FROM PARIS WITH YAGG

Yagg's chief editor Judith Silberfeld debated the French same-sex marriage bill with Jean Duchesne (special advisor to the Archbishop of Paris), Judith Hamery, American Section teacher, Lycée International de Saint-Germain-en-Laye) and Anne-Elisabeth Moutet (columnist, The Sunday Telegraph).

Watching Pink Triangle Press's video for the It Gets Better Project, it came to us: "Why not us?". So here's the video the Yagg team made:

If you can't see the video, click on It Gets Better – Yagg.com team in Paris, France

During the opening session of the 18th International Aids Conference, researchers and physicians joined their voices with activists, and used figures from their studies to call for the strengthening of a plan in response to the HIV epidemic, on all fronts.

The room is huge, just like the task that motivated everyone gathered inside. While some participants have been busy for the past two days already, the conference officially began the evening of Sunday, July 18, in Vienna, Austria. Speakers on the podium reminded participants of the major issues that relate to the response that is nowadays given against the epidemic. They also supported the activists’ demands with concrete figures. Activists took the stage at the beginning of the ceremony. (more...)

Is French society evolving faster than those governing the country?  The answer is yes if we believe in the latest survey “Living conditions and aspirations” of Crédoc (Research centre for the study and monitoring of living standards). (more...)

Days ahead of the XVIII International AIDS Conference, to be held in Vienna from 18 – 23 July, scientists have stormed out of their laboratories and have started to share their discoveries with the public. However, while the medias show a great interest in these announcements, and therefore make them top news, other issues linked to this disease are being neglected. (more...)

The Spanish television channel Intereconomía was fined last Saturday (July 3) for having produced and broadcasted last year a homophobic self-promoting trailer, where they compared the day of the Orgullo gay, gay pride day in Spain, with the other “364 days of the Orgullo of normal people” [“orgullo” meaning “pride” in Spanish, editor’s note]. (more...)

Ebrahim Hamidi is the name of a young man sentenced to death in Tabriz, in northwestern Iran. He is accused, without any evidence or witnesses against him, of homosexuality and sodomy.

The Iranian Queer Organization (IRQO), an Iranian association for LGBT rights based in Toronto, Canada, announced the news on July 4th, in a press release, after having obtained the testimony of Mohammad Mostafai, the defendant’s lawyer, a specialist in human rights issues and in cases of minors sentenced to death. (more...)

Madrid, Vienna, London, Rome, Helsinki, Marseille, Cologne and Caracas: a lot of parades took place this weekend. Many participants but also attacks in Rome and Helsinki. Yagg sums it up. (more...)

A plaque in memory of those prisoners sent to Nazi concentration camps on grounds of homosexuality will be inaugurated next September 25 at the former concentration camp of Struthof. This plaque, which will bear the inscription "In memory of victims of the Nazi barbarity, sent to concentration camps on grounds of homosexuality", will be affixed on the Wall of Remembrance, below the former crematorium, among the other commemorative plaques. (more...)

Every year, the participation numbers for the Paris gay pride (Marche des Fiertés) given by the police are way beneath those given by the organizers, but this year, the difference is spectacular between the 800,000 people calculated by the Inter-LGBT (a group of 50 LGBT French organizations) and the 99,000 – of which 34,000 demonstrators and 65,000 “onlookers” – computed by the Prefecture of Police. Yagg tried to understand why by letting both sides comment on this surprising discordance. Vincent Loiseau, Inter-LGBT’s spokesman, responded very quickly, stating that the numbers given by the Prefecture were  “scandalous and unrepresentative”, but the Prefecture, after many solicitations from Yagg, eventually answered… that it didn’t wish to answer. Neither about the figures, nor about this distinction between demonstrators and “onlookers”, which had never been made before. (more...)