Adrian and Clai just want their relationship to be recognized everywhere in Europe, regardless of borders.

A same-sex couple has taken the European Union to court this week in a rare grand chamber case calling for their relationship to be recognized – regardless of borders.

15 judges in the Court of the Justice of the European Union (CJEU) are now interpreting the word ‘spouse,’ in the context of EU freedom of movement laws.

Adrian Coman and Clai Hamilton are the couple at the center of this groundbreaking case. Ultimately, it is about getting recognition for their Belgian marriage, in Adrian’s home country of Romania.

‘The Romanian government refused to consider a residence in Romania for my husband Clai in 2013,’ Adrain tells Gay Star News. ‘So a positive decision would mean Clai can live in Romania with me.’

Specifically, the Court will clarify whether the definition of spouses includes same-sex couples.

The result of this would mean same-sex spouses have equal rights to reside in any EU member states.

The impact of the decision would change the right to same-sex spouses in five countries who don’t already give same-sex couples this right.

Poland, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Lithuania, and Latvia would have to recognize gay couples freedom of movement rights.

What will this mean for couples like Clai and Adrian in the EU?

Their legal struggle for this recognition of being a family has now been going on for over five years.

Adrian tells GSN without a change in the law Clai can only travel to Romania for three months, on the basis of his American passport.

‘Simply put, once Clai and I are in Romania, regardless of purpose we become strangers to each other in the eyes of the Romanian government.’

This can create difficult situations for gay couples in official scenarios like in healthcare. Adrian calls this discrimination based on sexual orientation:

‘When we are in Romania, if something happens to one of us, the other one won’t be “family” in the eyes of health authorities, banks etc. Therefore, our family life won’t be recognized by the state.’

One day the couple would like to move to Romania. But that decision for now, is in the hands of the courts.

Never underestimate the power of your story. It could change the world.

Growing up in Ohio, Raymond Braun wasn’t exposed to a wide LGBTQ community. Thanks to the power of technology, he was able to tap into the lives of others by watching their stories online. That inspired him to spearhead his own venture, which has led him to become one of the most successful gay Millennial media personalities.

Out magazine recently called Braun “one of the preeminent queer activists of his generation.” He topped Financial Times’s 2016 list of Top 50 Future LGBT Leaders, and was named to 2014’s Forbes 30 Under 30 list. As Logo’s inaugural political correspondent, he helped to establish the TV network’s election coverage.

One of the world’s leading social media influencers, Raymond Braun uses his following for good.

Braun founded his own consulting firm, RWB Media, which is focused on LGBT consumers and social outreach and counts several Fortune 500 companies and nonprofit organizations as clients. Previously he led YouTube’s social media campaigns and programs aimed at LGBT users.

What does it take to build a media empire and to reach the masses through social media and digital tools? The media consultant breaks it down to three strategies: education, empowerment, and community building.

Even with the internet, says Braun, it was still difficult “for LGBTQ folks to learn about their history, learn about how they can get involved in the movement, learn about sexual health, and learn about what it means to be LGBTQ. I think it’s important for us to, first and foremost, use social media and digital tools to educate people about what is going on. What is happening in the political climate? What is at stake for LGBTQ people? How can we get involved?”

Then, Braun says, you have to empower people to “feel confident in who they are. Maybe they don’t see openly LGBTQ people in their own community or in their small town or in their church or school; but if they can go online and see lots of LGBTQ people who are living full, vibrant, interesting, diverse lives, I think that can inspire them. Or just, at the minimum, to know that they’re not alone. If we use social media to help empower and embolden and instill confidence in LGBTQ people, then those people will feel more comfortable coming out.”

The Paris city council plans to open an archive centre in 2020 that will preserve documentation of the LGBT movement in France from the 1960s onwards.

The idea was conceived by the former Socialist mayor Bertrand Delanoë 20 years ago but, due to disagreements with LGBT associations, a centre failed to materialise. The recent success of Robin Campillo's 120 Beats per Minute-about the Act Up group who were prominent figures in Aids activism in the 1990s-has given fresh impetus to the creation of the centre.

