GAY GAMES
DEPART MONTREAL
The Federation of Gay Games ( FGG ) and Montreal parted ways Nov. 10.
Local organizers and the Federation couldn't agree on who should control the budget for the 2006 Gay Games or how many attendees to plan for.
Montreal wanted to aim for the largest Games ever while the Federation insisted on planning for a low turnout because past Gay Games have ended up in debt.
Undeterred, Montreal will forge ahead and hold an independent gay games in 2006.
'It is time to break with the past and with an organization that ultimately represents little more than itself, with only 21 of the 1,000 sports teams around the world being FGG members,' said Mark Tewksbury, an Olympic gold-medal swimmer and key Montreal organizer.
'Our event will take place without the FGG,' he said. 'We will offer the best sport games the gay and lesbian athletes of the world have ever seen.'
Montreal organizers were particularly irked that the FGG allegedly demanded full financial control of the 2006 Games while accepting no financial responsibility.
'The deal breaker between Montréal 2006 and the FGG was the issue of financial control of the event,' said spokesman Jean Héon. 'The FGG insisted on approval rights on budgetary increases and expenditures yet left all legal responsibility and accountability for the administration of the Games to the Board of Directors of Montréal 2006. Furthermore, the FGG, while not participating in any way in fundraising for the Games, collects close to $1 million dollars Canadian ( US$770,000 ) for the license rights to the trademark.'
[ See related story this issue. ]
MAN WHO STABBED PARIS MAYOR NOT
FIT FOR TRIAL
The man who stabbed and seriously wounded openly gay Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë last year probably will not face trial because psychiatrists repeatedly have deemed him mentally unstable and not responsible for his actions, The Advocate reported.
The charges against Azedine Berkane likely will be dismissed and he likely will be committed to a mental institution. However, Delanoë still could insist that Berkane undergo a fourth round of psychiatric testing.
Berkane stabbed Delanoë during an Oct. 6, 2002, party at City Hall because he dislikes homosexuals and politicians, he said. Delanoë spent two weeks in the hospital and underwent surgery to repair internal organs.
SOLDIER DENIED MARRIED HOUSING
A member of the United Kingdom's Royal Air Force, who will marry her fiancée later this month in the Canadian province of Ontario, where same-sex marriage is allowed, has been denied access to married military quarters in Oxfordshire, England, because same-sex marriage is not recognized in the UK.
Senior Aircraftwoman Samantha Wyatt, 26, met her partner, massage therapist Christa McKay, 25, during an RAF posting in Canada.
'I think the MoD [ Ministry of Defense ] are being totally unfair,' Wyatt told the BBC. 'Gays are allowed to be in the military now— why can't they recognize same-sex marriages?'
A ministry spokesman explained: 'Gay marriages are not recognized within the UK; therefore those individuals are not eligible for married quarters. The MoD is looking at this for the future but at the moment that is the situation.'
The UK lifted its military gay ban in early 2000.
BARBADIANS
NIX GAY SEX
In a phone-in poll conducted by Barbados' Daily Nation newspaper, 616 of 667 callers rejected the government's desire to decriminalize homosexuality to help slow HIV transmission.
The majority of those opposed to the change, 295 callers, said they were Pentecostal Christians. Another 123 callers identified as 'Christian.'
'Buggery' is punishable with up to life in prison.
NUNAVUT PROTECTS GAYS, BACKS MARRIAGE
The Canadian territory of Nunavut, created in a split from the Northwest Territories in 1999, extended antidiscrimination protections to gays and lesbians Nov. 4, the Nunatsiaq News reported.
The 10-8 vote in the Legislative Assembly came after five hours of debate over the definition of 'sexual orientation.' A motion to remove 'sexual orientation' from the bill creating the territorial Human Rights Act failed 9-7.
Nunavut was the only Canadian province or territory that did not have a human-rights act.
In other news, Nunavut Premier Paul Okalik said Oct. 31 that the territory will not perform same-sex marriages for the time being but will recognize same-sex marriages from Ontario and British Columbia, where courts rewrote the definition of marriage this summer to include same-sex spouses.
'If developments in the Parliament of Canada and the Supreme Court of Canada result in the definition of marriage being broadened, we will respect the law and comply with that,' Okalik said. 'In the meantime, anyone in Nunavut who has been legally married anywhere will be recognized by the government of Nunavut as married.'
Full same-sex marriage also is allowed in Belgium and The Netherlands.
Nunavut has a population of 29,000.
STATION FINED
FOR GAY KISS
Greece's Mega Channel has been fined $117,000 by the National Radio and Television Council for showing a male-male kiss on the weekly drama Close Your Eyes.
The council said the scene 'could damage young people by making them too familiar with vulgarity.'
Mega plans to challenge the fine in court.
On Nov. 14, about 35 gays and transvestites staged a kiss-in on the steps of the council's Athens headquarters to protest the fine.
GERMANY TO BUILD GAY MONUMENT
A committee of Germany's Federal Assembly Nov. 13 approved construction of a national memorial to the approximately 15,000 homosexuals sent to concentration camps by the Nazis.
The move was supported by the Social Democrats and the Greens, and opposed by the Christian Democrats. It faces a final vote in the full Assembly, where the two supportive parties have a majority.
GAYS MARCH
IN ADELAIDE
About 1,000 GLBT people marched in Adelaide, Australia, Nov. 7 in what the Australian Broadcasting Corporation said was the city's first gay-pride parade since 1973.
