Continuing our series of profiling the LGBT sports clubs around the world, in this issue we meet Damien Strogen - president of Team Auckland Masters Swimming (TAMS).

When was the TAMS club established?

We were formally set up in 1992. Ron Judd initiated the creation of TAMS. The idea germinated in 1990 at the Vancouver Gay Games and came into being 1992 with poolside coaching two times per week and registration as a masters club.

International Gay and Lesbian Aquatics (IGLA) is the organization that brings the world’s LGBT aquatics clubs together, sharing information and knowledge as well as staging an annual championships for LGBT competitors in swimming, diving, open water, synchronized swimming, and water polo.

We caught up with Jason Stone, head of the organizing committee for IGLA2013 to take a look at plans for this year’s event which will be held in the US city of Seattle.

An Anglican leader told the congregation at St Paul’s Cathedral in Dunedin yesterday that gay marriage has strengthened Canadian society.

The Very Rev Dr Peter Elliot, Rector of Christ Church Anglican Cathedral in Vancouver was visiting New Zealand from Canada, where same-sex marriage was legalized in 2005.

Dr Elliot, who is gay, told Otago Daily Times that respect and tolerance for gay people had increased since the legalization of gay marriage.

Robin Tomlin is dying of liver cancer but wants some closure on one of the most painful episodes of his life.

As a student at Argyle Secondary School in North Vancouver 42 years ago, he received his yearbook and when he opened it to the page with his picture on it, there was one word printed under his name: 'Fag.'

'I feel like, emotionally, they've been beating me with a stick for 42 years,' he tells the North Shore News.

A student in Canada wants to set up a retirement home for gay pensioners to help end alienation and loneliness among many LGBT old people.

Alex Sangha is raising $25,000 for a feasibility study on the project, which is part of his masters degree in social work at Nova Scotia's Dalhousie University.

The Vancouver student told CTV news that many elderly lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people experience homophobia in retirement homes and are forced to go back into the closet as a result.

Olympic bosses have backed equality at the 2014 Winter games but avoided criticizing Russian authorities who have banned a gay Pride House from the event.

The first Pride House was held at the Winter Olympics in 2010 in Vancouver, Canada and it set to be repeated at the 2012 games in London this summer.