Organisers Romance Writers Ink said they do not condone discrimination and recognised the new rule in their More Than Magic 2012 competition about gay entries was “highly charged”.

The rules had stated the competition would “no longer accept same-sex entries in any category” of the romance-writing contest.

The competition was to offer a grand prize of up to $495 (£310) and works could be entered in a range of romance categories including paranormal, historical and ‘sensual contemporary’, so long as the romance was heterosexual.

Author Kari Gregg described to the Guardian the response she received after asking the organisers to explain the rule: “RWI chapter members were uncomfortable with accepting same-sex contest entries. ‘Same-sex was just too much.’”

“The arrogant presumption that their behaviour was OK infuriated me as a professional, who (reasonably) expected her work to be considered with the same courtesy and respect afforded to every other romance book, but also as a parent of a LGBT young adult.

“Both the professional and the parent responded with an immediate, ‘how dare they?’”

A statement on RWI’s site says: “After much consideration, RWI regretfully announces the MTM Published Author Contest has been cancelled. All monies and books received from entrants will be returned as soon as possible.

“We have heard and understood the issues raised, and will take those concerns into consideration should the chapter elect to hold contests in the future.

It adds: “Please note: our contest coordinator, Jackie, is a chapter member who graciously volunteered to collect entries and sort by category. It is unfortunate that she has become the object of personal ridicule and abuse.

“We recognize the decision to disallow same-sex entries is highly charged. We also opted not to accept YA [Young Adult] entries. We do not condone discrimination against individuals of any sort.”

On the episode of her show set to air in the US tonight, Ellen tackles the opposition by One Million Moms which called for her to be sacked for being gay.

The group had accused JC Penney of jumping on the “pro-gay bandwagon”.

DeGeneres jokes: “For those of you are just tuning in for the first time, it’s true. I’m gay. I hope you were sitting down.”

On One Million Moms, she continues: “This organization doesn’t think I should be the spokesperson because I’m gay.

“They wanted to get me fired, and I’m proud and happy to say that JCPenney stuck by their decision to make me their spokesperson. Which is great news for me because I also need some new crew socks. I’m really going to clean up with this discount.”

On the claims made by One Million Moms that JC Penney was jumping on a ‘bandwagon’ she says: “First of all, being gay or pro-gay isn’t a bandwagon.

“You don’t get a free ride anywhere. There’s no music. And occasionally we’ll sing ‘We Are Family’ but that’s about it.”

She also confronts the claim that a majority of shoppers would go elsewhere when faced with a lesbian, questioning how much support there was for One Million Mom’s views.

37,700 people have now signed a GLAAD petition backing the retailer’s hiring of DeGeneres.

DeGeneres concludes: “I usually don’t talk about stuff like this on my show, but I really want to thank everyone who is supporting me.

“Here are the values I stand for. I stand for honesty, equality, kindness, compassion, treating people the way you’d want to be treated and helping those in need.To me, those are traditional values. That’s what I stand for. I also believe in dance.”

DeGeneres also welcomes the decision by the US 9th Circuit Appeals Court that California’s Proposition 8 gay marriage ban was unconstitutional.

“The what?”

“AMF,” he repeats, “it’s what everybody here drinks.”

“Right then,” I shout to the bartender behind the counter, “one AMF please. Whatever that is.”

Clearly I must have looked even more helpless than I felt to elicit such eager help from a stranger. Then again it isn’t the first time on this trip that a local’s interest levels suddenly perk up after he notices my English tones. For many Americans a foreign accent appears to be as irresistible as catnip.

Right now I am crammed against the counter of Pure, a Friday gay club night hosted at the otherwise straight Club Sound, and the place is filled to the gunwales. Unlike the tight-knit layout of European gay villages where different clubs and bars are usually within easy walking distance of each other, in Salt Lake, Utah (or SL, UT as I affectionately call it), venues are decidedly more spaced out. Only three of the dozen or so gay hotspots can easily be reached by foot from Pure. For anywhere else you have to get in your car and drive, or take a taxi. And considering Utah’s zero tolerance approach to drinking and driving it usually comes down to the latter. Forget about legal limits, driving in Utah after you’ve drunk anything with more kick than a Coke can land you in seriously hot water.

Back at Pure it didn’t take long for me to regret my own choice of drink. The pint-size glass that is being pushed in my direction now is filled to the brim with a concoction of toxic-coloured blue booze of seriously dubious origin.

“It’s called Adios Motherf**cker because after you drink it it’s bye-bye,” explains Shane. The two of us randomly met the previous night and Shane has kindly offered to act as my unofficial guide for the evening. “You’re gonna love it!”.

Had I known exactly what the club’s signature drink entailed, I might have been slightly more reluctant to follow the recommendation of a complete stranger earlier at the bar. Clearly there wasn’t going to be any more driving for yours truly tonight.

Oozing with queer cred

Salt Lake City, or simply Salt Lake as locals call it, is best known to many for its ties to the Mormon faith. After all, the city is the headquarters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with its 14 million global members and is also home to the world’s largest Mormon temple. But as my visit to the Utah capital has been progressing I’ve found it a refreshingly liberal and open minded city. Probably because unlike small-town Utah, Salt Lake itself boasts a non-Mormon majority among its 1.12 million residents.

In fact, the Salt Lake gay scene has moved forward with such great strides in recent years, that the city was recently crowned by The Advocate as the gayest city in America (beyond the obvious megalopolises of New York City, San Francisco and the likes). According to The Advocate, who based their list on “per capita queerness”, the far-less-oppressive-than-it-used-to-be Salt Lake City has now earned its queer cred and deserves its spot at number 1 judged by their “totally accurate if decidedly subjective criteria”.

Getting here is also much easier than you might think. If you happen to live near any of the major airports in the UK you will have no shortage of flight options, most of them with just one stop-over in the US. I opted to fly with Lufthansa so as to include a shopping trip in New York. Although it might not be possible to shorten the time of the actual flight, Lufthansa has one nifty way to help the time pass more quickly – it is the only airline to provide high speed internet access on transatlantic flights with connection costs starting at just £9. So whether you want to update your Facebook status, line-up some Statesides meet-ups through Gaydar and Grindr, or stay abreast of business emails, you can do all that and more aboard Lufthansa flights while merrily cruising at 40,000ft. From New York, suitcase crammed full of New York bargains of course, it was only a short flight onboard JetBlue to Salt Lake City, jetting off from the airline’s exclusive and impressively modern Terminal 5 at JFK airport.

Shooting fish the Mormon way

According to Shane, who can’t believe how little progress I have made with my AMF (I’ve barely dented it), the inescapable presence of the LDS Church does have its advantages.

“Those repressed Mormon boys are so easy to bang it’s like shooting fish in a barrel,” he grins when I ask him what it is like to live a city with such strong religious links. “Mix that with the gorgeous mountains and perfect sunsets every night and little Salt Lake is a slice of heaven.”

And he does have a point. Salt Lake certainly has its appeal: A decent gay scene, impressive shopping and striking sights, including as many Mormon-related attractions as you could wish for in one lifetime. But it is the spectacular natural attractions right on its doorstep that appeal even more to many of its visitors.

Take Park City for instance. Located just 30 minutes from downtown Salt Lake it hosts the prestigious and star-studded Sundance film festival every year and is home to three world-class ski resorts and some of the finest slopes in North America. Blessed with nearly 150 inches of light powdery snow every year it isn’t hard to understand why this picturesque ski village with its historically preserved Main Street played a key part during the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. This month the village will host a decidedly more rainbow-coloured event when Elevation Utah rolls into town for its second annual gay ski week, starting on February 23rd.

