Eurovision - my thoughts

It's over - finally - the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) that is. And those who still thought this was about the best song or the best singer will perhaps finally change their minds.

I feel sorry for France, Israel and Sweden, cause their singers were the best.

Israel - Eurovision Song Contest 2009 Semi Final 1 - BBC Three (Final Place 16th)

France made the 8th place and from what I read, this is the best French result in years and Patricia Kaas also attracted more viewers than before which is why France calls this year's participation a succes. The Swedish song took a different a different approach, but why not try something else when copying old songs (like some do) doesn't bring the expected success?
What I don't get are those disco beats and oompa oompa is not really my kind of music. So it will forever stay a mystery to me how Finland made it into the final and came in last, whereas Andorra did not (btw, the singer is originally from Denmark).

Eurovision 2009 Andorra - Susanne Georgi

or why didn't Ireland survive the semi-final?

Ireland: Sinead Mulvey & Black Daisy - Et Cetera


It's a good sign for the quality of the entries that Iceland came in second.

Yohanna - Is It True (Iceland) (Final 2nd Place)

And did you take notice that most of the points where attributed to the first six entries? How do you define a middle field, when the ninth place was the last to get more than 100 points? In my eyes people saying that germany's result was better than last year didn't look at the points.

Honestly I don't care, what I care about is that Norway will host the next ESC, which is one of best news in years. And it doesn't hurt at all that Norway is one of Europe's gay-friendliest countries :-)

I kept the best song of the entire contest for the end, Estonia - the secret winners.

Sandra Nurmsalu & Urban Symphony - Rändajad Estonia (Final Place 6th)

Video of the Day: IDAHO 2009

The site organizing the IDAHO 2009 challenge suffered from a DDOS attack on Friday, which was a clear homophobic attack. Unfortunately they were not the only gay-site and I sincerely hope that all sites are back online again and that all of them have the means to find the culprits and file complaints against them.

International Day Against Homophobia (May 17th)

I have to admit, I ignored mentions about this for several weeks, just because it was about IDAHO, took me some time to understand that this was not about some state in the US, but simply an acronym.

The International Day Against Homophobia goes back to an idea of Louis-George Tin, today the president of ILGA's French section. May 17^th was chosen as the date to coordinate international activities against homophobia as it was on May 17^th, 1990, that WHO removed homosexuality from the International Classification of Diseases. What started in 2005 with only a small group of countries participating evolved into a day with activities in over 50 countries worldwide. For a full list of the countries and detailed description of the objectives of this day, please read the according ILGA document Taking Action!.

This year, in 2009, the name was changed to "International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia", though everybody keeps referring to IDAHO.

Following the lobby work of the Spanish national federation FEGLTB the Spanish Parliament asked the Government on May 5^th to officially recognize May 17^th as the "International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia" (hat tip @ ana)

Organizations offer or participate in a wide range of activities and this year's May 17^th being a Sunday will probably/hopefully attract even more participants. It's impossible to mention all of them, you don't even find an exhaustive list on the official page, so I'll just give you an overview on the diversity of events and actions.

Another great site is this Canadian one : http://www.homophobie.org, which also provides you with promotional banners

You probably all heard about the IDAHO Challenge, which asks you to create a video and submit with the site by May 10^th (eurOut reported).

If you're in or around Berlin that day, you might check out a rally and symposium organized by LSVD (German Lesbian and Gay Association) referring to their ongoing campaign to include lesbian and gay persons in the German constitution (eurOut reported).

Also in Berlin, you can participate in the "protect every kiss 2009" event

Some pride events coincide with the International Day Against Homophobia, as e.g. in Blackpool or the Belgian Lesbian & Gay Pride in Bruxelles.

There are definitely many more events, are you participating in any these? What do you think of this idea?

This article was originally written for and published at eurOut.

photo blog: tough day for Maxi -

no comment ;)

My „no particular reason“ crush – Marie Labory

Marie Labory is a French TV journalist who has worked for ARTE Culture, hosting the shows alternating with Annette Gerlach for the last couple of years. The first time I saw on her tv I thought "well if she Is not a lesbian then I don't know who else is";)

Internet resources didn't deliver the expected results and trust me, normally I'm really good at digging. Ok I found out that she had worked for the gay channel pink tv, that was a hint but no proof. There's a certain type of women who appeal to the gay community and who therefore work for gay programs, events, magazines because they are successful at their jobs and not because of their sexual orientation.

