"NewsWrap" for the week ending January 20, 2007 (As broadcast on "This Way Out" program #982, distributed 1-22-07) [Written by Greg Gordon, with thanks to Graham Underhill, and Rex Wockner with Bill Kelley] Reported this week by Rick Watts and Don Lupo A gay man in the Czech Republic won a landmark ruling this week against a prospective employer for denying him a job based solely on his sexual orientation. 43-year-old Lech Sydor was promised a job as a masseur at a health rehabilitation center, but the manager refused to hire him after he found out that Sydor is gay. It's the first time that a Czech court has ruled on an issue of workplace sexual orientation discrimination. Sydor was awarded 70,000 crowns in damages - around 3,200 U.S. dollars - and the rehabilitation center was ordered to issue a formal apology. Sydor told reporters that he took his case to court because the company that refused to hire him didn't even try to hide the reason. "When I spoke to the director," he said, "he looked me straight in the eye and told me that he cannot afford to employ me because I am gay." In court, the Beskydy Rehabilitation Centre claimed someone who was better qualified had applied for the job. But after the ruling, its spokesperson Tomas Zelazko admitted that the centre feared that its clients would react negatively to a gay masseur. The Czech queer rights group Gay Initiative said it hopes the ruling will inspire others to courageously fight similar acts of discrimination. Sydor's successful workplace discrimination lawsuit follows last year’s passage of legislation to allow gay and lesbian couples in the Czech Republic to register their partnerships. And after 17 years in the LGBT rights movement, Jiri Hromada announced late last week that Gay Initiative, the rights group he's led for the past 7 years, is closing down. "Of course all the work is not done," Hromada told Radio Prague. "But the goals we set out in 1990 have been accomplished. Especially in the legislative realm, the status of gays and lesbians has massively improved… In thhe first poll done on homosexuality in 1990, only 10% said [they could] imagine a gay person as their neighbor. Last year, they did a similar poll connected with registered partnerships, and found that 70% of Czechs accept our differences. That is the main goal we sought to accomplish." The biggest task now facing the queer community, says Hromada, isn't convincing non-gay people to be more tolerant, but convincing more LGBT people to come out. "We did a survey last year with help from the E.U. within our own gay minority," he said. "What we found was that many people unnecessarily fear the negative consequences of coming out -- consequences that seldom actually happen." Other LGBT advocacy groups will continue the push for full equality in the Czech Republic, focusing on gaining all the rights of marriage for same gender couples, and a higher profile in the mass media, Hromada said, adding that, "I want people to not be afraid to fight for their rights." Taiwan's LGBT community is becoming more vocal in its demands for civil rights. Activists demonstrated on January 12th in front of Parliament to demand passage of a bill that would protect gays and lesbians from employment discrimination. It's passed in committee, but opposition from conservative religious groups, led by the Alliance For Life, has blocked it from moving forward. They claim the measure will not only protect gays and lesbians, but pedophiles and those who engage in bestiality. But lesbigay activist Wu Shu-liang told reporters that, "We don't want special privileges, we just need our rights as citizens and as people… To kill this bill is to deny our right to a livelihood." Queer rights leaders are also pressing the government to move forward with a proposal to recognize same-gender relationships - another piece of legislation opposed by church groups. The cabinet approved a measure in 2003 to create civil unions, but all attempts to advance the bill in parliament have thus far failed. Activists insist, however, that the fact that the bills were even drafted signals the growing strength of the island's lesbigay community. The first official Pride Parade was held in Taiwan last October. Several thousand members of the LGBT community and their supporters marched through the center of Taipei, the capital city. Carrying banners and waving rainbow flags, about 150 people gathered in Saint Peters Square at the Vatican on January 13th to protest the anti-queer pronouncements of Pope Benedict XVI. The demonstration, sponsored by the national LGBT advocacy group Arcigay, also commemorated the ninth anniversary of the self-immolation suicide of writer Alfredo Ormando. He doused himself with gasoline and set himself on fire in Saint Peters Square on January 13th, 1998 to protest the Roman Catholic Church's condemnation of LGBT people. He died of his burns 9 days later. In his suicide note, Ormando wrote at length about feeling rejected by the Church and the pain it had caused him. Some of the demonstrators laid floral tributes to Ormando. They also carried banners calling on the Italian government to legalize same-gender unions. One banner read "Less Vatican, more self-determination." The