Edinburgh Sheriff Court

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A 25-year-old man has appeared in court in Edinburgh charged with a string of offences relating to the possible transmission of HIV to several other men, BuzzFeed News can reveal.

Daryll Rowe faces 10 charges: four counts of rape and six of assault, all of which relate to events that are alleged to have taken place in Edinburgh in 2015.

The rape charges denote that on each occasion consent for sex was given on the condition that a condom was used, and because it was allegedly not – and, according to prosecutors, unbeknown to Rowe's sexual partners – it constitutes sexual intercourse by deception. This comes under the offence of rape in Scots law (Section 1 of the Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act 2009), according to the charges.

The assault charges allege that Rowe had unprotected sex knowing he was HIV-positive and that the act carried a risk of transmitting the virus, and that he did not disclose his HIV status prior to sex taking place. This happened on six occasions with five different men, according to the prosecution.

Four of those men were the same as those named in the rape charges. Their identities and anonymity are protected in law.

Rowe first came before the Edinburgh sheriff court on 10 February. He did not enter a plea. Rowe was remanded in custody before a second court appearance – what is known as the "Full Committal" – on 18 February, at which he did not enter a plea and was released on bail.

His arrest follows a six-month investigation by police in the Scottish capital.

Police Scotland

Shortly after Rowe's first court appearance, a Police Scotland spokesman confirmed to BuzzFeed News: "A 25-year-old man has been arrested and charged with a number of crimes including assault and sexual offences following an investigation by police in Edinburgh. He appeared at Edinburgh Sheriff Court on Wednesday 10th February and was remanded in custody."

Edie Windsor and her lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, tell the story of the first time their paths crossed.

This week on The Tell Show...

Edie Windsor and her lawyer, Roberta Kaplan tell the story of the first time they crossed paths, over 20 years before the United States v. Windsor ruling that paved the way for national marriage equality.

Edie Windsor and Roberta Kaplan were the plaintiff-attorney pair in the Supreme Court case that struck down the federal ban on same-sex couple's marriages.

Kaplan (left) and Windsor (center) worked on the case together for over three years, and remain close friends.

Andrew Burton / Getty Images

In 1991, Kaplan was referred to a therapist who dealt with "gay issues," Thea Spyer.

During their sessions, Thea Spyer offered Kaplan an example of the kind of fulfilling, loving same-sex relationship she was looking for: Spyer's own decades long partnership with a brilliant mathematician named Edie Windsor.

View Entire List ›

Taking “Transformation Tuesday” to the next level.

The @lesbianfunhouse Instagram account is full of queer ladies, tattoos, cute couples, and ridiculously good-looking humans. That's how Dutch founders Demi and Helen built a dedicated community of over 70K followers.

Instagram: @lesbianfunhouse

Instagram: @lesbianfunhouse

"It's a chance for people to show themselves," The founders told BuzzFeed News. Despite the account's handle, the duo made it clear that the page is intended for the entire LGBT community.

"We want to spread the love within the community and want to make everyone feel part of it. We want people to see that everyone is beautiful, then and now."

View Entire List ›

Federal politician George Christensen has likened a government-funded anti-bullying program to "grooming" undertaken by sexual predators in a shocking speech to parliament on Thursday evening.

parlview.aph.gov.au

The Queensland MP's comments are the latest in an increasingly vicious brouhaha over the Safe Schools Coalition, a program aimed at helping LGBTI students in schools.

On Tuesday, a federal review into the program was announced by Education Minister Simon Birmingham after weeks of sustained pressure from the Australian Christian Lobby and conservative MPs.

"If someone proposed exposing a child to this material, the parents would probably call the police, because it would sound a lot like grooming work a sexual predator might undertake," Christensen said.

Christensen read out a description of grooming from a child and adolescent sexual assault counselling service, saying it sounded "sadly familiar" in comparison to the Safe Schools Coalition.

"And what’s more, the program portrays all of this as normal, wraps it up in a taxpayer funded package and calls it an anti-bullying program."

The Safe Schools Coalition teaching manual All Of Us features the stories of eight LGBTI young people and suggests classroom activities around understanding identities such as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex.

It does not reference adult sex clubs, communities or shops.

The Labor opposition is standing by the program, with opposition leader Bill Shorten condemning Malcolm Turnbull for "failing to stand up to the right wing of his party".

When you see another lesbian in public and do “the nod”.

Netflix/BuzzFeed/Sophie Gadd

1) When a TV show has a lesbian storyline.

2) When none of the characters in the lesbian storyline die.

3) When a TV show has a lesbian sex scene.

4) When you tell a man you're a lesbian and he doesn't immediately ask you about what you do in bed.

5) When you find the perfect plaid shirt.

6) When you wear a dress and people don't say "oh but you don't LOOK like lesbian."

7) When your cat finally accepts your girlfriend.

8) When you introduce your girlfriend to new people and they don't assume you guys are just "GURL FWENDS".

9) When your parents refer to your girlfriend as your girlfriend and not your "friend".

10) When your Granny doesn't ask you if you've met any nice men recently.

11) When you go to a gay bar and you aren't the only women there.

12) When you go to a gay bar and there are actual lesbians there.

13) When you go to a lesbian bar and don't see your ex.

14) When you kiss in public and don't get heckled.

15) When you remember to file your nails.

16) When you match with a girl on Tinder and see you have no mutual friends.

17) When you go on a Tinder date and they haven't dated your ex.

18) When a hot girl on Tinder doesn't ask you if you're up for a threesome with her boyfriend.

19) When a hot girl on Tinder doesn't tell you she's "just looking to experiment".

20) When you're single and you actually meet a single lesbian.

21) When you meet a single lesbian who you haven't already slept with.

22) When you meet a single lesbian that no one you know has slept with.

23) When you don't get overcharged for a short haircut because you're a woman.

24) When you don't accidentally coordinate outfits with your girlfriend.

25) When you don't come to work dressed the same as a boy in your office.

26) When you find a really nice men's shirt that you can do up over your tits.

27) And hips.

28) When you watch a lesbian movie and it isn't the worst thing you've ever seen.

29) When you watch a lesbian movie with realistic sex scenes.

30) When any of your favourite celesbians post a new Instagram.

31) When a celebrity you have a crush on comes out.

32) When you see photos of lesbian weddings.

33) When you see cute photos of old lesbian couples.

34) When you hear a story about a lesbian couple than have been together for like 50 years.

35) When you check into a hotel and you don't have to do the awkward "no we don't want two single beds" chat.

36) When you don't have to explain to your doctor how you can be both sexually active and definitely not pregnant.

37) When you don't get asked who the man is.

38) When someone you know comes out the closet and you called it ages ago.

39) When you're stalking people from school on Facebook and it turns out they're mega gay now.

40) When you find someone from your school on HER.

41) When you see another lesbian in public and do "the nod".

42) When you see other lesbian couples in public and you're like "omg same".

It’s hard out here for a gay.

Looking at a detailed dating app profile.

Via Twitter: @EricODaily

Being presented with the proof that romance is not dead.

Via Twitter: @littlenicky125

Being offered minimum wage when you know your talents are worth so much more.

EQUAL PAY FOR THE GAYS.

Via Twitter: @RussellFalcon

View Entire List ›

A general view of the Italian Senate in Rome

Tony Gentile / Reuters

The Italian Senate signed off on legislation on Thursday creating a civil union status for same-sex couples after a bitter debate that dominated Italian politics for months.

The vote was 173 in favor and 71 against, Italian newspaper La Repubblica reported.The bill must now must be approved by the Parliament’s lower house, but it is expected to encounter much less resistance there than it did in the Senate.

But if the legislation is adopted in its current form, it will not be an end to the fight over same-sex couples’ rights. The government of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi traded away provisions important to LGBT activists in order to clear the path for Thursday’s vote, including a person’s right to adopt the child of a same-sex partner. LGBT groups are vowing a new fight against Renzi’s ruling coalition and litigation challenging provisions that they see as discriminatory.

“Pontius Pilate could not have done better,” a broad coalition of LGBT groups said in a statement denouncing the compromise issued shortly before the Senate vote, calling for a protest on March 5. If this bill is adopted, the groups said, would make Italy “unlike almost any other country in [the European Union] and unique among its founding countries, [ignoring] completely the existence and needs of the sons and daughters of gay couples.”

“Now our battle — concluding the associations — will continue in the streets and in the courts,” they vowed.

Supporters of same-sex civil unions demonstrate in Rome during the vote at the Italian Senate

Filippo Monteforte / AFP / Getty Images

The open wounds left by this fight will not only keep the battle alive in Italy, but could become a problem for major European institutions.

