Global gay 1072

COUPLE BANISHED

GHANA: A gay couple held a wedding ceremony on Easter Sunday in the Ghanaian city of Kumasi. Akwasi Boakye and Kwame Amankwa’s wedding was attended by hundreds of members of the local GLBT community. Following the wedding, the couple was banned from the city by the local chief. “Yes I’m gay and we had the wedding. That is my choice and I don’t think anybody should have a problem with that,” Boakye is alleged to have told the chief during an interrogation. Homosexuality is a misdemeanour in Ghana.

SURVIVOR’S STORY

GERMANY: The story of the last known gay survivor of the Nazis’ death camps has been turned into a book, Happiness Always Came To Me by German sociologist Alexander Zinn, and will be made into a documentary. Rudolf Brazda, now 97 years old, spent three years in Buchenwald concentration camp doing hard labour in a uniform bearing the pink triangle. He survived by hiding when the inmates were forced on a death march. “Brazda’s history differs markedly from that of the majority of homosexuals persecuted under the Third Reich — because he survived,” Zinn said.

SYMBOLIC MARRIAGE

INDIA: Transgender and third gender Indians have gathered to symbolically marry the Hindu god Aravan (pictured) at an annual holy festival in Koovgam in Tamil Nadu. In the ancient Hindu epic The Mahabharata, Aravan asked the god Krishna for one night with a woman, knowing he would die in battle the next day. Unable to find a woman, Krishna transformed himself into a woman and slept with Aravan. Transgender women are so associated with the god that in Tamil Nadu they are known as aravanis.