Saturday 31 March 2012
Westminster Abbey announced yesterday that George and Robert, the two gay and inseperable tawny owls who live in the Abbey Cloisters Garden, are to be married in the garden at 10.30 tomorrow morning. “The two owls have lived together in the Rowan tree for more than ten years,”said Abbey spokesperson Avril Olof. “It was felt that a wedding inside the Abbey might frighten them, so we decided to let them get married in the garden instead.” The couple will then enjoy a feast of bacon fat and roast mouse provided by Downing Street.
The Independent have been to St Petersburg, Russia where “on a Monday evening, the group gathers in a conference room near the Moscow railway station in St Petersburg. Gay people come to tell their stories and to get advice on how to break the news of their sexuality to their parents. In Russia, where there is little sex education at school and widespread homophobia, breaking the news to family and friends can be difficult, and on hand to advise are a number of gay young people and their mothers, who have gone through the process themselves and want to help others.”
St Petersburg now has a new law which punishes the promotion of homosexuality.
“The way the law is formulated is extremely vague, so nobody can say exactly what would be punished by it,” says Igor Kochetkov, a gay rights activist in the city. “But it means all our work on education and informing people could now be seen as illegal.” A teacher who reassures children that there is nothing abnormal about homosexual feelings, doctor who gives sexual health advice to gay young people, anyone who disseminates literature about coming out, may be in trouble. Even counselling suicidal gay teenagers might be illegal.
At the same time, Moscow Times informs us, “St. Petersburg’s gay scene has never been more visible or felt less threatened than it does today.”
Wow! Now for some potted history on gay rights in Russia. “Like many aspects of Russian civil society that tentatively grew up in the early 1990s, the gay and lesbian movement characterized itself by keeping its head down, not upsetting the authorities and trying hard to avoid creating trouble, a strategy most unlike that used by other, more provocative European gay rights movements. Many gay people in Russia still consider the mere existence of a gay rights movement a nuisance that will simply serve to turn an intolerant society’s attention toward a group of people that the average Russian rarely sees or even thinks about. While gay rights groups have become far more vocal in recent years, it’s still no exaggeration to say that the political side of the gay scene remains small and rarely visible, even as political protest seems to be returning to St. Petersburg.”
But things are not exactly visible. “You can still expect good old-fashioned videophone entries and unsigned venues, which just adds to the sense of adventure.” Psssst. I’m a friend of Yuri’s. Can I come in? Bars – Clubs – Lesbian Club – Even a Sauna! Wow! Moscow Times’ source is Lonely Planet Guide author Tom Masters… oh, they didn’t get this from the Kremlin Press Bureau, then.
Moscow Times has also given us a history of homophobia in Russia. Your Activist must say: this new law banning the promotion of homosexuality in Russia really is working well, isn’t it. “Orthodox clerics condemned sex between men and youths. They also condemned men who shaved, used make-up, or wore gaudy clothing as devotees of the “sodomitical sin.”"
Peter the Great outlawed sex between men in his Military Code of 1716, to be punished by flogging, and male rape, by penal servitude. In 1835, motivated by reports of vice in the Empire’s boarding schools, Tsar Nicholas I formally extended the ban on male same-sex relations to wider society in a new criminal code. Men who engaged in voluntary “sodomy” (muzhelozhstvo) were exiled to Siberia; sodomy with minors or the use of force netted exile with hard labor. This law remained in force until 1917. There was no law against lesbian relations. (Oh, just like here.)
Tsarist Russia avoided enforcing the law against upper-class homosexuals. There was no Russian equivalent to Oscar Wilde, Colonel Alfred Redl of Hungary, or Prince Eulenberg of Germany. Many supporters of the Romanov dynasty, and members of the tsar’s family, were flagrantly gay but when the government drafted a new criminal code — never to be adopted — in 1903, it continued to criminalize male homosexuality.
When revolution came in 1917, the Provisional Government wanted to enact the 1903 criminal code, but lost power to the Bolsheviks, who abrogated all tsarist law in November 1917. Until 1922 there was no written criminal law.
Over to Samoa where they know a lot about homosexuality, and to Paul Vasey of UCLA who’s studied it closely.
Paul Vasey. Photo: Katie May
He told Southern Alberta’s Council on Public Affairs on Thursday the results of his research in Samoa, which has a widespread culturally accepting attitude toward men who are attracted to other men.
Research has shown that homosexuality is genetic and that it has been around for thousands of years, Vasey explained. As to why gay men aren’t extinct even though they can’t reproduce, the answer is simple – at least the way Vasey puts it. His studies, which have been discussed at length among his students, not to mention in scientific journals and popular publications around the world, found sexual attraction to men is passed down through genes. When the gene is found in men, they’re more likely to identify as gay, at least in Western culture. But when the gene is found in women, they can pass it on to future generations. And the science shows that female relatives of gay men are likely to have more children than female relatives of straight men.
Are gay men more apt to encourage their female relatives to have children by helping raise them? The answer appears to be no, according to studies in Canada, the U.S., Britain and Japan, where straight men were just as likely as gay men to help out with nieces, nephews, grandchildren and the like.
In Samoa, it seems, men who are attracted to men don’t consider themselves gay. They’re like a third gender called fa’afafine, “in the manner of a woman.” Vasey plans to continue studying other nations, like southern Mexico, with similar cultural attitudes toward trans-gendered male sexuality. The research, along with his 20-year studies on female same-sex attraction in Japanese monkeys, is “ongoing, sort of constantly expanding.”
Excuse me a moment, let me write this down: “To the Editor, The Times. Dear Sir, Madam or whatever, I think I have just heard the first cuckoo. Yours sincerely, Gay Activist.”
Now where were we. A 71-year-old Texas grandmother has been charged with attacking her gay neighbor with her wooden cane while shouting homophobic insults. Wanda Derby allegedly beat Lloyd Guerrero, 25, around his neck and torso following days of posting offensive statements about him on Facebook and claims that he was dying from AIDS. Derby is also accused of slapping Mr Guerrero’s mother, when she attempted to help her son. Mr Guerroro had been staying with his mother, who lives next door to Derby, in Dallas, for a few months. Derby had reportedly grown angry when her son Steven, who is in his 30s, decided to move in with the Guerroro’s after having ‘issues’ at home. Then she went on to her Facebook page and disowned her son. Derby worked at the American Red Cross of Greater Dallas from August 2008 to April 2009 and as a financial officer with Mental Health Tarrant County from June 1986 to August 1999, according to her Facebook page. Police say the cane she used is considered a deadly weapon. The charge was enhanced as a hate crime which means the grandmother could be jailed for life.
‘She deserves every bit of it,’ Mr Guerrero said.
Were you expecting an April Fool story this year? Sorry to disappoint you.
SP
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