Daniele Viotti, a member of the Parliament of the European Union from Italy’s ruling Democratic Party, said in a statement to BuzzFeed News that he was calling on the E.U.’s executive body — called the European Commission — to enact regulations that would require member states to recognize adoptions and other “public documents related to civil status” from one another. The E.U. technically has no jurisdiction over family law in member states, but these issues affect freedom of movement for LGBT people throughout the continent which does fall under the E.U.’s domain.

“I think Europe will ask Italy for more and I hope Italy will be ready for more,” said Viotti, who is also co-president of the Parliament’s LGBT rights caucus. “Dropping stepchild adoption is dreadful because it leaves children without protection. The fight is not over.”

But Viotti said, the European Commission has “become a lot more timid” in pushing LGBT rights. The Commission is also now facing a grassroots effort by conservatives, called “Mum, Dad, and Kids.” The group is using a relatively new mechanism, installed to make the E.U. more democratic, to mount a petition drive to pressure the E.U. to define marriage as between a man and a woman.

But the Italian civil union fight shows that national governments are increasingly willing to ignore the exhortations from the European Union’s seat in Brussels and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, said Grégor Puppinck. Puppinck is one of the organizers of the “Mum, Dad, and Kids” initiative and director of the Strasbourg-based European Center for Law and Justice, a Christian conservative group affiliated with Pat Robertson’s American Center for Law and Justice.

“Maybe pressure from Brussels or Strasbourg are quickly diminishing in many aspects and I think one of the first aspects that are collapsing is the purely ideological power,” Puppinck said. The E.U. is currently challenged by fundamental governance questions while countries including the United Kingdom and Russia are refusing to honor rulings of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), Puppinck said. “To some extent we are witnessing collapse of the system.”

But Europe’s institutions hold some of LGBT activists’ best hope to push Italy forward. The ECHR helped force passage of the civil union bill with a ruling last July that Italy had violated same-sex couples rights by denying legal recognition, and some Italian activists are already contemplating how to get this legislation back before the courts.

“We will definitely start soon to plan new legal actions saying that the law is discriminatory, first of all for the children” of same-sex couples, said Yuri Guaiana of the LGBT organization Certi Diritti and a board member of the International Lesbian and Gay Organization’s European chapter. “It goes against a lot of ECHR rulings, so we’re very positive on the chances of winning. It creates an institution that’s exclusively for same-sex couples and ... we view it as a segregationist law.”

A banner reading ' it's forbidden to scrap the family' is seen during a Family Day rally

Andreas Solaro / AFP / Getty Images

But this challenge may be tricky, said Alexander Schuster, the lawyer who represented the same-sex couples in the ECHR suit decided in July. While the court has argued that same-sex couples have a right to legal status, it has repeatedly said states are not obligated to establish marriage equality. It has also held that states can restrict adoption only to married couples. Adoption suits that have succeeded in the ECHR have been when states give same-sex and opposite-sex couples in the same status different adoption rights, such as allowing opposite-sex couples in civil unions to adopt but barring same-sex couples in the same kind of civil union from doing so.

Schuster said there is a case already making its way through the Italian courts that could set up this kind of challenge. Italian courts have granted adoptions outside of married couples in a narrow set of circumstances, and some courts in Rome have extended that logic to apply to same-sex couples. If those precedents get undone by the country’s top courts — and a case recently decided by an appeals court could be appealed — this could go to the ECHR.

He thought the court would be leery of the political fallout of pushing existing precedent on LGBT rights despite expansive rhetoric found in some opinions.

“I think most European institutions are becoming very cautious,” he said.

But Puppinck of the European Center of Law and Justice said that he believed the ECHR was pushing an ambitious two-step strategy in its LGBT rulings: to first require all 47 states on the Council of Europe to at least provide civil unions for same-sex couples, and then “to suppress all the differences between marriage and civil partnerships.”

The Italian vote is a sign that even in Western Europe many still reject the idea that children should be raised by same-sex couples, Puppinck said.

“What really we want on this issue … [is that] we do not want the children to be the tools of the desires of the parents,” he said. “This is the ultimate [red] line.”

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

For the first time ever documented, a person taking Truvada — the once-a-day pill that prevents HIV infection in what’s known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP — has contracted a drug-resistant strain of the virus.

The case was presented on Thursday at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) in Boston.

The patient was a 43-year old gay man from Toronto who had been on the daily drug regimen for 24 months with no previous issues. The study researchers noted that, according to pharmacy records as well as blood tests, the man had been taking the drug properly around the time that he contracted the virus.

In general, Truvada is extremely effective in preventing HIV in those who take it every day. But the scientists concluded that there is an important, though very rare exception: someone who is exposed to a virus strain that is resistant to both drugs included in Truvada, tenofovir and emtricitabine.

The Toronto man had sex with someone who carried a virus that was resistant to both of the drugs in Truvada, as well as others.

“I think the evidence that we have says that in general PrEP is working quite well,” Richard Harrigan, director of research labs at the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV and one of the study researchers, told BuzzFeed News. “But there are always exceptions, and we have to keep that in mind.”

The problem arises because we use the same drugs for prevention that we use for treatment, Harrigan said.

“In the ideal world, there wouldn’t be any crossover between the drugs we use, but at this point we just don’t have that many things that have been shown to work,” he said.

The man, who is now HIV positive, is on antiretroviral therapy and has his infection under control, Harrigan said.

Harrigan also cautioned that exposure to a strain of HIV that’s resistant to just one of the drugs in Truvada might decrease the effectiveness of the pills. According to research done by his group, roughly 10% of the HIV-infected British Columbia population has emtricitabine resistance, and about 1% to 2% have tenofovir resistance.

“The issue of resistance is one that’s been discussed at length with respect to PrEP,” Mitchell Warren, executive director of AVAC, a global HIV-prevention advocacy group in New York City, told BuzzFeed News.

But he noted that, for example, none of the 1,400 people taking PrEP in an ongoing study led by Kaiser Permanente San Francisco have contracted the virus.

“I think it’s certainly important evidence that needs to be understood,” Warren said. “I don’t think it undercuts the important role PrEP can play.”

LINK: Here’s What We Actually Know About The Pill That Prevents HIV

Fairfax Media

It was a freezing night in June 1978 when a group of Sydney’s queer activists gathered at Taylor Square in the heart of Sydney’s gay district.

The Oxford Street bars were crowded on the ninth anniversary of New York's famous Stonewall Riots, which began the gay liberation movement in the United States. As the group marched down Oxford Street toward Hyde Park hundreds of people streamed out of the nearby gay bars to join.

"Out of the bars! Into the streets!" they chanted as the group of around 500 swelled to 2000 (much to the chagrin of the bar owners). Soon the crowd reached a police line at College Street.

The marchers had permission to be there, but police wanted the party to end. The keys to the van leading the march were confiscated and the music was shut off.

The marchers made their way - “Like the charging of the bulls” - up William Street towards Kings Cross. They didn’t want any trouble, they insist, but police met them at the other end anyway, and a brutal, bloody riot ensued.

“We thought it was going to be a parade. We thought it was going to be a good fun time, an opportunity to be out, to show who we were in terms of our sexuality, not to be hidden in some closet somewhere,” says Sandy Banks, one of the original 78ers - the name given to those first Mardi Gras marchers.

“I thought, ‘Let’s have some fun! Some fun! Little did I know about the trouble we’d end up in. It was just abominable.”

Banks says the police came from all sides and converged on the famous El Alemein fountain.

“It was then that it absolutely turned. The lights from the paddywagons. The lights from the houses in The Cross. It was just full on. The noise levels were overwhelming,” Sandy says. “There were the old tin garbage bins with the lids. So people were picking them up. They were flying across the streets. That was very, very dangerous.”

Sandy was arrested, picked up and thrown in the back of a paddy wagon. The bruises would be visible for weeks.

They weren't yet marching for things like marriage equality, adoption rights or family benefits. Their aim was something much simpler but infinitely more important. They wanted to be recognised as people. Homosexual sex was still illegal in NSW and would remain so for another six years.

“It was the one opportunity we thought we had to actually say, ‘Here we are. We’re not afraid. We’re out here and this is who we are. And we’re not going to live our lives in a closet’,” Sandy says.

52 others were arrested alongside Sandy. They spent the night in the freezing old Darlinghurst jail as her fellow marchers gathered on the outside, chanting and screaming for the release of their friends.

“There were 20 of us shoulder-to-shoulder. That was comforting. There were two blankets thrown in and there was no bottled water or anything. There was a large tin of water for us to have. It was just primitive.”

Eventually charges were dropped against all but a few of the rioters.

A few days later the Sydney Morning Herald published the names, addresses and occupations of everyone arrested, in the full knowledge that many of them would lose their jobs after being publicly outed.

This week, Fairfax offered a qualified apology.

"In 1978, The Sydney Morning Herald reported the names, addresses and professions of people arrested during public protests to advance gay rights. The paper at the time was following the custom and practice of the day," SMH editor Darren Goodsir said.