Hitting the great gay outdoors

Fancy something a little more rugged? Then best head south towards Moab, some 230 miles from Salt Lake, and the heart of the American West. Billed as the adventure capital of Utah, Moab is located between two spectacular National Parks and one stunning State Park. The rugged terrain and expansive landscapes of the Desert Southwest stands in strong contrast to the Rocky Mountains, and begs to be biked, hiked and explored in a dozen other ways. Arches National Park is an unmissable destination here, with its wealth of over 2,000 natural red sandstone arches, including the iconic Delicate Arch which has graced the cover of many a travel guide.

Regardless if it is rock climbing and hot air ballooning you’re after, or if you lean more towards speed boating and off-roading, there is no shortage of adrenalin-filled activities for outdoor enthusiasts in Moab and its surrounds. Be sure to time your visit carefully though. Summer temperatures in these arid parts can hit scorching highs of 40°C and more while the mercury can plummet as low as -15°C during the winter months. Even in spring and autumn Utah mornings and evenings often have a bite to them because of the generally high elevation of the state, though midday temperatures are normally in the region of a very pleasant (and usually sunny) 25°C.

Homeward bound

Two days after exploring the fruits of Salt Lake’s nightlife with Shane, it is time to jet home again. All too soon. Despite the relative brevity of my homebound Lufthansa flight (it takes less than eight hours to travel from JFK back to Europe), the quiet of the cabin gives me the perfect opportunity to reflect on my trip.

Like any major city Salt Lake isn’t without its own set of problems, many of it linked directly or indirectly to the Latter-day Saints Church. Despite Shane’s notion that the Mormon Church ensures a fertile hunting ground, its “love the sinner not the sin” rhetoric has been linked to some cases of homophobia in the Utah capital. But beyond these isolated instances and underneath that perfectly pristine Mormon image is a city that rewards you handsomely with a virtually unrivalled outdoors playground, buckets of charm and surprisingly open-minded locals.

Travel Toolbox

Where to stay: Centrally located within walking distance from downtown Salt Lake and major attractions like historic Temple Square, the Red Lion Hotel Salt Lake is an excellent option with great value for money. It boasts 393 well-appointed rooms, a fitness studio and a pool for the hot summer months. Especially attractive is the Red Lion’s free shuttle service, which isn’t just handy for airport pick-ups and drop-offs but also when setting off to explore the city’s gay hotspots and shopping offerings. A worthy alternative is the Salt Lake Hilton, also located in the heart of downtown Salt Lake.

How to get there: While there are more direct options to get to Salt Lake, yours truly opted to fly with Lufthansa from Manchester to New York for a spot of Manhattan shopping before continuing the journey to Salt Lake. In 2011 New York became Lufthansa’s first A380 destination in North America, and the airline also debuted its brand new First Class cabin on this route.

Once in the US few airlines can rival the offering of JetBlue and their expansive route network. Despite being positioned as a low-cost airline, there is nothing cheap about the JetBlue experience other than the airline’s fares. Expect plush chairs, oodles of leg room, unlimited donuts and the friendliest cabin crew around for miles. Not surprisingly JetBlue boasts a long ream of awards including Top Low Cost Airline for Customer Satisfaction and Best US Budget Airline.

General: Utah’s dedicated UK website www.goutah.co.uk as well as their general www.visitutah.com website provide a wealth of information to help plan your trip and to make the most of your time in the Beehive State. For more information about Moab visit the official www.discovermoab.com tourism information website. 

The landmark ruling is just the latest twist in the battle over same sex marriage in the state.

In May 2008, the state’s supreme court ruled that Proposition 22 passed in 2000 and other statutes that limit marriage to a relationship between a man and a woman violated the equal protection clause of the California Constitution.

By June of 2008, a new voter initiated proposition, Prop 8, a new ban on gay marriage, overturning the earlier ruling had received 1.12 million signatures in support. On the same day as Barack Obama was elected, just over seven million Californians voted in favour of banning same sex marriage, compared to six and a half million voting to retain it. During the time that gay marriage was legal, more than 18,000 gay couples got married during the time that same sex marriage was legal.

In 2010, following a lengthy public trial, effectively appealing the decision of voters, Judge Vaughn Walker has ruled that the voter-initiated Proposition 8, which bans gay marriage in California, is unconstitutional.
Judge Walker ruled that Prop 8, as it has become known, violates the equal protection clause in the United States constitution by denying gays and lesbians the right to marry a member of the same sex.

Supporters of Prop 8 appealed his decision and today a three-judge panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled 2-1 that Judge Walker’s decision was correct.
“Although the Constitution permits communities to enact most laws they believe to be desirable, it requires that there be at least a legitimate reason for the passage of a law that treats different classes of people differently,” the ruling of the court states.

Supporters of Prop 8 also claimed that Judge Walker was biased as he did not disclose that he was gay when conducting the trial. The Court of Appeals ruled that he was not required to make such a disclosure.

The 9th Circuit’s decision only applies to California, although it holds jurisdiction over Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregan and Washington. The govenor of Washington state recently said she will sign legislation to introduce gay marriage.

“Ever since the beginning of this case, we’ve known that the battle to preserve traditional marriage will ultimately be won or lost not here, but rather in the US Supreme Court,” Andy Pugno, general counsel for Protect Marriage said.

The governor of California Jerry Brown posted on Twitter: “The court has rendered a powerful affirmation of the right of same-sex couples to marry. I applaud the wisdom and courage of this decision.”

The black-and-white advert showed Beckham only in underwear to promote his new line.

It aired during the National Football League’s championship game, which over 100 million people watched.

Roland Martin tweeted to his 90,000 followers during the game: “If a dude at your Super Bowl party is hyped about David Beckham’s H&M underwear ad, smack the ish out of him! #superbowl”

In response, GLAAD said “advocates of gay bashing” had no place at CNN, where Martin is a regular commentator.

Martin insisted his comment, made during the American Football event of the year, was made because Beckham is a soccer player.

He responded yesterday that it was “furthest from the truth” that he would support violence or bullying towards gays and that he “sincerely regretted” any offence cause by his tweet.

On RolandMartinReports.com, he wrote: “When we witness violence in this country against someone because they are gay, or being beaten because they are Black, that speaks to a vicious cycle that seems to be never ending.

“My joking about smacking someone, whether it was in response to a commercial or food they prepare for a Super Bowl party or wearing an opposing team’s jersey, was stated in jest. It was not meant literally, and in no way would I ever condone someone doing such a thing.

“As I said repeatedly, I often make jokes about soccer in the U.S., and my crack about David Beckham’s commercial was related to that and not to anyone’s sexuality. To those who construed my comment as being anti-gay or homophobic or advancing violence, I’m truly sorry. I can certainly understand how someone could come to a different conclusion than the one I meant.

He added: “As someone who has spoken out forcefully against bigotry against African Americans and other minorities, as well as sexism against women, I fully understand how a group who has been unfairly treated would be offended by such comments, and, again, I am sorry for any offense my remarks caused.

At the time of publication, 5,700 people had signed a petition calling for CNN to stop inviting Martin to comment on current affairs.

As well as criticising the tweet, GLAAD also drew attention to Martin’s previously-expressed views on ‘gay cure’.

In 2006, a post by Roland Martin on RolandSMartin.com apparently equates homosexuality with kleptomania, saying: “… for Christians, going to church is not supposed to be a feel good exercise. We are expected to be convicted, and encouraged to walk away from sin and live a more Christ-like life. In my church, this goes for the woman who is an alcoholic, the child who continues to be disobedient to his parents, the young lady who is hell-bent on stealing, and the person who is gay.

It continues: “My wife, an ordained Baptist minister for 20 years, has counseled many men and women to walk away from the gay lifestyle, and to live a chaste life. She has asked heterosexual men and women to abstain from sex until marriage. For her, the obligation is to her calling as a minister of the Word, rather than bowing to societal pressures. She loves gay and lesbian church members dearly, and prays with them, talks to them, and breaks bread with them. But what she cannot do is compromise the integrity of the teachings of Christ.”

