OF ALL THE THINGS that Paris is famous for—the historic neighborhoods, the amazing museums, the spectacular food—what’s often overlooked is Paris’ importance in LGBT history and culture. France was the first modern country to decriminalize homosexuality—in 1798, almost two centuries before the U.S. From that time on, Paris has remained a relatively free […]
Archive | International
Too Good Is No Good
Staying in the countryside, a French calendar boasting photos of sexy farmers caused a minor dust-up when a Huffington Post piece objected that the subjects were clearly not real “farmers” but rather studio models in overalls. In this age of fake news, it’s surprising that anyone would notice this conventional fib, but it prompted […]
Gay Goings-on at the National Portrait Gallery
ONE OF THE MOST AMAZING PLACES in the world to learn about the gay past is the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) in London. Almost every gallery contains someone famous and/or fascinating who (in our terms) fell somewhere on the GLBT spectrum. This was especially clear a couple of years ago, when the […]
Discrimination Plagues Health Care in Kenya
According to the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, the LGBT community in Kenya often face discrimination and stigma when seeking medical health care services in public hospitals. Most health care providers in public hospitals are known for breaching their privacy and confidentiality by exposing the sexual orientation of their patients to other colleagues […]
Oral History Project Documents Lives of LGBTQ Immigrants Living in NYC
On September 27, Immigration Equality and the Brooklyn Community Pride Center launched the LGBTQ New Americans Project, featuring audio and video oral histories of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer immigrants living in Brooklyn and throughout New York City. Through extended conversation, the project records the unique experiences of LGBTQ immigrants in their own words. […]
Three Photo Ops from the 2016 Rio Olympics
The first is from a New York Times piece titled, “Q: Why Do Gay Men Love the Olympics? A: Isn’t It Obvious?” And if it wasn’t obvious before, one needed only to look at the impressive spread of photos accompanying the piece, showing mostly male athletes in Speedos or performing gymnastics. The piece even got […]
Paris is a Great Gay City
Paris is of course one of the world’s greatest cities– above all, one of its great cultural cities with literature, art, architecture, fashion, cuisine and so on and so forth– but I think Americans easily forget how great a gay city it is as well. They don’t call it ‘Gay Paris’ for nothing! Among […]
The Gay Side
When Oscar Wilde Tours designs gay history tours, we always try to show people the gay side of famous places. We do for instance “gay secrets” tours of Westminster Abbey, the Louvre, and the Vatican. But we also try to take people to some places that are important in gay history and that they might […]
GAY HISTORY OF ENGLAND
England is a great country for the traveler interested in gay history and culture. London is one of the great gay cities, and there are also places of gay historical interest spread around the country, from Sissinghurst in the south to Castle Howard in the north. The great thing about the gay history of […]
Malaysia on My Mind, or Why Nothing Changes Here
WHEN I was growing up in rural Florida in the 1970s and ’80s, gay life was secreted behind closed doors. Gay bars had names like “Secrets” and were hidden in nondescript strip malls where you could get bashed in the parking lot. It was a disgrace to one’s family to be gay — a fate worthy […]
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