"Stories need a hook," said a spokesperson for UNITE HERE Local 11. The union had been fighting the Beverly Hills Hotel and the Hotel Bel-Air for over a year, but it wasn't until LGBT activists got on board that their efforts found traction.
With one of the world's most infamous anti-gay laws, Uganda seems like the last place on Earth an LGBTI person would go seeking safety. But almost 100 LGBTI refugees have sought help from an NGO in Uganda's capital to seek asylum in the country, and there may be many more in the country illegally without seeking formal permission to stay.
"We are feeling like homosexuality is a crime everywhere ... there is not any protection here," said one of the men. Their yearlong journey across more than 10 countries to seek asylum in the United States.
Young LGBT Jamaicans are chased out of their communities by family and neighbors using vigilante justice to enforce the country’s laws against homosexual conduct. Now police are trying to push them out of their shelter of last resort.
Carlos Bruce, a Peruvian congressman, is leading a major campaign for civil unions in one of South America's most religious countries. The church has put his sexuality at the center of the debate — not that he seems to mind.
Russia and its allies in countries like Ukraine are fomenting anti-gay sentiment in an effort to push back the European Union's eastern expansion. “Now, the fight [is] between East and West, Russia and Europe — Ukraine is the field of the battle,” said one LGBT activist.
"The reality is lesbians are HIV-positive. The reality is lesbians are so in denial," a black lesbian activist in the township of Khayelitsha tells BuzzFeed.
"All things that are in the constitution, here they don’t mean anything, they don’t translate to our daily lives. People are being killed,” a married black lesbian activist in a Cape Town township says.