Martin had also previously come to the defence of Tracy Morgan, who caused offence last year after an ill-judged joke at a Nashville about stabbing his own son if he came out as gay.

Prop 8, the 2008 voter initiative that banned gay and lesbian marriages has been the subject of constant legal battles.

In 2010, Judge Vaughn Walker in August, which ruled that the ban on gay marriage in California was wrong. The decision came after a lengthy “trial” of the arguments for and against allowing gay couples to marry. “The evidence presented at trial and the position of the representatives of the State of California show that an injunction against enforcement of Proposition 8 is in the public’s interest,” Judge Walker wrote at the time. He initially ordered for gay marriages to resume in the state with almost immediate effect.

An appeal to his decision was immediately launched but
unusually, the official ‘defendants’ of that appeal, then governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney-General Jerry Brown, refused to defend the ban.

It is likely that regardless of tomorrow’s ruling, there will be an appeal of the judgement of some kind. 40 states have some sort of ban on gay marriage.

This is the sorry tale of how US Customs officials decided to apply such a test – and as a result humiliated and embarrassed a Canadian woman who was on her way to run a marathon and visit friends.

The story, released today by Christin Milloy, who also alerted the world to Canada’s no-fly rule, is that of Jennifer McCreath, from Newfoundland.

Following GRS in January 2011, Ms McCreath applied for a new birth certificate from the Nova Scotia administration, secure in the knowledge that according to officials there, she should expect to wait no longer than 10 days for her new documentation.

Seven weeks later, and with no certificate in sight, Ms McCreath was forced to set off carrying only her current passport, which included a gender marker of “M”.

All went well, until Toronto Pearson international airport, where she had to go through customs before boarding her next airplane, to the United States.

A US Customs agent inspected her passport, where and directed Ms McCreath to ‘Secondary Screening’, where she was photographed and fingerprinted. A further 90 minutes elapsed before anyone else spoke to her: since other individuals were dealt with in the intervening minutes, there is some concern that this was done deliberately in order to ensure she would miss her plane.

There then followed a search of her bags and according to Ms McCreath: “They started asking me all sorts of bizarre personal questions about my sexuality.” They also asked a number of intrusive and personal questions about surgery they assumed she had had, as well as questioning her about her medication and the purpose of a highly intimate device – a dilator – that they discovered in her luggage.

This last line of questioning continued despite the fact that Ms McCreath was carrying with her a doctor’s note which, she explained, “describes (the medical device) as urgent for me to have on my person, and can’t afford to lose them in luggage and to please let me carry them on board”.

In the end, Ms McCreath was permitted to continue on her way, paying out an additional $80 for having to change flights. To add insult to injury, it subsequently transpired that had she chosen to do so, she could have obtained a temporary passport from the Canadian Passport Office in the two years prior to her surgery. However, despite several conversations and a visit to the offices of that body, she was at no time informed of this option.

Following so soon after attempts by Canada’s Ministry of Transport to justify similar discriminatory legislation in respect of flying over Canada, this is a stark reminder of what happens when bad rules are allowed to lie on the books.

Spokespersons for that Office told us last week that:

- The no-fly rules were not new: they had originally been implemented in 2007, and were re-issued last summer;

- They were designed with “security” in mind and would help transport officials in determining whether an individual resembled their photographic identity

- They were in line with International Civil Aviation Organisation rules, as well as similar rules enforced by every other government in the world

They declined, however, to answer questions as to how a subjective assessment of gender might help an individual match a face to a photograph: nor would they give any further information as to how this measure would assist with security.

Despite several requests to substantiate their claims in respect of ICAO rulings, they declined to provide any text to corroborate their claims: nor were they prepared to back up their claims that these rules were the same as rules implemented elsewhere in the world.

Spokespersons for both the UK Border Agency and UK Dept of Transport told us that they were not aware of any such regulation being implemented in the UK.

Most chillingly, when asked how it could be possible for an official to determine whether a passenger appears “to be of the gender indicated on the identification he or she presents” – and whether there were any plans to carry out strip searches in this respect, they again declined to respond.

Ms McCreath understands that US officials are allowed to operate on Canadian soil so long as they abide by Canadian Human Rights legislation: if nothing else, the existence of Canada’s no-fly regulations seems likely to be used by US officials as justification for their action in this instance.

White has written 28 books including a trilogy of autobiographical novels and biographies of Marcel Proust and Jean Genet, for which he won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

His latest novel, Jack Holmes and his Friend, was published in 2011.

Speaking to Toby Ash, White explains the reasons behind choosing Alan Hollinghurst’s The Folding Star, Jean Genet’s Our Lady of the Flowers, Christohper Isherwood’s A Single Man, EM Forster’s Maurice and Andrew Holleran’s Dancer from the Dance.

Do you still feel as inspired as a writer today as you did, say, a couple of decades ago?

Well, a lot of people have said that Jack Holmes and His Friend is my best book, so I guess I’m still writing at the height of my powers. I teach writing, so I have to constantly think about writing problems.

Is the writing process for you pleasurable or angst-ridden?

It’s both angst-ridden and pleasurable. It is pleasurable to finish, I suppose. It’s always angst-ridden to write, with some stretches of pleasure. But it does seem to me that writing a novel is so precarious. It’s as though you’re carrying a bucket of water up a hill and you’re not quite sure you’re going to make it.

But you always seem to make it. Or are there times you haven’t?

I think I wrote three or four novels before one was published, so I certainly know what it’s like to write something and not have it be successful or accepted. Like every writer I’ve been criticised for some of my work. A couple of my novels are considered real failures.

How do you react to criticism? Do you ignore it or do you take it on board?

Sometimes it serves as a useful corrective. One of the things I have been very criticised for, even in Jack Holmes and His Friend, is being too explicitly sexual. I don’t think I’ve toned that down at all, as it’s something that interests me. But I’m not surprised when critics attack me for it.

Are they critical because it is gay sex? Do you think they would be less critical if it was heterosexual?

I think that in America especially, and in England too, there are a lot of people who are puritanical. They love to tell you that sexual writing is either boring or ludicrous. I think those are two ways of registering shock.

Do you think you would be such a prolific writer – or even a writer at all – if you weren’t gay? I remember you once said that when you were young you wrote about gay themes as a form of therapy.

For sure, in my early writing I felt like I was drowning and that writing was the only way of putting my head above the water, but the water was constantly rising. I think I had so many mental problems when I was young and I was constantly in therapy. That was certainly true for my teenage years and my twenties. I think that after I was 30 things changed a lot and I began to take more pleasure in the craft of writing and see novels as almost problems to be solved – artistic problems rather than psychological ones.

You teach creative writing and have done so for many years. You once said you found teaching in the early years a very useful education for yourself as a novelist. Do you still find that today?

I used to teach literature courses and that was certainly useful to be able to examine how books were put together. Now I only teach creative writing seminars and workshops. It’s instructive in a different way. For one thing, it keeps me in touch with how young people feel and the things they are thinking about and the way they are talking. For another, I’m constantly thinking about the construction of stories and novels. Issues like suspense and tension, characterisation, dialogue, percentages of dialogue to description and so on. All those rather technical issues get discussed in class and I think they are ones that I’m always thinking about and that must be useful for a writer.

So you can never stop building your knowledge.

I think that’s true. Reading established writers and classics is another way. I always hate when writers – often quite famous writers – will say they don’t read fiction and they only read biographies. I think that’s betraying the craft. Even if it was true, I wish they wouldn’t say it. I think that the truth is that you learn a lot from reading other people’s novels, including bad ones.

For the purposes of this interview we are looking at your favourite works of gay fiction. But outside of this genre, what writers have influenced you?

