"NewsWrap"
for the week ending June 2, 2007
(As broadcast on "This Way Out" program #1,001, distributed 6-4-07)
[Written by Greg Gordon, with thanks to Graham Underhill, and Rex Wockner 
with Bill Kelley]


Reported this week by Charls Hall and Rick Watts


  Police stopped an LGBT Pride rally outside Moscow City Hall on May 27th 
before it could start, arresting most of the organizers as they arrived.  At the 
same time, anti-queer thugs beat up several local activists and foreigners who 
had come to town to support the event.
Hundreds of state riot police in the Russian capital did little to halt the 
bloody assault and, in some cases, spewed homophobic insults at Pride 
supporters as they took them into custody.
Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov had banned a parade or any other public Pride 
events, calling them "satanic."
Those caught in the violent confrontations included members of the European 
Parliament and other European national parliaments.  They had assembled with 
Pride activists near City Hall to symbolically deliver a protest letter to 
Luzhkov signed by 42 members of the European Parliament.


  Pop group Right Said Fred singer Richard Fairbrass was attacked while 
giving an interview to the "Reuters" wire service.  Several others were also 
assaulted in the middle of interviews with the more than one hundred news 
organizations covering the event.  "On numerous occasions," the "BBC" reported, 
"nationalists circled gay rights activists as they spoke with journalists, then 
reached in to punch or kick the person being interviewed.  Police... only rarely 
detained their attackers."
British human rights activist Peter Tatchell was repeatedly punched, then 
slammed to the pavement and kicked several times, leaving him with a seriously 
swollen and bloodied right eye.  "There is no rule of law in Moscow," he said.  
"The right to protest does not exist.  This is not a democracy."
German MP Volker Beck and Italian European Parliament Member Marco Cappato 
were also arrested.  Dutch European Parliament Member Sophie in't Veld told the 
"GayRussia.Ru" Web site by phone soon thereafter that "We felt eggs and other 
things being thrown.  Police did nothing to arrest hooligans... I saw a guy 
with a knife... and I thought: 'That's it.  I'm out of here.'  We are now in 
some restaurant with [transgender Italian MP] Vladimir [Luxuria] and [pop-music 
group] t.A.T.u."  Luxuria ruefully said that, "We did not manage to [deliver] 
the letter."


  Chief pride organizer Nikolai Alekseev was jailed overnight along with a 
few other activists.  "We are accused of having blocked the streets and 
insult[ing] the police, which is a complete lie," Alekseev said in a phone interview.  
He called it "nothing else than the good old method of the KGB...  We will 
continue our fight for our rights," he said, "no matter if it does not please 
Mr. Luzhkov."


  The day before the Moscow City Hall melee, about 150 people attended a 
Pride Conference at the Swissôtel.  More than a hundred journalists and 26 TV 
crews covered the event.
Last year's first-ever pride events, which were also banned, ended the same 
way as this year's, when two small gatherings were violently attacked by 
neo-fascists, skinheads, fundamentalist Christians and riot police.  Charges against 
several of the organizers were later dropped.  A lawsuit over last year's ban 
is pending before the European Court of Human Rights.


  Meanwhile, Poland's Ombudsman for Children's Rights Ewa Sowinska said she 
won’t be asking state psychologists to examine the popular "Teletubbies" 
children’s TV show for what she had called a gay subtext.  In a recent magazine 
interview she said that the "BBC"-produced show might not be suitable for Polish 
television because one of the ostensibly male characters, Tinky Winky, carries 
a handbag.  Her original comments came on the heels of last month’s death of 
U.S. religious right leader Jerry Falwell, who had been mocked around the world 
for making similar statements, as was Sowinska.  The "BBC" has consistently 
challenged any claim that the "Teletubbies" show had a hidden agenda, queer or 
otherwise, other than to educate and entertain pre-school children.  It was 
produced in the U.K. between 1997 and 2001, and is still broadcast all over the 
world.
The country's state-run television network did delete a scene this week from 
the hit British series "Little Britain" involving a gay kiss.  The smooch ends 
a war of words over homophobia involving the character Dafydd, played by 
British comic Matt Lucas, who famously calls himself "the only gay in the 
village."  Network spokesperson Aneta Wrona told the "Agence France Press" that "We 
decided to cut a scene which could cause controversy among Polish viewers and 
which isn't exactly in line with our mission as a public television channel."
Last month, Poland’s Education Minister Roman Giertych announced legislation 
to make it a criminal offence to "promote homosexual propaganda" in schools, 
effectively banning any classroom discussion of sexual orientation.  With the 
backing of the current rightwing-dominated government, the bill’s passage 
appears almost certain.


