1 June

Friday 1 June 2012

The late Justin Fashanu. All Sport UK/Getty

Who says our national game is homophobic? Nine out of ten football fans would cheer for gay players, claims the Daily Mail. A new study found that 93 per cent of fans oppose homophobia and would support gay footballers. Ellis Cashmore of Staffordshire University questioned 3,500 supporters in the first study of homophobia amongst fans.
“It is the market which controls football which prohibits gay players coming out. Almost every major announcement about homophobia in football assumes that supporters are hostile to gay players. We have provided the first evidence that gay players would meet with approval from fans of all ages and backgrounds, tempered of course by fans rivalry, which proves the idea of ingrained homophobia in fan culture to be false.”

Gay Activist will have to take on extra staff to deal with the deluge of football stars coming out.

Oink Flap.

Just as well that a US Appeals court decided that it was no longer slander in New York to falsely say that someone is gay.

The decision wiped out decades of rulings, saying that society no longer treated such labels as defamation. Without defamation, there is no longer slander, the court ruled unanimously. Justice Thomas E. Mercure of the Appellate Division’s Third Department wrote for the court that earlier rulings were “inconsistent with current public policy and should no longer be followed.”

Luka Rocco Magnotta’s facebook profile picture

Members of Toronto’s gay community are distancing themselves from Luka Rocco Magnotta, the porn star accused of mailing body parts of a man he killed and dismembered, reports the Sun News, Toronto. He was supposed to have been a dancer at a gay club but – nobody remembers him at all.

Well, you can’t blame them.

A still from “A Special Pride”. Copyright details being sought

“A group of men and women barbecue burgers, set up a tent and mingle. They’re all members of the Rainbow Support Group, a service of the Pride Center. They also have intellectual disabilities. … ‘Acknowledging that people with intellectual disabilities are sexual is a new development in the human services field, one that is still in the pre-Stonewall days for those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender,’ says the film’s narration, as Rainbow Support members line up for a group photo shoot. ‘There’s an unfounded expectation that they do not have a sexuality, let alone an understanding of sexual orientation.’ “

This is the new documentary A Special Pride which is being premiered on June 9th at the Connecticut Gay & Lesbian Film Festival.

Advance warning: Gay Activist is kept up to date, and as part of that process, our daily blog posts are deleted after three months. On June 5th we will be deleting all March 2012 daily blogs.

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23 May

Wednesday 23 May 2012

Psychotherapist Lesley Pilkington has lost her appeal against suspension from her professional body over a therapy session with a journalist who posed as a christian wanting to be “cured” of being gay. She was first suspended in 2010 by the British Association of Counsellors and Psychotherapists for breaching the BACP ethical framework.

Lesley Pilkington. Photo: David Rose/Telegraph

In May 2009 journalist Patrick Strudwick went to see Ms Pilkington posing as “Matthew” and describing himself as a Christian who did not want to be gay any more. He secretly recorded the therapy sessions as part of an investigation into “conversion therapy” that claims to help a patient deny his or her attraction to the same sex.

The appeal panel reported that Mrs Pilkington had: “asked the complainant if there was any freemasonry in his family despite knowing that his parents were both Catholics. She then asserted that ‘freemasonry often encourages it [homosexuality] as well’.”

The panel concluded that: “In this therapeutic session it was totally inappropriate and unnecessary to raise what appeared to be Mrs Pilkington’s personal views about freemasonry”.

Mrs Pilkington also seemed to imply that “Matthew” may have some repressed memory of sexual abuse, an approach that was described by the appeal panel as “entirely wrong”, and agreed that Mrs Pilkington’s inclinations to make diagnoses was unprofessional and premature given this was an early stage in the therapy.

Mrs Pilkington remains suspended.

Getty

Police in Worcestershire, England want to reassure the gay community in Worcester after a man was punched and abused during a homophobic attack outside a city nightclub and subjected to a torrent of homophobic insults after being approached by a group of white men on Friday May 18. One of the men made out he was about to punch the victim before a second man punched him in the back of the head.

