Friday November 24, 2006 SGN.org |
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Volume 34 Issue 47 |
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Friday, Sep 05, 2008
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Rex Wockner |
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| International News | |
| SOUTH AFRICA PASSES CIVIL UNIONS BILL South Africa's National Assembly passed the government's Civil Union Bill Nov. 14. The vote was 230-41 with 3 abstentions. The ruling African National Congress party ordered its 293 MPs to vote in favor of the legislation. There are a total of 400 seats in the chamber. The measure now moves to the National Council of Provinces, where it should pass easily, then to President Thabo Mbeki for his planned signature. But the bill may be unconstitutional. A 2005 Constitutional Court ruling gave the government until Dec. 1 of this year to end the Marriage Act's discrimination against same-sex couples, finding that it violates the 1994 Constitution's prohibition against discrimination based on sexual orientation. The court said that if lawmakers did not take satisfactory action by Dec. 1, the Marriage Act automatically would be construed to allow same-sex marriage. The unusually worded bill just passed provides for the "voluntary union of two persons, which is solemnised and registered by either a marriage or civil union." The bill did not change the wording of the Marriage Act itself. It also permits discrimination by allowing marriage officers and clergy to opt out of performing same-sex unions as a matter of "conscience, religion or belief." South Africa's Human Rights Commission has called the bill unconstitutional, discriminatory and stigmatizing, and said the government should simply amend the Marriage Act to allow same-sex marriages. OUTGAMES LOST MONEY The 1st World Outgames, staged in Montreal last summer, lost $5.3 million, Quebec government auditors said Nov. 14. Organizers had reported a $200,000 surplus, but provincial accountants claim to have set the record straight. Games Co-Chair Marielle Dupéré blamed "a lack of public support, and the competing Gay Games in Chicago" for the deficit. Montreal was supposed to host the Gay Games. But a nasty fight between Montreal organizers and the Federation of Gay Games led to the founding of the Outgames and relocation of the Gay Games to Chicago. The Chicago games also lost money. Organizers there have been selling off assets and marketing Gay Games DVDs to recoup the loss. "We owe about $190,000 in vendor bills and expect all to be paid off by end of first quarter 2007," said Chicago Games Inc. Co-Vice Chair Tracy Baim. The next Outgames is scheduled for 2009 in Copenhagen and the next Gay Games is slated for 2010 in Cologne. JERUSALEM PARADE CANCELED A FOURTH TIME, RALLY HELD Jerusalem's Gay pride parade was canceled this month for a fourth time. Instead, organizers staged a small rally at Hebrew University's sports stadium on Nov. 10. Each time the parade had been scheduled, the police complained that some new threatening development in the nation was sapping their manpower and, as a result, they didn't have enough officers available to protect marchers from violent antiGay zealots. Each time, parade organizers decided the police's story seemed legitimate, and backed down from holding the parade. The rally at the sports stadium attracted about 4,000 participants and 3,000 police officers. It followed days of antiGay rioting in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods by forces opposed to any Gay parade. Police said it would have taken 9,000 officers to protect a march. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's openly Lesbian daughter, Dana, took part in the rally. "I was happy to be there with the sweetest people there is," she told Army Radio. "But on the other hand, there is a sad feeling in that they took us into a closed area. It was a feeling of being in jail. At the entrance we were asked to put on a pink ribbon and the feeling was that the event is too sterile." SINGAPORE WILL CONTINUE TO BAN GAY SEX The final version of government-proposed amendments to Singapore's penal code will legalize oral and anal sex for straight people but not for Gays. The amendments, hammered out over a three-year period, were made public Nov. 9. A note from the Home Affairs Ministry that accompanied the amendment proposals said Singapore is "a conservative society [and] many do not tolerate homosexuality." But the government said it will not be "proactive" in enforcing the remaining ban on male-male sex, which carries a penalty of up to two years in prison. Another clause set for repeal punishes "unnatural" sex of any sort with up to life in prison. ARGENTINE CROSSDRESSERS DECRIMINALIZED Crossdressers in Argentina's Mendoza province can now go out in public without fear of being arrested. Legislators repealed Article 80 of the Code of Misdemeanors which punished with 15 days in jail people who "in daily life wear clothes or attempt to pass as someone of the opposite sex." Thirty-three people have been arrested under the law this year, and 19 were arrested last year. REPORTS CLAIM IRANIAN GAY WAS HANGED A Web site called Iran Focus reported Nov. 14 that "a Gay Iranian man was hanged in public on Tuesday in the western city of Kermanshah on the charge of sodomy." The report said "Shahab Darvishi was charged with organising a 'corruption ring,' deliberate assault, and 'lavat,' which means homosexual relationship between two men or sodomy." The report credited "the