Reporter Khodoberdi Nurmatov, better known as Ali Feruz, is being threatened with deportation by Russian authorities.

Russia is attempting to deport Ali Feruz, a reporter based in Moscow, to Uzbekistan, over the protests of activists, courts, and Feruz himself.

Feruz, who is also known as Khodoberdi Nurmatov, fled Uzbekistan in 2009 after he was tortured for two days when he refused to cooperate with the country's notorious security services. He came back to Russia — the country where he was born — in 2011.

Once there, Feruz began reporting for the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, covering refugees and women's issues, as well as establishing himself as a well-known campaigner. But in 2012 Feruz had his passport stolen, leaving him without documentation after he was unable to go to the Uzbekistan embassy as he had fled the country just a year earlier.

On Aug. 1, Feruz was picked up by police as he was en route to work. Later that day, a Moscow judge, ignoring Feruz's current asylum applications, ordered that the 30-year-old be deported back to Uzbekistan, saying he had been living in the country illegally.

Ali Feruz / Via Facebook

"He is in the shadow of death," Kostyuchenko, speaking from Moscow shortly after she had spoken to Feruz from the detention center where he is being held, said.

She said she was "perfectly sure" that sending Feruz back to Uzbekistan would be a death sentence.

Last year, an Amnesty International report examined how Russian authorities were cooperating with Uzbekistan's security services in deportation cases, resulting in hundreds of people simply vanishing when officials colluded to send them back to Uzbekistan.

"There are people disappearing in silence," Kostyuchenko said. "If he went back there we will never know what happens to him. He does not deserve what is happening to him."

Kostyuchenko met Feruz four years ago when he first started pitching and writing for the newspaper.

He was an "extremely talented" reporter who spoke "eight or nine languages", Kostyuchenko said, and had written movingly about the refugee situation in Russia.

"We started out as colleagues but now we are very close, he is so kind," she said. "He has great sympathy for everyone. He always tries to understand everyone."

"He always tries to defend the person in the weak position," Kostyuchenko explained, describing how, when Feruz overheard a man make a sexist remark at her, "he immediately started fighting with him – not physically or anything like that — but he said, 'No! It's is very disrespectful, you cannot speak to her like that.' I was shocked!"

"He's like that: He sees some injustice and he fights it."

"We are so shocked and angry, and we are ready to fight to the end," she said. "Everybody loves him. Everybody signed the petition to our president, I mean from chief editor to the people working in our cafeteria: everybody."

Kostyuchenko said when she spoke to Feruz earlier he asked her to bring him cigarettes and notepaper. "'Paper?' I asked. 'Yeah, because I am finishing my reporting from here,'" she explained. "He is a true-born reporter and we need him."

Ali Feruz / Via Facebook

"Should he go back, at the very least, he will be subjected to criminal prosecution for being gay, which is a crime in Uzbekistan. It is a crime punishable by prison."

Members of the LGBT community in Uzbekistan face constant threats and abusive from Uzbek authorities. A Human Rights Watch report earlier this year noted that "police use blackmail and extortion against gay men, threatening to out or imprison them". The community faces "deep-rooted homophobia and discrimination".

Krivosheev said that if the deportation went ahead, Feruz "has little chance of justice. He is facing a very real risk of torture and ultimately this would mean many years in a very horrible prison."

"It is quite unusual that Putin's spokesperson will be answering questions about this, and clearly indicated that Putin is aware of this case."

The Kremlin's spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, yesterday said that the Russian leader was "aware of the existence" of Feruz's case, and that it was impossible "to close one's eyes" to the situation.

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The postal vote will cost $122 million.

Over the past 24 hours, the government has determined a new(ish) way forward on same-sex marriage, which is not legal in Australia. Here's what was decided, and what it means for you.

Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Richard Wainwright / AAPIMAGE

Acting special minister of state, Mathias Cormann, will give notice today to put the bill back on the agenda in the Senate.

This push for a ballot on November 25 will almost certainly fail.

All the senators who voted against it in November 2016 have confirmed they will vote against it again.

If and when the legislation fails in the Senate, the government will move to Plan B: a voluntary postal vote on the issue.

The postal vote would cost $122 million — about $50 million less than a compulsory, in-person ballot.

Cormann said on Tuesday that the government would direct the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) to collect the population's views on same-sex marriage.

He cited the Whitlam government conducting a phone survey about the national anthem in 1974 as a precedent.

"At the end of that process, 51.4% of Australians surveyed by the ABS opted for the Australian national anthem to be changed to Advance Australia Fair," he said.

"This is essentially the same process using the same constitutional head of power, using the relevant legislation underpinning the operations of the ABS and the Australian statistician."

Cormann said that as Finance Minister he has the power under the current Appropriations Act to allocate taxpayer money to pay for the vote without legislation.

Advocates have obtained conflicting legal advice suggesting the postal vote is unconstitutional, and say they will launch an immediate High Court challenge against the proposal.

David Moir / AAPIMAGE

This would give the parliament two sitting weeks ahead of the lengthy parliamentary Christmas recess to pass a bill for same-sex marriage if the postal vote returns a "yes" majority.

This means same-sex marriage could be legal by Christmas.

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“Pull your fingers out and get on with it.”

In a spirited defence of a parliamentary vote on same-sex marriage, Stefanovic described the postal plebiscite concept as "complete BS".

Nine Network

"Why do we elect officials if not to make decisions that reflect our beliefs?" Stefanovic queried.

"Let’s look at this simply, confidently, and compassionately."

Nine Network

Stefanovic also called out politicians for playing "political football", saying it was less about the issue of same-sex marriage, and more about the "chest-beating and posturing of politics".

"In a world where we should be celebrating love over hate, this decision is a no-brainer.”

Nine Network

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I’ve never been so thrilled by a low-speed scooter accident.

Listen, a lot of crazy stuff has gone down on The Ellen Show this year. Whether it's Ellen totally forgetting about Katy Perry's marriage to Russell Brand...

Ellen

...conducting this truly wild interview with Jessica Simpson...

Ellen

...or catching one of her audience members stealing merchandise, it feels like each week on the show has been crazier than the last. And I'm here to tell you that the trend does not show ANY signs of slowing down. In fact, you might say things have...SPED UP.

TO TWO MILES PER HOUR.

Ellen

Earlier this year, Ellen challenged Zach Braff to a scooter race. Pretty standard stuff, TBH.

youtube.com

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CBS 12 News / Via cbs12.com

A 22-year-old man was shot and killed early Sunday in Florida after he defended his friends from someone who had been shouting about how he hated "gays" and wanted to kill them, witnesses told authorities.

Juan Javier Cruz and some of his friends, some of whom are gay, had been eating and hanging out at Restaurante Y Pupuseria Las Flores in Lake Worth, Florida, around 1 a.m. One of Cruz's friends told detectives that when the restaurant closed, their group and other diners went outside and were confronted by Nelson Hernandez Mena, who began threatening them.

"I hate you damned gays. I’m going to kill you all here," Mena allegedly shouted, according to what witnesses told the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office.

When Cruz defended his friends, Mena pulled a handgun from his pants and fired several shots, killing Cruz and wounding another man in the ankle, who told investigators he believes he was targeted because he is gay.

Nelson Hernandez Mena

Palm Beach County Sheriff

The 48-year-old faces charges of first-degree murder, attempted murder, and aggravated assault with a firearm. On Monday, a judge ordered him held without bail at the Palm Beach County jail.

The Florida State Attorney's office did not immediately return BuzzFeed News' request for comment, but told the Sun Sentinel that it was too early in the investigation to make a call on possible hate crime charges.

Stunned and emotional, Cruz's family said the shooting made no sense.

"He did it for no reason," Brenda Carballo, Cruz's cousin, told ABC25 News after the hearing. "None of us know Nelson Hernandez."

Mena, who allegedly told investigators that he had drank 15 to 20 beers that night and was "very drunk," had also been out with a few friends at the Salvadoran restaurant.

According to the arrest report, the bystander who was shot in the ankle had asked one of Mena's friends for his phone number, which may be why Mena became angry. Cruz's friends also said that Mena kept looking over at their group "with an angry look."

Although several of Mena's friends who were with him at the restaurant said they didn't see what happened, they heard the gunshots. The man who gave his number to Cruz's friends said he ran back and was confronted by "a man who said his friend had been killed."

