Rex Wockner

International News

COSTA RICA DECLARES NATIONAL DAY AGAINST HOMOPHOBIA Costa Rican President Óscar Arias Sánchez and Health Minister María Luisa Ávila have issued an executive decree designating May 17 as National Day Against Homophobia. It states: "Public institutions must amply disseminate the objectives of this commemoration. They also must facilitate, promote and support activities directed at the eradication of homophobia." May 17 is the day the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses, in 1990. ACTIVISTS DENOUNCE PROSECUTION OF UKRAINIAN GAY NEWSPAPER The heads of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission and the European branch of the International Lesbian and Gay Association wrote Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko and other officials March 20 demanding that the public prosecutor in Kiev drop criminal charges against the newspaper published by the Gay community center Nash Mir. The center is charged with distribution of pornography in violation of Article 301 of the Criminal Code. "The government should ensure that notions such as public morality are not employed to restrict in a discriminatory manner, any exercise of freedom of opinion and expression that affirms diverse sexual orientations or gender identities," said IGLHRC's Paula Ettelbrick and ILGA's Patricia Prendiville. They said the case also violates the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, to which Ukraine is a signatory. MEN ARRESTED FOR HOMOSEXUAL CONDUCT IN IRAN The arrest of more than 30 men attending a house party in Esfahán, Iran, signals renewed efforts by Iranian authorities to enforce morality codes, Human Rights Watch said March 28. Sources said the raid took place February 28-29 and that the men have been jailed since without access to lawyers and without being charged with a crime. Police reportedly referred the men to a medical examiner to look for "evidence" they had engaged in Gay sex. Iranian law provides punishments up to death for penetrative sex between men. The last documented death sentences for consensual homosexual conduct were handed down in March 2005. It is not known whether they were carried out. Iran is known to have executed several teens and men accused of engaging in sodomy, but in the cases that have been publicized in recent years the individuals were accused of other crimes as well, such as rape. The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission has said it suspects that other charges are tacked onto 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 has said it believes executions solely for Gay sex are taking place out of the public eye. But Human Rights Watch has said it cannot fully document any executions in Iran in recent years carried out solely for the crime of consensual adult Gay sex, and that there is no evidence that charges of consensual homosexual conduct are converted to charges of rape in the judicial system. COPENHAGEN OKS GAY FOSTER PARENTS In a first for Denmark, the city of Copenhagen has approved two Gay couples as acceptable foster parents, the Copenhagen Post reported March 31. The couples were placed on a list to offer homes to children removed from their own homes by government officials. "We can't guarantee that the two couples will be used as often as other couples," said Klaus Wilmann of the city's Center for Foster Care. "But we feel that a family consisting of two men or two women can have the same beneficial qualities as any other." Famously liberal Denmark, which in 1989 became the first country to pass a same-sex registered-partnership law, has nonetheless remained squeamish on issues involving Gays and children. A spokesman for the official Danish Council of Ethics denounced Copenhagen's move as "supporting something abnormal." "Boys and girls benefit by being raised by a man and a woman," Morten Kvist said. IRELAND FINALIZING PARTNERSHIP BILL Ireland's government is putting the finishing touches on its civil-partnership bill, the Irish Times reported April 1. It will extend to registered same-sex couples the rights and obligations of marriage in areas such as property, social welfare, succession, alimony, pensions and taxes. Adoption rights will not be included. Terminating a civil partnership will work the same as divorce: The partners will have to have lived apart for four of the past five years before they can formally split. The bill also changes how the law treats cohabiting couples who have not entered into a civil partnership or marriage. If they lived together for at least three years (two years, if they have children) and then split, the partners could be on the hook for financial relief if they were economically dependent - in areas such as alimony, property and sharing of pensions. A recent Lansdowne Market Research poll found that 58 percent of the Irish believe Gay couples should have access to civil marriage, and another 26 percent think they should be