Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 15:31:33 -0700 (PDT) From: Rex Wockner Subject: WOCKNER/INT'L NEWS #275/2 August 1999 ============================================= = INTERNATIONAL NEWS #275 - Aug 02, 1999 = = (c) Rex Wockner = ============================================= --> MANCHESTER WANTS GAYS Manchester, England, has launched an ambitious campaign to attract gay American visitors. With funding from the European Union and local bars, hotels and nightclubs, Marketing Manchester will run advertisements across the U.S. promoting the city as "an international centre for gay culture and lifestyle," the Manchester Evening News said. "We have to look at Manchester's strengths," said campaign spokesperson Andrew Stokes. "It does have a thriving gay community. We've got the gay village, the fantastic Mardi Gras event and the Queer Up North festival. We have a really marketable gay product and it's good business sense. It's a valuable niche market and we are building on what we have." The Lord Mayor of Manchester, Councillor Tony Burns, added: "Any asset of the city of Manchester has to be exploited for the benefit of all its citizens. This is sensible business." According to research conducted by the British Tourism Authority, the U.S. has 18 million gays and lesbians with a typical income 70 percent above the national average. --> BELARUS COPS CONFISCATE RAINBOW FLAG Police in Minsk, Belarus, confiscated a rainbow flag from a July 23 display of AIDS quilts after the chair of the Russian NAMES Foundation, which arranged the display, charged that "exposing the gay flag discredits heterosexuals" with AIDS. The flag was brought to the exhibit by the gay group Belarus Lambda League. When they ignored Mikhail Nedelski's demands to remove it, he called the cops and Minsk Police Central District Chief Alexander Vyl came and confiscated it. Police officers also ordered Lambda to stop distributing their magazine, Forum Lambda, during the event. --> GAYS ORGANIZE IN MURMANSK, RUSSIA Murmansk, Russia's first gay organization, The Circle, announced last week that it was officially registered by the regional Justice Department. The group aims to protect the rights of gay people, help them adapt to life in a homophobic society, fight discrimination based on sexual orientation, educate the public on gay issues, and provide support to people with HIV. Members hope to create a consulting center, phone hotline, magazine, and book and video libraries. For more information, e-mail krug@circle.murmansk.ru or write Murmansk Regional Public Organization The Circle, P.O. Box 7033, Murmansk 183018, Russia. Murmansk is located north of the Arctic Circle near the northern tip of Finland. --> GAYS ORGANIZE IN MEXICO A gay-pride group organized in Guadalajara, Mexico, July 23. Fifty-four men attended a meeting to set up the Tapatio Gay Pride Committee. They hope to stage pride events and a parade in the nation's second-largest city. Meanwhile, the city of Veracruz on Mexico's southeast Caribbean coast saw its first gay-pride march July 18. Thirty-five people marched without incident. --> ANTI-GAY CRIMES UP IN MEXICO At least 164 homosexuals were murdered in Mexico because of their sexual orientation between 1995 and 1998, the Citizens' Commission Against Homophobic Hate Crimes reported July 28. The actual number of killings may be three times higher than what has been documented, said Carlos Monsiviais, co-author of a report that was delivered to the Mexico City Human Rights Commission. In three of the 1998 murders the victims were castrated, the report said. Anti-gay crimes are rarely solved because of societal homophobia, Monsiviais said. He also blamed the Catholic Church and right- wing organizations for fomenting anti-gay hatred. "More than anything else, these hate crimes are characterized by society's complete indifference," Monsiviais said. --> MALAYSIA FINES TRANSVESTITES An Islamic court in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, fined 22 transvestites $210 and one transvestite $105 on July 27 as punishment for competing in a beauty pageant in the northern state of Kedah. Judge Sheikh Zainol Embon declared: "Based on the photographs taken [at the pageant], all of you as participants of the beauty pageant wore women's clothes and lipstick." Crossdressing is illegal for Malaysian Moslem men. --> BRITISH HEALTH SERVICE MUST PAY FOR SEX CHANGES A British Court of Appeal July 29 upheld a ruling that the National Health Service's North West Lancashire Health Authority was wrong in refusing to pay for three men's sex-change operations. The judges said gender-reassignment surgery is a necessary medical treatment not a cosmetic procedure. "The health authority's policy ... does not in truth treat transsexualism as an illness but as an attitude or state of mind which does not warrant medical treatment," wrote Lord Justice Auld. The cases were filed by Miss A, 21, Miss D, 50, and Miss G, 50, after they were refused operations because they failed to show "overriding clinical need." -end- Rex Wockner's weekly "International News" is archived at http://www.qrd.org/qrd/www/world/wockner.html, which also archives Wockner's "Quote Unquote" column and some of his longer gay-press articles. Archives of Microsoft Sidewalk's "The Wockner List" are at http://sandiego.sidewalk.com/wockner A profile of Wockner is at http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/14229.html Please note: * World Wide Web and e-mail addresses never end with dots. Such a 'dot' is the period at the end of a news-story sentence. * Italics is shown like _this_. * The international telephone access code 011 is for dialing from the USA and Canada. 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