  Ian Paisley, Junior, the son of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist 
First Minister, would probably feel right at home in Poland.  He was appointed a 
junior minister in the government Office of First Minister and Deputy First 
Minister by his famous ­ or infamous - father Ian Paisley, Senior onnly three 
weeks ago, and represents North Antrim in the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Paisley, Junior told "Hot Press" magazine this week that he is "pretty 
repulsed" by gays and lesbians.  "I think that those people harm themselves and - 
without caring about it - harm society," he said.  "That doesn't mean to say 
that I hate them.  I mean, I hate what they do."
Alan Wardle of the national LGBT advocacy group Stonewall called the remarks 
a "disgrace... If he made these comments about Black or Asian people he would 
be hounded out of office."
As the expression goes, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.  The elder 
Paisley has been outspokenly anti-queer for decades, and led an unsuccessful 
campaign in 1977 against the decriminalization of homosexuality in Northern 
Ireland called "Save Ulster From Sodomy."
Sinn Fein’s Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness emphasized during a 
broadcast interview that the comments were Paisley, Junior’s own and did not 
represent government policy.  "Gay rights are enshrined in legislation," he said, 
"and we as first and deputy first minister[s] have a duty to uphold [them]."


  But lesbian and gay couples will be legally recognized in New Hampshire -- 
once considered to be one of the most conservative of U.S. states -- with the 
signature this week by Governor John Lynch on legislation creating civil 
unions. Starting in January, civilly united couples will have many of the same 
rights, responsibilities and obligations of heterosexually married couples.  
Lynch, who opposes marriage equality, called the civil unions bill "a matter of 
conscience and fairness."  Conservative religious groups have vowed to launch a 
repeal effort.
The first and only openly gay bishop of the U.S. Episcopal Church, New 
Hampshire’s V. Gene Robinson, said he plans to civilly unite with his longtime 
partner Mark Andrews.  "This is a real confirmation of what New Hampshire has 
always been about," Robinson said: "the freedom of its own citizens and fairness 
for everyone."  He said he will let individual Episcopal priests under his 
charge decide whether or not to bless same-gender unions.  That highly divisive 
issue has pitted the more progressive U.S. Episcopal wing against conservative 
theologians in other regions of the global Anglican Communion.
Massachusetts stands alone among U.S. states to extend full marriage equality 
to lesbigay couples.  There are civil union or domestic partnership laws in 
Connecticut, Vermont, New Jersey, Maine, California and Washington, and Oregon 
will join New Hampshire in offering civil unions in January.


  And finally, just who can patronize gay bars became a hot issue in two co
untries this week.  In Australia, Melbourne’s Peel Hotel, a popular watering 
hole and dance club for gay men, won the right to limit the number of women and 
heterosexual patrons in a case before the Victoria state government's Equal 
Opportunity and Human Rights Commission.  The tribunal’s chief executive Helen 
Szoke said that the bar’s gay clientele had experienced harassment, hostility 
and violence at the venue.  "(They) also have felt as though they've been like a 
zoo exhibit, with big groups of women on hens' parties coming to the club," 
she said.
Some critics have questioned how gay and heterosexual men can be 
differentiated, but the establishment’s owner Tom McFeely said it was more about 
inappropriate behavior than sexual orientation.  He said his intention was not to ban 
all heterosexuals and lesbians but to limit their numbers, enabling his gay 
clientele to freely express their sexuality.  Of the mostly negative publicity 
the news has generated, McFeely said, "I'm not worried about it because, to be f
rank, I don't really care what heterosexuals or lesbians think."


  Apparently sharing that view in Canada are the owners of Le Stud, a 
Montreal gay bar, which this week refused service to a woman and her father.  
20-year-old college student Audrey Vachon said she was told by a member of the staff 
that the bar didn’t serve women, and she was asked to leave.  She’s filed a 
complaint with the Quebec Human Rights Commission.  "I'm scandalized [to be 
treated this way by] a community which has suffered discrimination in the past," 
she said.
Some queer rights groups and similar businesses in both countries supported 
the right of gay men to gather in what they feel to be safe environments, while 
others criticized the exclusionary policies.  Peter Sergakis, who owns 
another bar in Montreal’s gay village, told Canadian television that "This should 
not be happening, it's like going back 20 years ago when... gays were 
intimidated in straight bars.  This is not acceptable in 2007."
More than a dozen women reportedly occupied tables at Le Stud this week in a 
protest organized by a Montreal radio station.  Some gay men in the bar, which 
bills itself as a "manly meat market," greeted the women, and chatted with 
them as they drank.<BR><BR><BR>**************************************<BR> See 
what's free at http://www.aol.com.</HTML>