News

Believed to be the world’s first intersex mayor, Councillor Tony Briffa has been elected in Australia., winning in the City of Hobsons Bay in the suburbs of Melbourne at the end of November.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The sponsor group of an initiative to extend legal protections prohibiting discrimination against LGBTQ people has collected 13,515 signatures from Anchorage registered voters in support of putting the measure on the city’s April 2012 ballot.

Malawi’s government announced Thursday that it was reviewing a number of laws, including its anti-gay and anti-lesbian laws. The announcement led to the headline ‘Malawi makes U-turn on disputed laws on media, gays’ in local newspaper.

A majority of Coloradans now support full marriage equality for same-sex couples, a poll released Friday shows. According to Public Policy Polling, 47 percent of those Coloradans polled said they believe gay and lesbian couples should have all the rights of marriage — and the name to boot.

SAN FRANCISCO — A panel of federal appellate justices signaled Thursday that they see no reason to overturn a ruling against California’s same-sex marriage ban due to the trial judge not disclosing his long-term relationship with another man.

WASHINGTON — The controversial anti-gay television ad that began airing in Iowa Wednesday from the campaign of Texas Governor Rick Perry — in which Perry takes direct aim criticizing the Obama administration’s repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell — has sharply divided his advisers, and caused in fighting between conservative gay GOP political groups.

The parents of Tyler Clementi — a Rutgers University student who jumped to his death last year after being humiliated online over his sexual orientation — said they learned only weeks before his suicide that their son was gay, and announced they have established the Tyler Clementi Foundation to work to prevent teen suicide and implement anti-bullying programs.

TROY, Mich. — Reports claiming Troy Mayor Janice Daniels was fired from her job at Century 21 Town & Country are not true, according to the manager of the real estate office where Daniels worked.

ASHLAND CITY, Tenn. — Students at a local school are grieving a classmate. Friends say the young man took his own life because he couldn’t take any more bullying.

The Ali Forney Center, the nation’s largest organization working on behalf of homeless LGBT youth, on Monday announced that longtime New York activists Frank Selvaggi and Bill Shea had donated $100,000 to the center to kick off its “Homeless for the Holidays” campaign, aimed at raising $1 million to increase the number of beds for homeless LGBT youth in New York City.