One of the group was described as white, 6ft 3ins tall, in his early 20s, with dark short hair combed over and a large nose. He was wearing chinos and a dark jumper with suede patches on its shoulders and elbows.

Inspector John McKay said police were keen to reassure members of the gay community that the force took all hate crime extremely seriously. “Thankfully we receive very few complaints of this nature in Worcester, but we always encourage anyone from the gay community who has been the target of homophobic abuse to report it to the police. I would like to emphasise that officers in Worcester have recently updated their hate crime training and are committed to combating and resolving this type of crime.”

“With the passing of Whitney Houston and now Donna Summer, I’ve been thinking about why divas are so important to the gay community,” writes Joe Kort in the Huff. “I have my own case of diva worship: I adore Diana Ross, Cher, and Oprah. I call their birthdays the “Gay High Holy Days” and celebrate. As a young boy I would take my sister’s black tights and put them over my head and sing “Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves” into a hairbrush, pretending to be Cher!”

Blimey.

Your Activist was not so affected.

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22 May

Tuesday 22 May 2012

Ravi. Photo: Time

Dharun Ravi, 20, yesterday was sent to jail for just 30 days for the death of Tyler Clementi, his room mate. He could have gone to prison for 10 years and been deported from the country after being found unanimously guilty in March of 15 charges, including invasion of privacy, interfering with a witness, tampering with evidence and the hate crime of “bias intimidation”. Despite saying that “society has every right to expect zero tolerance for intolerance” and criticising Ravi for his lack of apology, the judge angered gay-rights campaigners with the short jail term.

Rev. Charles Worley called for gays and lesbians to be placed in a form of concentration camp. Catawba Valley Citizens Against Hate says it plans a peaceful protest on Sunday outside Providence Road Baptist Church, where Rev. Charles Worley delivered his controversial homily on May 13.

Gay England football fans travelling to Ukraine for Euro 2012 have been warned to keep a low profile for their own safety, after Kiev’s first ever gay pride parade was cancelled on Sunday amid fears of violence from far-right thugs. Television pictures showed Svyatoslav Sheremet, head of the Gay Forum of Ukraine, being kicked and jumped on by a group of men after the event was stopped.

Amnesty International said police in the capital advised organisers to abandon the march just 30 minutes before it was due to start after 500 ultra-right football hooligans had gathered. Thousands of England fans will travel to the eastern European country for Euro 2012, which begins on June 8.

Welcome to the summer of no love.

However some positive news from Britain’s National Health Service. Same-sex couples will be given the same rights as heterosexual couples under guidance issued by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence.

The recommendation follows implementation of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 which abolished requirement for fertility clinics to take into account a child’s need for a father or a male role model before agreeing to treatment. Gay couples or single women now need only show they can provide “supportive parenting”.

Demand from gay couples paying privately for fertility services has boomed, and the number of lesbian couples undergoing IVF rose from 178 in 2007 to 417 in 2010.
One cycle of IVF can cost up to £8,000 privately. Because success rates are low – typically 20 per cent for a 38-year-old – couples can spend tens of thousands on treatment.

Many same-sex couples receive “outright discrimination” from health authorities, commented some gay spokespeople today, while anti-gay commentators said it amounted to a Government-backed attempt to “rewrite biology”.

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21 May

Monday 21 May 2012

Reuters

Homophobic thugs beat up Svyatoslav Sheremet, head of Gay-Forum of Ukraine, in Kiev. He was attacked after telling the media that the first gay parade in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev was cancelled because of safety concerns.

Looks like he was right.

Gay Activist sends Mr Sheremet best wishes for a speedy recovery from the attack.

We wish it was safe here in the UK but sadly it is no safer than places like Ukraine. A 19 year old teenager who has not been named was the victim of an unprovoked attack in Worcester city centre when he was subjected to homophobic abuse by a group of five men who then punched him on the back of the head while he was walking down The Avenue towards the Cornmarket car park at about 12.45am on Friday after leaving a nightclub.

