300 march in Latvia
After marching inside a fenced-in park last year, gay pride celebrants took to the streets of downtown Riga, Latvia, May 31 for a real parade this year.
About 300 marchers and 400 anti-gay demonstrators turned out for the festivities. Four counterprotesters and one marcher were arrested.
Police blocked the street at both ends of the march as well as streets that intersected the route. At the parade's end, the marchers left in buses.
A day earlier, Latvian President Valdis Zatlers had urged tolerance for LGBT people.
'I think that the main thing for people is not only to stop being intolerant, but also to understand others,' he told local media. 'We are talking only about tolerance, but we seldom talk about trying to form an understanding and comprehension vis-à-vis any minority group, no matter what kind.'
Zatlers also expressed support for granting spousal rights to same-sex couples.
'If some people have a common household and ... the common life of a single gender, then we certainly need to resolve these aspects of social privileges—inheritance, the right of the spouse to enjoy certain privileges and so on,' he said. 'That is what needs to be done, and it would be a gesture of understanding, comprehension and good will.'
Last year, armed with a court ruling that the ban on the 2006 parade was unconstitutional, more than 500 GLBT people marched inside Vermanes Park under heavy police protection.
In 2006, after the City Council banned the parade, organizers held a service at a church and meetings at a hotel. The attendees were attacked by Christian, ultranationalist and neo-Nazi protesters who pelted them with eggs, rotten food and feces.
In 2005, about 150 marchers attempted to march in the streets. They were outnumbered by around 1,000 anti-gay protesters who hurled insults, bottles and eggs; blocked the street; and forced the parade to be rerouted. The protesters chanted 'No sodomy' and 'Gays fuck the nation.'
Two Spanish men
arrested for alleged
gay crimes in Gambia
Following on the heels of Gambian President Yahya Jammeh's threat to 'cut off the head' of any homosexual the government catches, police in the West African nation arrested two Spanish men May 30 for allegedly propositioning two male taxi drivers.
Reports said the drivers feigned interest in the come-ons and lured the tourists to a rendezvous point while surreptitiously contacting police, who arrested the men when they arrived at the location.
The men were released after five days in jail and left Gambia, the Spanish Embassy said.
Speaking on television May 15, Jammeh vowed to enact anti-gay laws 'stricter than those in Iran' ( which punishes sodomy with the death penalty ) and said homosexuals should leave Gambia immediately.
He called homosexuality sinful and immoral, and said any hotel or lodging tolerating the presence of a homosexual would be closed down and the landlord punished.
Current law punishes gay sex with up to 14 years in prison.
Gambia is a tiny country that runs inland from the Atlantic Ocean solely along the flood plain of the Gambia River. It is surrounded on three sides by Senegal. There are 1.7 million residents, of whom 90 percent are Muslim and 40 percent are able to read. Gambians live, on average, to be 55 years old.
Norway to legalize
same-sex marriage
A bill in the Norwegian Parliament to legalize same-sex marriage has enough votes lined up to pass next month.
The measure now has the support of the three-party government coalition and two opposition parties.
Norway has had a registered-partnership law that gives gay couples nearly all rights of marriage since 1993.
New rights that will come along with the word 'marriage' include access to church weddings, adoption and state-funded assistance in getting pregnant.
—Assistance: Bill Kelley