 |
After being banned and violently attacked in some previous years,
Warsaw's gay pride parade went relatively smoothly May 19. Some 20,000
people marched. Photo by Jonas Hansson |
|
|
INTERNATIONAL NEWS #683
May 28, 2007
by Rex Wockner
Lithuanian pride rally banned, canceled
The centerpiece of the first-ever gay pride celebrations in Vilnius, Lithuania, was canceled May 23 after city officials refused to authorize it.
Organizers had planned to display a 30-meter rainbow flag in Savivaldybes Square, accompanied by the European Union's traveling "anti-discrimination truck."
But Mayor Juozas Imbrasas banned the truck from entering the city, and the City Council refused to issue a permit for the rally, saying it was likely to provoke anti-gay riots.
"We will not do the rainbow flag display in the central square, since we haven't got a permit and we have to respect the decision," Virginija Prasmickaite of the Lithuanian Gay League said in an e-mail. "Also, due to security reasons, we will encourage everyone not to make any [public] actions. The city is full of anti-gay leaflets calling upon [people] to demonstrate against gay propaganda."
The blocking of the EU's anti-discrimination truck, which has been roaming 19 nations for four years, was a first for the vehicle.
"This is an appalling act of disrespect ... toward the entire European Union and its basic principles," said Patricia Prendiville, head of the European branch of the International Lesbian and Gay Association.
Sophie in 't Veld, vice president of the European Parliament's Intergroup on Gay and Lesbian Rights, called on the European Commission to take decisive action.
"The commission does not hesitate to charge in with the cavalry to fight cartels or anti-competitive practices," she said. "In the 'European Year of Equal Opportunities,' the commission must demonstrate that it enforces all European laws, not just the economic ones. Banning a peaceful demonstration [has been] ruled illegal by the European Court of Human Rights."
Mayor Imbrasas also prohibited gay pride ads from appearing on the city's public-transportation vehicles.
The large ads, designed to fill the side or back of a city trolley bus, read: "A lesbian can work at school," "A gay man can serve in the police force" and "Homosexual employees have a right to be open and safe."
Imbrasas declared, "With priority for the traditional family and seeking to promote family values, we disapprove the public display of homosexualists' ideas in the city of Vilnius."
The ads -- produced and placed with around $8,000 in EU and Lithuanian government funding -- also never saw the light of day in the city of Kaunas.
After the ads were installed on trolley buses there, drivers refused to leave the trolley barn, saying they feared they would be mocked by friends and that the vehicles would be vandalized.
Other pride events in Vilnius went ahead as planned, organizers said. They included a cultural exhibition, film screenings, a seminar and a dance party.
Warsaw pride a success
Warsaw's gay pride parade went relatively smoothly this year as a record 20,000 people marched through downtown under heavy police protection May 19.
A few dozen members of a far-right youth group protested the parade and five of them were arrested, police said. In some previous years, the parade has been banned by city officials and violently attacked by anti-gay protesters.
Activists from around the continent joined the march, including Sweden's European Affairs Minister Cecilia Malmström, German MPs Claudia Roth and Volker Beck, and Madrid City Councilor Pedro Zerolo.
The parade took place 16 days after the European Court of Human Rights ruled unanimously that then-Mayor Lech Kaczynski violated the European Convention on Human Rights when he banned the 2005 march. Kaczynski, who is now Poland's president, had said he opposed "propagating gay orientation."
Current Mayor Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, who defeated Kaczynski's right-wing Law and Justice party in the November 2006 mayoral election, is more gay-friendly.
One day after the parade, conservative groups staged a march of their own in support of families and in opposition to abortion and gay rights.
One of the 800 marchers, Deputy Prime Minister Roman Giertych, told reporters: "One has to oppose what happened here yesterday. Revolting pederasts came here from many countries and tried to impose their propaganda on us."
Korean transgender celebrity marries
Famous South Korean transgender singer and actress Harisu married her boyfriend, rap singer Micky Chung, May 19 in Seoul.
