Up to date on Wednesday 22 May 2013

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The Gay marriage Bill for England and Wales was passed by 366 to 161, a majority of 205 on Tuesday night. Twelve senior ministers including David Jones and Owen Paterson were among the 133 Conservative MPs who voted against the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill. The Bill will now pass to the House of Lords, where some peers are planning further attempts to prevent it passing into law.

British Conservative MP David Davies addresses a group of anti-gay marriage demonstrators in London May 21, 2013. Photo: Adrian Dennis/Agence France Press

Three more gay men have been attacked in Manhattan just hours after thousands of demonstrators held a rally to protest against the killing of a young man who was murdered over the weekend because he was gay.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said that a gay couple, Steven Dixon and Michael Coleman, were walking in SoHo at around 5am Tuesday when two men started hurling anti-gay slurs at them in both English and Spanish as they made their way down Broadway between Prince and Houston streets. The suspects punched 42-year-old Dixon, causing injuries to his right eye. His 41-year-old boyfriend was also beaten.

Google Maps

Nigel Farage, the leader of the UK Independence Party, has said he will not expel members for voicing “old-fashioned” views about homosexuality, including those who describe it as “disgusting”.

You know who not to vote for.

A Moroccan court convicted two men of homosexuality and public indecency, and sentenced each to four months in prison. Prosecutors at the Temara court near Rabat, the capital, said at Monday’s trial that the men, aged 28 and 19, were caught having sex in a car and arrested. The men denied the charges. “If we thought our clients were homosexuals, we would refuse to defend them,” one of the lawyers said to the judge in court. He refused to identify himself to reporters.

Moroccan law outlaws homosexuality and gives a penalty of six months to three years in prison and a fine. According to the latest figures available from the Ministry of Justice, in 2011 81 trials involving accusations of homosexuality were held. The daily newspaper al-Akhbar reported on May 9 that three Moroccans from the northern town of Souq al-Arbaa recently received three-year sentences for homosexuality.

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Up to date on Monday 20 May 2013

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Much of the news media today is concerned with the shenanigans in the House of Commons over the Gay Marriage Bill (England and Wales). The votes are expected later tonight.

Human Rights Watch today told Zambian authorities to dismiss all charges and release James Mwansa and Phillip Mubiana who were arrested for engaging in homosexual acts when a neighbour tipped off the police. The police should immediately cease forensic anal examinations, which are intrusive, invasive and constitute cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment in violation of international law, said HRW. Both men were subjected to anal examinations without their consent by forensic doctors at the Kapiri Mposhi District Hospital, as part of the police investigation.

The arrest, detention, and prosecution of men suspected of homosexual acts is only one aspect of a looming human rights crisis for LGBT people in Zambia. Since April, politicians, religious, and community leaders have been carrying out vicious campaigns to vilify LGBT people, Human Rights Watch said.

Juliet Mphande, director of Lusaka-based LGBT organization Friends of Rainka, told Human Rights Watch that Mwansa and Mubiana, both 21, were coerced to confess to the allegations and have been deprived of adequate food and water while in detention.

James Mwape covered himself in a head sock while Philip Mubiana covered himself in a blank coat after appearing in court: Photo: Lusaka Times

Gay activists and supporters in New York will rally this evening to “demand an end to hate crimes against our community”. The LGBT Community Center announced a 5:30 p.m. rally on 13th Street, followed by a march to West Eighth Street and Sixth Avenue, where Mark Carson was shot and killed after his alleged assailant hurled anti-gay slurs.

Earlier this month, a gay couple was attacked on West 32nd Street and beaten so severely that one of the men needed eye surgery. Days before that, another gay couple was assaulted by a group of men in the same area, near Madison Square Garden. “New York is our city, and we aren’t going backward,” said Glennda Testone, executive director of the group organizing the rally.

A 33-year-old man is charged with murder as a hate crime in the Friday shooting death of Mark Carson. Two men were arrested in one of the other attacks.

NBC

Gay Activist is sad to learn of the recent violent attack on Christopher Bryant and his partner Damon. Mr Bryant is the editor of the online gay magazine Polari.

They were walking home through South London’s Betts Park when they were intercepted by a group of six men, who started speeding up and following them. The men started running and first caught his partner Damon. Mr Bryant doubled-back to get the attackers off his partner, but the attackers beat him to the ground, kicking his face and saying ‘stay down faggot’.

