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Thursday, Aug 21, 2008
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Rex Wockner |
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| International News | |
| SOUTH AFRICAN AIDS LEADER
MARRIES Well-known South African AIDS activist Zackie Achmat and his activist boyfriend Dalli Weyers were married near Cape Town January 5. South Africa is one of six nations where same-sex couples have access to full marriage. Hundreds of people attended the wedding, including Mayor Helen Zille. Gay High Court Judge Edwin Cameron conducted the ceremony, sporting eye glitter for the occasion. The wedding cake was a chocolate-brownie tower with a king and a cowboy on top. Achmat, 45, is the founder and chairman of the Treatment Action Campaign, South Africa's leading AIDS-activist organization. "We decided that the marriage statement as a same-sex couple was a profound one and we want the union to be seen as equal," Weyers told the Sunday Times before the wedding. Same-sex marriage also is legal in Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Spain and the United States (Massachusetts only). Numerous nations (and eight U.S. states and the District of Columbia) offer civil unions or registered partnerships that grant same-sex couples some, most or all of the rights and obligations of matrimony. BRAZILIAN GAY ACTIVIST MURDERED Brazilian Gay activist Francisco Técio de Oliveira Soares was stabbed to death January 3. His naked body was found in the hair salon he ran in the northeastern city of Crato. Police have speculated the killing was a crime of passion, given that nothing was stolen from the salon. Técio, 38, organized several local Gay pride parades and had been involved in Gay activism for more than two decades. DUTCH ARTIST RECEIVES DEATH THREATS OVER GAY MUSLIM PHOTOS Dutch artist Sooreh Hera, an Iranian exile, has received death threats and gone into hiding after a museum in The Hague planned to display her photos of Gay men wearing masks of the prophet Muhammad. "They said to me, 'We're going to burn you naked or put a bullet in your mouth,'" Hera, 34, told London's The Times. "They condemn homosexuality but in countries like Iran or Saudi Arabia it is common for married men to maintain relations with other men," she said. The municipal museum later decided not to mount the photos because, said director Wim van Krimpen, "certain people in our society might perceive it as offensive." Hera accused van Krimpen of "censorship" and caving in to "pressure from Islamists," and withdrew the rest of her pictures from the exhibition. A museum in Gouda then said it will put up the photos. The director of that institution has received death threats and is under police protection, The Times said. STRAIGHT BOUNCER CALLED "BREEDER" WINS DISCRIMINATION CASE A straight bouncer at the Bournemouth, England, Gay club Dreams was awarded $12,400 in compensation January 4 because the club's manager called her a "breeder" and fired her, the BBC reported. An employment tribunal in Southampton agreed that Sharon Legg, 33, was unfairly dismissed from her job. She received $6,000 for hurt feelings and the remainder for the firing itself. "It's an achievement basically for Gay, Bi and straight people," Legg told the network. "It's about basically proving a point that you just don't treat people like that ... whether you're straight, Gay or Bi." "If ... the shoe was on the other foot, I don't think it would be tolerated," she said. TRAVELING GOVERNMENT EXHIBIT CELEBRATES CZECH GAY HISTORY A government-curated exhibition documenting and celebrating Czech Gay history has opened in Prague and later will travel around the nation, including to small towns, Radio Prague reported January 9. The exhibition's curator is the government's minister for human rights and minorities, Dzamila Stehlíková, and its coordinator is veteran Czech Gay activist Jirí Hromada. "Twenty years ago homosexual citizens were the first group who began to speak about human rights," Stehlíková said. "Now, after 20 years of Gay and Lesbian development, we have a registered-partnership law, and the homosexual minority is part of democratic society, with its own structure and with a very interesting cultural and social life." The exhibition, now at the capital's House of National Minorities, includes Gay magazines, old photos, and videos of the disturbing debate in the Chamber of Deputies over the registered-partnership law. Openly Gay singer Pavel Vítek told Radio Prague: "What I have been most taken by is ... the history, which you now forget, of the period at the end of the 1980s and the start of the '90s. And I have also really been struck by the discreditable language used by our politicians, both men and women, when registered partnerships were being discussed. It's certainly worth hearing Justice Minister Parkanová and others again!" Stehlíková is excited about taking the exhibit on the road. "In some small towns many people with homosexual orientation have complications with coming out and this exhibition will help them to understand their own identity and to begin to live their own lives," she told Radio Prague. GAY CANADIAN ORGAN DONORS TO FACE EXTRA SCRUTINY Males who had sex with