Gay rights activists are demanding audits into British faith groups who’ve published homophobic materials.

According to British newspaper The Guardian, an investigation has revealed numerous church groups throughout the UK that receive grants from the Big Lottery Fund have published anti-gay lesson plans and sexist articles online.

Every year, the Big Lottery Fund awards millions of pounds to organizations for ‘good causes’.

Lesbian broadcaster Clare Balding is to receive a special award for reporting on the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games at this year’s BAFTAs.

She is to be presented with an achievement award for factual presenting.

The BAFTA committee commended her work saying Balding has become a national treasure.

Openly gay footballer Robbie Rogers discusses homophobia and football in one of his first interviews since coming out earlier this year.

The 25 year-old former Leeds United player gave a video interview with the Guardian’s Donald McRae where he talked about juggling his sexuality with his love of football.

California-born Rogers said: ‘Football has been such a big part of my life. It’s an industry that has a lot of things to change’.

‘There’s a lot of problems with it from sketchy agents to homophobic culture’.

Amnesty International in partnership with a local LGBT group warned that Northern Ireland's power-sharing government will soon face a human rights legal case over its continual refusal to legalize marriage equality.

In October 2012 members of Northern Ireland's Stormont assembly rejected a motion by the Greens and Sinn Féin to legalize marriage equality.

Around three hundred people attended a candle-lit vigil outside the office of the Daily Mail in London last night, to protest the newspaper's hounding of transgender primary school teacher Lucy Meadows, who was found dead a week ago today.

Campaigners Paris Lees, Jane Fae and Josephine Shaw and Labour MP for Bristol East Kerry McCarthy were at the vigil.

Bradley Manning, the US soldier held captive in military prison on suspicion of leaking hundreds of thousands of confidential documents to Wikileaks, plead guilty to 10 out of the 22 charges against him in a military court yesterday.

Manning read out at 35 page statement at the pre-trial hearing in Maryland saying he released the information to the publicly accessible website because he believed Americans should know the 'true costs of war', the Guardian reports.

The Press Complaints Commission is to launch an inquiry into the publication of Julie Burchill’s anti-trans column in The Observer.

The commission decided to act after receiving 800 complaints about the article, which was removed from the newspaper’s sister website The Guardian.co.uk soon after it was published on 13 January.

Protests against transphobia in the UK media are scheduled to take place tomorrow (17 January) in London and Manchester.

Around 300 attendees are expected to demonstrate outside of the London offices of the Observer newspaper, part of the Guardian Media Group.

The protests were initiated by Sarah Savage, star of the Channel 4 drama My Transsexual Summer.

Former equalities minister Lynne Featherstone has called for Observer editor John Mulholland and writer Julie Burchill to be sacked following the publication of a transphobic column.

'Julie Burchill rant against transgender community is absolutely disgusting – a bigoted vomit for which the Observer should sack her', tweeted the International Development Minister.

After her initial comment, the Liberal Democrat MP tweeted: 'If this was a different group I think there would be even more outrage sadly'.

Outspoken right-wing US pundit Rush Limbaugh has said the left wants to normalize pedophilia like they did with same-sex marriage.

On Monday (7 January), during the broadcast of his radio show Limbaugh discussed an article from left-wing British paper The Guardian titled ‘Pedophilia: Bringing Dark Desires to Light’.

A doctor who treated trans men and women seeking gender reassignment is being investigated after several patients complained about his practices.

One of the most serious complaints which prompted Britain’s General Medical Council to investigate Dr Richard Curtis was filed by a patient who had a double mastectomy and hormone therapy but later regretted the decision.

Seven gay couples were married on the New Year’s first moments, in Maryland, with thousands of same-sex couples to follow, after the state legalized gay marriage.

The couples were pronounced lawfully married at half past midnight during a ceremony on New Year's Day (1 January 2013) in Baltimore's City Hall, the state's largest city.

Baltimore mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake officiated at the wedding of the first of the couples, 68-year-old James Scales and 60-year-old William Tasker.

The couple have been together for 35 years.