France to consider bill allowing same-sex marriage

PARIS -- French President Francois Hollande delivered on a controversial campaign pledge Wednesday, sending the legislature a bill that would legalize same-sex marriage in France, Europe's second-most-populous nation.

Hollande's Cabinet approved the draft "marriage for all" bill, which would give same-sex couples the same legal rights as heterosexual ones, including the ability to adopt children. Lawmakers are set to examine the measure in Parliament in mid-January.

The proposal was declared a historic event by many French media organizations and comes 31 years after the French government refused to recognize medical designations of homosexuality as a mental illness. The new bill was unveiled just hours after voters on the other side of the Atlantic, in the states of Maryland and Maine, approved same-sex-marriage measures.

Hollande hailed the bill as a sign of "progress not only for a few, but for the whole of society."

"It's an important step toward equal rights for all," said Dominique Bertinotti, minister in charge of family issues, as she left the Cabinet meeting Wednesday afternoon. 

"We don't take anything away from heterosexual couples," Bertinotti added. "We enlarge and give the possibility for same-sex couples to have the same rights and, I repeat, the same duties."

Serbia bans gay pride parade, citing risk of violent attacks

Serbian officials have banned a gay pride parade and all other public gatherings scheduled for the same day, saying they fear a repeat of violent attacks that injured scores of marchers two years ago.

The decision comes after the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church called for the government to prevent both the pride march and a planned photo exhibit called “Ecce Homo” at a Belgrade cultural center, which the Orthodox patriarch argued was insulting to Christians. Right-wing and ultranationalist groups also pushed to halt the parade, one calling it “a manifestation of totalitarian ideology.”

Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dacic told reporters the government was also stopping gatherings of groups that wanted to attack the march from gathering and canceling soccer matches that might draw hooligans, in an attempt to avoid bloodshed. The move, Dacic insisted, was not a blow to civil rights.

Unconvinced, parade organizer Goran Miletic decried the government decision as “an open coalition with hooligans,” complaining that Serbian officials “completely adopted the arguments of extremist organizations, and even their demands," Serbian radio and television outlet B92 reported.

The parade was also banned last year over threats of violence. A year earlier, the event went forward in Belgrade but opponents attacked participants with stones and Molotov cocktails. As police clashed with rioters trying to disrupt the parade, more than 100 people were injured.

Europe sends gays seeking asylum back home and back to the closet

As gays and lesbians facing repression at home have come knocking on European doors, pleading for asylum, they have often been assured they will be safe -- if they stay home and stay in the closet.

In Hungary, a court weighing the case of a West African woman opined, “If she would not make her lesbianism public, she would not have to fear the consequences of her behavior,” according to a Dutch study of European asylum practices last year. Switzerland turned down an Iranian man, saying homosexuality was tolerated in Iran “when it is not publicly exposed in a way which could be offensive.”

The British Supreme Court made headlines by rejecting that idea two years ago, likening requiring gays and lesbians to hide their identities to sending Anne Frank back to her Amsterdam attic. The United Nations refugee agency flatly states that asylum seekers cannot be expected to change or hide their identity to avoid oppression, and that being forced to do so can itself be a form of persecution.

Yet the argument that gays and lesbians can simply be sent back to the closet has continued to hold sway in many parts of Europe, according to researchers who have tracked cases in France, Belgium, Ireland, Poland, Denmark and elsewhere. In one recent case that sparked outrage in Germany, an Iranian woman was turned down for asylum and told she could live “unobtrusively” without any problem.

Her story became infamous in Germany after she pleaded with a Nuremberg feminist organization for help. Samira Ghorbani Danesh, 24, fled Iran nearly two years ago after dodging arrest at a Tehran party that was broken up by religious police who took her girlfriend away. Danesh hid elsewhere while police turned up at her home looking for her.

Iranian law says homosexual acts between women are to be punished with whippings and, after the fourth offense, death, though researchers and activists say it is unclear how often such executions are carried out. Terrified that police or her father would punish her for being a lesbian, the Iranian woman fled to Turkey and ultimately arrived in Germany, where she sought asylum.

Her attorney, Gisela Seidler, argued that Danesh faced arrest and torture in her home country. But German immigration officials said the young woman could simply hide the fact that she was a lesbian and live safely in Iran. Unhappy with the decision, Danesh spoke out about the case in German media, a decision that brought an outpouring of support from gay rights groups but also added to her fear of returning.