Harisu, 32, had a sex-change operation in the late 1990s and was legally recognized as female in a 2002 district court ruling. She and Chung, 27, met on the Internet in 2005.
"I'll become a housewife who cooks well and is sexy and caring," she told journalists before the wedding.
In 2006, the Supreme Court ruled definitively that postoperative transsexuals can change their gender designation in the government's all-important family registry.
"A person's mental and social gender, which he or she did not recognize at birth, can be found during his or her social life," the court said.
Before changing a record, bureaucrats must confirm that the person felt he or she belonged to the other sex throughout adulthood, has undergone counseling and surgery, is living biologically and socially as a member of the new gender, and is recognized as such by family and friends.
Amnesty calls for release of Iranian crossdressers
Amnesty International has called for the release of 17 men jailed in Iran on charges of "homosexual conduct" and drinking alcohol.
The men, who reportedly were dressed in women's clothing at the time of their arrests, were among 87 people detained in a May 10 raid on a private party in Esfahán.
All 87 were severely beaten by police and Basiji militia members during the raid and there have been reports the 17 are being tortured in jail. They are not believed to have had access to lawyers or family since their arrests.
The other detainees were released but, according to Amnesty, are likely to face prosecution in the future.
Amnesty described the raid as part of a mounting security operation to enforce Islamic dress codes during an annual crackdown on "immoral behavior."
"Homosexual conduct" is punishable with flogging or death.
The Basiji force is composed of volunteer paramilitary units attached to the Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Pope, Bush top HRW 'Hall of Shame'
President George W. Bush and Pope Benedict XVI topped Human Rights Watch's International Day Against Homophobia "Hall of Shame" list issued May 16.
Also making the cut were Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Polish Deputy Prime Minister Roman Giertych, and Bienvenido Abante, who chairs the Philippine House of Representatives' Committee on Civil, Political and Human Rights.
The Pope, HRW said, "has intervened in politics in many other countries to condemn and threaten figures who support equal rights or any form of recognition for lesbian and gay families."
Bush, the organization said, is a threat to public health because his Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief "requires that one-third of HIV-prevention spending go to so-called 'abstinence-until-marriage' programs [which] threaten the health of LGBT people by sending a message that there is no safe way for them to have sex."
Iran's Ahmadinejad "has overseen a widening campaign to 'counter public immorality,' arbitrarily arresting thousands of Iranians for dressing or behaving differently. [He] uses religious vigilantes to raid homes and other private places in search of 'deviant' behavior -- including homosexual conduct."
Giertych, "part of a right-wing government that has made homophobia a centerpiece of policy," is a threat to children, HRW said, because the education ministry, which he heads, "has proposed a law to fine or imprison teachers, school officials, or student human rights defenders who even mention homosexuality."
Abante made the list "for trying to force his sexual orientation on others [by urging] that homosexuals be 'cured' and turned into heterosexuals. He has repeatedly blocked a landmark bill that would ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. ... He has also suggested that [LGBT] people are excluded from the 'definition' of human rights."
South African churches refuse to marry gays
Several South African church denominations are refusing to conduct same-sex marriages, which were legalized via government-sponsored legislation passed late last year.
According to Cape Town's Cape Argus newspaper, the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches have bowed out nationally, and Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian churches have done so on the provincial level.
Religious institutions that don't want to perform same-sex marriages must write to the Ministry of Home Affairs and explain their refusal, the report said.
Bishop David Beetge, head of the Anglican Church of the Province of Southern Africa, commented, "We have informed the government that we are not in a position to bless civil unions and have made it open and clear to the government and our congregation about our policy."
-end-
Assistance: Bill Kelley
Filed from San Diego
INTERNATIONAL NEWS #682
May 21, 2007
by Rex Wockner
More 'homosexual conduct' arrests in Iran
Some of 87 people arrested in a May 10 raid on a private party in Esfahán, Iran, are to be charged with the crime of "homosexual conduct" (hamjensgarai), Human Rights Watch reported May 16.
