Outgames international gay sport and culture event opens in Copenhagen
There will be triathlon and handball – but also bridge and line dancing. Copenhagen is preparing for thousands of gay people from dozens of nations to descend this weekend for the Outgames, a nine-day sporting and cultural olympics for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
When the 5,500 participants are introduced on a catwalk in Copenhagen’s central square today, it will kickstart nine days of sport, arts and political debates with almost 100 nations represented in more than 30 events, traditional and improvised.
But the event is about much more than podium places. The Outgames has launched itself under the banner of sport, culture and human rights. Participants from a host of cities, including Tel Aviv and Mexico City, will take over public spaces throughout Copenhagen to showcase artists and performers.
See Outgames international gay sport and culture event opens in Copenhagen
guardian.co.uk -
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100 Nations Meet in Copenhagen to Celebrate and Fight for Homosexual Rights
COPENHAGEN, — This week, thousands of people from across the globe will arrive in the Danish capital Copenhagen to take part in the most important international event for homosexual, bi-sexual and transgender men and women – World Outgames 2009. On the agenda is one of the largest and most important conferences on homosexual rights the world has ever seen.
Nearly 100 nations will be represented, and up to 200,000 participants, tourists and Copenhageners are expected to take part in World Outgames 2009 from July 25 – August 2. Apart from focusing on human rights for nine days, a large number of theme festivals and an extensive cultural and sports program will make Copenhagen the place to be.
“By hosting World Outgames, Denmark will send a signal to the rest of the world that it should maintain focus on the right to love whomsoever one wishes, irrespective of gender and sexuality. From Northern Europe to South America, in Eastern Europe and the Far East, there are human rights battles to be fought – particularly for homosexuals. We hope that World Outgames and the thousands of people from around 100 different countries will be able to spread the message to the world,” says Uffe Elbaek, director of World Outgames 2009.
The heart of World Outgames is a major international human rights conference being held in close cooperation with Amnesty International and IBM focusing on the necessity that all people, irrespective of gender and sexuality should have equal rights.
“It is important for Copenhagen that issues concerning homosexual rights and tolerance can be discussed without prejudice. World Outgames enables us to pay tribute to the diversity and openness that is such an innate part of the city. We are greatly looking forward to welcoming participants and spectators,” says Lars Bernhard Jorgensen, CEO of Wonderful Copenhagen.
A great variety of cultural activities will take place in Copenhagen during the event. Cities such as Melbourne, Tel Aviv, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro and Antwerp will contribute with music, entertainment, dance and much more. Sporting events throughout the city will include some 30 disciplines – such as ice hockey, beach volleyball and triathlon in Copenhagen’s harbor area. Apart from the cultural program and the sport events, the city will be awash with a large number of free activities.
Also, a gay cruise with 2,600 passengers will be docking at Copenhagen during World Outgames, and a mass blessing has been arranged at Copenhagen Cathedral offering gay couples special recognition by the Church to commemorate the 20th anniversary of legally recognized same-sex civil unions in Denmark.
Facts and additional information about homosexual rights in Denmark:
http://www.visitcopenhagen.com/factsheetWOG
Read more about World Outgames: http://www.copenhagen2009.org/
Official program: http://www.copenhagen2009.org/program
Download photos: http://www.copenhagen2009.org/photo
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Humpday Isn’t Really About Gay Sex
Lynn Shelton’s Humpday, a sexual sitcom, opens with a pair of breeders in bed. A youngish married couple, Ben (mumblecordeon Mark Duplass) and Anna (Alycia Delmore), confess they’re too tired to procreate that night and then confess their mutual relief. As if in response, the doorbell rings at 2 a.m. and Ben’s long-lost college buddy, Andrew (Blair Witch Project survivor Joshua Leonard), stumbles in from deepest Mexico. Anna, who has never had the pleasure, watches the unexpected bromantic action with grim incredulity. Aggressively loud, demonstrative, and hairy, Andrew is a credible representation of Ben’s id.
Reuniting an uptight married man with a footloose old pal, Shelton’s third feature offers a (much) more extreme version of Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy, also a sort of buddy movie, also shot in the Pacific Northwest. In this case, the lost weekend is steeped in sexual anxiety. Friday night, Ben has to retrieve merry Andrew from a house called “Dionysus” — home to a bi cutie (the director herself) and an omnisexual assortment of roisterers. No orgies, but plenty of stoned dancing. Anna, who has prepared her signature pork chop dinner, sits home alone. She stews; Ben gets stewed. Prompted by news of an amateur porn festival — sponsored by a local alt-weekly — Ben finds himself proposing to costar with showoff Andrew in a mad art project, dude-on-dude action, totally straight, yet somewhere “beyond gay.” Maybe they’ll be famous. The only problem: Just who is going to bone whom?