“Now she is in even more danger,” Seidler said earlier this year. “Her name is known all over the world.”

Gay marriage, long legal in Spain, now in its dictionary

Gay marriage has been legal in Spain for nearly seven years -- but only this month was it  accepted in its official dictionary.

The Royal Spanish Academy, the official institution that regulates the Spanish language, added another definition for marriage to its online dictionary this month, defining it as "under some laws, the union of two people of the same sex."

The added definition joined a slew of newly recognized Spanish words that reflect the changing world in Spain and beyond. Nearly 1,700 changes have been made to the dictionary in its fifth revision since 2001, undertaken in consultation with 22 language academies in Spain and abroad.

"Blogueros" are now officially recognized typing away on their blogs. The "Popemobile" is now known en español as the "papamovil." And the mingling of English and Spanish? That's "espanglish."

Spaniards can get "friki" on the dance floor, "chatear" online, play "sudoku," or "okupar" their cities in protest. They might identify themselves as "cienciologos" -- what Californians know as Scientologists.

Perhaps most tellingly in this uneasy year for the euro, the academy has now christened "euroescepticismo" -- a mouthful defined as "distrust for the political projects of the European Union."

Don't take it personally, Europhiles. The Academy "doesn't promote words," its secretary, Dario Villanueva, told El Pais when the changes were announced. "It records what people use."

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-- Emily Alpert in Los Angeles

Photo: Carlos Baturin and Emilio Menendez smile after being married in Tres Cantos on July 11, 2005, becoming the first couple to wed under Spain's law allowing same-sex marriage. Credit: Javier Lizon / Associated Press / EFE

Gay South African man slain in apparent hate crime

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- A 23-year-old black South African was killed last week in an apparent hate crime after getting into an argument about his sexuality, according to South African reports.

Thapelo Makutle, who lived an openly gay and transgender life in Kuruman township in the Northern Cape province, was found Friday with his throat cut in the room where he lived, according to reports.

Shaine Griqua, director of Legbo Northern Cape, a lobby group for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, said in a phone interview that the group was trying to clarify details of the crime after initial reports incorrectly said the man was beheaded.

Makutle was a volunteer with Legbo Northern Cape and worked in a furniture shop.

According to the reports, witnesses said two heterosexual men accosted Makutle about his sexual orientation and appearance. Some reports cited the witnesses as saying the men followed him home, but those reports couldn't be confirmed.

Fidel Castro's niece heading to Bay Area with rare U.S. visa

MEXICO CITY -- Mariela Castro, the outspoken daughter of Cuban President Raul Castro and niece of his brother Fidel, is scheduled to appear this week at a major conference in San Francisco after receiving a controversial U.S. visitor's visa.

The younger Castro has become a leading advocate (link in Spanish) for gay and lesbian rights in her island homeland and throughout Latin America. She will be speaking on a panel Thursday about the politics of sexual diversity during the annual congress of the Latin American Studies Assn., one of the largest such groups in the world.

The State Department's decision to give her a visa for the trip immediately drew protest from hard-liners in the Cuban American exile community and a smattering of elected officials. Even the presumed Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, used the visa issue to criticize his rival  President Obama.

A State Department spokesman, while not commenting on the specific case because visa applications are supposed to be confidential, said there was no blanket denial of visas for "Cuban government officials." Still, other reports suggested special dispensation had to have been granted by the administration.

As director of Cuba's National Center for Sex Education, Mariela Castro has led campaigns against homophobic discrimination in her country and lobbied successfully for her father's communist government to pay for sex-change operations.

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-- Tracy Wilkinson

Photo: Mariela Castro (in the front center with dark hair) participates in a parade on May 15, 2010, to mark International Day Against Homophobia in Havana. Credit: Associated Press

 

 

Activists fight homophobia from Myanmar to Malawi

Twenty-two years ago on Thursday, the World Health Organization took homosexuality off its list of mental disorders. The date has come to be celebrated as the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia, an event dreamed up by a French academic that has since spread across the world.

That includes places less welcoming to gays, lesbians and other sexual minorities than France or Germany, where couples smooched publicly at a "kiss-in" in Berlin. In Myanmar, for example, gay right activists held their first-ever celebration in Yangon, the Irrawaddy reported, another sign of the changes underway in a country that has gradually embraced reform.