Another one of Mena's friends said he heard the shots ring out as he was walking toward his car. Mena appeared shortly after and when asked what happened, he told his friend "nothing" and "asked him to take him somewhere," according to the arrest report.

When authorities arrested Mena around 10 a.m. on Sunday, they say he claimed that "a group of guys started attacking and threatening him" when he walked outside the restaurant.

Sheriff's officials also said Mena recalled reaching for his gun and pulling the trigger, but told investigators that Cruz was not his intended target.

Mick Tsikas / AAPIMAGE

Finance minister Mathias Cormann has confirmed that Australians will not see the same-sex marriage legislation they will be voting on before a postal ballot is held later this year.

His comments come as the government kicks a postal vote on same-sex marriage into gear, following the Senate rejecting, for the second time, its proposed compulsory attendance plebiscite on Wednesday.

In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Cormann was asked if Australians would see the proposed legal changes before the vote.

"Our position is very clear; we will facilitate consideration of a private members' bill after the plebiscite if the yes vote has been carried," he said.

"We believe the question is self-explanatory, we believe people across Australia understand what the question is.”

Asked if the government would facilitate Dean Smith's bill, which was released over the weekend and based on a bipartisan Senate inquiry into same-sex marriage legislation held earlier this year, Cormann said it was "a matter for the parliament".

"It’s a private members' bill, it’s not a government bill," he said. "We encourage everyone to vote consistent with their views."

Alex Greenwich, co-chair of Australian Marriage Equality, called on the government to let the public see what legal change they're voting on.

"I think it is critical that we know what legislation there would be a vote on," he told BuzzFeed News. "Without that, the process just looks like an even bigger farce."

There is significant disagreement within the government and the parliament at large about how, exactly, the Marriage Act should be amended to allow same-sex couples to marry.

Much of the contention is over who has the right to be granted exemptions from existing anti-discrimination law, and on what basis.

The bill released by Dean Smith and four lower house government MPs over the weekend would see religious ministers continue with an existing right to refuse any couple they do not wish to marry, as well as granting religious organisations the same exemptions they currently have under the Sex Discrimination Act.

But the bill put forward by the attorney-general George Brandis prior to the plebiscite legislation failing in the Senate for a first time last year contained a wider range of exemptions.

The Brandis bill would see a specific right to refuse to wed same-sex couples granted to religious ministers and civil celebrants on the basis of both religious and conscientious belief, as well as an exemption for religious organisations.

In a statement on Wednesday evening, Cormann confirmed that treasurer Scott Morrison would direct the Australian Bureau of Statistics to begin the process for the postal plebiscite.

Earlier on Wednesday, same-sex marriage advocates from PFLAG and Rainbow Families, and the independent member for Denison, Andrew Wilkie, announced they would be filing a legal challenge on the postal vote to the High Court.

The full interview with Mathias Cormann will feature in BuzzFeed Australia’s podcast ‘Is it on?’. You can listen to it from Friday. View it on iTunes and subscribe here.

One of Clements' sons, and an older advocate, run through the hearts.

Lukas Coch / AAPIMAGE

As the sun thawed the frosty grass outside of Parliament House early on Tuesday morning, a small group of people — mostly lesbians, armed with screwdrivers — stabbed holes in the hard ground.

Into them, in neat rows, they placed paddle pop sticks with hearts affixed to the top, slowly creating a sea of flapping pink cardboard. It was a protest, aimed squarely at the Australian government, to say: please don't hold a public vote on same-sex marriage.

Playing among the hearts were two boys — twins Jasper and Rufus, in school uniforms and with tousled brown hair — wresting a rainbow pride flag from one another as they tumbled through the rows.

Their dad, Archie Clements, told BuzzFeed News he was there because in a few weeks time, a ballot form asking whether or not he and his husband, Javier, should be legally allowed to marry under Australian law could "rock up in the mailbox of every family in my kids' school".

"I just find that very threatening," he said. "It’s a process over which we’ve got no control. It’s certainly a process we didn’t ask for."

Jasper, who had been insistently hammering on Clements' stomach, looked up. "Daddy! I’m trying to play the drums!"

Unfazed, Clements continued: "I just want this sorted out before my kids are really old enough to know what’s going on. I want them to take the rights of their family for granted, so there’s a lot of urgency from my perspective.

"My boys are nearly seven, and I don’t want them living with this throughout their childhood."

One of Clements' sons with Labor senator Penny Wong.

AAP

There were few groups watching the outcome of Monday afternoon's Liberal party room meeting more anxiously than LGBT parents.

Felicity Marlowe, convenor of Rainbow Families Victoria, told BuzzFeed News that it's people like her and her kids who are "on the frontline" of campaigns about marriage.

Arguments over same-sex parenting featured heavily in the marriage referendum in Ireland, the only other country to hold a public vote on the issue. Posters stating "Two men can't replace a mother's love" and similar were plastered the streets of Irish cities and towns.

Posters for the "no" campaign in Dublin, Ireland.

Clodagh Leonard / NEWZULU

Meanwhile, in Australia anti same-sex marriage activists have said same-sex marriage takes gender out of parenting and has a detrimental effect on children.

“It should be grown-ups teaching our kids how to be respectful of difference," Marlowe said. "But it will be grown-ups standing up on telly, on ads, on the radio, telling our children their families are not valid and their parents' love shouldn’t be recognised.”

For this reason, Rainbow Families campaigned to block the government's plebiscite the first time around, and breathed a sigh of relief when it was defeated in the Senate in November 2016.

But on Monday, the government came up with a brand new wedge for its political enemies: if you don't pass our compulsory attendance plebiscite, we'll bypass the Senate and run a postal vote.

The Senate knocked back the compulsory plebiscite on Wednesday. Shortly thereafter, same-sex marriage advocates and independent MP Andrew Wilkie announced a legal challenge to the postal vote. Now, only the courts can stymie the ballot.

(That is, bar an extraordinary floor-crossing moment from four government MPs dubbed "the Marriage Rebels" — however the renegade group has signalled it no longer plans to take such action.)

Lane Sainty / BuzzFeed

Back on the lawn, Stacey Graham was with her partner Tanya Grobbelaar and their daughter, Allegra, who is four.

"Kids are so...they take in everything," she said. "Everything they see in the media, on the news. Even from her age, they just take in everything they see, so of course it’s going to have an effect on them."

Allegra, who clung on to a large plush bunny rabbit while her mum spoke to BuzzFeed News, will start school next year. Graham does not want her to feel different because of her mums.

"I want her to know that her family is the same as every other family," she said. "We get up, go to work, pay bills. We’re not all that exciting."

Later, Graham found herself in conversation with opposition leader Bill Shorten, who strode down to the front lawn flanked by Labor bigwigs, including deputy Tanya Plibersek, shadow attorney general Mark Dreyfus, and senate leader Penny Wong, who has a rainbow family of her own.

A gaggle of photographers and cameramen stumbled to catch the moment the politicians made their own contributions to the sea of pink.

AAP

Later that morning, Sue Webeck was sat at a table outside the Parliament House visitors' cafe, sporting an intricately carved wooden bow tie. Six-year-old daughter Maya was on her lap.

As Webeck and Maya spelt out their names for the dictaphone, Webeck's partner Sam and Maya's twin, Elliott, arrived: "Ee double el eye oh double tee," Elliott offered, smiling.

Webeck said they were at Parliament House to talk to politicians because "we can be".

"We recognise there are lots of people involved in the debate around marriage equality who don’t have the opportunity to attend sessions like this, who may not have the personal support networks or the resilience to front up time and time again for this argument," she said.

She believes the government's way forward is a "cowardly approach to the conversation," and is wary of the media attention that will come with a concerted campaign.

"As a parent of young children, it’s hard to engage with that media in a positive and proactive manner with your children," she said. "But if we get swamped by a funded campaign, it’s going to be a really rough few months."

"The girls might get questions on our relationship at school and it’s not anyone else’s business, and that’s what’s frustrating," Sam added. "They shouldn’t have to answer questions like that."

AAP

BuzzFeed News understands the postal plebiscite would likely contain no funding for either side of the campaign. Both sides are fervently preparing to fight a full-blown national campaign in just five weeks time — with the "yes" side also organising a legal challenge.

If a court challenge is unsuccesful, the government aims for ballots to arrive at houses by September 12, be returned by November 7, and for a result to be known by November 15 — in time for a bill to be considered over the final two sitting weeks of the year.

12-year-old Riley, from South Australia, told BuzzFeed News: "I am so mad at the government."

