The Yogyakarta Principles - Boris Dittrich

‘Does it hurt?’ I asked the girl. We were hiding behind a car in front of the Tverskaya police station on Bolshaya Dmitrovka Street in Moscow. From the other side of the street a group of skinheads and other anti-gay nationalists were throwing eggs at us. Most of the eggs hit the wall of the police station but one landed between the girl’s neck and shoulders. The yolkleft a blurry, yellow mess.

LGBT Rights in the Workplace - Peter Purton

It is now more than thirty years since the first openly lesbian and gay trade unionists began to win support from their trade unions against discrimination in British workplaces. It is more than twenty years since the British trade union movement - in a debate at the 1985 Trades Union Congress - agreed as national policy to combat such discrimination. And it is ten years since that policy was given more concrete form, when official representative structures were established within the body o...

United by Love, Exiled by Law - Martha McDevitt- Pugh

Martha McDevitt-Pugh is a love exile, a term she coined herself when she realized that there was nothing free about her choice to live with her partner Lin in the Netherlands. At age 40, she fell in love with a friend she had met seventeen years earlier. The couple negotiated an agreement to live together in the Netherlands for two years, until Lin’s son had finished high school. Martha left a flourishing career in Silicon Valley, expecting to return. Only once she left did Martha discover t...

‘The Greenwood’ in Maurice and Brokeback Mountain - André Hielkema

Maurice (1987) and Brokeback Mountain (2005) have been two very successful films of the last twenty years (1) bringing developments in the struggle of the gay liberation movement in the West to the forefront in a remarkable way. Both are named after the literary works on which they are based: Maurice by E.M. Forster (1879-1970) which was written in 1913- 1914 and published in 1971 and the novella Brokeback Mountain (published as a story in 1997 in The New Yorker) by Annie Proulx (born in 193...

EU Support for LGBT People in Neighbouring Countries - Maxim Anmeghichean and Aija Salo

The European Union offers a range of mechanisms to monitor and promote human rights, as do other European and international institutions. With the adoption of the Amsterdam Treaty, the European Union acquis (1) explicitly included a commitment to equality and non-discrimination based on sexual orientation. Equality irrespective of gender identity and gender expression is covered in the legal framework of EU through the Gender EqualityDirective.

The Tyranny of the Majority. Gays in Poland - Wendelmoet Boersema

Prominent Polish gays are pursuing a new solidarity struggle. They call themselves ‘love dissidents’ fighting for a tolerant climate. Poles have become more nationalistic and they make life difficult for gays. ‘When I was an adolescent in the Poland of the eighties, homosexuality was a regular topic of conversation during sex education classes. If I had been young in today’s Poland, I would have felt as if I was judged and that I immediatelyhad to take a political point of view.’

Self-portrait - Radenka Grubacic

When I was thirteen years old, I felt attracted to a kindergarten female teacher. I was surprised and overwhelmed at the same time. At first I thought about it as something perfectly normal, because love is normal. I told my sister and a friend about it, but I was ridiculed and was not taken very seriously. When I was sixteen, I finally came out to myself as a lesbian. I was fully aware of my identity and I embraced it. But at the same time, I kept it a secret, because I knew how homosexuali...

‘Equality is a Moral Imperative’ - Martha McDevitt-Pugh

The election of Barack Hussein Obama as President of the United States on 4 November 2008 was an exhilarating moment for many in the LGBTI movement in the US and worldwide. Obama’s election puts an end to the Bush era - eight years which saw a sea of change for LGBT rights in many places around the globe as well as at a local and state level in the US. While much of the world moved forward, the US government actions seemed more consistent with the 1950s than with the 21st century. Just how b...