The main part of this month’s newsletter is highlighting the IDAHO event which is being held in Ripley this year on 17th May from 6.30pm. This event has proved very successful over the last few years and is a good way of people hearing what is going on with the LGBT population locally and on a national and international basis too, we may think that things are better, but evidence would suggest that this is not always the case, and it is a time to give thought to those in other countries with more oppressive views on homosexuality. It gives a chance for public organizations to show the services they offer to the LGBT population and the fact that they want to engage with us, as our thoughts and needs are just as important as every other resident within Surrey. So if you can spare some time on 17th May then make your way to the Talbot Inn in Ripley for the event.

There is also a plea in this newsletter to support a local charity and have fun at the same time, please see if you are able to help in anyway, even if you do not want the fun side of things think about sponsoring somebody else to have the fun.

International Day Against Homophobia (IDAHO)

In a world where 77 countries punish women, men and children because of their sexuality an International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHO) provides a platform for everyone to make a powerful statement to demand improvements for peoples quality of life Overseas and in the UK.  On the 17th May 1990 the World Health Organisation removed homosexuality from their list of mental disorders. Now IDAHO exists to provoke action to end Homophobia. Throughout history and in a large part of the world today, LGBT people have been under attack with constant pressure to remain "closeted" and removed from mainstream society. Every living person has a sexual orientation and this is part of who we are as individuals. Activities and events that help raise the profile of the existence of the UK and global LGBT community also help to demonstratethat sexuality does not make you less of a person.

Gay Surrey and IDAHO

Gay Surrey are putting on an evening at the Talbot Inn. This will included various speakers and presentation, so please support this fantastic event.

Performing live, the amazing Jo Paige. The Dynamic Voice of Jo Paige A deep, bluesy voice and the absolute passion to deliver a song straight from the heart are what make Jo Paige stand head and shoulders above other professional singers of her genre. She has a very diverse vocal range, which enables her to take the audience through the jazz classics of Nina Simone, Billie Holliday and Etta James with gusto, switching effortlessly to, Motown, Soul, rock ‘n' roll, reggae and pop numbers, as suits the occasion.

When men's lips meet (is this a start to the end of homophobia in football?)

By kissing Paul Scholes, Gary Neville declared war on homophobia. And Francophobia, too

Of the gestures exchanged between males, there are two common types. First, the handshake, which has over recent years exploded into a veritable rainbow of variations, from the traditional polite handshake through to the terrorist fist bump, taking in all manner of slaps and tickles along the way. The other is the hug, which has gone in the opposite direction, distilling itself into one uniform act; a brief squeeze, followed by two strong slaps across the shoulders.
In terms of actual physical contact, that's about it. A rogue uncle might rub his knuckles up and down your scalp, but that's a rarity. Kissing, meanwhile, just doesn't happen. Keep that in mind when you consider the reaction to an already famous meeting of lips on Saturday 17th April in the afternoon.
As if losing the derby to a last-minute headed goal from a 35-year-old wasn't bad enough, what followed next must have proved mortifying for Manchester City fans. As they sat in the stands contemplating yet another year in the shadows of their illustrious rivals, there on the pitch was Gary Neville, club captain and Manchester United archetype, planting a full, passionate kiss on the lips of his teammate and goalscorer Paul Scholes. The kiss exchanged by Neville and Scholes, or rather the one foisted upon Scholes by Neville, was broadcast around the world. It said a lot about what victory, the crucial three points as they say, meant to Manchester United. It also said a lot about Gary Neville. Such a gesture – normally expected of the male lead in a Jennifer Aniston movie – showed Neville in a whole new light. And it could yet prove to be totemic. Professional football, a sport constantly expected to provide role models for the nation's children, remains quite remarkable for the fact that throughout its upper echelons there is not one player, not a single one, who says he is gay. While the law of averages would suggest there ought to be at least more than one gay player in the Premier League, none has come out. Even when the Welsh rugby international Gareth Thomas came out late last year, no footballer followed his lead. They're all straight, you see, every single one of them.
Perhaps Neville can change all that. He may be married with two kids, but if this crazy, untamed, obsessional partisan feels that the only way of truly conveying his feelings is to lock lips with a bemused redhead then surely there's a broader message that could be made from it? The Manchester Pride event runs through the last 10 days of August this year. Neville should be invited as a guest of honour.
That Neville's big snog has made such a splash might say something about the continued existence of a homophobic undercurrent in the UK beyond the football fields. (It might also suggest there's a market for seeing a weasel-faced man get it on with his pals, I don't know.) But I think there's at last one other factor that fuels the prohibition of public kissing among British males. As much an irrational fear of gay men, I detect an irrational fear of the French.
I saw two men greet each other with kisses in a restaurant recently and I blushed. I knew there and then they were French. To kiss another man is, for the Briton, so closely associated with the idea of the effete values of the continent, those that put sophistication above strength and culture before valour (I'm making these up as I go along, but this is how prejudice works), that there is no way we could countenance the practice.
That is, until Gary Neville tried it. This was no peck on the cheek, this was a full-blown face-sucking. It was a greeting both intimate and red-blooded. It was the snog of a True Brit and I'm going to try it on my friends.

