Mexican activist murdered
A prominent Mexican gay activist was murdered in what appears to be an antigay hate crime, Amnesty International said July 14.
Octavio Acuña worked for the Quereteran Association for Sexual Education in Querétaro and ran a condom shop. He was found bleeding to death from multiple stab wounds inside the shop June 21. Nothing had been stolen.
In 2004, Acuña and his partner filed a complaint with the State
Human Rights Commission alleging that municipal police officers had stopped them in a public park and told them 'their sort' should not be there. A few weeks ago, Acuña publicly criticized the commission's failure to act on his complaint.
Local human-rights organizations say another gay activist was drugged and beaten the weekend following Acuña's murder, in another suspected homophobic attack. See www.amnesty.org .uk/news/press/16292.shtml.
Antigays trash Latvia's first pride parade
Latvia saw its first gay-pride parade July 23 after the Riga Regional Administrative Court slapped down a ban on it issued by city leaders three days earlier.
The approximately 150 marchers were heavily outnumbered by around 1,000 antigay protesters who hurled insults, bottles and rotten eggs; blocked the streets; and forced the parade to be rerouted.
The protesters chanted 'No sodomy' and 'Gays fuck the nation.'
In the end, police formed a human chain around the marchers to keep them safe. At least six antigay demonstrators were arrested.
The parade ended at an Anglican church where a 'rainbow mass' was celebrated by Maris Sants, a former minister in Latvia's dominant Lutheran church who was defrocked after he came out.
When the service ended, antigays blocked the church exits. Police escorted the marchers from the building and bussed them to safety.
'I have never experienced so much hate before,' Swedish marcher Rickard Lundgren told the Stockholm Web site QX.se. 'The hate was shining in their eyes.'
Officials in the capital city banned the march July 20 after Prime Minister Aigars Kalvitis denounced it as 'a parade of sexual minorities [ taking ] place in the middle of our capital city next to the Dom [ Cathedral ] .'
'This is not acceptable,' he said. 'Latvia is a state based on Christian values. We cannot promote things that are unacceptable to a large part of society.'
A city spokesman claimed the march would harm gays and lesbians by reducing tolerance for them.
'The majority of society was against it, and it could result in unrest,' said Ugis Vidauskis, spokesman for Riga City Executive Director Eriks Skapars.
Argentine Senate recognizes gay relationship
Argentina's Senate granted spousal rights to one of its employees who registered his relationship under Buenos Aires' Civil Union Law, local media reported July 13.
Eduardo Gabriel Crimi will receive 10 days off for his honeymoon. The Senate also formally asked the Ministry of Work's Social Security Secretariat if Crimi should be granted the special bonus employers give people who get married.
'The Senate's decision sets a key legal precedent because through an administrative act, dated and numbered, the Senate of the nation has affirmed the [ city's ] Civil Union Law on the national stage,' said César Cigliutti, head of CHA, the Comunidad Homosexual Argentina.
Police shoot rubber bullets, tear gas at AIDS protesters
Police in Queenstown, Eastern Cape, South Africa, broke up a demonstration by AIDS activists with rubber bullets and tear gas July 12, Human Rights Watch said. Forty protesters were injured.
The demonstrators, organized by the Treatment Action Campaign, were protesting the government's poor record in providing antiretroviral drugs to people with HIV.
In December, the Eastern Cape Health Department stopped accepting new HIV patients and referred those already on treatment to Frontier Hospital in Queenstown, which is caring for fewer than 200 of the approximately 2,000 people in need. More than 50 AIDS patients have died while on the hospital's treatment waiting list.
South Africa has some 5.3 million HIV-positive residents. In November 2003, the federal government promised to provide 53,000 patients with free antiretroviral treatment by March 2004. But a year later, only about half that number were receiving the drugs.
Eastern Cape province's largest city is Port Elizabeth.
Brazil allows
gay adoption
Brazil allowed a same-sex couple to adopt a child together for the first time July 7.
Vasco Pereira da Gama, 33, and Dorival de Carvalho Jr., 41, a couple for 13 years, operate a beauty shop and a modeling agency in the city of Cantanduva in São Paulo state. They also write social columns for local newspapers.
In granting the adoption, Judge Júlio César Spoladore Dominguez said that the Federal Psychology Council has determined that 'homosexuality is not a sickness, a disturbance or a perversion.'