"NewsWrap"
for the week ending July 14, 2007
(As broadcast on "This Way Out" program #1,007, distributed 7-16-07)
[Written by Greg Gordon, with thanks to Graham Underhill, and Rex Wockner
with Bill Kelley]
Reported this week by Don Lupo and Greg Gordon
LGBT Pride marches continue to be met with resistance in some cities around
the world, but strong support in most others.
Violence marred a Pride parade in the Croatian capital of Zagreb on July 7th.
Marko Jurcic, one of the organizers, told "Agence France Presse" that police
could not protect more than 20 marchers who were targeted by homophobic
assaults. About ten people were hurt, and two needed medical attention. He said
that Italian Senator Gianpaolo Silvestri was in one of the groups that was
attacked, but was not hurt. Croatia’s Interior Minister and several members of
parliament and human rights officials were also at the march.
The country’s parliament passed legislation giving limited recognition to
same-gender couples in 2003, but expanded rights for those couples was on the
marchers’ political agenda.
About 300 people, escorted by close to 500 police officers, braved the jeers
and assaults to take part in the seventh annual Pride march through the center
of the city. Police reported eight arrests, including one man who was
charged this week with preparing Molotov cocktails he and others planned to throw
into the crowd. Two of his friends, armed with eggs and tomatoes, were arrested
on the spot, while the Molotov cocktail-making man was tracked down later.
He’ll be the first person to face hate crime charges since they were added to
Croatia’s Penal Code last year.
Hungary’s Secretary of Justice and Law Enforcement said this week that
police are searching for more suspects in several homophobic assaults on Pride
marchers in Budapest on July 7th. Eight attackers were arrested on the scene.
Hundreds of skinheads and right-wingers gathered along the route of the city’s
12th Pride Parade to pelt marchers with eggs, smoke bombs, beer bottles, and
plastic bags filled with sand. About 2,000 people marched in the Hungarian
capital for several miles, from Heroes' Square to the foot of one of the bridges
over the Danube River. Nearly a dozen people, including a German citizen,
were reportedly beaten by anti-queer thugs during the march.
But about 200,000 people marched, and 300,000 spectators cheered them on,
at the annual Pride parade in Mexico City on June 30th, no doubt celebrating
the recent advent of civil partnerships for same-gender couples in the country’s
capital.
One observer told gay journalist Rex Wockner that he was particularly
delighted to see transgendered mariachi bands, a group of 800 indigenous men from
Veracruz dancing naked on the Angel of Independence monument, and "drag queens
all dressed as Frida Kahlo with a bad hangover." A raucous concert followed the
parade.
LGBT people gathered in Duarte Park in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic on
June 28th for their second annual Pride rally. Dozens of lesbians showed up
first, with rainbow flags, posters and pamphlets, and then some gay men
arrived "several hours later," according to a report in "El Diario." The newspaper
also ran a photo of women wearing T-shirts that said, "I am lesbian because I
like it and that's what I want."
"Los Tiempos" newspaper reported Cochabamba, Bolivia’s first Pride
celebration the same day in the form of a fair in the city's main square. A
first-ever Pride march followed on June 30th. There was "an overflow of glamour, joy,
luxury, color and respect," according to the report, as thousands danced their
way from the Plaza of the Flags to Columbus Plaza.
The second annual Festival of Art and Diversity brought 300 people to the
Kennedy Mall district in Guayaquil, Ecuador on June 28th under the theme "The
problem is not homosexuality but rather homophobia," capped by a six-hour
concert.
The third Pride parade in Panama City was held June 30th along Argentina
Way, ending at Andres Bello Park. Some 260 participants carried signs demanding
equal rights and urging tolerance and safe sex.
Hundreds of people marched in San Salvador, El Salvador July 1st to promote
sex education and discourage discrimination. Under the theme "Diversity in
Action," members of various LGBT, women's and HIV organizations joined the walk
from the Divine Savior of the World monument to Civic Plaza. A spokesperson
for the organizers said that there’s virtually no government support for
anti-homophobia or AIDS-prevention campaigns in El Salvador.
About 5,000 people gathered in the Plaza de Armas in Santiago, Chile on
July 1st for seven hours of dancing, music and drag shows. They also demanded
passage of anti-discrimination and civil-union laws, and celebrated the 16th
birthday of the nation's leading lesbigay-rights group, the Movement for
Homosexual Integration and Liberation.
In Bogota, Colombia, some 10,000 people marched with Pride from National
Park to BolÃvar Plaza in chilly, rainy weather July 1st. A group of Communist
Youth skinheads supported the parade, chanting, "There is no political freedom
without sexual freedom."
