Organisers Romance Writers Ink said they do not condone discrimination and recognised the new rule in their More Than Magic 2012 competition about gay entries was “highly charged”.

The rules had stated the competition would “no longer accept same-sex entries in any category” of the romance-writing contest.

The competition was to offer a grand prize of up to $495 (£310) and works could be entered in a range of romance categories including paranormal, historical and ‘sensual contemporary’, so long as the romance was heterosexual.

Author Kari Gregg described to the Guardian the response she received after asking the organisers to explain the rule: “RWI chapter members were uncomfortable with accepting same-sex contest entries. ‘Same-sex was just too much.’”

“The arrogant presumption that their behaviour was OK infuriated me as a professional, who (reasonably) expected her work to be considered with the same courtesy and respect afforded to every other romance book, but also as a parent of a LGBT young adult.

“Both the professional and the parent responded with an immediate, ‘how dare they?’”

A statement on RWI’s site says: “After much consideration, RWI regretfully announces the MTM Published Author Contest has been cancelled. All monies and books received from entrants will be returned as soon as possible.

“We have heard and understood the issues raised, and will take those concerns into consideration should the chapter elect to hold contests in the future.

It adds: “Please note: our contest coordinator, Jackie, is a chapter member who graciously volunteered to collect entries and sort by category. It is unfortunate that she has become the object of personal ridicule and abuse.

“We recognize the decision to disallow same-sex entries is highly charged. We also opted not to accept YA [Young Adult] entries. We do not condone discrimination against individuals of any sort.”

Tom Cullen and Chris New star as Russell and Glen, a pair of young gay men who meet in a Nottingham gay club on a Friday night.

The film charts the way their relationship develops over the following 48 hours.

Haigh said the award was “amazing and unexpected; this past year has just been incredible. I just want to thank the actors, Tom and Chris, who really brought so much to the script and I share this with them.”

The film has currently grossed over £200,000 at the UK box office after reportedly being filmed on a £120,000 budget.

The director also won the British Breakthrough Film-maker award at last month’s London Film Critics’ Circle Awards.

Two British Independent Film Awards also followed: for Achievement In Production and Most Promising Newcomer for actor Tom Cullen.

Cullen is next set to appear alongside Cynthia Nixon in an adaptation of Ken Follett’s World Without End.

Best Film last night went to We Need to Talk about Kevin. Michael Fassbender won Best Actor and Olivia Colman took home the gong for Best Actress.

White has written 28 books including a trilogy of autobiographical novels and biographies of Marcel Proust and Jean Genet, for which he won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

His latest novel, Jack Holmes and his Friend, was published in 2011.

Speaking to Toby Ash, White explains the reasons behind choosing Alan Hollinghurst’s The Folding Star, Jean Genet’s Our Lady of the Flowers, Christohper Isherwood’s A Single Man, EM Forster’s Maurice and Andrew Holleran’s Dancer from the Dance.

Do you still feel as inspired as a writer today as you did, say, a couple of decades ago?

Well, a lot of people have said that Jack Holmes and His Friend is my best book, so I guess I’m still writing at the height of my powers. I teach writing, so I have to constantly think about writing problems.

Is the writing process for you pleasurable or angst-ridden?

It’s both angst-ridden and pleasurable. It is pleasurable to finish, I suppose. It’s always angst-ridden to write, with some stretches of pleasure. But it does seem to me that writing a novel is so precarious. It’s as though you’re carrying a bucket of water up a hill and you’re not quite sure you’re going to make it.

But you always seem to make it. Or are there times you haven’t?

I think I wrote three or four novels before one was published, so I certainly know what it’s like to write something and not have it be successful or accepted. Like every writer I’ve been criticised for some of my work. A couple of my novels are considered real failures.

How do you react to criticism? Do you ignore it or do you take it on board?

Sometimes it serves as a useful corrective. One of the things I have been very criticised for, even in Jack Holmes and His Friend, is being too explicitly sexual. I don’t think I’ve toned that down at all, as it’s something that interests me. But I’m not surprised when critics attack me for it.

Are they critical because it is gay sex? Do you think they would be less critical if it was heterosexual?

I think that in America especially, and in England too, there are a lot of people who are puritanical. They love to tell you that sexual writing is either boring or ludicrous. I think those are two ways of registering shock.

Do you think you would be such a prolific writer – or even a writer at all – if you weren’t gay? I remember you once said that when you were young you wrote about gay themes as a form of therapy.

For sure, in my early writing I felt like I was drowning and that writing was the only way of putting my head above the water, but the water was constantly rising. I think I had so many mental problems when I was young and I was constantly in therapy. That was certainly true for my teenage years and my twenties. I think that after I was 30 things changed a lot and I began to take more pleasure in the craft of writing and see novels as almost problems to be solved – artistic problems rather than psychological ones.

You teach creative writing and have done so for many years. You once said you found teaching in the early years a very useful education for yourself as a novelist. Do you still find that today?

I used to teach literature courses and that was certainly useful to be able to examine how books were put together. Now I only teach creative writing seminars and workshops. It’s instructive in a different way. For one thing, it keeps me in touch with how young people feel and the things they are thinking about and the way they are talking. For another, I’m constantly thinking about the construction of stories and novels. Issues like suspense and tension, characterisation, dialogue, percentages of dialogue to description and so on. All those rather technical issues get discussed in class and I think they are ones that I’m always thinking about and that must be useful for a writer.

So you can never stop building your knowledge.

I think that’s true. Reading established writers and classics is another way. I always hate when writers – often quite famous writers – will say they don’t read fiction and they only read biographies. I think that’s betraying the craft. Even if it was true, I wish they wouldn’t say it. I think that the truth is that you learn a lot from reading other people’s novels, including bad ones.

For the purposes of this interview we are looking at your favourite works of gay fiction. But outside of this genre, what writers have influenced you?