"We acknowledge and apologise for the hurt and suffering that reporting caused. It would never happen today."

On Thursday, the NSW government formally said sorry for the way the marchers were treated.

“For the mistreatment you suffered, as a member of this parliament which oversaw the events of that night, I apologise and say I’m sorry," government MP Bruce Notley-Smith said as the 78ers watched on from the public gallery.

“The actions you took on June 24 1978, the pain and suffering meted out to you on that night and afterwards was undeserved. On that evening, you lit a flame under the gay rights movement in Sydney that burned its way to law reform and acceptance.”

Peter Parks / AFP / Getty Images

Jane Dempster / AAPIMAGE

While the violence from that night has, thankfully, never been reenacted, the battles being fought by Australia's LGBT community are far from over.

From the AIDS crisis and police brutality of the 80s to the political activism of the 90s and today’s battle for marriage equality and transgender rights, Mardi Gras has always been an opportunity for people who have been pushed to the fringes of society to take centre stage for one night a year.

But that doesn't mean the parade hasn't faced significant criticism. At the peak of the AIDS crisis in the 80s, there were calls for the whole thing to be shut down. In 1994 the parade was broadcast on television for the first time, bringing the ABC its best ever Sunday night ratings and drawing a new level of national attention to the parade.

It's been through several identity crises. In the '90s there was anger over the inclusion of bisexual and heterosexual marchers, while in 2011 Mardi Gras organisers faced criticism for removing the words “Gay and Lesbian” from its name. After a backlash, the name was restored.

At times the parade has been criticised as either too commercial, too sexual or too far away from where it began - as a place for political activism and to agitate for LGBT advancement.

Last year conservative commentator Andrew Bolt was exasperated to learn that there was no anti-ISIS float in the parade.

Sandy Banks herself has done her best to avoid the march since that freezing night in 1978.

“I didn’t like the commercialism. I thought, ‘I have no interest here. I don’t have any common platform with what’s being promoted. And so therefore I’m not going to come’,” she says.

By far the loudest opposition to the parade - the yin to the 78ers yang - is NSW MP Reverend Fred Nile.

Perhaps Australia’s most famous religious conservative, the reverend has spent his life fighting against the forces of immorality - and since 1979, one of his favourite targets has been the Mardi Gras.

Mardi Gras, and Nile’s annual denunciations of the event, have become so intertwined it’s hard to imagine one without the other. Like clockwork, each year Nile prays for rain over the parade route in an attempt to keep revellers away from the festivities.

[When asked by BuzzFeed News if he’s ever considered that the scantily clad, fit gay men who make up many of the parade’s numbers won’t mind getting a bit wet, he replies that it’s not just about the marchers.

“I’m sure it doesn’t bother them at all. But I know it does upset the floats. A lot of it is made of soft material so it does some damage.”]

But it hasn’t always been this way. Nile says he was broadly supportive of the marchers’ anger at police in 1978.

“It was a protest around the way they’d been treated by the police, and I understand that. I wasn’t against the protest march,” he says.

His opposition to the event began the next year, and hasn’t abated since. Central to it is his belief that the parade is used as a recruitment tool to encourage the “gay lifestyle”.

“[Mardi Gras] has had a big influence on public opinion, and the views of young people and so on, who are exposed to it. And that does concern me,” he says.

Mitchell Burke / NEWZULU

Nile also objects to “nudity and blasphemy” that he says makes up so much of the march, and argues police should uphold the same standards they would uphold on the other 364 nights of the year.

Nile claims police have told him that on any other night, many marchers would be fined for the way they’re dressed, but on Mardi Gras they get a free pass.

“Every group in society has a right in a democracy, if they wish to have a march or a parade… as long as they uphold the community standards and the state law as to what can happen on the public streets of Sydney.”

On that front, Nile isn't alone. Last year, a widely-shared piece written by gay Sydney journalist Gavin Fernando, said the parade made him less proud to be a gay man.

"I don’t understand the abundance of glitter. I don’t understand the hairy near-naked blokes grinding and wrestling in crotch-tight spandex at Fair Day, or swinging on float poles. I don’t understand the undeniable fact that sex — glorious as it is — is everywhere you look, walk and breathe. I mainly don’t understand the implication that I’m automatically connected to this display by means of my sexual orientation," he wrote.

Tracey Nearmy / AAPIMAGE / Anna Mendoza

Arguments against the parade's commercialism haven't gone away either. Among the sponsors this year will be the ANZ bank, Facebook and the state of NSW. It’s a long way from the radical queer activists marching simply to be recognised as human beings.

Today, activists say the sponsorship is nice, but it shouldn’t be used to turn the focus of Mardi Gras away from important issues.

“We're talking about multinational corporations who do big business with a lot of other countries around the world that are not LGBTI supportive, or more than that they're actually openly discriminatory if not violent," Nic Holas, a queer activist and writer, wrote for Fairfax last year.

"It's all very good to say 'yes, we're inclusive and yes we're pro marriage equality and we love the gays' but if they're directly profiting off work with other nations that are doing the exact opposite that's pink washing. Marketing is effective when it comes to making corporates appear more human but the profit will always drive the decision-making process.”

All these factors have combined to give Mardi Gras something of an identity crisis. What is Mardi Gras in 2016? Given the significant advances in LGBT rights since 1978, is there really much left worth fighting for?

In 2016, some of the loudest messages will be coming from transgender Australians, their families and friends.

Marching for the first time will be Lisa Cuda, the mother of a transgender son.

"I’m marching to show that I don’t just have a transgender child, but I celebrate that child, I completely support them. I think Mardi Gras is a real celebration of diversity, and I really want that to be out in the public," she says.

To critics who say Mardi Gras is no longer relevant as a political movement in 2016, Lisa says for her and her son, the battle is just beginning. She wants the world to know that trans Australians are still fighting for basic rights, like the ability to change a birth certificate or gain access to vital medical services.

"It’s really important that we are visual, for the basic fact that we have been locked in basements and closets for too many generations, and now we’re not prepared to take a backseat in life," she says. "It sends a very important message to the next generation that there are people in the community who are like them and are visible, and celebrated and proud."

Another float making its way up Oxford Street is the No Pride In Detention float.

Lead organiser Evan van Zijl told BuzzFeed News the float is designed to keep the political spirit of Mardi Gras alive.

“There’s this huge radical history that’s contesting the idea that homophobia is something that’s allowed to happen. We’re reclaiming space, challenging society using the concept of pride.”

Supplied

A joint project from the Refugee Action Coalition, Community Action Against Homophobia and the Riff Raff Marching Band, the float intends to project the message that Australian asylum seeker policy is an explicitly queer issue.

“When we say ‘They will never be settled here’, what that means is settling them in PNG – where homosexuality is criminalised,” said van Zijl. “It’s time we stop assuming people on the ground are dumb, or don’t care, or are middle of the road. They’re not. They want change.”

Marching alongside Lisa and Evan this year will be Sandy. After avoiding the parade almost every year since 1978, she says she's realised that to be involved and send a message is more important than ever.

"I’ve come to realise that being out and speaking up is actually some incentive to younger people," she says. "The thing that I think is a positive now is that Mardi Gras is aimed at people right across the board. It’s not aimed at the educated, it’s got working class roots. They’re there in their thousands."

"Also, the different work groups like the police are there. And that is good. Not that I will ever forget my memory about the police. I’ll never forgive being bashed the way I was. However, I’ve realised too that times have changed. We are hopefully moving forward. There is still homophobia and bullying in workplaces. There are high rates of suicide, a lot of them young gay people in country and regional areas."

As Sandy discusses the big issues that face the LGBT community today, there's still a hint of the queer revolutionary who took on police way back in 1978.

"Gay marriage is obviously what people are wanting at the moment. I’m not a strong supporter of gay marriage, because I believe it’s just sort of replicating heterosexual behaviour and that we never, ever really wanted that."

"I never really wanted to be the same as everyone else. I just wanted to have our rights."

Students at the Al-Fatah Pesantren, during Eid al-Fitr celebrations, August 12, 2015.

Ulet Ifansasti / Getty Images

A Muslim academy for transgender women that made headlines in the U.S. and Europe since opening in 2008 was closed on Thursday by officials in Indonesia's Yogyakarta region following protests by an organization calling itself the Islamic Jihad Front.

The head of the local jurisdiction home to the school, known as the Al Fatah Pesantren, confirmed its closure to BuzzFeed News on Friday. It is the latest development in an uproar over LGBT rights that began in January, which has caught the country's LGBT activists by surprise. Until last month, anti-LGBT rhetoric was not a major feature of politics in Indonesia, which is home to more Muslims than any nation in the world. The country has long been home to a community of transgender women known as waria, and the school — which has about 40 students — has received so much attention in the Western press in part because it symbolized pluralism and strands of progressive Islam that distinguished Indonesia's religious life.

