NewsWrap for the week ending May 6, 2006 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #945, distributed 5-8-06) [Written this week Greg Gordon, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Stephen Hunt, and Rex Wockner] Reported this week by Jon Beaupré and Charls Hall   It's getting tense in Moscow in the days leading up to that city's first-ever Pride march, scheduled to take place on May 27th -- the anniversary of the 1993 abolition of Soviet era laws in Russia against male homosexuality.  Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov has condemned the event and refused to issue a permit for it, and several of the city's religious leaders have warned of violent attacks against participants if the Pride march goes forward. Activists charge that the ongoing anti-queer rhetoric fueled successive nights of ugly attacks this week outside 2 gay venues.  An unruly demonstration forced the closing of a large party that more than a thousand gay men and lesbians were expected to attend.  Many demonstrators pelted people leaving the party with eggs and fruit, and police had to escort some partygoers to safety.  On the following night about a hundred demonstrators shouting anti-gay slogans and smashing car windows tried to prevent people from entering Moscow's best-known gay club. According to the BBC, anti-gay protesters on both nights were an odd mix of young men from a Russian nationalist group and elderly Orthodox Christians.   The Pride march in Krakow, Poland on April 28th was violently attacked by members of the rightwing All Poland Youth Group.  The BBC reports that counter-demonstrators threw rocks and eggs and chased after the marchers even when they left the planned route.  Police with riot shields and clubs finally intervened, arresting several counter-protesters.  More than a thousand LGBT people and their supporters took part in the march. There's been a sharp increase in overt homophobia in Poland since the conservative Law and Justice Party came to power last year -- including anti-gay statements by President Lech Kaczynski, who's reportedly called gays "perverts," his brother and Party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, and Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, who's said that if anyone "tries to infect others with their homosexuality, then the state must intervene in this violation of freedom."   Anti-gay killings continue, apparently unabated, in Iraq.  The latest victim was a teenage boy who reportedly may not have even been gay, but had sex with other men for money to support his impoverished family. Ali Hili, an exiled gay Iraqi with the London-based queer human rights group OutRage!, said that a neighbor witnessed the execution, reporting that 14-year-old Ahmed Khalil was dragged from his home in the al-Dura area of Baghdad by 4 uniformed Iraqi police officers who shot him twice in the head, and then several more times in the body. An anti-gay edict issued by the powerful Shiite Muslim leader al-Sistani in October has unleashed what amounts to a pogrom against gays and lesbians, who are reportedly being murdered virtually every week.  Human rights groups have called on the Bush administration to do something to stop the killings, but there's yet to be any public response by U.S. government officials.   A 25-year-old newspaper vendor pleaded guilty in Jamaica this week to the vicious murder in June 2004 of Brian Williamson, founder of the Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals and Gays -- or J-FLAG. Dwight Hayden told authorities that he and a friend, known only as "Bombhead", killed Williamson after he refused their demands for money, but human rights groups have called it a hate crime.  Williamson was hacked to death, stabbed more than 70 times by the 2 men. Hayden will be sentenced later this month for murder and robbery with aggravation.  "Bombhead" is still being sought by authorities in connection with the crime.   Cameroon's government has refused to release 9 men jailed on charges of homosexuality despite their acquittal in court last month, according to the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, or IGLHRC. The men have been jailed since being caught up in a raid at a gay nightclub in the capital city of Yaoundé in May last year.  They'd been accused of committing homosexual acts, punishable by up to 5 years in prison in Cameroon. At their trial, no witnesses were called and no proof was offered by the prosecution, so the magistrate overseeing the case declared the men innocent of all charges.  They expected to be freed quickly thereafter, but the prosecutor’s office has refused to order their release and has said that the men will be retried. Duga Titanji, the men’s attorney in Cameroon, told IGLHRC that "This development constitutes a major violation of due process.  