I love Nabokov. I think Lolita is one of the great books of the 20th century. I love Proust a lot. I have written a biography of Proust. I read a lot of poetry too and wrote a biography of Rimbaud.

Do you find yourself slightly pigeonholed as a chronicler of the New York gay scene of the 1970s and 1980s? Are audiences and critics resistant when you write on subjects outside this?

Well, I have tried other things and they have been dismissed or ignored. I wrote a historical novel called Fanny, which was about Frances Wright, a Scottish woman who started a utopian colony in America. The story is narrated by Frances Trollope, the mother of the author, who was herself an interesting, best-selling writer. I thought that was an amusing double portrait, but people didn’t like it. I think they thought, “How dare he write about something outside of his turf”. I wrote another book that was entirely heterosexual called Caracole, and that was really despised.

Who was it despised by? Was it the mainstream media or by gay critics in particular?

I think the mainstream ones. The gay ones just tended to ignore it because they had got the message that it wasn’t of interest to them. Gay bookstores refused to handle it, which was ludicrous because if you had been handling this writer anyway for his other work you’d think you’d want to handle it all. But then you had straight people criticise it because they didn’t quite get it. I mean it was a hard book to get because it was a sort of fantasy book. People didn’t know quite how to categorise it and I think that books that fail are always ones that are between genres or not clearly one thing or another.

Book One
Our Lady of the Flowers

Your first book recommendation is Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet, whose biography you wrote. Before we talk about this particular book, I wonder if you could tell us more about his early life.

Genet was put up for adoption by his mother. He became a child of public welfare. He was taken in by a family who lived in the heart of France, a rather backward area. His [foster] parents were paid a monthly stipend by the state to look after him. As long as his foster mother was alive he got along very well with everybody. But then when she died he kind of went crazy. He was accused of lots of little crimes, of stealing things. But basically he was just filching things, he wasn’t really stealing anything important – erasers and marbles and things like that.

He was very, very bright and he was probably the brightest student in the whole département. Because of his intelligence he wasn’t put out to work at age 13 as a farm worker, the way most foster children were. He was sent to a trade school to learn printing, which was considered a great honour. But he ran away from that school almost immediately and began a life of petty crime. He was arrested many times for things like stealing a signature of a French king at an autograph store or fabric from a department store or doctoring his train ticket so that it looked as if he was eligible for a longer train ride than he’d paid for.

France was very backward in a sense. It was really part of the 19th century until World War II. So just as boys in [Charles] Dickens are punished terribly for very minor crimes, in the same way Genet, who never committed any big crimes, was punished very severely. He even risked being given a life sentence, but his case was pleaded by [Jean] Cocteau who said that Genet was like Rimbaud and you don’t put Rimbaud in prison. And the judge, being French, was convinced by this argument and released him. Then he went into terrible decline because he had always written in prison with the threat of a life sentence over his head and now he was free as a bird and found it hard to write. He became extremely depressed. What he finally did was to change entirely and write for the theatre.

He did write most of Our Lady of the Flowers in prison and it was published first in 1943 during the occupation. It was published very privately in an edition of just 50 copies.

It’s extraordinary that it was published at all during the German occupation.

The Germans were very puritanical and would have certainly persecuted not only the author but also the publisher if they had known about it. But it was printed privately and sold under the counter to rich homosexuals. But Genet wanted a larger audience and he removed quite a few of the pornographic passages from the original edition in order to make it more accessible to the general public.

Can you tell us more about the book itself?

It’s beautifully written. It’s a sumptuous, poetic style, which is true of several of the books on my list. But he certainly was one of the greatest stylists of all time. He earned the attention of some of the leading thinkers of the day. [Jean-Paul] Sartre wrote a whole book about him and so did [Jacques] Derrida. Many other important writers like Cocteau wrote about him and admired him.

He invented in this book the drag queen for all literature who’s called Divine. She – the book calls her “she” even though she’s a man – is a prostitute and has many lovers. The most important is a pimp called Darling Daintyfoot. He brings home one night a very beautiful boy who’s called Our Lady of the Flowers, who is a murderer and who’s about to be executed. The book has several converging timeframes. For instance, Genet is always reminding us that he himself is in prison awaiting sentence. That’s one thread of the book. And then there’s another timeline, which is about the sentencing and execution of Our Lady of the Flowers. So those are different timelines that converge. But there are many characters in the book and there are a lot of sex scenes. It’s a world of the ghetto really. He places his ghetto in Montmartre. If you read it in French there’s an awful lot of thieves’ slang that’s used in the dialogue. The dialogue is very raw but the narration is very elegant and elevated. So there’s a kind of contrast between the two. The dialogue is constantly reminding you that these are criminals and part of the underclass, whereas the narration is always reminding you that you should think of this as something like a tragedy by Rossini.

This book was really a lifesaver for Genet, transporting him from the underclass to the heart of literary Paris.

It’s probably what saved his life. Because he was such a good writer Cocteau discovered him and intervened on his behalf and got him freed from a life sentence. Even the president of France exonerated him. It did change his life entirely. He was somebody who had no talent, only genius. He couldn’t do anything. He didn’t have any skills. He only knew how to write the best prose of the century.

Book Two
A Single Man

Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man is a book I know you are very fond of. You once described it as “the founding text of modern gay literature”. Why do you think this book is so important?

Well I think it’s the opposite of Our Lady of the Flowers in one sense as it’s not metaphorical. The style is extremely chaste and simple. The action of the book takes place in a single day. The reason it’s innovative is that with George – who’s the main character in the book – there’s no ideology given about how he came to be gay or what his childhood was like. Nor is he confined to the ghetto but he’s a respected teacher. He’s an Englishman living in Los Angeles, as Isherwood was himself, and he has lots of straight friends. One of them is a woman called Charley whom he sees during the course of the book. Another straight friend is a student called Kenny whom he sees at the end of the book.