The storm over LGBT issues began in January when the minister with oversight of higher education pronounced LGBT student groups to be incompatible with “standards of values and morals” expected at the country's universities.

Though some political leaders appear to have tried to quiet the uproar, others are eagerly pouring flames on the fire. On Monday, Defense Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu suggested the LGBT community is more dangerous than nuclear weapons, because "it skews the mindset of our nation away from our base ideology." On Friday, former Information and Communications Minister Tifatul Sembering, who now is an MP from the Islamist Prosperous Justice Party, tweeted, “A saying of the Prophet [Mohamed]: Whomever you find committing the acts of the community of Lot (homosexual) should be put to death," though he later deleted the tweet.

Until this year, the Al Fatah Pesantren operated without major problems, according to the school's director, Shinta Ratri, who spoke to BuzzFeed News by phone this week. In fact, she said, the country's waria community wasn't even perceived as connected to gays and lesbians nor the activists with ties to international LGBT organizations.

"Before people still understood that waria is separate from LGBT, but now even us waria have been becoming part of the LGBT," she said.

They had never had trouble with the Islamic Jihad Front, an organization founded around the same time as the school that claims 150 members. The organization's purpose is to "improve the public's understanding of Islam" and tackle “social disease,” said a man known as Darohman in Indonesian and Abu Dzaki in Arabic in a phone interview with BuzzFeed News. He is the leader of the group's "militia" which also has taken action to shut down a karaoke bar, harass Shiite muslims, and close a Christian church supposedly operating without a proper license, according to the group's website.

Last Friday morning, Darrohman told Buzzfeed News, the group broadcast a text message to its members that read, "We invite all Muslim Brothers to REFUSE and SHUTTER" the school. It was called an "Invitation to uphold what is right and rejecting what is wrong."

Darrohman told BuzzFeed News the group moved on the waria school because they'd heard the group was working on drafting fiqih — codes on religious obligations — for transgender women, and wanted "an official explanation."

The school's organizer's had heard about the text message before a group of 20 FJI members showed up, and the students of the school had fled to an office of a legal aid organization, Shinta said, and the local police responded to protect the school.

"We will provide security without any time limit; this is my territory," the local police commander, Suharno, said to CNN Indonesia. "We will also deploy [officers] to watch every day, every second to do security."

But on Thursday, a local official announced that they would close the school and ban religious activities on the grounds citing concerns about "public order," the Jakarta Post reported.

The head of the local government, Jati Bayubroto of the Bangun Papan subdistrict of Bantul, Yogyakarta, told BuzzFeed News by phone that the school was also facing complaints from neighbors over issues like noise and congestion when they held events. It meant in a house belonging to Shinta's relative and the neighbors said it also hosted karaoke and served alcohol. But, he said, the neighbors were also afraid that they would be targeted by groups like the FJI.

"For almost two years, people have been tolerant to the activities at the house of Ibu Shinta’s relative," he said. "But when the situation is threatening security, they are afraid something could happen in the neighborhood. They demand the closure of the place. In addition, they are also afraid that their activities could negatively affect the local kids."

The decision to close the school followed a meeting organized by local officials between the FJI and the school's organizers, which a lawyer for the school told the Jakarta Post was rigged against the school.

"The FJI's pressure is not a legal regulation that must be followed," the lawyer, Aditia Arief Firmanto, told the paper.

Shinta declined to speak to reporters after the meeting, telling the Jakarta Post by text message, "I am psychologically tired."

But she vowed she would continue fighting to provide religious instruction to her students when she spoke to BuzzFeed News earlier in the week.

"I will not give up to provide facility to our friends in the waria community to worship, to practice the Islamic way," she said.

Brosko / Getty Images

We've heard a lot from politicians, lobbyists and activists this week about the Safe Schools Coalition program, but we haven't heard much from the young LGBT people who may have benefited from it. Here's what they have to say about growing up queer in Australia.

"I haven't come out to anyone in real life but all my friends [online] know I'm transgender. Most my friends are a part of LGBT+, too.

We've had slurs used against us, watched teachers tell a lesbian couple to stop holding hands while heterosexual couples hug and kiss a few metres away from them.

The use of slurs in an everyday environment and the lack of teachers calling out students for using said words irks me, too. I told a classmate not to use "tranny" and she ended up pitting all her friends against me. - Scout, 15.

Brosko / Getty Images

"When I was younger I wanted nothing more than just to fit in. We moved around quite a bit and when you’re always the new kid you want nothing more than to feel like you belong somewhere. Just as I was hitting the developing stages of puberty, we immigrated to Australia and I had to start high school somewhere new.

My family is quite Catholic and I went to a Catholic high school, so from the start there was already a set notion of what the 'right' relationships are and what the 'right' attractions were. I saw gay kids being bullied, and 'faggot' or 'poofter' being thrown around every couple of minutes, and it just created this idea in my head that this was a bad thing to be.

By year ten, naturally I was a mess. I’d spent my whole life in this culture and it was chipping away at me bit by bit. I started thinking about hurting myself and committing suicide to just end all the conflict inside my head. I was so lonely and isolated, I was too scared to talk to my friends and couldn’t show any signs to my parents because I don’t know how they would react (to this day I’m still not out to them). I felt like I was about to explode and just needed help, thank god I spoke to one of the school counsellors (who had previously been my English teacher) and she helped through this horrific time.

I know that without a doubt that counsellor saved my life. But I could only speak to her because she had been my teacher before and she was really tiresome in finding out what was truly bothering me. I don’t know what would’ve happened to me if I didn’t ask for help or went to a different counsellor who was prejudiced against LGBT people or who was deeply religious.

So when I hear about new initiatives like the Safe Schools Coalition, I’m grateful that there’s a program out there helping young kids - both LGBT and non-LGBT alike - understand what it’s like to be different and to never feel ashamed of who they are. If it helps just one lost kid out there start accepting themselves before they get to the brink like I was, surely we’re doing something right?" - Michael, 20-years-old

Brosko / Getty Images

"I came out to my guidance counsellor in year 12 at high school. I went to a deeply Catholic college in Mornington, Victoria. I would say it's a pretty conservative area, mostly white and mostly liberal.

In my second session with her she expressed her concern for my "condition" and told me it was a phase. After some argument and a lot of confusion I told her it wasn't a phase and she concluded that it would be better for my life and my family's life if I didn't come out and just lived a "normal" life.

So for the next six years I tried to be "normal". I dated guys and developed horrendous anxiety and depression. In the 6th year (age 23) I decided enough was enough and came out... I immediately felt a weight off my shoulders!!! My friends were amazing, my family suspected and didn't care as long as I was happy and I am now a very happy person living my true life!!!" - Courtney

Brosko / Getty Images

“I didn’t learn the word “transgender” until I was 17 after stumbling on it on YouTube. By that time I’d gone through an irreversible puberty that was completely wrong for who I am.

Despite my parents and friends being such a support in most areas of my life, they couldn’t understand what I was going through and talking through my emotions and feelings inevitably became awkward and emotionally distressing.

It took me years to finally research, discover and put words to my experiences and by that time I was an adult and had had years of my life taken up by needless anxiety, depression and feelings of loneliness.

I’d had to stop doing sport and extra curricular activities while my academic study suffered as I became extremely sick at the age of 16. It wasn’t being trans that made me feel so isolated at school it was the fact that I did not have the freedom or support to be myself.

If I or if any of the people around me had had the knowledge or understanding of LGBT experiences, then I honestly believe that I would not have struggled so much with my own identity. Now surrounded by amazing support.” - Rory, 20, a transgender man

Brosko / Getty Images

"I was very lucky in a sense when I came out. My parents and all of my closest friends were very supportive. I didn't experience constant bullying from others during school but there were a few times that I felt very insecure about expressing who I was to others.

I think the worst experience I had while at school was after an 18th party and someone had started a rumor that I taken advantage of highly intoxicated (straight) girl when all I did was try to help her sober up, held her hair back when she puked and was a shoulder for her to lean on when she passed out.

None of her friends bothered to help her that night so I did. When I got to school on the Monday I felt like all eyes were on me, everyone was talking about me behind my back and saying that what I 'did' was disgusting and could be classified as rape.

When I eventually couldn't take anymore I told some teachers what was going on, a few were very helpful but some just didn't know what to do or how to handle the situation and told me that maybe I just shouldn't be so nice to other girls if I don't want things to spread.

This then lead me to rethink every interaction I had with another female while I was at school. I was scared to say the normal "I like your hair/nails/makeup today" because I was terrified that they would somehow take it as me confessing my love for them. This also didn't help the anxiety issues I was already experiencing due to the stress of VCE." - Abbie, 18, identifies as gay

Brosko / Getty Images

"I'm 19 this year, and I'm still not comfortable coming out to everyone in my life. I've known I was different since I was about 10, but it wasn't until I was 16 that I realised I might like girls as well as liking boys.

