LGBT News

For World AIDS Day, CNN’s Sanjay Gupta today reported on PrEP, which is the daily usage of Truvada as an HIV preventive. CNN’s piece characterized PrEP as “controversial” – when in fact it has been endorsed by the CDC and virtually all HIV/AIDS activists and organizations. So you can guess where this “controversy” is REALLY coming from. Watch below.

Last night President Obama issued his annual World AIDS Day proclamation which celebrates continuing advances and vows to pursue a cure for HIV. This afternoon the president follows up that message with a personal video. Watch below.

People reports: At 72, actress Holland Taylor has found the love of her life, saying she is in her first deeply committed relationship ever. “It’s the most wonderful, extraordinary thing that could have ever possibly happened in my life,” the actress said on WNYC’s Death, Sex & Money podcast, where she declined to name the woman she is dating. The …

CBS News reports: Police are looking for a man who nearly killed a transgender woman in a beating in Queens. Around 4 a.m. Sunday, the attacker followed the 35-year-old victim — whose given name was Ricardo Sal but goes by the name Kathy — to the front of Sal’s apartment on 93rd Street in Jackson Heights, police said. As CBS2’s …

A month ago One Million Moms called for a boycott of Mattel because their American Girl magazine featured two gay dads with the foster children they had ended up adopting. Since then donations to the couple’s charity for foster kids have tripled and thousands more children will now receive “Comfort Cases” – which are backpacks full of clothes, toys, and …

CNN reports: A U.S. Marine was found guilty of killing of a transgender woman who was found strangled in a Philippines hotel room in October last year. The court in Olongapo, a city 77 miles (124 km) northwest of Manila, sentenced Lance Corporal Joseph Scott Pemberton to up to 12 years in prison, according to CNN Philippines’ Ina Andolong, who …

President Obama tonight issued his annual World AIDS Day proclamation. It reads: More than three decades ago, the first known cases of HIV/AIDS sparked an epidemic in the United States — ushering in a time defined by how little we knew about it and in which those affected by it faced fear and stigmatization. We have made extraordinary progress in the …

Agence France-Presse reports: Three people were killed and five more injured when armed gunmen attacked a gay festival in Mexico’s southern tourist resort of Acapulco, police said on Monday. Attackers stormed the “Reina Gay” festival taking place in Tres Palos on the edge of Acapulco on Sunday, opening fire on the crowd, a local police official told AFP. Three men …

Big news today from amfAR. Via press release: amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, today announced the establishment of the amfAR Institute for HIV Cure Research, an innovative collaborative enterprise based at UC San Francisco (UCSF). As the cornerstone of amfAR’s $100 million cure research investment strategy, the aim of the Institute will be to develop the scientific basis of …

Within weeks of his 2012 election to his state’s legislature, former Queensland Attorney General Jarrod Bleijie engineered the downgrading of civil unions to registered partnerships. But in what is being called a “breathtaking reversal,” Bliejie has declared that he now supports same-sex marriage. Q News reports: Mr Bleijie, who is a committed Christian and a marriage celebrant this week told …

Ahram Online reports: A Cairo court ruled on Thursday a six month jail sentence for controversial television presenter Mona Iraqi for defaming and spreading lies about a number of men in the central Cairo bathhouse incident. The sentence follows a defamation case filed by the mens’ defence team. Iraqi was also ordered to pay bail of LE1,000 and a fine …

A World AIDS Day photo project titled When Dogs Heal launches this week in Chicago and New York City. Watch below as the Associated Press explains. The exhibit opens tomorrow at Chicago’s FLATS Studio and on Thursday at NYC’s LGBT Community Center.

Austria’s The Local reports: Five Austrian children of same-sex parents are taking the government to court over Austria’s marriage laws, which don’t allow gay couples to marry. The children and their parents have taken their cases arguing for same-sex marriage to the Administrative Court in Vienna, and hope to change the law so that the children can become ‘legitimate’. Austria …

Bloomberg reports: A majority of Japanese support changing the country’s laws to allow same-sex unions, with the highest backing coming from younger respondents, according to a poll. Fifty-one percent of people polled by researchers from universities and the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research back such partnerships, the Asahi newspaper reported. Support exceeded 70 percent among respondents in …

Homosexuality remains criminalized in 40 Commonwealth nations. Newly-elected Commonwealth Secretary General Patricia Scotland wants to do something about that. Via the Independent: A report this month by the Kaleidoscope Trust shows that more than 90 per cent of LGBT Commonwealth citizens live in jurisdictions where they are treated as criminals or suffer discrimination. Testimony from LGBT people in that report …

Early this week Canada announced that gay Syrian males will be admitted under their refugee policy, but other “lone males” will not. A gay Syrian who recently won asylum in Canada tells the local press that this policy could endanger the lives of gay Syrian refugees who identify themselves. Metro News reports: “If I was a refugee in a camp …

Via ILGA-Europe: The Cypriot parliament has voted in favour of the Civil Partnership Bill, meaning that same-sex couples in Cyprus will be legally recognised for the first time. The legislation, which has generated lots of debate nationally, will offer couples the same rights as civil marriage. However, joint adoption rights are not included as part of the civil union law. …

Arstechnica reports: Turing Pharmaceuticals AG will not reverse its decision to raise the price of a decades-old drug, Daraprim, by more than 5,000 percent, backing out of previous statements that it would cut the cost by the end of the year. In an announcement on Tuesday, the company said that the list price of Daraprim, which jumped from $13.50 a …

The gay man charged with clubbing a Chelsea gay couple over the head with a restaurant chair has sued the couple for assault and defamation. Also being sued for defamation are witnesses who provided video and statements to the police. Courthouse News Service reports: An HIV counselor’s night out in New York City went off the rails when he was …

The notoriously anti-gay chairman of New York City’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade has been accused of using parade funds to buy “male enhancement” drugs and make other unauthorized purchases. The Irish Voice reports: The board of directors of the New York City St. Patrick’s Day parade has notified the New York State Attorney General’s office about a “misuse” of parade …