The main story is George trying to survive because his lover Jim has just died in a car accident. In fact, Isherwood’s lover Don Bachardy hadn’t died but gone to England to study at the Slade School of Fine Art.

Yes, I was going to ask you whether the book was Isherwood imagining life without Bachardy?

Exactly. The death in the book really stands for this long departure of Don Bachardy. They were reunited later but there was definitely a difficult moment for Isherwood personally. And so he writes with great feeling about the loss of a lover.

A loss he cannot reconcile himself to.

In a way it’s tragic, but in another way it’s rather peaceful in the way it’s described. The thing you have to remember about Isherwood is that he was a Hindu. He believed in Vedanta and he was a practising Hindu convert. And so, really he believed that the self was not a single thing like a stone in the middle of a peach but something more like an onion, which peeled back endlessly until it disappears. So, the beginning and end of the book show him first rising out of sleep and composing himself as a self and the end shows all those elements dissipating into death. I think this is a Hindu book without the Hinduism. You can really only understand it if you understand Vedanta. But it’s never explicitly brought into the book.

Did you see the film?

Yes, I did. I thought it was too much like a perfume ad. It was too beautiful; the people were shown to be too rich. And there was the introduction – which I thought was ludicrous – of a beautiful male prostitute. That was an episode that didn’t make sense at all. I did think that Julianne Moore who played Charley was really great in this. Also, it was a very good performance by Colin Firth.

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But the GLAAD petition, which has 22,500 signatures today, also aims to highlight the lack of protection gay and transgender people face in the workplace in most of the states.

The website OneMillionMoms.com, a project of the American Family Assocation, had asked readers to call the retailer and demand she be replaced with a straight face.

The website said: “Funny that JC Penney thinks hiring an open homosexual spokesperson will help their business when most of their customers are traditional families.

“More sales will be lost than gained unless they replace their spokesperson quickly.

“DeGeneres is not a true representation of the type of families that shop at their store. The majority of JC Penney shoppers will be offended and choose to no longer shop there.”

In response, GLAAD set up the Stand Up for Ellen petition to thank the retailer for hiring the gay TV star and to raise awareness that in most US states, it is legal to fire gay employees on the basis of their sexuality.

Herndon Graddick, GLAAD’s senior director of programs and communications “Since Ellen came out 15 years ago, the nation has evolved and support for LGBT people is at an all-time high.

“Although it is still legal to fire someone for being gay in 29 states, Americans are fair-minded people who know that firing someone just for being gay is not what this country is about.

“J.C. Penney is standing with Ellen and so do we.”

GLAAD also points out for transgender people, the figure is worse: In 34 states a person can be fired for being trans.

The Los Angeles Times ran a reader poll which showed 96% support for keeping Ellen as the face of JC Penney.

Ellen’s name was called into question last month. Australian radio host Jackie O, whose middle name is also Ellen, told listeners it now “sounds a bit lez”.

Centred around Dan White, who was convicted of killing Milk and Moscone and first shown on Broadway in 1986, this is an intense verbatim retelling and dramatisation of White’s trial, scenes of which are cleverly juxtaposed with poignant historical moments using live action, video and voice recordings.

Joss Bennathan’s new production of the play uses the space delightfully and simplistically, and ensemble in the strongest sense of the word is achieved here.

Southwark Playhouse could have been built for this play – built under a railway arch – the sounds of the overhead trains seemed to be cleverly incorporated into George Dennis’ sound design, as when “dull thuds” were described during the account of Mayor Moscone and Harvey Milk’s assassinations, similar sounds were audible overhead, seeming to emulate a level of piercing calm, and adding to the momentum of the play.

Alongside the sound, the lighting was subtle enough to coerce the audience into actually being transported to the courtroom alongside Dan White, and simple yet effective states allowed the juxtaposition of scenes inside and out of the court to be seamlessly and snappily achieved.

The entire cast were faultless as an ensemble, and each member of the cast gave extremely strong performances, only enhanced by one another. The varying momentum of the piece is carried brilliantly by the cast bouncing off each other, and support each other exceptionally well through a piece fraught with emotion and turmoil.

Fighting a battle which seems already won by the opposition, and appearing devastatingly hopeless, Ben Mars’ performance as prosecutor Thomas Norman, was particularly noteworthy as he ploughed through one cross examination after another with his counterpart, Christopher Lane, the defence lawyer, also showing great stamina as the pair sustained their characters throughout long, but engaging courtroom scenes.

Both the costume and set work well together, designed by James Turner, with the minimalist set plastered with newspaper images from the Moscone-Milk assassination being complemented by spot-on costumes which evoked the period well.

Execution of Justice is a play that everyone should see, but which sadly will pass a lot of people by. Moving through the full spectrum of human emotion in 100 minutes, the passion, anger, and raw emotion from the audience on the other side of the traverse could be felt with the lights down, and despite being heartbreakingly tragic, the play ultimately delivers a message of hope.

This immensely moving production plays until Saturday 4 February at the Southwark Playhouse, London and tickets start at £10.

Main character Kurt Hummel, played by Chris Colfer, had found love with Blaine Anderson, played by Darren Criss, when he transferred to his school’s choral rival, Dalton Academy.

But clouds gathered following the arrival of Sebastian, portrayed by Grant Gustin, who set his sights on Kurt’s new boyfriend.

Guston, 22, said at the time his character was “after Blaine, obviously, and he’s also trying to take the place that Blaine had as the leader of the Warblers [his school's show choir].”

The two halves of Glee’s only on-screen gay couple, excruciatingly referred to in some quarters as ‘Klaine’, were going to be shown not just to be “together because they’re the only two gay characters”.

Now, in an interview with E!, Gustin says: “At first, first people were like, ‘Oh this guy’s cool, we like him, blah blah blah’. Then they found out what the character was going to be.