Paul MacInnes
www.guardian.co.uk  Sunday 18 April 2010

Are plays featuring gay men and women becoming more mainstream and not just shown and small theatres? Guardian theatre critics examine the thought.

In Mel Brooks's stage version of his film The Producers, the flamboyantly homosexual theatre director Roger de Bris urges:
No matter what you do on the stage
Keep it light, keep it bright, keep it gay!
Whether it's murder, mayhem or rage
Don't complain, it's a pain
Keep it gay!
While De Bris's character could be said to be a throwback to a different era of over-the-top gay male stereotyping, it's also a sign of how far the gay community has evolved that we now embrace such characterisations rather than take offence. After all, The Producers is an equal-opportunity offender, affectionately guying Swedish blondes, Nazi playwrights, old investors and scheming Jewish producers with equal abandon.
And we've also defiantly celebrated our drag heritage, with shows such as La Cage Aux Folles so successfully revived at London's Menier Chocolate Factory that it has now transferred to Broadway, and a stage version of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert now a long-running hit at the West End's Palace Theatre.
We've got access to a far wider range of portraits of gay men on our stages, too. This means that the affirmation (or not) that one example provides no longer has to carry such weight or emotional significance, as it did when plays such as Mart Crowley's The Boys in the Band broke new ground in portraying gay lives on stage at all, however compromised and self-hating they might have been.
 
Those portraits, of course, persist, in plays such as Tennessee Williams's Cat On a Hot Tin Roof (whose lead character, Brick, drowns his self-disgust in drink), currently being revived at the Novello theatre (where it ends this weekend); or Douglas Carter Beane's more contemporary satire of closeted Hollywood, The Little Dog Laughed, in which a gay actor is told by his (lesbian) agent, when he threatens to come out: "Are you British? Do you have a knighthood? If not, shut up!" It's the same advice that Rupert Everett – an actor who only has half of those qualifications – publicly gave in a recent Guardian interview: "I would not advise any actor necessarily, if he was really thinking of his career, to come out."
But the rites of passage, and the rights of coming out, are about to be shown more positively in the imminent West End opening of the hit Australian play Holding the Man, while next month the National premieres Drew Pautz's Love the Sinner, about gays in the priesthood.
Last month, the Royal Court won an Olivier award for its production of Mike Bartlett's Cock, which wrestled with a conflicted man trying to decide whether to stay with his long-term gay lover or take up with a new girlfriend, and there are plenty of cocks on offer for real in the Arts Theatre's late-night show, Naked Boys Singing. More discreet male nudity was also recently on show in a stage version of EM Forster's Maurice at Above the Stag, and currently in Studies for a Portrait, which has just opened at the King's Head.