I love Nabokov. I think Lolita is one of the great books of the 20th century. I love Proust a lot. I have written a biography of Proust. I read a lot of poetry too and wrote a biography of Rimbaud.

Do you find yourself slightly pigeonholed as a chronicler of the New York gay scene of the 1970s and 1980s? Are audiences and critics resistant when you write on subjects outside this?

Well, I have tried other things and they have been dismissed or ignored. I wrote a historical novel called Fanny, which was about Frances Wright, a Scottish woman who started a utopian colony in America. The story is narrated by Frances Trollope, the mother of the author, who was herself an interesting, best-selling writer. I thought that was an amusing double portrait, but people didn’t like it. I think they thought, “How dare he write about something outside of his turf”. I wrote another book that was entirely heterosexual called Caracole, and that was really despised.

Who was it despised by? Was it the mainstream media or by gay critics in particular?

I think the mainstream ones. The gay ones just tended to ignore it because they had got the message that it wasn’t of interest to them. Gay bookstores refused to handle it, which was ludicrous because if you had been handling this writer anyway for his other work you’d think you’d want to handle it all. But then you had straight people criticise it because they didn’t quite get it. I mean it was a hard book to get because it was a sort of fantasy book. People didn’t know quite how to categorise it and I think that books that fail are always ones that are between genres or not clearly one thing or another.

Book One
Our Lady of the Flowers

Your first book recommendation is Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet, whose biography you wrote. Before we talk about this particular book, I wonder if you could tell us more about his early life.

Genet was put up for adoption by his mother. He became a child of public welfare. He was taken in by a family who lived in the heart of France, a rather backward area. His [foster] parents were paid a monthly stipend by the state to look after him. As long as his foster mother was alive he got along very well with everybody. But then when she died he kind of went crazy. He was accused of lots of little crimes, of stealing things. But basically he was just filching things, he wasn’t really stealing anything important – erasers and marbles and things like that.

He was very, very bright and he was probably the brightest student in the whole département. Because of his intelligence he wasn’t put out to work at age 13 as a farm worker, the way most foster children were. He was sent to a trade school to learn printing, which was considered a great honour. But he ran away from that school almost immediately and began a life of petty crime. He was arrested many times for things like stealing a signature of a French king at an autograph store or fabric from a department store or doctoring his train ticket so that it looked as if he was eligible for a longer train ride than he’d paid for.

France was very backward in a sense. It was really part of the 19th century until World War II. So just as boys in [Charles] Dickens are punished terribly for very minor crimes, in the same way Genet, who never committed any big crimes, was punished very severely. He even risked being given a life sentence, but his case was pleaded by [Jean] Cocteau who said that Genet was like Rimbaud and you don’t put Rimbaud in prison. And the judge, being French, was convinced by this argument and released him. Then he went into terrible decline because he had always written in prison with the threat of a life sentence over his head and now he was free as a bird and found it hard to write. He became extremely depressed. What he finally did was to change entirely and write for the theatre.

He did write most of Our Lady of the Flowers in prison and it was published first in 1943 during the occupation. It was published very privately in an edition of just 50 copies.

It’s extraordinary that it was published at all during the German occupation.

The Germans were very puritanical and would have certainly persecuted not only the author but also the publisher if they had known about it. But it was printed privately and sold under the counter to rich homosexuals. But Genet wanted a larger audience and he removed quite a few of the pornographic passages from the original edition in order to make it more accessible to the general public.

Can you tell us more about the book itself?

It’s beautifully written. It’s a sumptuous, poetic style, which is true of several of the books on my list. But he certainly was one of the greatest stylists of all time. He earned the attention of some of the leading thinkers of the day. [Jean-Paul] Sartre wrote a whole book about him and so did [Jacques] Derrida. Many other important writers like Cocteau wrote about him and admired him.

He invented in this book the drag queen for all literature who’s called Divine. She – the book calls her “she” even though she’s a man – is a prostitute and has many lovers. The most important is a pimp called Darling Daintyfoot. He brings home one night a very beautiful boy who’s called Our Lady of the Flowers, who is a murderer and who’s about to be executed. The book has several converging timeframes. For instance, Genet is always reminding us that he himself is in prison awaiting sentence. That’s one thread of the book. And then there’s another timeline, which is about the sentencing and execution of Our Lady of the Flowers. So those are different timelines that converge. But there are many characters in the book and there are a lot of sex scenes. It’s a world of the ghetto really. He places his ghetto in Montmartre. If you read it in French there’s an awful lot of thieves’ slang that’s used in the dialogue. The dialogue is very raw but the narration is very elegant and elevated. So there’s a kind of contrast between the two. The dialogue is constantly reminding you that these are criminals and part of the underclass, whereas the narration is always reminding you that you should think of this as something like a tragedy by Rossini.

This book was really a lifesaver for Genet, transporting him from the underclass to the heart of literary Paris.

It’s probably what saved his life. Because he was such a good writer Cocteau discovered him and intervened on his behalf and got him freed from a life sentence. Even the president of France exonerated him. It did change his life entirely. He was somebody who had no talent, only genius. He couldn’t do anything. He didn’t have any skills. He only knew how to write the best prose of the century.

Book Two
A Single Man

Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man is a book I know you are very fond of. You once described it as “the founding text of modern gay literature”. Why do you think this book is so important?

Well I think it’s the opposite of Our Lady of the Flowers in one sense as it’s not metaphorical. The style is extremely chaste and simple. The action of the book takes place in a single day. The reason it’s innovative is that with George – who’s the main character in the book – there’s no ideology given about how he came to be gay or what his childhood was like. Nor is he confined to the ghetto but he’s a respected teacher. He’s an Englishman living in Los Angeles, as Isherwood was himself, and he has lots of straight friends. One of them is a woman called Charley whom he sees during the course of the book. Another straight friend is a student called Kenny whom he sees at the end of the book.

The main story is George trying to survive because his lover Jim has just died in a car accident. In fact, Isherwood’s lover Don Bachardy hadn’t died but gone to England to study at the Slade School of Fine Art.

Yes, I was going to ask you whether the book was Isherwood imagining life without Bachardy?

Exactly. The death in the book really stands for this long departure of Don Bachardy. They were reunited later but there was definitely a difficult moment for Isherwood personally. And so he writes with great feeling about the loss of a lover.

A loss he cannot reconcile himself to.

In a way it’s tragic, but in another way it’s rather peaceful in the way it’s described. The thing you have to remember about Isherwood is that he was a Hindu. He believed in Vedanta and he was a practising Hindu convert. And so, really he believed that the self was not a single thing like a stone in the middle of a peach but something more like an onion, which peeled back endlessly until it disappears. So, the beginning and end of the book show him first rising out of sleep and composing himself as a self and the end shows all those elements dissipating into death. I think this is a Hindu book without the Hinduism. You can really only understand it if you understand Vedanta. But it’s never explicitly brought into the book.

Did you see the film?

Yes, I did. I thought it was too much like a perfume ad. It was too beautiful; the people were shown to be too rich. And there was the introduction – which I thought was ludicrous – of a beautiful male prostitute. That was an episode that didn’t make sense at all. I did think that Julianne Moore who played Charley was really great in this. Also, it was a very good performance by Colin Firth.

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I grew up in a traditional Jewish family in Crown Heights. I love my mother, my father and my family. I had always felt different and was the subject of relentless bullying by other boys for “seeming” gay. When I was 17 I confided to a friend that I was attracted to men and not sexually attracted to women at all. When it came out, I was thrown out of yeshiva (Jewish religious school). For the longest time I felt so alone because I truly believed that I was the only person battling this secret war. My older siblings were getting married and having kids, and all I ever wanted was to be a part of the beautiful world my parents had raised me in. My dream was to marry a woman and live the life my family hoped and dreamed for me. I would never have chosen to be gay; I could not imagine anyone growing up in the Orthodox world who would choose to be someone who doesn’t fit into the values and norms of everyone around them.