“The film's critical and public success has enabled us to accelerate the process, which has dragged on for 15 years,” says Bruno Julliard, the deputy mayor of Paris in charge of culture. The film won the Grand Prix of the jury at Cannes Film Festival this year.

While the plans are at the consultation stage, the archive is likely to be in the town hall of the third or fourth arrondissement in the Marais district, which is the centre of France’s LGBT culture. The aim is to make the historical archives accessible to researchers. “The City of Paris has a concrete commitment towards appropriating the heritage of this activist battle and preserving its archives, and if there's a city that is legitimate in archiving this activist battle, it's Paris,” Julliard says. “Paris has a historic relationship with human rights and LGBT rights.”

Australia - We shouldn’t have to endorse a bill that enshrines in law new and different ways for some groups to discriminate against us.

I voted for marriage and equality – not one without the other.

I have imagined this moment many times and it goes something like this …

We’ve been in Canberra for a few days for some final lobbying and number crunching. Everyone is tense but excited. Is it really going to happen? After all these years, have we finally got this thing across the line? My partner Sarah and I have managed to score two spots in the public gallery and we sit, whispering and still, in accordance with the strict protocols.

The arguing is over, the debate has run its course and it’s time for the vote. We know we’ve got the numbers, but that doesn’t make it any less nerve-wracking. I am so anxious I can barely breathe and I know Sarah feels the same. Fifteen years we’ve been campaigning for this and here, today, now, it ends. It is the seminal moment in an extraordinary and historic movement for social change.

The kids are at home – waiting – and every time we call to check in they ask: Have they voted yet? Did we win? When we got married in 2003 in Canada, our son was nine months old and we carried him down the aisle before passing him to his aunt for the ceremony. This year he turned fifteen, and his two younger sisters turned ten and twelve. Our kids have lived this campaign their entire lives and this is their moment too.

The bell rings. The division is called. The vote is taken.

I can feel my heart knocking inside my chest and I grab Sarah’s hand. We watch the to-ing and fro-ing on the floor as the count is tallied. Then the whispering in the public gallery stops, and the Speaker makes the announcement: The ayes have it and, despite the rules, we are out of our seats and punching the air and cheering and clapping. I throw my arms around Sarah, laughing and crying at the same time. We did it! We won. We finally won. I am ecstatic. Jubilant. Triumphant. I have waited fifteen years for this moment and it is everything I wanted it to be.

Outside the public gallery, I share this sweetest of moments with all the other advocates who have marched and campaigned and lobbied and raised funds and written and spoken and doorknocked and struggled and fought. They have given so much of themselves to bring us to this time and we smile and embrace. The relief and the joy is indescribable.

I ring the kids first and tell them: Yes, we won. Yes, it’s over. When you spoke at that rally, when you talked on the radio, when you were featured in that magazine – when they attacked your family and you spoke up – you helped us win and that is an extraordinary thing. From today, in the eyes of the law, your family is just as good as everyone else’s family. You have legally married parents just like your friends and no one can ever take that away from you.

And then I call Mark and Tom who we have known forever. Start planning boys. Send us an invite and we’ll stick it on the fridge. Use any florist, or baker or celebrant you want – there will be no signs that read: “No gays”. You get to plan your big day in exactly the same way as anyone else. Congrats guys.

As I think back on the past 24 years of providing couples counseling for gay male relationships, I sometimes get asked what the differences are that I see (in general) in gay male relationships that are (again, in general), different from straight relationships.

I offer these thoughts to both single and coupled gay men, based on my perspective of what I’ve seen through the years. My experiences and observations as a gay men’s specialist psychotherapist might differ from other gay men, and even other gay male therapists, and we always have to be mindful of not indulging in unfair assumptions, stereotypes, or even prejudices. But since making a relationship work (which I define, in part, as the relationship’s level of satisfaction for each partner and in its overall longevity and subjective “quality” for each partner) is at least in part based on a skills-building process, skills that I believe are required for a gay male relationship to both endure (quantity) and thrive (quality). These are the issues that come up repeatedly in couples counseling sessions: 