It was at the beginning of 2013, and I realised that I might like girls when I saw this girl (who up until now I just thought of as a friend that I wanted a closer relationship to) come down the stairs and grin at me, and my heart started thumping really hard and I felt like my stomach was trying to come out of my mouth.

I tried to repress it a little, but I ended up coming out to one of the mothers at my dance school before I told anyone else. She made it very clear to me that what I felt was okay, and completely normal, and that I shouldn’t ever try and push down any emotion, no matter what it was.

This was hard for me to understand at first, because in my health class in year 9, the only thing that I remember was our teacher telling my entire class not to come out in high school, because kids were cruel and you were just inviting people to bully you.

That teacher’s statement has stuck with me throughout the years, and it’s only in the past few months or so that I’ve felt comfortable coming out to people outside my immediate family." - Hannah

Brosko / Getty Images

"Personally, my experiences at school haven’t been touched by Safe Schools, but I think that provides a bit of evidence as to why they are so important. I haven’t experienced any outright explicit homophobia; which makes me one of the lucky few.

This said, internalised societal homophobia is rife in schools, and the environment around me at the time I felt ready to come out pushed me back further into the closet. Whilst I had grown to accept my identity, mostly after pioneers of the gay community spoke out about their experiences, many online, I still felt as though those around me wouldn't be accepting.

As school captain of my high school, I felt as though if I told even my closest friends my identity, that it would spread around the school, ending in the platform I had being taken away from me. In the beginning of my high school, almost every day I’d have an accusation that I was gay, which sort of solidified in my mind that my identity was a negative thing, something that I should furiously deny, which I did.

Even after I came out to my parents at the end of year 10 I was still reluctant to come out to many people at school; the traditional masculine straight boy groups were still causing me fear for the next six months.

Sex ed in years 8 and 9 completely ignored the idea that perhaps there were LGBT students in the class, focusing purely on heterosexual relationships, something that obviously impacts on my relationships now. The worst instance of homophobia I’ve heard from people around me was aimed at my boyfriend, who attends a private school. He entered the bathroom at his school, and heard a couple of guys say “hey it’s [name], let’s get out of here!”, upon which they then ran out of the bathroom. You can only imagine how these same guys would react upon seeing a trans guy enter their bathroom.

Safe Schools is important because we need to be able to express our sexuality at school. We need to be able to feel comfortable about who we are whilst at school, with our families and in general.

Schools are the place where we are meant to find ourselves, where we are meant to feel comfortable and make friends, but without programs advocating for inclusion and acceptance, there will still be kids who experience homophobia and transphobia. These issues can no longer be seen as lesser, these are issues at the forefront of the civil rights fight of our generation, and we can’t let homophobic conservative politicians dictate to us the value of our identities." - Brady, 17, identifies as gay.

Brosko / Getty Images

"I figured out I wasn't straight when I was about 14, but I didn't feel comfortable with it until I left high school. My school wasn't super conservative, but didn't have support systems for LGBTQIA kids either.

I probably learnt more about sexuality and gender from Glee than I did from six years of high school. It wasn't even that people were intentionally homophobic, but that friends would say stuff that they didn't realise was hurtful. One of my friends was even outed without their consent. I only felt comfortable with who I was at when I started uni and found the queer collective." - Roison, 19, identifies as bisexual.

Brosko / Getty Images

"One time in grade 10 when I had a crush on a girl and didn't really deny it, a group of boys found me, cornered me, and called me a dyke over and over again. When I was in grade 6, which was when I was just starting to explore my attraction towards girls, when this guy caught me staring at this girl I liked in class and he turned to his friends and imitated me staring at this girl. He called out to her and told her in front of the entire class.

Growing up, I always felt that I was never learning about me. It was always about a man and a woman, never ever about anything to do with queer people. It took me a long time to figure out who I was sexuality-wise, and when I came out when I was 16, nobody could relate to me.

I'm lucky because we live in a world where coming out is accepted, but I never felt like I had heaps of people to talk to and look up to. It's almost as if we were left to decide for ourselves without having both sides of the story.

Instead of knowing I was queer since I started my education I was taught how to be straight and I hated myself. After I came out, people heard what I had to say, said 'cool' and then left it at that. There was never any conversation about it and nobody would talk openly about questioning their sexuality because we were taught to be straight or be silent." - Sophie, 18, identifies as bisexual.

Brosko / Getty Images

"The majority of the issues I faced throughout school were based purely around a lack of knowledge and an excess amount of fear. Anything that can educate people and cut down the fear of the unknown is something all schools should require.

I once got into an argument with someone about football, and they ended up calling me a dyke for disagreeing with them - it wasn't about whether I liked girls or not, it was about humiliating me.

Teachers starting and leading discussions about 'trannies' in male prisons, and laughing when an argument between students began. Conversations about same-sex marriage and LGBT couples adopting would take place with no thought about whether any LGBT kids were in the classroom, and how they'd feel when 'freedom of speech' was more important than making them feel comfortable in their own school. - Kelsey, 18, identifies as gay.

Brosko / Getty Images

"I grew up in the relatively new outer Canberra suburb of Calwell. It was as this suburb grew that I grew into a young person. I was to the outside world a lanky, geeky, pubescent male with all the hallmarks of someone you expect to be playing dungeons and dragons at lunchtime. This was my youth. It was not fantastic or is something I choose to visit often. My primary issue throughout high school (and primary school for that matter) was bullying. Due to the fact I never really showed any interest in anyone (male or female) and my dislike of almost all sporting activities meant it was assumed I was gay.

I was bullied. Bad. I remember being told I was gay or a tranny, or something similar since I was about 13. I remember people chasing me down the corridor to hit me for in any way appearing gay. I remember one day being told I was gay by another student at a party I went too. So strong was their conviction I was gay that they even gave the evidence that they had seen me hugging another boy. I of course didn’t respond. I was taught, rightly or wrongly, that defending yourself against bullies would mean they got bored and stopped. Bullies took that response as a challenge. The boy I was hugging was a friend who had just been told his sister had been raped by their uncle for the last three years. When she [the sister] finally came back to school, she herself was called a lesbian.

I went into a deep depression at this stage. Wandering the school in a sort of stupor at lunch and recess. Ignoring my friends. Ignoring everyone. This wasn’t the first time, but this was the worst.

Clearly being gay, or trans, or a lesbian meant you were in for a life of cruelty. The one thing that really drove this idea into my young adolescent brain was when I was crash tackled outside in one of the depressive wanderings and had deodorant sprayed on me by a gang of other students and then someone tried to set me alight. All the time they called me “gay fag.”

At the end of the day I went home and tried to kill myself.

The next day I went to school again, and hoped that I could report this incident. I did so and it turned our that my main attackers were not even from my school. They had been told of me by students from my school and helped to find me. They attacked me on school property then left. No one would admit to even the relatively minor (in the school welfare officer's mind) crime of supporting them.

I was on my own. So I kept my darkest secret, that I liked to cross dress and I wanted to be female, a very closely guarded secret. Lest their be a similar incident.

It wasn’t until years of repression, secret cross dressing, and lying to myself that I finally came out as a trans women to my friends and family. And I have never been happier in myself.

I really hope that there is another kid out there like me who is able to actually feel safe at school being who they are, and that people realise that they are important and should be safe. - Anne, Canberra

*Some of these stories have been edited for clarity.

To learn more about depression, check out the resources at BeyondBlue Australia or ReachOut. If you are dealing with thoughts of suicide, you can speak to someone immediately at Lifeline Australia on 13 11 14.

“Hey girl, you don’t just look good you look lesBIEN”

This description of your dating life.

Via jennserr.tumblr.com

And this explanation of trying to find a date.

Fox / Via skyfiregirl.tumblr.com

This double standard.

@lm_Tricia / Via lizard-stardust.tumblr.com

This excellent visual pun.

Via lacigreen.tumblr.com

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AP / David Goldman

In the first legislative session after the Supreme Court ruled for same-sex couples' marriage rights, Republican-led capitols across the country are home to an unprecedented number of bills to protect religious freedom or allow people to deny services based on their faith.

At least 105 bills were filed so far this year, more than double the number in 2015, according to data from the American Civil Liberties Union.

None of this year's bills have become law — most legislative sessions are still in full swing — but bills in eight states have picked up momentum, from Oklahoma to Georgia. Several have passed out of committee, while others have passed out of the full house or senate.

Some proposals are mild, such as a bill in Florida that affirms the existing rights of clergy and churches to refuse to wed a couple.

