“NewsWrap"
for the week ending August 2, 2008
 (As broadcast on "This Way Out" program #1,062, distributed 8-4-08)
[Written by Greg Gordon, with thanks to Rex Wockner with Bill Kelley]

Reported this week by Chris Wilson and Pam Marshall

  Violent attacks against four gay men, and the homophobic vandalism of three Lutheran churches, marred the celebration of EuroPride in Stockholm this week.  The 10-day festival in the Swedish capital, held in a different city each year, and capped by the traditional Pride parade, has attracted tens of thousands of LGBT visitors from across Europe.
But two gay men in their late 20s were robbed and stabbed earlier in the week.  According to police officials, the couple had just shared a kiss outside a convenience store when two men yelling homophobic slurs assaulted them, took their cell phones, stabbed one in the stomach, and then stabbed the other as he tried to protect his partner.  They’re each reportedly in serious condition, and the assailants have thus far eluded capture.
Two other men were beaten in the city as their attackers shouted anti-gay slurs and specifically denounced EuroPride.  Neither of the victims was seriously injured.  Three young men, aged 17 to 20, were arrested a short time later and charged with assault as a hate crime.
Three Lutheran churches in Stockholm were also vandalized this week.  Authorities said the churches had flyers pasted over the facades of the buildings denouncing EuroPride and containing Biblical condemnations of homosexuality.  Anti-queer literature from a group calling themselves "Orthodox Christians" was scattered around the grounds at each location.   The Swedish Lutheran Church, the largest denomination in the country, is lesbigay-welcoming and has a booth at EuroPride.

  The man who shot and killed two people and wounded seven others at a church in the U.S. state of Tennessee this week reportedly hated liberals and gay people.
58-year-old Jim D. Adkisson allegedly targeted the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church because of its liberal reputation.  He burst into Sunday services as parish children were performing for the congregation, opening fire with a 12-gauge shotgun he’d hidden in a guitar case.
Knoxville Police Chief Sterling P. Owen IV told reporters that a 4-page letter found in Adkisson's car indicated that the attack was motivated by his frustration over not being able to find a job, for which he blamed gays and what he called “the liberal movement.”
The Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church is like most others in the denomination, with a long record of activism in social justice movements.  The church makes its space available for weekly meetings of a local chapter of Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, and the predominately-LGBT Metropolit an Community Church of Knoxville held services there during the first 8 years of its existence.
Adkisson has been charged with first-degree murder and is being held on one-million-dollars bail.

  Religious police in Saudi Arabia, acting on a tip received by the state Commission for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, raided another so-called “gay party” this week.  Local television reported that 2 young men wearing women’s make-up and dancing together were among 55 people arrested in the Eastern coastal province of Qatif.  Drugs and alcohol were reportedly also found, and many of those arrested were apparently young Filipino and Pakistani men living in the country on work permits.  More than 20 men were arrested during a similar raid, also in Qatif, in June.
Homosexuality is severely punished in Saudi Arabia under sharia, or Islamic Law.  Convictions can even lead to public beheadings.  A court in April 2006 sentenced two Saudis, one Yemeni and a Jordanian to 2,000 lashes and 2 years in prison after a similar raid on an allegedly “gay party.”

  Bahrain’s parliament passed a measure in April ordering the Gulf state’s Interior Ministry to stop granting residence permits to foreign homosexuals, and an M.P. this week demanded that the government begin implementing that law.  The measure called for gay men to be “rooted out” of hair salons and massage parlors, and that teachers watch for “homose xual tendencies” in children and “punish them accordingly.”  Up to 2,000 allegedly gay Filipino workers may have been deported in 2002 by the predominantly Muslim nation.

