Tracy Thorne-Begland when he was a US Navy Pilot. Gay Influence
Virginia’s General Assembly rejected gay Tracy Thorne-Begland for a position as a judge after conservatives argued that his support for gay marriage and challenge to the military’s now-defunct “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy made him unfit for the bench. The House of Delegates voted 33 to 31, with 10 abstentions, to make Richmond prosecutor Tracy Thorne-Begland a General District Court judge in Richmond. He had needed 51 votes in the 100-member chamber to win appointment. “He holds himself out as being married,” said Del. Robert G. Marshall, who is running for U.S. Senate. Noting that gay marriage is not legal in Virginia, he said that Thorne-Begland’s “life is a contradiction to the requirement of submission to the constitution.”
Dallas Kilponen/Sydney Morning Herald
Retired High Court judge Michael Kirby told a Senate inquiry into gay marriage earlier this month that despite the heights he had reached in his career, he remained a second-class citizen because he could not marry his partner, Johan van Vloten. A reader wrote: ”It seems that all Kirby has to do is to raise his tired old hat and he gets a free kick from the Herald.” writes the SMH’s Readers Editor, Judy Prisk who goes on to look at how to achieve balance in the coverage of gay marriage.
There’s only one way to achieve balance. Have equality in marriage. Next…
Out in the Sticks publicity photograph: The Hereford Times
Organisers of the Out In The Sticks festival in Herefordshire say more needs to be done to overcome prejudice in the county. It is run by Hereford’s Courtyard Centre for the Arts and Herefordshire Rainbow Forum. Martyn Green, from the venue, hopes the festival, in its fifth year, will raise awareness and said it was “by no means exclusively for LGBT people”.
The programme of films, plays and concerts continues until Saturday. Mr Green said: “We’ve seen audiences grow and people coming out with confidence. We’ve still got some way to go – we’re not Birmingham, Brighton or London. In Herefordshire we have small pockets of those communities and it’s about giving them the confidence that there isn’t going to be prejudice.”
David Cameron in happier, gayer times. Uncredited press photo
The difference a few days makes. Just hours ago the Tories and Liberal Democrats received a thrashing in local council elections, losing more than 800 seats between them, mainly to a reinvigorated Labour Party, although probably mostly as a protest vote against economic austerity and failure. Now Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister David Cameron is expected to drop his plans to legalise gay marriage after his party’s miserable showing in those elections sparked a backlash from angry Tory backbenchers. The gay marriage pledge is expected to be dropped from the forthcoming Queens’ speech.
Photo: Help Valerie
Ediage Valerie Ekwedde’s deportation to Cameroon has been temporarily halted after he refused to board a flight from London to Paris. Campaigners say his life is at risk because he is gay and should not be removed from the UK. Mr Ekwedde fears persecution in Cameroon. The UK Border Agency found “no credible evidence” he was gay. The pilot is said to have decided not to fly with him out of consideration to other passengers. Mr Ekwedde arrived in Britain last November claiming he had been persecuted in Cameroon because of his sexuality. In July 2010, the UK Supreme Court ruled that two gay men from Cameroon and Iran were entitled to refugee status in a landmark ruling. The Supreme Court heard that in Cameroon jail sentences for homosexuality ranged from six months to five years.
Some of the attendees at this year’s Equality Forum. Photo: South Florida Gay News
The Equality Forum in the US is under way and JTA proudly reports that Israel is the featured theme. The events in Philadelphia, which end today, feature an array of Israeli gay performers and activists, as well as an address by Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the United States. The forum brings together a number of gay activist groups. They have a different theme every year. This year is the twentieth consecutive annual event.
ANC MP Patekile Holomisa, who chairs the constitutional review committee, said sexual orientation was a difficult subject. “The last time this issue was discussed was about same-sex marriages. Most of the people in the caucus were opposed to it, but then Luthuli House and the leadership instructed us to vote for it,” he said. Holomisa heads the Congress of Traditional Leaders.
