For TOGETHER, our 35th anniversary Annual Global Convention in Toronto (9-12 May 2018), IGLTA has created a special co-hosting agreement with Travel Gay Canada that is designed to increase engagement with tourism professionals across Canada. TGC is Canada's LGBT tourism industry association and works with its members to promote travel to and within Canada and to make Canada a favorite LGBT destination.
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If you'd like to be involved in an upcoming IGLTA consumer promotion, we want to hear from you. Please reach out to our Consumer Marketing Manager Auston Matta: auston.matta@iglta.org to coordinate travel donations in exchange for marketing visibility with IGLTA.
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MGM Resorts International, a Gold-Level IGLTA Global Partner and a proud partner since 2012, is preparing to host the MGM Resort Foundation's 11th Annual Women's Leadership Conference Aug 7-8. This two-day event is held annually in Las Vegas at the MGM Grand Conference Center and features a wide range of learning opportunities, career guidance and personal growth tools. The conference is open to women of all ethnicities, professions and social backgrounds, locally and nationally, and men who support them. This year MGM is proud to welcome Jen Welter, the first female coach in the National Football League (NFL), as a guest speaker. Each year, The MGM Resorts Foundation donates proceeds from the conference after costs to one or more local nonprofit agencies devoted to the welfare and development of women and girls. Although the event is sold out you can still actively engage via Facebook.com/WLCLV & Twitter (@WLCLV).
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The 5th Travel Trade Athens, organized by the Athens Convention and Visitors Bureau, in cooperation with IGLTA Organizational Partner European Tourism Association and IGLTA, will take place 2-3 October at the emblematic Grande Bretagne Hotel in the heart of the city. The annual event showcases Athens as an attractive cultural, artistic, and modern city break and meeting industry destination. Travel Trade Athens 2017 offers a fully hosted buyers program that includes international air travel, accommodation and a memorable social program making this a unique opportunity for buyers to develop first-hand business relationships with leading tourism suppliers in Athens and the rest of Greece. The closing date for registrations is 1 September.
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Travel buyers were urged to manage the risks for all travelers visiting the 72 countries that currently criminalize homosexuality – eight of which can apply death sentences – as well as other destinations with cultures that are intolerant of LGBT people.
Panelists, speaking during a session at the GBTA convention in Boston, said that LGBT risk management is an "incredibly complex and nuanced" issue with a wide range of laws, interpretations and cultural attitudes.
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President Frank-Walter Steinmeier announced on Friday that he had signed into law a measure allowing same-sex marriage in Germany, meaning the first official weddings could kick off in October.
The law was passed by the German parliament (Bundestag) at the end of June. The legislation states that the reform will come into force "on the first day of the third month following the declaration," meaning likely in October, according to weekly newspaper Die Zeit.
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U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., and U.S. Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva, D-Ariz., led 96 members of Congress in introducing legislation requiring federal surveys to include data collection on sexual orientation and gender identity.
While some federal data on LGBT communities is currently collected, there is no centralized requirement prioritizing the collection of LGBT data in federal surveys, which Baldwin said the LGBT Data Inclusion Act addresses.
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Thousands of protestors took to the street in Tel Aviv near the military headquarters to express their dismay at the government's answer to the High Court of Justice announcing its opposition to adoption by same-sex couples.
The government has changed its position on the issue several times. Ahead of the protest, the government requested more time from the High Court to revise its evaluation and provide their decision.
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Hundreds of gay and lesbian people of South Asian heritage are believed to be under pressure to marry someone of the opposite sex, police say.
West Midlands Police said a growing number are now contacting the force after being ordered to have a heterosexual wedding by their families.
The UK's forced marriage unit heard from at least 30 LGBT people last year.
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Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, a Democrat, has passed a bill into law banning licensed health care providers from using so-called gay conversion therapy to change a minor's sexual orientation or gender identity.
The Providence Journal reports Rhode Island has become the 10th state along with Washington D.C. to pass such a law. It is the fourth state this year to enact protections for LGBT youth.
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Prime Minister Theresa May has expressed her personal support for equal marriage in Northern Ireland.
The Prime Minister penned an op-ed for PinkNews recently to mark the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalization of homosexuality.
The Conservative leader used the piece to address the ongoing ban on same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland, where progress has been blocked in the devolved assembly by the Democratic Unionist Party.
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Singapore has voided the marriage of a couple after the husband underwent a sex change, making their partnership a same-sex union that contravened the city state's laws, a report said on 18 July. The couple married as man and woman in 2015 but the husband underwent a sex change operation and updated his national identity card to read "female," The Straits Times newspaper reported.
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The first same-sex marriage at an Anglican church in the UK is expected to take place in Glasgow later this summer.
St Mary's Cathedral has become the first in the country to be given permission to conduct gay weddings, a month after the Scottish Episcopal church general synod voted overwhelmingly to allow its churches to host the ceremonies.
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Since it was claimed the first same-sex Muslim marriage had taken place in Britain last week, the question of gay marriages within the community has dominated headlines.
Asifa Lahore, the country's first Muslim drag performer, openly rebuffed the assertion, saying the UK's gay Muslim community is "thriving” with “countless" same-sex marriages have taken place in recent years.
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