official news agency IRNA" as a source for the story. The Islamic Republic News Agency's version of the story said the Kermanshah Province Justice Department Communications Department said Darvishi was "found guilty of forming a coterie of corruption rings, physical assaults and the despicable act of sodomy." IRNA said the death sentence was issued by the Second Court of the town of Sahneh, and upheld by the Second Appeal Court of Kermanshah and the 27th Branch of the Supreme Court. "Hundreds of Kermanshah's residents were present at the scene of the execution," IRNA said. "They were supportive of the judicial system's decision and called for adopting a tough stance against criminals and disturbing elements." Iran's version of Islamic law does punish Gay sex with execution, and many human-rights activists say, with varying degrees of certainty, that the nation has executed numerous men for the crime since the 1979 religious revolution. But it is notoriously difficult to fact-check news that emanates from the nation, and skepticism of any one report is always warranted, as Iran does not have a free press. On Nov. 15, Human Rights Watch's Jessica Stern sent an e-mail to this publication which said, in part: "We are concerned with the charges in the case and by the case's lack of information. One or two sources should be considered inconclusive, especially in reporting on a case of this kind. ... We strongly urge caution until more information is known." In the same vein, the secretary general of the Iranian Queer Organization, formerly called the Persian Gay and Lesbian Organization, commented: "Similar to the Mashad incident last year, it may be extremely difficult to firmly establish why this man was hanged, or whether the charges were fabricated. Whatever the truth is, the Iranian government must be stopped from killing people for sex-related crimes." On July 19, 2005, two teenage boys, Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni, were publicly hanged in Mashad, and graphic photos of the executions circulated on the Web. Some Iranian and foreign media said the teens' crime was being Gay lovers. Other Iranian and foreign media said they had raped a boy. International human rights groups say they have been unable to determine which version of the story is true. Nonetheless, "the death penalty is on the books for Gay sex [and] it's at least sporadically enforced," said Scott Long, HRW's LGBT program head, in a Nov. 16 interview. |
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| Quote / Unquote | |
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by Rex Wockner -
SGN Contributing Writer "A lot of the chiefs of staff, the people who really run the underpinnings of the Republican Party, are Gay. [RNC Chairman] Ken Mehlman. OK, there's one I think people have talked about. I don't think he's denied it when he's been -- people have suggested -- he doesn't say 'I'm not.'" --TV talk-show host Bill Maher appearing on CNN's Larry King Live, Nov. 8. CNN removed the attempted outing from rebroadcasts of the show and forced YouTube to delete a clip of the remarks, claiming that blogger John Aravosis, who posted the clip, had violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. King responded to Maher that he'd "never heard" that Mehlman is Gay. Maher replied, "Maybe you don't go to the same bathhouse I do, Larry." The following day, CNN reported that Mehlman will step down from his job by the end of the year. This publication has no independent knowledge of Mehlman's sexual orientation. "I was certainly not trying to out Ken Mehlman. I was surprised to learn what a surprise this was to so many people because I guess I'm in my little bubble world of political junkies and in that world, you know, this is, you know, it's about as much of a secret as Liberace." --Bill Maher to TheStripPodcast.com, Nov. 16. "[Traditional Values Coalition Chairman Lou] Sheldon disclosed that he and 'a lot' of others knew about [disgraced Christian right leader Ted] Haggard's homosexuality 'for awhile ... but we weren't sure just how to deal with it.' Months before a male prostitute publicly revealed Haggard's secret relationship with him, and the reverend's drug use as well, 'Ted and I had a discussion,' explained Sheldon, who said Haggard gave him a telltale signal then: 'He said homosexuality is genetic. I said, no it isn't. But I just knew he was covering up. They need to say that.'" --From a Nov. 10 article in The Jewish Week entitled "Christian Right Agenda In Shambles After GOP Defeat." "You'll find no evangelical, no Christian leader anywhere coming out and saying: Let's do something different. Let's take this shocking [Ted] Haggard scandal as a cosmic sign, as a big rainbow-colored warning flag that maybe, just maybe we need to look at this Gay issue with a little more love and a little less nauseating pseudo-spiritual homophobic dogma. Maybe now is the time to rethink this hateful ideology that has kept us so deep in fear and mistrust and sexual agony for so long." --San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford, Nov. 8. "I think religion has always tried to turn hatred towards Gay people. Religion promotes the hatred and spite against Gays. But there are so many Christian people I know who are Gay and love their religion. ... I would ban religion completely, even though there are some wonderful things about it. I love the idea of the teachings of Jesus Christ and the beautiful stories about it, which I loved in Sunday school and I collected all the little stickers and put