Nikolai Alekseyev during his picket near St. Petersburg City Hall on April 12. Photo: Gay.ru
Nikolai Alexeyev was convicted today of spreading “gay propaganda” among minors in the first such ruling in Russia’s modern history. A city court in St. Petersburg fined him 5,000 rubles ($170) for breaching the law, which was controversially introduced by lawmakers in Russia’s second-largest city in February. He pledged to appeal the decision. Alexeyev was briefly detained last month after he picketed the city hall in St. Petersburg with a poster which said that “homosexuality is not a perversion” (pictured). He said the judge has not presented the grounds for her decision, and that they will only be available next week. Calls to the court went unanswered shortly after the ruling.
Photo: Michael Cheetham
Congratulations to the London Gay Men’s Chorus which has reached the ripe young age of 21. The choir was begun in 1991 by a group of nine men – none of whom are in the choir any more – who used to meet at a social group called London Friend, where they would play their favourite CDs. “Someone said to them: ‘Why not start a choir if you’re so into music?’ so they rehearsed a few pieces to raise money for charity and put on their first gig at Angel tube,” says chorus chairman Alisdair Low.
On 19 November 2011, Paul Ewang was arrested by the police and kept in custody for two days. “I was in a bar with a friend who is quite effeminate. When we left, the barman started swearing at us and poking us with an iron rod… He hit me with the rod, shouting: ‘Gays, it’s a gay couple.’ People came out and started assaulting us. They were gathering old tyres to burn us alive when the police arrived and took us to the station. We were kept in custody on charges of homosexuality. I fainted at the end of the second day, out of exhaustion and hunger, and was taken to hospital,” says Ewang. He is free because he managed to escape from the hospital.
‘Marc’, manager for the Centre Region branch of gay group PAEMH, recalls his own experience. Seven years ago, he was arrested and held for over 12 months in the Central Prison of Yaoundé. He was having a drink at a bar in Yaoundé when three policemen raided the place. “They said they were looking for a man whose face they didn’t know, but who regularly frequented the bar. Therefore, they were going to take all forty of us to the station for identification.” The police officers said the homosexuality charges were simply based on information that the bar was frequented by gays. “On June first , all eleven of us appeared before a judge who immediately signed a committal order. That is how we ended up in prison.”
The prosecution only started looking for ‘evidence’ of homosexuality three months after their incarceration, and subjected the accused to rectal examinations in a desperate attempt to find ‘traces of sodomy’. “Some bribed their way out,” Marc says, referring to those who left the police station. “But I refused to do so because I hadn’t done anything wrong. Ten other people also refused to ‘negotiate’, as we say in Cameroon, and the policemen kept us in custody on charges of homosexuality.”
Openly gay spokesman Richard Grenell left the Mitt Romney campaign because he was ‘silenced’ while his boss refused to defend him against personal attacks. Mr Grenell, Mr Romney’s former foreign policy and national security spokesman, felt his reputation was being destroyed by far right criticism that he would advocate for gay marriage inside a Romney White House. Mr Grenell resigned after less than a month on the job and cited ‘personal reasons’ as the cause for his departure.
A gay bar in Copenhagen has confirmed it has barred straight couples from kissing there. Jobbe Joller, the founder of Homosocialt Fællesskab, said a bouncer at the Never Mind bar in the Danish capital told a woman in his party she could not kiss her boyfriend. Confronting the bouncer, he said: “The bouncer replied that it was unacceptable to conduct in that kind of behaviour at a gay place and that Never Mind receives a lot of emails from its gay guests concerning the high number of straight guests that visit the bar. I asked him if it was not the same as saying that black people are not allowed to kiss in Never Mind, but he disagreed and told me that the owner of Never Mind may decide who can kiss and who can’t kiss in the bar.”
