Mardi Gras Rescued
Sydney, Australia's bankrupt and cancelled Mardi Gras celebration has been rescued and will continue. Four gay groups took over the organization that produced the huge, famous gay extravaganza and will sell its assets to pay off debt.
Volunteers will do what paid staff used to.
The new owners of the blowout are the AIDS Council of New South Wales, the Sydney Pride Center, the Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby and Queer Screen.
GAY HEALTH
CENTER TORCHED
Arsonists torched the Gay Men's Health Center in Edinburgh, Scotland, Sept. 30
Firefighters doused the flames quickly but patient records and computers were destroyed and there was extensive smoke and water damage.
"The whole room looks like a volcano has erupted," said Bruce Fraser, the center's chief executive.
GAYS PICKET
MUSIC AWARDS
Gays picketed London's Music of Black Origin Awards Oct. 1 because Best Reggae Act nominees Capelton, Elephant Man and TOK have recorded songs that urge that homosexuals be shot, burned or beaten to death.
None of the three won.
The protesters, from the group OutRage!, said they were attacked by a "screaming, homophobic mob" of teenage reggae fans.
"Yelling 'Kill the batty boy' and 'Kill chi chi men' [ Jamaican for 'faggots' ] , 25 mostly black teenage music fans kicked, punched, spat on and hurled beer cans, coins and cigarette lighters at gay human-rights campaigner Peter Tatchell after he held up a placard with the words 'MOBO rewards anti-gay hate,'" OutRage reported in a press release.
Fearing for their safety, the protesters abandoned their demonstration and were escorted away by police, they said.
"The collective homophobic hysteria was absolutely terrifying," Tatchell said. "It was like what white racists did to the black civil rights marchers in the Deep South during the 1960s. For a moment, I was in fear of my life. The hatred in those young people's eyes was frightening. Some of them looked like they would kill me if they had the chance."
TEL AVIV
EXTENDS RIGHTS
Tel Aviv, Israel, extended various spousal benefits to gay couples Oct. 3, the daily newspaper Ha'aretz reported.
Same-sex couples will have access to discounts and benefits at cultural facilities, libraries, swimming pools and city events, the newspaper said.
"The municipality will treat couples known to the public, including single-sex couples, as couples in every sense, and will confer to them the same discounts and benefits in public services which are provided to married couples," the new regulations state.
The benefits are available to couples who live together and submit an affidavit of their relationship.
COPS DENOUNCE PANIC DEFENSE
The Canadian Association of Police Boards is supporting a resolution calling for elimination of the homosexual-panic defense, in which an anti-gay attacker is acquitted or receives a lesser sentence after claiming the person he attacked made a pass at him.
The police boards also have called for gays to be added to the list of groups protected from hate speech and propaganda, according to a report in Vancouver's Xtra! West.
A bill on that matter is pending in Parliament.
"What we are trying to do is get people to stop making remarks about homosexuals," said Vancouver Police Inspector Dave Jones, who authored the panic-defense resolution and is lobbying for the hate-speech bill as well.
EU PROJECT SEES FULL SUCCESS
Six of the 10 countries that are hoping to be accepted into the European Union by Spring 2003 had anti-gay laws on the books at the time of their application for EU membership.
The International Lesbian & Gay Association ( ILGA ) and national gay groups responded by lobbying the European Parliament to refuse EU membership to any nation that "through its legislation or policies, violates the human rights of lesbians and gay men," which the parliament agreed to do in 1998.
Since then, all six nations have repealed their anti-gay laws--Lithuania in September 2000, Estonia in September 2001, Romania in December 2001, Cyprus in July 2002, and Hungary and Bulgaria in September 2002.
"This is a truly historic success for the human-rights policies of the European Union, for the European Parliament, and for Europe's LGBT movement," said ILGA-Europe Executive Director Ailsa Spindler. "Changes which could have taken decades without international pressure have been effected in a few years. They demonstrate that LGBT rights are now being taken seriously at the European level, and give us strong encouragement to pursue actively other areas of discrimination."
VATICAN MAY
BAN GAY PRIESTS
Vatican officials are circulating a draft of new church laws that would ban gays in seminaries and the priesthood.
The document, prepared by the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has been sent to theologians, canon lawyers, and others for comment.
It says that since Catholic teaching holds that homosexuals are "objectively disordered," it makes sense to keep them out of the priesthood.
Catholic doctrine considers gay sex "intrinsically evil," "deviant" and "contrary to the laws of nature." Gay relationships are "a deplorable distortion of what should be a communion of love and life between a man and a woman in a reciprocal gift open to life."
The church says any sexual act that is not open to the possibility of pregnancy is a mortal sin which, if not absolved in confession prior to one's death, condemns one's soul to hell. The procreation doctrine also categorizes birth control, masturbation and oral sex ( including between heterosexual spouses ) as mortal sins.