"Even the fact that we might have to vote in a plebiscite is stupid," she said.

Riley is well-acquainted with her family not being legally recognised. For almost 10 years, her mothers fought to have her non-birth mother's name listed on her birth certificate. (South Australia was the last state in the country to allow retrospective changes under which both parents could be listed.)

"It was really upsetting for Riley at the time," her mother, Sophie Pointer, said.

Riley said that people might think straight people hate her family, "but almost all our friends are straight, and they treat us equally".

"I believe it is very important that my mothers should get married," she said. "I want to be the perfect bridesmaid walking down the aisle at their wedding."

Win Mcnamee / Getty Images

Five active-duty transgender service members sued the Trump administration in federal court on Wednesday, arguing the president's recent tweets foretelling a ban on transgender military service impinge on their constitutional rights.

"The directive to reinstate a ban on open service by transgender people violates both the Equal Protection component of the Fifth Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution," says a complaint filed by the five anonymous Jane Does in US District Court in Washington, DC.

The White House has not conveyed a new policy on transgender service members to the Department of Defense since Trump tweeted that the military "will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity" on July 26, nor has the department promulgated one.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a spokesperson for the White House, told BuzzFeed News on Wednesday, "As has been said before, we will work with the Department of Defense to lawfully implement the policy." She did not elaborate on how or when a policy would be released, or what impact it would have on transgender troops currently serving.

"As is with any ongoing litigation we cannot comment on it," she added in an email.

For now, a 2016 policy established by the Obama administration that allows transgender people to serve openly remains in effect. Several LGBT groups are waiting to see what sort of policy the Trump administration would create to repeal the 2016 rules before taking further action.

But the suit filed on Wednesday argues there is already a draft policy or de facto policy, stating, "Upon information and belief, the White House outlined a plan to end the active service of transgender servicemembers to be transmitted to the Department of Defense for implementation."

The suit names Trump as a defendant, along with several top military officials, including Defense Secretary James Mattis and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph Dunford.

Lawyers for the National Center for Lesbian Rights and GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders — two legal groups on the complaint — write that they are seeking a judgment declaring that Trump's "directive to categorically exclude transgender people from military service is unconstitutional" and an "injunction prohibiting the categorical exclusion of transgender people from military service."

Shannon Minter, legal director of NCLR, said in a statement, "Trump’s attempts to reinstate a ban have blindsided thousands of transgender service members who are now scrambling to determine what this means for their families and their futures," adding, "we want to send a message loud and clear that we will aggressively challenge any attempt to harm them."

The Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law estimates that there are more than 15,000 transgender troops in the US military. The RAND Corporation estimates that there are between 1,320 and 6,630 transgender personnel in the active service, and between 830 and 4,160 in the selected reserve.

The Department of Defense did not immediately respond to a request from BuzzFeed News to comment on the complaint’s allegations or whether a specific policy was in the works.

Read the complaint:

The power is OURS.

I bet you thought that Captain Planet was just one of those iconic '90s shows that had been lost to the ages, never to be relevant again.

DIC Entertainment

Well, with one Facebook post, the show has put itself back on our radar and straight into our hearts.

View Video ›

"Without heart, there would be no Captain Planet!", the caption reads. "Australia, you have only 14 days to make sure you are enrolled to vote for the postal vote on same sex marriage: http://www.aec.gov.au/enrol/ THE POWER IS YOURS!"

facebook.com

For some context: Australia is currently A Giant Mess. The government is planning on spending $122 million on a voluntary postal vote to legalise same-sex marriage nationwide. Australians have to make sure they're enrolled to vote, and only have two weeks to do so, otherwise we don't get a say.

Captain Planet wants to make sure that every Aussie remembers to enrol.

DIC Entertainment

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“When I used the word boyfriend, that’s when everything turned south.”

This is Caleb Gardiner and he recently got the boot from an accommodation he found on Craigslist because he's gay. But, because of how BC's human rights code works, it's totally legal.

Gardiner had just returned to Vancouver and was looking for a temporary place to stay while he searched for a new apartment.

He found a listing on Craigslist for a bed in a shared space, with the condition that someone staying over was an extra $10 per night. He said OK, and let the renter know his boyfriend would be staying over.

"When I used the word boyfriend, that’s when everything turned south," Gardiner told BuzzFeed Canada.

Caleb Gardiner

"If you guys are gay, I cannot allow this to happen in my house. Pls don't bring your boyfriend to sleepover in my house," the renter, identified as Jenny, told Gardiner over text message.

The renter said she is a Christian and that their relationship is "totally against God's will. I don't want this thing in my house at all."

She also said that if that was a problem, she would refund Gardiner's money.

Gardiner was out for dinner with his boyfriend, Joel, and some friends when he got the message.

"I was outraged in the moment," said Gardiner, adding that his boyfriend Joel was even angrier.

His first instinct was to contact a lawyer, but it turns out what happened is within the law.

Caleb Gardiner

Although it is illegal to discriminate against tenants based on their sexual orientation when renting out a whole place, that doesn’t apply in shared spaces, such as when someone is just renting a bedroom.

According to Section 10 of BC's Human Rights Code, if "sleeping, bathroom or cooking facilities" are shared, renters can discriminate however they wish.

Robyn Durling, communications director for the BC Human Rights Clinic, explained that the exception has practical reasons behind it.

"That allows women to have another woman with them, that allows a Jewish person to have another Jewish person using their kitchen," Durling told BuzzFeed Canada.

"It’s intended to say that yes, in certain circumstances when people are living in close proximity, there may be a need to discriminate."

bclaws.ca

Gardiner ultimately opted to check out and get a refund, leaving him hunting for other accommodation.

Caleb Gardiner

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Rebecca Hendin / BuzzFeed

It started with a phone call in early July. A distressed man in his mid-forties, his voice tight with anxiety, telephoned BuzzFeed News to say the police had just apprehended him for cottaging.

Speaking quickly, he said they had stopped him in London’s Liverpool Street station toilets, paraded him through the station, taken his name and address, questioned him, and warned him that if he was found there again he would be arrested and could have to sign the sex offender register. We will call him Tim.

Clandestine sexual encounters between men in public conveniences sound like a black-and-white scene from the 1950s, not a practice still prevalent 50 years after decriminalisation. But Tim is far from alone and, it transpires, his experiences with the police are far from uncommon.

What the phone call led to was unexpected: the uncovering of multiple issues that in 2017 many presume are no longer relevant – let alone unresolved – and multiple questions that have never been answered.

Why, in an age of Grindr and internet dating and supposed liberation, are men still meeting for sex in toilets? How can this be policed without damaging the relationship with the LGBT community? Are the laws in this area still fit for purpose – and how can they be applied to serve the public as a whole?

The questions also expose the difficulties of allocating police resources (in the case of Liverpool Street, those of the British Transport police) when the 21st-century horrors of terrorism demand so much. And whether police can observe members of the public going to the toilet without invading the privacy of the innocent.

Over the next few weeks, BuzzFeed News began interviewing individuals who go cottaging, including one public figure. (In the USA, toilets where men meet for sex are sometimes called “tearooms” rather than cottages – and in Australia, they are called “beats”.)

What emerged was a parallel world much deeper, more secretive and more complex than first appears – one of both the liberated and the closeted; of politicians and celebrities mixing with the most private of people; where self-discovery and escapism intermingle with addiction, abuse, and sexual violence.

Some started going to toilets for sex when they were still children.

As such, the picture formed by the cottagers has several faces: For some, it is a shadow of what lies outside. For others, a burst of oxygen in otherwise airless lives. And for the rest, a joyous, even defiant paroxysm of lust, unencumbered by the prim restraints of heterosexual life.

What began, then, as an investigation into the confines of sex in public toilets, came to expose wide and unexpected areas: how little the inner lives of many gay and bisexual men have changed, how a homophobic culture fuels child sexual abuse, and how much the response to cottaging affects everyone.

Judgment and shame, meanwhile, encircle the practice, and from parts of all communities. Why, it is asked, do they have to do that? It’s disgusting. It’s dirty.

As each man’s story begins to unfold, the responses to these jabs swirl together, sometimes echoing each other, often in the most surprising and devastating ways imaginable.

None of this is simple.

Tim had walked down the steps to the toilet at the Liverpool Street station when, he says, he saw about eight men standing at the urinal masturbating, looking straight ahead at the wall. Only he and one other turned to face each other. They did not touch. And they did not see the police entering.

