“NewsWrap"
for the week ending November 1, 2008
 (As broadcast on "This Way Out" program #1,075, distributed 11-3-08)
[Written by Greg Gordon, with thanks to Rex Wockner with Bill Kelley]

Reported this week by Tanya Kane-Parry and DonnaAnn Ward

  Police in Bangalore, India’s third most populous city, were accused this week of arresting and mistreating more than 40 LGBT activists following an apparent crackdown on hijras � male-to-female transsexualls � in what the local “Daily News and Analysis” callled a “drive against the city’s eunuch menace.”  According to Human Rights Watch, police took the hijras to the station, verbally abused them, and beat one severely.
"A five-person crisis team from the Bangalore-based NGO Sangama went to Girinagar police station to assist in their release,” the global rights group said, “which has taken only a few hours in previous cases.”  HRW said that officers beat, slapped, and kicked them, and sexually abused two members of their team.  All were charged with “unlawful assembly” and “obstructing a public servant” and locked up.
A total of 42 people were detained during peaceful demonstrations that followed.  The activists and the five hijras originally arrested appeared before magistrates a day or two later, and all were released, some on bail.  Many still face charges ranging from extortion to unlawful assembly and rioting.
Hijras are often unable to obtain identity papers in India because their gender identity conflicts with their recorded gender at birth.  That makes it difficult for many of them to get an education, secure housing, or find legal employment.
The Naz Foundation, an NGO sexual minorities advocacy group, is currently challenging India’s law criminalizing “unnatural sex” in the Delhi High Court.  They argue that the colonial-era statute has been used to justify persecution of LGBT people in the country, and hampers HIV/AIDS education efforts by driving gay people, one of its most vulnerable groups, underground.

  According to a report from the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission � or IGLHRC � LGBT activists were tear-gassessed in mid-October during an event promoting HIV/AIDS prevention in the Guatemalan city of Samayac Suchitepéquez.
Organizers told IGLHRC that they were originally granted permission to use the municipal hall, but after church groups complained to the mayor, the permit was revoked.  They found a rental space, but after nearby police officers left the area, someone threw a tear gas bomb into the room.  “While no one was seriously injured,” IGLHRC said, “people fainted, children became excessively tearful, and everyone was affected by the fumes.”
The group noted that a number of marginalized people, from indigenous to LGBT and women’s rights groups, have repeatedly been targeted by police and security forces in Guatemala.  Although consensual adult same-gender sex is legal in the Central American country, Amnesty International has also reported widespread abuse of LGBT activists there.

  An increasingly inflammatory campaign against gays and lesbians in the east African country of Uganda shows no signs of letting up.
A leading newspaper, “The Independent,” claimed in late October that "The signs are there that homosexuality is growing in the Ugandan society... Recruitment is reportedly highest in secondary schools and in prisons.”
The “Monitor” newspaper reported this week that a local school district would look into claims that “homosexuality is being practiced in some schools in the district.”  A school official was quoted as saying that “we shall not hesitate to carry out a full blast investigation because the act itself [is] criminal under the laws of this country.”
Two LGBT activists were detained and abused by police last month and accused of “recruiting homosexuals” � though there �s no such “crime” in Uganda.  Many other LGBT people have fled the country.  Government leaders and church officials have repeatedly condemned gays and lesbians.  President Yoweri Musevini has called homosexuality a “negative foreign culture.”
The country’s penal code carries a maximum penalty of life in prison for homosexual conduct, punishes “attempts at carnal knowledge” with up to seven years behind bars, and “gross indecency” with a prison sentence of up to five years.

  Sexual orientation-based hate crimes are increasing in Scotland at an alarming rate, according to a recent report in the Edinburgh-based “Daily Record” newspaper.
While some local police agencies don’t track hate crimes based on sexual orientation, the newspaper cited figures from several that do to report that assaults against gays and lesbians have more than tripled in the country from only a handful three years ago to literally hundreds this year.
Calum Irving, director of the LGBT advocacy group Stonewall Scotland, called the revelations “horrific,” telling the paper that “There is still a massive problem of under-reporting.  Police forces need to take it seriously, record these crimes properly, and make it clear to the LGBT community that they can trust the police and that hate crime will not be tolerated.”
Other human rights activists called for civil rights legislation and hate crime protections for gays and lesbians.  Morag Alexander, Scotland commissioner with the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said that “This isn’t about being politically correct,” and urged the Scottish Parliament to “give judges the powers to take into account homophobic or prejudiced motivations when passing sentence, making sure the punishment fits the crime.”

