In 1995, my parents upped stakes and moved to Australia, citing cold Cantabrian winters as the chief culprit. I didn’t go with them, and decided to resettle in the North Island. Part of it stemmed from the fact that they’d decided to resettle in Queensland, historically one of the most backward and corrupt areas of […]

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Focus on the Family New Zealand has two ‘factsheets’ on same-sex counselling and transgender rights, both derived from their parent predatory Christian Right multinational parent organisation. So, what do they have to say?
In the case of its opinions about counselling and psychotherapy, FOFNZ provides no references for its claims that ‘exgay’ ‘reparative therapy’ is desirable […]

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Last month, the Economist reiterated an earlier call for comprehensive global drug legalisation. How will this deal with the HIV/AIDS epidemic?
The Economist slammed the current global campaign against the narcotics trade, arguing that it had done nothing but create failed states like Afghanistan, whose northern provinces rely on opium trafficking for heroin manufacture elsewhere. The […]

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In Canada, there’s still intense debate about the British Columbian provincial government’s  arrest of two Fundamentalist Church of the Latter Day Saints (schismatic Mormon fundamentalist polygamists). However, there’s similar debate down in Texas.
In Ms. Magazine, Andrea Moore-Emmett provided a detailed account of spousal battery and rape and child sexual abuse within FCLDS communities. She records […]

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At the recent documentary film festival in the main centres, there’s one piece (Suddenly Last Winter) that deals with LGBT issues in Italy. What has life been like there for our Italian counterparts? As it turns out, not too good.
One wouldn’t have thought so, given that male homosexuality per se was stricken from the Italian Penal […]

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While I was watching Underbelly last Wednesday, I was reminded about our community’s own share of maligant and destructive individuals. Or were they incidentally or biographically homosexual, as opposed to gay?
Let’s be mature about this. What do I mean by “incidentally or biographically homosexual?” Simply this- their sexual orientation or identity was an incidental element […]

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For the most part, bioethics has been characterised as primarily concerned with questions of heterosexual reproduction. However, it is also relevant to questions about LGBT access to general healthcare.
Actually, bioethics has never solely been about reproductive healthcare access. One persistent issue, kidney donor ethics, involves a resource-intensive form of surgery and ongoing dialysis needs that […]

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Amidst the horror of Victoria’s bushfire tragedy, DNA now informs us that a gay couple, Patrick Jennings (50) and Geoff Grady (36) may have perished on “Black Saturday.” Fruit Salad Farm (Marysville) was one of the business and residential properties destroyed, and it now seems that the couple were unable to escape from the rapid […]

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Should consensual adult sadomasochists be covered under anti-discrimination laws? Read the Canadian Xtra article below and draw your own conclusions.
Some might argue that while consensual adult sexual practices should not be criminalised, few practitioners of consensual sadomasochism view it as an all-encompassing lifestyle comparable to a core attribute like sexual orientation or gender identity. Preference […]

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On Tuesday, Canada’s right-wing province of Alberta announced that it would cut the province’s gender reassignment surgery funding to save $700, ooo funding out of an estimated $12.9 Billion budget this year. The GRS programme was funded to provide surgery for ten to twenty trans Albertans each year. The province has just said that it […]

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