“NewsWrap"
for the week ending November 3, 2007
(As broadcast on "This Way Out" program #1,023, distributed 11-5-07)
[Written by Greg Gordon, with thanks to Rex Wockner with Bill Kelley]

Reported this week by Rick Watts and Tanya Kane-Parry

  Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen delivered decidedly mixed messages this week when he urged the public not to discriminate against gays and lesbians, while at the same time announcing that he's severing all ties with his lesbian daughter.
He said during a graduation speech at a Phnom Penh university that he was "disappointed" that his 19-year-old daughter, whom he adopted soon after her birth in 1988, is a lesbian and is living with another woman.  "I will ask the court to disown her from my family," he said.  "We are concerned that she might one day cause us trouble... and try to stake her claim for a share of our assets."
Women's rights activists in the southeast Asian country quickly condemned the Prime Minister.  "You do not have to agree with her decision,” said Theary Seng, Executive Director of the Center for Social Development, “but you have to respect her rights."
A former Khmer Rouge soldier, Hun Sen has led Cambodia's 13 million people for two decades.  He and his wife have three sons and two daughters, and the adoption of their third daughter had been a closely guarded secret.  He did not mention her by name during his speech.
"I can educate people in the whole country, but I cannot educate my adopted daughter," he lamented.  "We sent her to study in the U.S., but she did a bad job.  She returned home and took a wife."
However, he asked Cambodians to be more tolerant of gays and lesbians than he seems to be.  "I'd like to take this opportunity to appeal to parents and society not to discriminate against them,” he said, adding, “and do not call them transvestites."
Homosexual acts are not illegal in Cambodia.  Former King Norodom Sihanouk has spoken out several times on behalf of LGBT rights, and in 2004 posted a message on his Web site in support of same-gender marriage.  The country's queer community, however, remains largely closeted.

  Draft legislation was introduced in the Austrian Parliament in late October that would allow same-gender couples to form civil partnerships.
The bill was filed by Social Democrat Justice Minister Maria Berger, and would give lesbigay couples nearly all the rights of marriage, excluding adoption.
Berger's Social Democrats are part of a ruling government coalition with the conservative People's Party.   That party has resisted legal recognition of same-gender relationships, but there have been recent reports that it may now support a limited form of civil unions.
Following committee consideration and possible revisions, the legislation is expected to reach Parliament later this year.

  The Irish government this week announced plans to legally recognize same-gender relationships, but exactly what form they'll take remains to be seen.  The government of Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said it would introduce legislation covering same-gender couples by the end of March, and expects the bill to pass within a year after that.
Justice Minister Brian Lenihan described it as one of the most important pieces of social legislation in the history of the country, saying that it will cover pension rights, maintenance, and powers of attorney.  But he avoided questions about other family rights, adoption, or what the relationships would be called -- only that they wouldn't be called marriage.
It seems clear that whatever legislation is proposed won't be comparable to the civil partnerships available in the U.K., where gay and lesbian couples have virtually all the rights of marriage except the name.  However, Ahern has warned that Ireland's Supreme Court would reject any bill equating same-gender partnerships with marriage.  A clause in the Irish constitution requires the government to “protect the institution of marriage.”
Most LGBT advocacy groups expressed disappointment at the government's plan to apparently legislate only limited legal recognition for lesbigay couples.  Kieran Rose of the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network said during a national radio interview that he preferred full marriage equality, but that as a "practical pragmatist" he welcomed any move to protect the rights of people in same-gender relationships.

