Rex Wockner

International News

ARGENTINE PRESIDENT SAID TO SUPPORT GAY MARRIAGE New Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner supports legalization of same-sex marriage, according to the president of the National Institute Against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism (INADI). In a February 24 interview with the Buenos Aires newspaper Clarín, María José Lubertino was asked, "With [former President Raúl] Alfonsín the divorce law was established. Will Cristina's accomplishment be Gay marriage?" Lubertino responded, "I have no doubt. & If they didn't want me to advance this issue, they wouldn't have put me in charge of INADI." GAY JAMAICAN COP SEEKS ASYLUM IN CANADA A Jamaican police officer who recently came out publicly now feels his life is in danger and is hoping to emigrate to Canada, the Toronto Star reported February 25. Jamaican Constabulary Force officer Michael Hayden, 24, faced abuse and attacks from homophobic fellow officers even before formally coming out in The Jamaica Star newspaper. But now he says he's received death threats and has gone into hiding. "I want to stay here and fight," he told the Star. "But it's not safe for me. My life is in great, great jeopardy." A spokesman for the force declined comment. Gay men are routinely attacked and beaten by anti-Gay mobs in Jamaica, which international activists consider to be among the world's more overtly homophobic nations. ACTIVISTS DEMAND RELEASE OF MEN JAILED UNDER MOROCCAN GAY SEX BAN Human Rights Watch and the Moroccan Human Rights Association on February 26 demanded the release of six men jailed under a law that bans Gay sex. The men were arrested in November after a video circulated online showing them at a supposed Gay wedding celebration in the town of Ksar el Kbir, Morocco. "The prosecution produced no evidence at trial that the defendants had violated Article 489, which provides prison terms for persons who commit 'lewd or unnatural acts with an individual of the same sex,'" the human-rights groups said. "The men all denied the charges." An appeals court later upheld the men's prison sentences, which ranged from two to 10 months. A petition demanding repeal of Article 489 is on HRW's Web site. See tinyurl.com/335oem. FIVE GAYS RUN FOR LEGISLATURE IN NEPAL Five Gay men are running for seats in Nepal's national legislature in the April 10 election. The new 601-seat Constituent Assembly will replace an interim legislature that has been in place since Parliament was dissolved in early 2007. The Gay men are candidates for the large Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist), which is part of the ruling alliance. Sunil Pant, founder of Nepal's leading Gay group, the Blue Diamond Society, is among those seeking office. In December, Nepal's Supreme Court ordered the government to pass new laws and rewrite old ones to extend equal rights and anti-discrimination protections to Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transsexual and intersex people. The ruling came in a public-interest case filed by Gay organizations. "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual and intersex are natural persons irrespective of their masculine and feminine gender and they have the right to exercise their rights and live an independent life in society," the court said. The court also ordered the government to form a committee to study same-sex marriage in other nations with a view to changing Nepalese law in that area, as well. At present, "unnatural" sex is illegal in Nepal under penalty of up to two years in prison. IRANIAN NOBEL LAUREATE DENOUNCES TREATMENT OF GAYS Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi expressed regrets over her nation's treatment of Gays in a speech at Madrid's Cultural Center in mid-February, according to the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. "This is the first time she openly addresses the issue of legal persecution of homosexuality in Iran," said IGLHRC spokesman Hossein Alizadeh. "The state-run Iranian media are now out to get her, accusing her of promoting immorality." IGLHRC has become increasingly vocal in the past year about Iran's ongoing executions of teens and men accused of engaging in sodomy, even though in nearly all the cases that have been publicized the individuals were accused of other crimes as well, such as rape. The organization has said it suspects that other charges often are tacked on to sodomy cases to prevent the public outrage that would accompany executions carried out solely for the crime of consensual adult Gay sex. The group also believes executions solely for Gay sex are taking place out of the public eye. "[O]ur suspicions [are] that their current practice really is to rid society of Lesbians and Gay men," the organization said in July. AFRICAN LESBIANS MEET IN MOZAMBIQUE About 75 women attended the Coalition of African Lesbians conference in late February in Maputo, Mozambique. Spokeswoman Fikile Vilakazi told reporters the group's top goal is decriminalization of homosexuality. Gay sex is banned in 38 African nations. "You should not be arrested and charged for how you use your own body," she told the Reuters news agency. HATE-CRIME CONVICTION IN ZAGREB PRIDE INCIDENT A man who was arrested as he prepared to throw gasoline bombs at marchers in last year's Gay pride parade in Zagreb, Croatia, was convicted of attempted assault and a hate crime February 25. Josip Situm, 25, told the court his Roman Catholic faith drove him to oppose Gay parades. He was sentenced to 14 months in prison with mandatory psychiatric treatment. The case marked Croatia's first hate-crime prosecution. Twelve other anti-Gay demonstrators were arrested during the city's sixth pride parade, and several were found to be carrying Molotov cocktails or tear gas. Around 30 of the 300 marchers were assaulted in numerous incidents after the parade ended. At least 10 sustained minor injuries and two required medical treatment. The marchers were jeered and spat on by right-wing youths throughout the parade route. A line of police in riot gear marched along on both sides of the parade. Zagreb Pride called Situm's sentence "a great turning point for the entire community of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, intersex and Queer persons and our position in society because it is the first ruling for a crime conditioned by hate based on sexual orientation." But Pride's Marko Jurcic also expressed "deep disappointment with Zagreb's police for failing to file criminal charges for all the other attacks that happened simultaneously with Situm's." With assistance from Bill Kelley