allowed civil partnerships but denied marriage. EURO COURT EXTENDS PENSION RIGHTS TO GAY COUPLES The European Court of Justice ruled April 1 that pension plans must pay out to surviving same-sex partners when the legal partnership is similar to marriage. The ruling came in the case of Tadao Maruko v. Versorgungswerk der deutschen Bühnen, the pension plan for German theaters. The plan had refused to pay Maruko his late partner's pension, arguing that only married people were covered. The court said that was direct discrimination that is illegal when the partners "live in a union of mutual support and assistance which is formally constituted for life." The ruling is relevant to several of the 27 European Union nations that have marriagelike partnership laws for Gay couples, including the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Sweden, Slovenia and the United Kingdom. Same-sex couples have access to full marriage in Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain. With assistance from Bill Kelley and Andrés Duque pictures: above Paula Ettelbrick, below Patricia Prendiville

by Rex Wockner - SGN Contributing Writer "There will not be a magic day when we wake up and it's now OK to express ourselves publicly. We make that day by doing things publicly ... until it's simply the way things are." -Openly Lesbian U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., to syndicated newspaper columnist Deb Price, March 31. "Hiding homosexuality is a long-tested shame in Hollywood and no doubt continues even in these days of Gay marriage and Gay civil partnerships. I agree that audiences are much less perturbed than producers allow by a performer's sexuality. How else to explain the continuing popularity of George Michael, Elton John, Rupert Everett, Ellen DeGeneres and, excuse me, also the Gay actor who played Gandalf?" -Openly Gay actor Sir Ian McKellen writing on his blog, March 26. "I used language that trivialized the seriousness of the issue and did not communicate respect for the essential dignity of every human being as a person created in the image of God. I apologize for speaking in a way that did not reflect the standards which the Family Research Council and I embrace." -Peter Sprigg, vice president for policy at the Family Research Council, in a March 27 statement. On March 19, while speaking against a pending bill that grants immigration rights to Gay Americans' foreign partners, Sprigg had told Medill News Service, "I would much prefer to export homosexuals from the United States than to import them into the United States because we believe that homosexuality is destructive to society." "I'm not sure I can sing 'Holiday' or 'Like a Virgin' ever again. I just can't - unless somebody paid me like $30 million or something. [If] some Russian guy wants me to come and sing 'Holiday' at his wedding that he's gonna have to a 17-year-old - you know it." -Madonna in an appearance on New York City's WHTZ radio, March 27. "I didn't fit into the popular group [in high school]. I wasn't a hippie or a stoner, so I ended up being the weirdo. I was interested in classical ballet and music, and the kids were quite mean if you were different. I was one of those people that people were mean to. When that happened, instead of being a doormat, I decided to emphasize my differences. I didn't shave my legs. I had hair growing under my arms. I refused to wear makeup, or fit the ideal of what a conventionally pretty girl would look like. So of course I was tortured even more, and that further validated my superiority, and helped me to survive." -Madonna to Vanity Fair, April issue. "It's gotten me excited a couple times. That's how I feel about it!" -Singer Janet Jackson on Gay porn, to Instinct magazine, April issue. "It never frustrated me. I never got upset behind it. For what reason? Why get upset because someone said you were Gay or called you Gay? That should upset me? Then it would be something negative to me, and it's not. It's just another rumor, like all the rest of them." -Singer Janet Jackson to Instinct magazine, April issue. "The one thing I always say that I really, really mean is I should have had a Gay son. Melissa doesn't care that Ann Miller can tap without shoes. Doesn't care! This breaks my heart. I've put on the Sirius showtunes channel in the car and Melissa gets upset with me. This is not right!" -Comedian Joan Rivers to Instinct magazine, April issue. "Dean noted that he personally supports same-sex marriage, a position brought about by 'getting to know Gay people' during and after his 2004 presidential campaign." -From a March 28 Washington Blade story summarizing Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean's deposition in a wrongful-termination lawsuit brought by former DNC Gay-outreach director Donald Hitchcock. "I am on such a tightrope when it comes to backing Clinton or Obama that one tiny little thing is going to push me off the precarious high wire of indecision and