“NewsWrap" for the week ending July 12, 2008 (As broadcast on "This Way Out" program #1,059, distributed 7-14-08) [Written by Greg Gordon, with thanks to Rex Wockner with Bill Kelley] Reported this week by Pam Marshall and Chris Wilson A Hungarian court ruled this week that dozens of violent extremists who pelted Budapest Pride marchers with eggs, bottles and rocks on July 5th were merely exercising their “free speech rights”. Charges were dropped against more than 40 protesters who were arrested at the scene. Three others were acquitted, and four were slapped with minor fines and the latter only for refusing to obey a police order to disperse. Police used water cannons and tear gas to disperse the protesters at several points along the Pride march in downtown Budapest, a police van was set on fire, and several Pride marchers suffered minor injuries in the melee. Two gay businesses were firebombed during the week leading up to the march. After several years of peaceful events, rightwing resistance to lesbigay legal advances in Hungary including a Registered Partnersship Act giving same-gender couples many of the rights of marriage, which takes effect in January may have fueled the first organized attackks against Budapest Pride last year, and the renewed assaults this year. But hundreds of thousands of LGBT people and their allies filled the streets20of Madrid on July 5th in a colorful display of Pride in one of the world’s most queer-progressive countries. Equality Minister Bibiano Aido led the parade under a hot sun of more than 30 floats and sound trucks blasting techno and Brazilian music. She told reporters that "It is a day of joy, to demand the rights of people and all citizens." A float entered by Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's Socialist Party, a multi-colored double-decker bus, sported a large "Building Equality" banner. In 2005 Spain became only the third member of the European Union, after the Netherlands and Belgium, to legalize marriage equality. Several members of the conservative opposition Partido Popular and their allies in the Roman Catholic Church continue to demand repeal of that law, leading several Pride marchers to carry signs proclaiming “Secular State.” An estimated 300 people also marched under sunny skies in Lisbon in the Portuguese capital’s ninth annual Pride parade. Participants chanted “Portugal needs to come out of the closet,” and “No to the dictatorship of hetero-cultivation.” The current government has rejected any move to change Portugal’s marriage laws to accommodate same-gender couples. About 50 people staged a Pride march in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic in late June. They carried rainbow flags and beat drums as they walked through the historic downtown section of the city. Local media reported that the marchers urged passa ge of legislation protecting LGBT people from discrimination. Marchers also spoke out against Roman Catholic Cardinal Nicolás de Jesús López Rodríguez, who, in an October interview with the newspaper “El Nacional,” reportedly referred to gays as "maricones" or "faggots". López Rodríguez has also called LGBT people "lacras sociales," according to a 2006 “Associated Press” report, which could be translated as "social waste" or "social scum." Police estimated that 825,000 people celebrated Pride in London on July 5th, making it the largest such event in U.K. history. Members of all 3 branches of Britain’s armed forces marched in uniform for the first time. Wearing a pink cowboy hat, recently elected Tory Mayor Boris Johnson was booed by some along the parade route for comments in a book he wrote seven years ago comparing same-gender civil partnerships with “a union between 3 men and a dog.” LGBT activists have generally said they’re reserving judgment to see how Johnson behaves as mayor. Ben Summerskill, chief executive of the leading U.K. advocacy group Stonewall, told reporters that “All politicians are on a journey, and his journey seems to be heading in the right direction.” Sir Ian McKellen and other Stonewall members met with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown prior to the parade to discuss combating homophobic bullying in schools, which20McKellen called “hugely important.” British Equalities Minister and deputy leader of the Labour Party Harriet Harman was booed as she spoke from the main stage at the post-parade rally in Trafalgar Square. Hecklers were protesting the Government’s treatment of lesbian and gay asylum-seekers in the U.K. from their queer-oppressive countries, including recent high-profile cases of gay and lesbian refugees from Iran and Nigeria. All have expressed fear of being killed if forced to return to their native countries. