Friday December 1, 2006 SGN.org |
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Volume 34 Issue 48 |
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Sunday, Sep 07, 2008
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Rex Wockner |
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| International News | |
| ISRAEL RECOGNIZES GAY MARRIAGES FROM ELSEWHERE Israel's High Court of Justice ruled 6-1 on Nov. 21 that same-sex couples who marry in places where it is allowed -- Belgium, Canada, Massachusetts, the Netherlands or Spain -- are considered married in Israel. "The court held that there should be no Gay exception to the standard rule of law that a marriage valid where celebrated should be honored elsewhere," said Evan Wolfson, executive director of the U.S. group Freedom to Marry. The case was brought by five Israeli couples who were married in Canada. A couple does not need to live in Canada to get married there and, with the exception of Quebec, there is no waiting period between getting a license and tying the knot. MOSCOW ORGANIZERS SUE TO HOLD 2007 GAY PARADE Organizers of last summer's banned Moscow Gay pride parade have filed an appeal with the Moscow City Court's presidium in hopes of being permitted to march next year. They say the court rulings that upheld city officials' ban on the parade were "illegal." If the activists fail at the presidium, they vow to push on to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Because of the ban, this year's first-ever march was downsized to an attempt to lay flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, then walk a few blocks for a rally across from City Hall. The participants were violently attacked by neofascists, skinheads, Christians and riot police. Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov said he banned the march because Russia's "morals are cleaner" than those of "the West." He called the attempt to lay flowers a "desecration ... a provocation [and] a contamination. People burst through and of course they beat them up," he said. STRAIGHT PEOPLE USE BUENOS AIRES PARTNERSHIP LAW Straight people are making ample use of Buenos Aires' first-on-the-continent civil-union law that was designed primarily for same-sex couples, the Clarín daily reported. In fact, as of June, slightly more straight couples had registered than Gay couples since the law came into force in 2003 -- 319 vs. 307. The report said many heterosexual couples view civil union as a "halfway point" between just living together and getting married, or they have need of the rights granted to civil-union couples in areas such as social security, contracts, mortgages, pensions, insurance, sick leave, bereavement leave, visitation rights and relocation expenses. Some also find it appealing that a civil union is much easier to terminate than a marriage, the newspaper said. AMBASSADOR QUITS AS HOST OF SWEDISH GAY TV SHOW The cohost of The Gay Lobby, a new program on Sweden's Sveriges Television 2 (SVT2) network, has quit, calling the show "vulgar and tasteless," reported the Stockholm newspaper The Local and the Gay Web site QX.se. Sverker Åström, a former United Nations ambassador who came out three years ago at age 88, taped only two episodes before resigning in protest against being portrayed "in a silly and humiliating light." Åström had accepted the job in hopes it would "contribute to greater understanding for the continuing difficult situation for homosexuals, with discrimination in the workplace, defamation, gossip, threats of violence and even the risk of murder," he said. A spokesman for the show said producers are "sad" about Åström's departure but that "the guys and Gays working on the show believe in it." CAMPAIGN URGES U.N. TO PUSH DECRIMINALIZATION OF GAY SEX The International Day Against Homophobia (IDAHO) organization has launched a major campaign to push for a United Nations resolution urging the 77 countries that ban Gay sex to legalize it. IDAHO founder Louis-Georges Tin has garnered support from hundreds of celebrities, politicians, writers, intellectuals and nongovernmental organizations. "With more than 70 countries in the world still making homosexuality a crime by law -- and punishable by death in 12 of them -- this is a legal scandal which the petition for a proposed U.N. resolution decriminalizing homosexuality gives people a concrete way to fight," Tin said. Among the signatories to IDAHO's U.N. petition are South African Nobel Peace Prize winner Bishop Desmond Tutu, Italian Nobel Prize winner in literature Dario Fo, Portuguese Nobel Prize winner in literature José Saramago, Austrian Nobel Prize winner in literature Elfriede Jelinek and Indian Nobel Prize winner in economics Amartya Sen. Other well-known signatories include entertainment figures Bernardo Bertolucci, David Bowie, Elton John, Cyndi Lauper, Judith Light, Mike Nichols, Edward Norton, Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin and Bruce Vilanch; and writers Edward Albee, Noam Chomsky, Michael Cunningham, Larry Kramer, Tony Kushner, Salman Rushdie, Tom Stoppard, Gore Vidal and Edmund White. Political signatories include former European Commission President Jacques Delors, former French prime ministers Michel Rocard and Laurent Fabius, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Thomas Hammerberg, and Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë. The petition -- "For a Universal Decriminalisation of Homosexuality" -- says, in part: "We ask the United Nations to request a universal abolition of the so-called 'crime of homosexuality,' of all 'sodomy laws,' and laws against so-called 'unnatural acts' in all the countries where they still exist." For more information, visit www.idahomophobia.org. EURO MPs BLAST LATVIAN HUMAN RIGHTS CHAIR The European Parliament's Intergroup on Gay and Lesbian Rights said Nov. 20 that it "deplores" the Latvian Parliament's choice for chair of its Human Rights and Social Affairs Committee. The Euro MPs said Janis Smits has a "history of hate speech and incitements to hatred and violence" against Gays and others. "In parliamentary debates, Mr. Janis Smits frequently quotes the Old Testament in defence of his old-fashioned values arguing in favour of a world-view that advocates sexual minorities should be put to death," the Intergroup said. Intergroup President Michael Cashman added, "Janis Smits has been a vocal opponent to universal human rights, advocating a world in which Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals and Transgender peoples have no rights to protection, no rights to exist." |
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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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