"In the past a crowd of people at this kind of event would be assumed to be against the government, taking part in something like a protest," Aung Myo Min of the Human Rights Education Institute of Burma told Channel News Asia. Now people “dare to reveal their sexual orientation,” he said.

In Malawi, human rights groups appealed to the new government to decriminalize homosexuality, the Maravi Post reported. In Iran, activists reportedly released rainbow balloons and hoisted rainbow flags for the occasion, but covered their faces in photos submitted to the Joopea blogging site to mark the day, a sign of the stigma that is still felt even among those willing to speak out.

Gay marriage: Where it's legal around the world

Gay marriage is still illegal in much of the United States, where President Obama this week made public his support for allowing same-sex couples to wed.

It also remains rare around the world, as the above map from the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex Assn. shows. (Double-click on the map to see a larger image.) Rather than the right to nuptials, gay people face years in prison in much of Africa and the Middle East.

To read more about what it's like to be gay in nations ranging from Ireland to South Africa, delve into some of our most compelling past stories about gay rights around the world:

Indian prince is out but not down

Egypt dissident a double outsider

In a hyper-macho Irish sport, a coming out

South Korean actor throws open closet door

Mexico City hosts nation's first gay marriages

An online 'Arab Spring' for region's gays and lesbians

In South Africa's black townships, being gay can be fatal

— Emily Alpert in Los Angeles

Image: World map of lesbian and gay rights around the world, including marriage rights. Credit: The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex Assn.

Madonna turns down gay activist calls to boycott Russian city

Madonna turned down calls to boycott St. Petersburg after the Russian city passed a law punishing people for promoting homosexuality to youth, saying she would instead use her August concert there to speak out.

“I will come to St. Petersburg to speak up for the gay community, to support the gay community and to give strength and inspiration to anyone who is or feels oppressed,” the pop star said on her Facebook page Wednesday. "I don't run away from adversity."

Russian journalist Masha Gessen had urged Madonna to steer clear of the Russian city in a blog post for the International Herald Tribune. Gay activists in Russia were unswayed by the pop star,  telling Agence France-Presse that they would protest "the hypocrisy of pop stars" at her show.

Russian media reported that the new law imposes fines of up to roughly $170 for individuals, $1,700 for officials and $17,000 for legal entities for advocating homosexuality to minors. It makes it illegal to foster "the false perception that traditional and nontraditional relationships are socially equal" among youth.

"The legislation makes it illegal to argue against it: A lawmaker who dared say that same-sex relationships are not inferior to heterosexual ones could be fined," Gessen wrote Monday.

Human Rights Watch criticized the law as so vague that it "could lead to a ban on displaying a rainbow flag or wearing a T-shirt with a gay-friendly logo or even on holding LGBT-themed rallies in the city."

Vitaly Milonov, who wrote the bill, said it would not be used against the media or to stop gay pride parades, and was meant to "outline certain additional rules of behavior toward minors" It would only affect "children's environments," Milonov told the St. Petersburg Times. 

Russia decriminalized homosexuality nearly two decades ago, but bias against gays has continued,  including routinely banning or breaking up gay protests, Human Rights Watch said.

Madonna has run into problems in Russia before -- though not from the gay community, which she has championed worldwide. Russian Orthodox activists protested her first show there six years ago, upset with her singing “Live to Tell” while wearing a crown of thorns and dangling from a cross, Bloomberg reports.

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-- Emily Alpert in Los Angeles

Photo: Madonna. Credit: Chris Jackson / Getty Images

Iraq killings said to target 'emos' for nonconformist style

Unconventional youths who call themselves "emos" have reportedly been threatened or killed in a recent round of attacks in Iraq, where some see their long hair and alternative style as gay.

Though "emos" are known as a specific subculture that mixes goth and glitter in the West, the term has become a catchall phrase for all kinds of nonconformists in Iraq, said Samer Muscati, a Middle East researcher for Human Rights Watch. Gay and effeminate men have been lumped into the category.

"They are grouping us all together, anyone who is different in any way, and we are very easy targets," a 22-year-old gay man in Baghdad told Human Rights Watch after getting death threats on his phone.

The Iraqi government has dismissed the problem; the Interior Ministry has characterized emos as "Satanists," according to human rights groups.

 A coalition of international organizations is pushing the Iraqi government to take the problem seriously, calling for an investigation to bring the killers to justice.