“And then all these pictures started coming out of, like, Darren Criss and Chris Colfer with my headshot in the middle.”

He continues: “Right off the bat, before people had even seen an episode – I don’t know, I never took these too seriously – literally death threats on Twitter, saying ‘If you break up Klaine, I will find you and I will kill you’.”

Gustin laughed off the threats and went on to praise the “intensity” of Glee fans in general.

The show is gearing up to feature another gay couple, with Jeff Goldblum set to pair up with Brian Stokes Mitchell as they play character Rachel Berry’s parents.

The Jurassic Park actor and Broadway star Stokes will sing a duet together during their début in a special Valentines Day episode called ‘Heart.’

The actress’s observations in a New York Times interview this month sparked controversy, when she seemed to say she chose to be gay.

Now the 45-year-old has said it was within the scope of her bisexuality that she decided to enter a gay relationship, rather than switching at will between exclusively gay and straight sexual orientations.

She reiterated that her comments only applied to her, not the gay community in general.

Though Nixon had made it clear in her original interview that she was only speaking for herself, she drew criticism from gay rights advocates who said statements which imply there may be an element of choice in sexuality hinder the fight for equal rights.

Nixon and Christine Marinoni have been together for nine years and went public with their relationship in 2004. She has two children from a former 15-year relationship with a man.

Nixon’s statement in full reads: “My recent comments in The New York Times were about me and my personal story of being gay. I believe we all have different ways we came to the gay community and we can’t and shouldn’t be pigeon-holed into one cultural narrative which can be uninclusive and disempowering. However, to the extent that anyone wishes to interpret my words in a strictly legal context I would like to clarify:

“While I don’t often use the word, the technically precise term for my orientation is bisexual. I believe bisexuality is not a choice, it is a fact. What I have ‘chosen’ is to be in a gay relationship.

“As I said in the Times and will say again here, I do, however, believe that most members of our community — as well as the majority of heterosexuals — cannot and do not choose the gender of the persons with whom they seek to have intimate relationships because, unlike me, they are only attracted to one sex.

“Our community is not a monolith, thank goodness, any more than America itself is. I look forward to and will continue to work toward the day when America recognizes all of us as full and equal citizens.”

712,000 people tuned in to watch the film at 9pm last night, up more than 50% on the channel’s average over the last year of 470,000 viewers according to Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board.

Amal Fashanu, whose uncle, Justin Fashanu, was the only-ever openly gay player in the UK, questioned figures from the game on why no British professional footballer has come out since.

Justin Fashanu’s niece helped launched the Justin Campaign on 19 February 2010, which would have been the former Norwich City player’s 49th birthday.

A spokesperson for the Campaign said today: “Football still has a very long way to go in properly dealing with the problems of homophobia, biphobia and transphobia within the sport. However, the more the issue is discussed and is brought out of the closet, the easier it will be to address the problems.”

“The Justin Campaign is proud to be working with The FA and a number of Premier League and Football League clubs on the forthcoming Football v Homophobia initiative, which takes places from February 18th – 26th. “

“The fact that we are now working in partnership with major organisations and clubs in the game shows how far we have come. We hope that the momentum increases and we can finally reach a time when sexuality is no longer a barrier to being a footballer or a fan.”

The film included emotional interviews with Justin’s brother and Amal’s father, John Fashanu.

John Fashanu’s critical comments in the press following his brother’s coming out and ensuing media interest in his life came as revelations for the 22-year-old.

In another part of the film, Fashanu spoke with Queen’s Park Rangers captain Joey Barton, who revealed his uncle is gay and said he felt sorry for those players who were not comfortable discussing homosexuality.

Barton said there were “archaic figures” in the footballing world who would discriminate against gay players, but that he expected an out gay player in Britain in the next decade.

Openly gay former NBA basketball player, John Amaechi, told Fashanu: “Football is run by a group of straight, white, old men. Football is clearly not that comfortable with women in board rooms, clearly not that comfortable with black people in management positions. And so, when it comes to gay people, that just blows their mind.”

Emilia Fox will play Lady Portia Alresford, a former lover of Blanche Mottershead, portrayed by Alex Kingston, best known for her role as ER’s Elizabeth Corday.

The first series of the Upstairs Downstairs revival was closely watched as the BBC’s answer to ITV’s seemingly unstoppable Downton Abbey.

The latter briefly tackled gay relationships in high society with a dalliance between the Duke of Crowborough and a footman of the Crawley family in its first series.

While that relationship was kept quiet, the lesbian affair in the inter-war drama Upstairs Downstairs is made public.

Writer Heidi Thomas told the Mirror: “These are two brilllant, intellectual women who have a deeply romantic friendship in the tradition of the great Edwardian romantics, which gives each of them endless stimulation and satisfaction.”

The “covert and difficult” relationships, she added, “causes a bit of a stir when it all comes out, but Blanche finds support and sympathy from an unlikely quarter”.

“She is quite a radical, very used to a free existence, and doesn’t understand why she would have to conform to the beautifully-kept world they’ve created for themselves.”

The series is due for broadcast in the spring.

Only in this case, the empire seems to be doing good.

Star Wars: The Old Republic, a online role-playing game based in the Star Wars universe and developed by Bioware, has come under fire for its plans to include a gay storyline.

The Family Research Council, based in the US capital, are trying to drum up support for a rebellion against progressive video-gaming.

Tony Perkins, President of the FRC wrote: “In a galaxy not so far far away, Star Wars gamers have already gone to the dark side. The new video game, Star Wars: The Old Republic, has added a special feature: gay relationships.

“Bioware, the company that developed the game, said it’s launching a same-sex romance component to satisfy some complaints.

“That surprised a lot of gamers, since Bioware had made it clear in 2009 that “gay” and “lesbian” don’t exist in the Star Wars universe.”

The announcement was made by Bioware in September 2011.