Witnesses said police and Basiji militia led the detainees into the street, stripped many to the waist and beat them until their backs and faces were bloody. Several suffered broken bones.
There were four women among the arrestees and eight people who were accused of wearing clothes of the opposite sex.
The women and some of the other detainees have been released but an unknown number remain jailed facing the homosexuality charges as well as charges of consuming alcohol, which is illegal.
Family members have not been allowed to see the prisoners and they have been denied lawyers, HRW said.
"When the authorities break doors and bones in the name of morality, the rule of law is reduced to a mockery," said HRW's Middle East division deputy director, Joe Stork.
The Toronto-based Iranian Queer Organization (IRQO) said the party was a birthday celebration for a man named Farhad, and that Farhad's parents were among the detainees.
IRQO said two people had jumped from second-floor windows in an attempt to escape the raiding officers "and were in bad condition."
An IRQO dispatch dated May 13 said the jailed individuals are "gay men" who are "under severe torture and in bad condition in the jail. ... Their lives are in danger."
But IRQO later amended its statement, advising reporters not to call the raid a "gay crackdown" until actual charges are filed.
Hundreds of thousands protest gay unions in Rome
Up to half a million people protested in Rome's St. John Lateran piazza May 11 against the national government's plan to pass a civil-union law for same-sex and other couples.
The measure is pending in Parliament. Prime Minister Romano Prodi has promised to let MPs vote their consciences rather than the party position.
The rally was organized mainly by Roman Catholic groups. Several hundred supporters of gay unions staged a counterdemonstration in another piazza.
Pride gets off to rough start in Lithuania
Lithuania's first gay pride celebrations got off to a rocky start May 14 when bus drivers in the city of Kaunas refused to drive buses displaying ads from the Lithuanian Gay League.
The large ads, which ran the length of the buses and also appeared on the back, said: "A lesbian can work at school," "A gay man can serve in the police force" and "Homosexual employees have a right to be open and safe."
A spokesman for the bus company said the drivers feared they would be mocked by friends and that the buses would be vandalized.
After the company demanded a guarantee it would be reimbursed for smashed bus windows, the agency that placed the ads removed them.
LGL President Vladimiras Simonko said he will file a complaint alleging sexual-orientation discrimination with the Ombudswoman for Equal Opportunities.
The ads, which were set to run later on buses in the capital, Vilnius, cost more than $6,500 to produce and place, and were funded by the European Union and the Lithuanian government.
After the Kaunas brouhaha, Vilnius Mayor Juozas Imbrasas promised to ban the ads' appearance there as well.
"We tolerate people of any kind of sexual orientation; nevertheless, with priority for the traditional family and seeking to promote family values, we disapprove the public display of homosexualists' ideas in the city of Vilnius," Imbrasas said.
The centerpiece of Lithuania's first pride events will be the display of a 30-meter rainbow flag in Vilnius' Savivaldybes Square on May 25.
Other announced activities include seminars, panel discussions, cultural programs, a dance party and distribution of gay-related information to the public.
Moscow parade a go despite ban
Gays, lesbians and their supporters plan to parade through Moscow on May 27 even though Mayor Yuri Luzhkov banned the event.
Luzhkov has said gay pride parades "can be described in no other way than as satanic" and will never be permitted while he's mayor.
"The march, from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., is planned to start close to Moscow's main post office and pass along Myasnitskaya Street to Lubyanka Square," said chief organizer Nikolai Alekseev.
He said he expects up to 5,000 participants, including "foreign [and] Russian politicians and famous mainstream human rights activists."
Last year, organizers canceled the city's first planned pride march after Luzhkov banned it. They instead tried to lay flowers at the Kremlin's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and hold a protest rally across from City Hall. Participants in both small events were violently attacked by neofascists, skinheads, Christians and riot police.
A lawsuit over last year's ban is pending before the European Court of Human Rights.
In St. Petersburg, meanwhile, activists announced plans for that city's first pride parade to be held May 26 on Nevsky Prospekt, the main thoroughfare.
