… Most queer Americans are used to encountering an established gay nightlife in the world’s larger cities (at least those where political oppression is not a factor), and it’s reasonable to expect Tokyo to fall into this category. …

THE OWNER of Lai Lai’s, Shanghai’s only dance venue for low-income gays, was screaming over the five-piece band. She accused our small contingent of safer sex outreach workers of attracting police scrutiny, telling us to get out of her dancehall and never come back. Dr. Tong Chengliang, sex education specialist and director of HomoHeart, the city’s first specifically gay hotline and outreach organization, told his volunteers to grab their bags of condoms and gay sex literature and leave. Even in relatively open Shanghai in the summer of 2005, police harassment in China was so commonplace that Tong just shrugged his shoulders and said, “We’ll try again next week.”

In December of that year, …

PUBLIC OPINION on same-sex marrage and adoption show enormous variation from one European country to the next, according to a large-scale survey that covered all 25 current members of the European Union (EU), two countries in the process of joining, and two candidate countries. For all of the countries surveyed, under half of the sample populations favored same-sex marriage and a third approved of gay adoptions, but this finding may be misleading in light of this high level of variance.

On June 6, 2006, in a document titled “Family and human procreation,” the Pontifical Council for the Family asserted its strong commitment to the traditional family and its opposition to gay couples, whose attempts to obtain legal recognition would produce, according to the paper, the “eclipse of God” in modern society.

ON APRIL 28, 2006, “March of Toleration,” a gay parade, was attacked in Kraków. Youth activists of the parliamentary party League of Polish Families threw stones, eggs, bottles, and slurs at peaceful GLBT marchers. …

AFTER the major media success and publicity in 2000 of Rome World Pride, the group behind the event, InterPride (International Association of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Coordinators), elected the organization Jerusalem Open House to organize a similar event entitled “Love Without Borders” in Jerusalem in August 2005. On May 14, 2005, however, …

Following is a statement issued by the Alternative Lifestyle Foundation (LGBT Humanitarian Project) of Nigeria. This unsolicited report describes a dire situation for gay men and lesbians in one of the world’s poorest countries, and announces the formation of an organization whose mission is to fight anti-gay persecution and to lobby for sexual equality. We publish this report as a public service in the hope that some readers will respond to the group’s plea for help in getting this organization started. [The editors.]

The stereotypical images of southern Italy as a land of pasta and mafia vendettas needs to be replaced with a new understanding of the Mezzogiorno, as the southern regions of Italy are collectively known. The region now has the distinction of electing the first openly gay regional president in the history of the Italian republic. …

… Gay activist Vladislav Topchev echoed Nahorna’s pessimism. “The presentation of us in the media is to satisfy heterosexual interest. Even if journalists are gay-friendly, information tends to be distorted.” He has heard about physical attacks everywhere in Ukraine. Homophobia is rampant both in the industrial, largely Russian-speaking east, and in the Europe-turning, Catholic west, he told me. “There is no difference in the level of homophobia.” …