“Just as I was coming the cops appeared,” he says. There were three officers.

Tim is muscular and tattooed, with deep laughter lines and an unusually expressive way of speaking, as if trying to conjure the feeling of each word with his tone. We speak twice.

“They said, ‘Can you follow me?’ They took us upstairs and said, ‘Do you know that what you were doing is illegal? They then walked us through the station.”

While doing this, says Tim, one of the policemen stopped to speak to a fourth officer. “He whispered in his ear and I remember the guy saying, ‘Oh, well done.’”

The officers sat Tim and the other man down near the station’s taxi rank. “They read us the riot act. It all became about kids: ‘What if a kid had walked in? Are you aware you could go on the sex offenders list for doing what you’ve done?’ He was trying to scare us.”

One of the policemen took their names and addresses and asked about previous convictions before leaving them with another officer to check their details. On his return, the policeman, says Tim, “told us they were going to let us off with a warning and they would take a photograph of us so that there’s a record in case we ever did it again.”

Tim was left confused by this: unsure why they took his photo, wondering if it was simply a scare tactic. He also says they were not told where their details would be stored, what the record was, or for how long the details would be kept. Then they were free to go.

Rebecca Hendin / BuzzFeed

The experience shook him up. “It was embarrassing, shaming,” he says, and without any public statements by police in recent times about their response to cottaging he has no idea whether it was a one-off incident in response to a complaint from a member of the public or whether it was part of a wider operation. Given the more pressing concerns of counterterrorism, he says, prioritising cottaging would be wrong.

A few months before Tim was caught, another man found himself in the grasps of the British Transport police. We’ll call him Andrew.

He says he had been standing at the urinals next to another man. Both had their penises in their own hands. Andrew looked over at the other man’s, at which point he heard a voice call out.

“The police were where the sinks are. They said, ‘You! I see you! You two come with us, if you try to run we’ll arrest you.’ They were looking down the urinals.”

He says two uniformed officers led them upstairs and asked him why he thought they had brought him up there. It was then that Andrew noticed they were wearing cameras: small devices attached to the uniforms, which the British Transport police call “body-worn video” (aka BWV) cameras.

Afterwards, when they were let go after an almost identical process to the one Tim had described, Andrew was left anxiously wondering if the cameras were turned on, and whether they had filmed him in the toilets. The police had not mentioned them to him, he said.

He says the police told him they would not press charges if he admitted what he had been doing. “He said I was lucky he wasn’t charging me because otherwise I would be on the sex offenders register.” The officer, he says, also asked, “What if a kid had seen that?”

All the men BuzzFeed News spoke to, in response to this question, said that cottagers stop the moment a child enters and were horrified at the idea of anyone underage witnessing such activity.

“I was very scared,” says Andrew about the experience overall. “I disagreed with what they were doing so I would have liked to have argued, but I [felt] I was going to get arrested if I did.”

The history and context to such police interventions sits uneasily with many officers today and many members of the LGBT community, making straightforward decisions about how to manage such activity in 2017 a fiendishly difficult balance.

The fear expressed by Tim and Andrew, and the wider anxiety among many, especially older gay and bisexual men, is informed by extraordinary behaviour by some officers throughout decades of targeted crackdowns and entrapment of men in public lavatories, drawing accusations of brutality and homophobia. Not least during times when all gay sex was illegal and almost all men had to remain in the closet, many trapped in sham marriages, from which sex in toilets offered the only outlet.

When George Michael, therefore, was caught in a Los Angeles toilet in 1998, the fury he later expressed through his satirical song and video "Outside", mocking the officer who he says had entrapped him, was not merely personal. The policing of cottaging had become, like stop-and-search policies, incendiary, politicised. For some, this remains the case.

Michael, a smiley, salt-and-pepper-haired businessman, has for nearly 40 years gone cottaging and cruising across the country. Now in his fifties, he begins to talk about what happened to him in the 1980s and 1990s.

Rebecca Hendin / BuzzFeed

On one occasion at Liverpool Street station, he says, “The police came along with a mirror on the end of a long pole. This officer was going along with this mirror, along the tops of the cubicles, and banging on doors. But that of course included looking at people on their own having a poo. I was outraged.” Michael says he also witnessed this technique at Manchester Victoria railway station.

He made an appointment with the British Transport police. “I said, ‘This is just wrong. What you need is the support of a community in order to police a community. You want those same people you’re pissing off to ring you up and say we saw a suspicious car outside.’ I said, ‘Your response [to cottaging] is kneejerk, and what happens is you send out officers and it becomes a vessel for their homophobia.’”

Michael says he has experienced this himself, that in a cottage in Hackney, east London, he was the victim of a police sting. Although such things are now seemingly not practised, for decades the police sent young, attractive plainclothes officers (dubbed “pretty policemen”) into toilets, to pose as fellow cottagers.

That is what the LA police did with George Michael and what the Metropolitan police did with the celebrated actor Sir John Gielgud in the 1950s, leading in both cases to their arrest and public shaming. (Future prime minister Edward Heath, by contrast, was also given a warning by police for cottaging in the 1950s, but this was concealed until after his death.) That day in Hackney, Michael unknowingly approached an officer.

“This guy stood next to me and started getting his dick out and getting it hard and wanking and waving it.” This might sound extreme, not least because by doing so the officer himself committed an offence, but such practices were not uncommon for undercover officers.

As soon as Michael responded, he says the officer “roughed me up a bit – pushed me around. They wanted some ID and I got my wallet out and I remember them taking my credit cards and throwing them on the ground. They just wanted to humiliate me.” They did not arrest him. (When approached by BuzzFeed News, the Metropolitan police declined to respond to historical allegations and instead a spokesperson said that “current policies and procedures have been formed working with key LGBT partners” and that they “do not proactively patrol” public toilets.)

Michael remembers something else about the policing of toilets. “In Liverpool Street I used to see endless girls pissed out their brains and disappearing into cubicles with men. In the gents. And nothing was done about them. They don’t get prosecuted.”

On several occasions over the years, Michael says he has spoken to officers policing cottages and asks them to imagine a scenario that tends to shift their attitudes. “I will say, ‘Think for a moment. You’re driving home from work and you could stop at any one of six places and you could go in and get a quick blow job off a woman, no one would ever know about it. Do you think you wouldn’t be tempted?’”

For Michael, the policing of cottages today cannot replicate the past. Making apprehending men in toilets any kind of priority “creates a witch hunt”, he says. “It creates an anti-LGBT feeling when actually these things are a matter of taste.”

The only problem is, these things are in fact a matter of law. According to Section 71 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, sex in a public toilet is illegal. But this is the only place specifically mentioned in law where sex is forbidden – a place notoriously and historically known for where gay and bisexual men have sex.

Places such as so-called lovers’ lanes, laybys or car parks where heterosexuals meet for sex – “dogging” – are not mentioned in law.

By contrast, Section 71 of the Sexual Offences Act, which beefed up previous laws to prohibit any form of sexual activity in toilets, was a deliberate attempt to quash cottaging.

And although other general laws relate to sex in public, there has been no particular attempt by lawmakers to stop it in spaces favoured by heterosexuals.

The application of these laws, therefore, has to be proportionate and equal in order to avoid appearing or being discriminatory. A further complication arises from the fact that police intervention in public sex is often in response to complaints from the public. With a significant minority of the British public still disapproving of homosexuality, this therefore poses the question: Are complaints more likely if it is two men having sex rather than a man and a woman?

Superintendent Jenny Gilmer of the British Transport police insists to BuzzFeed News that it is the crime rather than who is committing it that concerns the public, and rejects any suggestion that gay or bisexual men are being targeted by the force.

According to British Transport police figures, however, 92% of people “formally dealt with as suspects” by their officers for sex in public toilets between 2012 and 2017 were men (making up 91 individuals). They were unable to provide figures of the total number of people who were stopped by officers and given “informal words of guidance”.

Gilmer was concerned by some of the experiences with police of the men who spoke to BuzzFeed News. In particular, the lack of information given regarding the record on which details of those apprehended would be kept.

Rebecca Hendin / BuzzFeed

Hi. Do you have questions about Australia's upcoming postal survey on same-sex marriage? Same.

Lukas Coch / AAPIMAGE

BuzzFeed News has the answers to the most common questions people are asking about the postal survey. We will update this post frequently as more information comes to light.

