Uganda bans same-sex marriage
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni signed a constitutional amendment Sept. 28 banning same-sex marriage. The measure passed Parliament in August. It says 'marriage is lawful only if entered into between a man and a woman,' and emphasizes that 'it is unlawful for same-sex couples to marry.'
Criminal penalties for entering into a same-sex marriage will be added in an upcoming revision of the penal code.
Gay sex already was banned in Uganda.
Police attack
Nepalese gays
Nepalese police have attacked gays and metis ( transgender males ) again, assaulting a group in Kathmandu on Sept. 24, reported the British gay-rights group OutRage! and Nepal's gay Blue Diamond Society.
The attack began with plainclothes policemen sexually harassing several metis who were socializing outside the Himalayan Java Café. One policeman, Nava Raj Adhikari, allegedly stuck a lit cigarette onto the hand of one meti and demanded she go have sex with him. When she refused, he reportedly pulled her hair and slapped her.
Adhikari later returned with other cops who beat several metis with sticks and rocks, kicked them with heavy boots, then arrested at least one of them, the gay organizations said.
The Blue Diamond Society said it asked the National Human Rights Commission and Human Rights Cell of the Nepal Police to investigate the incident, but they refused, claiming it was merely a fight between a 'meti gang' and a 'police gang.'
'These assaults are a continuation of a long history of homophobic abuse and violence by sections of the Nepali police,' said Peter Tatchell of OutRage!. 'We are concerned that LGBT people in Nepal have no legal redress against state violence, and that they get little support from mainstream human rights groups and political parties.'
Dutch trio enters
civil union
A man and two women have been allowed to enter a civil union in the Netherlands, the Brussels Journal reported Sept. 27.
Victor de Bruijn tied the knot before a notary with two women identified only as Bianca and Mirjam.
'I love both Bianca and Mirjam, so I am marrying them both,' he said.
Victor and Bianca already were married. They met Mirjam on the Internet and she later moved in with them and divorced her husband.
Victor said Mirjam and Bianca both are bisexual. 'I think with two heterosexual women it would be more difficult,' he theorized.
Data surface from 1949 Brit sex survey
Newly discovered results from a 1949 British sex survey show high rates of homosexuality at the time.
According to the BBC, which found the data in a university archive, the findings were 'suppressed' 56 years ago because they were 'so scandalous.'
Twenty percent of both men and women told investigators they had had gay sex.
It was the United Kingdom's first nationwide sex survey.
Woman attacked at Johannesburg Pride
A lesbian on a float at Johannesburg's Sept. 24 pride parade was pierced in the neck with a broken bottle hurled from a high-rise apartment building, the Cape Times reported.
'Blood spurted from her neck,' said fellow participant Paula Coburn. 'I ripped open some packets to get T-shirts out to try and stop the blood, then I phoned the paramedics. ... We were terrified. The blood was spurting out in big clots, and she looked as if she was having a fit.'
The 18-year-old victim, who asked not to be identified, was stitched up and released from the hospital two days later.
'I'm much better now,' she told the Cape Times. 'But my right hand doesn't want to work. I am not going to change because these people have a problem with me. I'll be back next year.'
The woman was riding on the Forum for the Empowerment of Women float which was the only float in the parade that carried a political message, the newspaper said.
The float was the target of homophobic abuse all along the route from Constitution Hill to the Heartland gay village in the Braamfontein district, the report said.
Several thousand people—most of them white—took part in the 16th annual march. This year's theme was 'The right to be, the freedom to express.'
