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.

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.