We've split the questions up into: a) postal survey logistics; b) the High Court challenge against the survey; and c) the political background. We won't be including day-to-day coverage of the postal survey in this post, unless it pertains to a direct answer to a common question.

If you have a question you'd like us to answer, or have noticed something interesting happening around the postal vote in your neck of the woods, email lane.sainty@buzzfeed.com.

POSTAL SURVEY LOGISTICS

Tracey Nearmy / AAPIMAGE

I'm just after the bare bones. What dates do I need to be aware of?

So far, the government has provided the following dates:

• Enrol or update your details by August 24.
• Ballots sent out from September 12.
  
• You can request replacement material if it is lost or spoiled, up until 6pm on October 11.
• Australians "strongly encouraged" to return forms by October 27.
• Last date to return forms is November 7.
  
• Result announced on November 15.

How can I make sure that I get to vote?

Enrol or check that your details are up to date with the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) here. Look, everyone's doing it:

What question will we be answering?

"Do you support a change in the law to allow same-sex couples to marry?"

Do I have to vote?

No. Unlike usual Australian elections or referendums, the postal survey is voluntary and you will not be fined for not voting.

Who is running the Yes and No campaigns?

In the Yes camp, expect to see: The Equality Campaign; Australian Marriage Equality; Getup; just.equal; Pflag; the Labor Party; the Australian Greens; and unions. Plus, former swimming star Ian Thorpe!

In the No camp, expect to see: The Anglican and Catholic churches; the Australian Christian Lobby; Marriage Alliance; the Australian Marriage Forum; and the Australian Family Association. They are under the new umbrella organisation "The Coalition for Marriage". Plus, former prime minister John Howard!

Why are you calling it a postal survey? Isn't it a vote? What happened to the "plebiscite"?

This is...complicated, and largely because it is being run by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), not the AEC. The "postal survey" language is taken directly from the Australian Bureau of Statistics memorandum. Legally, it is a survey, because the ABS only has the authority to collect data from Australians, not to run a vote or an election. And it is being run via the post, therefore, "postal survey".

Hang on. Why is the ABS running the vote and not the AEC?

We have put this question to the government on two occasions and not received a direct response. So who can say, right? But here is some commentary that offers interpretations in Fairfax Media and The Conversation and on the ABC.

If it's being run by the ABS, rather than the AEC, does that mean the responses will be demographically weighted according to the population?

No. Finance minister Mathias Cormann advised BuzzFeed News that responses would be counted on a one person, one vote basis.

If the Yes vote wins, will same-sex marriage will be legal?

It's not quite that simple. A bill still needs to pass the parliament for same-sex marriage to become legal, no matter what kind of vote/survey is held ahead of it.

If a Yes vote is returned, the government will allow its MPs a conscience vote (meaning they can vote however they like) on a private members' bill for same-sex marriage. Many governments MPs have pledged to follow the result of the postal survey, but others have said they will ignore it or just use it as a guide.

Given the numbers in the parliament, it is very likely — but not guaranteed — that a same-sex marriage bill would pass the parliament if the government allowed a conscience vote.

What if the No vote wins?

If the No vote wins, the government will not allow a conscience vote on a bill for same-sex marriage and continue to block any legislation for same-sex marriage coming forward.

It's worth noting here that Labor has said it will legislate for same-sex marriage within 100 days of winning government even in the event of a No vote.

Will Australians get to see the same-sex marriage bill before taking part in the postal survey?

No. Mathias Cormann told BuzzFeed News the legislation would be considered after the vote and that "the question is self-explanatory". However, groups on both sides of the debate are unhappy about this and want the legislation to be released so they know the extent of religious exemptions that might be proposed. (This is essentially the bakers-baking-a-gay-wedding-cake debate.)

How much is the postal survey costing taxpayers?

$122 million.

Will taxpayer money be spent on the Yes and No campaigns?

The government is not officially funding the Yes and No campaigns. However...there is a loophole that allows politicians to use their electoral office budgets to print material supporting either campaign, and politicians on both sides have already told BuzzFeed News they plan to use it. You can read more about that here.

Will there be regulations around advertising?

In Question Time on Thursday, prime minister Malcolm Turnbull laid out the protections the postal vote would be subject to:

"The protections that will be in place for the postal plebiscite will include all the protections under the telecommunications legislation, which makes it an offence to tamper with the mail. It will be covered by the protections under the Census and Statistics Act, which makes it an offence to provide false or misleading statements. And, of course, the Criminal Code itself contains multiple offences which would prohibit a person from interfering with the collection of statistics, including making it an offence to obstruct, hinder, intimidate or resist a Commonwealth official in the performance of their functions."

However, it will not have the protections contained in the Electoral Act, which prevent the distribution of misleading or deceptive material. Fairfax Media reported that Mathias Cormann has made an offer to Labor and the Greens to work on legislation pertaining to the postal survey that would introduce those protections, so stay tuned.

I'm an overseas voter. What should I do?

You should sign up as an overseas postal voter and register your overseas address with the AEC.

As of August 13, the advice for overseas voters was: "The Australian Bureau of Statistics is conducting the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey and is currently finalising the survey process, including supporting participation by all eligible Australians (including those without access to mail, vision impaired, overseas etc). The ABS will provide details when they are available."

I'm a silent voter. What should I do?

Silent voters are people who do not have their addresses listed on the electoral roll for personal or safety reasons. This group includes prominent people — such as, ironically, politicians, and also judges and celebrities — and also people who need privacy for safety's sake, including victims of domestic violence or stalking.

The government has said silent voters will definitely be able to participate. However, there is some confusion about how this will happen, because under the law the AEC cannot release the addresses to the ABS. Again, the ABS has said it will provide further detail when it is available.

I am in some other kind of complicated voting situation. Help?

The ABS has a dedicated information line for the postal survey. You can call 1800 572 113 with questions, seven days a week, from 8am–8pm AEST.

I saw an article saying 16 and 17 year olds might be able to vote. Can they?

Some people have speculated that treasurer Scott Morrison accidentally enfranchised 16 and 17 year olds in his directive to the ABS, which defined an "elector" as a person who:

(a) enrolled on the Commonwealth electoral roll at the end of 24 August 2017; or

(b) who has made a valid application for enrolment on the Commonwealth electoral roll before the end of 24 August 2017.

The (very short version of the) theory goes that 16 and 17 year olds can make valid applications to be on the electoral roll before turning 18. They just can't vote in elections — but there's nothing saying they can't vote in a postal survey. You can read the long version of the theory here in an excellent blog post by Stephen Murray.

The AEC and Cormann watered down the speculation, saying it was not correct because 16 and 17 year olds are only "provisionally" enrolled until they turn 18.

However, some people maintain that the government and the AEC are mistaken in their reading of the law, and that the directive as it stands definitely allows 16 and 17 year olds to vote in the postal survey. Again, Murray has laid out the legal case here on his blog.

It's an interesting stoush, but either way: the government can change the directive any time it pleases. So if it turns out that the language does allow 16 and 17 year olds to vote, it's likely the government will just adjust it so they can't.

The latest directive from the ABS says that only people who have turned 18 by August 24 are allowed to vote: "People who become eligible for enrolment after the 24 August, for example for those who turn 18 after 24 August, will not be on the roll and therefore not included in the survey."

Can I put glitter in my return envelope?

You probably shouldn't. The ABS has warned that any extra material in the envelope other than the survey response will be destroyed and "due to processing machinery or possible contamination, may result in the survey form also being destroyed and therefore not processed".

HIGH COURT CHALLENGE

MP Andrew Wilkie (left), Felicity Marlowe and Sarah Marlowe at the High Court in Melbourne.

Tracey Nearmy / AAPIMAGE

Look can I just get a 101 on this?

Of course. The postal survey is currently subject to two legal challenges in the High Court, both brought by supporters of same-sex marriage who object to the national vote. Broadly speaking, the challenges argue that the government does not have the power to spend money on the postal survey without passing legislation, and that the ABS does not have the authority to collect the information the government is asking it to.

If the court decides in favour of the legal challenges, there will be no postal survey and the government will not allow same-sex marriage legislation to come forward. If it decides in favour of the government, the postal survey will go full steam ahead.

What are the important dates?

The two cases will be heard together by the full bench of the High Court on September 5 and 6. The hearing is scheduled to run for one and a half days.

There has already been one hearing before Chief Justice Susan Kiefel on August 11 at which the dates where set down. There will be another brief hearing on August 16, starting at 12 noon.

