"NewsWrap" for the week ending May 19, 2007 (As broadcast on "This Way Out" program #999, distributed 5-21-07) [Written by Greg Gordon, with thanks to Graham Underhill, and Rex Wockner with Bill Kelley] Reported this week by Don Lupo and Rick Watts The third annual International Day Against Homophobia ­ or IDAHO --- was observed in some fifty countries around the world on May 17th. That’s the day in 1990 when the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from its catalogue of mental illnesses. Public events, from street demonstrations to online actions, commemorate that day by drawing attention to the continuing discrimination and violence LGBT people face on a daily basis in many countries. Human Rights Watch marked the day by publishing its annual homophobia "Hall of Shame". Because of their continuing anti-queer actions and statements, Pope Benedict XVI, U.S. President George W. Bush and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad topped the list. IDAHO events were held in several cities across the UK, while a demonstration organized by the British Youth Council outside the Polish embassy in London protested the well-documented homophobia of that country’s leaders. Poland’s Education Minister Roman Giertych announced legislation this week that would make it a criminal offence to "promote homosexual propaganda" in schools, essentially censoring all classroom discussion of homosexuality, and stating that "teachers who reveal their homosexuality will be fired." Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski and his twin brother Lech Kaczynski, Poland's President, have each endorsed the bill, all but ensuring its passage in Parliament. In Australia, the Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby urged friends and families of lesbians and gay men to send a supportive email on the International Day Against Homophobia to their local MP and "speak out against injustice and demand [that] all human beings are treated with dignity and equality." In Ankara, Turkey, an international anti-homophobia meeting began on May 17th and was scheduled to run until May 21st. The Macedonian Association for Free Sexual Orientation released a new book analyzing international law, LGBT-related legal issues, and cases of discrimination. LGBT organizations in the Ukraine protested at the International Academy of Personnel Management against the expulsion of an openly gay student last year, and handed out leaflets condemning homophobia, racism and xenophobia. Among several IDAHO actions in Canada, placards with slogans such as "Love is for everyone" and "Hate is not a family value" dotted Grand Parade Square in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where more than 200 people also mourned the recent gay-bashing deaths of two local men. Nepal’s leading queer advocacy group Blue Diamond Society published its first issue of "The Pink", a magazine dedicated to sexual and gender minorities in Nepal and South Asia. The group also held the country’s first LGBT film festival in the capital of Kathmandu. The organization Pro-Gay Philippines hosted a film exhibition and roundtable discussions addressing homophobic discrimination. In Guyana, May 17th was marked with a screening of "Songs of Freedom," a film about the lives of gay and lesbian Jamaicans by director Philip Pike. The International Lesbian and Gay Association ­- or ILGA -- hostedd a first-ever pan-African conference in Johannesburg in the week leading up to the International Day Against Homophobia. About 60 activists discussed their first-hand knowledge of laws that breed homophobia and strategies to overcome it. Thirty-eight of 85 United Nations member countries that outlaw homosexuality are in Africa, according to an April 2007 ILGA report, which accused many African governments of "institutionally promoting a culture of hatred" against gay and lesbian people. In some areas where Islamic law is in force, homosexuality can be punished with death by stoning. South Africa stands alone on the continent in its progressive attitudes, last year becoming the first African nation to establish marriage equality for same gender couples. Nonhlanhla Mkhize, director of the Durban Gay and Lesbian Community and Health Centre, told the "South African Press Association" that "As the fifth country to legalize same-sex marriage, we urge our leadership to take the lead — on the African continent and internationally  ” in the struggle against all forms of prejudice against lesbian and gay people." The European branch of ILGA announced that a number of mayors had signed its Pride Campaign manifesto. Among the first were Bertrand Delanöe, the openly gay Mayor of Paris and co-President of United Cities & Local Governments; Eleni Mavrou, the Mayor of Nicosia, Cyprus; and Amsterdam Mayor Job Cohen, who conducted the world’s first same-gender marriages in 2001. Patricia Prendiville, Executive Director of ILGA-Europe said she hopes their signing on to the campaign will "encourage other mayors to condemn homophobia generally, and in particular encourage them to [refrain] from banning or otherwise limiting LGBT pride festivals and demonstrations." There was a heavy police presence as about 5,000 people took part in a Pride parade in Warsaw on May 19th, and for the first time with the official blessing of ­ or at least grudging acceptance by - city officials. Mayor Hanna Gronkiewicz Walz had been pressured by right-wing