Gay Activist wishes Christopher and Damon a speedy recovery from their attack and ordeal and hope for justice.

Gay Star News

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Up to date on Sunday 19 May 2013

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A gunman used anti-gay slurs before he shot and killed a man in fashionable Greenwich Village early Saturday. Police were dispatched to the corner of 8th Street and Sixth Avenue just after midnight Saturday. They found the victim — Marc Carson, 32, of Harlem, pictured — on the ground with a gunshot wound to the head. Elliot Morales, 33, was charged with Second Degree Murder As A Hate Crime, as well as Criminal Possession Of A Weapon on Saturday. The gunman first urinated on the street outside the bar, then walked into the bar and made anti-gay remarks to the bartender.

There have been 22 “bias attacks” in New York City this year, compared with 13 at this time last year.

News.com

Leaders from mosques across the country have signed a letter accusing the Government of attacking “the cornerstone of family life”.

Organisers said Muslim opposition should be seen as a challenge to David Cameron’s claims to be acting in the interests of “equality” and “diversity”. They quote the Koran and say they are fulfilling a “sacred trust to God” by airing their views, and they describe marriage as a “sacred contract between a man and a woman” which they say “cannot be redefined”.

The letter has been signed by 505 imams and mosque chairmen from London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Leicester, Luton, Preston, Blackburn, Burnley, Dewsbury, Newcastle, Bradford, Huddersfield and Nottingham among other cities.

Trish/Bergen Record/New York Daily News

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Up to date on Friday 17 May 2013

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Portugal’s parliament today adopted legislation allowing individuals in a gay marriage or partnership to apply to adopt each other’s children. The bill passed its first reading by 99 votes to 94 with nine abstentions. The opposition Socialist Party and the extreme left, and 16 members of Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho’s centre-right Social Democrats, voted in favour. The law now has to pass a second reading before being signed by the country’s president.

Two other bills seeking to give couples full rights to adopt jointly were rejected, however. In Portugal, any individual can apply to adopt but a gay marriage law passed three years ago explicitly excluded adoption for same-sex couples. The new bill aims not to revisit adoption by gay couples but to “respond pragmatically to existing family realities,” the bill’s authors said.

Agence France Press

Yesterday was of course the International Day against Homophobia and the Winnipeg Free Press looks at the progress gays in Canada have made – and finds it wanting.

Education Minister Nancy Allan said the government of Manitoba was fully committed to helping create an inclusive province for all. “We have to stand up against homophobia because we can’t be bystanders. Students can’t work if they’re humiliated, intimidated or marginalized,” she said, encouraging all Manitobans to fight homophobia. More and more bullying of gay students is occurring on the Internet and via social media, often cloaked in anonymity. “Bullying has taken on a new form and homophobia is changing. Our laws need to keep up.”

Winnipeg Free Press

More than one in four gay people in Europe have been subjected to violence, abuse or hate-filled threats in the past five years, according to a study of homophobia in Europe.

The European Union is calling for action to counter discrimination and violence against homosexuals after the survey, by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights, revealed many gay people are living in fear across the 27-nation bloc. The survey of 93,000 lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people showed that more than 80 percent of the group are verbally abused or bullied at school, nearly one in five feel discriminated against when seeking work and a quarter of the people have been attacked or threatened in recent years.

Morten Kjaerum, pictured, Director of the EU Fundamental Rights Agency, said action is needed ‘to break down the barriers, eliminate the hate and create a society where everyone can fully enjoy their rights.’

2008 Photo: The Associated Press

The International Day against Homophobia was also marked in Tbilisi, Georgia, today. It turned nasty, quickly. Thousands of other Georgians led by priests broke through police barricades and forced gay rights activists to flee.

Holding banners saying “Stop Homosexual Propaganda in Georgia!” and “Not in our city!”, the demonstrators swarmed into a square in central Tbilisi where about 50 Georgians were rallying in support of gay rights. Police escorted the gay rights supporters onto buses and drove them away to avoid violence. Several people, including some journalists, received minor injuries.

Later in the evening, rowdy crowds took to the streets and started shouting at people they thought might be homosexual.

