gay rights

Ireland set to have first gay PM

The 38-year-old will become the first gay taoiseach and will also be the country's youngest ever leader.

Mr Varadkar beat his rival, Housing Minister Simon Coveney, with 60% of the votes to lead Fine Gael - the biggest party in the coalition government.

He will succeed Enda Kenny as leader of the centre-right party within weeks.

The former GP is the son of an Irish nurse and a doctor from India and much of the media coverage of his victory has focused on Mr Varadkar's background, age and sexuality.

Funeral home 'refused' to cremate gay man

John "Jack" Zawadski, 82, and his nephew filed a lawsuit against the Picayune Funeral Home's owners seeking damages for breach of contract and emotional distress.

The lawsuit accuses them of backing out of a verbal agreement to provide final services for Zawadski's husband, Robert Huskey, in May 2016 after discovering he was gay. The reversal compounded the family's grief and left them scrambling for alternatives. The only provider they could find was 90 miles away, the lawsuit alleges, leading the family to cancel Huskey's memorial.

Ellen lauded for gay rights influence as she receives highest US award

Celebrities including Tom Hanks, Robert De Niro and Michael Jordan were also among the 21 recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Barack Obama said it was easy to forget the risk Ellen De Generes took to come out as gay in 1997.

He said her bravery helped "push our country in the direction of justice".

"It's easy to forget now, when we've come so far... just how much courage was required for Ellen to come out on the most public of stages almost 20 years ago," he said during the award ceremony at the White House.

Being gay when it was still a crime

Now 93 and married to a man, he's "the luckiest, happiest, old gay man alive".

But for many years, he led a double life - married to a woman but secretly knowing he identified as homosexual.

As the government announces gay and bisexual men convicted of now-abolished sexual offences in England and Wales will be offered pardons, George tells Newsbeat what it was like to be gay, when it was still a crime.

George believes he should never have been convicted of a crime and says the only thing he was guilty of is "being in the wrong place at the wrong time".