COLOMBIAN SENATE APPROVES CIVIL-UNION BILL
Colombia's Senate approved a civil-union bill Oct. 10 in a 48-40 vote.
The measure still faces action in the House and, if it passed there, would need President Álvaro Uribe's signature.
The bill, known as Project 130, sets up a registration mechanism and grants registered couples marriage rights in the areas of social security, health benefits, pensions and joint ownership of property.
"Although there is still a long legislative road ahead for the bill to become law, Colombian LGBT advocates are elated and celebrating the fact that this is the first time ever that a Colombian congressional branch has voted to recognize the rights of Gays and Lesbians," said New York City activist and blogger Andrés Duque, a native of the South American nation.

IRISH SUPPORT RIGHTS FOR GAY COUPLES
Sixty-four percent of the Irish support granting same-sex couples spousal rights in legal and financial matters, a Sunday Tribune/Millward Brown IMS poll has found.
Twenty-six percent oppose such rights and 10 percent have no opinion.
The poll also found that half of respondents oppose same-sex adoption and 37 percent support it.
Men, farmers and people over 50 were more likely to express antiGay positions while women and people between 18 and 35 were more likely to support Gay equality.

U.K. TO ADD DISCRIMINATION PROTECTIONS
The United Kingdom will implement rules by April to prohibit antiGay discrimination by providers of goods, facilities and services, the government has announced.
The measures were set to take effect in October but were delayed after churches said they feared such things as being forced to rent their premises to Gay groups for meetings.

AUSSIE PM SUPPORTS RIGHTS FOR SAME-SEX COUPLES
While he opposes same-sex marriage, and civil-union laws that too closely resemble marriage, Conservative Australian Prime Minister John Howard pledged Oct. 21 to work to grant Gay couples some legal rights.
Reports said the areas to be considered include taxation, Medicare, pharmaceutical benefits, pensions, elderly care, immigration and subsidized military housing.
The Weekend Australian newspaper said Howard expressed interest in the matter following a quiet lobbying campaign by Liberal members of Parliament.

SINGAPORE FINES CABLE COMPANY OVER LESBIAN SEX SCENES
Singapore's StarHub Cable Vision has been fined $6,360 by government regulators for airing pixelated footage of Lesbian sex and bondage during the midnight reality show Cheaters.
Officials said the scenes depicted unnatural sex acts and were "offensive to good taste and decency" in violation of the Subscription TV Program Code, which prohibits promotion and glamorization of "Lesbian lifestyles."
Gay sex -- "carnal intercourse against the order of nature" -- is banned in Singapore under penalty of up to life in prison, though the law does not seem to be enforced.

POLICE RAID LIMA BARS
Several Peruvian police agencies joined together to raid two Lima Gay bars -- 69 and Avenida 13 -- on Oct. 13, the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission reported.
Accompanied by TV reporters, officers from the Lima City Security Department (Serenazgo), the tactical actions unit, the motorized police and the National Police first raided the Lesbian bar Avenida 13.
"Many of [the women] were dragged out of the local bar and forced into police trucks, while television crews filmed them," IGLHRC said.
Following what IGLHRC called "the massive detention of the young Lesbians," the officers went to the building's second floor and raided the Gay-male bar 69.
IGLHRC accused Serenazgo of "a pattern of verbal and physical aggressions, extortion and robbery against the Gay, Lesbian and travestis [Transgender] community in Lima."
For information on a letter-writing campaign against the harassment, visit http://www.iglhrc.org/site/iglhrc/section.php?id=5&detail=690.

PRESS OUTS BRITISH MP
Britain's Daily Mirror newspaper outed Tory Member of Parliament Greg Barker on Oct. 26, reporting that he left his wife and three children to have an affair with the male interior decorator who had redone the family home.
Barker, 40, who represents Bexhill and Battle in East Sussex, has a mostly antiGay voting record and has described himself to constituents as a "family man," reports said. He did, however, vote in favor of the Civil Partnership Bill in 2004.
Barker is not expected to suffer any political damage from the outing. Several reports said Conservative Party Leader David Cameron, to whom Barker is a top lieutenant, plans to stand by him.
"The revelations about Mr. Barker caused little surprise at Westminster, as he is not the only married MP who is Gay," London's Times reported. "MPs from all wings of the Tory party expressed support for Mr. Barker last night."
The affair with decorator William Banks-Blaney reportedly lasted a year and is now over.
Barker refused to comment on the outing except to confirm he has separated from his wife and demand that he is "entitled to a private life."
"I am not in a current relationship," he said.
Barker's mother-in-law, Georgina Harrison, told the Daily Record: "Of course it was a shock. But these days it's not really unusual any more. It's modern life, isn't it? Men seem to think they can get away with it now."
She said Barker and his wife, Celeste, "still get on really well."
"She still loves him. You don't just stop loving someone. And anyway, I think there's still a chance they could work it out. ... They talk all the time."

by Rex Wockner
SGN Contributing Writer

"This is the only drug I've ever thought worth taking. ... This stuff keeps me sane and happy. I could write without it ... if I were sane and happy. I'd say it's a great drug -- but obviously it's not very healthy. You can't afford to smoke it if you've got anything to do. ... You've got to be in the right position to take it. You've got to have achieved most of your ambitions because it chills you out to such a degree that you could lose your ambitions." 
--Gay singer George Michael as he lit up a marijuana cigarette during an Oct. 20 interview in Spain with the British TV program The South Bank Show. The episode airs Oct. 31.