City officials refused to authorize the march, saying it would interfere with other celebrations taking place that day, the eve of City Day, which marks the city's founding in 1703.
Organizers now plan to apply for a permit for a different date.
"Misconceptions about sexual minorities are widespread here," Alexandra Polyanskaya of the pride organizing committee told The St. Petersburg Times. "Gay people feel they need to show they are normal human beings."
African ILGA members gather in Johannesburg
About 60 activists gathered in Johannesburg May 5-8 for the first African regional conference of the International Lesbian and Gay Association.
Thirty-eight of the 85 nations that criminalize gay sex are in Africa, ILGA said.
"The ... mere existence [of such laws] reinforces a culture where a significant portion of the citizens need to hide from the rest of the population out of fear -- where hatred and violence are somehow justified by the state and force people into invisibility or into denying who they truly are," the organization said.
ILGA is a worldwide network of 560 national and local GLBT organizations from 90 nations.
-end-
Assistance: Bill Kelley
INTERNATIONAL NEWS #681
May 14, 2007
by Rex Wockner
Euro court rules against Warsaw pride ban
Warsaw violated European law when it banned the 2005 gay pride parade, the European Court of Human Rights ruled unanimously May 3.
The man who was mayor then, Lech Kaczynski, is now Poland's president.
The Euro court said the city breached the European Convention on Human Rights' guarantee of freedom of association and assembly, its prohibition on discrimination, and its guarantee of a right to an effective remedy.
The city was sued by the pride organizers, the Foundation for Equality.
In prohibiting the march, Kaczynski said he opposed "propagating gay orientation" and holding the event the same day Warsaw unveiled a monument to an anti-Nazi hero. The city further claimed that the Foundation for Equality failed to submit a proper "traffic organization plan" and that the parade could lead to violence by homophobes.
Gays marched anyway, about 2,500 of them. Around 300 anti-gay protesters hurled eggs and shouted slurs at the marchers. Ten people were arrested and three were injured, including a policeman.
In a press summary of its ruling, the Euro court said it "attached particular importance to pluralism, tolerance and broadmindedness" and that "the harmonious interaction of people and groups with varied identities was essential for achieving social cohesion."
"The positive obligation of a State to secure genuine and effective respect for freedom of association and assembly was of particular importance to those with unpopular views or belonging to minorities, because they were more vulnerable to victimisation," the summary said.
The European branch of the International Lesbian and Gay Association commented: "There is a significant case-law already established by the Court in regards to freedom of assembly and now we know that the same principles are equally applicable to LGBT citizens. We hope that this decision ... will put a final stop to the outrageous violations of the right to peaceful demonstration by LGBT people which we witnessed during the last few years in some European cities."
Activists to join Riga, Warsaw prides
Activists from several nations will travel to gay pride parades in Riga, Latvia, and Warsaw, Poland, this year to support the local celebrations, which have seen aggression and hostility from residents and government officials in previous years.
Amnesty International said it will bring up to 100 members from 11 countries to Riga's parade June 3 "as a demonstration of solidarity with Latvian LGBT people."
There also will be a "big delegation" from Sweden, said Jonas Hansson of the Swedish gay group RFSL, the National Federation for Sexual Equality.
Hansson said the 65-person delegation will include Members of the European Parliament Hélène Goudin and Maria Carlshamre, Swedish MPs Maria Kornevik Jakobsson, Camilla Lindberg, Börje Vestlund, Marianne Berg, LiseLotte Olsson and Helena Leander, and members of RFSL, LGBT Liberals, LGBT Social Democrats, the Feminist Initiative, LGBT Amnesty, the Gay Police Association, LGBT Students, the Swedish Armed Forces, Stockholm Pride and the gay cultural group Tupilak.
Swedish and Euro MPs also will march May 19 in Warsaw, as will Sweden's minister for European Union affairs, Cecilia Malmström, who also will deliver an address to a pride conference.
During both Riga and Warsaw prides, the local Swedish Embassy will host a reception for members of GLBT organizations and local and visiting VIPs.