Other bills gaining traction, however, chart new ground. A measure in Georgia would give individuals a legal defense if they refuse service based on a religious objection. A bill in Mississippi seeks to protect someone who denies marriage-related goods or declines non-emergency medical services to a transgender person. In Oklahoma, a proposal would protect adoption agencies that turn away parents, and in Tennessee, a bill would provide immunity to counselors who turn away clients.

A fifth of the bills filed this year reflect variations of the religious freedom laws approved last spring in Indiana and Arkansas.

A summary of the bills moving forward is below.

Advocates for the measures say they are resisting a tectonic encroachment on their free speech and exercise of religion — particularly in light of bans on same-sex couples' marriages being struck down this past June and nondiscrimination laws that lack exemptions for people of faith.

"Lawmakers have stepped up to shore up freedoms we have always had as Americans, because they understand those freedoms are at risk," Greg Scott, a spokesman for the Alliance Defending Freedom, told BuzzFeed News.

Scott, whose group provides support to lawmakers working on religious freedom bills, added, "The stakes have never been higher and the intentions of those who oppose religious freedom have never been clearer."

But LGBT advocates, who have been trying to stymie the bills by teaming up with pro-LGBT businesses, argue religion is being used as a guise to promote discrimination.

"As the opposition has fewer issues left to stand on, they are now turning to religious refusals, and, more dangerously, anti-transgender bills as their last stand against the LGBT community,” Dan Rafter, a spokesman for the group Freedom for All Americans, said in an interview with BuzzFeed News.

As a result, he said, "The level of activity this legislative session is unprecedented.”

"People are allowed to have their own religious beliefs, and that is why they are already so strongly protected, but you can’t impose them on others, especially if that means denying them services — like denying access to a homeless shelter or access into a restaurant.”

Georgia

House Bill 757 was among the mildest of eight religious freedom bills introduced in Georgia this year. But in a sudden twist, it transformed into a lightning rod.

The house originally passed the bill Feb. 11 as a so-called Pastor Protection Act, which would affirm existing rights of clergy and religious organizations to refuse services that clash with their faith. Those rights are widely considered already guaranteed by laws on the books and the Constitution.

However, a senate committee last week broadly amended the bill. The full senate on Feb. 19 approved a version that would also ban government from penalizing an individual or faith-based organization for acting in accordance with their religious opposition to same-sex marriage.

Rafter and other LGBT advocates contend this would give people and groups carte blanche to refuse services to gay couples, and that the bill’s definition of a faith-based organizations is so ambiguous that it may encompass for-profit businesses that express a religious point of view.

But it is unclear which version, if any, will become law. Because the house and senate bills are so different, the house would need to affirm the senate’s expanded version — and house leaders are holding back.

Businesses and LGBT groups have leaned on Republican House Speaker David Ralston to block the new version.

However, Kaleb McMichen, a spokesman for Ralston, told BuzzFeed News that religious conservatives also applied counter-pressure. McMichen said the house is likely to approve a compromise between the two versions of the bill before adjourning on March 24.

“Like most things,” he said, “I think it is going to be somewhere in the middle.”

Mississippi

House Bill 1523 is a broad proposal to protect the rights of those who oppose marriage equality — and believe sex should be restricted to married straight couples — while also protecting those opposed to recognizing the gender identity of transgender people.

The Mississippi House passed it on Feb. 19; it is now in the senate.

The 13-page measure prohibits the government from “discriminating” against people for acting on their religious convictions.

In defining “discriminating,” the bill says government could not fine, withhold loans, give bad grades, refuse to hire, or take dozens of other retaliatory acts against individuals acting on their faith. The measure would protect, among others, people who deny services at a business, refuse marriage-related goods, and refuse non-emergency medical services to transgender people. The government also could not penalize a religious organization for denying housing, employment, or services.

Tennessee

Senate Bill 1556 and House Bill 1840 would give counselors and therapists immunity from liability if they refuse service to someone whose behaviors conflicts with their religious beliefs.

The senate passed its bill on Feb. 17, including an exemption in cases when clients are in “imminent risk of harming themselves or others.” A house committee is scheduled to take up the measure on March 1.

West Virginia

House Bill 4012 is a Religious Freedom Restoration Act, known as a RFRA, that has passed the house and has been referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Much like a federal law of the same name, the bill says the government “may not substantially burden a person's right to exercise of religion” unless the government has a compelling reason and uses the least restrictive means possible.

Twenty-one states already have variations on RFRAs on the books.

LGBT advocates have raised concern about these laws, but it is not clear they would provide a successful case against discrimination complaints — particularly those that mirror the narrowly written federal law. But, LGBT advocates say, it is unclear how the laws could be interpreted by courts.

Kentucky

A senate committee passed SB 180 on Thursday, just one week after it was introduced. The fast-moving legislation would protect people who provide creative services — such as wedding cakes or floral arrangements — and apparently override the eight local ordinances in Kentucky that ban LGBT discrimination.

Specifically, the proposal builds on the state’s RFRA. It says that no ordinance or public agency shall restrict the rights of people who provide “customized, artistic, expressive, creative, ministerial, or spiritual goods or services.”

As WCPO reported, “The bill comes after the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Human Rights Commission ordered a Christian T-shirt company to get diversity training for refusing to print shirts for a gay pride festival. A state judge overturned the order, but an appeals court is reviewing the case.”

The bill now heads to the full senate, which some believe will vote on the measure by next week.

Missouri

Missouri lawmakers are attempting to place a constitutional amendment on the ballot with Senate Joint Resolution 39, which had its first committee hearing on Wednesday. If the bill is passed by the legislature and the amendment is approved by voters, the legislation would protect individuals and religious organizations from activities that clash with their faith.

“The state cannot penalize an individual who declines, due to sincere religious beliefs, to provide goods of expressional or artistic creation for a same sex wedding ceremony,” says a bill summary, which adds that religious organizations could not be penalized for refusing to perform a same-sex couple's wedding or refusing to allow one on its property.

Florida

A couple companion bills moving through the Florida legislature would affirm the right of clergy and religious organizations to deny services based on their religious beliefs. Both Senate Bill 110 and House Bill 43 are out of committee and appear to be heading to floor votes next week.

Oklahoma

House Bill 2428 says the state could not deny contracts to religious adoption agencies — which typically receive taxpayer funding — even if they turn away parents due to a religious objection.

Specifically, according to a legislative analysis, “The measure provides that no state agency may refuse to contract or enter into an agreement with a child welfare service provider because the provider declines to provide or refer for a child welfare service that conflicts with the provider’s religious beliefs or moral convictions ....”

It was passed by Feb. 16 by the Children, Youth and Family Services Committee and now heads to the full house.

Michigan approved a similar law last June.

In all of these states, Republican backers of the bills say they are intent on protecting the faithful.

Eunice Rho, advocacy and policy counsel for the ACLU, which has tracked the bills, disagreed. “The pattern is crystal clear,” she said in a statement. “These bills are all aimed at chipping away at the rights of LGBT people under the false guises of freedom and safety.”

Scott, from Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), countered that people characterizing the bills as anti-LGBT “are wrong.”

“There has never been a ‘right’ to coerce someone, particularly an artist or creative professional, to produce speech or participate in the celebration of events that burden their consciences," he wrote in an email to BuzzFeed News. "The introduction of same-sex marriage, as religious freedom and freedom of conscience advocates like ADF have long warned, has already led to a tectonic shift in many areas of law and policy related to religious freedom and free speech."

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facebook.com

On Friday, Indonesia's former Information and Communications Minister Tifatul Sembering, tweeted, “A saying of the Prophet [Mohamed]: Whomever you find committing the acts of the community of Lot (homosexual) should be put to death.”

Sembering is now a member of Parliament from the Islamist Prosperous Justice Party. His tweet is the latest example of a rise in anti-LGBT rhetoric by high-profile politicians in an uproar that began in January. On Monday, Defense Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu said the LGBT community is more dangerous than nuclear weapons, because “it skews the mindset of our nation away from our base ideology.”

Sembering later deleted the tweet in response to online criticism. A few people, including religious studies scholar Akhmad Sahal, suggested Sembering was importing the rhetoric of ISIS, which has publicized the execution of many alleged gay men that it justifies with this same passage of scripture, to Indonesia.

One local paper reported that the former minister had been "bullied," and Sembering tweeted that he had been silenced after simply quoting scripture.

As of publication, "just smile" is winning with 49% of the vote.

youtube.com / Via youtube.com

A group of LGBT artists in Kenya calling itself Art Attack came together to record a remix of Macklemore and Ryan Lewis's "Same Love" addressing homophobia in Africa. The accompanying music video was banned by Kenya's Film Classification Board one week after it appeared online earlier this month.

All the artists involved in making the video are LGBT, said Jojibaro Barasa, an activist and singer who appears in the video. Most of the musicians didn't want to be named out of fear of reprisals, Barasa said in message to BuzzFeed News, and he and others in the video have received threats since the video premiered.