The Irish Government has blocked a move to protect gay doctors and teachers from being fired due to their sexual orientation. Justice Minister Alan Shatter claimed Fianna Fáil senator Averil Power’s Employment Equality Bill may not have been able to pass “constitutional muster”. Ms Power said appropriate wording could have been worked out at committee stage, but the move was voted down. The Gay and Lesbian Equality Network described the Government’s attitude as “very disappointing”. Ms Power told the Seanad provisions in law that could see schools, hospitals and other institutions sack staff because of their orientation “serve as a daily chill factor for gay lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people”.
Di Natale. Photo: Getty
Udinese striker Antonio Di Natale has stated that the taboo of homosexuality in professional football will not be broken any time soon. “Professionally, I admire Prandelli and am fond of the man, but I disagree with him [on homosexuality],” Di Natale told La Repubblica. “Breaking the taboo of homosexuality in football is difficult, almost impossible. I wonder how the fans would react? I’m sorry, but I disagree with the choice to go public, at least in football because privacy is very important. Our world, in some respects, is very complex.”
“Homosexuality is a mental disorder and psychological perversion which psychologists call a sadomasochistic perversion – an act of changing good and right into bad and wrong. The result of this act is very dangerous: 1. The perversion of justice 2. The perversion of the truth 3. Sexual diseases like gonorrhoea and syphilis, which kill the patient slowly and painfully.”
Wow. Would you like some more of this enlightenment? Okay then, brace yourselves.
“A study shows that gay persons are mentally retarded and they hate children. Those who need children either adopt or get them through heterosexual unions. It is proved that sexual permissive practices spread deadly diseases like HIV and AIDS. It is discovered that after 1960 the rates of sexually transmitted diseases rose sharply. In 1993, Simon Le Vay who studied the mental status of homosexuals and heterosexuals found an important difference in the size of the hypothalamus, a part of the brain that regulates hormones. Genetics also influence such an attitude. A study on 33 pairs of homosexuals revealed that they had a distinctive genetic pattern involving X Chromosomes. There are clinics rendering service to homosexuals who are mentally disorder. In India, there are seven lakh homosexuals affected with venereal diseases.
Stop this menace or face consequences, may be destruction of the world.”
“From the late 1950s to the ’70s his limp-wristed camp act, long before the days of Larry Grayson and John Inman, was the talk of the town. His catchphrase was, ‘Shut your gob, Tony’s speaking’. Glasgow-born, Tony’s real name was Frederick York Clark Wight. He spent much of his childhood in the Fulwood Cottage Homes orphanage in Sheffield, reflecting: “I was born of good parents but on the wrong side of the blanket.” National Service saw Tony stationed in Germany and Austria with the Army Medical Corps, then he signed up for six years as a medic in the Navy. Out on Civvy Street he worked first for a tailor in Attercliffe, standing in the doorway to attract custom, later becoming the ‘singing waiter’ at the now demolished Rotherham House pub, near Castle Market. Later he worked at Firvale Infirmary – now the Northern General Hospital – as a geriatric staff nurse.”
Your Activist thought you might like this snap of Mr Gay World contestants in South Africa. Delegates from around the world are attending the event in Johannesburg but Mr Gay New Zealand, Andrea Derleth, currently leads after an obstacle course and written exam on questions about LGBT history.
Fred Karger. Official photo of the Fred Karger campaign
The Times of Israel has looked at the US Presidential Campaign of Fred Karger, “the first gay … to run for the White House. He’s been left out of the conversation because his campaign has barely registered — in last week’s Maryland primary, for example, he placed eighth out of eight candidates (including several who are no longer running). With 349 ballots in his favor, the 62-year-old Karger walked away with 0.1 percent of the vote — leaving him 49.1 percent and more than 114,000 supporters behind Romney, the winner.” They asked him if he will run again. “[Laughs] I’m pretty exhausted from this nonstop activity for 25 months. I can’t anticipate another run for office. This is my first, and I’m thoroughly enjoying it, but I think this is probably it.”