Imagine my surprise and joy at finding an article on the French site têtu, confirming my hopes. Apparently she's been out forever :)

The article is about her being the only out female journalist and - here's the actuality angle - today's starting Festival de Cannes and how arte's daily show tries to be different from the others, e.g. Canal +. They're allocating the same space to all three sections of the festival, so we're going to learn more about the movies running at Un Certain Regard.
Looking forward to getting my daily movie dose presented by Marie Labory :-)

Official trailer at ARTE, looks like fun.

First guest will be Isabelle Huppert, president of this year's jury.

Love is gay

Love is gay? But what's the news in this? In this case, I took some liberties with translation. I don't know what was originally said respectively written, according to a German translation the Russian participant for the Eurovision Contest Anastasia Prikhodko
gave this as an answer in an email when asked about supporting Slavic Pride. The literal translation would have been "love is colorful" but "love is gay" fits so much better.

According to some fan blogs some of the participants are gay (I don't know who and if they are out) and no signs of support for Slavic Pride from them - except for Gordon, singer of the Dutch group, who said that he was going to boycott the show, if there would be aggressions against homosexual activists.

I have to take up the cudgels on behalf of Patricia Kaas whose answer to the question about her support for Slavic Pride was that she hadn't heard of that before, yet everyone should have the possibility to live their life.

It's not been that long that I came across the term Slavic Pride, until recently it had always been referred to Moscow Pride. Nikolai Alexeyev, founder of gayrussia.ru, has been trying to get official permission for a pride parade in Moscow for years now. Mayor Yury Luzhkov, an extreme homophobe, refused permission repeatedly, for various reasons. With international support Nikolai Alexeyev still organized unofficial pride parades, some of which you probably heard of in the media, e.g. police stood watching skinheads and other militants aggressing and attacking participants of the parade and ended up arresting participants of the parade.

This year though, they had hoped to be granted permission, as they scheduled the pride parade on the day of the
Eurovision Song Contest and the fear of international TV showing Russian police breaking up the parade would result in a positive decision.
Unfortunately Moscow's mayor doesn't care about this and after weeks of stalling and claiming that he never received a request for the parade he finally came around this weekend and officially prohibited the march. Reason: out of fear of the safety of the participants.
That's not only the most hypocritical reason I've ever heard, this is outrageous. This comes from the same man shouting "satanic" and worse whenever he has the occasion and also called in representatives of the church to help him fight against homosexuals including organizing an anti-demonstration on the same day.

Nikolai Alexeyev will still organize the march this Saturday, May 16^th, and as upset as I am about the mayor, I wonder as much if this is really a good idea. After all we're talking about disobeying in Russia, I'd be more than happy when proven wrong, but I fear that this year actions of the police will be even harder.

What do you think? Am I too pessimistic? Would you participate in this parade in Moscow?

This article was originally written for and published at eurOut.

Names – ever think about them?

 

Ever wondered what's in a name and what this might imply?

In Germany we have this thing called saint's day and in some families this day is given more attention than anniversaries.
Most of those saint's days go back to religious persons and there are complete books on that topic. If you're from a religious family you probably have a more traditional name, one that can be traced back to a saint.

I recently read that there is a wave of choosing more androgynous names like Luca or Lena though I don't see anything androgynous about either of them. Sure, normally a name ending on an "a" would lead to the assumption that you're dealing with a woman - unless you're facing an Italian name. Italian Luca's and Andrea's are always male. As for Lena (and who is not thinking of Lena Heady at this moment?) nothing modern and androgynous about this one, as it's short for Magdalena - very religious, very traditional and definitely very feminine.

Family names are a different matter, sometimes left open to speculation, e.g. I have at least three versions that really make sense as to where my family comes from. I prefer that version where it would mean "on fire".

And I'll leave you with that thought.