  Hate crimes decreased slightly last year in the United States, but the FBI said this week that there was a surge in crimes targeting gays and lesbians.
The FBI reported more than 7,600 hate crimes in 2007, down about one percent from the previous year in the two largest categories, race and religion.
But, the report found, attacks based on sexual orientation, the third-largest category, increased about 6 percent.  Blacks, Jews, and gays were the most frequent hate crime targets.  More than a third of all incidents were categorized as vandalism or property destruction.  Intimidation was the second most common hate crime, followed by physical assault.
The FBI said its information was purely statistical and did not analyze the causes for the slight overall decrease or the increase in anti-lesbigay hate crimes.
A rash of attacks against LGBT people � or those perceived to be � were also reported this week on the campuses of the University of Idaho and Washington State University.
LGBT-specific federal hate crimes legislation has repeatedly stalled in Congress during the administration of George W. Bush.

  In other news, the Vatican issued new psychological screening guidelines for seminarians this week to, according to Church officials, eliminate candidates with “psychopathic disturbances.”  Specifically mentioned were heterosexuals “unable to control their sexual urges” and candidates “with strong homosexual tendencies.”
The document, approved by Pope Benedict XVI and released by the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education, said that early detection of “sometimes pathological defects” would help avoid “tragic experiences” � a veiled reference to the Roman Catholiic Church’s notorious sex abuse scandal.
The Vatican has claimed that most of the abusers were gay, despite bountiful scientific evidence that there’s no connection between sexual orientation and pedophilia.
The Pope’s increasingly virulent attacks against gays and lesbians seem to parallel legal advances for same-gender couples around the world in recent years.

  A small outdoor LGBT rights demonstration scheduled this month in Singapore has been postponed � because the main organizer said responsee from sexual minority communities has been greater than he expected.
Roy Tan told the “Straits Times” that he wanted to hold it early next year instead "to ensure that all interested parties - straight, gay and queer - have the opportunity to participate in this landmark occasion."
It remains to be seen if it will actually take place, however.  Singapore authorities have banned or cancelled previous public LGBT events that they said “promote[d] a homosexual lifestyle.”
A cable television station was fined earlier this year for showing a commercial in which two women kissed, and a TV network was even more-heavily fined for featuring a gay couple with their adopted son.
The government announced earlier this year that private, consensual, adult homosexual sex would no longer be prosecuted under the Asian city-state’s colonial-era sodomy law, but refused to consider its repeal.

  And finally, two classics of lesbigay literature have survived demands that they be pulled from public library shelves in two U.S. cities.
A review committee at the Lewis and Clark Public Library in Helena, Montana considered a complaint by a local resident that “The Joy of Gay Sex” was “pornographic,” and that the library was not providing a “safe place” for children and adolescents.
The library board held a public hearing on the issue in September and received about 200 written submissions before voting to keep the book on the shelves.
Director Judy Hart told reporters that it was the library’s obligation to provide information to all elements of society.

  And in Maryland, the Calvert County Board of Library Trustees voted unanimously last week to keep a children’s book about two male penguins and the chick they raised where it’s already been available: in the children’s section of county libraries, along with other picture books.
A few women had complained that the book would expose children to subject matter that violated their parents’ moral beliefs.
"And Tango Makes Three" tells the true story of male penguins Roy and Silo, who had formed a noticeable partnership at the Central Park Zoo in New York City.  When zookeepers saw the two taking turns sitting on an egg-shaped rock, they gave the couple a real egg that had been abandoned and allowed them to hatch it, producing a baby girl penguin named Tango.  "And Tango Makes Three" has been among the right wing’s most targeted books since its publication in 2005, but it’s also won several awards.
"This is a public library," said board Trustee Laura Holbrook.  "We are here to be welcoming of all families of all kinds."




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