1. Money 

Gay male couples can have a lot of conflict around money. Statistically, white men tend to be relatively high earners. The sexism that women only earn a portion of what men earn, for the same work, extends to both gay men and straight men. It’s hard to find a gay male couple where issues of competition don’t come up, whether regarding physical appearance, social influence, or income. When money issues arise in gay male relationships, I believe it’s because all American men (and elsewhere) are still, even in our oh-so-modern times, expected to the “breadwinners.” White men, especially of middle class or higher socio-economic status, are socialized to “getting their way,” enjoying a social privilege (whether they want it or not) among all demographics. Gay men of color face a dual challenge in managing social reactions and pressures from being both gay and people of color, and also gender expectations. There are many potential pressures to face and overcome. Straight men face a lot of social pressure, still, to earn more than their wives. Conversely, a straight man who earns less than his wife can feel humiliated, jealous, or dejected (from both women and other men), all from society’s strong and ubiquitous messages of what it expects from men – it’s not even up for discussion or conscious awareness; it just “is.” So when two gay men form a relationship, issues of each partner competing to be the breadwinner often arise. It’s like some kind of pissing contest. There can also be an irony that the older, higher-earning partner can be the sexual bottom role in the relationship, and it’s in the bedroom where issues of power, control, and dominance can be “played with,” reversed, or expressed. In every gay male relationship, there is overt power, and there is covert or “passive-aggressive” power. How these dynamics are expressed, and the conflicts that can result, are often the impetus for entering couples therapy.

The gay men that I work with are often from mixed cultures or different nationalities. I’m not sure why this is; I really don’t think it’s because gay male couples “have more problems” than straight couples, or even that cross-cultural gay couples can’t get by without couples therapy. Maybe it’s that the cultural differences add an extra layer of challenge that can be a source of conflict. But it also adds an extra layer of mystery, excitement, exoticism, and fun. But along with cultural differences, such as language, food, spirituality, traditions, and habits, can be cultural differences about money. So, in couples therapy, differences and conflicts that arise about money issues on the surface are really differences in culture, even just differences in “family culture” in the family of origin, even if both partners are the same nationality/ethnicity.

Couples therapy helping a gay couple resolve conflicts about money often involves my helping the partners to understand that this is not a competition, or that one partner must dominate or be declared the “winner.” Rather, it’s about helping the men understand that their household is not two “I” that live under the same roof; it’s about forming a “we.” Forming a “we,” where each partner is a 50/50 stakeholder in the relationship, can be hard for men, because in general men are taught to “control” and “dominate” from the time we are little boys in ways that they don’t even realize that they’re doing it (Don’t believe me? Just ask a scholar in feminist studies if that statement is true.)

Unlike straight couples, who (up until relatively recently) had the monopoly on legal recognition of their relationships (before domestic partnerships and marriage equality laws), gay men were treated by the law as two unrelated individuals under one roof, especially for legal and tax purposes. Straight married couples are socialized to “blend” their money more readily, and they have their parents’ example and subtle heterosexist behavioral modeling to follow (from everything from feature films, to television, to commercials). They are more likely to have joint bank accounts, joint tax filing, and automatic rights of survivorship on everything from 401-ks to Social Security survivor benefits – and they have for generations. Gay men are socialized to think more individually, and the idea of “blending” their two individual incomes into one “household income” once they are coupled is a kind of mental and emotional hurdle that only softens with increased time and trust.

Couples therapy can involve brainstorming, identifying, evaluating, and implementing specific money management plans in the household so that both partners feel like they are making an equal contribution, even if there is a vast difference between Partner A and Partner B’s incomes.

