Subjects Archives: LGBTQ

After September 11th, 2001, one of the liberal justifications for the military intervention against Afghanistan was the oppression of women, but also of gays, by the Taliban.  People in Europe and the USA received with shock the news that same-sex couples were publicly executed in the Kabul Stadium by bringing down a wall upon them […]

  Scott Long: Around the world, there are existing sex laws being strengthened, there are new sex laws being passed.  In Egypt you have people being jailed for homosexuality and for being HIV positive under what’s actually a prostitution law that dates from the fifties.  In Burundi and Nigeria, you have people trying to pass […]

(PU) A recently released study has found that heterosexuals can, with effort, become gay.  Eighty-six percent of a survey group of straight women and men were able, through various forms of reparative therapy, to transform their sexual orientation and achieve “good homosexual functioning.” Dr. Marvin Flabcock, of the American Psychiatric and Floral Design Association, conducted […]

  Judith Butler, ‘I Must Distance Myself from This Racist Complicity,’ 19 June 2010 As Berlin Queer and Trans Activists of Colour and Allies we welcome Judith Butler’s decision to turn down the Zivilcourage Prize awarded by Berlin Pride.  We are delighted that a renowned theorist has used her celebrity status to honour queer of […]

We, the undersigned queer Arab organizations, are appalled by the US Social Forum’s decision to allow Stand with Us to utilize the event as a platform to pinkwash Israel’s crimes in the region. Stand with Us is cynically manipulating the struggle of queer people in the Middle East through its workshop entitled “LGBTQI Liberation in the Middle East”.

  A flashmob infiltrates the Westin St. Francis hotel in San Francisco and performs an adaptation of Lady Gaga’s song “Bad Romance.”  The event was organized to draw attention to a boycott called by the workers of the hotel who are fighting to win a fair contract and affordable healthcare.  Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and […]

  Palestinian civil society has called on Elton John to respect its boycott call and cancel his June 17th concert in Tel Aviv.  If he does so, he’ll be joining Santana and Gil-Scott Heron, who recently cancelled their spring concerts in Israel.  This video suggests six reasons why Elton should join the BDS (boycott, divestment, […]

  We asked queers in our city to tell us why they are against Israeli apartheid.  Here’s what they said. Video by Alexis Mitchell * * * Editor’s Note: QuAIA has come under attack by the pro-Israel lobby and Toronto city bureaucrats: “An April 18, 2010 feature story in the Toronto Star revealed that City […]

New Orleans’ Black and transgender community members and advocates complain of rampant and systemic harassment and discrimination from the city’s police force, including sexual violence and arrest without cause.  Activists hope that public outrage at recent revelations of widespread police violence and corruption offer an opportunity to make changes in police behavior and practice. On […]

  Matthew Waites.  The Age of Consent: Young People, Sexuality, and Citizenship.  Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.  viii + 285 pp.  $95.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-4039-2173-4.  $29.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-230-23718-6. There are many “ages of consent.”  But in common parlance, age of consent laws define the age at which a person can legally consent […]

  William A. Peniston, Pederasts and Others: Urban Culture and Sexual Identity in Nineteenth-Century Paris.  New York: Harrington Park, 2004.  xii + 258.  Maps, tables, notes, bibliography, index.  $49.95 US (hb).  ISBN 1-56023-485-7; $24.95 U.S. (pb).  ISBN 1-506023-486-5. As part of the burgeoning of the history of gender and sexuality, recent years have seen several […]

Sherry Wolf.  Sexuality and Socialism: History, Politics, and Theory of LGBT Liberation.  Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2009.  333 pp.  $12. The cover photo on Sherry Wolf’s book shows a protest rally with a woman holding a highlighted rainbow flag.  Radical gay and lesbian activists, one assumes.  Look closely, though, and you’ll see that the woman is […]

  Robert Aldrich.  Colonialism and Homosexuality.  London and New York: Routledge, 2003.  xii + 436 pp.  Maps, notes, bibliography, and index.  $104.95 US (cl.).  ISBN 0-415-19615-9.  $32.95 (pb.).  ISBN 0-415-19616-7. It is generally seen as a sign of maturity when gay scholarship moves beyond a mere self-affirmative search for “ancestry” and develops a critical and […]

  In late 2009 the New York-based group Human Rights Watch published a report titled New Castro, Same Cuba.  Based on the testimony of former prisoners, the report systematically condemns the Cuban government as an “abusive” regime that uses its “repressive machinery . . . draconian laws and sham trials to incarcerate scores more who […]

  Some religious communities are not reciprocating the tolerance and respect they insist on from others when it comes to gay rights, particularly in Muslim and some Christian communities.  That seemed to be the bleak message at the heart of To Be Straight with You, which was performed at the O’Reilly Theatre in Dublin last […]

  Rauda Morcos has every right to hate the press.  On July 2003, the Israeli newspaper Yedeot Ahronot interviewed Morcos about her poetry but also announced to the world that she was a lesbian. Following the public outing, Rauda Morcos’ car windows were smashed, the tires punctured, and she received countless threatening phone calls and […]

Over the last 15 years more than a million people have immigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union, welcomed by the Israeli ‘Law of Return’ that grants immediate citizenship and financial support to all Jews and their family members. My last research1focused on the queers among them, looking at the ways sexuality and nationhood intertwine in queer immigrants’ sense of belonging to the country that is officially defined by state policy — and indeed perceived by many immigrants themselves — as their home.

The government of President Leonel Fernández, with the support of the powerful Catholic Church and the far right (known as the Nazionalistas), will soon adopt a new constitution that will set the country back decades. The new constitution is part of a ruling class attack on working people in a desperate attempt to preserve the […]

  Out of Place: Interrogating Silences in Queerness/Raciality (Raw Nerve Books) came out in July 2008.  The book presents an unprecedented compilation of critical articles by scholars and activists, which address the manifold ways in which questions regarding ‘race’ and racism are silenced in queer politics and theory.  Out of Place was very well received.  […]

  Dear friends, Over the last few years a number of timely publications have illuminated the connections between gender and sexuality, the War on Terror and racialisation.  One of these is Out of Place: Interrogating Silences in Queerness/Raciality, edited by Adi Kuntsman and Esperanza Miyake and published by Raw Nerve Books in 2008.  An edited […]