SOUTH AFRICAN CIVIL UNION BILL CRITICIZED
South Africa's Human Rights Commission has criticized the government's Civil Union Bill, which would create a separate institution essentially identical to marriage for same-sex couples.
The commission said the bill is unconstitutional, discriminatory and stigmatizing. It said the government should instead amend the Marriage Act to allow same-sex marriage.
The bill was introduced in response to a 2005 Constitutional Court ruling that gave legislators until Dec. 1 of this year to end the Marriage Act's discrimination against same-sex couples.
If lawmakers do not take satisfactory action by that date, the court said the Marriage Act automatically will be construed to allow same-sex marriage.
On Oct. 17, Gay groups staged a march and picket against the Civil Union Bill in Pretoria.
"Civil partnerships are not equivalent to marriage. They entrench institutional segregation in our law and a separate, inferior status for Gay relationships," one of the organizers, Alex Ringelman, told The Independent newspaper.

NETHERLANDS WELCOMES GAY IRANIANS
In a reversal of policy, the Netherlands announced Oct. 17 it will welcome most if not all Gay Iranian immigrants.
Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk previously had taken the position that Iranian Gays were not at risk of government persecution or execution if they lived their lives discreetly.
Verdonk said she had a change of heart after reading parts of an upcoming Human Rights Watch report on Iran's abuse of homosexuals.
A recent HRW press release stated that the organization "has documented torture and executions for homosexual conduct in Iran."
HRW has been under pressure from the British Gay group OutRage! and other activists to renounce its agnostic position on Iran's apparent executions of Gay men.
One Gay Iranian exile group, Sweden-based Homan, claims there have been some 4,000 such executions since the 1979 revolution installed a religious government.

MARRIAGE OFFICIAL SUES FOR RIGHT TO DISCRIMINATE AGAINST GAYS
A marriage registrar in the Canadian province of Manitoba has sued the province alleging religious discrimination after he was stripped of his position for refusing to conduct same-sex marriages.
Kevin Kisilowsky's case will be heard by Manitoba's Court of Queen's Bench. The Manitoba Human Rights Commission previously rejected a similar complaint from Kisilowsky.
Canadian provinces began legalizing same-sex marriage in 2003, and the federal Parliament did so nationwide in 2005.

U.N. BLASTS CAMEROON ON GAY JAILINGS
The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention declared Oct. 11 that 11 men jailed for more than a year in Cameroon while awaiting trial on sodomy charges were arbitrarily deprived of their freedom in violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
The ruling came on a complaint filed on the men's behalf by the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission and the International Commission of Jurists.
The 11 victims were nabbed at a Gay bar in May 2005. Some were eventually convicted, others were acquitted and one died of AIDS complications while in jail awaiting trial. The sentences for sodomy were shorter than the period of time the convicted men spent incarcerated before trial, so they were released this past summer.

LATVIAN DIPLOMAT CLEARED
The Belarus Prosecutor General's Office on Oct. 11 dropped pornography charges against Reimo Smits, former second secretary of the Latvian Embassy.
The office apparently didn't say why the charges were dropped following "a preliminary criminal investigation."
In July, Belarus state television aired excerpts from a Gay-sex tape, reportedly claiming it depicted Smits and had been seized from his Minsk apartment. Officials said the Belarus KGB raided Smits' residence because he was distributing porn. The 10-minute TV report reportedly described the several black-and-white snippets, seemingly captured by a hidden camera, as "a dirty homosexual orgy." Smits promptly returned to Latvia.
Latvian officials later suggested Belarus fabricated the sex and porn allegations because Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko disapproves of diplomats who promote democracy in his nation. Smits was a contact person for Belarus' democratic opposition. Latvia also called the raid on Smits' residence a "breach of the Vienna Convention because it was a violation of the private space of our diplomat."

MUSEUM STAGES GAY ANIMALS EXHIBIT
The Natural History Museum in Oslo, Norway, is presenting an exhibition on animals who engage in Gay sex.
Project leader Geir Søli told Reuters that "homosexuality has been observed for more than 1,500 animal species," including giraffes, penguins, parrots, beetles, whales, swans and bonobos.
"Bonobos are Bisexuals, all of them," he told the wire service.
Museum literature accompanying the exhibit states that homosexuality is found throughout the animal kingdom and "is not against nature."
Some Christian groups have denounced the exhibit.

EUROPEAN ACTIVISTS GATHER IN BULGARIA
The 10th annual conference of the European Region of the International Lesbian and Gay Association is being held in Sofia, Bulgaria, Oct. 26-29.
This year's theme is "We Are Family - Our families in Europe and the European family."
"There is still significant work to be done in order to achieve full social acceptance and legal equality for all families across the continent," the group said. For more information, visit www.ilga-europe.org/conference.

GAYS ORGANIZE IN MOZAMBIQUE
The "first ever ... seminar on Gay rights" has been held in Mozambique, the Agência de Informação de Moçambique (AIM) reported Oct. 13.
As a result, a Gay "movement" likely will be launched within weeks, the report said.
There is disagreement, AIM said, on whether to call the new organization the "Mozambican Gay and Lesbian Movement" or the less-in-your-face "Organization Against Sexual Discrimination."
At the end of the two-day seminar, attendees called for school-based sex education, Gay-inclusive material in libraries and bookstores and on television, and for dialogue with media editors and the journalists union.

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.