Hispanic Africa

Both Spain and Portugal have had colonial links with Africa. The first major links were a result of the movement of peoples around the Mediterranean coastal regions. The Roman Empire was the first to bring the whole Mediterranean under single rule, and later the Muslim empire controlled the coastal region along north Africa. Both of these influenced Iberian history and culture, and the development of an lgbt heritage.

When the Muslims invaded Spain from north Africa they launched a golden age for the Iberian peninsula, and al-Andalus (the Muslim country which gave its name to present-day Andalusia) is regarded as one of Europe’s cultural highlights. The ease with which the Muslims entered Spain has been put down, in a small part, to the existing puritanical attitude towards sex enforced by the Visigoths of Iberia.

al-Andalus was sufficiently remote from the Islamic homeland far in the eastern Mediterranean for the Muslims to not worry too much about such similar restrictions imposed from Mecca or Baghdad. They had their own north African culture and remnants of the Roman culture which merged with Islam to produce something unique.

This amalgamation was more sexually tolerant than eastern Islam and, apart from a period when Moroccan-based Islam was imposed in the 12^th century, it was celebrated in art and literature. Particularly of note are the writings of the 11^th century Andalusian Muslim Ibn Hazm and the poet Ibn Quzman in the early 12^th century, who both celebrated the love of boys.

There were trading ports and routes along north Africa which were used by Spanish and Portuguese merchants for centuries before what we might call “sexual tourists” began to take advantage of them. This was to prove very important when the Muslims were driven out of Iberia by 1500.

Once Iberia had become a Christian region in the 15^th century its influence began to filter to the rest of the world. The Spanish conquered the Canary Islands in 1402 and concentrated their expansion on north African bases and the New World, while the Portuguese ventured into uncharted waters further south, first by colonising Madeira and the Azores and then heading south to reach the Guinea coast in the 1460s. It is unlikely that Europeans introduced homosexual activity into their central African colonies, as it is more likely that the Muslims from north Africa had got there first and brought their own practices with them. Most of the native tribes across Africa seem to have had same-sex rituals, and the Europeans introduced the more recreational same-sex activity that was demonised as sodomy by the Christian Church.

After the fall of Islamic al-Andalus some Christians found the new restrictions imposed by the Catholic monarchy too much, and those who chose Islam over Christianity and converted were called “renegades”. Many of these “renegades”, including, it is said, 400 Spanish Franciscan friars, moved to the Muslim ports along north Africa. It was also a destination for visits from Spanish writers such as Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616). He spent some time in Algiers and wrote of an acquaintance who was one of the “renegades” who kept a harem of young boys purely because of the sexual freedom the city gave him.

Spain had less influence in Africa than Portugal as most of it’s empire was in the Americas. Portugal’s main influence lay in southern Africa in what is now Mozambique and Angola.

One of the contradictions seen in Portuguese colonies was that same-sex activity was accepted more so than in other European colonies in Africa. As long as “sodomy” and same-sex attractions were kept out of sight and private they were tolerated. It certainly wasn’t included in the laws codified by the Portuguese colonial powers in the 1880s, unlike it was in other European colonies.

Following independence from Portugal in 1975 Mozambique suffered a civil war. Rebuilding itself in the aftermath has been a success story in post-colonial Africa. Angola, on the other hand, also independent in 1975 and plunged into civil war, became the centre of a Cold War battle between the east and west. A Marxist government controlled Angola until democracy was eased in after 1989. However, the power of the previous ruling party remained until 2002. The present government refuses to accept homosexuality and it is illegal.

Today Mozambique retains tolerance towards the lgbt community and homosexuality is not illegal. There is an equal age of consent and anti-discrimination laws for sexual orientation, but no partnership or marriage rights yet.

Hispanic influence on the lgbt community in Africa has been varied, and little of it has filtered out of the continent. The biggest influence Spain and Portugal has exercised worldwide has been through the Americas where many lgbt Hispanics (Latinos/Latinas) have shaped the world-wide lgbt community. That is the subject of my next article for Hispanic Heritage Month on 3^rd October.

The Body of a God - Part 3

Even though the first official bodybuilding contest organised by Eugen Sandow in 1901 was a huge success there was no immediate follow-up competition. Instead an American called Benarr Macfadden organised similar contests in the USA a few years later, leading to America as being seen as the “home” of bodybuilding. Until recent decades, however, gay bodybuilders have had to stay firmly in the closet, such was (and still is, to some extent) the paranoia among straight bodybuilders that all gay men would want to “touch” them.

