marriage is recognised everywhere within the state they live and cannot be reclassified without their consent.
We are not, at this stage, asking the court to declare that same-sex couples may marry in Northern Ireland, but simply to state that if someone is married they must be recognised as married. The referendum result in the Republic makes the need for recognition of marriages even more urgent. We could now have a situation where a married couple who live in Derry/Londonderry are not recognised as married at home but if one partner travels across the border to work in Donegal, they are recognised as married but the partner who remains in Northern Ireland is not recognised as married. This is a truly unreasonable position for any government to hold and deliberately devalues a same-sex relationship comparative to an opposite-sex relationship without providing any evidence as to why they should be treated differently.
It is important to note that recognition of marriages is only one part of the puzzle, the second is to ensure that same-sex marriages can be conducted in Northern Ireland. However, we believe that the most strategic outcome is to secure recognition of marriages in Northern Ireland and then either allow the Assembly to legislate for marriages to be conducted in Northern Ireland or challenge the failure of the government to introduce same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland.
As our recent rally for marriage equality in Belfast City Centre, with our partners Amnesty International and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, demonstrated there is enormous public support for the introduction of marriage equality in Northern Ireland.  Thousands of people attended to make their voices heard.   If legislative or referendum solutions are not practical to achieving this, then the public interest is best served by strategic litigation.
 
Reprinted 11th Edition: 22nd June 2015

Unrealistic Gay Beauty Standards

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SHUTTERSTOCK / ZURIJETA
A new study of gay men found they had a clear image of their ideal body but on average they felt they needed to look even hotter than their ideal body simply to get dates. The study authors think this is probably leading to eating disorders. Gay men, this bears repeating: nobody’s perfect and that’s okay.
Family Support Helps Queer Teens… Maybe
Corbis
A new study on family support and depression among LGB (no T) teens had some weird findings: queer girls with lots of family support were less depressed but queer boys with lots of family support were more depressed. Why? No idea. More research is needed but until then we should be looking out for all our youth — boys and girls alike.

LGBT people are subjected to hate crimes ‘on daily basis’ in UK rural communities

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The Independent The Independent – James Cusick – Tuesday 23 June 2015

Survey reveals that eight in 10 have been verbally abused or harassed, with one in 10 suffering physical assault

Survey reveals that eight in 10 have been verbally abused or harassed, with one in 10 suffering physical assault


 
The portrayal of the “only gay in the village” as a tolerated and integrated minority, masks a far harsher reality for Britain’s LGBT community who are subjected to everyday bullying including verbal abuse, discrimination and criminal damage to their property, according to a new report.
The study reveals that hate crime, especially in small rural communities, is often a daily occurrence for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
However high levels of under-reporting – out of fear that police will not treat incidents seriously, or that they will be “outed” to families – is leaving vulnerable victims lonely and isolated.
The report by the University of Leicester’s Centre for Hate Studies estimated that 35,000 cases of hate crime against LGBT people fell below the radar of official crime figures.
The report’s author, Dr Stevie-Jade Hardy, paints a picture of intolerance far removed from the BBC TV Little Britain comedy character, Daffyd Thomas, played by Matt Lucas.
Dr Hardy said that the individuals who contributed to the study described being “targeted by young people” in their area, being verbally abused with derogatory names shouted in the street and their homes daubed with offensive graffiti.

