Category: Opinion

Rainbow Counsellor Elijah Luke Michel is here to help with your problems: I’m very frustrated with my family. I’m a 21-year-old Iranian M2F trans woman born in NZ, and when I came out two years ago my family surprisingly accepted it. Now I have a girlfriend and my parents are upset because it’s okay to […]

Article:Katherine Wolfgramme for Star Observer With the world’s media courting trans issues – whether it online, current affairs programmes, in the papers, or reality television – trans visibility is at an historic high. But as a trans gender woman I can’t help but wonder, in amazement, how has this come to be? In what was […]

Some colleges in the US ask students to state their PGPs. Their what? PGP is an acronym for preferred gender pronouns. Students are encouraged to disclose whether they want to be referred to as ‘she’ and ‘her, ’or ‘he’ and ‘him,’ or the alternative options are ‘it’ or ‘they,’ or ‘none of the above,’ and […]

Rainbow Counsellor Elijah Luke Michel is here to help with your problems: I’ve recently separated from my partner of seven years and I’m at a loss as to how to start the new year without him. He was not only my partner, but my best friend and confidant, and I feel like half of me […]

Article and photo: Star Observer “I forgot to ask whether you’ve been with a trans guy before?” He hadn’t. “Well, you’ve been with a guy before? And you’ve been with a woman before? All right then,” I told him, “you’ll be fine.” Steve* from Grindr is an extremely decent lay and hasn’t once been weird […]

  Mark Hangartner, chair of the Auckland Rainbow Church, reaches out to our Christian LGBT+ readers and gives us a message of hope and community. A shortened version of this message was published in our December 2016 issue. At Christmas, we reflect on the life of a person who was born in a cattle-shed and […]

Bah humbug, I hate Christmas! I’m a single gay guy and this is my loneliest time of year. Everyone goes away with family or partners and I’m left hooking up with the dregs on Grindr. When will it be my turn to have happy holidays? Your turn is right now if you create it! Those […]

Looking at the broad phases in the history of Auckland’s gay nightclub scene, there are interesting parallels with three of the most well-known events of 20th-century gay history. From the 1940s to the 1990s in Aotearoa, there was a paradigm shift in attitudes to human sexuality. Also increasingly, change is argued in terms of objective/scientific […]