"The public think I'm a man on the brink of a breakdown because I fell asleep in my car, I hit a parked car and because I cruise as a Gay man. I feel good. I live in the house of my dreams with the man of my dreams. I'm happy with the music I'm making -- and I'm still loaded. I'm enjoying my life. ... I hope my future is very different. I hope I learn to shut my mouth. If I did, I would probably have all the sex I like, wherever I like. Which I do anyway. I should learn to shut my mouth and sing. That would be clever."
--Gay singer George Michael in an Oct. 20 interview with the British TV program The South Bank Show. The episode airs Oct. 31.

"There was a very, very strong physical attraction, a spiritual attraction and an emotional attraction. [I was] completely taken aback by his kindness, his humanity, his compassionate nature, his sense of fun. We had so many things in common. He asked for my phone number at the end of the night, and it just went on from there."
--David Furnish on meeting his partner, Elton John, to the Toronto Gay newspaper Xtra!, Sept. 26.

"By and large, we're very happy. There are things about him that, in an ideal world, I'd love to change, and I'm sure he'd say the same thing about me, but then that's not the person that I fell in love with. A relationship isn't about making your partner perfect."

--David Furnish, Elton John's partner, to the Toronto Gay newspaper Xtra!, Sept. 26.

"I'm not an Elton John type of Gay. I'm not vanilla. ... If you're a common or garden homosexual then maybe, but not if you're a fag like I am."
--Boy George in a new British Channel 4 documentary, as quoted by The Independent, Oct. 15.

"Madonna ... I just think she's a vile, hideous, horrible human being with no redeeming qualities. There's nothing nice about her. I've never heard anyone say anything nice about her at all. And anyone that's ever met her she's been vile to. Vile, full of herself -- so unspiritual. How has this woman got away with it for so long?"
--Boy George in a new British Channel 4 documentary, as quoted by The Independent, Oct. 15.

"I do a lot of Planned Parenthood and NARAL events and I keep trying to find a way to make the joke like, 'This is why I don't date men anymore. I'm so concerned about abortion rights in this country. God forbid something should happen to me. That's why I now have a girlfriend.' I can't find a way to make that joke."
--Open Lesbian Cynthia Nixon, who played Miranda on Sex and the City, to the Lesbian magazine Curve, November issue.

"I don't know what it is about Toronto, but for some reason I'm like a rock star here. I mean, people like me well enough in the States, I'm not complaining. But in Toronto I get a subtly different response -- there's an actual thrill in the air. It's great, but I never know quite what to do with it. Like, afterward, some of the people who came up to get their books signed were so flustered to meet me they couldn't speak clearly."
--Dykes To Watch Out For cartoonist Alison Bechdel writing on her blog, Oct. 12.

"I do have regrets in my life. I regret that Michelle Pfeiffer was married when we did 'One Fine Day.' And that Julia [Roberts] and Catherine Zeta-Jones were married, too. Also Matt Damon, but that's a different story. I'd like a crack at him."

--Actor George Clooney speaking at an American Cinematheque tribute to him, as quoted by New York's Daily News, Oct. 17.

"I guess there have been a few questions about my sexuality, and I'd like to quiet any unnecessary rumors that may be out there. While I prefer to keep my personal life private, I hope the fact that I'm Gay isn't the most interesting part of me."
--Actor T.R. Knight, who plays Dr. George O'Malley on Grey's Anatomy, to People magazine, Oct. 19.

"That this [the Mark Foley scandal] happened to the GOP is too, too much. ... It was the GOP that cozied up to churches and preachers who likened homosexuals to the vilest people of all time and called on them to cease their wicked ways, go from homosexual to heterosexual, which everyone knows they can do but will not because, apparently, it is easier to be Gay and reviled than it is to be straight and comfy about it."
--Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, Oct. 17.

"If anything good has come out of the [Mark] Foley scandal, it is surely this: The revelation that the political party fond of demonizing homosexuals each election year is as well-stocked with trusted and accomplished Gay leaders as virtually every other power center in America. ... The split between the Republicans' outward homophobia and inner Gayness isn't just hypocrisy; it's pathology. Take the bizarre case of Karl Rove. Every one of his Bush campaigns has been marked by a dirty dealing of the Gay card, dating back to the Lesbian whispers that pursued Ann Richards when Mr. Bush ousted her as Texas governor in 1994. Yet we now learn from 'The Architect,' the recent book by the Texas journalists James Moore and Wayne Slater, that Mr. Rove's own (and beloved) adoptive father, Louis Rove, was openly Gay in the years before his death in 2004. This will be a future case study for psychiatric clinicians as well as historians."
--New York Times columnist Frank Rich, Oct. 15.

"This is an election unlike any other I have ever participated in. For six years this country has been totally dominated -- not by the Republican Party, this is not fair to the Republican Party -- by a narrow sliver of the Republican Party, its more right-wing and its most ideological element. When the chips are down, this country has been jammed to the right, jammed into an ideological corner, alienated from its allies, and we're in a lot of trouble."
--Bill Clinton speaking in Las Vegas Oct. 12,according to AP.

"I used to think that Gay visibility was all that was necessary. It turns out that is not true. Many people know us and even love us, but still vote for homophobic politicians and for referendums limiting the legal rights of Gays to marry. We must all begin explaining to our heterosexual friends the various ways in which the law treats Gays unequally and deprives us of rights they take for granted. These things are familiar to us, but many heterosexuals have never thought about it because they have no reason to, and won't do so until we bring it to their attention."
--Syndicated Gay-press columnist Paul Varnell in a September filing.