Shulman, then theatre critic of the Evening Standard, wrote an inflammatory article headlined Stop the Plague of Pink Plays – a title that gay author Michael Arditti pointed out was "cynically designed to equate gay-themed theatre with another 'gay plague' that then exercised the tabloids".
But what's different nowadays is that gay theatre is no longer confined to a ghetto (once centred on venues such as the Drill Hall and Oval House), but can be seen far and wide. It's even on Broadway, where Elton John and David Furnish have lent their names to a new play, Next Fall. But in an interesting development, the producers are coy about identifying it as a gay play. The poster shows the central lovers separated by other characters, with a tag line: "We love who we love." They want, in the words of the show's director Sheryl Kaller, "to make clear that there is something in the play for the widest possible audience".
Gay theatre may have come out of the ghetto, but it's apparently still not entirely out of the closet.
www.guardian.co.uk

Surrogacy and gay men
Gay male couples will be able to use a fast-track route to become the legal parents of surrogate children. On 6 April, changes to the law will permit two men to be named as parents on a child's birth certificate for the first time in British history. The transition will take effect following the implementation of the final piece of the 2008 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act. This last section is aimed at helping same-sex and unmarried couples who seek to have surrogate children and will allow them to secure legal parenthood in a new, simplified manner. At present, only married, heterosexual couples can use this route.
"These changes bring the law up to date with the realities of modern 21st-century life and recognise that increasing numbers of same-sex and unmarried couples are having children together," said Natalie Gamble, of the fertility law firm Gamble and Ghevaert.
Surrogacy has become increasingly common and offers couples an alternative route to parenthood if all other methods, including IVF treatments, fail. Current legislation allows heterosexual, married couples to get a parental order to give them a birth certificate for a child born to a mother with whom they have entered into a surrogacy agreement. But gay, lesbian and unmarried couples cannot do this. The surrogate mother has to be named on the birth certificate. If she is married, her husband is legally considered to be the father.
An example is provided by the story of Steven Ponder and his partner, Ivan Sigston. Both are police officers. Last year, they became one of the first gay couples to father a baby in Britain when Ponder's married sister, Lorna Bradley, gave birth to a boy, William. Crucially, however, Lorna Bradley's name appeared on the birth certificate, which made her a legal guardian of the child. Ponder and Sigston could have applied to adopt the baby. If successful, they would have been given an adoption certificate to replace his original birth certificate. But adoption is complex and involves the intervention of social workers and other professional groups. The new system is far more streamlined. Provided that a court is satisfied that two men are in a stable relationship; that no fees, other than expenses, are paid to the surrogate mother; and that it is in the child's best interest, then it will award a parental order for a birth certificate to be drawn up with both men named as parents, and therefore legal guardians. "Lesbian couples and unmarried couples usually have other routes available to them if they want to have children, but surrogacy is particularly important to gay men, so they will get most out of this change in legislation," said Gamble. In effect, the law has now opened the doors in order to make it easy for a gay man and his partner to have children.
This point was backed by Ben Summerskill, chief executive of Stonewall, the gay rights campaign group: "We are delighted that the reality of people's family lives is being recognised at last, that both lesbian and gay couples no longer have to go through the unpleasantness of an adoption procedure." Gamble warned, however, that while the new legislation would make it easier for gay couples to have children, the rules governing surrogacy in the UK remained badly out of date.
"There are particular pitfalls for single parents and those going abroad. In the latter case, a couple returning to England with a surrogate child find that the law does not recognise their right to parenthood. It can cause immense distress. There are a lot of aspects of surrogacy that now need to be addressed urgently."
www.observer.guardian.co.uk

Do fancy having some fun and supporting a local charity in the process?

Then why not look at the website of RASASC to see how you can get involved in raising money through sky diving, go up in a Glider or just going for a nice leisurely walk in stunning countryside around Guildford or how about a more energetic cycle ride along the southdowns .

The Rape and sexual abuse support centre (RASASC) provides among other services a telephone listening service and face-2-face counseling. The service is open to everyone and is non-judgmental, you do not need to be referred and you do not need to have reported any incident to the police in order to access to their services. RASASC is a voluntary UK charitable organisation providing a range of confidential and caring services to anyone (male or female including those from the LGBT population) whose life has been affected by sexual abuse or rape, whether recently or in the past, in Surrey and beyond.