The company said: “Due to the design constraints of a fully voiced MMO [massively multiplayer online game] of this scale and size, many choices had to be made as to the launch and post-launch feature set. Same gender romances with companion characters in Star Wars: The Old Republic will be a post-launch feature.

“Because The Old Republic is an MMO, the game will live on through content expansions which allow us to include content and features that could not be included at launch, including the addition of more companion characters who will have additional romance options.”

Bioware was commended for listening to the gaming community after one of the moderators on its forum reportedly told fans in 2009 that the term “gay” did not exist in the Star Wars universe.

In 2009, Dragon Age: Origins was released by Bioware and included a fireside embrace between two male characters.

Now Perkins continues on behalf of the FRC: “Since the announcement, homosexuals have been celebrating the news, but parents sure aren’t [sic]. On the game’s website, there are more than 300 pages of comments – a lot of them expressing anger that their kids will be exposed to this Star Warped way of thinking. You can join them by logging on and speaking up. It’s time to show companies who the Force is really with!”

In 2007, Bioware included a lesbian storyline in its Mass Effect game.

The “scene of lesbian intimacy” led to the game being briefly banned in Singapore.

The Family Research Council supported a move last year to drop Haruki Murakami’s critically acclaimed Norwegian Wood from a New Jersey school’s reading list, citing the “homosexual agenda”.

The organisation was classified as a ‘hate group’ in 2010 by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a listing it called “slanderous”.

The game was announced in 2008 and developed by teams in Austin, Texas and at Bioware’s headquarters in Alberta, Canada at an estimated cost of $150-200 million.

Released in December, the updates which include gay characters have yet to be implemented.

Amal Fashanu’s uncle killed himself in 1998 following years of struggles with homophobic bullying and an investigation into an alleged sexual assault, which was dropped.

In the film, Justin’s brother John Fashanu tell his daughter: “I think there’s more chance of the next Pope being black, than you finding a footballer who will come out and say he’s gay.

“Even straight players will not talk about gay players or gay society… I don’t think in two decades of football I have ever witnessed the abuse that your uncle Justin [Fashanu] received, from all sections of the stadium.”

Amal Fashanu helped launched the Justin Campaign on 19 February 2010, which would have been the former Norwich City player’s 49th birthday. Now, she questions figures from the game past and present on why none of the 5,000 professional footballers in the UK is openly gay.

In the film, publicist Max Clifford, tells her: “I’d say in the last 15 years, probably half a dozen [players] that I know are either gay or bi-sexual. There have been others that I suspect….When gay footballers have come to me to protect their identity, they have made it very clear that their career would be finished if they were known to be openly gay.”

John McGovern, former Nottingham Forrest Team Captain’s comments were widely reported. When asked about his club’s manager Brian Clough calling Fashanu a ‘poof’, he says: “I don’t even call that discrimination. It’s another word for what we’re talking about, being a homosexual.”

Swede Anton Hysen and American David Testo are the only professional footballer in the world who are publicly out.

On the future of a game with so few openly gay players, Simon Smith of the Gay Football Support Network told PinkNews.co.uk today: “We believe that British football fans and players would be comfortable with an openly gay player.

“Most comments we hear from fans suggest they don’t care about a players sexuality just that they perform well on the pitch.

“We feel there is certainly an ‘old guard’ amongst the football hierarchy who just don’t understand the concept of a gay professional footballer but they are certainly lagging behind the attitudes of modern Britain. In next 10 years we feel that a players sexuality will be a non-story and there will be openly gay people in football in the same way we now have gay politicians, teachers and even soldiers.”

In the documentary, Joey Barton, Queens Park Rangers tells Fashanu: “Certain managers….certain individuals within the game will discriminate against people. These archaic figures think if they had a gay footballer that there would be all kinds of shenanigans going on in the dressing room.”

Openly gay former NBA player, John Amaechi, says: “Football is run by a group of straight, white, old men. Football is clearly not that comfortable with women in board rooms, clearly not that comfortable with black people in management positions. And so, when it comes to gay people, that just blows their mind”

Britain’s Gay Footballers will be shown on BBC3 tonight at 9pm GMT.

Hudson died in 1985 from an AIDS-related illness after starring in nearly 70 films.

Production company Made in Manchester was presented with the award for the drama based on his life by former Dr Who star David Tennant, who also took home a Best Actor award.

ROCK was written and directed by Tim Fountain and starred Michael Xavier as Rock Hudson and Bette Bourne as legendary agent Henry Willson.

It was one of a number of pieces produced by Made in Manchester released via The Independent online.

Hudson, who was married to Willson’s secretary for three years in the 1950s, reportedly once seduced James Dean to win a bet against Elizabeth Taylor.

Dean starred in the movie Giant with Taylor and Hudson, but he died before the film was released.

Noreen Nash claimed: “Elizabeth and Rock took bets on who could get James Dean into bed first.

“I had an idea Rock would win but Elizabeth wasn’t so sure. James was troubled but gorgeous.”

MIM’s Creative Director Ashley Byrne says: “We are delighted to have been recognised for this piece by the BBC. Special thanks must go to writer and director Tim Fountain, the actors, to producer Iain Mackness who pulled this production off in extra quick time and of course to The Independent online for giving us a platform.”

Byrne called on the BBC to expand its online space for audio drama.

He said: “Writers, actors, producers all love making audio drama but they rarely get the chance to do so. The BBC has it in their power to give this unique genre more space and to introduce it new audiences.”

ROCK can still be heard at the Independent.

In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, the 48-year-old actor said he did not know whether they would be able to go the distance on the promise.

He told the magazine: “We’d actually like to, and it seems to mean more and more to our kids. We made this declaration some time ago that we weren’t going to do it till everyone can. But I don’t think we’ll be able to hold out.

“It means so much to my kids, and they ask a lot. And it means something to me, too, to make that kind of commitment.”