  A Ugandan AIDS activist was abducted and tortured by police this week, according to reports by Human Rights Watch, Sexual Minorities Uganda, and the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, or IGLHRC.
Usaam Mukwaaya and two other activists were charged with trespassing in June after staging a protest during a global HIV/AIDS conference in Kampala to demand that men who have sex with men be included in the deliberations.
According to an IGLHRC press release, after he was abducted, Mukwaaya was “cut around the hands and tortured with a machine that applies extreme pressure to the body, preventing breathing and causing severe pain,” and that he was “aggressively questioned about the Ugandan LGBT movement.”  Mukwaaya was reportedly dumped by the side of a road after the interrogation, and members of Sexual Minorities Uganda found him “weak, filthy, and without shoes and some of his clothing.”
Human Rights Watch warned that "The abduction and torture of a Ugandan HIV/AIDS activist who faces trial for holding a peaceful protest reveals the danger to those who challenge the government's policies."  Police officials insist that Mukwaaya was not harmed during detention, and was simply seeking publicity.
Consenting adult same-gender sex is outlawed in Uganda, and President Yoweri Museveni has often railed against homosexuality as a “negative foreign culture.”

  U.S. President George W. Bush signed legislation this week that repealed a law banning HIV-positive travelers or immigrants from entering the country.  The measure passed both houses of Congress by significant margins as part of a global HIV/AIDS funding bill.
The ban was created by a 1987 regulation that added HIV to the list of communicable diseases that bar visitors and immigrants.
But the Health and Human Services department must implement the new regulation by issuing a notice in the Federal Register, where rule changes are published.  A mandatory comment period of up to 90 days follows, and only then can the rule be finalized.
Writing in the New York-based “Gay Community News” this week, Duncan Osborne reported that a memo issued to all federal agencies on May 9th by White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten specified that any new regulations for the remainder of the Bush administration had to be proposed by June 1st and finalized by November 1st.  Bolten wrote that the only exceptions were for "extraordinary circumstances."
It appears, then, that repeal of the HIV travel and immigration ban may not take effect until there’s a new president in the White House.

  Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick signed legislation on July 31st repealing a 1913 law that barred couples from marrying there if the union would not be valid in their home states.&nbs p; Following a previous Senate vote, the House overwhelmingly voted for repeal earlier in the week.
California, which in June became the only other U.S. state with marriage equality, has no residency requirement.  Same-gender weddings have been legal in Massachusetts since 2004, and repeal of the 1913 law, originally enacted to bar interracial marriage, now allows couples from other states to marry there.  Opponents of repeal warned that the move would make Massachusetts the “Las Vegas of gay marriage” and would infringe on other states’ rights to define marriage.
But supporters said that the old law had racist origins, and argued that repeal would bring an economic boom to Massachusetts.  A recent study, in fact, predicted that same-gender couples marrying there, especially from nearby states, would add 111 million dollars to the Massachusetts economy in the next 3 years.
Several out-of-state lesbigay couples have already requested marriage license applications in Provincetown, according to Assistant Town Clerk Suzi Fults, and more are expected.
New York doesn’t allow its same-gender couples to marry, but – citing several court rulings � Governor David Paterson has orderred the state to recognize such marriages legally performed elsewhere.

  Marriage equality in California is far from secure, of course, with a looming November ballot initiative, Proposition 8, that would overturn the state Supreme Court ruling and constitutionally ban same-gender marriage.  That hasn t stopped thousands of couples from getting marriage licenses in California since the Court ruling took effect in mid-June.
The original wording of the ballot initiative read: “amends the California Constitution to provide that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."  But new language, ordered by state Attorney General Jerry Brown this week, will now say that the initiative "Changes California Constitution to eliminate right of same-sex couples to marry."  It also notes that banning those marriages could prevent California from gaining tens of millions of dollars in potential sales tax revenue.
Supporters of Proposition 8 say they’re considering a lawsuit demanding that the language appear as it did on petitions that qualified the initiative for the ballot.  Jennifer Kerns, spokeswoman for the so-called Protect Marriage coalition, said that the new language could "prejudice voters against the initiative."
But Steve Smith, campaign manager for No on Proposition 8, applauded the language change.  "What Proposition 8 would do is eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry,” he said, “which is exactly what the Attorney General put in the title of the measure."

  And finally, Florida and Arizona are also facing November ballot initiatives to constitutionally ban same-gender marriage.  But Barbara McCullough-Jones of Equality Arizona is concerned that all the attention and money are going to the California battle.  "We need a win in California.  We need a win in Florida.  We need a win in Arizona," she wrote in an article published this week.  "That very trifecta has the potential to change the face of American politics."