‘Happy and Gay’ in Pakistan? ABC News

It wasn’t until she was 16 years old, when she’d left her Pashtun family in Peshawar for an elite school where the teachers were nuns, that Minot realized she was gay.

“I found out when I dated my literature teacher [a nun],” she said. “I got an A.”

It is virtually unheard of in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan for a lesbian to be willing to discuss her sexuality openly, especially a lesbian who is also Pashtun. The Taliban, who are overwhelmingly Pashtun and were born in Pakistan’s northwest tribal areas near Peshawar, have pushed walls of bricks on top of gay Afghans.

But Minot, now 42, who asked that only her nickname be used because of societal stigma, sat recently in jeans and a T-shirt in the Pakistani city of Lahore, confidently talking about her sexuality, her girlfriends and her attempts to be with men.

“I have been with men, two men,” she said. “But that was to get the confusion out of my mind. Since then,” she said, pausing, “happy and gay.”

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Why women are leaving men for other women

Lately, a new kind of sisterly love seems to be in the air. In the past few years, Sex and the City’s Cynthia Nixon left a boyfriend after a decade and a half and started dating a woman (and talked openly about it).

Actress Lindsay Lohan and DJ Samantha Ronson flaunted their relationship from New York to Dubai. Katy Perry’s song “I Kissed a Girl” topped the charts. “The L Word,” “Work Out,” and “Top Chef” are featuring gay women on TV, and there’s even talk of a lesbian reality show in the works.

Certainly nothing is new about women having sex with women, but we’ve arrived at a moment in the popular culture when it all suddenly seems almost fashionable — or at least, acceptable.

Statistics on how many women have traded boyfriends and husbands for girlfriends are hard to come by. Although the U.S. Census Bureau keeps track of married, divorced, single, and even same-sex partners living together, it doesn’t look for the stories behind those numbers.

But experts like Binnie Klein, a Connecticut-based psychotherapist and lecturer in Yale’s department of psychiatry, agree that alternative relationships are on the rise.

“It’s clear that a change in sexual orientation is imaginable to more people than ever before, and there’s more opportunity — and acceptance — to cross over the line,” says Klein, noting that a half-dozen of her married female patients in the past few years have fallen in love with women. “Most are afraid that if they don’t go for it, they’ll end up with regrets.” http://CNN.com

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Wyoming murder “really a hoax,” congresswoman

As Congress approved legislation to expand the legal application of hate crimes, cosponsor Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., proclaimed on Wednesday that “We have
declared America to be a hate-free zone.”

It may not be that easy.

During debate on the legislation, a Republican congresswoman from North Carolina questioned the decade-old Laramie, Wyoming murder that galvanized a national drive to impose penalties on hate-driven crimes.

Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., used the word “hoax” to describe the killing of Matthew Shepard, a young gay man who was tied crucifixion-style to a fence, repeatedly pistol whipped and left for dead. He later died in a local hospital.

“. . . We know that young man was killed in the commitment of a robbery,” Foxx told the House. “It wasn’t because he was gay This — the bill was named for him, (the) hate crime bill was named for him, but it’s really a hoax that continues to be used as an excuse for passing these bills.”

The “hoax” argument is directly contradicted by court testimony by girlfriends of the two men who murdered Shepard. Both girlfriends testified that the killers set out to find and rob a gay man. They befriended Shepard in a bar. The slight Shepard asked them to give him a ride home.

Foxx was not alone in her heavy prose. “Pedophiles and other bizarre sex orientations given protection by Congress,” headlined a release by the Traditional Values Coalition.

The legislation extends to women, gays and the disabled provisions of America’s existing hate crimes law. The law already singles out for special punishment violent crime based on race, religion and/or national origin of the victim.

Asked about Rep. Foxx’s “hoax” allegation, McDermott replied with a Latin maxim: “Res ipsa loquiter.” Translated, it means: The matter speaks for itself.

See Wyoming murder “really a hoax,” congresswoman Seattle Post Intelligencer

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Viral “He’s Just Not That Into You” Video Breaks Gay Comedy Ground

e’s Just Not That Into You may have just marked a small, but seismic shift in gay-related comedy.

No, not the movie itself, opening today, which is getting decidedly lackluster reviews (the critics seem to agree that it’s amiable at best, and too long).

The true comedy gold may lay in a short video, 10 Chick Flick Cliches That Are Not in “She’s Just Not That Into You,” produced for iTunes to virally promote the film and released on January 20th.

The video stars Bradley Cooper, Justin Long, and Kevin Connolly, actors from the movie, and it’s supposedly directed at male-moviegoers who might be brought to the movie by their girlfriends.

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May didn’t realise Mercury was gay

Brian May has revealed that he did not realise Freddie Mercury was gay until several years after Queen formed.

The guitarist told the Daily Express that the famed frontman had a number of girlfriends during the band’s early days.

“I don’t think even he was fully cognisant in the beginning,” May said of Mercury, who died of Aids in 1991 aged 45.

“You’re talking to someone who shared rooms with Fred on the first couple of tours, so I knew him pretty well. I knew a lot of his girlfriends and he certainly didn’t have boyfriends in those days, that’s for sure. I think there was a slight suspicion but it never occurred to me that he was gay.

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