He said he woke up feeling “a bit low on confidence” and had a small lump on his head as well as a bit of a headache. “They just kept taunting me and one of them got really lairy and went for a swing for no reason,” said the teenager, who does not want to be named. “Then one of his other friends punched me to the back of the head. I was a bit scared and a bit intimidated. Generally it doesn’t bother me but as it was a group of people it did. I did feel really small and it was completely out of the blue.”

Gap

The US clothing retailer GAP has released a new advertising campaign in Los Angeles, which features a gay couple embracing under one t-shirt, and has angered the anti-gay group, One Million Moms.

Gay Activist wishes that One Million Moms would read the preceding two stories and wonder what they would feel like if that happened to their son.

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7 May

Monday 7 May 2012

Getty

War seems to be breaking out between the Coalition government parties in the UK. After the poor showing in the elections last week, gay marriage was unceremoniously dumped as it was thought to be unpopular with voters. Lynne Featherstone, the equalities minister, who is a member of the Liberal Democrat Party, the second party in the UK Coalition government, has other ideas. “There will be no U-turn on equal marriage.” She said the Coalition would continue to focus on “core issues”, such as reducing the deficit, at the same time as introducing laws allowing same-sex couples to marry by the end of this Parliament.

Francois Hollande. Photo in public domain

There were also elections yesterday in France and new French President-elect Francois Hollande is expected to legalise gay marriage and adoption by same-sex couples by early next year. Hollande says on his website: ‘Freedom is the ability to let two people in love, regardless of their sexual orientation to unite. Equality is to allow any couple to use the same device without legal discrimination.’

While Hollande may support gay marriage and adoption for same-sex couples, he will face a battle to get it through. National Front, the far right party led by Marine Le Pen, got 18.1% of the vote. In a radio interview last year, she said: ‘I am totally opposed to gay marriage and I think that only a minority are for it anyway. Gay pride events with its parades are, as a general rule, provocations against other people, notably Catholics.’

Raymond Taavel. Photo: Globe and Mail

Meanwhile in Canada friends and supporters of murdered gay activist Raymond Taavel continue his efforts to build a more compassionate community, and held a memorial service yesterday. Raymond Taavel was beaten to death outside a bar in Halifax on April 17. About 200 people marched from the city’s Grand Parade to St. Matthew’s United Church to recall Mr. Taavel’s work advocating for the human rights of gay and lesbian Canadians. Andre Denny of Cape Breton is charged with second-degree murder in connection with Mr. Taavel’s death.

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26 April

Thursday 26 April 2012

Photo: Allegedly, the recent hanging in Iran. Uncredited Photo: Pink News

A young man known only by the initials CH M was hanged publicly in Marwdasht, Fars Province, Iran, for allegedly engaging in ‘sodomy’ with another man on 19 April. Gholamhossein Chamansara, the Attorney General of Marwdasht, reported that the death penalty was given to the man, whose age is not known, due to his ‘despicable/heinous act’ that contradicted Sharia Muslim laws, and that the man was a gangster and performed the type of ‘unlawful activities’ for which the death penalty is usually applied.

David McArthur. Birmingham Mail

Florian Baboi battered David McArthur to death at his home in Birmingham. Mr McArthur had picked up Baboi for sex. Baboi fled to his native Romania after killing McArthur in Woodbroke Grove, Northfield, last August, but returned to the UK after handing himself in to the British Embassy in Bucharest a month later. Baboi, 35, of Izons Street, West Bromwich, met openly-gay Mr McArthur, a 63-year-old quantity surveyor, on August 19 in Lower Essex Street, part of Birmingham’s gay quarter and went back to Woodbrooke Grove for sex. The prosecution allege that “once there consensual sexual activity took place and, after that, the defendant battered David McArthur, kicking and stamping on his head and chest before leaving him for dead, half-naked, at the foot of the stairs in the hallway of his home.”

The next day, he said, commuters saw Baboi, who appeared drunk and whose hands and clothes were stained with blood, waiting at a bus stop on Bristol Road. Baboi asked a man, who had seen him the night before with Mr McArthur, for money and to use his phone to call a taxi. After taking the bus to the city centre he took a taxi to the home he shared with two other Romanians, telling one of them he had “hit a gay man” who refused to give him money. Baboi took a bus to Romania and police who searched the address where he had been staying found a watch he had stolen from the victim. Baboi has denied murdering McArthur between August 19 and 23 last year. The case continues.