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith last month refused requests for a moratorium on the deportation of lesbigay Iranian asylum seekers in particular, claiming that “the evidence does not show a real risk of discovery of, or adverse action against, gay and lesbian people who are discreet about their sexual orientation”. Longtime activist Peter Tatchell called that “complete nonsense and deeply insulting,” adding that it was “like saying that Jews in Nazi Germany were safe if they hid their Jewishness.” But a Scottish Asylum Immigration Tribunal this week rejected the refugee application of now-19-year-old gay Syrian JoJo Jako Jacob, even though the ruling acknowledged that his home country represses homosexuality. “Homosexuals have to modify their behaviour and lifestyle accordingly,” they wrote. “We find no evidence that in Syria [he] would conduct himself other than discreetly to avoid repercussions." It’s not clear if the gay teenager can appeal the ruling. But Sweden's Migration Board has ruled that Iranian gays and lesbians who seek asylum there will get it if they were out of the closet while living in their homeland. The Board concluded that such individuals are at risk of persecution if they’re returned to Iran. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has infamously claimed that Iran has no homosexuals, but a sodomy conviction can bring the death penalty under his country’s sharia, or Islamic law. Iran is believed to have used it since the Islamic revolution somewhere between a few and thousands of times. Western gay activists with an interest in Iran have for years debated at length how often Iran executes adults for consensual same-gender sex, if it does at all. Accurate information on the question seems to be impossible to obtain. In its reports about Iran, Human Rights Watch has said that at minimum it has “documented brutal floggings imposed by courts as punishment, and torture and ill-treatment, including sexual abuse, in police custody.” In other news, Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim has once again been accused of sodomy. He was convicted in 1998 of that charge, and corruption, although the country’s high court overturned the sodomy conviction and freed him from jail in 2004. The former deputy prime minister, who’s married with 6 children, had been the heir apparent to then-Prime Minister Mahati r Mohamad before he vocally opposed his mentor’s economic policies. He was arrested20for sodomy and corruption soon thereafter. Anwar and his supporters have always claimed that the charges were trumped up by the government to discredit him and prevent him from becoming Prime Minister. He’s now back in politics following a 5-year ban because of the corruption conviction. His opposition People’s Justice Party made significant gains in recent elections against the ruling National Front coalition government of current Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, Mahatir’s handpicked successor. There are no laws against homosexuality in Muslim-majority Malaysia, but sodomy, even between consenting adults, is punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Saying that the government was trying to “cause anxiety and disgust among Muslims” against him, the 60-year-old Anwar has strongly denied the latest charges, made this week by a 23-year-old male staffmember. Anwar told reporters that he has strong evidence to support his innocence, but said his lawyers had advised him against elaborating because the investigation is ongoing. Abdullah’s government has denied any suggestions that the new sodomy accusation is politically motivated. In the U.S., the director of North Carolina’s state Standards Laboratory, which calibrates equipment measuring everything from the weight of medicines to the weight of trucks on the highway, retired this week rather than follow the govern or’s order to lower U.S. and state flags to half-staff to honor former Senator Jesse Helms, who’d20died the week before. L. F. Eason III, who’d worked for the state for 29 years, said in an email message to his staff that the notoriously racist and anti-queer Helms had “a doctrine of negativity, hate and prejudice,” and advised the governor and other supervisors that he could not in good conscience honor him. Helms consistently opposed any LGBT-positive legislation during his long career, railed against government support for LGBT artists, and once said of gay men and HIV/AIDS that “It's their deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct that is responsible for the disease.” Specifically citing opposition by Helms to the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the late senator’s filibuster to stall efforts to make Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a national holiday, the 51-year-old newly retired Eason told an interviewer that "Everything he did was such a disservice to this state... I don't see how anybody could celebrate his career." And finally, the American Family Association has called for a boycott of global hamburger chain McDonald's. The rightwing group is upset that the fast-food giant has joined the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, given it money, and put one of its executives on the group's board. The AFA claims that its nearly 3 million supporters don't want to spend money at establishments that actively "promot[e] the homo sexual agenda, including homosexual marriage" though there’s no indicatioon that McDonald’s has ever specifica lly endorsed marriage equality. In a resolute response to the AFA boycott announcement, however, McDonald's USA spokesman Bill Whitman said that "Hatred has no place in our culture... That includes McDonald's, and we stand by and support our people to live and work in a society free of discrimination and harassment." [Pam & Chris sing brief McDonald’s TV jingle “I’m Lovin’ It.”] The Famous, the Infamous, the Lame - in your browser. Get the TMZ Toolbar Now!