So do I think that I was “born gay”? I don’t know and I am not sure how important that is. What is important is that it certainly is not something that I chose or had anything to do with. And I felt immense pressure to somehow change who I was.

After much time and research I found a well-known organisation that “specialised” in reparative therapy. This organisation had endorsements from a wide range of rabbis and I was sure that it was the answer to all my problems. The organisation’s executive director told me that he believes everyone can change if they simply put in the hard work. I would have done anything to change, and this message was just the hope I was looking for. I spent two years attending every group meeting, weekend, and individual life coaching sessions they offered. My parents and I paid thousands of dollars. Every day, every session, I was working and waiting to feel a shift in my desires or experience authentic change. That moment never came. I didn’t change, I never developed any sexual desire for women, and never stopped being attracted to men. Instead, I only felt more and more helpless because I wasn’t changing. The organisation and its staff taught us that change only comes to those who truly want it and are willing to put in the work. So if I wasn’t changing, I was seen as someone who either really didn’t sincerely want it, or would not put in the necessary work. In other words, there was no one to blame but myself.

The worst part of my experience in reparative therapy came at the end. In a locked office, alone with my unlicensed ‘life coach’, who said he was an ‘ex-gay man’ I was told to undress, stand in front of the counsellor and do things too graphic to describe in this article. I was extremely uncomfortable, but he said that I must do this for the sake of changing and that if I didn’t remove my clothing I wouldn’t be doing the work it takes to achieve change. I would do anything to change, and so I did what he asked me to do. It was probably the most traumatising experience of my life.

I tried to tell people what happened, but the organisation said it wasn’t true and refused to fire the life coach. But I have spoken to other men who all underwent the same experience. And I can only imagine how many other young men who this has happened to who have not yet come forward. One of the most frustrating aspects was that because this coach is not licensed by any professional board, he is unaccountable to any licensing committee. Since I was over eighteen and agreed to this kind of therapy, I am told that I have no legal recourse. But I do have my voice! Yet, even after coming forward with what happened, nothing has changed. I often hear that this therapy has helped people, that it is wonderful, but I wonder, how helpful can an organisation be when it causes great suffering and pain to many who come to them for hope.

The recent Torah Declaration, signed by so many rabbis, only serves to perpetuate the notion that all homosexuals in the Orthodox community must change in reparative therapy. Unlike the helpful recent RCA statement on welcoming homosexuals or the “Statement of Principles” written and signed by over 200 responsible rabbis, the Torah Declaration does not demand that therapists must be board licensed. Unlike these other statements, it does not allow those for whom this kind of therapy is harmful or not working to seek other options. It kills me that this Torah Declaration will be used by parents to force their children into therapies that may be harmful to them. It frightens me that this Torah Declaration says that “change is mandated by the Torah,” when I know personally that change therapy has not worked and was so harmful for me. It hurts me to know that I am now being blamed by these rabbis and therapists for this failed therapy.

It confuses me that this Torah Declaration contains so many flawed arguments. Saying that God would never make a gay person unable to change is simplistic, inconsistent and flat-out wrong. If someone gets into an accident we would never say that we know he can be “cured” simply because his affliction is not genetic and he wasn’t born this way. We would never tell a deaf person (born deaf or not) that his ‘test’ is to find a way to hear again, so that he can be observe the positive commandment of hearing the shofar (horn) in the synagogue at new year? Yet the Torah Declaration uses all of these arguments to make gay people feel that their ‘test’ from God in life is to change their sexuality, simply because it may not be genetic and God would never make it unchangeable. This is the worst kind of rationalised homophobia.

I know first hand how this kind of societal bullying can lead to self-harm and suicide. I know of too many young men who have been pressured to stay in these kinds of therapies only to be tormented to point of taking their own lives. No one can bring these boys back. However, there are many Orthodox rabbis, religious therapists and organisations that remind us we are loved and that we belong. In the darkness of my days, a grass roots support community organisation in New York called JQY saved my life. JQY is a group of over five hundred young Jews who grew up in the religious community. Their goal is to combat shame, bullying and ostracising, while making families, religious schools and communities safe and welcoming to their gay members. They do not advocate for any change in religious law, but rather assert that one can believe that certain behaviours are technically prohibited and still be a happy, healthy and fulfilled person.

In JQY the right path for an individual is unique for each person. There are some members of JQY who are trying to change their orientation and many like me, who have tried for years and have discovered that it is not possible for them. We are all just trying to be the best that we can be. We learn from each other and are there for each other because we know how hard it is to be gay in a religious family. JQY is my logical family. We have support meetings, crisis resources, festival get togethers and sabbath meals where we know it is safe to be ourselves.

I now have a sense of pride about who I am. However, I understand the concept of “pride” as combating the years of self-shame and instead promoting a sense of personal self worth. Pride is not a celebration of any personal behaviour or desire. Nowhere in my story do I ever mention prohibited behaviours. I know that “being gay” does not express anything about personal intimate behaviour; it merely expresses an orientation. I adhere to the religious concepts of modesty, which demands that intimate behaviour stays private and discrete, and has no place in the public forum. In fact I do not know any gay person from a religious background who doesn’t believe the same way.

This is not an appeal to change religious law or anyone’s political views. This is not a push for gay marriage or any legitimising of gay marriage within the orthodox Jewish community. I am simply asking my community not to judge and not to pressure someone to participate in a program or therapy which causes harm. Just because someone is honest about being gay, does not mean that he engages in anything wrong. No one should feel silenced or asked to lie about who they are. Abuse and cruelty should never be tolerated or ignored. A little humility goes a long way. Sometimes the kindest and most thoughtful response when it comes to very difficult situations is, “I don’t know, but I’m here for you because you are part of my family and community.”

This comment has been adapted from an article first published in the Jewish Free Press by the author. Chaim blogs at http://gottagivemhope.blogspot.com/ and tweets at @chaim89

PinkNews.co.uk’s founder Benjamin Cohen recently recorded an It Gets Better Video to explain that it gets better to be Jewish and Gay and that gay cures don’t work.

But the GLAAD petition, which has 22,500 signatures today, also aims to highlight the lack of protection gay and transgender people face in the workplace in most of the states.

The website OneMillionMoms.com, a project of the American Family Assocation, had asked readers to call the retailer and demand she be replaced with a straight face.

The website said: “Funny that JC Penney thinks hiring an open homosexual spokesperson will help their business when most of their customers are traditional families.

“More sales will be lost than gained unless they replace their spokesperson quickly.

“DeGeneres is not a true representation of the type of families that shop at their store. The majority of JC Penney shoppers will be offended and choose to no longer shop there.”

In response, GLAAD set up the Stand Up for Ellen petition to thank the retailer for hiring the gay TV star and to raise awareness that in most US states, it is legal to fire gay employees on the basis of their sexuality.

Herndon Graddick, GLAAD’s senior director of programs and communications “Since Ellen came out 15 years ago, the nation has evolved and support for LGBT people is at an all-time high.

“Although it is still legal to fire someone for being gay in 29 states, Americans are fair-minded people who know that firing someone just for being gay is not what this country is about.

“J.C. Penney is standing with Ellen and so do we.”

GLAAD also points out for transgender people, the figure is worse: In 34 states a person can be fired for being trans.

The Los Angeles Times ran a reader poll which showed 96% support for keeping Ellen as the face of JC Penney.

Ellen’s name was called into question last month. Australian radio host Jackie O, whose middle name is also Ellen, told listeners it now “sounds a bit lez”.

Govenor Christine Gregoire said: “As governor, I believe the state of Washington cannot be in the business of discrimination. As an American, a wife and mother, marriage equality is fair, just, and right. And it is time.”