It was also in America where a sub-culture of muscle admiration developed in photography which dated back to the Father of Bodybuilding himself, Eugen Sandow. Developing from this came physique magazines, making it possible for closeted men to see muscular bodies without going to the gym or to rarely-held bodybuilding contests. A niche market opened whereby magazines published specifically for gay men were promoted as ordinary physique magazines – the “beefcake” magazines. They catered for those who were attracted to a wide variety of muscular types, from massive bodybuilders to slimmer, toned athletes.

There still remained, however, a certain perceived “corrupting influence” that physique magazines in general were said to produce, especially those which showed men in poses which had nothing to do with training. Several beefcake magazines were accused of being pornographic purely on this basis. The debate came to a head in 1947 when beefcake magazine pioneer Bob Mizer was convicted of distributing “obscene material” in the mail. Ironically, these photographs and magazines are now considered important cultural items!

At the same time bodybuilders were beginning to turn their sport back to its origins in entertainment. The cinema industry soon pounced on bodybuilding champions and put them onto the big screen, in very little clothing. In doing so the film industry was perpetuating the belief that the more muscles a man had the more heroic and ideal he was. The visibility of these bodybuilders on the big screen also gave the sport a big boost and many bodybuilding gyms and associations were formed.

Bodybuilding was beginning to grow into an industry. More gyms and more contests were joined by commercial interests such as more magazines, sports nutrition and personal trainers – and the development and use of drugs and steroids.

But the bodybuilding world was not ready to embrace diversity. It did, however, realise the homoerotic nature of the sport and deliberately promoted a macho straight image with bodybuilders surrounded by scantily clad females, much as boxing and wrestling matches still do, not to mention many present day bodybuilding magazines.

This didn’t stop the lgbt community from embracing the culture of the body beautiful, something it was more discreet about exhibiting previously. Gyms specifically catering for the gay market began to open up across America in the late 1970s. Several gay bodybuilders were competing in mainstream contests in this decade In fact, and what is just as remarkable about the 2 gay bodybuilders who were openly gay by the 1980s is that they were also the first black bodybuilders to win the Mr. America contest – Chris Dickerson in 1970 and Jim Morris in 1973. Jim was also the first black Mr. USA, and Chris went on to become one of the greatest and most titled bodybuilders in history. Both came out in the late 1970s. The first bodybuilder to come out and make a big media event out of it was Bob Paris in 1989, another former Mr. Olympia, Mr. America and Mr. Universe.

The general fitness industry, which saw the rise of jogging and aerobics as well as bodybuilding, was something that Olympian Tom Waddell wanted gay men and women to join and show the world that gay people were not stereotypical effeminate weaklings. It is fortunate that Tom was living in San Francisco at the time as there was a large lgbt health and fitness community already established there, and with their help he created the first Gay Games in 1982. Bodybuilding was among the sports, attracting a varied group of competitors of men and women of all ages.

Bodybuilding has been on the schedules of most Gay Games and Outgames ever since and is often one of the most popular events, and the contest held at the 1994 Gay Games in New York attracted the highest number of entries to any bodybuilding contest in history, gay or straight – 265.

Today gay bodybuilders are more visible, though not, yet, in major international contests such as this weekend’s Mr. Olympia. But go to any Pride, any club, any gym, and you’ll see gay men flexing their muscles proudly. The internet is full of websites of gay and straight men showing off their muscles (though, it has to be said, more often for the sexual gratification of the viewer).

And on that note I’ll finish this mini-history. For those of us who try to keep in shape with weight-training (and fail!) let’s hope that gay bodybuilders continue to flex for our sexuality and prove that muscles and masculinity are not exclusive to heterosexuality.

Oh - and good luck to the contestants (straight, gay or closeted) of the Mr. Olympia finals on Sunday.

Professor, Priest, and Proud

In a blog concerned with history there can be no more distant events to cover than those around the time of the Big Bang. Today I’m looking at an event that occurred just afterwards and the role a gay physicist is playing in understanding it.

The debate between science and religion and the existence of God is one I’ve been avoiding deliberately throughout my year of science – so far. In the ancient world there was no debate because science and religion were the same. Philosophers used their limited knowledge of the universe to discuss the meaning and origin of life. Modern science is much the same. Scientific theories are based on what we know, we just know more than the ancients did and can explain the universe better.