Equal marriage legislation is being considered in Washington, New Jersey and Maryland. In Maine, enough signatures have been collected on a petition to trigger a public ballot.

But in Minnesota and North Carolina, discussions are taking place to introduce constitutional amendments defining marriage as being between a man and a woman, meaning Pitt and Jolie’s prerequisite of universal marriage equality is unlikely to happen soon.

In New Hampshire, legislators are preparing a vote on reintroducing the state’s gay marriage ban, which was overturned as of 1 January 2010.

Charlize Theron made a similar pledge in 2009 about then-boyfriend Stuart Townsend. Theron originally hails from South Africa, where gay marriage is legal.

Pitt would not say whether or not he had proposed to Jolie.

When New York introduced equal marriage laws last year, he said: “It is encouraging that New York has joined the movement to grant equal marriage rights to its citizens.

“But it is each American’s Constitutional right to marry the person they love, no matter what state they inhabit. No state should decide who can marry and who cannot.”

He added: “Thanks to the tireless work of so many, someday soon this discrimination will end and every American will be able to enjoy their equal right to marriage.”

Many critics of the celebrated film and theatre actor suggested that she was confusing being gay with being bi, and that her use of the word “choice” would undermine the battle for LGBT equality.

Shortly after shocking fans by revealing that she had shaved her head ahead of performing in a Broadway production of Wit, the 45-year-old addressed these criticisms in a Skype interview with Kevin Sessums of the Daily Beast.

With reference to her relationships with both men and women, Sessums asked if she was: “a lesbian in a heterosexual relationship? Or a heterosexual in a lesbian relationship?” to which Nixon replied:

“I think for gay people who feel 100 percent gay, it doesn’t make any sense. And for straight people who feel 100 percent straight, it doesn’t make any sense. I don’t pull out the ‘bisexual’ word because nobody likes the bisexuals. Everybody likes to dump on the bisexuals.”

When Sessums points out that bisexuality constitutes “the ‘B’ in LGBT,” Nixon replies: “I know. But we get no respect.”

The interviewer then suggests that her use of the word ‘we’ means that she identifies herself as bisexual, to which she replies:

“I just don’t like to pull out that word. But I do completely feel that when I was in relationships with men, I was in love and in lust with those men. And then I met Christine and I fell in love and lust with her. I am completely the same person and I was not walking around in some kind of fog. I just responded to the people in front of me the way I truly felt.”

She goes on to say:

“Look, I understand for political reasons why some people want to kind of squelch this idea that being gay might be a choice, because a lot of the rights we want are posited on the supposition that why are you denying me my rights any more than if I were created a different color? But I don’t feel the need to cede the definition of what a gay person is to the bigots. They don’t get to define who I am.”

Perez Hilton voiced his continuing problem with Nixon’s description of her own sexuality, and blogged:

“She certainly has the right to voice her opinion, and as we said before, we can’t define her “gayness”…but it still does concern us that she’s putting the notion that being gay is a choice out in the world.”

On the other side of the argument, actor Harvey Fierstein tweeted in the Sex and the City star’s defence, saying:

“Folks are jumping down CYNTHIA NIXON’S throat for saying that: A- She’s a lesbian by choice. B- She doesn’t like the bisexual designation. Would people please get a life and leave the lady alone? There is very little black and white when it comes to sexuality.”

He went on…

“Why are we being as intolerant as the bigots we despise? Let people experience their lives as they experience their lives. It’s none of your damn business! Whether we are born this way or not should not be the basis for our citizenship anymore than our religion.”

A mother of three, Nixon has been honoured for campaigning for gay rights, and has received a GLAAD award.

In the interview, Nixon also commented on her kids, their acceptance of her relationship with Christine Marinoni:

“My kids–and the kids they go to school with–are all living in a post-category world. It’s we older folks who are caught up in it.”

But Tower Hamlets Council told PinkNews.co.uk today no venues have been selected for review as they have not yet finished analysing their first consultation on the policy.

600 regulars of the White Swan on Commercial Road near Limehouse put their names to a petition saying they were “surprised and shocked” the venue was being “targeted for review”, the BBC reports.

The council had consulted last autumn to “gather community opinions on a draft policy which says that there is no location within Tower Hamlets suitable for sex establishments”.

The policy would allow the council to shut down venues which offered pole-dancing, lap-dancing and stripping in order to protect against exploitation of women.

The petition’s author said no women were involved in the gay comedy strip contest held on Wednesday evenings at the White Swan.

Daryl Stafford told the BBC “It certainly feels like it’s extremely homophobic.

“It feels as though it’s because it’s a gay venue and there are a lot of people on the council who do not approve of having a gay venue in the middle of their borough.”

But the council insists no venues have yet been selected for inclusion in the review.

The petition reads in part: “The White Swan, Commercial Road, E1 caters for the Gay community. It has been under the same management for twenty six years. There is no prostitution or exploitation on the premises and there has never been any complaint about the White Swan by residents, police or the licensing authorities.

“We are therefore surprised and shocked that a venue which has an international reputation, is being targeted for review by the Council as a so called “sex” establishment.

“We call on the Council to prove its commitment to equality and exclude the White Swan from this discriminatory policy.”

A council spokeswoman told PinkNews.co.uk: “No decision has been made at present.

“The council is part way through the analysis and evaluation of the sex establishment consultation that took place in autumn. There was a record number of responses to the consultation and it was clear that residents felt strongly about the matter.

“A consultation meeting was held with Rainbow Hamlets [Tower Hamlets' LGBT Community forum] and these views along with all of the others collected as part of the consultation process will be considered.

“No decision has been made in relation to which premises would be deemed to be sex establishments. National sex establishment legislation will be adhered if and when this process occurs.”

Barry Kirk, a co-ownder of the pub told the BBC: “We’ve survived a lot over the years.

