Russian court dissolves country’s main LGBTQ rights organisation
A Russian court has effectively shut down the country’s largest LGBTQ rights organization after a failed attempt by the government to liquidate the Russian LGBT Network and its parent organization, the Charitable Sphere Foundation, in February.
A court in St. Petersburg issued the decision this week in support of Russia’s Justice Ministry. A representative of the ministry had claimed the Charitable Sphere Foundation illegally “carried out political activities using foreign property” under the guise of a charity and said its activities are aimed at changing legislation, including the Russian Constitution. In its lawsuit, the Russian government also accused the group of spreading “LGBT views” and engaging in activities that go against “traditional values.”
The foundation’s founder, Igor Kochetkov, a former director of the Russian LGBT Network, slammed the court’s decision and the government’s claim that the charity did not comply with “basic traditional family values established in the Constitution.”
British gay couple tie the knot in historic Antarctica wedding
Two British sailors who have traveled the globe together for 20 years tied the knot recently in a historic Antarctica wedding.
Eric Bourne and Stephen Carpenter said “I do” aboard the RRS Sir David Attenborough, a polar research ship on its maiden voyage in Antarctica. Bourne and Carpenter are the first same-sex couple to wed in the British Antarctic Territory, the largest of the U.K.’s 14 overseas territories.
“Antarctica is such an incredible place,” Carpenter said in a statement issued by his and Bourne’s employer, the British Antarctic Survey, the U.K.’s national polar research institute. “It felt like the perfect place for us to finally tie the knot! We’ve even had the coordinates of the wedding location engraved into our rings.”
Janelle Monáe confirms she’s non binary
Musician and actor Janelle Monáe confirmed she is nonbinary, meaning neither exclusively male nor female and discussed what it means to her in a recent interview with “Red Table Talk,” a talk show hosted by Jada Pinkett Smith; her daughter, Willow Smith; and her mother, Adrienne Banfield-Norris.
“I’m nonbinary, so I just don’t see myself as a woman, solely,” Monáe said during the episode released Wednesday. “I feel all of my energy. I feel like God is so much bigger than the ‘he’ or the ‘she.’ If I am from God, I am everything. I am everything, but I will always, always stand with women. I will always stand with Black women. But I just see everything beyond the binary.”