Ludovic Mohamed Zahed (R) and his partner Qiyam al-Din. Al Arabiya
Ludovic Mohamed Zahed, a French man of Algerian origin, and his South African partner Qiyam al-Din, were married in accordance to the Sharia in the presence of a Mauritian imam named Jamal who blessed their union on February 12, 2012. The two were previously able to marry in South Africa under the country’s same sex marriage laws, which also permits gay couples to adopt but France does not recognize same sex unions. Zahed, who has his family’s blessings for the marriage, says that he faces more obstacles with the French law than discrimination from Muslims. Zahed decided to make his wedding a family affair, with his trusted Mauritian imam in tow. The marriage took place in a modest house in Servon on the outskirts of Paris, and was attended by his parents and few close friends. “Being married in front of my family, was like a new start of life for me, I could have never imagined such a day would come, seeing the joy in my parents’ eyes after they had battled with my sexuality and tried with all their might to change the course of my sexual orientation.”
Gay Activist sends warm congratulations.
Jim Hubbard in his vintage Act Up sweatshirt. Jim Hubbard
It is Act Up’s 25th anniversary, and Act Up will be demonstrating on Wall Street, New York on April 25 at 11 a.m. local time, demanding a tax on Wall Street to fund AIDS research. For more information, visit facebook.com/events/208718522568785.
The Blue Diamond Society, Nepal’s leading gay rights group, has launched Nepal’s first gay sports event. The two-week event at the national football stadium and other venues around Kathmandu will feature Nepali participants in track and field, volleyball, football, martial arts and tennis. Asia already stages the “Asia-Pacific Outgames”, another multi-sport gay event, but this has only been hosted by New Zealand and Australia. Nepal’s version which is due to take place in late September will be the first in Asia.
“The aims for organising the Blue Diamond National Sport Competition 2012 are to mainstream LGBT people into the larger society, promote healthy lifestyles, encourage physical fitness, and promote health mentally and spiritually,” said Nepalese MP Sunil Pant.
The United Arab Emirates Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender group has collected first hand witness accounts which the campaigners insist prove that the party did happen and arrests arrest did take place. Adilah, a lesbian member of UAE LGBT, said: “My friends were at the party and it did happen, we now know that the hotel security staff tipped off the police who then proceeded with the arrests. People were released the following day after signing a testimonial they would “not do it again”, although two people we know of are still unaccounted for and may be still held in prison because of their sexuality.”
Four years ago Frank Mugisha begged his colleagues to join him for his first demonstration in support of gay rights in Uganda. Only four came along, reports the Washington Post. This week, during a march against gender-based violence led by the gay advocacy group Sexual Minorities Uganda, the Ugandan activist saw more than 30 colleagues walk the streets of Kampala holding pro-gay posters. “For us, this is a sign of progress,” Mugisha said, pointing to the white tarpaulin under which his group assembled after Monday’s hour-long march. “We are no longer afraid of anything. We even have a banner.” Mugisha carries a sense of optimism that is slowly germinating within the tightly knit gay community. The mere fact, Mugisha said, that Ugandans are now having a national conversation on gay rights is itself an achievement. In the past, the subject was taboo. “We see a shift in public opinion, and I guess it’s because many Ugandans are talking about homosexuality a lot,” he said. “There are some local leaders who are now willing to meet and talk to us. The only problem we have is the belief people have that we are promoting homosexuality and recruiting children.”
MPs will raise the issue after a Dutch newspaper revealed details of the punishments – which had not been exposed by an official investigation into sexual abuse within the Church published last year. The NRC Handelsblad, a daily evening paper in the Netherlands, identified a man called Henk Heithuis, as one of the young men who were castrated as well as nine other minors. After reporting two monks to the police for abusing him in a Catholic boarding home, he was surgically castrated in 1956, when he was still a minor.
Mr Heithuis. NRC Handelsblad
Cornelius Rogge, 79, a well-known Dutch sculptor who knew Mr Heithuis witnessed the phyiscal evidence of the castration. ‘We once asked Henk to drop his pants when the women were gone. He did that. He was maimed totally. It was a huge shock,’ he said.
