Protestors blocking the main entrance to Idaho’s State Senate chamber on Monday, February 3. (Photo: John Miller/AP)

BY ERIN HIGGINS
dot429

On Monday, February 3, Police arrested forty-three LGBT activists after a two-hour protest that blocked Idaho Senate Chamber entrances. According to the activists, the demonstration was meant to inspire lawmakers to include gay and transgender people in the Idaho Human Rights Act. Participants wore matching shirts bearing the words “Add the Words Idaho,” and they held their hands over their mouths in order to demonstrate their oppression.

According to police, activists stood shoulder to shoulder in a line that blocked legislators from getting through. Before she was arrested, former Senator Nicole LeFavour, who is openly lesbian and one of the organizers of the demonstration, allegedly told officers that if lawmakers “get a bill through committee, we would let them do their work.”

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The post LGBT activists arrested in Idaho protests first appeared on Lesbian.com.

BY MICHAEL K. LAVERS

LGBT rights advocates in more than 100 countries around the world will commemorate the International Day Against Homophobia on May 17 with a series of marches, workshops, performances and other events. Identoba, an LGBT advocacy group in Georgia, is planning a flash mob in front of the country’s old Parliament building in the country’s capital, Tbilisi, on May 17 during which participants will make a rainbow flag with their T-shirts. Botswanan playwright and activist Kalvin K. Kol-Kes is staging his play “BUTCHered” inspired by Mart Crowley’s “Boys in the Band” that focuses on a group of friends who are predominantly lesbian.

Pedro Julio Serrano of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force noted the march in the Puerto Rican capital on May 17 will coincide with the debate over three bills that would extend adoption rights to gays and lesbians; add sexual orientation and gender identity and expression to the island’s domestic violence laws and ban anti-LGBT discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations.

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The post Spotlight on International Day Against Homophobia first appeared on Lesbian.com.