Daily Record

Senior Aircraftsman Robert Fleeting, 24, of East Kilbride, was found dead in his room after a drunken night out went terribly wrong. He left five suicide notes. A coroner concluded yesterday that Robert took his own life after having consensual sex with a gay medic at RAF Benson in Oxfordshire.

Fleeting’s parents Charles and Susan are outraged. Susan said: “We are devastated by the coroner’s verdict. We have been unable to get closure and grieve for Robert because we are too busy fighting for justice for him.” The couple called for the police investigation to be re-opened. They say Robert suffered internal injuries, which they claim shows that he was sexually assaulted, and they are furious that Robert’s body was released for cremation before the results of the post-mortem into his death were made available.

“My son was living the dream. He was happy and engaged to be married. He was due to go out to the Falklands and had signed up for Afghanistan. There is no way my son was gay and we believe something terrible happened to Robert that night that he couldn’t live with. I don’t believe he would have taken his own life if he had had consensual sex with a man.”

Coroner Nicholas Gardiner recorded a verdict of suicide after a half-day inquest in Oxford. He said he believed Robert’s sexual experience that night had come as a “dreadful blow” to him because he “had no such feelings in the past” and was engaged. “I can come to no conclusion other than that he took his own life.”

Robert, who was engaged to Maxine Menhennet, from Margate in Kent, was found hanging from a rolled-up curtain on the back of his room door on September 4 last year.

Gay Activist sends condolences to all friends, family and colleague of Mr Fleeting, and Mr McArthur.

Photo: Gary Calton/Guardian

Writing in The Guardian, Stonewall comment on their research published this week over the treatment of gays and lesbians by the National Health Service. Their findings were disturbing.

“GPs will soon be making decisions about not only about who can access services, but also which services are available. Unfortunately, my conversations with them highlight that there has been limited work at the frontline primary care level on addressing the needs of different groups that make up a local community. It is vital, both for tackling the poor experience many lesbian, gay and bisexual people report, and for the distinct health needs many have, to actively work with the local lesbian, gay and bisexual community, designing and commissioning services that take their needs into account.”

Stonewall has a Health Champions programme. It is much needed.

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25 April

Wednesday 25 April 2012

AP Photo of Monday’s Miss Nicaragua Gay Parade

Alexey Danichev/RIA Novosti

Ivan Kharchenko, a gay teenager in Moscow region was put away in a drug clinic for 12 days by his irate traditionalist father before he was released by his friends (pictured) who beseiged the facility.

Kharchenko publicly admitted his homosexuality at his 16th birthday earlier this year. The news did not shock his classmates, but devastated some of his relatives. His grandmother tricked Kharchenko into going to a “witch” who unsuccessfully attempted to exorcize the “spirit of homosexuality” from him. Failing magic, his father ordered the teenager to go to the drug clinic and left him there, allegedly against his will. “I’d rather have you disabled or a vegetable than gay,” said the boy’s father.

Towleroad

Gay activists have been prosecuted and fined for the promotion of homosexuality in Russia’s Arkhangelsk Region, the regional prosecutor’s office reported on its website on Wednesday.

Prosecutors in Arkhangelsk argued that since passage of the law, social movement activists have repeatedly committed actions aimed at promoting homosexuality and “demonstrated the typical content of posters around the building of children’s library.” One person was fined 2,000 rubles ($68), and the other offenders (their number was not disclosed) were punished with fines of 1,800 rubles ($61).

Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone has pledged there will be ‘no risk of successful legal challenge’ against religious bodies who are unable to marry gay couples as a result of the government’s gay civil marriage proposals.

“It would not be religious organisations, but the United Kingdom Government in the dock in Strasbourg. We respect and understand the concerns of religious organisations, and we want to work closely with them to give them that reassurance. Just as we were able to reassure Members of this House and the House of Lords about civil partnerships being registered on religious premises to the point where they felt that they could let that pass, we will do the same in this case.”