There is, of course, a religious group who have adopted the word “science” in their denomination name – the Christian Scientists. Their doctrine regarding faith and science is worthy of a separate article, and their opinion of homosexuality is much like that of other denominations – some worshippers accept it, others condemn it. Christian Scientists acknowledge that there are worshippers who are lgbt, and in 1979 they formed a group called Emergence International to support lgbt Christian Scientists.

My own views on the specific debate between science and religion aren’t important at the moment, but I can mention someone who is an ordained minister and at the forefront of research into discovering the secret of “Life, the Universe, and Everything”. He is successfully combining three areas in his life which some may find puzzling. He’s a scientist, a priest, and openly gay, and his name is Michael J. Ramsey-Musolf, until recently Professor of Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Many people are confused about ordained priests becoming scientists, or even vice versa. So it may confuse some people even more to learn that Michael Ramsey-Musolf’s specialist research area is the creation of matter. The Bible states that this was the action of God. Science states that this was the action of baryogensis.

Baryogensis, which deals with theoretical events shortly after the Big Bang, is thought to be the result of an imbalance of quark particles and anti-quark particles. That didn’t mean anything to me at first, so I spoke to an ex-partner who happens to be a physicist. He explained it in simple terms, so I hope I’ve grasped the basics.

Protons and neutrons are sub-atomic particles called baryons, and they make up most of the matter in the universe that we can see and feel around us. These protons and neutrons are made of even smaller particles called quarks. My friend then mentioned antimatter. I’ve heard of antimatter – it crops up in science fiction a lot, but it also occurs in physics. All matter in the universe should balance with the antimatter and, therefore, the quarks should have an equal number of anti-quarks. But that’s the problem.

Think of a quark as the simple number +1, and an anti-quark as -1. Together they cancel each other out and matter wouldn’t be created. So some baryons must have more quarks than antiquarks because matter WAS created. Without quarks, there would be no baryons, and without baryons there would be no protons or neutrons to create the matter to see and feel.

That’s the problem being investigated by physicists like Michael Ramsey-Mudolf – how do we exist? From a theological point of view he has one answer, but Michael is also interested in the scientific answer. At first Michael went through the process of deciding if science and religion were compatible, and which direction to take in life. Eventually he decided on both and studied for his PhD before entering the Episcopal Divinity School. During the whole time he had another decision to make – did his sexuality conflict with his religious beliefs? Again, he decided not.

In 1994 Michael was ordained into the Episcopal church of America. The diocese in which he works, Los Angeles, is already known as a progressive church when it comes to lgbt clergy. In 2010 the diocese consecrated Mary Glasspool, an open lesbian, as a bishop.

But Michael’s work as a theoretical physicist has not been without its problems. At the University of Wisconsis-Madison he experienced continual hostility from some colleagues purely based on his sexuality. He admitted during the first session which centred on lgbt issues to be held during a major physics conference last year that there were times when he thought of leaving his post at the university. It was support from a few colleagues outside the lgbt community who convinced him to stay on, at least for the time being.

And that time being came to an end this year. This month Michael left Wisconsin-Madison to become director of the University of Massachusetts High Energy Theory Group.

Michael’s participation in that conference session, organised by the American Physical Society, was just part of his personal outreach activities. These activities have ranged from something as simple as putting the Rainbow Pride flag on the first slide of his scientific presentations to being a member of several committees. He served as Chair of the Wisconsin-Madison Faculty Senate GLBT Issues Committee and on the Office of Equality and Diversity Advisory Committee.

No doubt the debate among some scientists on the compatibility of science with religion will continue until there is nothing left to discover. Hopefully the debate on the compatibility of being openly gay in science will end a lot sooner.



Celebrate Bisexuality Day

Happy Bisexuality Day everyone. I hope all you bi people out there are celebrating your contribution to the  world in style. To get you in the mood, go to this fantastic list of famous bisexuals from the American Institute of Bisexuality.

Hispanic Europe

Where else could I start looking at the lgbt heritage of the Hispanic world than in Spain and Portugal. In this little I prefer to use the word Iberia for the area rather than Hispania, the Roman provincial name, because the latter name puts one country in the mind more than the other and both have made significant contributions around the world.