She said : “If something was done about it, then sometimes the instances got worse and the targeting levels increased.”
According to the study, LGBT people who were “noticeably different” and living in small rural communities, were more likely to be the victims of hate crime.
Of those who were interviewed at length for the study, 88 per cent  reported being victimised. The national figures highlighted in the report showed only 4,267 incidents being recorded by police in 2012-13. The most recent Crime Survey [for England and Wales] showed 39,000 homophobic hate incidents over the same timeframe.
The survey reveals that eight in 10 LGBT people have been verbally abused or harassed, with one in 10 suffering physical assault.
Additional evidence suggested that although victims of transphobia [intense prejudice against transsexual or transgender people] could be targeted up to 50 times a year, only three in 10  individuals bothered to report what had happened to them.
The Leicester study lists the “normalisation” of hate crime, concerns about wasting police time, and “negative experience” of police involvement, including being “outed” without permission, as potential reasons for the substantial under-reporting.
Dr Hardy said her research alongside previous studies had shown a targeted minority who were often scared to go out, scared to reveal their identity and were suffering both emotionally and physically from the impact of hate crimes.
The publication of the new study has been co-ordinated with the launch of new campaign to combat the high incidence of LGBT hate crime and to raise awareness of victimisation.
Matt Lucas as “the only gay in the village”, Daffyd Thomas in BBC's Little Britain (Rex)
Matt Lucas as “the only gay in the village”, Daffyd Thomas in BBC’s Little Britain (Rex)
The campaign is being supported by the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice, the Welsh Government and the Crown Office Scotland and is being co-ordinated by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC).
It is aim is to encourage equality and diversity, eliminate unlawful discrimination, and to protect and promote human rights.
Commenting on the UK campaign which carries the message “Recognise it, Report it”, the deputy chairwoman of the EHRC, Caroline Waters, said “It is a tragedy that there is a still a backdrop of intolerance and abuse which stays largely hidden from society.”
Paul Roberts, the chief executive of the LGBT Consortium, which assists voluntary and community organisations in providing support and services, said LGBT communities were already working with the police to help break down barriers.  He added : “But too often LGBT people don’t know they are experiencing hate crime or just shrug it off. Our message today is – recognise it, report it and get support when you need it.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/lgbt-people-subjected-to-hate-crimes-on-daily-basis-in-uk-rural-communities-10337452.html
 

Humanists have always been champions of LGBT rights

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Andrew Copson says Humanists and LGBT people are natural allies.

Andrew Copson says Humanists and LGBT people are natural allies.


PinkNews

 
Chief Executive of the British Humanist Association Andrew Copson writes for PinkNews on World Humanist Day.
Humanists are simply people who see the world as a natural place, best understood by science and reason, and who seek to live an ethical life on the basis of reason and humanity. It’s a valuable way of seeing the world – and one which has inspired great commitment to equality. In recent years, society has come a long way, and the UK in particular has become a more diverse, more tolerant, and more accepting place.
But as far back as you can look, you can see that humanists have not just been LGBT-friendly, but champions of LGBT people and their rights.
World Humanist Day, which falls on 21 June each year, provides us with an excellent opportunity to reflect not just on how much humanists have contributed to our society – but also to the struggle for LGBT equality.
Today the British Humanist Association (BHA), which represents humanists across the UK and campaigns on equalities issues, can count prominent LGBT figures such as Stephen Fry, Dr Christian Jessen, Peter Tatchell, and Angela Eagle MP among its Patrons. Other prominent humanists have included queer writers Virginia Woolf and E M Forster, the mathematician Alan Turing, and the economist John Maynard Keynes.
I’m proud of the fact that BHA celebrants were conducting same-sex humanist weddings decades before the legalisation of same-sex marriage. The BHA was later a prominent campaigner for legal same-sex marriages in Britain, working closely with the All Party Parliamentary Humanist Group on the passage of the Same Sex Marriage Act.
The Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association, now part of the BHA, also campaigned for legal same-sex marriages since its inception in the late 1970s. In 2001, the group campaigned heavily for gay couples to take part in the London Partnership Register – the policy which later inspired the Civil Partnerships Act and eventually the Same Sex Marriage Act.
When same-sex marriage was legalised in Scotland, the first weddings were humanist ones – as Scotland has the benefit of legal humanist marriages and legal same-sex marriages. England and Wales is still lagging behind in that department, but there is pressure now on Michael Gove to legalise humanist marriages south of the border as well. There’s still work to be done.
Like Humanism itself, the enthusiastic support humanists have shown for LGBT issues cuts across all divides – sexuality, race, and social background.
As Stephen Fry put it in a video he recorded for the BHA last year, ‘Ultimately, morality comes from us.’ We don’t look to religious texts to tell us what’s right or wrong. We consider a particular situation; we look to what the evidence says about it; and we try to think and feel as others might about a situation.
This approach has made natural allies of humanists and LGBT causes. But it’s also led to humanists taking an active role in a wide range of issues – from the anti-apartheid movement to anti-colonialism, animal rights issues, and the campaign to legalise assisted dying.
LGBT people have often adopted a similar approach – which is why the LGBT movement have been such enthusiastic advocates for others human rights causes as well. There’s something about being denied one’s rights, or one’s place in society, or being discriminated against, which teaches us to be aware of other’s feelings; to be conscientious; to try to see things fairly.
It’s an approach which is uniquely prepared to meet novel ethical challenges as time goes forward, but also one which is deeply embedded in our culture and in the way we see the world. Perhaps moreso than any religion. This World Humanist Day I will be reflecting on that long hard road, and the people who have walked it.
Andrew Copson is the Chief Executive of the British Humanist Association.