Stand by to be stabbed in the back.

Hillary Clinton told an audience at Syracuse University that many foreign leaders in Africa and Asia consider gay rights and indeed womens’ rights to be a “totally foreign concept.”

“You can imagine the conversations that I have,” she said. “In parts of Africa and Asia, gay rights is just a totally foreign concept. … I mean, the first response is, ‘We don’t have any of those here.’ Second response is, ‘If we did, we would not want to have them and would want to get rid of them as quickly as possible. And it’s your problem, United States of America, that you have so many of those people. So don’t come here and tell us to protect the rights of people we don’t have or that we don’t want.’ It’s a very difficult conversation because it’s just not been one that people have had up until now.”

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23 April: St George’s Day

Monday 23 April 2012

Wishing everyone a very happy St George’s Day.

Mr Slipper. Channel 10

Australia’s government has lost its one-vote majority just two weeks before Parliament resumes, after Speaker Peter Slipper resigned after allegations of financial impropriety and sexual harassment. Mr Slipper’s resignation follows civil action by James Ashby, 33, an aide he employed in December, alleging sexual harassment. Mr Ashby is on leave from Mr Slipper’s office. There are also criminal allegations about the possible misuse of taxpayer-funded Cabcharges, which are being investigated by federal police and the Department of Finance.

The late Gareth Williams. Public domain

The inquiry has begun into the death of MI6 spy Gareth Williams whose decomposed naked corpse was found inside a locked holdall in his bath. He had complained of “friction” at work and had become disillusioned with life in London. The body of Mr Williams was found in his home in Pimlico, central London, in August 25, 2010. A painstaking investigation has drawn a blank. Mr Williams may have died after breathing in too much carbon dioxide.

The bath where Mr Williams was found. Public domain

Police lawyer Vincent Williams told Coroner Fiona Wilcox: “There is a live, complex ongoing investigation taking place. It is because there may be criminal proceedings further down the line that the Commissioner feels that the pattern of disclosure… has to be done with some care.” He warned a “careful line must be struck between open justice” at the inquest and a criminal investigation.

John Glen MP. BBC

Salisbury Conservative MP, John Glen says he will not be bullied into cutting ties with a charity that sponsored an event where a “cure” for homosexuality was discussed. He uses interns from the anti-gay Christian Action Research and Education charity.

New Statesman

The potential withdrawing of housing benefit for the under-25s is an assault on the lives of young LGBT people. Government policy and spending cuts assume that young people will remain at home with their parents. This ignores the fact that not all young people are able to remain in the parental home. Young LGBT people in particular are already at much higher risk of homelessness than their straight counterparts, with around 25% of the young homeless population in urban areas identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. Parental rejection is still an issue for these young people; many face the prospect of losing their homes on coming out, or increasingly, in the age of social media, being outed. Still more are living with parents or family members who are openly hostile or even violent. For some, the price of staying at home includes attempts by family members to ‘cure’ them of their sexual or gender identities, through reparative therapy, religious ritual, torture, corrective rape or forced marriage. Is it reasonable to expect them to remain? asks the New Statesman.

No; the policy contravenes the government’s own definitions and principles of “discrimination”.

The Times of India, faced with increasing number of suicides among gay men who are HIV positive, finds a number of cases that are worrying. They come to the conclusion that in India, suicide is rampant among gay HIV-positive men.

“23-year-old tattoo artist Veer (name changed) recently discovered that he was suffering from AIDS. Unable to cope with his rapidly falling health, the lad just stopped taking medicines and finally committed suicide a few days back. Along with being HIV positive, these two men had another thing in common – both of them were closet gays and hadn’t declared their sexuality to their families. So, what needs to be done to contain these suicides in the gay community?” asks the Times of India.

Sex education, support groups and dialogue are needed urgently, says the paper.

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20 April

Friday 20 April 2012

The Guardian have a feature on gay protest placards. In case you need some ideas.