"We wanted to tell real stories using real gays and lesbians," Barasa told BuzzFeed News. "We felt we have to continue talking about our rights because they were still being violated."

Footage in the video references the anti-LGBT legislation in neighboring Uganda, an anti-LGBT march in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, and even last year's pride march in Istanbul, Turkey, which police shut down with water canons.

Though no sustained anti-LGBT political campaign has taken hold in Kenya and the country's courts have handed LGBT activists some victories, there have been efforts to target LGBT people using the justification that Kenya law criminalizes homosexuality. The Kenya Film Classification Board reportedly censored the video because it was shot without required licenses and "it does not adhere to the morals of the country."

The ban was not a surprise, Barasa said, but it came faster than expected.

"We have no apologies whatsoever because it took us a lot of courage and resources to put everything together," Barasa said. "That is why the government was shaken to a point of releasing a press statement. To us the message reached home."

Watch the full video here.

youtube.com

Pray for Delphine.

A new teaser trailer for Orphan Black's fourth season was released last week, and unsurprisingly, it looks tense as heck.

BBC America / Via youtube.com

Sock monkeys on fire!

BBC America / Via youtube.com

A terrifying mouth apparatus!

BBC America / Via youtube.com

Creepy masks!

BBC America / Via youtube.com

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“I’m not racist, it’s just a preference.”

BuzzFeed Yellow / Via youtu.be

Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures

There’s a scene from Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994) in which the title character, played by Jim Carrey, is so disgusted with himself that he pukes in the toilet twice and has to empty an entire tube of toothpaste to brush his teeth. He then takes off all his clothes, puts them in a trash can, and burns them, before getting into the shower and weeping as the camera pans out. It’s a clear parody of scenes in dramas involving women who take showers after being sexually assaulted.

The traumatic event that caused this reaction? The discovery that Lois Einhorn, a female police detective played by Sean Young — who had just kissed Ace in a previous scene — is the same person as Ray Finkel, a man Ace suspects of kidnapping the Miami Dolphins’ mascot Snowflake and quarterback Dan Marino. The knowledge that Ace has kissed “a man” sends him into a shamed panic spiral. And when Ace reveals Einhorn’s former identity by forcibly exposing the bulge in her underwear to practically her entire police department at the end of the movie, all the men retch as Ace’s “real” woman love interest Melissa (Courteney Cox) observes in puzzlement.

Jim Carrey in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.

Warner Bros.

More than two decades later, Ace Ventura comes across as blatantly transmisogynist (a term the author Julia Serano coined to specify the intersection of transphobia and misogyny that trans women too often deal with). Lois ceases to be a full-fledged human being as soon as she’s revealed to be trans, so she can be subjected to such cruelties as having her body forcibly exposed for public display without consequence. Lois’s humiliation itself is the butt of the joke — and the men’s disgust centers the movie’s attempt at ick-factor body humor.

On the surface, there isn’t much comparison between Ace Ventura’s explicit transphobia and the in-bad-taste but certainly tamer jokes in two comedies that opened recently: Zoolander 2 and Deadpool. In a reprise of their roles as preening male supermodel Derek Zoolander and his sidekick Hansel, Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson have been supplanted as the most popular models on the planet by the nonbinary, agender model All (Benedict Cumberbatch). In Deadpool, Ryan Reynolds plays the pansexual title character prone to bawdy jokes about queer people.

But threading a line from comedies of the early '90s to those that feature transgender themes today reveals that even though there has been steady progress in humanizing trans characters, harmful stereotypes still plague trans women and gender-nonconforming characters. Transfeminine people are nearly always presented as villains and objects of derision or disgust, especially in comparison to conventionally attractive cisgender love interests.

The last 25 years of evolving transgender themes in mainstream comedy also demonstrate the projections and fears of the cisgender men both behind and in front of the camera. Trans characters — particularly trans women — are often inserted into a comedy’s narrative to fulfill a gross-out shock factor (“Lol! I can’t believe a ‘normal’ man got tricked into sleeping with a disgusting, ‘abnormal’ she-male!” is the audience reaction these filmmakers are going for). The audience is also supposed to laugh because a man has been “deceived” by these women, and straight male viewers can take comfort since the humiliation is not their own. The way trans characters are used and abused exemplifies the lengths heterosexual cisgender men will go to demonize trans women in order to deny them womanhood, as well as reaffirm their own desperately fragile masculinity.

The '90s, When Trans Women Were Disgusting Villains

If Ace Ventura marked the full-fledged incorporation of transphobia into movie comedies, then Soapdish (1991) was an essential precursor. In that movie, a scheming Montana Moorehead (Cathy Moriarty) tries to topple Celeste Talbert (Sally Field), as the star of the soap opera The Sun Also Sets, by seducing producer David Seton Barnes (Robert Downey Jr.). After a series of twists and turns involving David and Montana conniving to give Celeste more and more absurd and unsympathetic scenes to act out so the show’s fans would reject her, it’s brought to light that Montana used to be Milton Moorehead; cast and crew react in horror and wonderment, while Montana runs from the set in shame.

Though the transgender-woman-as-villain trope in American movie comedies did not originate with Soapdish — that dubious honor arguably belongs to the roundly panned film adaptation of Gore Vidal’s novel Myra Breckinridge (1970) — the '90s comedy demonstrated the trope's effectiveness as a modern plot device. Montana’s “transgender reveal” is a shocking and absurd twist that elucidates her deceitful nature; if she lied about being trans, then she’s a liar at heart. David, who’d slept with her, attempts to control his retching reaction, as he excuses himself from the set to presumably vomit.

By the time Ace Ventura and Jim Carrey’s over-the-top antics rolled around in 1994, the forced exposure of a character’s trans status was amplified by using the outlines of her genitals. In between Soapdish and Ace Ventura was the much-talked-about drama The Crying Game (1992), which became a cause célèbre when, during what feels like a gritty drama involving the love affair between a man and a woman, the woman is shown to have a penis and the man pukes in the bathroom.

Leslie Nielsen in Naked Gun 33 ⅓.

Paramount Pictures

Ace Ventura is an overt comedic take on this revelation, as was Naked Gun 33 ⅓ (1994) from the same year. In that movie, police detective Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) has an ongoing flirtation with the villain’s girlfriend and accomplice Tanya Peters (Anna Nicole Smith), who attempts to seduce him several times during the movie. Near the end of the film, the two find themselves alone in a dressing room at the Academy Awards, when Tanya undresses in silhouette and her shadow gives away her penis. Frank reacts in utter disgust, and ends up puking inside a tuba for laughs.

One of the major indicators of trans women’s villainy in these movies: They did not disclose their trans status. The fact that they’re killers, blackmailers, or terrorists is intertwined with them “hiding” their male past, though the humiliating revelation that they’re trans is typically treated as more shocking and important than the crimes they’ve committed. The exposure of these women becomes synonymous with “catching” them; there’s no meaningful difference made between finding out a woman is trans and discovering that she’s a criminal.

In the end, movies that depict trans women as deceitful, disgusting villains divulge more about the cisgender male psyche than they do about transgender women (after all, the filmmakers and writers who imagined these characters are overwhelmingly cisgender men). The trans-woman-as-villain plot device represents men’s fear of being duped into sacrificing their heterosexual male privilege by deigning to sleep with a person they consider to be a man.

Seen in this way, the puking reaction to trans revelation in these movies is not really borne of disgust at the women themselves, who are played by conventionally-attractive cisgender actresses — rather, the disgust is borne of men’s self-loathing for continuing to be attracted to these women.

2000–2015: When Trans Women Were Obstacles for Weak Men

Since the '90s, male-focused comedies have had a fascinating, almost obsessive preoccupation with transgender women, in movies like Dude Where’s My Car? (2000), The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005), and The Hangover Part 2 (2011), not to mention a plethora of TV comedies and movies with one-off gags at trans women’s expense, most notably in Ted 2 (2015). The message in these movies and shows is almost always that trans women are revolting and less than human.

Dude Where’s My Car? explicitly uses the trans woman-as-criminal trope, when Jesse and Chester (Ashton Kutcher and Seann William Scott), two teenage stoner dudes, wake up not knowing where their car is, and find themselves at a strip joint called the Kitty Kat Club. There they meet Tania (Teressa Tunney), a stripper who gave Jesse a lap dance the night before that he doesn’t end up remembering. Tania turns out to be a transgender thief who gave the guys a suitcase full of cash for safekeeping and wants it back.

There are the standard gags, inherited from '90s comedies, of Tania demonstrating the bulge in her underwear to come out as trans — at least she’s empowered enough to do it herself, rather than being outed against her will. Typically, Jesse reacts by retching. Tania also speaks in a low, masculine voice whenever she demands her money from Jesse and Chester, and an artificially feminine one when she doesn’t want people to know she’s trans. Tania’s voice (dubbed, since she’s played by a cis woman) is meant to once again underline the connection between “deceiving” other people and her criminal behavior.