“But Wednesday is our only busy weeknight. If they kill off our Wednesday nights, we’ll be threatened with closure.”

The leader of the Conservative group at Tower Hamlets, Peter Golds, said: “I, like most reasonably minded people, have concerns about scantily clad women being exploited.

“But consenting adults looking for a laugh, a joke and comedy is not exploitation.”

The 16-second clip is an ad for a new record by Perfume Genius, the stage name of Mike Hadreas, containing shots from a music video for his single ‘Hood’.

It features the artist in an embrace with gay porn star Arpad Miklos which Youtube said “promoted mature sexual themes”.

At one point in the clip, the singer looks down while being held by Miklos. Neither is wearing a shirt. In a second shot, they are filmed embracing while wearing only underwear.

Vimeo continues to host the video, which you can watch above.

Gay musician Michael Stipe has slammed the decision as “discrimination”.

The response sent to Matador read: “The ad has been disapproved because it violates our Adult Image/Video Content policy.

“Per this policy, video content, audio, static imagery, and site content must be family safe. Any ads that contain non family safe material are disapproved. I noted to the team that the people in the video are not entirely unclothed, but the overall feeling of the video is one of a more adult nature, including promoting mature sexual themes and what appears to be nude content.

“As such, the video is non family safe. In order to have this video ad approved, you will need to bring it into compliance with our policy.”

Matador say they have received no further response from Youtube in response to requests for clarification on how they could bring the video up to code.

Nils Bernsetin, publicity director at Matador said yesterday: “I should note that this isn’t a user-uploaded video — the music video itself is on YouTube and not even flagged as ‘adult’ — this is what’s called a “pre-roll” ad, those annoying ads that we pay YouTube to run before videos you want to watch.

“So it seems they’re worried about upsetting unsuspecting viewers that don’t want to see two men looking romantically at each other.

“But I’ve had ads for anti-gay-rights Republican candidates and “Jersey Shore”-style TV shows sprung on me that seem to fit ‘not family safe’ or “promoting mature sexual themes’ more than this.

“I bet most of the people in the approvals department don’t even agree with this, but are afraid to piss off deep-pocketed conservative clients, which is even sadder given the innocence of this clip.”

Former REM frontman Michael Stipe wrote last night on his Tumblr account: “For YouTube to deem this advertisement as “non family safe” is dumbheaded discrimination; I find their actions in doing so disgraceful and cowardly. YouTube, shame on you. You were born of the 21st Century, now act like it.”

The full video for the single ‘Hood’ remains hosted on Youtube.

PinkNews.co.uk has contacted Youtube but has so far been unable to obtain clarification.

Reports suggest that the attack on gay artist Balbir Krishan, which took place at state-run gallery Lalit Kala Akademi, was motivated by homophobia, although the attacker has not been identified.

Telhelka TV uploaded a video of the incident, which shows a masked attacker calmly approach the artist as he talks about his work, smashing a painting and then hitting Krishan on the head with a blunt object.

This incident has been linked to Hindu fundamentalist groups, as Krishan said the attacked shouted: “We taught a good lesson to [artist] M.F. Husain too. If you don’t stop, you’ll get the same dose.”

The artist, M.F. Husain was widely celebrated, but left India in 2006 amidst court cases and controversy surrounding his work which depicted Hindu deities as nudes. He lived in London in self-exile, until his death last year.

Despite the suggestion of the involvement of Hindu fundamentalist groups, none have come forward to claim responsibility for the attack.

Krishan, whose works have been deemed controversial due to their homoerotic nature, also said that he received anonymous telephone calls, and that one caller said: “You are determined to ruin Hinduism.”

Former chairman of Lalit Kala Akademi, Ashok Vajpeyi, told The Sunday Guardian, New Delhi,: “This is a violation of an artist’s freedom of expression. Every person, including the attacker, is entitled to their own opinion. But to physically harm [someone] to [get them to] accept your point of view is downright wrong.”

The artist, who lost both of his legs in a train accident fifteen years ago, had dedicated the show to Bhupen Khakhar, one of India’s best known gay artists.

Similarly, Khakhar explored sexuality in a way which referenced Hindu scriptures.

This attack mirrors that of Susan Burns, 53, of Virginia, who, in 2011, attacked a Paul Gauguin painting in Washington DC’s National Gallery claiming she did it because it is “very homosexual”. She pounded the painting titled Two Tahitian Women and tried to pull it from the gallery wall, court records say.

Krishan’s exhibition transferred to a private gallery after the attack, and the show closed without disruption.

A report has been filed with the police, but the attacker still has not been identified. 

The poll of 326 actors was carried out by Equity, the union for actors, stage managers and models and published in The Stage today.

81% of respondents said they were openly gay in their professional life, and 94% were open to performers they are working with.

But 43% said they would not be so open talking to their agent.

Equity equalities officer Max Beckmann told The Stage: “The finding that 81% of survey respondents are out in their professional lives and that 73% found the decision to be out easy is hugely encouraging and suggests an industry in which it is safe to be out.

“What is troubling is the finding that only 57% of respondents are out to their agents and it’s particularly concerning 35% of respondents have experienced homophobia in their professional lives. This goes some way to explaining that many respondents say they weigh up whether or not to come out on a job by job basis, and while not hiding their orientation often do not ‘broadcast it’.

“Comments also suggest that actors remain fearful that coming out will hinder their prospects of being cast in certain roles such as romantic leads.”

More than half of the respondents said the negative implications of coming out which they feared included a narrower range of roles becoming available to them as gay actors.

Discussing his experience as a gay actor in a recent interview with PinkNews.co.uk, Simon Callow said: “The press wouldn’t let me come out. When they did interviews with me they’d ask, “Do you have a girlfriend?” and I would say, “No, I’m gay,” but they would never write it down.