Although RFSL (Riksförbundet för Sexuellt Likaberättigande) translates as National Federation for Sexual Equality, the group calls itself the Swedish Federation for Gay, Bisexual, Lesbian and Transgender Rights in English press releases.
Lithuania to hold first pride events
Lithuania will see its first gay pride events in late May.
The Lithuanian Gay League said a major highlight will be the May 25 display in Vilnius' Savivaldybes Square of a 30-meter rainbow flag -- "the longest and biggest rainbow flag in Lithuania."
The group also plans to place ads on trolleys and buses in Vilnius and Kaunas, and will offer seminars, panel discussions, cultural programs and a dance party.
Activists also plan to distribute gay-related information to the public.
Lima gay bar closed over noise, 'immorality'
One of Peru's most-popular gay bars has been shut down by Lima city officials following complaints of noise and immorality.
The bar Downtown, in the trendy Miraflores district, had incurred the wrath of the Peruvian Consumers and Users Association, which said the club routinely "compromised ... public order."
Gay activists called the closure discriminatory, but Mayor Manuel Masías noted that two straight clubs were closed at the same time, according to LivingInPeru.com.
Honduran activist injured in attack, jailed
Police officers watched and offered encouragement as five attackers beat a transvestite activist April 20 in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, according to a May 4 alert from Amnesty International USA.
At the time of the attack, Josef Fabio Estrada, who is a leader of the Rainbow Association Transvestite Group, and two other transgender prostitutes were working in the gay Comayagüela district of the city.
"They were stopped and searched by police," Amnesty said. "Almost immediately, Estrada was set upon and beaten by five men, while a police patrol car sat parked nearby. The officers reportedly watched, laughed and offered encouragement to the attackers, shouting, 'Kill the faggot, beat him!' The police allegedly prevented two other sex workers from intervening. Estrada reportedly used a broken bottle found on the ground to defend himself. At this point the police finally intervened. They arrested and handcuffed Estrada, but let his attackers go free."
Amnesty says Estrada was seriously injured and has received no medical attention in custody. He is charged with attempted murder and robbery, and is being held in the state penitentiary's "cell of death" with prisoners suffering from tuberculosis, AIDS and mental illness, the organization said.
"Tragically, these grave threats and human rights abuses are all too common for the LGBT community in Honduras," said Amnesty USA's Ariel Herrera, director of the organization's OUTfront Program.
In March, the Rainbow Association's treasurer, Donny Reyes, was detained by police and held in a cell where he was raped and beaten by fellow prisoners at the urging of one of the arresting officers.
"Look, I'm bringing you a little princess, you know what to do," the officer said, according to Amnesty.
Amnesty said the Rainbow Association recently vacated its offices because of police intimidation and harassment that followed Reyes' public complaints about the abuse.
Honduran nongovernmental organizations say some 200 GLBT Hondurans were killed between 1991 and 2003 in anti-GLBT hate crimes.
-end-
Assistance: Bill Kelley
Filed from San Diego
INTERNATIONAL NEWS #680
May 07, 2007
by Rex Wockner
Gay pride thwarted again in Moldova
Gay pride didn't go well in Moldova for the third year in a row.
Authorities in the capital, Chisinau, banned all public pride activities again, despite a Supreme Court ruling that last year's ban was illegal.
The city says pride events threaten public order, offend Christian values and promote sexual propaganda.
Despite the ban, gay activists attempted to lay flowers April 27 at a monument to victims of repression. They were stopped by police, who said a permit was required for the action.
The flowers were then deposited at the officers' feet, said Boris Balanetkii, head of the pride organizing group GenderDoc-M.
"Police [said] GenderDoc-M has to have official permission of the City Hall to hold this event [but] later a representative of City Hall commented in an interview ... that the actions of the police were not correct and in order to lay flowers there is no need for any permission," Balanetkii said.