There is very little definitive references in historical records to show if there was any kind of homosexual culture or activity in pre-Roman times in Iberia, so the best place to start would be to look at the most famous Iberian in the Roman Empire – the emperor himself, Hadrian.

There is some disagreement among some historians as to Hadrian’s actual birthplace. Some say he was actually born in Rome, but the most widely held belief is that he was born in what is now Santiponce near Seville. His parents were both Iberian-born. Either way, he spent much of his childhood there.

The last decade or so has seen a resurgence of interest in Hadrian, and a big part of this has been an acknowledgement of his sexuality. Historians no longer skirt around the issue of his relationship with Antinous. Hadrian was held in such high esteem after his death that the many statues of Antinous that Hadrian erected have survived to this day. You can’t say that about the lovers of many other emperors.

When the Roman empire became Christian, Christian doctrine affected attitudes to all sexual activity and sexual roles in society. In 305 the Synod of Elvira in Granada declared that communion would be refused to all pederasts, men who had sex with boys and young teenagers, implying that pederasty was more acceptable than sodomy to which physical punishments applied. Today it’s the pederasts, or paedophiles, who are punished in Europe.

In 410 the Visigoths attacked Rome and it’s empire (in the west) finally crumbled. The Visigoths were Arian by religion, a sect of Christianity that had been condemned as heresy. Iberia and southeasten France became a Visigoth kingdom. During this era punishment for sodomy was enshrined in several laws, punishment which varied from castration to exile, or even death by fire.

I has been suggested that it was the severity of the Visigoth punishment that made it hard, too puritanical, for Iberians to handle. As a result, some historians say, Iberians were more receptive to invasion from Islamic north Africa just to rid themselves of the Visigoths. Even though the Koran of Islam prohibits homosexuality the African Muslims didn’t always enforce it. The influence of Islamic Africa on Iberia will be dealt with in more detail in my next Hispanic Heritage article.

There are another culture in Iberia before the Muslims arrived – the Jews. As in most of Europe Jews were often seen as a bad influence on society and were blamed for many atrocities that were obvious lies, like child sacrifice and ritual blood-letting. In the introduction to “Spanish Writers on Gay and Lesbian Themes” (1999) David Eisenberg writes: “Homosexuality was honoured among Andalusian Jews to a degree scarcely conceivable today…” The poetry of some influential scholar-rabbis contains many examples of male love. Perhaps, as with the Muslim empire and the Romans, it was the geographical remoteness of Iberia, on the edge of the known world, far from the regions of  Roman, Arab and Jewish cultural origin, which helped to distance the Iberians from the threat of official punishment.

The expulsion of the Jews from Iberia came at the same time as the Spanish monarchs were sending Columbus off in search of the Indies. It was also the time of the Spanish Inquisition. While there are many records of men being executed for sodomy, it should be emphasised that it was NOT the Catholic Church that was responsible, not directly. Death sentences were legislated by civil authorities not the church. The Catholic Church had the death penalty for heretics, and anyone found guilty of sodomy by the local town court could, in their eyes, be guilty of heresy also.

Several Spanish kings of the medieval period are often stated as being gay – two kings of Castille being referred to the most, Juan II (1405-1454) and his son Enrique IV (1425-1474).

Catholic influence across Iberia reinforce the Christian ideal of male brotherhood, of how close friendship between men was a higher ideal than between a  man and woman. The church adopted a rite form the Greek Orthodox church which was the same as the marriage ceremony – wedded brotherhood, you could say. Although it isn’t certain, it is likely that the marriage recorded between Pedro Diaz and Muño Vandilaz on 16^th April 1061 in northern Spain was wedded brotherhood.

The death penalty for sodomy introduced by civic authorities persisted through to the 20^th century. Very few medieval lgbt Iberians are readily identifiable, at least few who were not executed. Literature was the only outlet for poets and writers who may have been homosexual, and there is a continuity of homoerotic and sexual literature through all of Iberian history. Some homophile centres developed in Toledo and Seville, for instance, and those men who wanted sex with other men could always travel into Spanish North Africa.

In 1822 the death penalty in Spain was removed. With the spread of ideas across Europe during that century the influence of Magnus Hirschfeld’s Scientific-Humanitarian Committee helped pave the way for the Independent Teaching Institute in Spain, which opened its Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid in 1915. Famous lgbt residents included Federico García Lorca.

