"GAY: Good As You" - a new bilingual (Russian & Byelorussian) magazine for gays and lesbians under the aegis of the Byelorussian human rights project "GayBelarus" - is to be launched in Minsk later this month. It is aimed at public acquaintance the with the problems faced by gay community, to discuss hard topics, entertain, stir up discussions and place on its pages creative works of LGBT people and gay-friendly "straights".

"Because of political regime in this country and peculiarities of the domestic legislation on mass media that is willing to nip in the bud any civil activity, our magazine did not go through the official registration of mass-media procedure. In this connection, we are forced to publish only a limited number of copies. Nevertheless, I believe that in any case the Byelorussian society and its gay community will appraise our project.

The magazine will cover gay-life and gay-friendly events too. We are open to the world. The magazine’s pilot edition is made by a group of 10 people and we are sure that we can manage it!", said Sergey Praded, GAY magazine’s editor-in-chief.

The magazine’s presentation show will be held in "6_A" club on February 27th, 2010. During the event, the public will enjoy the performances of Taïs - a specially invited drag-queen from Ukraine, women striptease and male dancers, and for the "dessert" - the BDSM-show.

"We continue our joint efforts of the Byelorussian LGBT-community aimed at cooling the heat of homophobia in the country. This year we plan to make our agenda filled with many interesting gay events and we believe that this party can bring the LGBT active members closer to the LGBT community itself. It would be a very positive turn of our info-entertaining event. Welcome! It’d be useful and gay!", said Sergey Androsenko, the Chairman of the GayBelarus project.

Up to this date there were no any gay-themed periodical in Byelorussia that could cover local and international gay life, reports Gay.by.

Translated by Yerdna Bananes