  In other news, about 50 people picketed Saudi Arabia's embassy in London on October 19th to protest the Middle East nation's reported floggings and executions of gay men, and specifically -- according to reports in the local “Okaz” daily newspaper -- the 7,000 lashes punishment meted out in October to two men convicted of sodomy in the city of Al Bahah.
The London protest was held in advance of a state visit by Saudi King Abdullah, and was organized by the National Union of Students and the queer direct-action group OutRage!
Outrage! leader Peter Tatchell said the Saudi government is “guilty of detention without trial, torture, and the public beheading of women who have sex outside of marriage,” and called the country “a theocratic police state."
And there were reports this week that extremist texts that encourage hatred of LGBT people, Christians and Jews are being distributed at several British mosques that are funded by the Saudi government.  Researchers at the Policy Exchange, described in reports as a center-right think tank, said they'd found some 80 hate-filled books and pamphlets in a quarter of the 100 mosques and Islamic institutions they visited.   According to their study, the publications call for LGBT people to be killed and women to be subjugated, and include comments such as "The Jews and the Christians are the enemies of the Muslim."                          
The report is said to be the most comprehensive survey of its kind ever produced in the U.K., and based on a 12-month investigation by several teams of specialist researchers.
Many of the institutions mentioned are among the best-funded and most active of Britain's approximately 1,500 Islamic establishments.  A number of them have received official visits from politicians and members of the Royal Family.
Some of the literature calls for Muslims to segregate themselves from non-Muslims, and  "[o]n occasion,” the report concluded, “this attitude of deep-rooted antipathy towards Western society can descend into exhortations to violence and jihad against the `enemies' of Islam.'"
But Iqbal Sacranie, a former secretary general of the Muslim Council of Great Britain, questioned the political agenda of the Policy Exchange, and told reporters that most Muslims reject such extremist viewpoints.  “We cannot accept messages of hate,” he said.  “[T]here is zero tolerance on that.”
The release of the study was apparently timed to coincide with Saudi King Abdullah's state visit to Britain.  Several advocacy groups urged Prime Minister Gordon Brown to discuss human rights issues with the Saudi leader.
The study urged British mosques that stock extremist publications to trash them immediately; and called on the government, councils, police, and community leaders to sever any ties they have with Islamic institutions that continue to distribute hate literature.

  Literature of another sort made headlines this week in Jamaica.  Each of the country's three leading newspapers were up in arms over reports that the Education Ministry had okayed a home economics textbook that includes households headed by same-gender couples as “families.”
But Education Minister Andrew Holness angrily condemned the reports, telling a quickly called news conference that his department had approved a different book by the same authors.  “The book that is not endorsed by the Ministry is the one with the offensive clause.  The book that we have endorsed has nothing like that in it,” he said, adding that “We want to make it absolutely clear that the Ministry of Education does not endorse or support the teaching of homosexual relationships as the accepted standard of family.  We don't teach it and we don't recommend it.”

  Meanwhile, a U.S. group known for its “God Hates Fags” proclamations has been ordered to pay for the consequences of its obnoxious actions.
The notorious “Reverend” Fred Phelps, who leads the Topeka, Kansas Westboro Baptist Church was, along with two of his adult daughters, ordered this week to pay almost 11 million dollars in damages to the father of a U.S. Marine from Pennsylvania killed in Iraq.  The congregation, as they've done elsewhere, picketed the March 2006 funeral of Albert Snyder's son, Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder because, they claim, U.S. soldiers are paying the price for America's acceptance of homosexuality.  They carry signs with slogans like “Thank God for dead soldiers” and “God hates fag enablers.”
The Phelps' attorney, Jonathan Katz, argued that burials are a public event, and that the churchmembers were exercising their free speech rights.  But the elder Phelps and his two daughters were found liable for invasion of privacy and intent to inflict emotional distress.  The jury awarded 2.9 million dollars in compensatory damages and 8 million dollars in punitive damages to the fallen Marine's father.
He has little chance of collecting, however, even if the judgment is upheld on appeal.  Assets of the church, and those of the three named defendants, are reportedly less than a million dollars, and verdicts in civil cases generally carry no enforcement provisions.
The renegade church gained international notoriety for picketing the funeral of another Matthew, college student Matthew Shepard, who was gay-bashed to death in Wyoming in 1998.  Congress and 34 U.S. states have since enacted measures to specifically ban such funeral demonstrations.  Despite those laws, and this week's verdict, the Phelps clan remains defiant, telling reporters that they have no intention of curtailing their protests.

  But finally, the first five-star gay hotel in Latin America opened this week in the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires.  The city has become an increasingly popular tourist destination, rivaling Rio de Janeiro for the title of South America's queer capital.  Buenos Aires hosted the first international gay World Cup soccer championship in September, and in 2002 became the first capital in Latin America to legally recognize same-gender civil unions.
The hostelry's developer, Spain's Axel Corporation, opened a five-star, 66-room gay hotel in Barcelona in 2003.
Nacho Rodriguez, general manager of the new 48-room Buenos Aires location, told the “Associated Press” that “Like any other business, we have economic objectives, [but] we're also about fighting to help the normalization and acceptance of gays in society.”


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