The surgical removal of testicles was regarded as a treatment for homosexuality and also as a punishment for those who accused clergy of sexual abuse. Mr Heithuis was castrated at the age of 20 – in 1956 he had accused Catholic clergy of sexually abusing him in his Church run care home.
Mr Heithuis died two years after the castration in a car crash.
The investigation received 1,800 reports of sexual abuse by clergy or volunteers within Dutch Catholic dioceses in the period since 1945.
Gay Activist repeats: The Catholic Church are in no position to lecture anyone else about how to live their lives.
Thanking outgoing Chair Dr Malone for his “stellar work” as Chairperson and tireless advocate on behalf of the transgender community in Ireland, Dr Hannon said as Chairperson he would continue to advocate on behalf of LGBT doctors working in Ireland. “We will be sponsoring further educational bursaries for medical students again this year. I would like to thank all members for their continued interest and involvement in the organisation.”
“Iro Uikka clutches his throat as he describes the violent clash that led to spending his nights sleeping in New York City subway cars. “When I told my mother I was gay, she grabbed me by the neck and threw me out,” he says. “Then she threw my coat on top of me and shut the door.” That was five years ago when he was 18, still living at home in Florida. Uikka is among tens of thousands of homeless youths across America who are LGBT — lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. Most are on the streets because they have nowhere else to go — outcasts who leave home after being rejected by family members or flee shelters because residents bully or beat them. LGBT young people represent a dramatically high proportion of an estimated 600,000 or more homeless youths across the country — between 20 percent and 40 percent, according to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute. But only about 5 percent of youths identify themselves as lesbian, gay or bisexual, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. … Lesbian, gay and bisexual youth are about four times more likely to attempt suicide than their straight peers, according to the CDC. And one in three is thrown out by their parents, according to data collected from youth across the country by the Family Acceptance Project at San Francisco State University. Some youth use “survival sex” to land in a warm bed, or they move from home to home of friends and acquaintances..”
“In the eight years since Tianlei told his parents he was gay, they’ve put relentless pressure on him to act straight and marry. “My parents push me to deceive a girl into marrying me,” said Tianlei, a 28-year-old company manager in the southern Chinese province of Yunnan, using a nickname. “They just want a grandson to save face in front of others and don’t care how she would suffer… I would rather die than do it.” But in China, a great many men give in to the pressure. An estimated 10 million Chinese women are married to gay men, according to retired Qingdao University professor Zhang Beichuan, often trapping wives in unhappy unions they can’t easily leave due to Chinese law and social stigma. Zhang estimates that 80 to 90 percent of gay men in China intend to marry or have married, citing a survey of more than 1,500 Chinese gay men.”
Credit to Hong Seok-cheon, an actor, who is famous in Korea as the former host of a children’s show that was South Korea’s version of “Sesame Street” and a costar of a popular 1990s sitcom. He came out 12 years ago. Within 24 hours, the network summarily fired him from his jobs as a regular guest on several talk shows and slapstick host of the children’s show. No one would take his calls. Hong says he received so many death threats he shut himself up at home and began drinking heavily and contemplating suicide. Previously a nonsmoker, he began going through three packs a day. “I knew my career was over,” he said. “It was like somebody suddenly dropped a bomb on everything I had worked so hard for. One day it was there, and the next it was gone.”
He is the first gay man to discuss sex and sexual orientation on-air in South Korea. 77% of Koreans in one poll said they believed “homosexuality should be rejected.” “In South Korea, we’re led to believe that gay sex is dangerous, alien and dirty. For so many years, I’ve been treated as an outcast in my own country. I’m just so happy to be here today, talking openly about who I really am.”