Having thus invested its protagonists in a game of “chicken,” played to justify their respective life choices, Humpday delivers some excellent situation comedy. The scene where Andrew and Anna have a get-acquainted drink and Andrew inadvertently exposes Ben’s boastful lie that his wife has signed off on their “project” is pure Honeymooners. (Bang, zoom, straight to the moon!) Ben can’t tell Anna why he wants to have sex with Andrew, only that it’s very, very important to him. And, terrified that Ben might think he really did have a yen, Andrew can only sigh, “I wish I was more gay.” Of course. Just as Brüno is more of a comment on celebrity culture than the love (or hate) that dare not speak its name, Humpday is actually less a queer comedy than a satiric view of macho. Appreciative as Shelton may be of her dudes, she has another agenda. Each in his own way, the guys have been freaked by a manifestation of assertive female sexuality — although the term “pussy-whipped” is never used.
See Humpday Isn’t Really About Gay Sex
Miami New Times
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Mexico City Gay Pride Parade Draws Thousands
MEXICO CITY – Thousands of Mexicans marched peacefully through central Mexico City in the 31st Gay Pride March at which they demanded improvements in gay rights, watched over by some 1,500 police.
All transpired in calm at Saturday’s parade, Mexico City police department spokesmen said.
The annual march by lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transsexuals, transgender individuals and transvestites began at midday at the Monument of the Angel of Independence and it ended at the Plaza de la Constitucion later in the afternoon.
The participants this year called for maintaining a “separate” profile weeks before the general elections in which the lower house of Congress will be renewed, six governors and 606 mayors elected.
They also demanded improvements in security, health, sexual education and policies of equality to minimize the problems of discrimination that they still face in Mexico. See
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Politics, Religion and Discourse: A Conversation about Same Sex Marriage.
SAVE THE DATE
Monday, June 22, at 7PM at GRACE CATHEDRAL – San Francisco.
Politics, Religion and Discourse: A Conversation about Same Sex Marriage.
Panelists:
Bishop Gene Robinson, Episcopal Church, New Hampshire
Rabbi Doug Kahn, Executive Director of the San Francisco based Jewish Community Relations Council
Bishop Yvette Flunder, The Fellowship, a multi-denominational fellowship of 110 Pastors and Christian leaders representing 56 churches and faith-based organizations throughout the United States Mexico and Africa.
Reverend Lindi Ramsden, Executive Director of the Unitarian Universalist Legislative Ministry, California
Joe Tuman, Political Analyst, CBS 5 Eyewitness News, Professor, SF State University, Author “Political Communication in American Campaigns” (Sage, 2008)
Moderator Bishop Marc Andrus, Episcopal Church, Northern California
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San Angelo mayor resigns to be with gay partner
San Angelo, Texas residents were surprised this past week when Mayor J.W. Lown resigned from his office to be with his partner in Mexico. Lown, who was re-elected for a fourth term by a landslide vote, is helping his partner, a non-U.S. citizen, get a visa.
“I made the final decision …
Gay mayor’s illicit love is talk of conservative Texas
The small Texan city of San Angelo has been turned upside down by one of the most unusual sex scandals ever to impact on American political life.
Joseph Lown, the popular mayor, suddenly resigned last week after revealing he had fallen madly in love with an illegal immigrant. That was the first revelation; the second was that his new partner was another man.
Not surprisingly the news has become the talk of Texas. In the socially conservative and solidly Republican state, gay marriage and illegal immigration are probably the two hottest potatoes in town.
Perhaps, then, it was no wonder that Lown announced the end of his career from Mexico, where he had fled with his new boyfriend and from where he could mourn the end of an otherwise successful political career.
The news came as a bombshell. Lown, 32, had just won a fourth term with 89 per cent of the vote. He was immensely popular after having worked long hours to fix the city’s infrastructure and attending hundreds of community meetings.
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Swine Flu Deaths Mount
(Chicago, Illinois) Authorities in Mexico announced three more swine flu deaths and the United States and Canada one more death each as the world’s largest vaccine maker signed a deal with the United States to produce a swine flu vaccine.
The World Health Organization says at least 46 countries have confirmed …