David Mdzinarishvili/Reuters (Today)

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Up to date on Sunday 12 May 2013

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A 23-year-old man has been tortured to death in Russia in an apparent homophobic attack. Rights groups warn that anti-gay sentiments are on the rise in Russia. The victim’s battered and naked body was found in the courtyard of an apartment building in the southern city of Volgograd on Friday morning. The young man had suffered numerous injuries, including to the genitalia, and had been sodomized with several beer bottles.

“He was raped with beer bottles and had his skull smashed with a stone,” Natalia Kunitskaya, a spokeswoman for the Volgograd region branch of the Investigative Committee, told AFP. She confirmed the attack was believed to have been a hate crime, a rare admission in Russia.

Two men aged 22 and 27 have been detained in connection with the attack, the Moscow-based Investigative Committee said in a statement on Saturday. One of the suspects has a criminal history. The victim was said to have been drinking with the two men, apparently while celebrating Victory Day which Russia marks on May 9. Regional investigator Andrei Gapchenko told Echo of Moscow radio on Saturday that two men started beating the victim after he told them he was gay.

Nikolai Alexeyev, the Russian gay activist, called for harsher punishments for homophobic crime. We are planning to press for hatred of sexual minorities to be qualified as an aggravating circumstance if it is a motive for a crime,” Nikolai told Interfax. “At the moment, hatred for sexual minorities is practically disregarded as a motive, and most likely that [Volgograd] crime will be investigated as one caused by a trivial row and the homophobic motives will gradually disappear from all the documents.”

Destination 360

Former minister Tim Loughton (pictured) and fellow Tory MPs are pushing for a public referendum on gay marriage to be held on the same day as the next general election, which under our new five year term law is due in May 2015. Back in February 134 Tories voted against the Coalition’s plan to introduce equal marriage, 35 abstained and only 126 voted for gay marriage. MPs calling for a referendum include the Unionist MP Jim Shannon and David Burrowes, the Conservative who spearheaded Tory oppostion to the policy. An amendment tabled to the draft law in the past few days calls for public to be asked: “At present, the law in England and Wales defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Should the law be changed to define marriage as the union of two people – whether a man and a woman, or woman and a woman, or a man and a man?”

The Gay Marriage (England and Wales) Bill is due to have its third and final reading in the House of Commons on 20 May.

Sarah Lee/Guardian

Associated Press reports that Asllan Berisha and Brian Ramirez, both 21, were arrested in connection with the beating of two gay men in Manhattan early Friday and police are investigating whether there is a link to an earlier anti-gay attack in the same area last Sunday. The two victims were approached by a group of about five men who shouted anti-gay slurs and beat them. The gay men tried to flee but the attackers followed them to the entrance to the 33rd Street PATH station, where Port Authority officers saw the assault and broke it up. Several of the attackers fled but officers arrested two suspects on charges of felony assault as a hate crime.

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Up to date on Saturday 11 May 2013

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Death threats against Caleb Orozco, pictured, who is attempting to overturn laws that criminalise homosexuality in Belize, have escalated during the four-day courtroom hearing and his case has stirred up resentment of the gay community, according to Lisa Shoman. “There has been a visible increase of threats and violence against Mr Orozco and against all homosexuals in Belize,” she told the local TV channel. “There are threats for killing, burning, shooting; you name it. It has to stop. We are all Belizeans. We can agree to disagree without getting violent about it.”

The London-based Human Dignity Trust, which is supporting his case as part of its global campaign to decriminalise homosexuality, and whose chairman is the eminent human rights lawyer Timothy Otty QC, said Orozco’s car had been damaged in an attack on Thursday night.

UN Aids Caribbean

National lottery grants have been awarded to homophobic British faith groups, including a range of Christian, Muslim, Jewish and other religious groups, over the last 20 years, mainly to finance community projects working with young or vulnerable people.

They include the Nigerian based Christ Apostolic church in Luton, which won a £10,000 lottery grant to set up an after-school club for students to play music together in 2007. The club no longer operates. A Sunday school lesson plan says: “… Same-sex relationships are foreign to God’s Law … Anyone who practises lesbianism, homosexuality, gay-marriage etc is a beast! Don’t do it!” It adds: “At the end of this lesson, the people of God should be showing deeper hatred for sexual sins.”

Gay campaign groups want a funding review and more oversight, and say groups should not get public money if they do not uphold equal values.

