The message from the recent Lambda Literary Awards in New York City is that queer Canadian authors rock. On May 27, four writers took home prizes from the ceremony that celebrates the best in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender books published the previous year.

The names of queer Canadians were sprinkled liberally through Lambda's list of finalists, which was announced in March.

Vancouver author Amber Dawn won the Lesbian Debut Fiction award for Sub Rosa (Arsenal Pulp Press). 

Zoe Whittall won in the new Transgender Fiction category for her novel Holding Still for as Long as Possible (House of Anansi Press).

Anna Swanson took home the Lesbian Poetry Award for her collection The Nights Also (Tightrope Books).

S Bear Bergman and Kate Bornstein received the award for best LGBT Anthology for Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation (Seal Press).This year has been literary windfall for Bergman and Bornstein. In April they were awarded a special prize for LGBT non-fiction for Gender Outlaws at the Publishing Triangle Awards held in New York City.

The judges applauded the anthology, saying that it “celebrates gender-nonconforming people in all their beauty, humanity and complexity. The contributors to this book confront gender issues with such vibrant, mind-expanding style that readers are urged to question the status quo of seeing gender in binary ways.”

Bergman is a regular contributor to Xtra. His latest article explored queer and trans parenting.

 

     

Nikolai Alexeyev remained true to his word  — on Saturday, May 28, gay activists defied Moscow authorities and took to the streets to celebrate Pride.

It turned out to be a costly move and became yet another example of the city’s intolerance of gays.

In 2010 the European Court of Human Rights determined that Moscow’s ban on the Pride parade (from 2006 to 2008) breached the European Convention on Human Rights.

The ruling said that “the main reason for the bans on the gay marches had been the authorities’ disapproval of demonstrations, which, they considered, promoted homosexuality.”

Alexeyev was determined there would be a parade in 2011, and for a brief time it looked like it would happen. It had been reported that the new mayor was in favour of Pride and that the march would go on with the city’s approval.

The report turned out to be wrong and authorities, once again, banned the parade.

Saturday’s march ended in violence as neo-Nazis ambushed the march and attacked the gay activists.

Moscow police jumped into the fray and arrested people from both factions, including a prominent US gay rights activist, Dan Choi. Choi was allowed to take his cellphone into the prison with him, and he did what any good activist would do — tweeted about his experience.

Choi was released after several hours, while his Russian counterparts were kept in jail overnight.

Before the march, Choi posted a video, explaining his reasons for being in Moscow.

In all, eight people were arrested. According to The Advocate, one activist, Anna Komarova, was pressured by the police to give information about Moscow Pride's organization.

Alexeyev was not arrested; in fact, it is not known if he even attended Pride. The Moscow News writes that Alexeyev had hurt his foot on the Thursday before the rally and that Choi had tweeted that Alexeyev was safe and in hiding.

I find that a little disappointing, but I am sure that in the next few weeks Alexeyev will come out of hiding and once again speak up for gays rights in Russia.

UPDATE: A new video with  UK  gay activist Peter Tatchell speaking about the events in Moscow. Tatchell  managed to wrestle himslef free from the police and escape capture.
    

Today, Chicago is going to be an activist’s heaven.

As the state of Illinois prepares for civil unions to become legal on June 1, rightwing activists are planning anti-marriage-equality demonstrations at St Peter’s Catholic Church in Chicago.

Pro-gay activists are planning a counter-demonstration. Go Pride, an online newspaper, writes that the protesters will “demonstrate against the far-right activists assembling there.”

The “far-right activists” are the Americans for Life, an anti-gay and anti-choice organization. Their rally will start at St Peter's and then proceed to the Illinois Government offices.

According to The Advocate, the rally will launch the Illinois Defense of Marriage Initiative, urging the state legislature “to secure by law the definition of marriage in Illinois between one man and one woman.”

Speakers for the rightwing rally will include Peter LaBarbera, leader of the group Americans for Truth. LaBarbera's life passion is to expose “the homosexual activist agenda.”

Organizers of the counter-protest say the anti-gay activists clearly want to put anti-equality measures before voters in a statewide referendum.

Bob Schwartz, of Chicago’s Gay Liberation Network, which is sponsoring the counter-protest along with LGBT Change and Join the Impact, told The Advocate that “Our Illinois politicians of both parties are notoriously weak and prone to blowing with the political winds. A successful anti-gay referendum could provide the impetus to cause them to cave in significant ways, such as weakening our civil unions legislation.”

While activists in Chicago square off against each other, another group of activists in Moscow is preparing to go ahead with gay pride, even though the city has denied them permission to do so.

In an email to Xtra, Nikolai Alexeyev wrote, “We will defy the illegal ban, and this year more than ever we are not scared of any arrest; we will face any legal consequences."

 

 

   

It’s a sad day when sex education classes are deemed unsuitable for children. Most people believe that sex education is an important component in schools, but it appears that President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil disagrees.

Rousseff has banned the production and distribution of sex education films, specifically, an education package designed to combat homophobia in schools. A report by the BBC states that Rousseff believes the footage, which contains gay and lesbian scenes, is not suitable for children.

The “anti-homophobia” kits were about to be distributed to schools by the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education. Rousseff apparently caved under pressure from evangelical church groups and rightwing nuts in Congress. They threatened to block any upcoming legislation unless the president stopped the films.

It seems that Ontario Minister of Education Leona Dombrowsky and the Ontario Catholic school boards are not alone in their warped ideas on protecting children.

I wonder what they would have thought of the gender diversity lesson at a California elementary school that featured single-sex geckos, transgender clownfish and boy snakes that act "girly"?

The San Francisco Chronicle wrote that the Redwood Heights Elementary School in Oakland wanted to teach students about the diversity of families in the school,  tackle issues of bullying and emphasize that not all children conform to gender norms. 

Joel Baum, director of education and training for Gender Spectrum — an anti-bullying educational group — delivered the lessons. Baum used toys and examples from nature to show the children how diverse gender can be.

In an interview with Fox News, he said that “Gender identity is a spectrum where people can be girls, feel like girls, they feel like boys, they feel like both, or they can feel like neither.”

    

The decision of Kathy Witterick, 38, and David Stocker, 39, to raise their child Storm as genderless has caused quite a stir across the nation.

The Toronto couple’s lifestyle is not unusual and is one that many of us in the queer community can relate to.

Both parents come from liberal households where gender identity was fluid — Witterick’s brother experimented with drag as a teen in the ’80s. They have travelled extensively through Mexico and most recently spent a year in Cuba.

Both have worked in social justice organizations — Witterick in violence prevention before becoming a full-time mother. Stocker teaches at a tiny school with four teachers and about 60 students whose lessons are framed by social-justice issues.

The couple lives in a nice home in a city neighbourhood with their three children: Jazz, five, Kio, two, and Storm, four months. Both Jazz and Kio are un-schooled at home, choose their own clothes (Jazz likes dresses) and sleep with their mother and father every night on a big, comfortable mattress on the floor.

Sounds to me that they are a loving family.

However, their latest parenting decision not to declare the gender of Storm has unleashed a barrage of criticism from people around the country after their story was published in the Toronto Star.

When Storm was born they sent out an unconventional birth announcement: “We've decided not to share Storm's sex for now — a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a stand up to what the world could become in Storm's lifetime (a more progressive place?).”

The announcement was apparently met with stony silence, but the newspaper article has been met with criticism, complaints and outrage.

Of course Fox News has picked up the story, contacted pro-family organizations and come to the conclusion it always does — that Storm will grow up terribly confused about sexual identity.