Later in the day, about 20 activists went to City Hall and stood in front of it for 15 minutes with their mouths taped shut with rainbow stickers. Police allowed the protest and protected the activists from about 30 counterdemonstrators from an extremist youth organization, Balanetkii said.
"This event showed that the public disorder, of which the members of the City Hall [are] so afraid, did not take place, and the majority of the people who were witnesses of the event were peaceful," Balanetkii said.
"We consider it was the first small victory in the fight of the LGBT community for the freedom of assembly in Moldova. [We will] do our best that next year a public manifestation of the LGBT community will take place not only as protest action but as a pride parade."
Activists from the Netherlands, Sweden (including Member of the European Parliament Maria Carlshamre), Romania, Canada and Ukraine traveled to Chisinau to participate in the pride activities, which also included cultural events, concerts, forums, a soccer match and the Moldovan premiere of The Vagina Monologues.
Euro Parliament blasts Poland on gay issues
The European Parliament passed a resolution April 26 criticizing government-sponsored legislation in Poland that would ban discussion of gay topics in schools and punish teachers and principals who violate the proposed law with firing and a fine or jail time. The vote was 325 to 124 with 150 abstentions.
"These kinds of people cannot work with children," Polish Deputy Minister of Education Miroslaw Orzechowski told local radio in March. "These activities need to be acted upon ... before it's too late to make a difference."
Minister of Education and Deputy Prime Minister Roman Giertych also has spoken in favor of the legislation, saying, "Homosexual propaganda must ... be limited so children will have the correct view of the family. ... If we will not use all our power to strengthen the family, then as a continent there is no future for us. We will be a continent settled by representatives of the Islamic world who care for the family."
The Euro resolution also calls for a gay fact-finding mission to be sent to Poland, for worldwide decriminalization of homosexuality, and for the European Commission to launch court actions against European Union member states that breach EU obligations.
Following the parliament's vote, Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski claimed that "nobody is limiting gay rights in Poland."
But he added: "If we're talking about not having homosexual propaganda in Polish schools, I fully agree with those who feel this way. Such propaganda should not be in schools; it definitely doesn't serve youth well. It's not in the interest of any society to increase the number of homosexuals -- that's obvious."
Kaczynski previously has called gays "perverse," and his twin brother, President Lech Kaczynski, has warned that if homosexuality "were to be promoted on a grand scale, the human race would disappear."
In response to the Euro resolution, Patricia Prendiville, executive director of the European branch of the International Lesbian and Gay Association, said, "Homophobia is, unfortunately, alive and well across Europe and the firm stance of the European Parliament is crucial for furthering the fight against discrimination and prejudice which LGBT people in Europe face on a daily basis."
Early gay-rights writings found
University of Manchester academic Dr. Hal Gladfelder has discovered pro-gay writings from 1749 in the National Archives in Kew, England.
The five-foot-long handwritten scroll is a legal indictment of the printer of a book by Thomas Cannon called "Ancient and Modern Pederasty Investigated and Exemplify'd."
The book -- which contained stories and philosophical texts in defense of male homosexuality -- disappeared immediately after it was published, but the indictment reproduces many passages from it.
One surviving extract states: "Unnatural desire is a contradiction in terms; downright nonsense. Desire is an amatory impulse of the inmost human parts."
Gladfelder said the book "must be the first substantial treatment of homosexuality ever in English. The only other discussions of homosexuality were contained in violently moralistic and homophobic attacks or in trial reports for the crime of sodomy up to and beyond 1750."
Gladfelder "came across the scroll in a box of uncatalogued legal documents from 1750."
"[T]he 18th-century courts -- who were trying to suppress this -- unwittingly helped publicize it 258 years later," he said.
Little is known about Cannon, but Gladfelder said he had to leave England to avoid indictment.
"Interestingly, his father was dean of Lincoln Cathedral and his grandfather was bishop of Norwich and Ely," he said.
"It's a fair assumption that Cannon was writing for a gay subculture at the time," Gladfelder added. "Though he lived in anonymity -- possibly because of the notoriety of his pamphlet -- I certainly regard him as a martyr. His life has many parallels with Oscar Wilde, who was persecuted by the law, forced into exile, and effectively silenced for being an apologist and advocate of same-sex love."
