“NewsWrap"
for the week ending October 20, 2007
(As broadcast on "This Way Out" program #1,021, distributed 10-22-07)
[Written by Greg Gordon, with thanks to Rex Wockner with Bill Kelley]

Reported this week by Don Lupo and Jon Beaupre

  Uganda's leading Muslim cleric recommended to President Yoweri Museveni this week that gay people should be marooned on an island for the rest of their lives.  Sheikh Ramathan Shaban Mubajje told reporters following his meeting with Museveni that he asked the president to “get us an island on Lake Victoria� we take these homosexuals and they die ouut there� then we shall have no more homosexuals in the country.�”  Adding that “� such behaviors could be devastaating to our generation,” he went on to say that “We join other religions in the fight against homosexuality."
According to a report in Kampala's “Monitor” newspaper, some Muslim clerics who attended the meeting said Museveni never commented on Mubajje's proposal.  He's well known, however, for rivaling another homophobic African leader, Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, in his use of ugly anti-queer rhetoric.
Uganda outlaws male homosexuality, a remnant of British colonial rule in the nineteenth century.  Offenders face a sentence of up to life in prison.
Attacks on gays and lesbians - both verbal and physical -- have been commonplace in Uganda, but they've increased since Ugandan LGBT rights groups held a first-ever public news conference in August to demand basic civil rights.  Many of the participants, fearing reprisals, wore disguises.  Supporters of a coalition of Christian and Muslim religious groups filled a downtown Kampala stadium a week later demanding mass arrests of homosexuals.
The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission reported last week that it had uncovered evidence that the administration of George W. Bush has funded groups in Uganda that actively promote violence and discrimination against lesbians and gay men.  Among those receiving money, according to U.S. government records cited by the queer advocacy group, is the Makerere University Community Church.  Its leader, Pastor Martin Ssempa, was the primary organizer of the anti-queer rally in Kampala.  His coalition, which includes Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Baptists, Seventh Day Adventists, and Evangelicals, has also posted names, photos and addresses of Ugandan LGBT rights activists online.

  A spokesman for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said last week that the Iranian President was misquoted when he said during a late September appearance at Columbia University in New York that there are no gays and lesbians in his country.
Presidential media adviser Mohammad Kalhor told “Reuters” that "What Ahmadinejad said was... that, compared to American society, we don't have many homosexuals."
But Hossein Alizadeh, the Persian-speaking communications director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, disagreed.
Alizadeh is a gay Iranian who won asylum in the U.S. based on his sexual orientation.  He played an audio file on his computer over the telephone and translated Ahmadinejad's comments about “hamjensbaz” -- a derogatory term for homosexuals as people with loose morals who seek those of the same gender for sexual pleasure - this way: "We in Iran -- we in Iran, firstly, we don't have hamjensbaz like you have in your country.  In our country, there is no such thing.  In Iran, such a thing does not -- in Iran, in Iran, absolutely such a thing does not exist as a phenomenon.  I don't know who told you otherwise."
Alizadeh said Ahmadinejad again denied the existence of lesbigay people in the Islamic Republic a day later at a United Nations press conference.  According to Alizadeh, a reporter for the Voice of America's Persian service asked him: "You mentioned that there is no such phenomena in Iran as homosexuality.  Could you please elaborate on that?"
According to Alizadeh, Ahmadinejad replied: "Seriously, I don't know of any.  As for homosexuality, I don't know where it is.  Give me an address, so that we are also aware of what happens in Iran."

  But Venezuela may become the first nation in South America to constitutionally protect its gay and lesbian citizens.
The National Assembly, which is controlled by President Hugo Chavez, this week approved the addition of sexual orientation to categories protected under human rights provisions of an amended constitution.
Chavez, who's come under fire from U.S. officials for his friendship with Cuban President Fidel Castro and his support for Iran, also wants the constitution amended to end term limits, effectively allowing him to continue as president for an indefinite period.  The revised constitution must still be approved by the country's voters.