Phyllis Guest writes in the Dallas Voice about all the countries where to be gay is to be illegal. There are a lot of them. While LGBT equality is steadily advancing in the U.S., being gay is in many nations an invitation to punishment or death. The reasons and excuses? Religion or culture or some combination of the two.

Moscow may become the next city to outlaw so-called homosexual propaganda, reports the Moscow Times, as the Moscow City Legislature announced Thursday it will hold a “roundtable” discussion about creating a law similar to the one passed in St. Petersburg last month. The decision to discuss the potential law was announced by the head of the legislature’s Commission on Health Care and Public Health, Lyudmila Stebenkova, who said discussions will begin Monday. Representatives from the legislatures of the Kostroma and Archangelsk regions, as well as the city of St. Petersburg will also attend the meeting. These localities already have anti-homosexual laws in effect.

Gay rights activists condemned the move. “The Moscow City Council also decided to disgrace itself like its Petersburg colleagues,” chairman of the Russian LGBT Network Igor Kochetkov told Interfax. He said the law is a “shame for the legislature which highlights its incompetence.”

Some readers have asked Your Activist why the date is repeated at the start of each entry. This is because Gay Activist was hacked last year, so now a security copy is taken of every posting before it is published; to aid identification, the date is repeated so it appears on our security copy.

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19 April

Thursday 19 April 2012

Andre Noel Denny arrives at Nova Scotia Provincial court to be arraigned on charges steaming from the beating death of gay activist Raymond Taavel, Halifax, N.S., on April 18, 2012. Photo: Mike Dembeck/Canadian Press

The Nova Scotia government will conduct a joint review with health authorities over the release of a man from a psychiatric facility who faces charges in the beating death of a well-known gay rights activist in Halifax. The deputy ministers of health and justice will lead the review alongside the CEO of the Capital District Health Authority. “The review will determine whether all relevant policies and procedures were followed and whether they were adequate,” said a news release from the Nova Scotia government.

Photo of Raymond Taavel in public domain

The panel will provide a progress report in 30 days. Andre Noel Denny, 32, faces a second-degree murder charge in the death of Raymond Taavel. Denny was arrested in a nearby alley. Meanwhile, he has been sent back to the hospital where he was supposed to be the night of the brutal beating. Denny, who has a history of mental illness and violence, gave reporters the finger as he was led inside the Halifax courthouse. Then he claimed self-defence. “Public drunken fight. Self-defence. What can I say?” he said as he was led into the courtroom. Many of Taavel’s friends showed up at the courthouse for the latest development in a case that has shocked the city.

Boris Johnson. Photo: Press Association

London’s Mayor Boris Johnson today said there could have been an “intense backlash” against Christians if he had allowed London buses to carry adverts suggesting gay people could be cured. He said the ads, which he blocked last week, days before they were due to appear, would have caused “great offence”. … “The job of Mayor is to unite, to stop prejudice,” he said. “The backlash would be so intense it would not have been in the interest of Christian people in this city.” His Labour mayoral rival Ken Livingstone backed the move at a debate jointly organised by London Church Leaders, Faith to Engage and the Evangelical Alliance, saying: “In my view Boris was right to pull the ads.”

“Thousands of gay men in India are leading a double life,” writes Bettwa Sharma in the Huffington Post. Marriages were often used as a cover when homosexuality was prohibited (in India it was decriminalized in 2009). Family pressure reduces the changed law to a technicality; parents force marriage at the cost of their children’s happiness, and sometimes lives.

Arun, a 34-year-old engineer, attempted suicide to escape marriage. To see his elderly father and mother in despair is killing him. “I’m their only son,” he says.

India, rapidly modernizing, still holds on to family values, chiding the West for divorces and broken families. But sanctity of marriage is often built on silence and hidden pain. Mum and Dad, even after they know that their child is gay, insist on traditional marriage. They agree to lie to the in-laws and turn a blind eye to the extramarital affairs. The bride’s future is of no consequence in this deal. “The majority of parents will seek this solution,” says Bharat, an openly gay lawyer who used to be married. He runs a group called Samajh, which counsels parents with gay children.

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