Erwin van der Borght. Photo SVT
“Laws criminalizing consensual same-sex relationships must be repealed by the Cameroonian government, Amnesty International said as it called for the release of those currently in prison for homosexuality, “It is time to end the arrest, detention, prosecution and other forms of persecution and discrimination against people perceived or known to be gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender,” said Erwin van der Borght, Amnesty International’s director for Africa. Since March 2011, 13 people in Cameroon have been arrested for allegedly practising homosexuality. Most have been targeted on the grounds of their perceived sexual orientation, rather than on any alleged participation in prohibited consensual acts. In virtually no cases have the police or other eyewitnesses claimed to have seen the alleged homosexual acts,” reports All Africa.
“Eight gay men have been murdered in their homes in Gauteng in the past two years in strikingly similar circumstances. The men were all found with their hands tied behind their backs. The most recent murder occurred just over a week ago. There have been no arrests. And, with incomplete forensics and not a single prosecution, a family is now resorting to private investigation.”
There may also be a further victim.
The latest victim, theatre manager Rulov Senekal, was found bound and suffocated in his home on February 26 after a meeting with two men in his apartment the night before, as your Activist reported recently.
HIV activist and ex-TV presenter Jason Wessenaar was murdered in his home in Pretoria West on December 18 last year. He was stabbed seven times in the neck during what appeared to have been a struggle. The murder weapon was different, but there are similarities with the other cases.
Barney van Heerden was found in his Orange Grove house on September 19, strangled and bound after he had let someone into his home. His laptop and cellphone were taken, and again there were no signs of forced entry.
Siphiwe Selby Nhlapo was murdered a week before that. Bound and strangled in his apartment in Kliptown, he had acid poured onto his face. Some clothes and a television were taken from the scene.
Last August, a landlord, who cannot be named, was found strangled and bound at his home in Northcliff. Police believe he had tried to fight off his attacker before he was bludgeoned with a heavy object. He was bound and strangled. Tenants found the body the following morning. Again, there was no forced entry, and almost nothing was stolen.
Oscar O’Hara was killed last May in Kensington. He had been house-sitting for author Ivan Vladislavic. He too was tied up and strangled. Again, very few valuables were taken.
In December 2010, Jim Cathels was found dead in his apartment in Berea. He was bound and strangled. Yet again there was no forced entry and little was taken from the scene.
Manolis Veloudos was bludgeoned with a laptop and bound and strangled in his Linden home in April 2010. A man was arrested for the crime, but the murder charge has since been dropped.
Another gay man, Thebe Mogamisi, is known to have arrived in Joburg from Bloemfontein late last year to pursue a relationship he had started online. He vanished on December 31 and is yet to be found.
Rulov Senek al, Thebe Mogamisi, Manolis Veloudos, Jim Cathels, Siphiwe Selby Nhlapo, Jason Wessenaar, Barney van Heerden and the un-named victim, and their colleagues, friends and families all deserve justice.
Photo: Moti Milrod/Haaretz
After years of being shunned by the mainstream political parties in Israel, gay activists are now making progress.
“After years during which … only Meretz and Hadash had gay divisions, over the past year three centrist parties have joined the pink wave. The first of the large parties was Kadima, which a year ago set up the Kadima B’Ga’ava (Kadima with pride ) section. Labor and Likud also recently established divisions for the gay community.
The two newest members, Labor and Likud, this week held an evening forum at the Evita bar in Tel Aviv. In the presence of a small audience, almost exclusively male, members of the gay community were encouraged to register with the parties. “I joined the Likud around a decade ago, unconnected to the LGBT issue. A person does not have to change his political affiliation because of his sexual orientation,” said the chairman of Pride in the Likud, Dr. Evan Cohen, a lecturer in linguistics at Tel Aviv University,” reports Haaretz.
The Montreal Gazette notes that during the Bruins-Rangers game Sunday on NBC there was a public service announcement aimed at ending homophobia in sports. (That’s it above and it is good.) Eight NHL players, including Rangers goaltender Henrik Lundqvist, Ducks right-wing Corey Perry and Senators rightwing Daniel Alfredsson, are featured in the ad for the You Can Play campaign.
