ZAMBIAN GAYS SUFFER
Zambia's Registrar of Societies continues to refuse to register the gay organization LEGATRA ( Lesbian, Gay and Transgender Association ) .
Due to this, and other problems, LEGATRA has been unable to raise money to create a public awareness campaign and challenge the ban on gay-male sex.
"At the moment we are at an impasse," says spokeswoman Regina Numwa.
Gay men are routinely arrested. The cases are usually dropped for lack of evidence or settled out of court.
LEGATRA's president has been gay-bashed twice. In one incident, one of his eyes was permanently damaged.
"Zambians are generally not very militant people; and, faced with multiple hostilities, the LGBT community closes ranks," Numwa said. "LEGATRA finds it very difficult to organize the LGBT community, as they live in perpetual fear of their lives."
Zambian Vice President Christon Tembo has said: "An association formed to further the interests of homosexuals can never be registered in Zambia. Those who will persist in championing the cause for homosexual activities in Zambia risk being arrested for the felonies of committing criminal acts or for conspiracy to commit criminal acts."
LESBIAN AD CLEARED
Britain's Advertising Standards Authority Jan. 12 dismissed a complaint filed against a billboard for Queercompany.com .
The ad shows an underwear-clad lesbian couple kissing on a bed with the tagline, "Thank God For Women." The campaign, which also will include a male version of the poster, is scheduled to appear all around London and in subway cars. It is believed to be Britain's first mainstream gay ad campaign.
The ASA said the poster is not sexually explicit and probably will not harm children.
TOWN DRIVES OUT FEST ORGANIZERS
Residents of Swan Hill, Victoria, Australia, pop. 10,000, have driven Scott Wheatland out of town because we was organizing a festival celebrating gay survival in rural areas.
Wheatland also had to shut down the restaurant he had run for a year after anti-gay residents boycotted it.
"I am moving to Melbourne because I don't feel comfortable here," Wheatland told a local newspaper. "I can't get work any more. It's very sad. I was born in Swan Hill and thought I would be here a long time."
One vocal opponent of the festival, Presbyterian preacher Martin de Pyle, said the event "would have been nothing less than a [ homosexual ] recruiting drive."
"Homosexuals live in this town in peace and we don't mean them any harm," de Pyle said. "It was only when they wanted to drive an agenda in the town that the town said we don't want it."
PLAY CANCELED
DUE TO ANTI-GAY PROTESTS
The opening night of American playwright Terrence McNally's Corpus Christi was canceled in Melbourne, Australia, Jan. 17 following threats of violence. The play's central character is a gay Christ figure.
The production has been denounced by local leaders of the Greek Orthodox, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, Anglican and Islamic religions, some of whom protested outside the theater.
"Every year it's getting worse," said Yasser Soliman, president of the Islamic Council of Victoria. "It will soon become the norm for people to blaspheme and put down whatever beliefs they like."
Islamic Information and Service Network of Australasia President Samir Mohtadi added: "We ask God to curse these people who have taken part in this play and those sponsors ... all those who assist in this filthy and dirty play of allegations."
SYPHILIS OUTBREAK AMONG DUBLIN GAYS
There's been a syphilis outbreak among men who have sex with men in Dublin, Ireland, the Irish Times reported Jan. 15.
Twenty-seven cases have been recorded.
An outbreak control team has been established to formulate an intervention strategy, the newspaper said.
MEN TO PULL A 747 WITH THEIR PENISES
Twenty men from Taiwan will pull a Boeing 747 jetliner down a Los Angeles runway with their penises this March, Salon.com reported Jan. 12.
The plane will wear a harness with 20 lines attached to it.
The men are devotees of the Chinese martial art Chiu Chiu Sen Gong. They hope to set a Guinness world record.
TANZANIAN GAY GROUP GROWS
The Tanzanian gay group Community Peer Support Services has grown to 334 members since its launch three years ago.
Organizers say they have trained 250 people as activists, set up a lobbying arm, and created national and international linkages.
The group recently received funding from The Netherlands' Humanist Institute for Cooperation with Developing Countries ( Hivos ) to open an office and conduct 10 regional human-rights workshops.
GAYS PROTEST
IN BRISBANE
Fifty gay couples staged a public kiss-in in Brisbane, Australia, Jan. 14 in protest against an incident a week earlier in which two gay men were kicked out of city-run South Bank Parklands for kissing.
A park spokeswoman said kissers of both same and opposite sexes recently have been asked to stop making out in the park in deference to the sensitivities of "families."
OFFICIAL: HALF OF RUSSIANS COULD CATCH HIV
At current infection rates, half of the population of Russia will be HIV-positive in 10 years, the head of the National Center for the Fight Against AIDS said Jan. 9
"If this rate of infection continues, more than a million people will have the HIV virus by the end of the year, and half of the Russian population will be infected within the next 10 years," Vadim Pokrovsky said in an interview on Echo Radio.
Russia' s population is 145 million. At least half a million people are infected now, Pokrovsky said.
Pokrovsky needs $70 million a year to effectively fight the spread of the virus, he said, but the government has given him only $3 million this year.