When will we know the result?

At or after the hearing on September 6.

Isn't that date awfully close to September 12, when the ballots will be posted out?

It is! I wish I had more to type to reassure you, but I don't. The timeframe is just super tight.

OK I want to know more. Who is involved in the cases?

The two suits are known as M105 and M106 (this is the number the court assigns to the cases after they are filed).

The litigants in M105 are independent MP Andrew Wilkie, Shelley Argent from PFLAG, and Victorian mum-of-three Felicity Marlowe, represented by the Public Interest Advocacy Centre. Their lead barrister is Ron Merkel QC.

The litigants in M106 are advocacy group Australian Marriage Equality and Greens senator Janet Rice, represented by the Human Rights Law Centre. Their lead barrister is Katherine Richardson QC.

What are the legal arguments?

To go back to basics: normally, in order to spend money, the government has to pass legislation through the parliament. This rule exists so the government can't go mad with power and spend all Australia's taxpayer money with no checks and balances.

In this case, the Senate rejected the plebiscite twice — so in normal circumstances, the government could not spend money on it. However, there are some special circumstances under which the government can spend money without passing legislation. In this case, the government is using a section of the Appropriations Act called the Advance to the Finance Minister:

This allows Cormann to allocate up to $295 million for expenditure that is urgent and unforeseen.

Some of the issues likely to be raised and contested in court include:

• Whether the postal survey counts as an "urgent" and "unforeseen" event, as the Appropriations Act requires.
  
• Whether the government has exceeded its executive powers.
• The definition of "statistical information" and whether it includes people's opinions about same-sex marriage.
  
• The powers of the ABS more broadly.

What does the government say?

The government says it is very confident that it has the power to conduct the vote. It's precedent? A telephone survey of 60,000 Australians about the national anthem in the '70s.

In 1974, the Whitlam government commissioned the ABS to survey 60,000 Australians about what the national anthem should be and whether it should be changed. Inexplicably, just over half endorsed changing it to "Advance Australia Fair".

But the fun fact here is after "Advance Australia Fair" was picked, the Fraser government after Whitlam changed it back to "God Save the Queen" and then eventually let everyone have a vote on it in 1977... in a national plebiscite.

Um, OK. So what happened in the directions hearing on August 11?

The parties in M105 and M106 came to an agreement about what happens between now and the actual hearing. Both challenges had filed injunctions, meaning they had requested the court to order the ABS to stop preparing for the postal survey. But the court heard that everyone had agreed the injunction wasn't necessary if the High Court granted a hearing before September 12 — which it did.

In return, the Australian Statistician agreed that the ABS would not post out any ballots or ask Australians for information on the issue until September 12. But it can still prepare for the vote — preparing lists, printing ballots, etc — so if the challenge fails, the postal survey can go right ahead.

Kiefel also set out the dates for the hearings ahead.

POLITICAL BACKGROUND

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull (left) and the Minister for Finance Mathias Cormann.

Lukas Coch / AAPIMAGE

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

A US Department of Justice filing in federal court on Saturday indicated the Trump administration will reevaluate policies from the Obama administration that let transgender inmates use facilities that match their gender identity, including in housing and shower rooms.

However, the DOJ avoided addressing the core issue of a federal lawsuit over rules to protect transgender prisoners.

The case was filed by four evangelical Christian women in a Texas prison who challenged the Obama-era guidelines, and claimed sharing quarters with transgender women subjects them to dangerous conditions.

Lawyers under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who are defending the government, however, argued against the women — saying the inmates have not exhausted their administrative options, and haven’t yet proven they are threatened by sharing common areas with transgender inmates.

But the government did not defend the transgender-friendly policy itself — indicating the administration is examining what it means.

In a filing in US District Court in Northern Texas, the Justice Department said it expects that the next Bureau of Prisons director, who has not yet taken office, "will evaluate the issues in this case and how the challenged regulation and policies apply to Plaintiffs."

The case began in late 2016 and continued this year. Plaintiffs Rhonda Fleming, Jeanette Driever, Charlsa Little, and Brenda Rhames — each sentenced to a term of more than four years — are serving time at the Federal Medical Center, Carswell, a federal prison in Fort Worth.

The women are represented by lawyers at the Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom. Their lawsuit takes aim at regulations established in 2012 to protect transgender inmates from violence under the Prison Rape Elimination Act, and at a guidance memo — issued by the Bureau of Prisons days before Obama left office — on how to handle transgender inmates.

In an amended complaint filed in May, the women's lawyers wrote that Obama’s policies are “a politically-driven agenda to affirm that gender identity theory, rather than biological sex, is the normative basis to determine whether an inmate is male or female.”

The complaint adds that housing transgender women — who it calls “men” — along with the general female population ”creates a situation that incessantly violates the privacy of female inmates; endangers the physical and mental health of the female Plaintiffs and others, including prison staff; [and] increases the potential for rape.”

Sharing facilities with transgender women compromises their constitutional rights to privacy and to be free from physical harm, the complaint adds. It also alleges the women are being denied the right to practice their faith under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

The women are seeking a preliminary injunction to immediately bar integration of transgender prisoners.

But the Justice Department countered in its brief on Saturday that the women "have not established that they will suffer any imminent harm absent an injunction. The transgender inmates housed at Carswell...are not even in the same housing unit as Plaintiffs."

Further, federal lawyers added, the court lacks jurisdiction over the case because the women "have not exhausted their administrative remedies under the Prison Litigation Reform Act."

The rules created under the Obama administration were designed to reduce the high rates of violence and sexual victimization against transgender inmates by instructing prison officials to “consider on a case-by-case basis whether a placement would ensure the inmate’s health and safety, and whether the placement would present management or security problems.”

"In making housing unit and programming assignments," a January 2017 Bureau of Prisons memo states, "a transgender or intersex inmate’s own views with respect to his/her own safety must be given serious consideration."

The case is before District Judge Reed O’Connor, who has suspended Obama-era rules for transgender protections before. He issued preliminary injunctions in a case concerning guidance for transgender workers and students, and in a case on transgender health care coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

In those two lawsuits, Sessions withdrew the federal government’s appeals to defend the Obama administration's policies. Sessions also reversed guidance from his predecessor that said transgender students must be allowed to use facilities that match their gender identity.

“Every single part of him – the way he thinks, the way he acts, and everything that he does – just makes me fall in love with him every single day, more and more.”

Tom Daley and his partner Dustin Lance Black have released a video showing their wedding day on YouTube.

They have also announced that any revenue from the video will go towards two charities: the LGBT+ Switchboard, and the "It Gets Better" programme.

Tom Daley / youtube.com

Like them both preparing for the big day...

Tom Daley / youtube.com

...and walk down the aisle.

Tom Daley / youtube.com

View Entire List ›

“I can’t be homophobic, I made eye contact with a gay…”

When straight people transform into a human label maker:

charleytimeless.co.vu

When they're anal about the color pink:

bassiter.tumblr.com

When straighties complain:

your-homophobia-is-showing.tumblr.com

When homophobia was defeated:

starlight-bi.tumblr.com

View Entire List ›

People protesting a Texas "bathroom bill" in the state capitol in March.

Eric Gay / AP

A series of "bathroom bills" aimed at restricting transgender individuals' access to bathrooms in public places and schools have failed to pass in the Texas legislature's special session, which ended on Tuesday night.

The special session was called by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott with the aim of passing bills including property tax reform legislation and the bathroom bill — a version of which passed in the Senate early in the session last month.

The Senate version of the bill, which had the strong support of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and other far-right Republicans, would have forced transgender people to use bathrooms that correspond with the gender marker on their birth certificates.

But influential House Speaker Joe Straus — a moderate Republican — and people in the business community objected to the proposals.

In the end, the special session ended without a vote being called on the bills, effectively killing them for now.

"The Speaker made it very clear to me personally that he opposed the privacy bill and said he would never allow it to be voted on," Abbott told KFYO radio. "There is absolutely no evidence he will ever change his mind on this issue."

Critics of the bill raised questions about how such a policy would be enforced in practice, while also labeling them as blatantly discriminatory toward transgender people.

"The issue is that these bills violate people’s rights under Title IX and the constitution, and really bar people from participating in public life," Kali Cohn, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, told BuzzFeed News.

Changing birth certificates to reflect a person's gender identity can also be complicated, Cohn said, depending on where they were born.

