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The 'Hormonlu Domates'
(Hormone-fed Tomatoes)
Awards
Lamdaistanbul is an organization established in 1993 whose purpose is to change negative opinion and attitudes, produce solidarity, and solve problems of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transvestites and transsexuals (LGBTT).
Headquartered in its namesake city of Istanbul, the group began last year to distribute the 'Hormonlu Domates' (Hormone-fed Tomatoes) Homophobia awards. The goal of the awards is to encourage people and institutions to rethink their attitudes about LGBTT. Last year's 'Hormonlu Domates' winners included comedic actor Mehmet Ali Erbil, super-star entertainer Hülya Avşar, and newspaper columnist Erman Toroğlu (who was the inspiration for the awards in the first place, as you'll see below).
This year's Homophobia Award Winners (for people or organizations that acted negatively toward LGBTT between July 2005 and June 2006) were determined by the voting on Lambdaistanbul's website.
Among the 'Hormone-fed Tomatoes' candidates this year were well-known institutions, associations, and famous people like actor Kadır Inanır (who you mustn't ask) and singer/actor Alişan (who tries to forget the gay role with rape scene that he once played), the Şişli Police (with their robocops), writer/actor Selahattin Duman (with his Mykonos newspaper articles). Click on the article above to see the full list of candidates in 4 categories: The Press, Entertainment, Politics, and Institutions.
Lambdaistanbul representatives say that the inspiration for the idea of the 'Hormonlu Domatoes' Awards originated with Erman Toroğlu: "When he said that homosexuality is the result of side effects from eating hormone-fed chicken, a light bulb suddenly flashed in our minds. We thought that people and organizations that draw public attention (due to their insensitive attitudes about gay-people) ought to get an award. And, this year for the first time, the winners were chosen by public ballot -- which was open to everyone who visited the Lambdaistanbul website."
You too may visit the website (http://www.lambdaistanbul.org/php/hormon.php?hormonYil=2006)
-- and see who won this year. The Homophobia Winners were invited to the awards ceremony which took place on 1 July during Gay Pride Week (Escinsel Onur Haftası) -- but none were available to attend...
For more on Gay issues in Turkey, use our 'Search the whole website' feature in the upper right corner of this page.
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