a man within the past five years will face heightened scrutiny in the organ-donation system under a Health Canada policy enacted in December, The Globe and Mail reported January 10. Health officials will speak to the donor's family and friends to glean information about the individual's behavior and warn potential recipients of the details. Even though organs are tested for such things as HIV and hepatitis B and C, officials worry that the testing may not be definitive. Canada bans blood donation by any man who has had sex with a man, even once, in the last 22 years. MOSCOW POLLING-PLACE PROTESTERS ACQUITTED Thirteen Gay activists detained December 2 at a Moscow polling place have been acquitted by a local magistrate's court. Some of the activists had "voted" by writing "No to homophobes - No to Luzhkov" on their ballots. Strongly anti-Gay Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov was scheduled to vote at the same site an hour later. He banned the city's first two Gay pride parades in 2006 and 2007, calling them "satanic." The activists - including Moscow Pride organizers Nikolai Alekseev, Nikolai Baev and Alexey Davydov - were taken into custody by police and security forces and held for seven hours at the Tverskoi district police station for allegedly picketing without advance notification to the authorities. But the court determined that no picket had occurred and that police were unable to specify a crime the activists had committed. As such, it also was illegal for police to detain the activists for more than three hours. "This is our first considerable victory in courts in the legal fight with Moscow authorities and Moscow mayor personally," Alekseev said January 11. "Lawlessness of the authorities can be witnessed during all our actions but up to now we never won in court. This is a positive signal." He said the activists may sue the police for illegal detention and arrest. With assistance from Bill Kelley |
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| picture - Sooreh Hera |
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| Quote/Unquote | |
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| "We [Barry Manilow and I] were both so happy to have a gig that, you know, we didn't care because it was, you know, the guy was really nice to us and he was paying us what was really good money in those days, which was like $300 a night. I mean, that was an extraordinary amount of money in those days and we were just, like, we didn't care. We would have, you know, been at the zoo singing, we didn't care. We were just thrilled & I know people expect me to have been, you know, appalled and stunned and all that stuff. I mean, maybe they're surprised that I was so blasé & I had seen plenty by that time, so, I have to say, it was not a big surprise. I had a great time. They were great to me and I had a chance to learn all these songs and play all these songs and move into the mainstream, and it was just like a dream come true." - Bette Midler on performing in Gay bathhouses in the 1970s, to TheStripPodcast.com, January 10. "I seldom read The New York Times. It's written as if every one of their readers is a heterosexual white male. To me they almost speak a foreign language." - Actor Harvey Fierstein to London's Pink Paper, December 20. "The UK has Gay marriage and I applaud you for it. But are you really going to tell me that everyone is now out of the closet? You may have Gay marriage but you still have Gay shame." - Actor Harvey Fierstein to London's Pink Paper, December 20. "Gay rights are inevitable. How long the road, how painful the journey, how expensive the struggle are the only details. And they are just details." - Actor Harvey Fierstein to London's Pink Paper, December 20. "In high school, everyone was like, 'I wanna be a doctor!' I was like, 'I wanna be on Survivor.' And I did it! So now I'm like, cool, I'm 22 and my goals are accomplished. What next? There's always a possibility of going back to college, but it's a possibility of not knowing what to go into, ultimately." - Openly Gay Utahan Todd Herzog, winner of the most recent season of TV's Survivor, to the Gay newspaper QSaltLake, January 3. "I find the city fulfilling in the same ways I always have. It's so physically dazzling; it has a small-town vibe with cosmopolitan attitudes. And nowadays it's quite simply my home. And something I am so heavily identified with I probably would feel weird living anywhere else." - Tales of the City author Armistead Maupin talking about San Francisco, to The Out Traveler, spring 2008 issue. "The current wave of support for Barack Obama from Democrats, independents, and even some Republicans is partly based on his vision of a new political discourse that breaks with the petty, destructive polarization of the past 20 years. Whether Obama can build up his foreign policy credentials sufficiently to reassure an anxious general electorate remains to be seen. But Hillary herself, with her thin, spotty record, tangled psychological baggage, and maundering blowhard of a husband, is also a mighty big roll of the dice. She is a brittle, relentless manipulator with few stable core values who shuffles through useful personalities like a card shark ('Cue the tears!'). Forget