Later movies of the 2000s have shied away from this trans woman as deceiver trope, replacing it instead with another method for distancing “normal” men from transgender attraction. In The 40-Year-Old Virgin, the virgin man in question, Andy (Steve Carell) gets set up with a transgender sex worker whom he rejects. Later, Andy confronts his friends about the incident, in a scene rife with transphobic jokes, designed to depict the trans woman as inhuman and disgusting.

Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, and Romany Malco in The 40-Year-Old Virgin.

Universal Pictures

Part of the joke is that Andy’s friend Jay (Romany Malco), who hired the sex worker, couldn’t tell she was trans despite the obvious signs. It’s curious that in a bro comedy genre dominated by white men (none of the previous movies discussed so far have any prominent male minority characters), it’s now the black guy who can’t tell an “obvious” trans woman apart from a cis woman. It seems as though the white male director (Judd Apatow) and screenwriters (Apatow and Carell) were hesitant to have a white man play the part of a trans-attracted male.

Of course, the other part of the joke is the vulgarity of Andy’s description — how he seems eager to denigrate the trans woman’s identity in the harshest words possible. The joke can be funny only if the audience, like the characters in the movie, refuses to treat the trans woman as a person. But we’re supposed to empathize with Andy’s plight and root for him to get properly laid, even if he’s this weird guy who’s 40 and hasn’t had sex. Andy finally succeeds when he ends up with a “normal” woman and has old-fashioned heterosexual sex by the end of the movie.

This contrast between the type of guy who ends up with a trans woman and the one who doesn’t is even more stark in The Hangover Part II, when the wimpy Stu (Ed Helms) is about to get married in Thailand and invites the debonair Phil (Bradley Cooper) to join him. When they end up getting drugged and blacking out, they retrace their steps and find out that Stu ended up having sex with a transgender bar girl the previous night, when they visit her dressing room at a club.

Ed Helms and Bradley Cooper in The Hangover Part II.

Warner Bros.

“Hey, you’re in Bangkok sweetie,” the bar girl begins, “There’s a reason they don’t call it Bangcunt.” She turns around to reveal her penis, and both Stu and Andy reel. The comedy in the rest of the scene comes from the woman detailing Stu’s exploits with her, including how much he enjoyed having sex with her and the fact that he was the bottom in their encounter. The soft, unmanly Stu flails and cries in misery while the type-A, macho Phil visibly tries to keep himself from puking, recalling the reaction of many men before him. Phil acts as the comforting, normative presence for the audience — the one straight guy viewers are supposed to identify with — in contrast to the inadequate Stu, who can now add an accidental attraction to trans women to his list of faults.

Phil’s solution to Stu’s distress is even more telling. “I promise you, no one’s going to ever find out about this,” Phil says when Stu asks him what he should do. And when Stu replies that he can’t prevent himself from knowing he’s had sex with a trans woman and enjoyed it, Phil consoles him further by saying: “You just forget. It goes away.”

This is the lesson these comedies want us to learn: Men should forget about their attractions to trans women or, if they can’t, at least not acknowledge their existence. To me, it’s clear that the revulsion expressed in these movies is simply a symptom of how much straight men are privately attracted to what they publicly reject. If the prevalence of transgender porn and the number of well-known men who’ve been caught cavorting with trans women are any indication, then the transgender comedy in these movies says more about male fetish (especially for preoperative trans women) than it does about trans women themselves. It doesn’t matter if their experiences are pleasurable or that the trans women they interact with are actual human beings with individual qualities — societal taboo prevents these male characters from acknowledging trans humanity, because doing so would compromise their precious heteromasculinity.

Now: Permitting Transphobia By Co-Opting LGBT Identity

This is where we come to Deadpool and Zoolander 2, two movies that seem to account for previous history as well as the recent conversations about trans people. They've arrived at a time when trans visibility and political power have grown in Hollywood, especially over the past year with the advent of Caitlyn Jenner, and the continued success of Laverne Cox and other trans actors, as well as shows like Transparent and Sense8. We seem to have arrived at an era where blatantly dehumanizing depictions of trans people run enough risk of deterring a mainstream audience that filmmakers and writers are careful to avoid them explicitly.

Both Zoolander 2 and Deadpool take aim at less obvious and more indirect targets. A petition to boycott Zoolander had already garnered almost 25,000 signatures immediately after the trailer came out, mainly on the basis that the gender non-binary character All is played by a cisgender man, Benedict Cumberbatch. As the petitioner Sarah Rose wrote, All is portrayed as “an over-the-top, cartoonish mockery of androgyne/trans/non-binary individuals.”

Owen Wilson, Ben Stiller, and Benedict Cumberbatch in Zoolander 2.

Paramount Pictures

The problem is not just that All is over-the-top, as so many portrayals of minorities in these mainstream movies are, but the specific ways that All is made fun of, as well as the surrounding depictions of queer people in the movie. Already, the entire premise of the Zoolander movies is to make fun of male models for having qualities traditionally associated with women — namely vanity and appearance-consciousness. In Zoolander 2, Derek Zoolander and his sidekick Hansel are brought out of retirement to supposedly headline a big-time fashion show. But after a decade out of the limelight, they find that they’re out of touch with the current fashion world. At the fashion show, they’re introduced to the agender model All, who has supplanted them as the most sought-after model in the world.

Upon meeting All, Hansel first asks whether All has “a hot dog or a bun,” then specifies, “Do you have a wiener or a vaginer?” The movie happily mocks Hansel for being out-of-touch with current culture for any number of reasons, but not for asking about a trans person’s genitals, or basing his judgment of a person’s gender on them. He later shouts, “Definitely a hot dog!” after All dresses as a gargoyle and whips Zoolander and Hansel with his tail. This scene once again brings back the trope of trans femme as villain.

Since the movie makes fun of All by saying that All is marrying “hermself,” it treats the possibility of non-binary gender identification as obviously absurd, trivializing the concerns of an increasingly important segment of the transgender community. There’s also the head-scratching appearance of Kiefer Sutherland as a man who’s been impregnated by Hansel, who in his time off has been a part of a group relationship that includes people of various fetishes as well as a goat. In the world of Zoolander 2, transgender people blend flatly together with polyamorists, sado-masochists, and people who practice beastiality, because they’re all just part of the same joke.

But what isn’t a joke is the attraction between Zoolander and the hot cisgender woman Valentina (Penelope Cruz). She’s in charge of solving crimes against fashion, and helps Zoolander find his long-lost son, another symbol of his sympathetic normalcy despite his unorthodox behavior. The two of them end up together in a celebration of heterosexuality, and Zoolander’s male-model eccentricities are redeemed by both fatherhood and traditional straight attraction.

Gina Carano and Ryan Reynolds in Deadpool.

20th Century Fox

“It seems insanely narrow-minded and counterintuitive to say that there wouldn’t be a homosexual character in that world.”

For any Star Wars fans who were left fantasizing about the Finn/Poe dynamic in The Force Awakens, we have some good news: Director J.J. Abrams said "of course" LGBT characters will be coming to the galaxy far, far away.

Lucasfilm / Via youtube.com

"When I talk about inclusivity it’s not excluding gay characters. It’s about inclusivity," Abrams told reporters at the Oscar Wilde Awards in Los Angeles on Thursday, the Daily Beast reported.

Alberto E. Rodriguez

His comments reflect previous remarks Abrams made to BuzzFeed News in December, where he stressed his desire for the film to feature a diverse cast.

"It was hugely important to me that the actors in the film look the way the world looks," Abrams said.

"I want people to feel that this is an inclusive world," he said. "Because that's what I felt when I saw Star Wars originally. The Force binds all living things together —not just white dudes."

While critics lauded Abrams for placing Rey (Daisy Ridley) and black character Finn (John Boyega) at the center of The Force Awakens, many fans were rather ~inspired~ by the dynamic between Finn and Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac).

Lucasfilm/Walt Disney Studios

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It was love at first ride.

Meet Adam Keller and Jared Marinelli, two Connecticut trainers who got engaged during an absurdly cute spin class flash mob proposal on Valentine's Day.

According to the studio's blog, the pair of spin class trainers met last March when Keller starting working there. They had crushes on each other right away.

They went on their first date a week later, and have been together ever since.

youtube.com

The Valentine's Day class started out just like any other, until the cyclers — including Keller — hopped off their bikes and removed their shirts, revealing matching "Team Jadam" shirts.

Marinelli, who was the instructor at the class, at first thought they were filming a promotional video for their studio, Joyride.

youtube.com

And they show off their choreographed dance moves.

youtube.com

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