“One woman from the Mail on Sunday, after a lot of meandering, said: “Now, I gather you’re bisexual?” I told her: “That’s an absolute calumny, I’m not bisexual, I’m entirely homosexual,” but it never appeared in the interview.”

Rupert Everett, who starred in My Best Friend’s Wedding, has suggested that his career was damaged by coming out in the 1990s.

In 2009, he told the Observer: “The fact is that you could not be, and still cannot be, a 25-year-old homosexual trying to make it in the British film business or the American film business or even the Italian film business.

“It just doesn’t work and you’re going to hit a brick wall at some point. You’re going to manage to make it roll for a certain amount of time, but at the first sign of failure they’ll cut you right off… Honestly, I would not advise any actor necessarily, if he was really thinking of his career, to come out.”

Other stars, including Cutting It’s Ben Daniels, have rejected Everett’s comments.

He told The Stage last year: “I would never advise anyone to stay in the closet to further their careers – I’m sure it leads to big fat gay ulcers.

“There are actors I know who won’t come out, and I can see it crippling them as human beings. It’s a great shame that people can’t be who they are in the 21st century, and people won’t let them be who they are.”

Malcolm Sinclair, actor and President of Equity, commented on the findings saying: “I have never felt that being gay has worked against me but the finding in Equity’s own survey that just under half of all gay performers are not out to their agent in the UK is worrying. But then work is scarce and, whether sexulaity is a barrier or not, people may just err on the side of caution. They don’t want to test the water to see if it’s all right.

“I think the great issue today is the nightmare problems facing gay teeenagers in coping with vicious bullying in schools.”

In an interview with the New York Times, the Sex and the City actress appeared to defy the sentiments of Lady Gaga’s hit record, saying she doesn’t believe she was ‘born this way.’

She said: “I gave a speech recently, an empowerment speech to a gay audience, and it included the line ‘I’ve been straight and I’ve been gay, and gay is better.’ They tried to get me to change it, because they said it implies that homosexuality can be a choice. I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice.”

Nixon then acknowledges the contentious issue of using the word ‘choice’ and its potentially damaging effect: “A certain section of our community is very concerned that it not be seen as a choice, because if it’s a choice, then we could opt out.”

She goes on to voice annoyance at the suggestion of ‘opting out’, but blames opposition to gay rights who have been allowed to “define the terms of the [gay rights] debate.”

Nixon, who is currently starring in a production of Wit on Broadway, with reference to the idea of suddenly realising she was gay, said: “I find it offensive to me, but I also find it offensive to all the men I’ve been out with.”

A mother of three, Nixon has been honoured for campaigning for gay rights, and has received a GLAAD award.

Before moving on to discuss her family life, she said “you don’t get to define my gayness for me”.

Nixon makes it clear in the interview that she is discussing her own sexuality, and not homosexuality in general, but has already come under fire from gay-rights advocators who have said that such statements cause damage to the fight for equal rights.

This is a sentiment shared by gay blogger John Aravosis, who wrote a blog entry suggesting that Nixon, who has had long term relationships with both men and women, is not gay, but bisexual. He wrote:

“When the religious right says it’s a choice, they mean you quite literally choose your sexual orientation, you can change it at will, and that’s bull.

“It’s not a “choice,” unless you consider my opting to date a guy with brown hair versus a guy with blonde hair a “choice.” It’s only a choice among flavours I already like. If you’re bisexual, you’re not gay, so please don’t tell people that gay people can “choose” their sexual orientation.”

Aravosis described Nixon’s statement as: “damaging to [the gay] civil rights effort” and speculated that “religious hatemongers” will use such statements to deny civil rights to gay people.

In 2010, Nixon attributed her self-definition as gay to her “political stance,” but said otherwise she might describe all women as bisexual.

On Nixon’s statement, the gay blogger, Perez Hilton, wrote:

“We totally hear her out and true, we cannot define her “gayness,” but it wasn’t a choice for us. We were BORN gay. And millions of gay people around the world feel the same way.”

Newton-John has joined the string of famous Australians in support of the campaign, which includes actor, Hugh Jackman, film critics David Stratton and costume designer, Margaret Pomeranz, Lizzy Gardiner.

The ‘Physical’ singer said: “With respect to marriage equality I believe that no one has the right to judge and deny couples who love each other the ability to make a marriage commitment.

“Love is love.”

This statement by the Grease actress, comes shortly ahead of a sold-out fundraising dinner for AME, which will see director and screenwriter, Stephan Elliot, announce more support from other high-ranking Australians.

Alex Greenwich, Australian Marriage Equality National Convener, is pleased with the growing support by these prominent figures:

“Australians admire celebrities like Olivia Newton-John and Hugh Jackman because they reflect our values of tolerance and a fair go for all, values which they are reminding us apply just as much to same-sex couples as to other Australians.”

As well as the dinner, there will be an auction, which includes prizes donated by Olivia Newton-John, Kylie Minogue, Icon Films, GetUP, Lady Gaga and others.

The dinner is not the only support for marriage equality in Australia this week, as Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young is to announce a fresh bid to push through a bill she introduced in 2009 which would legalise gay marriage.

She reportedly was confident of the support for such a bill, but was looking to discuss the practical implications of legalising gay marriage.

Hanson-Young said: “I’m not interested in stunts. I’m interested in getting the law changed.”

A backbencher for the Australian Labour party, Stephen Jones is also expected to introduce a bill to legalise same-sex marriage, and despite being accepted by the party, who recently changed their stance to support gay marriage, it is expected to be quashed by opposition.

Supporters of marriage equality remain hopeful of coalition MPs being granted a conscience vote on the issue.

Gay marriage is currently illegal in Australia, whilst civil unions are allowed in some states.

Olivia Newton-John appeared on the popular American television series Glee, singing a duet of her most famous hit ‘Physical’ with lesbian actress Jane Lynch.

As well as being an actor and singer, Newton-John was also the president of the Isle of Man Basking Shark Society.