2.Sex

Gay male couples tend to approach sex differently. We all know that gay male couples are much more likely to entertain the idea of, or even be in, a non-monogamous relationship. Part of this is cultural and historical; part of this is the nature of men’s sexuality in general (hey, truth be told, MANY more straight men would be non-monogamous if given the opportunity by their wives, as I have learned from working with straight men in my practice, and some (just like gay men) take that prerogative even if it’s directly violating a monogamy agreement). Gay men are much more likely, in general, to only “not” be appalled at the idea of another person (man) having sex with their partner/spouse, but to be turned on by it. Gay men have a greater capacity (in general) for “sport sex,” and less about foreplay; they can separate sex from love more easily. Without a woman’s particular sexual makeup in the equation, it changes the sexual equation. You really can’t directly compare a straight couple’s sex life with a gay male couple’s sex life. Some things just don’t “translate” culturally, physically, socially, emotionally, etc. So, part of my job in couples counseling is to help gay men understand this, and to avoid making direct comparisons to straight relationships all the time (some of the time is OK, particularly in confronting double-standards and internalized homophobia). Part of my expertise as a gay men’s specialist therapist is to understand the special cultural considerations of gay men, by this point in my life and career, in extreme detail of “cultural competency” of psychotherapeutic/clinical social work practice. By validating to a gay male couple that their sex life must be discussed not only “apart” of any heteronormative expectations, but also independently of even OTHER gay male relationships they might know of, the couple can be reassured that the decisions and practices they make are unique and customized to them. There is no one proper “cookie-cutter” sex life for gay male couples that fits all.

While this is also true for straight couples, issues of monogamy, frequency, type of sex, the “vanilla-versus-kink” spectrum, BDSM, and even time management discussions differ. While this is not necessarily unique to gay men, a big factor can be finding time for sex, when often both partners are busy, high-level executives or professionals who work extraordinarily long hours or have jobs that require frequent travel. 

Figuring out how long to wait before you have sex with someone is a deeply personal question that is highly dependent on a wide variety of factors and conditions.

For example, if you’re looking for a man to enter into a serious, long-term relationship with, or if you’re even looking for a man you may one day marry, then you might prolong the waiting period before you slip between the sheets.

Sex is extremely important to a healthy relationship, but sometimes it’s wise to make sure it isn’t the only aspect of your relationship when you’re looking to build something with a little longevity.

However, if you’re just looking to go out and have fun and hook up with new guys, then waiting a long time to have sex probably doesn’t make a lot of sense.

You can’t be (safely, responsibly) slutty if you’re making every attractive guy you meet wait six months before the two of you get down to business. If you’re in the middle of an uncommitted stage of your dating life, then you really shouldn’t wait very long to hook up with the men you meet.

In other words, the only way to know how long you should wait before having sex with a man is to be pretty clear about what sort of relationships you’re looking for.

It sounds mechanical but until you set some firm goals about what you’re looking for from the men you meet, you can’t ascribe to any universal rule about how long you should or shouldn’t wait before having sex.

Should I have sex with someone I just met?

Define “just met.”

Should you have sex with a man you’ve been on one date with or whom you just met at a bar or a party and spent some time getting to know? Sure, why not. If you find him attractive, and if you’re at a point in your dating life where you just want to mess around, then you should absolutely go for it.

Scotland - The first minister's apology coincided with new legislation that will automatically pardon gay and bisexual men convicted under historical laws.

The bill will also allow the removal of such convictions from criminal records.

Consensual homosexual acts between men aged over 21 in Scotland were only decriminalised in 1981.

And it was not until 20 years later that the age of consent for gay men was lowered to 16.

Speaking in the Scottish Parliament, the first minister said it was "shocking" that consenting sexual activity between men in Scotland was still classed as a criminal activity until so recently.

She added: "Before then, hundreds of people in Scotland were liable to be convicted as criminals, simply for loving another adult."

And the first minister said the simple fact was that parliamentarians in Scotland had, over many decades, supported or at least accepted laws which "we now recognise to have been completely unjust".

Ms Sturgeon said: "Those laws criminalised the act of loving another adult; they deterred people from being honest about their identity to family, friends, neighbours and colleagues; and by sending a message from parliament that homosexuality was wrong, they encouraged rather than deterred homophobia and hate.

"Today as first minister I categorically, unequivocally and wholeheartedly apologise for those laws and for the hurt and the harm that they caused to so many.

"Nothing that this parliament does can erase those injustices, but I do hope this apology, alongside our new legislation, can provide some comfort to those who endured those injustices

"And I hope that it provides evidence of this parliament's determination in so far as we can to address the harm that was done."