With no new arrest warrant being served, this is now a blatant case of arbitrary detention." Cary Alan Johnson, IGLHRC's senior coordinator for Africa, said his group "will work with Cameroonian activists to confront this brazen abuse in the courts and at the national and international diplomatic levels."   The Buenos Aires gay bar Zero Consequence was raided by Argentina's Federal Police late last month while it was hosting a private party. According to the group C.H.A. -- Argentine Homosexual Community -- police turned on the lights, stopped the music, and forced the 120 partygoers to stand with their hands against a wall for an hour while information from the individuals' identity cards was recorded in a notebook. "It was like the worst times of the military dictatorship... 30 years ago," said C.H.A. President César Cigliutti.  The police occupation continued for nearly 4 hours, but no one was arrested. Some journalists speculated that the club might have failed to pay routine bribes.  According to reporter Mariano Lago, "The fact that it was a gay bar only made it worse, as military and police forces are deeply homophobic.  Anyway, what happened was absolutely illegal.  These people were taken hostage," he said. C.H.A. announced that it plans to file criminal charges alleging "illegal deprivation of freedom," meet with the Interior Ministry, and lodge a complaint of "police violence" with the Secretary of Human Rights.   Amid the current national debate in the U.S. over immigration policy, the groups Human Rights Watch and Immigration Equality issued a report this week on the problems faced by thousands of American citizens and their foreign-born same gender partners. Titled "Family, Unvalued: Discrimination, Denial and the Fate of Binational Same-Sex Couples under U.S. Law," the 191-page report includes testimony by gays and lesbians describing abuse and harassment by immigration officials, being deported and separated from their partners, and enduring financial as well as emotional hardships. The report details how current exclusionary policies in the U.S. are rooted in a long history of anti-immigrant sentiment, and how homophobia has contributed to those policies.  From the McCarthy era until as recently as 1990, U.S. law barred foreign-born lesbians and gay men from even entering the country. According to the report, many U.S. citizens are being forced to move with their foreign-born partners to countries where their relationships are recognized.  At least 19 nations worldwide -- Canada, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Israel, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand -- provide some form of immigration equality to the same gender partners of citizens and permanent residents. A bill called the Uniting American Families Act has been introduced in both the U.S. House and Senate but, says Scott Long of Human Rights Watch and co-author of the report, "I don't think it's going to happen in this Congress."   And finally... [Cut 1/"Good evening and welcome to PrimeTime.  I'm Diane Sawyer."] U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney's openly lesbian daughter Mary finally broke her public silence this week as the Bush administration enters its 6th year.  It's likely no coincidence that she's got a new book coming out called "Now It's My Turn". Mary Cheney has been damned by right wing Republicans for being an "out" lesbian and condemned by queer activists who've demanded that she be more vocal in the fight for LGBT civil rights.  She was clearly her father's daughter during an interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC-TV's "PrimeTime" this week -- evasive at times, but painting a loving family portrait.  On coming out to her parents... [Cut 2/Mary: "never occurred to me that I wouldn't still be loved."] Is it difficult for Cheney when her father and their Republican Party take public positions against lesbigay equality? [Cut 3/Mary: Yes, a lot of debate around Cheney dinner table but those discussions are private... Sawyer asks if she'd still be in the GOP if her dad weren't VP, she says she doesn't respond to "hypotheticals"} She did say she opposes the so-called Federal Marriage Amendment, that she'd like to see the U.S. military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy repealed, and that she supports adoptions by same gender couples.  Would she marry Heather Poe, her partner of 14 years, if she could? [Cut 4/Mary: "Already consider ourselves married, waiting for state and federal laws to catch up.") Mary Cheney nevertheless remains in lockstep with the administration of her dad's boss, George W. Bush, whom she describes as "a good man."  And while her new book is called, "Now It's My Turn", might it just be the prequel to a less restrictive future, or will she forever be her father's daughter?  As Diane Sawyer notes, Dick Cheney will be... [Cut 5/Sawyer:  "… Vice President for annother 2-1/2 years, until finally, Mary Cheney's conflict between supporting her dad, and standing up for herself, will be over."]