elements in the Polish government to follow her predecessor’s ban on Pride parades for the past two years. But she said that would contradict the recent European Court of Human Rights ruling that last year’s ban contravened E.U. laws supporting freedom of assembly and expression. The seven judges, including one from Poland, were unanimous. Unauthorized Pride events in Warsaw were attacked by anti-queer mobs in recent years, but no incidents were reported this time. But organizers of a proposed Pride march in Moscow on May 27th were officially denied a permit during a meeting with city officials this week. They’ve said they plan to hold some type of event anyway, despite brutal attacks by skinheads and religious fundamentalists on peaceful gatherings last year. Moscow activists have also lodged a challenge similar to the one against Warsaw in the European Court of Human Rights to their city’s previous Pride march bans. And officials in the Russian city of St. Petersburg this week also banned a Pride march planned there for May 26th. Iranian authorities arrested 87 people, including 80 suspected gay men, at a birthday party this week in Isfahan, according to a report by the Toronto-based Iranian Queer Organization. The rights group said that witnesses told them by phone that police beat the male guests with batons and also arrested the host's parents. The female guests were released soon after, but according to the latest reports the men remain in custody without bail or visitors. Male homosexual acts are punishable by death in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Rights workers said they feared the detainees could be tortured. An Iranian man was publicly hanged for homosexuality in November, and the hanging in 2005 of two reportedly gay teenagers prompted several European nations to begin granting asylum to Iranian refugees based on threats of persecution in their homeland because of their sexual orientation. And finally, the deaths of a staunch supporter of equality for LGBT people, and one of its most vocal opponents, topped the news in the U.S. this week. Yolanda King, the firstborn child of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, died at the young age of 51 of what a family spokesperson said may have been a heart condition. She was an actress and speaker whose company, Higher Ground Productions, was "committed to celebrating diversity and embracing unity." She spoke often of the Black civil rights movement's paving the way for other social justice movements, including those of LGBT people. Last year, she told the annual Out & Equal Workplace Summit that "discrimination under the rule of law still exists. If you are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, you do not have the same rights as other Americans... For a nation that prides itself on liberty, justice and equality for all, this is totally unacceptable." Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese called Yolanda King "a true friend of the GLBT community," while the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force’s Matt Foreman said that "Like her father, Yolanda King fought for racial and economic justice and challenged America to face up to these scourges. Like her mother, she was an unwavering voice for equality and justice for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people." Reverend Jerry Falwell, perhaps the most recognizable face of the religious right in the U.S. for more than three decades, also died of heart failure this week at the age of 73. His successful fundamentalist Christian TV ministry bankrolled the creation of the Moral Majority in 1979 as a conservative political force, and Falwell took credit for the presidential election and reelection of Ronald Reagan in the 1980’s. He later founded Liberty University, a faith-based college in his hometown of Lynchburg, Virginia. Falwell probably made more appearances on TV news programs and talk shows than any other religious right leader, usually condemning the moral decay of American society and railing most often against abortion and homosexuality. Two days after 9/11 Falwell notoriously blamed the attacks on "pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle." He later apologized for those remarks. He also called openly gay U.S. Congressman Barney Frank a "pervert" during a confrontation on CNN in 2002. Perhaps most infamously, Falwell claimed in 1999 that the purple, triangle-topped purse-carrying Tinky Winky, one of the boy characters on the popular Teletubbies children’s TV program, was "Role modeling the gay lifestyle [and was] damaging to the moral lives of children." Those comments were ridiculed around the world. [concludes next page…] Virtually all of the major U.S. queer advocacy groups extended their condolences to Falwell’s family and congregation, but lamented his often offensive and always abrasive opposition to LGBT civil rights. Reverend Mel White ghostwrote two books for Falwell before coming out as a gay man in 1999 and co-founding Soulforce, an ecumenical organization dedicated to fighting what they call "spiritual violence" against LGBT people. He said that, "It breaks my heart to think that Jerry died without ever discovering the truth about God's lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender children. I sincerely hope that one day his school and his church will have a change of heart."


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