Quote/Unquote

by Rex Wockner - SGN Contributing Writer "Part of me is titillated by the fact that I'm Gay. I remember when being Gay was all very cryptic. You'd sneak into the back door and down the stairs and back around and then you're suddenly in some magical world called Gay culture. It was very exciting and very underworld. I actually kind of miss those days." -Singer k.d. lang to the Toronto Gay newspaper Xtra!, February 1. "I think the Gay community has grown up and evolved. There's a new driver and vehicle to explore and a wider spectrum of existence not focused only on coming out - it's a more expansive culture that is accepting of Transgendered people, Bisexuals and others. Remember when we used to hate Bisexuals? I think society is more open about sexual orientation in general. Look at Larry Craig or the whole Catholic Church scandal. It's not all black and white anymore; even in the Gay and Lesbian community there is a spectrum. And that's very heartening." -Singer k.d. lang to the Lesbian glossy Curve, March issue. "Yes, yeah, I would consider Oprah a friend - Oprah and Gayle, both are just terrific women." -Michelle Obama, wife of presidential candidate Barack Obama, on CNN's Larry King Live, February 11. "[In] the late '70s and '80s, I had Gay boyfriends. I had sexual relationships with guys who had never been with a woman, and have never been with a woman since. See, in those times you didn't have to define yourself. People weren't demanding constantly that you say what your label was, so it didn't seem like such a big deal, and it wasn't so shocking." -Actress Susan Sarandon to PlanetOut.com, February 13. "[H]uman sexuality is much more complex, diverse and blurred than the traditional simplistic binary image of hetero and homo, so loved by straight moralists and - more significantly - by many Lesbians and Gay men. ... In a future non-homophobic society, more people are likely to have Gay sex but less people will identify as Gay. This is because the absence of homophobia makes the need to assert and affirm Gayness redundant." -Leading British Gay activist Peter Tatchell writing for The Guardian, February 14. "Gay identity is largely the product of anti-Gay repression. It is a self-defense mechanism against homophobia. Faced with persecution for having same-sex relations, the right to have those relationships had to be defended - hence Gay identity and the Gay rights movement. But if one sexuality is not privileged over another, defining oneself as Gay (or straight) will cease to be necessary and have no social relevance or significance." -Leading British gay activist Peter Tatchell writing for The Guardian, February 14. "The reason I have always supported the entire Gay community is because they have kept her name iconic. They have been supportive, but what was really interesting, if you went to see my mother's concerts when she was performing, the audience wasn't a Gay audience. It was really after she passed away and what happened at Stonewall, that's when the Gay community took her as their own." -Lorna Luft, Judy Garland's daughter, to London's Pink Paper, January 24. "Don't you find it to be horrendous that we have a president of the United States of America that's sat up on his, I don't know what you want to call it, his throne that he thinks it is, and said that Gay couples shouldn't be allowed to marry? That's insane." -Lorna Luft, Judy Garland's daughter, to London's Pink Paper, January 24. "It's so important for Gay people to come out. It's the young people I've always been so concerned about. When a young person has to hide, then you start having a very strange life. Then you start sneaking around, going to weird places and then you're not safe and you're embarrassed and not feeling good about yourself and you can't have a healthy, safe relationship. It becomes sort of underground and perverse, and it's just no good! It's so important to me to have people be themselves, and it's so important to have more talk about it and have it out in the open." -Actress Bernadette Peters to the Palm Springs Gay magazine the BottomLine, February 1. "I don't know this for a fact but I would bet my life that this is what happened: They went to [U.S. Rep.] Barney Frank and said, 'What do we need to pass ENDA?' Rep. Frank, who has always been pretty squeamish on the trans issue - and I guess I can say these things because I am leaving my job - you know, said, 'Look, the best way to pass ENDA, and the easiest way is to: Let's take out gender identity.' And I don't think the [House] speaker's people thought this through - didn't think it through - and then they said, 'OK, let's do it.'" -Outgoing National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Executive Director Matt Foreman discussing last year's GLBT-community war over the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, on The Michelangelo Signorile Show on Sirius Satellite Radio's OutQ channel, February 12. "Matt Foreman, who announced January 23 that he would be resigning as executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, was many things during his five years at the top of one of the country's preeminent Gay rights organizations. He was an outspoken opponent of the war in Iraq. He fought against privatizing Social Security. He stood foursquare against the erosion of abortion rights. But what any of these issues have to do with lobbying for Gay rights - presumably Foreman's job description - is beyond me. His job description, though, was the problem. Foreman, after all, is just a symptom of the larger problem with NGLTF: It's a garden-variety liberal interest group posing as a Gay rights organization." -James Kirchick, an assistant editor of The New Republic, writing at Advocate.com, February 5. "After months of lurid clamor, Senator Larry Craig has been formally rebuked by the Senate ethics committee for his run-in with the vice squad last summer in an airport men's room. The committee concluded that the Idaho Republican brought discredit on the Senate. After all the controversy, the committee acted without holding a public inquiry and it did not levy any punishment. Nothing much results from the rebuke, except for the committee's grave statement of wounded decorum. Senator Craig continues to serve Idaho. The ethics committee disappears once more behind its Oz-like curtain." -The New York Times editorial board writing on its blog, February 20. With assistance from Bill Kelley