While it's possible to make that change in Texas, there are no specific laws that make it mandatory for courts to allow transgender people to do so, according to the National Center for Transgender Equality, and some courts are more willing to issue the orders than others.

"The practical reality of doing so can be difficult. It can also be really expensive," Cohn said.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick

Jon Herskovitz1 / Reuters

The anti-transgender bill that passed the Senate never had enough support in the more moderate House, where two other bills were put forward that would have banned local anti-discrimination ordinances from applying to multi-user bathrooms and locker rooms, similar to part of a law still in effect in North Carolina. HB46 would have made those anti-discrimination measures for LGBT people illegal in cities and school districts, while HB50 would have made them illegal in school districts only.

At least five major cities in Texas have local non-discrimination ordinances specific to LGBT people.

An array of business, religious, and community groups rallied against all three bills in the past few weeks, arguing they were likely to damage the Texas economy, and lead to boycotts much like those that unfolded in North Carolina after the passage of that state's bathroom bill.

"Without overstating it, I think it is significant that we made it through the regular session and the special session without one of these bills passing," said Cathryn Oakley, senior legislative counsel with the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest LGBT rights group. "I think it says a lot about where the business community is and the wider community is. People were not fired up about this bill, they did not see a need for it."

The Texas legislature isn't slated to reconvene for a regular session until 2019 (as it only meets every two years), though there is a possibility that Gov. Abbott will call another special session in the interim. Both supporters and opponents of bathroom bills expect them to remain a political issue in the lead-up to the 2018 elections in Texas.

Lt. Gov. Patrick reiterated in a press conference on Tuesday night that he intends to make this a campaign issue for Republicans across the state, and that "the issue is not going away."

"I said to the speaker, 'Mr Speaker, pass this bill, put this issue in the rearview mirror.' It’s not going away. It’s going to be a campaign issue in primaries and in the general election cycle," Patrick said.

Eric Gay / AP

Speaker Straus seems unlikely to waver in his rejection of the bills — he has expressed his opposition to bathroom bills multiple times, particularly citing business leaders' stance against them.

The ACLU of Texas has said that it would challenge any version of the legislation that passes.

Oakley, with the HRC, said she thinks the opposition to the bill will remain strong.

"If they ever do consider this bill again, those people are activated now, they’re engaged," Oakley said.

The Texas bills came a year after legislators in at least six states introduced bathroom bills aiming to restrict which bathrooms transgender and gender-nonconforming people are allowed to use in public and in schools.

Patrick, Straus, and the House bill sponsors' offices did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

This post has been updated to reflect that HB 46 and HB 50 would have applied to multi-user bathrooms and locker rooms specifically.

“If that’s not open minded, I don’t know what is,” he said.

Rapper Tyler, the Creator's newest record, Flower Boy, alludes to same-sex attraction and relationships.

Giphy

On the track "I Ain't Got Time," Tyler says "Next line will have 'em like ‘whoa’, I’ve been kissing white boys since 2004."

Many critics believe that the Flower Boy track "Garden Shed" is an allusion to concealing his true sexual identity.

Nicholas Hunt / Getty Images

Now, in a new interview with Know Wave's Koopz Tunes radio show, Tyler admits he had his first gay relationship as a teenager.

Frazer Harrison / Getty Images

The Odd Future rapper told the radio show "I had a boyfriend when I was fifteen in fucking Hawthorne. If that's not open minded, I don't know what is."

Frazer Harrison / Getty Images

View Entire List ›

William West / AFP / Getty Images

The Australian Bureau of Statistics does not expect to have a solution for overseas Australians who want to participate in the same-sex marriage postal survey until August 22 — just two days before enrolment closes.

The government announced the unprecedented national postal survey last week as a last-ditch effort to keep its election promise of giving the Australian people a say on same-sex marriage.

But the short time-frame handed to the ABS to prepare for the vote has left Australians living overseas increasingly worried it will be difficult or impossible for them to participate.

One man was told "We have received no information about this at all" by the ABS when he emailed asking for information about overseas voting the day after the survey was announced.

Now, staff at the dedicated information hotline set up for the survey are telling overseas voters that it’s anticipated more information will be provided to them by August 22.

The electoral rolls for the survey close at midnight on August 24, with ballots expected to be posted out from September 12 (pending the result of a High Court challenge).

Afp Contributor / AFP / Getty Images

Chris Edwards, an Australian copywriter living in Shenzhen, China, told BuzzFeed News there was “little chance of the ballot actually making it to me”.

"The postal system is so inefficient that there is little chance of a normal ballot paper making it to me on time. I've had parcels go missing or be sent back without an effort to follow up, even with my Chinese wife assisting me," he said.

Because of this, Edwards said, he normally votes in Australian elections at the consulate. If that isn’t an option, Edwards and other Australians in southern China are concerned they won't be able to take part.

"Generally, people think it's a waste of time and that we won't be able to vote," he said.

"How does the Australian government expect to service the tens of thousands of Australians living in China to get ballot papers, if they are not going to offer a service in the 4 embassies and consulates (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu) as well as Hong Kong? We can't all register for overseas voting in the hope of our ballot papers arriving on time."

BuzzFeed News has also spoken to concerned Australian voters in New York City and also in Timor Leste, where there is no residential postal system.

The latest update from the ABS says “arrangements will be put in place” to allow Australians living overseas to participate.

Do you have questions about Australia's upcoming postal survey on same-sex marriage? Same. Here's a list of everything you need to know, and more.

Alamy

Same-sex marriage campaigners in Northern Ireland have been dealt a double defeat after the High Court today ruled against two cases involving gay couples seeking same-sex marriage – but have vowed to appeal the rulings.

Currently, only civil partnerships are available to same-sex couples in the region.

In a judgement that was previously expected to pave the way to full marriage rights in Northern Ireland – the only part of the UK not to allow same-sex marriage – Mr Justice O’Hara dismissed a case involving a gay couple who married in England in 2014 who argued that their marriage should not be downgraded to a civil partnership on returning home to Northern Ireland.

He also dismissed a second case from two further gay couples who sought a judicial review into the Northern Ireland Assembly’s failure to introduce same-sex marriage, by arguing that it was a contravention of human rights not to allow same-sex couples to marry.

Of the first case, O'Hara ruled: “It is not at all difficult to understand how gay men and lesbians who have suffered discrimination, rejection and exclusion feel so strongly about the maintenance in Northern Ireland of the barrier to same sex marriage. However, the judgment which I have to reach is not based on social
policy but on the law.”

The ruling continued: "While the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission supports an equal level of human rights protection across the United Kingdom, its Chief Commissioner wrote on 11 June 2012 that 'the restriction of marriage to opposite sex couples does not violate the international standards and this is clear from both the international treaties and the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights and the United Nations Human Rights Committee.' In my view the Chief Commissioner was correct to make that statement."

O'Hara went on to elaborate that he is disinclined to overstep the jurisdiction of the Northern Ireland courts or contradict previous Strasbourg rulings. The implication in the ruling is that it is for politicians in the Stormont government to introduce same-sex marriage and not a judge.

Ciaran Moynagh, the solicitor for the Petition X couple, said following the ruling that "the work will continue" and released a statement on the couple's behalf: “Of course, we are disappointed by today’s ruling. What it shows is that more work needs to be done to explain a truth that, to us, is self-evident; the love two men or two women share is never a threat to society – in fact the world could do with a little more love today.

“Today we are calling on the mums, dads, siblings and friends of LGBT+ people to no longer remain on the side lines. Speak, write or tweet to our political leaders reminding them that the majority of people in Northern Ireland support same sex marriage. Our fight to have our love recognised continues and we will discuss our options with our legal team.”

Mr Justice O'Hara also dismissed the second case but the ruling has not yet been published. Solicitors acting for the two couples tweeted immediately after the ruling that it was "disappointing" but that their clients would appeal.

O’Hara spent over 18 months reaching a verdict on the legal challenges to the lack of same-sex marriage rights in Northern Ireland.

The Royal Courts of Justice in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Alamy

John O’Doherty, director of the Rainbow Project, the LGBT pressure group supporting the cases, told BuzzFeed News the day before the verdicts that they were particularly hopeful of success in the case seeking recognition of same-sex weddings elsewhere in the UK because of the strength of legal precedent.

“One of the key arguments was, in Scotland two 16-year-olds can get married without parental consent – they can’t do that anywhere else in the UK – but once married in Scotland they have to be recognised as married everywhere else, so why should that be different for equal marriage?”