Two very different sides of the sexual equality debate

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Jeff Dudgeon at the City Hall in Belfast
Jeff Dudgeon at the City Hall in Belfast

Belfast TelegraphBY RUTH DUDLEY EDWARDS – 22 JUNE 2015

Those of you who worry about the speed of social change and feel bullied by those who dismiss you as dinosaurs, homophobes and so on, might take some comfort from recent words from two gay men. Benjamin Butterworth and Jeffrey Dudgeon are both campaigners for sexual equality, but both believe opponents have a right to be heard.

Butterworth is a young, Left-wing Londoner, who writes mainly on gay issues, but who was horrified to hear that Ukip’s LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) wing had been banned from next Saturday’s London Gay Pride parade. “People fighting to reform Ukip from the inside,” he said, “are much-needed friends of Pride, not foes.”
In his view, the organisers had “managed the unthinkable: to be more narrow-minded and ignorant than a party that exists to serve that very purpose”. Who was next, he wondered. Gay Catholics or lesbian Muslims?
He reminded his readers that what the equal rights movement had wanted was simply to be included, equal and have a clear voice: they had been so successful that the UK is now Europe’s most gay-friendly nation.
“Yet,” he went on, “the modern gay community – equal in law and thereabouts in culture – has turned in on itself.
“It brandishes the attitudes and outlooks that once-upon-a-time it would define itself against. Looking like an inward, aggressive group of judgmental trolls.”
Those of you who don’t use social media are mercifully spared the trolls, but I can assure you there is no shortage of gays among those flinging abuse at total strangers who don’t agree with their liberal opinions.
I had a quick look at a few random comments (if you read too many of them you’d go away and drown yourself) and offer you this choice example: “Just because you don’t have the sense to realise that Ukip are fascists who would exterminate you all (even the Ukip-voting LGBT people – Google “night of the long knives”) given any real power doesn’t mean that everyone else hasn’t picked up on this by now.”
It reminded me of the paranoid raving of some of my critics who tell me I’m too stupid to grasp that the Orange Order are the same as the Ku Klux Klan.
It is not. And Ukip is not fascists. Which doesn’t mean that, like most organisations, including gay ones, they have their crazies.
Butterworth pointed out that, in the UK, gay campaigners were successful because they had reached out to others, including Tories.

He would, I imagine, regard Jeffrey Dudgeon, a UUP Belfast city councillor, as a hero. And he’d be right.

I’ve known Jeff for years and have always admired how he fought bigotry without bitterness.

It was mostly his patient work that led to the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Northern Ireland in 1982 after he took a case to the European Court of Human Rights.

He made a speech recently in the council apropos demands to legalise gay marriage immediately, pointing out wryly that this was being pushed by people who had never helped in the struggle for decriminalisation, including Sinn Fein, “who were not supportive of law reform when it was unpopular”.

He was, he said, “nervous of opponents getting demonised for opposing something that was common currency a few short years ago”.

While he had no respect for those who wanted to reverse reforms, “I have respect for those I know who cannot support this motion, either because of theological beliefs, or simply traditional views”.

In Jeff’s view – and he knows better than most – change had come about because gay people came out, “and the world realised we were not what they were led to expect. That then became a geometric process. Everybody had a gay person in their family, or one amongst their friends.”

He had been selected and elected in South Belfast as an openly gay man, “and have been treated with respect and courtesy by all the other members. This has warmed my heart like little else”.