Washington’s state senate approved a bill last night to give equal marriage rights to gay citizens, 28-21.

The lifting of the gay marriage ban is now almost certain to pass as it heads to the state’s House of Representatives, where it is not expected to encounter majority opposition.

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Home-schooled Sarah Crank told lawmakers it “would be the best birthday present ever if you would vote no on gay marriage”, the political blog ThinkProgress reports.

Maryland’s Democratic Governor Martin O’Malley introduced a bill last week which, if successful, would lift the ban on gay marriage in the US state of Maryland.

14-year-old Sarah told the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee: “I really feel bad for the kids who have two parents of the same gender. Even though some kids feel like it’s fine, they have no idea what kind of wonderful experiences they miss out on.

“I don’t want any more kids to get confused about what’s right and OK.

“I really don’t want to grow up in a world where marriage isn’t such a special thing any more. It’s rather scary to think that when I grow up the legislator or the court can change the definition of any word they want.

“If they can change the definition of marriage, then they could change the definition of any word.

“People have the choice to be gay, but I don’t want to be affected by their choice. People say they were just born that way, but I’ve met really nice adults who did change. So please vote ‘no’ on gay marriage.”

After being thanked for her testimony, the girl is asked where she is schooled. She replies that she is home-schooled.

When the recording began to draw attention on the blog, Crank’s mother waded in personally to support her child’s speech in the comments section, saying Sarah “and many others are affected by the one way tolerance that gays expect but won’t extend to others”.

She insisted her daughter wrote the speech herself and told one commenter “Your ill wishes toward her are the perfect example of the one way tolerance that is the norm.”

An attempt in 2011 to lift the gay marriage ban failed to pass through the state legislature.

Conversely, attempts to introduce a constitutional ban on gay marriage have also failed.

Last night, Washington’s state senate voted in favour of equal marriage rights for gays, making the passage of the law there a near-certainty.

Listen to the recording of Sarah Crank’s testimony below:

Jonathan Simcox and Steven Ondo of Ohio told Cleveland’s FOX8 network they were suing police officers for use of “excessive force and undisguised prejudice” during their arrest.

Simcox and Ondo said they had been making their way home in April 2011 when they began arguing in the street.

An off-duty police officer who lived on the road then told them to cease disturbing the peace.

Simcox told FOX8: “He came out over shouting, saying, ‘Shut up, you’re disturbing the peace’.”

“I pushed to get past him, as soon as I did that he knocked me on the ground, and just started beating me, hitting me, standing over top of me, and punching me repeatedly.”

The couple was arrested and released. A week later, they say police arrived at their home late at night to detain them on assault charges relating to that incident.

The gay men say at the time they were only wearing t-shirts and underwear.

Simcox’s brother, who was present at the scene, asked if he could bring their clothes was allegedly told: “You can go get them shoes, but faggots don’t deserve to wear pants in jail.”

The couple say it was a day before they were reunited with their trousers, and they went on to be cleared of the assault charge.

Cleveland authorities said the couple’s civil lawsuit, which claims their constitutional rights were infringed, would be addressed in the US District Court.

The lifting of the gay marriage ban is now almost certain to pass as it heads to the state’s House of Representatives, where it is not expected to encounter majority opposition.

Governor Christine Gregoire could sign the bill into law as soon as next week to make Washington the seventh state in the union to allow gay couples to marry.

Last week, Mary Margaret Haugen, a Democratic state senator representing Camano Island, became the 25th senator needed to back the move to allow gays equal marriage rights.

At the vote, 28 state senators came out in favour of the move, four of whom were Republicans.

In favour of keeping the ban were 18 Republicans and three Democrats.

Senator Ed Murray, a gay Democrat representing Seattle and sponsor of the bill said supporters were “patriots who are trying to do what is best for our country” and extended all senators an invitation to his wedding, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Opponents may still force a state-wide ballot in July if the legislation is successfully passed in both houses if they can garner enough support in a petition: 120,577 by the beginning of July.

Before the state legislature’s session began this year, Governor Gregoire announced her support for the move at the capital, Olympia.

She told a press conference: “It is time in Washington state for marriage equality. It’s the right thing to do.”

“Our gay and lesbian families face the same hurdles as heterosexual families: making ends meet, choosing what school to send their kids to, finding someone to grow old with, standing in front of friends and family and making a lifetime commitment.

“For all couples, a state marriage license is very important. It gives them the right to enter into a marriage contract in which their legal interests, and those of their children if any, are protected by well-established civil law.”

Coffee giant Starbucks has been among multi-nationals based in Washington state to back the draft legislation.

A statement from the Seattle-based hot drink titan says it was “proud” to join other Washington-based employers like Microsoft and Nike as support for equal marriage brews in the state.

Earlier this month, Microsoft, which has supported equal rights for gays in the state before, added its voice to those supporting the legislation, saying: “Microsoft’s greatest asset is a talented workforce as diverse as our customers. As other states recognize marriage equality, Washington’s employers are at a disadvantage if we cannot offer a similar, equitable and inclusive environment to our talented employees, our top recruits and their families.

“This legislation would put Washington employers on equal footing with employers in the six other states that already recognize the committed relationships of same-sex couples.

“Passing the bill would be good for our business and for the state’s economy.”

Main character Kurt Hummel, played by Chris Colfer, had found love with Blaine Anderson, played by Darren Criss, when he transferred to his school’s choral rival, Dalton Academy.

But clouds gathered following the arrival of Sebastian, portrayed by Grant Gustin, who set his sights on Kurt’s new boyfriend.

Guston, 22, said at the time his character was “after Blaine, obviously, and he’s also trying to take the place that Blaine had as the leader of the Warblers [his school's show choir].”

The two halves of Glee’s only on-screen gay couple, excruciatingly referred to in some quarters as ‘Klaine’, were going to be shown not just to be “together because they’re the only two gay characters”.

Now, in an interview with E!, Gustin says: “At first, first people were like, ‘Oh this guy’s cool, we like him, blah blah blah’. Then they found out what the character was going to be.

“And then all these pictures started coming out of, like, Darren Criss and Chris Colfer with my headshot in the middle.”

He continues: “Right off the bat, before people had even seen an episode – I don’t know, I never took these too seriously – literally death threats on Twitter, saying ‘If you break up Klaine, I will find you and I will kill you’.”

Gustin laughed off the threats and went on to praise the “intensity” of Glee fans in general.

The show is gearing up to feature another gay couple, with Jeff Goldblum set to pair up with Brian Stokes Mitchell as they play character Rachel Berry’s parents.

The Jurassic Park actor and Broadway star Stokes will sing a duet together during their début in a special Valentines Day episode called ‘Heart.’

The actress’s observations in a New York Times interview this month sparked controversy, when she seemed to say she chose to be gay.

Now the 45-year-old has said it was within the scope of her bisexuality that she decided to enter a gay relationship, rather than switching at will between exclusively gay and straight sexual orientations.

She reiterated that her comments only applied to her, not the gay community in general.

Though Nixon had made it clear in her original interview that she was only speaking for herself, she drew criticism from gay rights advocates who said statements which imply there may be an element of choice in sexuality hinder the fight for equal rights.

Nixon and Christine Marinoni have been together for nine years and went public with their relationship in 2004. She has two children from a former 15-year relationship with a man.

Nixon’s statement in full reads: “My recent comments in The New York Times were about me and my personal story of being gay. I believe we all have different ways we came to the gay community and we can’t and shouldn’t be pigeon-holed into one cultural narrative which can be uninclusive and disempowering. However, to the extent that anyone wishes to interpret my words in a strictly legal context I would like to clarify:

“While I don’t often use the word, the technically precise term for my orientation is bisexual. I believe bisexuality is not a choice, it is a fact. What I have ‘chosen’ is to be in a gay relationship.