Political slogans and banners at the march protested the recent demise of
Colombia's civil-union bill, which, after passing both houses of Congress, was
killed in a conference committee by senators who were reportedly pressured by
the country’s Roman Catholic Church to change their votes.
President Alvaro Uribe, a conservative Catholic himself, had promised to sign
the bill into law.
But marriage equality in South Africa hasn’t guaranteed the safety of gays
and lesbians there, and national advocacy groups are calling on the government
to do more in particular to end escalating attacks on lesbians in the Black
townships. At least four women have reportedly been murdered during the past
few months because of their sexual orientation. And this week, thirty-year-old
Sizakele Sigasa, an outreach coordinator at the Positive Women's Network and
a lesbigay rights activist, and her 23-year-old friend Salome Masooa, were
found tortured, murdered, and dumped in a field in Soweto. Police would only say
that Masooa had been shot to death, but that Sigasa was found with her hands
tied with her underpants, her ankles tied with her shoelaces, and three bullet
holes in her head and three in her collarbone.
The Treatment Action Campaign said in a statement that "This appears to have
been a hate crime, committed by people who are intolerant of women and
lesbians," and lamented that "poverty, unemployment and cultural attitudes that
promote machismo will take generations to resolve."
Australia’s Federal Government has rejected openly gay High Court Justice
Michael Kirby’s call for equal pension rights for same-gender couples.
Parliament is about to consider legislation altering some technical aspects
of judges' pensions. Kirby had appealed to Attorney-General Philip Ruddock to
support a move that would allow his partner of 38 years, Johan von Vloten, to
receive a spousal pension as the spouses of heterosexually-marriedd judges do
- if he outlives the 68-year-old jurist, who retires in two years.
But a spokeswoman for Ruddock said this week that the Government would not
support changes to the Judges' Pensions Amendment Bill to extend coverage to
their same-gender partners because it didn’t want to address only one aspect of
such proposed entitlements. The conservative Federal Government of Prime
Minister John Howard, however, has long opposed any moves to grant what it has
consistently called "marriage-like rights" to same-gender couples.
In yet another example of the inadequacies of civil union laws in the
United States, global shipping giant United Parcel Service said this week that it
can’t provide health and insurance benefits to the civilly-united partners of
its union workers in New Jersey because they’re available only to legally
married couples. The company issued a press release noting that it does provide
spousal benefits to married same-gender couples in Massachusetts, and that
civilly-united non-union employees in New Jersey are covered. But, it said,
"Absent a law that specifically categorizes same sex partners as married spouses,
UPS cannot unilaterally change a union contract to offer same sex benefits," and
that civil unions would need to be specifically included when a new contract
is negotiated.
The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled in October that same-gender couples should
be given all the rights of marriage, but let the state legislature decide
whether to call those legal relationships marriages or civil unions. The
legislature chose civil unions, but since the law took effect February 19th, nearly
one in eight of about a thousand civilly-united couples have reported being
refused spousal health care benefits by their employers because they aren’t
legally married.
Last month a review commission created as part of the civil unions
legislation was told that the law is not working. Its report to the legislature is
generally expected to call for full marriage equality in New Jersey.
And finally, a disgruntled man named Michael McDermott went to the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C., which hears
copyright and trademark cases, claiming that granting San Francisco’s Dykes on Bikes
a trademark for the exclusive use of that phrase was "disparaging to men...
scandalous and immoral," and that the very word "dyke" is synonymous with a
"deep obsessive hatred of men and the male gender."
But the federal court ruled three-to-nothing this week that McDermott had no
legal right to sue, and that men were not harmed by a group’s decision to call
itself "dykes".
The motorcycle-riding Dykes On Bikes has been a fixture in the "City by the
Bay" for more than 30 years. The non-profit group regularly leads San
Francisco’s Pride parade - as do similar groups in other ciities -- and helps LGBT
organizations with fundraising.
In 2004 and again in 2005 the U.S. Trademark Office rejected the application
of Dykes on Bikes because it believed the phrase was disparaging to lesbians.
The group then appealed to the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. With the
help of the National Center for Lesbian Rights and more than two dozen expert
declarations from scholars, linguists, psychologists, and activists
demonstrating how the word "dyke" has evolved to become a positive and empowering term,
the Appeal Board ruled in their favor in December 2005, prompting McDermott’s
lawsuit. This week’s court ruling ends the nearly three-year battle, and marks
the first time the term "dyke" has been trademarked.
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