Gay Bombay was founded in 1998. It is one of Mumbai's longest-running gay support groups, which has been hosting parties in different clubs since 2000.[9][7][10]
Activities
Gay Bombay organizes various LGBT events including dance parties, picnics, film festivals, film screenings parents meeting, trekking, cooking, speed-dating brunches, counselling sessions, meet-ups, gatherings, and discussions on topics such as HIV/AIDS and relationships.[5][11][10]
In July 2009, Gay Bombay organized a party to celebrate the Delhi High Court's verdict on decriminalizing homosexuality in India.[12] In 2008, the Queer Media Collective Awards was started by Gay Bombay to acknowledge and honor the media's support of the LGBT movement in India.[13]
It organizes a talent show every year, Gay Bombay Talent Show, to provide a platform for LGBT artists.[11][14]
In May 2017, Gay Bombay paid tribute to Dominic D'Souza, India's first AIDS activist by showing a short film on Positive People, an NGO founded by D'Souza.[15]
In popular culture
The book Gay Bombay: Globalization, Love and (Be)longing in Contemporary India (2008) by Parmesh Shahani,[16] is based on characters and situations that the members of Gay Bombay experienced, reportedly to Mint.[17][18]
Queer is an umbrella term for people who are not heterosexual or are not cisgender. Originally meaning 'strange' or 'peculiar', queer came to be used pejoratively against those with same-sex desires or relationships in the late 19th century. Beginning in the late 1980s, queer activists, such as the members of Queer Nation, began to reclaim the word as a deliberately provocative and politically radical alternative to the more assimilationist branches of the LGBT community.
Fire is a 1996 Indo-Canadian erotic romantic drama film written and directed by Deepa Mehta, starring Shabana Azmi and Nandita Das. It is the first installment of Mehta's Elements trilogy; it is succeeded by Earth (1998) and Water (2005).
Section 377 of the British colonial penal code criminalized all sexual acts "against the order of nature". The law was used to prosecute people engaging in oral and anal sex along with homosexual activity. The penal code remains in many former colonies, but has been repealed in Singapore and India as of 2023. It has been used to criminalize third gender people, such as the apwint in Myanmar. In 2018, British Prime Minister Theresa May acknowledged how the legacies of British colonial anti-sodomy laws continue to persist today in the form of discrimination, violence, and death.
Homosexuality in India has been a subject of discussion from ancient times to modern times. Hindu texts have taken various positions regarding homosexual characters and themes. The ancient Indian text Kama Sutra written by Vātsyāyana dedicates a complete chapter on erotic homosexual behaviour. Historical literary evidence indicates that homosexuality has been prevalent across the Indian subcontinent throughout history.
Ashok Row Kavi is an Indian journalist and LGBT rights activist.
New Zealand society is generally accepting of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) peoples. The LGBT-friendly environment is epitomised by the fact that there are several members of Parliament who belong to the LGBT community, LGBT rights are protected by the Human Rights Act, and same-sex couples are able to marry as of 2013. Sex between men was decriminalised in 1986. New Zealand has an active LGBT community, with well-attended annual gay pride festivals in most cities.
Sridhar Rangayan is an Indian filmmaker who has made films with special focus on queer subjects. His queer films, The Pink Mirror and Yours Emotionally, have been considered groundbreaking because of their realistic and sympathetic portrayal of the largely closeted Indian gay community. His film The Pink Mirror remains banned in India by the Indian Censor Board because of its homosexual content.
The Iranian Queer Organization, also known as the Persian Gay and Lesbian Organization, was an advocacy group for LGBT rights in Iran based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The organization was founded by human rights activist Arsham Parsi and monitors violations of gay rights in Iran. Under the Islamic laws of Iran, homosexuality is punishable by death.
The KASHISH Mumbai International Queer Film Festival is an annual LGBT event that has been held in Mumbai, India, since 2010. The film festival screens gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer films from India and around the world. It is voted as one of the top five LGBT film festivals in the world.
The LGBTQ community has a long recorded history in Ancient India due to the prevalence of the accepting Hindu spiritual traditions and cultures across the subcontinent, with a turbulent period following Islamic and European colonialism that introduced homophobic and transphobic laws, thus criminalizing homosexuality and transsexuality. In the 21st century following independence, there has been a significant amount of progress made on liberalizing LGBTQ laws and reversing the homophobia and transphobia of the previous colonial era.
India has a vibrant LGBTQ culture, especially in its large cities due to growing acceptance in the recent years.
Humsafar Trust is an NGO in Mumbai which promotes LGBT rights. Founded by Ashok Row Kavi, Suhail Abbasi, and Sridhar Rangayan in 1994, it is one of the largest and most active of such organisations in India. It provides counselling, advocacy and healthcare to LGBT communities and has helped reduce violence, discrimination and stigma against them. Humsafar Trust is the convenor member of Integrated Network for Sexual Minorities (INFOSEM).
This is a timeline of notable events in the history of non-heterosexual conforming people of South Asian ancestry, who may identify as LGBTIQGNC, men who have sex with men, or related culturally-specific identities such as Hijra, Aravani, Thirunangaigal, Khwajasara, Kothi, Thirunambigal, Jogappa, Jogatha, or Shiva Shakti. The recorded history traces back at least two millennia.
Chennai has LGBTQIA cultures that are diverse concerning- socio-economic class, gender, and degree of visibility and politicisation. They have historically existed in the margins and surfaced primarily in contexts such as transgender activism and HIV prevention initiatives for men having sex with men (MSM) and trans women (TG).
The following outline offers an overview and guide to LGBT topics.
Shobhana S. Kumar, an Indian female entrepreneur, who started India's first online queer (LGBT) bookstore, Queer-ink.com.
LABIA is an organization for queer and transgender people in Mumbai, India. It was founded in 1995 as Stree Sangam, and is often cited as a significant organization in the history of LGBTQ organizing in India.
The following list is a partially completed compilation of events considered to have a profound effect on the welfare or image of Tamil sexual minorities. The use of bold typeface indicates that the event is widely considered to be landmark:
a Huggins19. Ganguly, Dibeyendu: (1 Dec,8 2015) For HR Chiefs, LGBT is the New Diversity Frontier, The Economic Times Archived 20 February 2019 at the Wayback Machine
Further reading
Chris Berry; Lynn Spigel; Fran Martin; Audrey Yue (2003). Mobile Cultures: New Media in Queer Asia Console-Ing Passions: Television and Cultural Power Console-ing Passions. Duke University Press. pp.187, 190, 195. ISBN9780822330875.
Ellen Lewin; William L. Leap (2009). Out in Public: Reinventing Lesbian / Gay Anthropology in a Globalizing World. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN9781444310672.
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