Gay News

To the casual observer, the black flag with unfamiliar white symbols looked out of place among the colourful outfits and banners at London's gay pride march.

CNN certainly thought so, running photographs of the flag above a banner headline, saying: Isis flag spotted at gay pride event. The segment was billed as an exclusive and the network even lined up one of its top security analysts, Peter Bergen, to discuss its appearance.

However the flag was a spoof, with the apparent Arabic script actually being pictures of dildos, dongs and butt plugs.

Lucy Pawle, a CNN journalist, didn't spot the subtleties and went on air being surprised that no-one else had reacted to the flag. She said:

This man dressed in black and white waving what appears to be a very bad mimicry of the Isis flag, but a clear attempt to mimic the Isis flag, the black and white flag with the distinctive lettering.

She also said that she had alerted the police to its presence.

The news clip has now been deleted.

A notoriously anti-gay Russian politician has suggested popular TV show and book Game of Thrones is harmful and should be banned.

Vitaly Milonov, who is a deputy in the St Petersburg legislature, and who was behind Russia's anti-gay propaganda law in its earliest form, claimed that one in ten characters in Game of Thrones is a sexual deviant . He told TASS:

We can see that the Internet and television have assumed a leading function in education, replacing or ousting altogether traditional methods of education and upbringing of the young generation. Denying the fact or pretending that nothing of the kind is going on is a short-sighted position.

It is not the point of scenes of violence or elements of advocating violence which is at issue. The point is that practically any product of culture, which is brought to us from the West, advocates values which provoke the formation of a certain paradigm of views on politics and the reality.

Nowadays, any game or a TV film series is not merely a merry thing to see. For example, in The Game of Thrones book every tenth character is a sexual deviant. Such products and their popularisation in this country might bring ideas to our minds that a certain conduct is a matter of fact thing.

A New Cross sex cinema has surprisingly been granted a licence to show films but with miserable licence restrictions designed to make it unviable.

Club 487, discreetly located behind the doors of an old New Cross Road printing shop at 487 New Cross Road , has been running unlicensed since the turn of the year, charging punters £15 a time to watch explicit films and pleasure themselves in the basement. And, as News Shopper found, the audience even have sex with each other.

Following a police raid, a licensing application to show movies was finally submitted in late April, with manager Peter Jones billing the venue as an adult environment for people meet/socialise .

And, following a brief discussion at a Catford town hall licensing committee last night (June 2), the club was granted a licence to show films. However, there were a number of restrictions designed to make to the cinema unviable.

Firstly, the licence only allows the club to show films with a certificate from 18 down to U. And the club must also agree to maintain CCTV of every room inside the premises except the toilets, keeping copies of the tapes for 31 days.

Leaving the town hall, heavily-tattooed cinema manager Jones would only say: I'm pleased.

Despite recent publicity around the cinema, just two people had objected to the licence.

Taiwanese singer Jolin Tsai's runaway hit We're All Different, Yet the Same has been banned from the airwaves and television screens in Singapore, according to Hongkong's Mingpao News.

The ban was ordered by the music censors of the Media Development Authority. It means that television and radio stations will be fined if they air the song or the music video.

Under Singapore's censorship rules, broadcast content must not:

In any way promote, justify or glamorise... lifestyles such as homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexualism, transsexualism, transvestism, paedophilia and incest.

Jolin Tsai said in a statement that she was disappointed with Singapore's decision as the song was her way of expressing her support of marriage equality through music. She would, however, respect differences in opinion.

The music video for We're All Different, Yet The Same features a wedding scene -- and a kiss -- between Jolin and Taiwanese actress Ruby Lin. It was inspired by the true story of a lesbian couple who has been together for 30 years. When one half of the couple was hospitalised and required surgery, her partner was unable to give consent because she was not legally recognised as a family member.