center-left coalition of Prime Minister Romano Prodi is reportedly still drafting a bill to grant limited partnership rights to Italian gay and lesbian couples. Prodi himself, however, has said he's opposed to full marriage equality. Benedict has constantly railed against same-gender unions since he became Pope in April 2005. He even condemned queer couples in his recent Christmas message. In his latest salvo last week, he told a gathering of local Italian government officials that granting legal recognition to lesbian and gay couples was "dangerous and counterproductive, as they inevitably weaken and destabilize the legitimate family based on matrimony." Benedict has promised to use all the powers of the Vatican to defeat any bill granting rights to same-gender couples. A widely circulated press release from the British queer advocacy group OutRage! this week called on activists around the world to protest draconian laws proposed in Nigeria that would subject gays and lesbians, or anyone who even associates with them, to as much as 5 years in prison. But Scott Long, who heads the office of LGBT concerns at Human Rights Watch, an organization devoted to protecting abused people around the world, issued an urgent email warning that any protests lodged with the Nigerian government would hurt, not help, the cause of LGBT people there. "Please, people, do not flood Nigerian consulates and embassies with protest letters at this time," he wrote. "It is emphatically not what the Nigerian activists who are in the forefront of the struggle want right now." Long charged OutRage! with failing to consult with activists in Nigeria as to the best course of action, writing that "I'm sure this initiative was entirely well-intentioned. But Nigerian activists are angry." He says he's heard from the country's leading queer and human rights groups who've told him that trying to pressure the Nigerian government would be counterproductive. "There is no evidence right now that the bill is moving forward. It has been stalled in committee in the legislature for months," Long wrote. He said Nigerian activists are hoping the measure will die a quiet death as the current legislative session comes to a close. Long wrote that lawmakers are "not likely to take up the bill unless something -- such as an international campaign -- pushes them to." As we record this report, there's been no response from OutRage! Iraq's government this week strongly criticized a U.N. human rights report about its civilian death toll in 2006, saying it discussed subjects that are taboo in Iraq, such as homosexuality. "The current environment of impunity and lawlessness invites a heightened level of insecurity for homosexuals in Iraq," the report says. "Armed Islamic groups and militias have been known to be particularly hostile toward homosexuals, frequently and openly engaging in violent campaigns against them…There [have] been a number of assassinations of homosexuals in Iraq." But government spokesperson Ali al-Dabbagh told reporters that "There was information in the report that we cannot accept here in Iraq… The reeport, for example, spoke about the phenomenon of homosexuality and giving them their rights... Such statements are not suitable to the Iraqi society. This is rejected… They should respect the values and traditions here in Iraq," he said. Iraqi exiles who are in touch with gay and lesbian friends in the country continue to report abductions and murders of people believed to be homosexual by organized death squads. Those often militia-based groups, claiming to be enforcing Sharia, or fundamentalist Islamic law, have also been summarily executing people for listening to Western pop music, wearing shorts or jeans, drinking alcohol, working in a barber shop, dancing, or even having a Sunni name. Women have been killed for not being veiled, or walking in the street unaccompanied by a male relative. Iraqi lesbigay activists living in exile say that the increase in U.S. troops recently proposed by President Bush will do little to end the pogroms against LGBT people, or the general sectarian violence that began in the country soon after the U.S. invasion in 2003. But finally, Britain's Secretary of State for Education and Skills Alan Johnson told "BBC Radio 4" this week that he'd like to see the queer rights anthem "(Sing If You're) Glad To Be Gay" included in a book for schoolchildren. The government's "21st Century Songbook" is a 10-million-pound project designed to encourage singing in schools. Johnson has outspokenly supported the pending Sexual Orientation Regulations, which ban discrimination in the U.K. based on sexual orientation in the provision of goods and services. He stressed, however, that the song is only his personal choice. But Ann Widdecombe, a columnist for the "Daily Express," wrote that, "this type of moral discussion should be left for when children are much older." Songs will be nominated by students and teachers. Composer Howard Goodall will make the final selections. "(Sing If You're) Glad To Be Gay" was written by musician and activist Tom Robinson for the 1976 London Pride march. His Tom Robinson Band recording of the song in 1978 reached number 18 on the British charts.