"NewsWrap" for the week ending May 27, 2006 (As broadcast on "This Way Out" program #948, distributed 5-29-06) [Written this week Greg Gordon, with thanks to Graham Underhill and Rex Wockner] Reported this week by Jon Beaupré and Charls Hall According to initial reports from Moscow, that city's first-ever Pride parade has ended prematurely with violence and mass arrests. About 200 people were reportedly detained by police at the May 27th event, including Nikolai Alekseyev, one of the primary organizers of the march. The parade was planned for that date because it's the 13th anniversary of the repeal in Russia of Soviet-era laws against consensual homosexual sex. A police spokesperson said that about 120 of those arrested were Pride march participants, while the others were part of a counter demonstration by skinheads, members of the Russian Orthodox Church and a far right political group who had formed to confront the marchers, shouting "Moscow is not Sodom!" "This is a perverts' parade," one counter-protester, a woman who gave only her first name, Irina, told the Associated Press. "This is filth, which is forbidden by God. We have to cleanse the world of this filth." Canadian TV journalist Ellen Pinchuk reported that, "It did appear [that police] were more interested in arresting members of the gay and lesbian community than those who had come there to beat them up, so that was closely watched by international observers here from human rights groups, and members of the European Parliament." Authorities report that most of those arrested have already been released. More than a thousand police officers were put on full alert after organizers vowed to march despite the absence of an official city permit to do so. Pride marchers had planned to lay flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier -- a symbol of the World War 2 struggle against fascism, and one of Russia’s most sacred places. But police closed the gates to the park and began making arrests. Peter Tatchell of the British rights group OutRage! told Reuters that, "We came here to lay flowers at this anti-fascist memorial... Today is a great shame for Russia because a peaceful protest has been suppressed." Volker Beck, a Green member of Germany's Bundestag, was also among the openly queer notables from outside the country to march in a show of international solidarity. He was giving a TV interview when about 20 nationalist youth surrounded and beat him, bloodying his nose. Volker Eichler, a gay activist from Berlin who witnessed the attack, told the Associated Press that police not only failed to intervene on Beck's behalf, but eventually arrested him. According to a BBC report, several other foreign queer rights activists were also beaten by protesters. As an unprecedented Pride-related conference on May 25th kicked off the weekend in Moscow, members of an extreme nationalist group disrupted a speech by the grandson of Oscar Wilde. About 20 skinheads burst into the library hall where Merlin Holland was speaking, shouting nationalist slogans and throwing eggs at him, then spraying the room with an unidentified gas. The hall was quickly evacuated and there were no reported injuries. A Moscow court late this week upheld Mayor Yuri Luzhkov's official denial of a parade permit. The day before the parade Luzhkov told Russian Radio, "I believe that such a parade is inadmissible in our country above all for moral considerations. People should not make public their deviations." One group of LGBT activists had issued a statement before the parade calling it "untimely, dangerous and provocative." Ivan Timchenko, manager of the Three Monkeys, Moscow's most popular gay club, told the London Times that he and most of his friends were opposed to the public Pride celebration. "It is too early for Russia," he said. "We need to start breaking down barriers at home first. If we can’t talk about this at home, how can we shout about it on the street?" The U.S. State Department is finally acknowledging anti-queer violence in Iraq, saying that the U.S. embassy in Baghdad is willing to meet with non-governmental LGBT groups to address what activists have described as an increasingly calamitous situation, according to a story this week in the Washington Blade. Numerous reports over the past several weeks have documented a wave of vigilante-style kidnappings and murders of anyone perceived to be gay, lesbian or transgendered in Iraq by Shiite Islamic fundamentalist death squads. An April 20th letter sent by the U.S. based International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged her to condemn the rash of killings and to "ask that U.S. military and civilian personnel in Iraq call these abuses to the attention of Iraqi authorities." L. Victor Hurtado, acting director of the State Department's Office of Iraq Affairs, claimed in a May 11th reply that the U.S. is working with the Iraqi government to promote the protection of human rights. "We are very troubled by these reported incidents of threats, violence, executions, and other violations of humanitarian law