The Struggle for Gays in India: VIDEO

Voice of America is doing a mini-series of reports on LGBT life around the world. In their latest segment, they look at the situation for gays in India, which is improving but still quite difficult, even after the 2009 Supreme Court ruling decriminalizing gay sex.

Watch, AFTER THE JUMP...

Norway's Crown Princess Flew to India, Posed as Nanny to Care for Gay Employee's Twins Born to Surrogate

Norway's Crown Princess Mette-Marit went the extra mile for a gay palace employee who could not get a travel visa to care for his infant twins born to a surrogate mother in India, Reuters reports:

Armed with a diplomatic passport that granted her immediate access, the future queen jumped on a plane in late October when the employee, who is also a friend, and his husband were unable to travel to care for their newborns.

"For me, this is about two babies lying alone in a New Delhi hospital," Mette-Marit said in a statement. "I was able to travel and wanted to do what I could."

She did not alert Indian authorities and spent several days with the babies at the Manav Medicare Centre, where staff assumed the wife of Norway's Crown Prince Haakon was a nanny.

A relative of one of the fathers eventually took over while the palace kept her absence under wraps. Said Mette-Marit: "Sometimes life presents you with situations with few good solutions. This was one of those."

News: Powerball, Action Figures, Morsi, Botany

A somewhat belated congratulations to California lawmaker Cathleen Galgiani! The Democratic state senator who came out of the closet to fight anti-gay bullying eked out a reelection victory last week.

As Mitt Romney settles into post-campaign life at his mansion in La Jolla, California, one has to wonder how he's coping with the town's growing stench. From the NYT: "...The smell, a pungent stench that emanates from the accumulation of bird feces on the rocks, has become a growing problem. And strict environmental regulations in the cove have stymied the city’s efforts to address the problem before it drives tourists and businesses away, effectively roping the rocks off with red tape."

There's definitely still plenty of red tape to be put up before Washington and Colorado residents can buy legal green: "Like Washington, Colorado still needs to set up a regulatory framework to handle what is expected to be a big expansion of its marijuana market, even though the state already has more medical marijuana dispensaries than it has Starbucks."

A cost of mobile accessibility in India: "Millions once bought sex in the narrow alleys of Kamathipura, a vast red-light district here. But prostitutes with inexpensive mobile phones are luring customers elsewhere, and that is endangering the astonishing progress India has made against AIDS."

Now you too can be an action figure.

The mystery of the black dahlia has been solved. The actual flower, not the legendary murder mystery.

Twilight Breaking Dawn Part 2 topped the box office this weekend, as expected.

Derek Hough left his sleeves at home for Dancing with the Stars rehearsal.

PETA says happy birthday to Miley Cyrus by giving her a pig.

Feeling lucky enough to buy a ticket for the $425 million Powerball drawing?

And a very happy birthday to The Killing actor Joel Kinnaman.

A Catholic speaks out against Vatican-backed hate.

Faced with protests for his ouster, Egyptian President Morsi now claiming his dictatorial power grab is just temporary. "The presidency reiterates the temporary nature of those measures, which are not intended to concentrate power, but to avoid ... attempts to undermine democratically elected bodies and preserve the impartiality of the judiciary," he office said in a statement that gave no end date for his sudden one-man rule.

Former French first lady Carla Bruni said that she, unlike husband Nicolas Sarkozy, supports same-sex marriage and gay adoption. "I am rather in favor of gay marriage and adoption, I have a lot of friends -- women and men -- who are in this situation and I see nothing unstable or perverse in families with homosexual parent," the former model and musician told Vogue.

It will be a big, gay week for the Supreme Court.

A Kentucky teacher has been reprimanded after writing "You can’t be a Democrat & go to Heaven" on her classroom's chalk board.

Gay Rights Activists Celebrate Pride In New Delhi

For the fifth year in a row, LGBT activists in New Delhi held a gay pride march to counter homophobia in a country where colonial-era homophobia runs deep.

Though the crowd of hundreds was relatively small when compared to other prides around the world, the song remained the same: any society that claims to be modern must embrace its LGBT citizens.

Dozens of demonstrators carried a nearly 15-meter- (50-foot-) long, rainbow-colored banner and waved placards demanding that the government extend the scope of anti-discrimination laws to schools, workplaces and public and private spaces.

...

"Queer and loving it" and "Give us your support" read some of the placards carried by the activists as they marched to the rhythmic beat of traditional drums and music. Other supporters distributed badges and rainbow-colored flags and scarves.

The slow rate of acceptance of LGBT people among Indians could be seen in the masks worn by some participants, but one organizer told IBN that this year's event drew more people than previous events.

Watch The Trailer For Salman Rushdie's 'Midnight's Children': VIDEO

Director Deepa Mehta, author Salman Rushdie and dozens of actors and crew members managed to keep it a secret, clandestinely filming in Sri Lanka and hiding their project's true name for fear of violent retaliation, but they did the seemingly impossible: created a film adaptation of Rushdie's 1980 novel Midnight's Children.

The film, a tale of two men born at the precise moment India gained independence from colonial Britain, has already hit the festival circuit, including a bow at BFI London Film Festival earlier this month, and will be released stateside next month, but before that, take a peak at the official trailer and some footage from Midnight's Children AFTER THE JUMP.

NEWS: Mrs. Jackson Missing; Too Many Traitors; Bristol Palin Laughs At 'Faggot'

 Tripp Palin calls Auntie Willow a "faggot" -- mom laughs -- AFTER THE JUMP ... 

 Is Michael Jackson's mom missing or not?

 Michele Bachmann's search for Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the American government nets ... Grover Norquist?

 The Paterno statue goes down. 

 Australia's ex-minister of foreign affairs on marriage equality, off the record.

 For some reason, a half-dozen Indian newspapers are reporting this weekend that Marilyn Monroe was a lesbian. 

 Growing up gay in the west of Scotland, the Church is no help at all:

After years of watching The Devil Wears Prada and Sex and the City and preferring the products of Habitat and Ikea to Adidas and Puma, you finally acknowledge that there may be trouble ahead. What to do, though? Even if you tell your parents gently that you are having issues with your sexual identity, you know that they will either pretend they didn't hear you or that you should seek counsel from the parish priest. You might as well tell him that all this time he thought you were human you were really a horse. If he's not actually gay himself he'll simply say: "Take two paracetamol and lie down until the feeling goes away."

  The 14 gay Olympians.

 Alexander Cockburn is dead.

 Boycotting Chick-fil-A? Why not Best Buy, Target, and Exxon, too?

 ... and what about Microsoft and Apple?

 A handful of advocates, armed with nothing more than their keyboards, have put many of the country’s largest retailers, including Apple, Microsoft, Netflix and Wal-Mart, on the spot over their indirect and, until recently, unnoticed roles in funneling money to Christian groups that are vocal in opposing homosexuality.

The advocates are demanding that the retailers end their association with an Internet marketer that gets a commission from the retailers for each online customer it gives them ... a share of the commission that retailers pay is donated to a Christian charity of the buyer’s choice, from a list that includes prominent conservative evangelical groups like the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family.