It is people like Jeff who change hearts as well as minds and people like Benjamin Butterworth who rein in the worst of their own community.

I hope LGBT activists are paying attention to these two wise men.

The Irish vote for gay marriage reverberates through Germany

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The Economist – Jun 20th 2015 | BERLIN | From the print edition

German same-sex unions

At the end of the Regenbogen

The Irish vote for gay marriage reverberates through Germany

SINCE Ireland voted in May to allow same-sex marriage, Europe has had a clear divide: liberal in the west but more illiberal going east. Germany is in the middle. Since 2001 gay and lesbian couples have been able to enter civil unions, and 35,000 have done so. They enjoy the same rights as heterosexual spouses for tax and inheritance. But same-sex couples do not have full adoption rights, and their union is not called marriage.
Many Germans find this embarrassing. A 2013 poll found 74% in favour of full marriage rights for homosexuals. So are the opposition Greens and Die Linke (The Left) in parliament, as well as the Social Democrats, the junior party in the ruling grand coalition. The upper-house Bundesrat, where these three parties have a majority, recently passed a non-binding resolution urging the government to make marriage available to all.
That was largely symbolic, because of opposition within Chancellor Angela Merkel’s centre-right block, consisting of two “Christian” parties: her own Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the more conservative Bavarian Christian Social Union. The phrase “Christian union” came from a post-war confessional alliance between Catholic and Lutheran parties from the Weimar Republic. But conservatives now invoke Christian values to argue against same-sex marriage. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the premier of Saarland, who is often touted as a possible successor to Mrs Merkel, recently argued that if you allow gay marriage, incestuous or polygamous nuptials might be next.
Yet within the CDU attitudes are changing. The defence minister, Ursula von der Leyen, another possible successor to Mrs Merkel, this month told the party’s executive committee that “something fundamental has changed in society.” If Irish Catholics can relax about gay marriage, so can German ones, says Jens Spahn, a gay member of the committee. Mrs Merkel, the daughter of a Lutheran pastor, has been coy but is thought to be tolerant in private. She visibly squirmed when asked during the 2013 campaign to explain her party’s rejection of gay marriage. But she knows she has moved the CDU leftward in the 15 years she has led it. Many blame her for the emergence of a new party on the right, the Alternative for Germany, which attracts disgruntled former Christian Democrats.
Such objections are tactical, says Alexander Vogt, leader of the gay-and-lesbian club within the CDU. As is her wont, Mrs Merkel chooses battles carefully. Right now—with Grexit, Brexit and Ukraine—she faces many. She might also like to keep gay marriage alive as an issue to concede to the Greens, whom she may prefer as a coalition partner after the 2017 election. One way or another, says Mr Vogt, Germany will have same-sex marriage soon afterwards.

London: Ken Livingstone and Partnership Ceremonies

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Gay History

by Paul
Couples on the London Partnerships Register celebrate

BC – Ken Livingstone joined the couples’ celebrations


In 2001 London Mayor Ken Livingstone introduced a partnership registration service for same sex couples. The registrations recognised the partnership of the individuals but did not confer any legal rights. The new register was called the London Partnerships Register. The register was open to heterosexual as well as gay couples.
The first couple to take advantage of the scheme, which pre-dated Civil Partnerships and demonstrated the need and desirability of giving same sex couples rights, were Ian Burford and Alexander Cannell, who had been together already for 38 years.
They had a five-minute ceremony conducted by Rob Coward, a specially-trained officer with Greater London Authority.
Couples taking part in the ceremony received a certificate but the register was not made available to the public for confidentiality reasons. The register was designed to be self-financing, charging couples £85 to register their details.
The Greater London Authority was the first public body in the United Kingdom to recognise same-sex relationships as being on a par with heterosexual partnerships.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1525205.stm

Coming Out and Father's Day

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BY ANDREA ROMANO

Coming out to your parents can be difficult for an LGBT person, even years later. So it’s always nice to know that there’s someone at home who loves and accepts you exactly as you are.
For Father’s Day,  Upworthy invited several dads to sit down for an open and honest conversation with their LGBT children about when they came out to them.
Sometimes the greatest gift is having a good heart-to-heart.