"NewsWrap"
for the week ending August 18, 2007
(As broadcast on "This Way Out" program #1,012, distributed 8-20-07)
[Written by Greg Gordon, with thanks to Graham Underhill, and Rex Wockner
with Bill Kelley]
Reported this week by Don Lupo and Jon Beaupré
Lesbigay Ugandans made history this week at a Kampala hotel by calling a
first-ever news conference to demand their civil rights. Fearing the repressive
regime of outspokenly anti-queer President Yoweri Museveni, however, most of
the seven representatives of LGBT groups wore masks to hide their identity.
They complained that police regularly arrest and beat gays, or take bribes
for not doing so. Lesbians and gay men are also frequent victims of violence by
homophobic mobs in Uganda, especially in rural areas where most of the
African country’s population live. Human rights groups including Amnesty
International have criticized the Ugandan government for allowing the abuses to continue.
Dr. Paul Semugoma, one of the speakers at the news conference, said that
medical schools in his country offer no information on sexuality. He told
reporters that when an HIV-positive gay man came to his office he didn’t know how to
advise him about safe sex, "even with all my training," he said. "That was
when I realized that if we were going to stop the HIV/AIDS epidemic, we needed
to educate ourselves about sexual health for gays and lesbians, too."
Uganda still maintains its British colonial era law against male homosexual
activity, which is punishable by up to life in prison. The group at their news
conference called for repeal of that law, tighter controls on police, and the
distribution of HIV/AIDS prevention material for gay men.
Victor Juliet Mukasa of Sexual Minorities Uganda probably the mostt
high-profile activist in the country, whose home has been raided by police - told the
news conference that "Our message is simple and clear; let us live in peace...
We are human beings and should have the same rights as any other citizen of
Uganda."
But a government cabinet member said that the current administration has no
intention of repealing the sodomy law, and claimed that homosexuality is not a
human rights issue.
The government of the Netherlands would beg to differ. It’s launched a
review of how LGBT people are treated in 36 countries that benefit from its
routine financial aid. Same-gender sex is banned in 18 of those nations, and
punishable with fines, flogging or, in three cases, the death penalty.
Dutch Development Cooperation Minister Bert Koenders has instructed embassy
officials to conduct the research and report back in a few months' time, hoping
it will stimulate discussion between his government and officials of the t
argeted nations, though none were named. Embassy officials have also been told
to lobby for decriminalization of same-gender sex in countries that ban it.
The Netherlands became the first country in the world to open civil marriage
to same-gender couples in April 2001.
Thousands of gays and lesbians and their supporters demonstrated in a
National Day of Equality on August 12th in Australia's largest cities, denouncing
the government of Prime Minister John Howard and demanding the right to marry.
The events marked the third anniversary of the passage of federal legislation
limiting marriage to heterosexual couples.
Demonstrators marched through the central business district of Melbourne,
flying pink balloons displaying "Equal Love" symbols. "Your friend or your
neighbour or someone you don't even know might be a first-class taxpayer,"
organizer Aly Mohummad told reporters, "but they're a second-class citizen in the eyes
of the law."
Activists marched in Sydney from Oxford Street, the hub of the queer com
munity there, to city hall. Speaking at the rally, Green Party Senator Kerry
Nettle condemned the Howard-engineered marriage ban and said "[T]hree years later
we hear the Prime Minister talking about trying to impose a ban on same sex
adoptions from overseas, just before [another] federal election." Under the
proposed legislation, any child adopted legally overseas by a same-gender couple
would not be granted a visa to enter Australia.
Other National Day of Equality demonstrations were held in Brisbane and Perth.
The country’s Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission launched an
investigation last year into inequities faced by same-gender couples. It urged
passage of legislation to guarantee rights for them in its report to the
government two months ago. But Prime Minister Howard has ignored their
recommendations, claiming that there’s no popular support for such laws. Recent polls
contradict him.
The Church of Sweden entered its first-ever contingent in Stockholm's LGBT
Pride parade on August 4th.
The 30 marchers, including two senior priests, carried signs saying, "Love is
stronger than everything." A church spokesman said officials want to "break
the big silence of the masses" on LGBT matters. About 76 percent of Swedes
belong to the Lutheran church, although only 2 percent regularly attend services.
Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt toured Pride Park on August 2nd, the hub of
the week long festivities, becoming the first sitting Swedish head of state to
visit a Pride venue. RuPaul and Bananarama performed on the park's main
stage on August 3rd, and about 50,000 people marched in the parade the next day -
including several MPs and government ministers - with an estimated 500,000
spectators.