them in my book. But the reality is that organised religion doesn't seem to work. It turns people into hateful lemmings and it's not really compassionate." --Elton John to Britain's The Observer, Nov. 12. "Dave [Furnish] and I as a couple seem to be the acceptable face of Gayness, and that's great. I've got to use that power to try and do what I can ... to try to make the situations in Russia and Poland [better]. I'm off to Poland in two weeks to say something there because the situation is not good. If I'm on the board of Amnesty International I can't just sit back and say nothing. ... I'm going to fight for them, whether I do it silently behind the scenes or vocally so that I get locked up. I can't just sit back; it's not in my nature any more. I'm nearly 60 years old, after all. I can't sit back and blindly ignore it, and I won't." --Elton John to Britain's The Observer, Nov. 12. "We'll have been together 36 years in March. ... It's a matter of commitment and something that binds you soulwise. I don't know what it is. I can't imagine Jane [Wagner] not being in my life. If you really know what there is to love about someone, it really can't be violated. Our families are intertwined and I'm close to her sister too. It just is." --Actress/comedian Lily Tomlin to the Carolinas Gay newspaper Q-Notes, Nov. 4. "The auto-fellatio scene. We had to film it three times, with three cameras each time. And because there was a 'money shot,' we did it in the morning one day, then again that afternoon, and then again the next morning." --Gay actor Paul Dawson recalling his most difficult scene in the critically acclaimed new film Shortbus, to the Palm Springs Gay magazine The Bottom Line, Nov. 10. Dawson's character fellates himself and then ejaculates into his own mouth while masturbating. "Last night we saw unprecedented victories for fair-minded candidates and for equality; we also witnessed a stinging rebuke of anti-Gay elected officials in this country. The historic rejection of the domestic partnership ban in Arizona is a symbolic turning point in the march towards marriage equality." --Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese, Nov. 8. "Rick Santorum, the third-ranking GOP senator, compared same-sex marriage to 'man on child, man on dog' sex. He supported allowing faith-based service providers to discriminate in hiring based on religion with federal dollars and to proselytize. ... We are thrilled, ecstatic and overjoyed that Rick Santorum has been thrashed at the polls. His extreme and gratuitous homophobia will no longer pollute the Senate. Good riddance." --National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Executive Director Matt Foreman, Nov. 7. "Praise Jesus, the Christian right's stranglehold on culture and morality is over. As pointed out by Slate, the all-powerful evangelical church's bizarre and insufferable run of influence has peaked, and its easy access to Washington is now falling away like Tom DeLay's toupee during the Apocalypse. And Ted Haggard, bless his little meth-happy Gay soul, provided the final nail in the coffin of religious right hypocrisy at just the right moment. It's almost as if it were ... ordained." --San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford, Nov. 10. "Social conservatives drove the GOP's agenda the last several years. Their divisive agenda alienated the mainstream Republicans and independents who determined this election's outcome. Social conservatives should take responsibility for this loss. ... A strategy that caters solely to a narrow group may win one election, but it won't create a permanent majority. The GOP spent the last several years catering to social extremists. But social conservative leaders will always bully and threaten instead of working for the party's future. They're an unreliable foundation who can't be trusted for long-term support." --Log Cabin Republicans Executive Vice President Patrick Sammon, Nov. 7. "Doogie Howser wasn't outed, he was 'lanced.' That's a new term to describe celebrities who have been forced to reveal they're Gay, said Reichen Lehmkuhl, boyfriend of 'N Sync star Lance Bass. 'It's to be outed by someone in the public media and to a celebrity, and Neil Patrick Harris, I understand, has been "lanced,"' Lehmkuhl told AP Radio News." --The Associated Press wire service, Nov. 7. "In 1970, not a single law protected Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual people from discrimination. Today, 18 states -- representing 40 percent of the U.S. population -- protect LGB people from discrimination, including Washington state, which was added to the roster this year. And these figures do not include the many municipalities in other states that have passed nondiscrimination laws -- places like Kansas City and Indianapolis and Covington, Kentucky. And when you include these local jurisdictions, 49.9 percent of the population lives in a place where anti-LGB discrimination is prohibited." --National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Executive Director Matt Foreman addressing the annual Creating Change conference, Nov. 10. "Let me just say one thing to [disgraced former U.S. Rep.] Mark Foley: Mark, whenever you re-emerge from wherever you are, please don't pop up looking to us for acceptance and support, or a toaster -- there's no toaster waiting for you here." --National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Executive Director Matt Foreman addressing the annual Creating Change conference, Nov. 10. |
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