Project founder Patrick Burke said the campaign is intended to “make locker rooms safe for all athletes, rather than places of fear, slurs and bullying.” The message was “shown for the first time during the first intermission of NBC’s Sunday afternoon telecast of the Bruins-Rangers game” and that 35 NHL players “have committed to take part in the project.” His younger brother Brendan acknowledged that he was gay while serving as the manager of the college hockey team at Miami of Ohio. Brian Burke marched in Toronto’s gay pride parade with Brendan, and again after Brendan died in a 2010 car accident.
Brian Burke’s open and accepting attitude is in marked contrast to that of baseball icon Tommy Lasorda. He was estranged from his son Tommy Jr., who died of AIDS in 1991. Lasorda has steadfastly denied his son was gay. “It is important for straight athletes at all levels to step up and let gay athletes know they will be accepted, and to let other straight athletes know that homophobic language and attitude is never appropriate.”
UK passport forms are being updated to include options for same-sex parents. New forms including “parent one” and “parent two” alongside “mother” and “father” are expected to be brought in by the end of the year. There will also be sex-free passports to allow trans people to opt out of identifying themselves as either male or female.
Federico Armenteros. Photo: Federico Armenteros
“Gay old people have to go back in the closet when they enter retirement homes,” explains Federico Armenteros, of the December 26th Foundation in Madrid, named after the date in 1979 when the law used during Gen Franco’s dictatorship to imprison homosexuals – or to send them for “cure” with electric shocks – was repealed. “For many years, a lot of people believed that homosexuals were sick and sinners… That is more pronounced among older people, and hard to change.”
Jelko Kacin, the European parliament’s rapporteur for Serbia says that the decision by the Serbian authorities to ban the gay pride parade failed to ensure the rule of law in the country. “What was at stake here is the question whether the institutions can secure the rule of law in the country. They failed to do so yesterday.” He added that he “deeply regretted” the ban and said that the only way to restore Serbian citizens’ confidence in the government is for the authorities “to effectively neutralise right-wing nationalist organisations”.
Serbian Interior Minister Ivica Dacic told local media today that police arrested over 20 people linked to ultra-nationalist groups who opposed the pride parade over the weekend.
Some Nigerian politicians are again trying to push through legislation to further criminalise lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) people and their friends.
Sex between people of the same gender is already a crime, and in some parts of the country, men who have sex with each other can be put to death – but certain people seem to believe this is not harsh enough.
Here we go again. The Same Gender Marriage Prohibition Bill 2011, a scaled-down version of earlier anti-LGBT bills has popped up in Nigeria’s Parliament. “We as a country need to act very fast for this trend not to find its way into our country,” Senator Domingo Obende is quoted as saying. “Same sex marriage cannot be allowed on moral and religious grounds. The Muslim religion forbids it. Christianity forbids it and the African traditional religion forbids it. It should not be allowed because it will lead to a breakdown of the society.”
Opponents of the new Bill point out its evil effect: “It is actually about giving the state power to punish anyone suspected of entering into, or celebrating and supporting, a sexual relationship or loving partnership between two men or two women. The wording explains that “’Same Gender Marriage’ means the coming together of persons of the same sex with the purpose of living together as husband and wife or for other purposes of same sexual relationship. Partners face up to three years in prison, while any person or group that “witnesses, abets and aids the solemnisation of a same gender marriage contract” may be imprisoned for five years.
Londoners may like to have a sneak pre-vada of the fifth GFEST which gets under way actually in November, but GFEST are hot on advanced publicity. Of interest to activists is the annual political debate associated with the festival. The debate: East London – Homophobia & Transphobia, a culture and arts perspective is on 15 November at Rich Mix in Shoreditch / Bethnal Green.
Finally an appeal by Gay Activist itself. We have been unable to trace any photographs of the historic event the fire at the Dream City Cinema, London which happened in 1994. Does anyone have any photographs of this incident, please? Thank you.