The apology was made on the same day as the publication of the Historical Sexual Offences (Pardons and Disregards) Bill.

The legislation will give an automatic pardon to gay men convicted under historical discriminatory laws - but will not apply to behaviour that is still illegal today.

It will also enable men to apply to have convictions for same-sex sexual activity that is now legal removed from central criminal conviction records.

Justice Secretary Michael Matheson said the new legislation was an important step towards addressing the injustice faced by many gay men in the past.

He added: "These discriminatory laws, although abolished, continue to have implications for people to this day and it is only right that we address this historic wrong, which criminalised people simply because of who they loved."

Whether you have 99 problems, or just a handful, stress can be dangerous – even life-threatening – for men.

Stress: You can’t hear it, you can’t see it, you can’t taste it, yet it’s commonly accepted that stress significantly impacts men’s health. As more research is published on the effects of stress and anxiety, we're learning that stress can be more serious than ever imagined, particularly for heart health. And in other ways, like how it affects your relationships with women, stress can be downright strange.

Here are six reasons why it’s worth keeping a lid on stress and anxiety:

1. Stress can change your taste in women. 

Guys in a high-stress activity see heavier women as more attractive than did those involved in a normal activity, a British study of 81 men found. Kevin B. Jones, MD, author of What Doctors Cannot Tell You: Clarity, Confidence and Uncertainty in Medicine, finds these results highly plausible. “You need no physician to tell you that stress can change a man's decisions,” he says.

“We've all seen someone going through a difficult personal crisis who seems to flub even completely unrelated judgment calls. Some men self-medicate their stress or poor mental health with decisions that further muddle their judgment, such as involvement with illicit drugs, binge alcohol consumption, or dangerous sexual entanglements. But even without mind-altering substances or habits, they will make different decisions when too heavily stressed.”

2. Men take stress harder than women. 

Men are supposed to be “rocks,” impervious to stress. But recent research flies in the face of this conventional wisdom, indicating that the women fare better in the face of stress. In one study of more than 24,000 Canadian adults, men who had high demand and low control in their jobs or had job insecurity were more likely to have had major depression. Women in the study, though still at risk for anxiety and depression, were not as likely to have experienced major depression.

Simon A. Rego, PsyD, director of psychology training at Montefiore Medical Center/Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, says that gender differences regarding the effects of stress manifest themselves in other ways that are negative for men’s health.

“Men under stress are more likely than women to report having been diagnosed with high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease or heart attack,” he says.

Fathers and Gay Sons: A Complicated, Vitally Important Relationship.

Fathers in many families are mysterious, distant, intimidating figures-even more so for boys with homosexual attractions. They are the family torchbearers of manliness, and, as males young and old know, homosexuality is considered the dreaded opposite of masculinity. According to Michael Kimmel, a sociologist and expert on male sex roles, men demonstrate their masculinity by repudiating all that is feminine and demonstrating an ever-ready willingness to engage in sexual intercourse with women whenever the opportunity arises-in a nutshell, to prove they are not gay. To be gay is to be powerless, weak, unable to break free from Mommy, and these characteristics are incompatible with real manliness.

Initially, the assertion that homophobia plays center stage in men's masculine self-concept may seem rather extreme. However, go to places where men and boys congregate such as schoolyards, sports fields, fraternity houses, and locker rooms in this country and you will hear taunts such as "You're a sissy!" "That's so gay." "Hey cocksucker!" or "Wow, you really got fucked in the ass on that play!" Sex between males is seen as an act of violence and domination rather than an expression of love, affection, or mutual pleasure, and this mocking, whether it is done playfully or with hostile intent, is meant to degrade a man by deriding his manliness. A boy growing into a gay man will get the message loud and clear that he is weak, dirty, and, perhaps worst of all, less than a man. Thus it is no wonder that the boys in the study for my book: Coming Out, Coming Home: Helping Families Adjust to a Gay or Lesbian Child (http://www.comingoutcominghome.com), recalled being so reactive and fearful of the responses of their fathers-the very people who were expecting them to receive and carry the torch of masculinity.