“As I said in the Times and will say again here, I do, however, believe that most members of our community — as well as the majority of heterosexuals — cannot and do not choose the gender of the persons with whom they seek to have intimate relationships because, unlike me, they are only attracted to one sex.

“Our community is not a monolith, thank goodness, any more than America itself is. I look forward to and will continue to work toward the day when America recognizes all of us as full and equal citizens.”

This is the result of new rules, introduced last July, but only now coming to light, which state that an air carrier “shall not transport a passenger if … the passenger does not appear to be of the gender indicated on the identification he or she presents”.

The reason that it has taken so long for this provision to percolate through to public awareness is that it was introduced not through formal legislation before the Canadian legislature, but as part Identity Screening Regulations, implemented unilaterally by the Ministry of Transportation, in support of Canada’s so-called Passenger Protect programme.

Its impact will be felt first by members of the Canadian transgender community, who may only change the ‘sex’ designation on a Canadian Passport, on provision of proof that surgery has taken place, or will take place within one year. This, it is argued by blogger, Christin Scarlett Milloy, means that non-operative transgender persons, gender nonconforming (genderqueer) persons, and the vast majority of pre-operative transsexual persons will find it literally impossible to obtain “proper” travel documentation.

However, there is likely to be some degree of impact on trans persons from any other country travelling through Canada on documents that fail to meet these new criteria.

A petition calling on the Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, to have these regulations set aside has been launched on change.org.

Meanwhile, cynics are speculating whether this move is ill-thought accident – or a rather more sinister piece of revenge by Conservative MP and Minister for Transport, Denis Lebel.

The change to regulations took place shortly after the federal election in 2011. In the previous parliament, Bill C-389, a bill to amend the Human Rights Code to explicitly enshrine protections against discrimination for transgender people, had successfully passed in the House of Commons, only to die on the Senate floor when the election was declared.

As Ms Milloy asked yesterday: “Is the timing of this disturbing and blatantly discriminatory regulatory adjustment merely a coincidence?

Analysis

Some people have been asking how many individuals have actually been prevented from flying by these regulations: but that misses the point entirely – which is that the use of perceived gender in this fashion is deeply offensive not simply to trans men and women, but to all men and women who fail to live up to societally imposed “norms” of gender and appearance.

A particular issue, which i have reported on in the past, is how women whose appearance is in any way “butch” or masculine frequently report difficulties in some women’s spaces.

While some will inevitably defend this move on grounds of “security”, it is important to understand what is being required here. No-one is objecting to government rules that require an individual’s appearance to match to their description on their pasport – or indeed that they should be allowed to duck out on biometric measures such as fingerprinting or retinal scans.

But this is about something else: whether an individual fits with the preconceived notions of what a border guard believes constitutes a “normal” appearance for their declared gender.

Over the last twelve months, Australia has stated its aim of permitting an “indeterminate” status to be recorded on passports for intersex individuals: and the UK Government has revealed that it is examining the entire question of whether gender markers on official documents are useful – not just, as critics would have it, for reasons of “political correctness”, but because there are genuine doubts that it really adds much that is useful.

This makes the Canadian regulation looks all the more like a seriously retrograde – and spiteful – step.

Jane Fae is an independent writer and sexual rights activist. 

Only in this case, the empire seems to be doing good.

Star Wars: The Old Republic, a online role-playing game based in the Star Wars universe and developed by Bioware, has come under fire for its plans to include a gay storyline.

The Family Research Council, based in the US capital, are trying to drum up support for a rebellion against progressive video-gaming.

Tony Perkins, President of the FRC wrote: “In a galaxy not so far far away, Star Wars gamers have already gone to the dark side. The new video game, Star Wars: The Old Republic, has added a special feature: gay relationships.

“Bioware, the company that developed the game, said it’s launching a same-sex romance component to satisfy some complaints.

“That surprised a lot of gamers, since Bioware had made it clear in 2009 that “gay” and “lesbian” don’t exist in the Star Wars universe.”

The announcement was made by Bioware in September 2011.

The company said: “Due to the design constraints of a fully voiced MMO [massively multiplayer online game] of this scale and size, many choices had to be made as to the launch and post-launch feature set. Same gender romances with companion characters in Star Wars: The Old Republic will be a post-launch feature.

“Because The Old Republic is an MMO, the game will live on through content expansions which allow us to include content and features that could not be included at launch, including the addition of more companion characters who will have additional romance options.”

Bioware was commended for listening to the gaming community after one of the moderators on its forum reportedly told fans in 2009 that the term “gay” did not exist in the Star Wars universe.

In 2009, Dragon Age: Origins was released by Bioware and included a fireside embrace between two male characters.

Now Perkins continues on behalf of the FRC: “Since the announcement, homosexuals have been celebrating the news, but parents sure aren’t [sic]. On the game’s website, there are more than 300 pages of comments – a lot of them expressing anger that their kids will be exposed to this Star Warped way of thinking. You can join them by logging on and speaking up. It’s time to show companies who the Force is really with!”

In 2007, Bioware included a lesbian storyline in its Mass Effect game.

The “scene of lesbian intimacy” led to the game being briefly banned in Singapore.

The Family Research Council supported a move last year to drop Haruki Murakami’s critically acclaimed Norwegian Wood from a New Jersey school’s reading list, citing the “homosexual agenda”.

The organisation was classified as a ‘hate group’ in 2010 by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a listing it called “slanderous”.

The game was announced in 2008 and developed by teams in Austin, Texas and at Bioware’s headquarters in Alberta, Canada at an estimated cost of $150-200 million.

Released in December, the updates which include gay characters have yet to be implemented.

I meet Greg near his home in Malibu, California. Despite once dominating the sport of diving, he surprises me by being both affable and polite. He grew up in San Diego, 150 miles south of where we are seated. I want to begin the interview there. How did he get involved in diving?

“When I was very young I used to sneak into my sisters dance classes and copy what they did,” he tells me. “I had my first recital when I was three. Shortly after I got a partner and we started competing together. Our focus was mainly acrobatics. Eventually she took up gymnastics as well, so I decided to join her. I loved it.”

“Then I remember watching my first Olympics. My dad, being Greek, was crazy about them. I decided there and then that I wanted to compete at the Olympics as a gymnast. Not long after we got a pool built in our backyard and I started practicing gymnastics off the diving board. My mum freaked out! She thought I was going to kill myself, so she got me diving lessons.”

“For a while, between eight and twelve-years old, I did all three: diving, acrobatics and gymnastics. But back then gymnastics wasn’t done on sprung floors and the dancing took place on concrete. By the time I was twelve my doctor said I had to give up acrobatics and gymnastics because I had bad knees. From then on I concentrated on diving, still with a desire to one day make the Olympics. After a year, I was world champion for my age group. By the time I was sixteen I’d made the US Olympic team.”

It was at his first Olympics, at the age of sixteen, that Greg won a silver medal in the 10m-platform event. For many athletes an Olympic silver medal is the crowning achievement of their career. Not so for Louganis. His Olympic career was however substantially hindered four years later, when President Carter decided America would boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics, in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

“At the time I was the diving team captain,” explains Greg, “so I was in all the meetings leading up to the games. As athletes, we wanted to go to Moscow and boycott the opening and closing ceremonies, apart from one representative who would carry the flag. Our voices were never heard.”

The boycott became a reality and in Louganis’ absence the USSR’s Alexander Portov won gold in the 3m-springboard event while East Germany’s Falk Hoffmann took gold in the 10m-platform competition. Nevertheless, Greg’s place at the top of his sport was confirmed two years later at the 1982 World Championships.

“It was funny because at the Worlds we were announced in reverse order,” he tells me. “I’d won the prelims and so was announced last. They introduced Portnov as ‘Olympic gold medallist 1980.’ He only got that title because I wasn’t there. So for the men’s 3m-springboard I felt I had something to prove. I turned it on and in the end I didn’t even have to do my last dive to win. I won by a lot.”