BP CEO outed, resigns
The chief executive officer of BP (formerly called British Petroleum) resigned May 1 after London newspapers reported that he had a four-year relationship with a 27-year-old man he met through an escort service.
The media also reported allegations that CEO John Browne, 59, had misused company funds, facilities and staff to support ex-boyfriend Jeff Chevalier's cell-phone ring-tone business.
It also emerged that Browne had lied to a court about how he and Chevalier met, as Browne fought a months-long behind-the-scenes court battle to block publication of a story about the relationship by Associated Newspapers, publisher of The Daily Mail, the Mail on Sunday and the Evening Standard.
Browne had claimed the two met by chance while he was exercising in a public park.
Browne also allegedly lied to the court, medical tests reportedly confirmed, in claiming that Chevalier was hooked on alcohol and drugs.
"For the past 41 years of my career at BP I have kept my private life separate from my business life," Browne said in a statement announcing his departure. "I have always regarded my sexuality as a personal matter, to be kept private. It is a matter of personal disappointment that a newspaper group has now decided that allegations about my personal life should be made public.
"I wish to acknowledge that I did formerly have a four-year relationship with Jeff Chevalier. ... I deny categorically any allegations of improper conduct relating to BP.
"My initial witness statements, however, contained an untruthful account about how I first met Jeff. This account, prompted by my embarrassment and shock at the revelations, is a matter of deep regret.
"These allegations will result inevitably in considerable media attention for both myself and BP. ... I have therefore informed the board of BP that I intend to stand down as group chief executive with immediate effect."
-end-
Assistance: Bill Kelley
Filed from San Diego
INTERNATIONAL NEWS #679
April 30, 2007
by Rex Wockner
Former Singapore PM favors legalization of gay sex
Former Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, the nation's founding leader, suggested April 23 that if people are born gay, then gay sex should not be illegal.
"If in fact it is true -- and I have asked doctors this -- that you are genetically born a homosexual, because that's the nature of the genetic random transmission of genes, you can't help it -- so why should we criminalize it?" Lee told a meeting of the ruling party's youth wing, according to the Straits Times newspaper.
"Let's not go around like this moral police ... barging into people's rooms. That's not our business," he said.
"Gross indecency" between men is punishable with up to two years in prison in Singapore, though the ban doesn't seem to be enforced.
Lee, who was prime minister from 1959 to 1990, is presently a special cabinet minister in the government of his son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
Former British PM outed
Several British newspapers outed former Prime Minister Ted Heath April 24, reporting allegations that police warned him in the 1950s to stop cruising for gay sex in public toilets if he wanted to continue in politics.
Heath, who died in 2005, was undergoing background checks for the post of privy councilor at the time.
The reports quoted an article published in the New Statesman magazine in which Brian Coleman, a senior Tory member of the London Assembly, said it was "common knowledge" that "Heath managed to obtain the highest office of state after he was supposedly advised to cease his cottaging activities in the Fifties when he became a Privy Councillor."
"Cottaging" is a British expression that means looking for gay sex in public toilets, which are called cottages. The term also is sometimes used to refer to park cruising.
The day after the New Statesman article appeared, Coleman reiterated to The Times, "It was certainly not a secret that he [Heath] was an old queen."
Heath was prime minister from 1970 to 1974. He was a bachelor and never publicly discussed his sexuality.
Several politicians responded to the New Statesman article by saying they had always believed Heath was heterosexual, asexual or celibate.
A privy council in monarchies is similar to a nonmonarchy's cabinet. The United Kingdom has both, with its cabinet being the most powerful committee of its Privy Council.
Rosie spurns Bermuda
Rosie O'Donnell has told Bermuda to clean up its gay act.
The island has been axed as a stop for her next GLBT R Family Vacations cruise because last time one of her cruises stopped there, about 100 Christians greeted the vacationers with an
|
Add A Comment