against members of the gay and lesbian community in Iraq," he wrote. Lt. Col. Barry Venable, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Defense, said last week that other Iraqi groups are being targeted for assassinations and kidnappings, including college professors, doctors and owners of liquor stores. "We try to stop killings and assassinations regardless of the motive," Venable said. The Bush administration, while earlier this year condemning Islamic clerics for threatening to execute a man in Afghanistan for converting to Christianity, had until now remained silent over the anti-LGBT killings in Iraq. Education and theology clashed in Scotland this week. With the demise 6 years ago of the noxious law banning the "promotion" of homosexuality in schools, the country's sex education curriculum is finally being amended to include discussions of homosexual sex and relationships -- a move Scotland's Catholic Church has vehemently condemned. "To quite graphically equip children with information about same-sex relationships is appalling, outrageous and utterly unnecessary," said a spokesperson for the Church. "Where was it decreed that every aspect of human sexuality has to be addressed in the school curriculum?" The instructional guidelines, part of the Sexual Health and Relationships Education project, leave it up to individual teachers whether or to what extent they want to discuss issues such as protection from sexually transmitted diseases for lesbians and gay men, how to access sexual health services, and how to handle same-gender crushes. A spokesperson for the Scottish Executive said that, "No new guidance to schools is being issued. What NHS Health Scotland is doing is offering training to schools should they wish it on a range of diversity and equality issues." Meanwhile, the Church of Scotland, the country's national church, is supporting adoptions by same gender couples, but with specific restrictions. The mixture of laypeople, consultants and academics at the Church's General Assembly this week said there should be a strict selection process to ensure couples are in an "enduring... stable and strong relationship." The Church supports adoptions access for same gender couples as long as new legislation doesn't define adoption as a "right". Individual gays and lesbians can already adopt in Scotland, but their partners have no legal rights. A new law expected to come into force next year will grant same gender couples equal parental rights. The General Assembly also acknowledged that the advent of civil partnerships has led to increasing requests by same gender couples for a Church of Scotlan d religious ceremony. The Assembly narrowly decided that the blessing of civil partnerships would be a matter of conscience for local ministers -- that no minister would be disciplined for conducting such blessings, but that none would be forced to do so. The close vote requires that each presbytery be consulted, and that the issue be raised again at next year's annual meeting. Australian Prime Minister John Howard has come under fire by several of the country's queer advocacy groups for telling students during a speech in Ireland at Dublin University that denying marriage or civil unions to same gender couples is not discrimination. Responding to a student's question on the issue, he said, "I think it is a form of minority fundamentalism to say that you have to, in every aspect of one's institutions and one's arrangements in society, have technical equivalence." The Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby called the Prime Minister's reference to equality advocates as "minority fundamentalists" "offensive" and the Australian Coalition for Equality labeled it "insulting." A recent poll showed that a majority of Australians favor legal recognition for same gender couples, and more members of Parliament are calling for some form of civil partnership law. Queensland MPs Warren Entsch and Peter Lindsay have each called on the Howard government to introduce such legislation. "There's actually a lot of support building in the Parliament," said Lindsay, "and from people that you wouldn't... think would be supporting this." And finally, every now and then we like to share the latest report about homosexuality as a natural variant in the animal kingdom. In the news this week, both a gay and a lesbian pair of storks at the Dutch zoo in Overloon have adopted and raised a number of chicks. A lesbian stork couple was given 2 eggs to sit on, while a gay male pair was given 1 egg to nurture. Zoo staff were unsure if the queer storks would have a natural urge to raise offspring, but were happily surprised to discover that the birds embraced parenthood. Animals usually express homosexual behavior in mating rituals, but the storks in Overloon are tenderly caring for and feeding their adopted chicks. Zoo spokesperson Esther Jansen said, "The gay storks look after the eggs and the chicks just as well as our heterosexual birds" -- a notion, we can't resist saying, that's bound to ruffle the feathers of some homophobes.