Will you be attending the Tropical Pride Festival in Cairns from September 19th-21st?

Once assumed widely to be gay, Stephen Daldry, the director of the hit film Billy Elliot, has just married a woman. The lucky lady is known as Lucy, from New York. Hollywood actress Anne Heche was until recently dating comedienne Ellen DeGeneres, and telling other gays and lesbians: “If you come out, it’s gonna be better for you.??? But earlier this year...

Are you old enough?

Homosexuality has traditionally been a soft target for legislatures evoking hysteria about unnatural acts by quoting misplaced religious righteousness and other such nonsense.

Peter Sheringham from The Piercing Urge URGES us to ASK the right questions…

Coming Out is a process, a journey. Here’s some tips to make your trip as smooth as possible…

The first time I ever masturbated I thought about a guy – my friend actually. It was a strange moment. I was confused about the experience of wanking and then even more so about the fact I was thinking about guys and not girls during it. Up until then I was only ever interested in girls – or so I thought.

Bents Bites; “I’m Out already, and here’s why…??? Recently in a bb, I read a question from a young gay guy as to why bother being out of the closet. Below is why *I* think it's important.

Bents Bites; “Get your rosaries off my ovaries…???

The biggest problem I have with the 'pro-life' lobby is that they try to take away a woman's right to a legal and safe abortion if she doesn't want, or can't cope with a pregnancy for whatever reason.

On the 3rd September 1977 I cried. On that day my son was born. He was healthy and correctly formed: ten fingers, ten toes and the spout was in the right place. If memory serves me correctly, I even prayed to the Lord for THE deliverance—which is cool because I’m not even religious; until it suits me! (By the way, the missus came through it all smiling–read ‘painfully grimacing’).

Australia is sport crazed but do the gay and lesbian community share in this obsession? There are a lot of cultural myths and prejudices about sport and sexuality. Sports are often promoted as if they were the exclusive province of heterosexual men while women are frequently considered to have value in sport only as sex appeal. And gay men and lesbians don't exist in sport.

The reason it is such a bitch of a thing is largely because we are fighting genetics. The stomach area obviously houses a lot of vital internal organs. In order to protect them, we are 'designed' to have a bit of extra "padding" there. We aren't supposed to have washboard abs, which is why only about 1% of the population has them. But don't get me wrong, we still all want them!

Right…to change the shape of your body, you first need to be clear about what you are trying to achieve. Are you trying to build up muscle or lose fat?

Mel and Julia got married. This is their story…

We decided to get married for all the "usual" reasons, we were deeply in love, and we wanted our friends and family to witness our commitment to each other and to acknowledge the special bond that we shared.

Picture this. It's a bleary-eyed Sunday morning in Sydney. Street sweepers clear the detritus of another parade along Oxford Street. Stragglers wander in a daze as the road barriers are collected. My partner and I wake in our hotel room, all smiles. What could we have been thinking? What we did was provocative. Performed in everyone's faces. So not very Melbournian at all. We *whisper* held hands.

Most gay people start to realise they are gay from around puberty, sometimes earlier, sometimes later. This is a very confusing time for these people, for a number of reasons.

Scared you may have bad breath and you've got a big date? One of the problems with diagnosing bad breath is getting someone brave enough to tell you actually have it!

Marriage falls under the Federal Marriage Act of 1961, which stipulates (among other things), that only a male and a female may legally marry. This obviously poses a considersable problem for gays and lesbains. So, why bother?

This is one of those stories where you can’t really place a time or a date for its beginning. For as long as I can remember, back to my early teens, I always knew that I was gay. But growing up within a military family only served to reinforce the notion that being gay was anything but normal.

This article is directed at the Catholic Church. While I have nothing against the Catholic Church, I believe that they are still major players in promoting homophobia. The only effective way to deal with homophobia like this is to go straight to the source and attack it. It is not meant to be offensive. I believe it is just the truth. This article is being written to help combat the homophobia that still remains in the church, particularly in the Catholic Church.

Are Lesbians At Risk for Contracting HIV from Each Other? Yes!! There have cases reported since the mid 1980's which indicate that women are transmitting HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) to each other.

The ALSO Foundation turns 21 this month and founder Mac Ronan has many reasons to be proud of his baby. Story and photographs by SHERELE MOODY.

ADAM CARR reports on the tragedy of gay men and lesbians in the Moslem world

Some call it spoken word, some performance poetry. What ever the word, the art form is getting a make-over. A new compilation CD entitled You Talkin’ to Me?, reveals the next big thing in the aesthetic of the word. DAREN POPE has a listen.

CRUISE Style Aid 2002 has two really big surprises. Television celebrity Denise Drysdale has agreed to be the Cruise ship director (board shorts and Denise are made for each other), and dance music sensation Disco Montego, along with Under Cover Angel star Katie Underwood, will be performing the hit single Beautiful.

They are a hard duo to pin down, but Kerryn Phelps, President of the Australian Medical Association and Jackie Stricker, her partner and personal assistant ? arguably the most famous lesbian couple in Australia ? delivered a powerful message when MIJ TANITH interviewed them recently.

LESS than 24 hours before Father Mychal Judge became Victim No. 0001 at the World Trade Centre on September 11 the New York Fire Department chaplain and openly gay man delivered a visionary sermon.

This is his speech.