Rex Wockner

International News

by Rex Wockner - SGN Contributing Writer Old video embarrasses Canadian MP The New Democratic Party in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan found a 17-year-old videotape recently when it moved into the Opposition offices at the provincial legislature in Regina, and federal Tory MP Tom Lukiwski is highly embarrassed by it. On the amateur tape, in which staffers of the Saskatchewan Progressive Conservatives are goofing around for the camera, Lukiwski, who was then the party's general manager, says: "There's As and there's Bs. The As are guys like me, the Bs are homosexual faggots with dirt on their fingernails that transmit diseases." The tape, recorded the night of the Saskatchewan leaders' debate during the 1991 election, was released to the media by the provincial NDP on April 3. "If I could take those comments back, I would," Lukiwski said April 3. "I would give anything to take those comments back. They do not reflect the type of person that I am. I can only say that on behalf of myself, my family and my children, I am sorry. I am ashamed." In response to the brouhaha, federal opposition MPs urged Prime Minister Stephen Harper to strip Lukiwski of his post as parliamentary secretary in the Conservative caucus. "The member was 40 years old when he made these hateful remarks," said Liberal MP Scott Brison. "Allowing the member to remain an officer of the House of Commons defaces this institution." But on April 7, Harper said, "I believe when such apology and remorse is sought from an individual member, the generous and high-minded thing to do is to accept that apology." Chief of Panama's National Police welcomes Gay officers The head of Panama's National Police, Rolando Mirones, said April 3 that Gays can be police officers as long as they obey regulations, laws and the Constitution while on the job. Speaking on radio station La Exitosa, Mirones said: "It would be bad to ask a person if he is homosexual or not, because this has nothing to do with his responsibilities. "I believe that if the person has the moral, ethical, psychological and physical capacity to be a police officer, it doesn't matter what his preference is or what he does at home in his free time, as long as it's nothing illegal." Justice Minister Daniel Delgado Diamante was not happy with Mirones' remarks. "I cannot imagine a homosexual policeman and this is a situation that from a personal point of view, I reject completely," he told local media. Delgado added that National Police regulations prohibit homosexual acts. Retired Gen. Rubén Darío Paredes also spoke out against Mirones, telling the newspaper Crítica: "At first, I thought & Mirones was joking with the journalists. & I am sure that today, with calm and meaningful reflection, the director perhaps has realized that he made a lamentable slip." The head of the Gay group New Men and Women of Panama, Ricardo Beteta, told Crítica that Mirones' statement was "a very important step," but noted that police regulations say that "if the institution discovers that an officer has a Gay or Lesbian life, it is cause for firing." "So, he should change the regulation that now is the law of the land so that his words truly have value," Beteta said. UK government to study Irish Gays in London The sociology department at Britain's University of Essex has received a $164,000 grant from the United Kingdom government to investigate the experiences of Irish Gays living in London. Project head Róisín Ryan-Flood told the Press Association wire service she hopes to "uncover the ways in which contemporary sexual citizenship, migration and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender imaginaries of the metropolis are mutually implicated in complex ways." A Taxpayers' Alliance spokesman denounced the grant as "straight out of a political correctness joke book." Trouble reported for Gays in Shanghai too Following reports of a police crackdown on Gay men in Beijing, a posting on the Singaporean gay e-mail list SiGNeL said a similar operation is under way in Shanghai. "Three or four of the major clubs have been closed by the police following raids," the informant said. "Another one, m7, was visited by the police last Saturday [March 29] and the music stopped at 2 a.m. Not sure if this is a sign of things to come." Beijing police raided and closed two Gay bathhouses on March 20 and 21, according to a report circulated on Asian Gay mailing lists by AIDS activists in China and Malaysia. The March 26 report said the popular Gay bathhouse Club Oasis was raided March 20, and 70 patrons and employees were taken into custody. It said the patrons were released 30 hours later but the staff remained jailed. The report said a second Oasis bathhouse also was raided March 21 and the staff, but not the customers, were taken into custody. The report also included a list of other recent alleged police actions against Gays in Beijing, including a bar raid and temporary closure, raids of cruisy parks, and arrests of sex workers tracked down via their Web postings. Olympic torch delayed in London by Gay leader The bus carrying the Olympic torch was delayed in London's Oxford Street on April 6 by well-known activist Peter Tatchell of the Gay-rights group OutRage!. Tatchell ran in front of the bus and held up a poster which said, "Free Tibet, Free Hu Jia." Police wrestled Tatchell to the pavement, deposited him on the sidewalk and released him without charge after questioning. "Hu Jia was jailed for 3 1/2 years last week for campaigning for free speech, Tibetan autonomy, environmental protection, and for the human rights of the rural poor and people with HIV," Tatchell said. "He exposed the Chinese government's coverup of the use of HIV-contaminated blood, the lack of support and care for people with HIV, and he challenged social prejudice and discrimination against people with the virus. "Hi Jia is a truly heroic figure, who & kept campaigning, even though he knew it would put him at risk of arrest, torture and imprisonment." Tatchell said British Prime Minister Gordon Brown "shamed himself and Britain" when he greeted the torch at his official residence "at a time when China is shooting dead Tibetan protesters and jailing and torturing hundreds of political prisoners." "All countries that love freedom, democracy and liberty should refuse to host the Olympic torch and boycott the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics," Tatchell said. "Athletes should wear Tibetan flags during their events and on the podium when they collect their medals." The torch also encountered messy protests in Paris and San Francisco this month for the same general reasons. With assistance from Bill Kelley

picture:Tom Lukiwski

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