The Second Republic in Spain, created in 1931, saw an explosion of lgbt writings and activity. This liberalisation was halted when General Franco came to power after the Spanish Civil War. Homosexuality was made illegal and vigorously enforced with thousands of gay men being imprisoned. Likewise, in Portugal homosexuality became illegal under the dictatorship of Antonio Salazar.

This didn’t stop the development of an underground lgbt culture in places now virtually synonymous with gay Sapin – Sitges, Ibiza and Barcelona. After Salazar’s and Franco’s deaths in the 1960s and 1970s their laws against homosexuality were repealed and a new wave of liberalism grew across Iberia. It is surprising how quickly this liberalisation took hold in these very Catholic countries. Perhaps the biggest leaps for lgbt rights was the legislation of same-sex marriages in 2005 (Spain) and 2010 (Portugal), and transgender rights to register their preferred gender in 2006 (Spain) and 2010 (Portugal).

From the days of the Roman Empire to today Spain and Portugal have had an underlying acceptance of homosexuality that was greater than most of Europe, even through eras of persecution from various regimes who tried to stamp it out. The present lgbt community across Iberia has a vibrancy and, indeed, the passion, which characterises Iberian culture itself.

Shining a Light on Gravity

One of my most favourite tv programmes of ALL time is James Burke’s “Connection” series. One episode entitled “Drop The Apple” ended with Einstein’s theory that gravity can bend light waves. James Burke explained the experiment which proved it. Even though he mentioned no names, he was describing the work of Sir Arthur Eddington (1882-1944).

Between the two World Wars Arthur Eddington was as well-known to the British public as people like Patrick Moore and Carl Sagan have been in recent years. Eddington was an effective communicator and broadcast on radio often. If modern technology was around in his heyday I wouldn’t be surprised if had his own twitter account.

One thing Eddington never talked about was his sexuality. A BBC drama called “Einstein and Eddington”, made in 2008, included references to Eddington’s sexuality based on rumours which the writer of the programme deliberately enhanced for dramatic effect. While these rumours may never be proved they have persisted and don’t contradict what we do know about his personal life. As one reader of Professor Peter Coles’ blog commented last week, men in Eddington’s position at a university was required to be a bachelor. That doesn’t make him gay, of course, but there was no reason for not to him have a romantic relationship with a woman without marrying her either at university or afterwards. There’s no evidence that he did so. So, Sir Arthur Eddington is on my “probably asexual” list until we know for sure, which may never happen.

Back to Einstein and gravity. Einstein said that the Sun’s gravity could bend the light coming from the stars beyond it. There was one way to prove it – during a total eclipse. So Arthur was packed off to Principe, an island off the west African coast, with some camera equipment to record the total eclipse over the island on 29^th May 1919.

The very simplified illustrations below show how the proof was found. On the left is a representation of some representative stars at a time of year before the Sun moved into it. On the right is a representation of the same stars in May 1919 when the total eclipse took place.





Arthur took photos of the eclipse, and then compared them with photos of the same stars he took earlier in the year. Look at the arrows on my illustrations. They represent the position of one star. Arthur discovered that this star had “moved”. In the weird way that science works, the star apparently moves AWAY from the Sun because, remember, the light is bent around the Sun like a boomerang. I’ve exaggerated the effect to make it clearer, and I hope you can tell the star has moved in relation to it’s nearest neighbouring star. The other stars would also have been affected, though in different degrees. It proved that the light from that star had bent, proving Einstein’s theory. In the words of James Burke at the end of his episode: “… because of which it’s Einstein’s universe now, not Newton’s any more. So, you can ‘Drop the Apple’.”

Another of Einstein’s gravitational theories has yet to be proved. He suggested that exploding stars and colliding galaxies create gravity ripples through space. These gravitational waves, having travelled billions of miles, would be so small by the time they reach Earth that it would be virtually impossible to detect them. It’s like someone shouting in your ear – from 1,000 miles away! The sound waves would be so small as to be unnoticeable.

A physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been working on ways to detect gravitational waves since 1991. Pakistani-born Nergis Mavalvala was encouraged by her parents to study and be mechanically skilled. For a Muslim country this was forward thinking on their behalf, though her mother objected to Nergis getting grease stains on her clothes.

Nergis’s chemistry teacher at school in Pakistan encouraged her interest in experimentation and this started her on a career of developing scientific equipment. Nergis is not just an academic, she is a hands-on, practical scientist.

