Pink Everest: Nepal appeals for gay tourists

Source

By RAVI NESSMAN (AP) – 2 days ago

KATMANDU, Nepal — Nepal wants to paint Mount Everest pink.

It wants gay honeymooners trekking through the Himalayas.

It wants to host the world’s highest same-sex wedding at Everest base camp.

But mainly, the conservative Hindu nation wants a chunk of the multibillion dollar gay tourist market to help pull it out of poverty.

That quest — brushing aside historical biases in pursuit of economic opportunity — is symbolic of one of the gay rights movement’s most stunning successes.

Just five years ago, police were beating gays and transsexuals in the streets.

ST Life!: Colourful Castro centre

23 June 2009
Straits Times Life!

Colourful Castro centre
By yong shu hoong, in san francisco

Acclaimed film-maker Alfred Hitchcock once described San Francisco as ‘a good location for a murder mystery’.

So it is no wonder he set several of his famous thrillers, such as Vertigo (1958) and The Birds (1963), in San Francisco and its Bay Area.

More recently, San Francisco’s iconic landmarks, in particular, the Golden Gate Bridge, have popped up in Hollywood movies, such as the animated feature Monsters Vs Aliens and the fantasy film Land Of The Lost.

On a more serious note, the 2008 Oscar winner Milk, director Gus Van Sant’s biopic of slain politician Harvey Milk, was also filmed on location in San Francisco.

Chinese gay bars open, activism slowed during Olympics

Source: Washington Blade
Date: 15 August 2008

Chinese gay bars open, activism slowed during Olympics
Activists find inspiration, new enemies from the West

LAURA DOUGLAS-BROWN
Friday, August 15, 2008

The first paragraph of the Aug. 9 entry on John Amaechi’s blog could have been written by any Olympic tourist guilty of staying up too late to take in the local culture.

“I had to wake up at 6 a.m. this morning, which was not fun considering I had been up until 3 a.m., watching the opening ceremony and hanging out at ‘Destination’ again,” he wrote. “I have to say that it got busy very late — I am officially too old for bars that close at 5 a.m.”

Police raid gay sauna and cuff owner

In a press release issued the day after, One Seven, a well-known bathhouse catering to a gay male clientele said they were rudely raided by the police the previous night. In their statement , they described the sequence of events as follows: The police turned off the water supply and then when owner Harvey “Sam” Schwartz opened to back door to investigate the problem, the police rushed in for what they described as a “spot check”. The statement said the police did not reply to Schwartz’s question about whether they had a search warrant. When Schwartz took a stand against the female officer entering the premises – which included open showers and a men’s changing room – he was knocked down to the ground, handcuffed and spent the night in a lock-up. He has since been charged with “assaulting (pushing) the officer that handcuffed him”.

(Note however, that there is some confusion about the date in the press release by One Seven and it’s not clear whether the incident took place on Friday 25 April or Saturday 26 April 2008.)

If the link above is broken, click the graphic for a copy of the Press Release.