by Suzanne Rose

After six days of 24-hour-a-day activism, LGBT occupiers, activists, and human rights groups in Seoul, South Korea, won the Seoul Student Rights Ordinance, with all clauses in the original draft included. The draft that calls for non-discrimination against LGBT students as well as their active protection passed the council with a vote of 54 in favor, 28 against and four abstentions. The Educational Committee of the Seoul Metropolitan Council had tried to delete the clauses on LGBT students. This is a significant event in the LGBT history of Seoul because the activists fought face to face against homophobic individuals and groups.

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More than 1,000 members of the LGBT community marched in Manila, Philippines, to demand equal rights and an end to discrimination as well as more support for an AIDS program. Progressive Organization of Gays in the Philippines spokesperson Goya Candelario said that the organization is pushing for a law against the discrimination that denies LGBT people jobs and social services.

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Eighty thousand people in over 124 countries have joined a campaign on Change.org calling on Ecuador’s Minister of Health to investigate and close more than 200 Lesbian “ex-Gay clinics” that allegedly use torture techniques to turn homosexuals straight. A coalition of leading Ecuadoran women’s rights activists is leading the campaign.

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In England, a petition was started to ask the government to formally pardon the late Gay mathematician/World War II code-breaker Alan Turing. Turing was prosecuted for his sexual orientation in 1952 and forced to undergo chemical castration. He committed suicide two years later at the age of 41.