As this eighteen-year-old young man recalled:

My father has always been very physical. He liked competitive sports and he played football. He was always pushing me to be on the football team or to do this or that. The kind of things I had absolutely no interest in doing at all, and I don't know how tied up that is in sexuality, but I certainly felt like I had something I needed to keep hidden from him.

Rico, a twenty-two-year-old Latino man who worked in a bookstore, described how his father's derision, perhaps fueled by suspicion, made him fearful:

He would call gay people names and stuff. Just saying that he didn't agree with it and thought it was wrong and all that stuff. . . . Yes, and he didn't want me to become that . . . One time I had just dyed my hair. I was eighteen, nineteen. I dyed it red. And he said: "Don't be a girl, you fag!" or something like that.

Rico, whose parents were long-divorced, perceived these admonitions as a threat, which is why at the time of his interview he had yet to come out to his father.

When Jay was asked if his emerging sexual orientation played any role in his relationship with his father, he replied:

Yes. I think I was taking out my frustrations with all of the straight jocks at school . . . that he was this mister normal guy that had the normal family, the normal house and the normal job and normal, normal, normal. And I don't know . . . he was an easy target, too, because he wasn't always here and when he was here I could attack him.

While this is advice for those who identify as “bottoms,” anyone who has anal sex should have an understanding of the process involved in successful bottoming. It will help you be a better “top” and positively affect your sexual experiences.

The act of bottoming is a true art, and whether it’s your first attempt or you’ve been experimenting with it for quite some time, analyzing your readiness and the proper techniques not only allows you to reach heightened sexual pleasure, but also enables safe and enduring practices.

If you’ve never tried bottoming, but you’re curious, you shouldn’t just dive in without preparation. Successful and pleasurable bottoming takes time and practice, through dilation exercises, training of your self-awareness, and control of the pelvic floor.

The good news? Bottoming shouldn’t hurt. Of course, it may be uncomfortable at first and you might initially question how there could ever be pleasure in it-something that happens with vaginal sex the first time as well.It takes practice, patience, and following a few simple guidelines to enhance this sexual practice. I often tell patients that great bottoms have been doing it for quite some time, with many first experiencing it in their youth. Unfortunately, no one showed us the right way to bottom in our high school sex ed classes. Still, it’s never too late to learn so you can enjoy new and positive sexual experiences.

Here’s my 101 guide to bottoming:

1. Begin With Dilation

Get yourself an anal trainer kit, and start training for dilation two to three times a week (for as little as five minutes each time). Use a water-based lubricant and start with the smallest plug. Insert just to the point of pressure. Hold it there for a few seconds, then try to engage the muscles. Allow yourself to relax before removing the plug, then re-lubricate and re-insert to the point of pressure. Repeating this process will prove successful over time, so don’t get discouraged if the first time you only get a small portion of the tip in. Repeat the process three to five times. The key is to remember there are three sets of muscles that need to relax for a successful entry. Think of it as a tunnel, and the entire tunnel needs to be a well-lubed cylinder. We don’t advise inserting the entire length of the plug and leaving it in on the first try, because removal may be difficult, which could cause tearing. If after four to five sessions you can insert that size without any issues, you’re ready to graduate to the next size. Don’t forget to enjoy it. If you become stimulated during the process, go for it! Not only is it a pleasurable side effect to your dilation training, but you can start to channel your orgasm anally and begin to gain control over time.

2. Ready For The Real Thing

When you’ve successfully mastered a medium size plug, you’re ready to graduate to the real thing. Congratulations! It’s always best to start off with you in total control and a partner you trust to be patient in letting you decide the level you’re comfortable with. Some people use dilators first, either with or without a sexual partner, to “warm up” and remind themselves of the practiced techniques. Once the engines have been started, the bottom needs to sit on the tip of the penis, allowing control of entry. Use plenty of lubricant and remember the different sets of muscles that need to be released to allow access. Start off using the same technique of inserting until you feel pressure, hold it there, pull out, re-lubricate, and repeat. The three to five-time rule applies here as well. Being on top of the penis really allows for you to determine your level of comfort. If pain occurs, you can stop, call it a day, and try again another time. It’s not worth causing pain or a potential injury.