into the welcoming arms of my favorite candidate. In fact, I've already fallen for both of them, only to climb back up and resume my balancing act. ... But last week I think I may have felt the hard shove in the back that will send me drifting effortlessly into Obamaland where I plan to become a permanent resident. It was accompanied by the words: 'I remember landing under sniper fire.'" -Lesbian journalist Ann Rostow writing in the San Francisco Bay Times, March 27. "I'm for Barack Obama all the way. The Clinton campaign has took a desperate turn and has, I think, shown its true colors. How dare they use fear against Americans after these past seven years? I'm really tired of politicians telling me what to be afraid of. On the other hand, Obama is hopeful, grounded and clearly intelligent. He is, relatively, an outsider to the beholden D.C. club, and I think that is what America is calling out for. ... He represents I think the true spirit of the beginning of the 21st century. Looking back, I feel like we've all had enough of the fear and the arrogance, and losing our place in the world. Our very big idea of a country and democracy has been brought to a near end by very small people." -Openly Gay R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe to Salon.com, April 1. "[I]mmigration is a federal responsibility and I am going to do everything I can to eliminate any disparities in any benefits or rights under our law at the federal level so that all people will have available to them every right as an American citizen that they should, and that would include immigration law." -Hillary Clinton, speaking in support of giving spousal-immigration rights to Gay Americans' foreign partners, to Philadelphia Gay News, April 3. "[M]arriage is in the province of the state[s], which has actually turned out to be lucky for us, because we didn't have to get beaten on the [anti-Gay] Federal Marriage Amendment because we could make, among other arguments, that it was such a stretch for the federal government and it was wrong to enshrine discrimination in the Constitution." -Hillary Clinton to Philadelphia Gay News, April 3. "I anticipate that there will be a very concerted amount of effort in the next couple of years that will move this important issue forward and different states will take different approaches as they did with marriage over many years and you will see an evolution over time." -Hillary Clinton when asked about same-sex marriage by Philadelphia Gay News, April 3. "I would be very strongly outspoken about this and it would be part of American foreign policy. There are a number of gross human-rights abuses that countries engage in with whom we have relations and we have to be really vigilant and outspoken in our total repudiation of those kinds of actions and do everything we can, including using our leverage on matters such as aid, to change the behavior so we can try to prevent such atrocities from happening." -Hillary Clinton when asked April 3 by Philadelphia Gay News, "What changes would you make toward governments that execute Gay people ...?" "Let's be clear that the profoundly humanistic position of this government is to respect the intrinsic dignity of everyone, of every human being, independently of their creed, race, sexual preference. ... We will give certain guarantees to stable Gay couples but matrimony will continue being reserved for a man, a woman and the family. ... Every person has dignity, that's to say, one must respect a person independently of their sexual preference. Be careful not to deny employment to someone because of their sexual preference. That is discrimination, that is unconstitutional." -Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, March 29. "I would say that Cuba has homophobia lite, not aggressive. We don't have cases of persons murdered or beaten because they're Gay, as happens in Europe or the USA. It's true there was a more difficult period in the 1960s and '70s, but then there was a rejection of homosexuality all over the world. [Now] we have come to recognize also the diversity of sexual orientations." -Mariela Castro Espín, director of Cuba's National Center for Sex Education and daughter of President Raúl Castro, to the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, March 27. "I live in the Castro, in San Francisco, and everyone knows what that means. The streets are teeming with homosexuals. It's just like in those horror-movie fundamentalist videos: Everyone's in leather with their bits and butts on display; murderous Baby Jane drag queens run amok day and night; Gay sex is happening in the streets at all hours. There's a huge lube slide at the corner of 18th and Castro by the Bank of America, where of course, virgin straight men are sacrificed should they wander haplessly into our own little Sodom-by-the-Bay." -Violet Blue writing at SFGate.com, April 2. With assistance from Bill Kelley pictures: above Ann Rostow; below Donald Hitchcock