all her little gold crosses: Hillary's real god is political expediency. Do Americans truly want this hard-bitten Machiavellian back in the White House? Day one will just be more of the same." - Openly Lesbian writer Camille Paglia at Salon.com, January 10. "I will vote for Hillary if she is the nominee of my party, because I want Democrats appointed to the Cabinet and the Supreme Court. But I plan to vote for Barack Obama in the Pennsylvania primary because he is a rational, centered personality who speaks the language of idealism and national unity. Obama has served longer as an elected official than Hillary. He has had experience as a grass-roots activist, and he is also a highly educated lawyer who will be a quick learner in office. His international parentage and childhood, as well as his knowledge of both Christianity and Islam, would make him the right leader at the right time. And his wife Michelle is a powerhouse. The Obamas represent the future, not the past." - Openly Lesbian writer Camille Paglia at Salon.com, January 10. "Except on Gay marriage, [Barack] Obama has hit all the right notes on the Gay rights issues of the day, and he has refused to pander. He has chastised conservative black pastors and white evangelicals alike for opposing Gay rights and aggressive HIV prevention. He even refused the demand from Gay activists that he reject the support of Grammy-winning gospel singer Donnie McClurkin because he claims to be 'ex-Gay.' Obama is the only candidate who talks regularly about Gay rights, including civil unions, in front of national audiences, and he is the candidate best suited to reach out to independents and Republicans in the general election and in fulfilling the promises he has made as a candidate. If you can vote in the Democratic primary of your state, there is no better candidate on Gay rights than Barack Obama." - Syndicated Gay-press columnist Chris Crain in a January 3 filing. "The Obama revolution arrived not on little cat feet in the Iowa snow but like a balmy promise, an effortlessly leaping lion hungry for something different, propelled by a visceral desire among Americans to feel American again. The Bushes always self-consciously and swaggeringly put themselves 'on the American side,' as Poppy used to say, implying that their rivals were somehow less American. But many Americans can no longer see themselves in the warped values of the Bush White House or the pathetic paralysis of Congress or the disapproving gaze of the world. They want a different looking glass. So they rolled the dice." - New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, January 6. "New Hampshire's decision to recognize civil unions and grant Gay and Lesbian couples the same rights granted by the state to heterosexual married couples is an important step forward on the march toward equality, fairness and justice." - Presidential candidate John Edwards in a January 1 statement. "This bill would establish a clear rule that the federal government will provide the same benefits to all its employees regardless of sexual orientation. This is not only the right thing to do, it is smart policy. This bill will treat domestic partners with the equity and fairness they deserve." - Presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, as she co-introduced the Domestic Partner Benefits and Obligations Act in late December. The measure extends all spousal rights to federal workers' same-sex partners - in areas such as health, long-term care and retirement benefits, and the Family and Medical Leave program - as well as spousal obligations in areas such as anti-nepotism and financial disclosure. "Really, has there ever been a phonier, flip-flopping panderer in the history of politics than 'Full of Mitt' Romney? He is so plastic that I bet he has 'Mattel' tattooed on his behind. If Romney became president, it would be like watching a four-year video loop of the movie I-Robot, minus the action scenes. How anyone could actually pull the lever for someone so utterly devoid of character, conscience and consistency is a mystery." - Syndicated Gay-press columnist Wayne Besen, January 2. "So they dangled a few more clams in front of mama's paws and suddenly she's in the blogosphere! Yes, I'll be going to that clichéd place in your computer by pinching out a daily posting of mirth and mayhem - something wise and witty and astounding, yet not SO good it will blind you to the fact that there's still an actual column coming every Wednesday. & [W]hatever smug verbiage I'm selling, I want you to comment, bitch, moan, call me fat and ugly, and basically help me feel alive again." - Gay Village Voice columnist Michael Musto in his debut blog posting, January 9. See blogs.villagevoice.com/dailymusto. "Don't tell me I don't read! I scan the obits every day to look for apartments. And I regularly devour the less challenging parts of the National Enquirer and some of the lighter profiles on BigMuscle.com. Oh, and also publishers catalogues! They're much easier than actual books, and if you turn the page you really don't miss anything." - Gay Village Voice columnist Michael Musto on his blog, January 10. With assistance from Bill Kelley |
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