  Meanwhile, more than 800,000 people participated in the 12th annual LGBT Pride parade in Rio de Janeiro on October 14th along the famous Copacabana Beach.
Many participants were scantily clad, despite relatively cool temperatures, as they danced to samba music and waved rainbow flags.
Political banners called for Brazil's congress to enact LGBT hate crimes measures and marriage equality for same-gender couples.
According to Brazilian human rights groups more than 2,500 LGBT people have been murdered in the country in the past 10 years.

  After both his sister and father were killed by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, and receiving death threats and harassment for being gay, a Colombian immigrant has won asylum in the United States.  According to San Francisco's LGBT “Bay Area Reporter,” the man's identity remains confidential because of provisions related to asylum cases.
The man fled to Miami on a three-month visa six months after his father's murder.  He eventually moved to San Francisco and found a lawyer to argue for asylum.  The man was diagnosed with HIV while undergoing required medical tests for the case, and was granted asylum based on his HIV status.

  But Nicaraguan gay refugee Alvaro Orozco has reportedly been in hiding in Toronto since Canadian authorities ordered his deportation by October 4th.  The now 22-year-old man has sought a safe place to live since he fled his father's beatings and his native country's macho/homophobic culture when he was 13.  Orozco hitchhiked through Central America and Mexico, briefly found shelter in the U.S., and eventually made his way into Canada.  He was denied asylum by Immigration Canada last year because the hearing judge didn't believe he is gay.  Several appeals of that ruling have failed, even when Orozco's lawyers demonstrated the extensive news coverage his case has received in Nicaragua, which outlaws same-gender sex, and how he'd almost-certainly be persecuted if he's forced to return to his home country.  Orozco's only hope of staying in Canada and avoiding that potentially violent fate is Immigration Minister Diane Finley, who's been asked to grant him a Minister's Permit to stay in Canada based on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.

  In other news, even though Sweden has had a registered-partnership law since 1994 granting same-gender couples all the rights of marriage except the word, three opposition parties have introduced a motion in Parliament to create full marriage equality for lesbian and gay couples.
The Social Democrats, Greens and Left Party submitted the legislation.  Even though three of the four parties that make up the governing coalition support the move, the government couldn't submit the bill itself because one of its partners, the Christian Democrats, opposes the proposal.
According to reports, only four favorable votes by MPs from the governing coalition will be needed for the measure to pass.

  Queer activists in Australia have stepped up their lobbying efforts in recent weeks for legal recognition of same-gender couples at the federal level, which Liberal Party Prime Minister John Howard has resisted since he first took office in 1996.  He's been reelected three times since then, and has now called new elections for November 24th.  With Kevin Rudd's opposition Labour Party polling 12 percentage points ahead of the Liberals, LGBT voters are expected to be wooed during the campaign by the two major parties, as well as by smaller more progressive parties, such as the Greens, who've strongly supported couples equality.
Howard's government has thus far ignored a June report by the country's Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission recommending that 58 laws be changed to grant gay, bisexual and lesbian Australians equal rights, including benefits for same-gender couples.

  And finally, the U.S. military this week violated its own “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” policy banning gays and lesbians from serving openly in the armed forces - but only for a few days.
According to “USA Today,” the Army, Navy, and Air Force placed ads for new recruits on “GLEE.com,” a site for gay and lesbian professionals.  The acronym stands for “Gay, Lesbian and Everyone Else”.  Most of the advertised military jobs were for hard-to-fill positions requiring advanced training, although some were for core combat slots at a time when the Iraq War has challenged recruiters to meet Pentagon goals.  The ads promoted openings for medical professionals, intelligence analysts, and badly-needed Arabic translators, among others, and were placed through GLEE.com's parent company, New York-based Community Connect, as part of a diversity program of jobs-listings giant Monster.com.
Soon after a “USA Today” reporter asked clueless recruiters about the ads, they were pulled.
Steve Ralls of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, a lesbigay military advocacy group, told “USA Today” that "The majority of GLEE's members would not be allowed to be as open in the military as they are online," adding that gays and lesbians "have been drummed out of the armed forces simply for using sites like GLEE."
Since "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" became law in 1993, some 11,082 highly-trained lesbigay military personnel have been discharged -and at a huge cost to U.S. taxpayers, estimated to be at least 363 million dollars.


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