Amid claims of censorship, multiple award-winning novelist Christos Tsiolkas has thrown his support behind calls for the Australian Film Classification Board (AFCB) to lift its ban on the gay film I Want Your Love which was due to be screened at several major film festivals around the country.

A queer film with a six minute gay sex scene that was set to screen at this year’s Melbourne Queer Film Festival has been denied exemption from classification by the Australian Film Classification Board.

A group prevented from taking part in the Mardi Gras Parade have spoken out against Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras (SGLMG), questioning whether the current event carries the “integrity” and “purpose” of the original march.

Claims of censorship have been bandied after independent television crews were banned from the floor of Queensland Parliament until late August for airing protests taking place within the building during debate on the LNP Government’s watering down of civil union laws.

Prominent Russian gay rights activist Nikolai Alexeyev was one of about 40 people arrested in Moscow over the weekend after protestors attempted to hold demonstrations to demand the right to hold a gay pride parade.

Gay rights activists have become the first to be arrested in St Petersburg under laws introduced in March which bans ‘the propaganda of homosexuality and paedophilia among minors’.

Sydney Mardi Gras has rejected claims of “censorship” by followers of the Raëlian movement after the Parade Committee objected to a proposed banner containing religious and spiritual symbols which the organisation said was “not respectful” towards other community groups.

After arriving in Melbourne overnight as a guest of the Australian Open, tennis legend Margaret Court has claimed that she has been the victim of a targeted hate campaign for simply repeating “what God has said in the Scriptures” following her most recent attacks on the LGBT community.