MDA to keep light-touch approach – Balaji tells Thio

1 March 2008
Today

MDA to keep light-touch approach, will act only upon threat to social harmony

Alicia Wong

The Media Development Authority’s (MDA) light-touch policy on online content cannot mean it is “hands off,” said Nominated Member of Parliament (MP), Professor Thio Li-ann on Friday as she highlighted the need to deter “anti-social attacks” online.

The response: The MDA will take action if racial and religious harmony is threatened, but maintain a light-touch approach otherwise.

Gay Africans and Arabs come out online

Source

18 February 2008
Reuters

Gay Africans and Arabs come out online
By Andrew Heavens

KHARTOUM (Reuters) – When Ali started blogging that he was Sudanese and gay, he did not realize he was joining a band of African and Middle Eastern gays and lesbians who, in the face of hostility and repression, have come out online.

But within days the messages started coming in to black-gay-arab.blogspot.com.

“Keep up the good work,” wrote Dubai-based Weblogger ‘Gay by nature’. “Be proud and blog the way you like,” wrote Kuwait’s gayboyweekly. Close behind came comments, posts and links purporting to be from almost half the countries in the Arab League, including Egypt, Algeria, Bahrain and Morocco.

The gaze of strangers: Morocco, male love and modernity

Source

30 January 2008
Open Democracy

The gaze of strangers: Morocco, male love and modernity
by KA Dilday

The new-media exposure of homosexual activity in the Muslim world highlights the paradoxes of its collision with modernity, says KA Dilday.

In December 2007, the Moroccan court of justice sentenced six men to jail terms of between two and ten months for the crime of homosexuality. The men had been filmed participating in a mock wedding of two men in the northern town of Ksar el-Kebir. Moroccans saw the video on the internet: someone, and than many people, loaded what appeared to be low-quality mobile-phone videos of the ceremony onto You Tube.

YouTube has become the Moroccan samizdat. Moroccans post videos of officials accepting bribes, and of all the things that are forbidden in the establishment press. It is likely that the video was posted by someone friendly to the guests, but once it was in cyberspace it was available to everyone.

More Singapore teens contracting STIs

Source

28 December 2007
The New Paper

More S’pore teens contracting STIs

by Low Ching Ling Sun

In the heat of the moment, he let his guard down and had unprotected sex with a stranger he met through the Internet.

Only later did it occur to Ben (not his real name), 19, that his moment of passion could cost him dearly.

He started to worry about contracting a sexually transmitted infection (STI).

So last Wednesday, he got himself tested at the Department of Sexually Transmitted Infections Control (DSC) Clinic at Kelantan Lane.

China’s first gay chat show goes live on the Internet

Source: Reuters
5 April 2007

China’s first gay chat show goes live on the Internet

Beijing (Reuters) – For singer and bar-owner, Qiao Qiao, talking about her sexuality live on an Internet broadcast accessible to millions of people was easier than telling her parents that she was a lesbian.

“My mother was very supportive,” she said on Thursday, as cameras rolled in a small studio in northwest Beijing. “But my father still has not accepted it. He said I was young and would feel different when I was older … But he is still saying that even though I’m now in my thirties,” she said. Qiao Qiao was the first guest on “Tongxing Xinglian”, China’s first gay chat show, an interactive online forum hosted by gay presenters and accessible to more than 130 million Internet users across the country.