AOL Money

Europe’s biggest gay rugby tournament, the Union Cup 2013, is on in Bristol from 23 to 26 May. 550 rugby players have registered. The fifth biennial Union Cup tournament will be hosted by Bristol Bisons RFC, the city’s gay and inclusive rugby team. This year is set to be the largest tournament so far, with teams from as far afield as Stockholm, Berlin, Lisbon, Amsterdam, Edinburgh and Dublin. There will also be teams from Cardiff, London, Birmingham and Manchester. This Is Bristol thinks the tournament will boost the city’s economy by £250,000.

Union Cup 2013 web site

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Up to date on Monday 6 May 2013

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David Cameron has been urged by Conservative MPs to scrap the gay marriage bill in a bid to halt the rapid rise of the UK Independence Party, who won 147 council seats in last weeks’ county council elections. Since then the pressure has piled up on would-be reforming Prime Minister David Cameron. Sir Gerald Howarth, pictured, a former defence minister, said his constituents were “fed up to the back teeth” because the Government failed to deliver on promises. He challenged Mr Cameron to adopt a plan which includes scrapping the gay marriage Bill, freezing the overseas aid budget, opting out of the European Convention on Human Rights, cutting immigration and holding a prompt EU referendum.

The Gay Marriage Bill has been through the Lords and is waiting for a third reading in the House of Commons, but no date has been set for its’ third reading. If it passes that hurdle it goes to the Queen for signing into law.

Press Association

Exciting news from San Francisco, if you’re into that sort of thing. Your Activist is, frankly, approaching the “past it” generation.

San Francisco’s Castro area is excited that a high-end, male strip club is going into the iconic old Bank of America building (pictured with a typical community event on the doorstep, April 20th 2013) right next to Harvey Milk Plaza. It’s called the Randy Rooster SF, and is being billed as a “gay gentleman’s supper and burlesque club.” “From what they presented to me, it appears to be a go-go dancing, semi-strip club,” said Terry Asten Bennett with the Merchants of Upper Market and Castro association. “It’s not going to be nude, but potentially they will be stripping down to thongs,” said Randy Rooster co-owner Daniella Reichstetter. But unlike other strip clubs, she said, patrons won’t be stuffing dollar bills into the thongs.

Spoilsports.

Steve Rhodes

Voice of America reports that Russia’s Duma is shortly expected to give final approval to the vaguely worded bill that would ban “homosexual propaganda” accessible to minors. Despite protests, the bill won nearly unanimous approval in a preliminary vote last January.

Manny de Guerre, pictured, a long-term British resident of Russia, helped organize “Side by Side,” the gay film festival in Moscow. “The impact of the law is that it creates fear in society,” said de Guerre who attended the festival with her partner. “It gives the green light to Orthodox activists, to nationalists, that it’s OK to beat up lesbian and gay people, that it’s OK to discriminate against them.”

In a a nationwide Levada poll conducted in February, two-thirds of respondents backed laws banning “gay propaganda” and large majorities said that gay propaganda could mean banning books, films, protests and parades.

At the offices of Young Guard, a Kremlin support group, Ekaterina Stenyakina, gives voice to mainstream Russians’ distaste for homosexuality. “We have traditional religions in which family values are among the most important of all,” said Stenyakina, a leader of the group. “That’s why our country, our state, is not ready for this kind of manifestation – gay parades on main squares.”

Oleg Grannikov, a Moscow gay activist, says that in this environment most Russian gays keep their personal lives in the shadows. “In Moscow, of course, the situation is better than in the regions,” he said during a break at the film festival. “But still, while people may be open with their friends, very few are open with their parents or at their job.”

Russia’s new legislation seems designed to keep Russian gays firmly in the closet for years to come.

Participants march and shout slogans during a protest by gay rights activists in St. Petersburg May 1, 2013: Reuters | Manny de Guerre: Front Line Defenders

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Up to date on Wednesday 24 April 2013

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The deadly bacterial meningitis outbreak among gay men in New York City is unlikely to abate any time soon, New York City health officials warn. In the last two years 7 men have died and 22 have been hospitalised. The New York City outbreak has been linked to parties, online websites or apps that men used to find other men for “close or intimate sexual contact,” according to health officials. But for more than half of the men sickened by meningitis, there was no evidence that the men had used any of these means to encounter other men, according to public health officials.

After four cases of meningococcal disease among gay men were reported in Los Angeles there were concerns that the New York City outbreak had spread. Public health officials in Los Angeles and New York say the strains are not connected.