Working on the detection of gravitational waves Nergis used her thesis to suggest how a laser interferometer, using precisely positioned mirrors, could detect the smallest of wave. However, the mirrors would have to be so far apart that even thermal energy at the atomic level would swamp the wave signal from space.

It was at this time that Nergis found love. She hadn’t experienced any real romantic attachment until she met her present girlfriend. They are still together and have a 5-year-old child.

Undaunted by the technical challenges Nergis and the team developing interferometers are continuing to produce more stable and sensitive equipment to find those gravity waves from far-flung exploding stars first theorised by Einstein a century ago.

Hispanic Heritage Month

Today the USA begins a month-long celebration of it’s Hispanic heritage. This is an ideal opportunity for me to celebrate with them and look at the rich heritage the Hispanic lgbt community has made around the world.

I feel quite attached to things Spanish. I love the history and culture of the country (shame about the food!) and I’ve dated a couple of Spanish guys. When I’m not cheering for the UK, Canada or Ireland I’m cheering for Spain. Why? Because I’ve got a lot of Spanish ancestry. Admittedly it goes back to medieval times and King Edward III of England. Through him I descend from the royal dynasties (both Christian and Muslim) of Castile, Leon, Aragon and Navarre, and I know that at least one inch of the miles of DNA in my body in inherited from El Cid. But then, I’m sure you have as well, you just haven’t found out.

The size of the Spanish Empire manes that Hispanic culture has spread to every continent on the planet, even to the Argentine and Chilean claims in Antarctica. It seems unreasonable not to celebrate without, as the same time, ignoring the other side of the coin – persecution of native cultures, slavery, invasion. All of these have influenced modern Hispanic countries and the lgbt communities.

The National Hispanic Heritage Month in the USA originates way back in the 1960s as a weak-long celebration. President Ronald Reagan expanded it to a calendar-month in length in 1988, making this it’s 25^th anniversary.

The reason why 15^th September was chosen to begin the celebration is because it is the date in 1821 when several central American countries declared independence from Spain – Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Other Hispanic countries became independent in the following week. The heritage month last until a few days after the anniversary of Columbus’s discovery of the Americas on 12^th October 1492.

Over the course of this heritage month I’ll take each continent in turn and look at its lgbt heritage and cultural development. I’ll take them in a kind of chronological order according to expansion, beginning with Europe, then Africa, the Americas, and finally Asia-Oceania.

Before that I want to bring in this year’s overall science theme. There are many lgbt scientists of Hispanic heritage. Here are just three.

When considering those of Hispanic heritage in the lgbt community the best place to start is with Juana Maria Rodriguez, Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. In her 2003 book “Queer Latinidad” Juana pointed out that it is impossible to take gender out of Hispanic culture because it’s very language is heavily gender based. As a means of unifying, or perhaps eliminating, the gender differentiation of the male Latino and female Latina identities Juana adopted the “@” symbol to produce a new word – Latin@ - to describe the whole Hispanic community.

Juana is one of the world’s leading experts on the Latin@ community in the lgbt world, though much of her work comes from research in her native California. The remarkable aspect of this is that Juana had no academic aspirations after school. It was only after a chance meeting with an old teacher in a gay bar that her interest in going into higher education and university was sparked.

One Hispanic scientist making another splash in the world, quite literally in his case, is Luis Eduardo Bahamon. Originally from Colombia Luis has both Hispanic and native Colombian blood. He is, perhaps, better known in the sporting lgbt community for his achievements in swimming and diving than for his work as a clinical cytogeneticist with Kaiser Permanente in California. Cytogenetics is the branch of genetics which deals with chromosomes and health conditions, such as hereditary diseases and DNA research.

Luis was a keen diver from childhood. He won his first medal, a bronze, at the age of 16 in high school in Colombia. Since then he has competed for his adopted country of the USA in both diving and swimming. Currently Luis is a member of West Hollywood Aquatics and is an adviser to International Gay and Lesbian Aquatics on diving issues. He competes regularly in US Masters competitions and lgbt events such as the Gay Games and Outgames. His most recent diving medals have been 2 silvers at the Gay Games in Cologne in 2010.

And last, but not least, a quick mention of Dr. Diana Eva Azcarate. She is a research scientist at the Institutio Argentino de Radioastronomia in Berazategui near Buenos Aries. Diana is one of just a handful of transgender scientists, and is a campaigner for transgender rights in Argentina.