Sweden has had a comprehensive registered-partnership law for same-gender
couples since 1995. It’s expected to become the seventh country to fully
legalize same-gender marriage sometime next year, including the right to marry in the
Church.
A national Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, meeting
this week in Chicago, urged its bishops not to defrock gay and lesbian
ministers who violate a celibacy rule but are in a "mutual, chaste and faithful
committed same-gender relationship."
Bradley Schmeling, a pastor at Atlanta’s St. John’s Lutheran Church, was the
focal point of the debate. He’d been removed from the St. John’s clergy
list earlier this year after he told his bishop he was in a committed
relationship with a man. Under Church rules an ECLA disciplinary committee said it had
no choice but to defrock Schmeling. He continues to pastor at St. John's at
the request of the congregation, though his name still won’t appear on the
clergy list. He called the Church’s relaxation of its rules "a crack in the dam."
Like other mainline Protestant denominations, the Evangelical Lutheran Church
in America has struggled for decades over how to treat its lesbigay
parishioners and clergy. An eight-year study on human sexuality by an ELCA task force
could recommend changes to church policy when its final report is issued in
2009. The Assembly voted to refer proposals on ordaining gays and lesbians and
blessing same-gender couples to the task force so it could also consider those
issues in its report.
The 538-to-431 vote to ease the outright ban on partnered lesbigay clergy
came on the final day of the weeklong Assembly meeting, following hours of
emotional debate. Dozens of gay and lesbian ministers came out at the gathering,
distributing a prayer booklet featuring first-person essays on the pain of being
forced to choose between the ministry and a lifelong partner.
Meanwhile, a Texas church has refused to conduct a man's funeral after
learning that he was gay. The funeral of Cecil Sinclair, a Navy veteran who
served in Iraq in Desert Storm, was to have been held this week at the High Point
Church in Arlington. Sinclair’s brother Lee is a member of the Church, and its
pastor is the Reverend Gary Simons, brother-in-law of nationally known
preacher Joel Osteen, a televangelist who’s railed against abortion and
homosexuality.
Sinclair was diagnosed with a heart condition six years ago and died at age
46 from an infection following surgery intended to sustain him for a heart
transplant. Church officials planned a meal and a slide show for about a hundred
guests to commemorate Sinclair's life. Reverend Simons told the "Dallas
Morning News" that some of the photos his family provided, however, "had very
strong homosexual images of kissing and hugging... My ministry associates were
taken aback," he said. Shocking the already grieving family, the
nondenominational church decided at the last minute not to hold the funeral for Sinclair.
"Can you hold the event and condone the sin and compromise our principles?"
Simons asked. "We can't."
A statement issued by Jeff Lutes, the Executive Director of Soulforce, an
ecumenical group whose aim is to end what it calls "spiritual violence" in
religious life, said this incident should "inspire some much-needed national
reflection about the dangers of religion-based bigotry... We should stop giving
churches a pass when they preach God's unconditional love, and then ask gay and
lesbian members to suppress an integral part of themselves in order to be worthy
of that love."
And finally, Malaysia's first openly gay Christian pastor conducted a
controversial worship service at a Kuala Lumpur hotel on August 12th, prompting
anxiety from the country’s Christian leadership in the predominantly Muslim
nation, which also has large Buddhist and Hindu minorities.
37-year-old Reverend Ouyang Wen Feng is an ethnic Chinese Malaysian who was
ordained a minister in the United States in May. "For some of us, especially
our gay brothers and sisters," he said, "we have experienced firsthand that
Christianity has been used to persecute minorities." He urged his congregation
of nearly 80 people, mainly gay men and lesbians, to "reclaim our faith and
celebrate our sexuality." But Reverend Wong Kin Kong, Secretary General of
Malaysia's National Evangelical Christian Fellowship, worried that, "Christians do
not want others to assume they condone such a thing." The Southeast Asian
country outlaws sodomy, which is punishable by up to 20 years in prison and
whipping.
Worshippers at the service, including people from neighboring Singapore,
hugged each other and sang hymns with lyrics like "With justice as our aim, a
queer and righteous people united in Christ's name."
Reverend Ouyang, who’s worked at the queer-affirming Metropolitan Community
Church in New York City, told his congregation that "[T]oday, we're making
history. We're here to tell Malaysians that we're all children of God."
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