Louganis took home the World Championships 10m-platform gold as well. Two years later at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics he completed another clean sweep, picking up his first two Olympic gold medals. I ask him if he felt the same winning his second gold medal as he did when he won his first.

“For me, each one was totally different. The first time, I wasn’t really expecting it. I really wanted to prove myself on both springboard and 10m-platform. So when they were presenting me with the gold for springboard, I knew my job wasn’t done. I was busy thinking about the next day; what was I doing to prepare for the platform event? I enjoyed it, but I didn’t bask in it. Then when I won gold for platform, I lost it! I was the first man to win both events in 56 years.”

Louganis decided to bow out on a high and announced his retirement.

“I thought that was going to be it,” he tells me, “but it didn’t turn out that way. At the time, I was one of the proponents for trust funds to enable athletes to do commercial work while maintaining their eligibility for competitions as amateurs. I remember speaking to the President of USA Diving shortly after the Los Angeles Olympics. I asked him how the initiative was progressing and he told me that I was the only person in diving it affected and, of course, I was retiring. So I told him: “Fine, I’m not retiring. Do the work.” It took two more years to get it done and by then the Seoul Olympics were just two years away.”

By Seoul, Louganis had turned 28, old for the sport of diving. Some members of America’s Olympic diving squad were even calling him ‘grandpa’. Nevertheless, Greg beat the odds and won two more Olympic gold medals. He did so in breathtaking fashion. In the ninth round of preliminaries for the 3m-springboard event, in full view of the world’s media, Louganis hit his head on the springboard in midair, while attempting a reverse 2½ somersault pike. The world gasped in horror as he fell into the water. Still conscious, he managed to pull himself out of the pool.

“I’ve hit my head twice my entire career,” says Greg. “Seoul was the second time. My coach said I didn’t have to carry on, but from my point of view we’d worked too long and hard to get to where we were. I didn’t want to give up without a fight.”

The wound on the back of Louganis’ head was duly stitched up and he was back on the springboard just over half an hour later.

“The split second I hit the board I became the underdog,” he says. “The pressure was off of me. I didn’t even know if I was strong enough to compete. I just took it one dive at a time, one event at a time.”

Remarkably, come the 3m-springboard finals, he nailed all his dives and retained his Olympic title. His third Olympic gold was swiftly followed by his fourth when he bagged the 10m-platform event as well. He announced his retirement again, this time for good and turned his attention to another passion of his: acting.

It was while appearing in New York in the play ‘Jeffrey’ that Louganis was approached by Kile Ozier to record a message for the opening ceremony of 1994’s Gay Games. Louganis, who had long been out to his friends and family, decided it was time to make a public announcement and agreed.

“I’d never been open about my sexuality with the media before,” he tells me. “If I’d discussed my sexuality while diving I would have been known as ‘the gay diver’. The US media would have jumped on it. They love labels. I always wanted the focus to be on my diving, which is why I kept my sexuality to myself.”

Regardless, I put it to Greg that he would still have won the medals he did whether he’d been out or not.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I had a tough time making the teams. Although I usually won the titles, there were a lot of National Championships where I came in second. Diving is definitely one of the more objective sports because in competition they always knock off the highest and lowest scores, but homophobia ran pretty deep in the sport at the time.”

Louganis had another secret he wanted to be free of as well: six months before the 1988 Olympics he’d tested positive for HIV. He’d kept the diagnosis secret for a simple reason: the Korean authorities wouldn’t have let him in for the Olympics had they known his status. Greg knew this very well. He had wanted to share his Olympic experience with his friend, Ryan White, but White was denied a Korean visa on the grounds that he was HIV positive.

“By 1994 I was still paying cash for all of my meds. I even paid $80,000 out of my own pocket for a hospitalisation bill because I was worried that if my insurance company picked up the bill the tabloids would find out. I needed to tell people so I decided to write a book. A friend of mine introduced me to a writer called Eric Marcus and we started writing together. The first thing Eric asked me was what was going through my head when I hit my head in Seoul; it was my concern for other people; I didn’t want anyone touching my blood. No one was going to get HIV from a chlorinated pool, but I hadn’t told the doctor who sewed up my head about my status. He was the one I felt bad for.”

When Louganis’ HIV status was made public, Dr James Puffer, the US Olympic team physician who treated Louganis in Seoul, announced he had since tested negative for HIV. He also said he did not fault Greg for not revealing his HIV status at the time. Louganis traces his infection to one of two previous long-term relationships: his previous boyfriends Jim and Kevin. Both are now dead.

“My dad always wanted to blame Jim because he didn’t like him, but it could have been either one of them,” Greg tells me. “When word was spreading about a ‘gay cancer’ I thought I was in a stable relationship. I didn’t know I wasn’t. Jim and I ended up being diagnosed around the same time. When I told a friend that my doctor wanted to put me on AZT right away, he started sobbing. A lot of his friends on AZT had wasted away. It was pretty toxic. Nowadays they prescribe it in much lower doses than they did back then.”

Greg’s achievements are made all the more remarkable when one understands the challenges he faced, particularly in 1988. These days however, Greg’s name is being mentioned in the same breath as that of a much younger diver. In May 2008, shortly before the Beijing Olympics, Matthew Mitcham announced he was gay in an interview with Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald. When did Greg first hear about Matthew?

“The first I heard was friends asking me if I’d seen the story,” he answers. “By the time he reached Beijing he was constantly being asked about me and vice versa. It was easy for me: I was at home so I could just not answer the phone. He was at the Olympics. There was no avoiding it. I understand why people make the comparison, but it’s really not fair on either of us. He’s his own person and that’s something I really tried to convey to him when I met him recently. He’s doing great. He’s just got to believe in himself and not worry about the other stuff.”

Like me, Greg watched on television as Matthew won Olympic gold in Beijing’s 10m-platform event. I ask him if his own wins flashed back at that moment?

“It wasn’t a flashback,” he tells me. “I just knew what he was going through. It was unfortunate that NBC’s commentary here in America was so distracting. Matthew was the only openly gay athlete competing in Beijing, but NBC ignored the wider story and referred to Matthew’s partner as his ‘friend.’ I have to admit my appreciation of the moment was overshadowed by my annoyance with what appeared to be censorship by NBC.”

Trans woman Christine Alexander has filed a law suit against Massachusetts Department of Correction, of which she is currently in custody, because she said staff: “knew of her need for medical care and yet failed to provide the same.”

In Massachusetts, Alexander’s gender identity disorder is classed as a “major mental illness” and it has been reported that Alexander claims to have become severely depressed and experienced anxiety as a result of allegedly being deprived of the treatments.

The treatments required would be for removal of facial and bodily hair, and to stop Alexander from experiencing male pattern baldness.

Summarising Alexander’s case against the defendants, Judge Joseph Tauro said she alleged that they had failed: “to provide her with the medical treatment will lead to serious bodily harm, untreated mental illness and continued depression.”

All three state official defendants, Lawrence Weiner, Robert Diener, M.D., and Rebecca Lubelczyk made an attempts to have the case dismissed, however US District Judge Tauro denied these dismissals and deemed the allegations to be “taken as true”.

He said the claims were: “sufficient to establish that the plaintiff has a serious medical need, which has not been adequately treated under the eighth amendment standard.”

Alexander claims that the defendants have broken the eighth and fourteenth amendments of the American constitution which state that citizens must not be subject to “cruel or unusual punishments” and should stop the “state and local governments from depriving persons of life, liberty, or property without certain steps being taken to ensure fairness.”

Alexander was diagnosed with gender identity disorder in 2003, yet has been sentenced to serve in a mens’ prison.

The case continues.