The wait is over and the WorldPride parade is underway in downtown Toronto.  Toronto has had an annual Pride parade for more than three decades, but this year, it’s an even bigger party than usual due to the fact that the city is hosting World Pride for the first time.

This is the busy season for local film festivals in Israel. The Tel Aviv International Student Film Festival opened last weekend, the Cinema South International Film Festival opens on Sunday in Sderot, and the ninth annual Tel Aviv International LGBT Film Festival, TLVFest, will open Saturday night.

A new survey shows the youngest bloc of voters is decidedly progressive, nervous about money—and not especially energized about voting.One big takeaway is that Millennials are strongly supportive of governmental intervention in society on a wide array of social issues. The survey also suggests Millennials place a high value on equality.

US ambassador John Berry says the two countries have achieved great advances for their LGBT communities. "We do not have to accept this, the world can fight homophobia," Berry said in a video filmed for samesame.com.au and released on the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia. "It is so important because we need to communicate to our brothers and sisters who are in less fortunate places that we have not forgotten them, that we stand together, that gay rights are human rights and both the US and Australia will stand to protect them."

As the last of the thirty-seven participating countries weighed in (Israel, the Netherlands, Iceland, Slovenia), a dark-horse winner emerged: Conchita Wurst. A glamorous drag queen, the Austrian candidate was decked out in a long, glittering dress and sported a full beard.  “It’s a firm and clear rebuke against Putin’s anti-L.G.B.T. legislation and people who support it,” William Lee Adams, the editor-in-chief of WiwiBloggs.com, the Internet’s most-read Eurovision Web site, said. 

An upcoming game for Nintendo's handheld devices will let players enter a virtual world in which they make friends, flirt and can even get married and have kids.  But those romantic relationships can't be with characters of the same gender -- a fact a growing online movement hopes to change.