Gay and bisexual men in England could halt the spread of HIV in their community within a generation, according to a major new campaign launched today by the Department of Health and the THT. The It Starts With Me campaign urges people in high-risk groups to get tested for HIV at least every 12 months. They should get tested more often than that if they have symptoms or have unprotected sex. People should protect themselves during sex by using condoms and finding other ways to avoid risk.

DoH/THT

The US National Football League has agreed at last to better protect gay players against discrimination and harassment. The NFL will promote a “culture of inclusion” for gay players. They will also display posters in locker rooms to highlight the NFL’s anti-discrimination policies.

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Up to date on Monday 22 April 2013

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Toutes les nouvelles d’aujourd’hui est de la France, et ce n’est pas bon.

“As an often ill-tempered debate in the national assembly on the subject of gay marriage came to an end last week, violence against gays and their businesses was clearly escalating,” says The Guardian, “with arrests at protests in the capital and other cities, and reports of attacks on gay bars. Anti-gay marriage protesters, who have taken to calling their movement Le Printemps Français (the French spring, an echo of the Arab spring uprisings that overthrew unpopular dictators), mimicked the radical feminist movement FEMEN, whose members demonstrate topless, and took off their shirts outside the French parliament. The figurehead of the anti-gay marriage movement, the comedian Virginie Tellenne, who calls herself Frigide Barjot and who has described herself as “press attaché for Jesus”, had earlier said: “If Hollande wants blood, he’ll get it.” She later retracted her comment, saying she had “gone too far”.

“Jean Soubeyre, a 43-year-old who works in marketing, said the legitimacy given to homophobia in the current climate was horrible. “The law will pass, but it’s crystallising all sorts of other problems, such as the financial crisis.” Rol agreed that the law will pass. “Hollande knows he doesn’t have a choice. If he renounces it, he will lose all credibility,” he said. “For me, the [anti-gay marriage] protests just confirm that France is a rightwing country at heart.”

Michel Euler/AP

Raphaël Leclerc has become another victim of violence in the wake of the debate and protests. He was punched and kicked after being jumped by three men when he and his partner left a club on Saturday in Nice. “We were not kissing and we were not holding hands,” explained the 24-year-old. “A couple of minutes later there were three, who were shouting ‘hey gays’ at us, and then they ran at us.”

LGBT campaigners say the pending arrival of France’s same-sex marriage bill has been used by some as an excuse to carry out anti-gay violence.

Raphaël Leclerc

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Up to date on Thursday 18 April 2013

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Four people have been detained on suspicion of carrying out an attack at a Lille, France, gay bar, amid nationwide tensions over the gay marriage bill. Four men smashed the bar’s windows, hurled furniture and yelled insults, and started an altercation that left the assailants, the bar’s owner and two bar tenders with light injuries.

More people were detained in Paris after a protest against gay marriage ended with demonstrators fighting police and damaging cars along the Champs-Elysees.

President Francois Hollande’s government called today for an end to violent protests. It said those behind the rise in homophobic assaults would be punished. “I cannot accept … homophobic acts and violence against property in the midst of protests, or any defiance of law enforcement officials,” Hollande told reporters during a visit to Paris Charles de Gaulle airport. “Procedures must be respected, sensibilities must be respected, and everyone must be heard … but the law and parliament also need to be respected.”

Agence France – Press

California’s law to ban licensed counsellers from practising ex-gay treatments is boiling down to whether the therapy is free speech or a medical treatment that can be regulated by government, Judge Morgan Christen of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said yesterday. Morgan and two other judges considered 90 minutes of legal arguments over the ban on “sexual-orientation change” counselling of minors. The court will issue a written ruling later.

Undated Photo: Uncredited/Pink News

Greg Bourke, of Louisville Kentucky, pictured with his son, who signed up to help at the Boy Scouts of America when his son joined, but who was made to step down because he is gay, has delivered a petition with over 64,000 signatures to one of their major donors.

The Boy Scouts of America is currently embroiled in a debate over whether to lift its ban on gay volunteers, members and staff. Earlier in February, it delayed a vote on whether or not to lift the ban until May “due to the complexity of the issue”. Bourke’s petition urges United Way, a large nonprofit organisation in the US, which allocates funding to BSA troops across the country.

Uncredited photo: Pink News

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