In the News

In Toronto, Canada, two professors are having a very public row. One is a professor of Clinical Psychology and the other a professor of Physics. If changes in the law take place in a way that is anticipated, one of them may end up in jail.

They don’t even know each other. And you might thank that because it is taking place in Canada, we can all relax, because it could never happen here; except that many of the changes so far that have taken place in Canada, one of the most socially progressive cultures in the Western World, are copied elsewhere.

This was the country that first removed ‘mother and father’ from birth certificates on the grounds that if gay and lesbian parents could not constitute a mother and father together, and so feel discriminated against, then the term should be abolished altogether.

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Romania's Constitutional Court (CCR) postponed again on Tuesday, November 29, a decision in the case of the Romanian Adrian Coman and the US-born Clay Hamilton, a gay couple who got married in Belgium and want to have their marriage recognized in Romania.

It is the fourth time when the court postpones a decision in this case. Valer Dorneanu, president of the Constitutional Court, said after the Court’s meeting on Tuesday that the CCR would ask for a point of view from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), under the demand of the parts.

As news of the referral reached Brussels, ILGA-Europe Advocacy Director Katrin Hugendubel commented "We know this isn’t the end of the journey for Adrian and his family – but we are edging ever closer to what could be a momentous day for them. Many couples, whose right to freely move and reside within the European Union have been limited by similar domestic restrictions, will also be eagerly awaiting the outcome of this case."

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On the eighth floor in a gritty suburb of the capital, Taipei, sits the ten-year-old Wei-ming temple, a Taoist house of worship—but an unusual one. Nearly all the visitors buying bundles of prayers or bringing handwritten ones of their own to be burnt by the priest at the altar are gay. The deity receiving the prayers, and to whom the shrine is dedicated, is the Rabbit Spirit, a 17th-century folk deity from Fujian province in mainland China who protects men who have sex with men. In late imperial China, "rabbit" became a derogatory term for homosexual. In this temple the rabbits are reclaiming the label.

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He lives in Lambeth Palace, surrounded by priceless artefacts and can legitimately claim to be the ecclesiastical leader of more than 85 million pilgrims. But the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend Justin Welby, knows the experience of having little in the way of possessions.

As a 12-year-old boy, he recalls leaving rented flats in the dead of night, tiptoeing out of several buildings because his father was unable to pay the landlord. The fees for his final two years at Eton were never paid but absorbed by the school. He has known the insecurity and humiliation of not having enough money to pay the bills.

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