Faroes celebrate pride
GLBT people in the Faroe Islands celebrated their pride Aug. 17-19 with a parade, festival, panel discussions and movies.
About 130 people marched under the theme, 'Does love have gender?'
The events also were a celebration of a law passed last December that criminalizes discrimination based on sexual orientation. The vote on the bill in the Løgting ( parliament ) was an uncomfortably close 17-15.
Politicians from Sweden, Denmark and Iceland traveled to the islands to join the festivities, which were organized by the Association of Nordic LGBT Student Organizations and the Faroese GLBT group Fridarbogin.
'It is important for us ... to see this great support from our friends in the Nordic region,' said Fridarbogin's Tina Jacobsen. 'We hope [ it ] will help our own politicians to see the importance of speaking about human rights.'
The post-parade festival took place in Vaglid, the main square of the capital city, Tórshavn. About 200 people attended.
In a speech, Løgting member Finnur Helmsdal called for passage of a law creating registered partnerships for same-sex couples.
The Faroes, population 47,000, are a self-governing overseas administrative division of Denmark located north of Scotland, halfway between Norway and Iceland. The capital has 19,000 residents.
GLBT Ugandans launch media campaign
GLBT activists staged a groundbreaking press conference in Kampala, Uganda, Aug. 16 to launch a media campaign called 'Let Us Live In Peace.'
They hope to engage the nation in a public conversation, humanize gay people and reduce routine police abuse.
'We step into the public today to give a face to the many who are discriminated against every day in our country,' the group Sexual Minorities Uganda ( SMUG ) said in a statement.
' [Y] ou see homosexuals and transgender people every day without realising that it is what we are. We do not harm anyone. We are your doctor, your teacher, your best friend, your sister, maybe even your father or son.'
In response to the event, Ugandan Minister of Ethics and Integrity James Nsaba Buturo told the BBC that the nation will not grant gays any rights or decriminalize gay sex, which is punishable with life in prison.
Government spokesman Kirunda Kivejinja responded that 'homosexuality is repugnant.'
Five days later, hundreds of Christian, Muslim and Bahai residents staged an angry anti-gay rally.
They denounced homosexuality as immoral and demanded that U.S. journalist Katherine Roubos be deported. She is a Stanford University student who has been writing about gay issues while interning at Kampala's Daily Monitor newspaper.
In conjunction with the rally, Buturo and Ugandan Deputy Attorney General Fred Ruhindi called for the arrest of people who ignore the ban on 'carnal knowledge against the order of nature.'
Brazil to fund sex-change operations
Brazil's national health-care system will pay for sex-change operations following a decision by a regional federal court in Porto Alegre that the surgery falls within the constitution's guarantee of access to medical care.
The court said transsexuality is 'a sexual-identity disturbance where individuals need to change their sexual designation or face serious consequences in their lives, including intense suffering, mutilation and suicide.'
Candidates for the procedure will have to undergo psychological evaluation for two years and receive approval from a medical panel.
The government had argued it could not afford to offer the surgeries, but opted not to appeal the ruling.
A sex-reassignment operation costs approximately $1,000 in Brazil and could be sought by one in every 10,000 residents, the Ministry of Health said.
Arrested Nigerians do not face death penalty
Despite several mainstream-media reports to the contrary, 18 men arrested in Bauchi, Nigeria, Aug. 5 on charges of vagrancy, cross-dressing and practicing sodomy as a profession will not face the death penalty.
The men, who were detained at a wedding party at the Benko Hotel, were charged under Section 372, Subsection 2 ( e ) of the Bauchi State Shariah Penal Code, which allows for punishment of one year in prison and 30 lashes.
In addition, at an Aug. 21 hearing in the Tunda Al Khali Area Court, Judge Tanimu Abubakar determined the men should have been charged only under the section's vagrancy and cross-dressing provisions.
Prosecution of the case was turned over to the Bauchi State Ministry of Justice, instead of the police. The next hearing is Sept. 13.
Tanimu released at least five of the men on $158 bail and returned the others to jail.
An angry mob of Muslims, hopeful that the men would be sentenced to death, threw rocks at them as they left the court building. Police fired tear gas to disperse the mob, which also tried to set the court house on fire.
Activist Joseph Akoro of the Nigerian gay group The Independent Project has told the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission that the men actually were not dressed as women when they were arrested.
'This leads us to believe that the charges have been drummed up to incite hatred against gay people,' Akoro said.
Police, working together with the Hisbah Islamic anti-vice squad, also had detained several other people at the wedding party, but released all the women and non-Muslims.
International gay activists consider Nigeria to be highly homophobic. Earlier this year, the National Assembly considered, but did not act on, an extreme anti-gay bill that would have outlawed gay marriage, public or private gatherings of gay people, visiting a gay Internet site, and nearly everything else associated with being gay. Local activists worry that the bill could be reintroduced at any time.
In addition, the head of Nigeria's Anglican church, Archbishop Peter Akinola, is the leading anti-gay voice in the worldwide Anglican Communion. There are more Anglicans in Nigeria ( 15 million ) than in any other nation except the United Kingdom ( 26 million ) . The denomination has 77 million members worldwide.
No gay flag for Truro
Bucking a trend in nearby cities, the Town Council in Truro, Nova Scotia, refused to fly the rainbow flag at the Civic Building for the town's first gay pride celebration, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported Aug. 3.
The council nixed the gay flag in a 6-1 vote, with Mayor Bill Mills saying, 'God says, 'I'm not in favor of that [ homosexuality ] ,' and I have to look at it and say, 'I guess I'm not, either.''
Mills added: 'If I have a group of people that says pedophiles should have rights, do we raise their flag too? I don't want to lump them in with homosexuals, but that's the point, the issues, and that's my feeling. There doesn't seem to be standards anymore. Everything is OK, everything is a go.'
Truro, population 12,000, is about 60 miles ( 96 km ) northwest of Halifax.
—Assistance: Bill Kelley