RASASC is run by volunteers and is dependent on donations in order to survive and carry on providing valuable services to those that need them, they are not funded by the Government or any statutory bodies. Not everybody has the courage or confidence to seek support when they have been sexually abused or raped. So why not take a look at their website and sign up to having some fun and at the same time raise some much needed funds for this very important local charity.

www.rasasc-guildford.org/supportus/fundraising.htm  

This organization is very supportive of the LGBT population so you do not need to worry about facing any prejudice or discrimination.

Gay Surrey

As always Gay Surrey has all the latest updates on their website, so why not take a visit www.gaysurrey.org

IDAHO 2010 just a heads up for next years day:

17th May 2010
6.30pm onwards
Event held at the Talbot Inn Ripley Surrey

Articles needed urgently

A lot of articles this month have come courtesy of www.pinknews.co.uk although some of the articles have a local reflection a lot do not. Please contact me with local news and information that the LGBT population of Surrey would be interested to know. You may run a business that you wish to advertise (free of charge) please send me a copy electronically.

Surrey Domestic Abuse Helpline
Are you being frightened, hurt or
abused by a partner or family member
24 hour confidential service
01483 776822

East Surrey Domestic Abuse Outreach Service
01737 771350
(Serving Reigate and Banstead, Mole Valley and Tandridge)

North West Surrey Domestic
Abuse Outreach Service
01483 776822
(serving Woking, Runnymede and Surrey Heath)

North Surrey Domestic
Abuse Outreach Service
01932 260690
(serving Epsom, Ewell, Elmbridge and Spelthorne)

South West Surrey Domestic
Abuse Outreach Service
01483 577392 or 01932 260690
(Serving the Waverley area)

Relate, West Surrey
Provincial House
26 Commercial Way
Woking, Surrey GU21 6EN
01483  715285   www.relatewestsurrey.org.uk

TWISTER Youth Club!
LGBTQ Young People, Surrey Ages 13-19
Various Nights 7.30pm - 9.30pm
www.surreycc.gov.uk/twister

Naz Project
HIV and sexual health support service for
South Asian, Middle Eastern, North African, Latin American and other excluded communities
e-mail naz@naz.org.uk
Website: naz.org.uk
0208 7411879  9.30-5.30 Mon-Fri.

Guildford Area Gay Society (GAGS)
Meets every Wednesday, phone Simon on 01252 370809
www.gags.org.uk

The Cellar
Disco runs last Saturday of
each month 9.00 pm - 2.00 am and social meeting Friday evenings 8.30 pm midnight
Farnham, Surrey (phone for details)
01252 715844

Homophobic Incidents
Call Surrey Police on:
0845 1252222 or www.stophatecrime.co.uk
WSLAGLO@surrey.pnn.police.uk or 01483 630474

GUM Clinics
Genito-Urinary Medicine

Farnham Road Hospital, Guildford
01483 537007

Blanche Heriot Unit, St Peter’s Hospital, Chertsey
01932 722669

Frimley Park Hospital, Frimley
01276 604105

K2 Clinic, Wolverton Centre, Kingston Hospital
For Gay and Bisexual Men
Wednesday 6.00 - 8.00 pm - walk in only
0208 934 2843

Local Voluntary Organisations

Outline
Lesbian and Gay Helpline
open Sunday and Tuesday between 7.30 and 10.00 pm
01483 727667

www.gaysurrey.org
offering help, support and advice locally
to those who need it
Tel : 0700 5982 429 anytime
Young Gay Surrey
Website dedicated to 13 to 19 year olds for help and support www.ygsspeakout.org

The following Charities offer advice, support and
information to people infected and affected by
HIV/AIDS

Positive Action
0800 9801990 (freephone)
01252 345019
THT Surrey Region
01483 263160
St Peters House Project
01737 763000

Married Men’s Group
A group for men who are married or in
relationships with women and are attracted to
or having sex with other men.
07801 629972

RASASC
Rape and sexual abuse support centre
01483 546400 female staffed (7.30-9.30) closed Saturdays and Bank Holidays