The same principle had been applied to humanist weddings, he said, whereby a humanist marriage in Scotland is recognised in England even though humanist weddings are not legal there.

Ciaran Moynagh, the solicitor representing the Petition X couple, told BuzzFeed News that he would challenge the ruling in the court of appeal. If successful there, it would enable his firm to initiate a successive legal challenge that would prise open full same-sex marriage rights in the province. Such a case would argue that if Northern Ireland now recognises same-sex marriage from other parts of the UK, it is legally nonsensical to not authorise it in Northern Ireland.

“We always thought it was a two-stage process,” said Moynagh. “It would be unsustainable [not to allow full same-sex marriage rights]. You’re now recognising them from England, why can’t we have them here?”

However, if this legal route is the tool that delivers full same-sex marriage rights, it could take more than two years, said Moynagh.

John O'Doherty speaking at a same-sex marriage rally

BuzzFeed

Both cases arose amid a protracted political fight for same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland that reaffirmed entrenched divides between the main parties as the public’s attitudes increasingly converged in favour of it.

But while polls suggest 70% of the Northern Irish population now support same-sex marriage and over 50% of Northern Irish politicians are in favour, the devolved government failed to introduce it before dissolving earlier this year and the Westminster government has declined to intervene on the issue, deeming it a devolved matter.

Stormont debated the introduction of gay marriage five times over the last few years, and on each occasion the vote failed. This was because the Democratic Unionist Party invoked what is known as a “petition of concern”, in which the bar is raised for passing a motion from more than 50% of the assembly member votes to 60%, including at least 40% of both unionist and nationalist politicians.

This tool was introduced after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement to prevent one community riding roughshod over another and to ensure cross-community cohesion in the power-sharing government. The use of such a mechanism in the issue of same-sex marriage, which does not have particular republican or loyalist resonance, therefore proved highly controversial, with many accusing the DUP of misusing the petition.

While politicians argued and stalemate prevailed, therefore, others sought legal solutions. In 2015, the Rainbow Project approached a gay couple about bringing a case against the fact their marriage was not recognised in Northern Ireland despite being enacted in another part of the UK.

Twitter

“When we spoke to them they felt strongly that equal marriage should exist in Northern Ireland, and that they should be recognised as being married, having gone to the effort of going to England getting married, with their families and friends,” O’Doherty told BuzzFeed News. After making their case to the High Court, the Rainbow Project, the couple and their lawyers waited over 18 months for a ruling.

“I don’t think any of use were expecting to be waiting nearly two years but that’s unfortunately where we’ve ended up,” said O’Doherty. “It’s certainly been difficult.”

There are now several paths ahead before full same-sex marriage rights could be won.

The first is through the courts, but both the court of appeal would have to find in favour of one or both of the current cases dismissed today in the high court, and the supreme court would then need to either support this judgment if appealed, or not agree to hearing the cases.

But the political route is still possible, however.

According to O’Doherty, the day that the Stormont assembly dissolved, a private member’s bill calling for same-sex marriage – supported by Sinn Fein, the SDLP, the Alliance Party, Green Party and some Ulster Unionist members – was being considered.

If Stormont resumes its duties rather than Northern Ireland falling to direct rule from Westminster, then this private member’s bill would be “pretty much the first thing on the agenda,” said Monagh. “There is draft legislation there and with this [petition X] case being successful the draft legislation would certainly make it to the floor for a vote.”

Because it is a private member’s bill, a petition of concern could not be used in the first hearing, and by the second, an attempt to wield such a petition would be harder, said Monagh: “Is same-sex marriage an orange-and-green thing anymore? If you look at the polls and the data, the majority of the public are supportive of it.” In this instance, he added, as legislation would be prevented by the use of a petition of a concern, then a judicial review could be brought against the wielding of such a petition.

The final path to same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland could come if, in the event of Stormont failing to reconvene to form a workable assembly, the Westminster government reverts to direct rule. Pressure would then mount on Westminster to roll out same-sex marriage rights to citizens in Northern Ireland, as its previous assertion that such matters are the responsibility of devolved governments, would no longer stand.

O'Doherty today called on Theresa May to deliver equal marriage rights across the UK.

"Of course, we would prefer that the Northern Ireland Assembly were in a position to grant these rights; the Assembly is not currently functioning," he said. "It is, therefore, the responsibility of Theresa May's government to make the necessary amendments to the marriage legislation to make it applicable in Northern Ireland.

"The eyes of LGBT people around the world will now be on Theresa May. She says that she has changed her mind on LGBT equality over her years in Parliament. Now is her chance to prove it."

Liberal senator Eric Abetz.

Mick Tsikas / AAPIMAGE

Liberal senator Eric Abetz says that legalising same-sex marriage in Australia could lead to people marrying the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Abetz said that if the parliament legalises same-sex marriage following a "yes" result in the upcoming postal survey, it could lead to humans legally marrying inanimate objects.

BuzzFeed News: If we change the marriage laws in Australia that it could lead eventually to people being able to marry objects such as…the Harbour Bridge?

Abetz: Why not? Why not.

Look, I would like to think that that is taking the argument to the limit, but the issue is if we are judging this solely on a person’s view of what love is to them, and people [ask] me, 'how can you judge somebody else’s love?', then I think you’ve got to accept that love is love and that’s the slogan.

Having said that, whilst we very much believe that marriage has something to do with love, the marriage act does not require it...

BuzzFeed News: Are you equating the love between two same-sex people with the love a person could have with the Eiffel Tower in Paris?

Abetz: The sad thing is, I’m not doing it. There are people that are actually saying they want to marry the Eiffel Tower. There are people that say we want a threesome marriage, and 'who are you to judge that marriage should only be between two people?'.

And indeed, that was the, I think very cogent argument of the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, chief justice Roberts, in his dissenting judgement where he pointed out that once you remove that vital element of it being a man/woman thing, and you just say love is love etc, then basically you open the floodgates to anything.

I think our society would not accept people being able to marry the Eiffel Tower, but if you just limit it to people then there are issues in relation to polyamory.

In 2007, an American woman changed her surname to "La Tour Eiffel" after holding a commitment ceremony with the tower, which she described as her partner of 10 years.

In Australia it is not legal to marry an object and no one has ever proposed that it should be legalised.

Abetz admitted his analogy was taking the argument to its extremes, but insisted that it was a valid point in the marriage equality debate.

Prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has promised there would a respectful debate during the postal survey but within the last week "no" campaigners have conflated same-sex marriage with bestiality and polygamy, and claimed marriage equality will create a "stolen generation" of the children of LGBTI Australians.

Earlier this week, Liberal MP Kevin Andrews compared people in same-sex relationships to the relationship he has with his cycling buddies.

"Yes, there are all kinds of affectionate relationships ... I have an affectionate relationship with my cycling mates who we go (sic) cycling on the weekends, but that's not marriage. Why doesn't the law have a place in those sort of relationships?" Andrews said.

The government has taken steps to pass a special law to set the ground rules for a fair and balanced debate, but it won't be considered by parliament until two High Court challenges are resolved.

The Harbour Bridge comments follow an article Abetz penned for the August edition of Family World News (a newsletter put together by veteran conservative politician Fred Nile), where he writes that if “marriage equality” was given its genuine meaning it would make marriage open for anyone to marry anyone, or anything.

"If this is the standard then who is to judge the quality/type/validity of any love — within families, with more than just one other, or indeed why not the Eiffel Tower?" he said.

Supplied.

Abetz, who plans to campaign for the "no" vote, said that he wants Australia's anti-discrimination laws to be changed to allow individuals to refuse service to gay people. Currently, only religious bodies and organisations can refuse service on the grounds it would injure their religious beliefs.

He wants provisions included in the private members' bill that would be passed by parliament following a "yes" result that would allow any service provider, such as a taxi driver, to refuse service to any gay person.

"My view is that if we were to make this unfortunate decision as a nation, then the legislation should have a no-detriment provision," he told BuzzFeed News.

"So in other words, if you do not support same-sex marriage, you don't have to do anything to support it."

The full interview with Eric Abetz will feature in Is it on?, BuzzFeed Australia’s podcast. You can listen to it from Friday. View it on iTunes and subscribe here.

Do you have questions about Australia's upcoming postal survey on same-sex marriage? Same. Here's a list of everything you need to know, and more.