“NewsWrap"
for the week ending June 20, 2009
(As broadcast on "This Way Out" program #1,108, distributed 6-22-09)
[Written by Greg Gordon, with thanks to Rex Wockner with Bill Kelley]

Reported this week by Michael LeBeau and John Torres

  U.S. President Barack Obama issued a memorandum this week ordering government agencies to extend a few benefits to the partners of gay and lesbian federal employees.  They include sick leave and long-term care insurance, but not the biggest employee benefit – health care.<
In his first LGBT-related action and comments since taking office, Obama said during the signing ceremony on June 17th that the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, prevented him from authorizing all of the same benefits given to heterosexual government workers.  He also called for repeal of that Clinton-era measure.
It was probably no coincidence that the president’s move followed a firestorm of criticism from LGBT rights advocates the previous week over a Department of Justice brief supporting DOMA in a court challenge to the law.  While it is not unusual for the Justice Department to routinely defend existing laws, it was offensive language in the brief, comparing same-gender relationships to incest and pedophilia, which sparked the torrent of outrage.  Several notable rights leaders have threatened to boycott a thousand-dollar-a-plate LGBT fundraiser later this month for the Democratic National Committee, with Vice President Jo e Biden as the keynote speaker.
We’ll have a lot more on this story later in the program.

  Sao Paulo, Brazil has hosted, by most accounts in recent years, the world’s largest LGBT Pride Parade.  The city welcomed as many as 3 million visitors at this year’s 13th annual celebration on June 14th.
But 21 people were injured by a bomb thrown into a crowd of people at about 9:00 p.m. that evening in a popular downtown gay nightclub area.  Four people were rushed to the hospital.  One has critical head trauma, another is in serious condition with multiple injuries, and the 2 others are said to have non-life-threatening injuries.  Seventeen people were treated at the scene by paramedics for minor shrapnel injuries.
Initial reports said a resident angry about the noise that night threw the explosive into the street from a window.  But parade spokesman Pedro Xavier told the “Associated Press” that it was probably a planned anti-gay attack, because, he said, “nobody has a bomb just sitting around at home.”
The carnival-like parade spanned nearly 8 hours earlier in the day.  It drew the diverse range of LGBT people, and even heterosexual couples - many accompanied by their children - for a mammoth march down skyscraper-lined Avenida Paulista to the beat of loud music blasting from some 20 sound trucks.  Ironically, Sao Paulo Mayor Gilberto Kassab said at a kick-off rally that "This parade is an opportunity to express our rep udiation of homophobia."
According to other press reports, the bombing was not the only homophobic act during the Pride celebration.  Police said a 17-year-old boy who took part in the parade remains in a coma at a Sao Paulo hospital after being attacked by a group of unknown assailants who found him alone on an empty street.  Another youth was attacked in Roosevelt Plaza where the march ended, and a third was stabbed in Largo do Arouche Plaza.

  But there were no reported problems as tens of thousands marched through the streets of Rome on the same day in that city’s annual Pride parade.  Colorfully dressed demonstrators carrying rainbow flags attacked the conservative government of Premier Silvio Berlusconi with signs reading "freedom for all".  Several banners demanded rights for same-gender couples and marriage equality.  Other marchers dressed in clerical garb with colorful hats, and carried signs reading "No Vatican" to protest what they say is the Church's excessive influence on Italian politics.

  In heavily Roman Catholic Poland, hundreds of gay and lesbian activists paraded through the streets of Warsaw on June 13th, and also called for legal recognition of same-gender couples.   About 1500 demonstrators marched along Warsaw's main Marszalkowska Street under police escort.  Several dozen right-wing youths shouting anti-gay slurs confronted the parade near the Parliament building, but police prevented direct confrontations between the 2 groups.

  In Croa tia, another mostly Roman Catholic country, police also guarded some 900 activists as they marched through the center of Zagreb in the city’s 8th Pride parade.  As in previous years, activists from Serbia, Bosnia, Albania and Slovenia were among the event's participants.
About 50 members of a minor political party and a neo-Nazi group held a counterdemonstration and shouted anti-gay slogans.  Police were able to maintain order and arrested 5 of the demonstrators.  They also reported that a 27-year-old man who took part in the parade was seriously injured that night in an assault by 3 unknown assailants.

  An estimated 400,000 people capped a weekend festival with the 39th annual Pride Parade in West Hollywood, California on June 14th.  Both L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, speaking at the kick-off rally, helped set the tone for a more political event than usual by calling for action at the ballot box to overturn Proposition 8.  Last year, of course, Pride participants celebrated the state Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling, which would be overturned when voters passed that ballot measure in November.  California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said in a court filing this week that he would not be defending the marriage equality ban in a federal lawsuit challenging its constitutionality, saying it’s up to the judicial system to determine its legality.  Attorney General Jerry Brown said last week that he’d be filing a friend of the court brief supporting the challenge to Prop 8.

  The annual Pride parade in Des Moines, Iowa on June 14th was reportedly the largest turnout in its 30-year history as participants celebrated that state Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling earlier this year.  Organizers with Capital City Pride said they expected more than 10,000 celebrants by the end of a 4-day festival leading up to the parade.

  But Lithuania's parliament approved a measure this week that outlaws any discussion of homosexuality in schools and in public information to which children are exposed.  The bill was overwhelmingly approved on its first reading on June 4th, and again on this week’s final reading, but almost half of the MPs in the 141-seat legislature missed each vote.
Amnesty International said the "Law on the Protection of Minors Against the Detrimental Effect of Public Information" compares positive discussion of gays and lesbians with “the display of a dead or cruelly mutilated body of a person, and information that arouses fear or horror, or encourages self-mutilation or suicide."  Nicola Duckworth, Amnesty's Europe and Central Asia program director, said the law "denies the right to freedom of expression and deprives students' access to the support and protection they may need."
Opponents plan to challenge the law in the European Court of Human Rights.

  Sixty-seven gay Filipino men working in Saudi Arabia were arrested by police in Riyadh on June 13th for holding a drag show and possessing liquor at a party in celebration of Philippine Independence Day.  Each faces 3 to 6 months behind bars and 50 to 100 lashes on charges of “imitating women,” an offense against the Quran.
Vice Consul Roussel Reyes corrected earlier reports that 72 Filipinos had been arrested, saying the correct number of 67 was based on an actual count of detainees in the police station when representatives of the Philippine embassy visited them.  Many were still wearing gowns and wigs.
It was not the first time that Filipino workers have been arrested in Saudi Arabia for violating the Islamic country’s strict laws against homosexuality and cross-dressing.
The men were released on June 16th after their respective sponsors paid the necessary fees.  Court hearings of the charges against them are pending.

  The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office released a statement this week strongly condemning the reported mass killings of gay men in Iraq.  The U.S. State Department raised the issue with Iraqi government officials in Baghdad last week.  Several human rights groups have reported that dozens of men who were gay, or perceived to be gay, have been murdered during the past several months by armed militias apparently acting on comments by religious leaders that homosexuality must be “eradicated” in the country.  Others have been victims of so-called “honor killings” by homophobic family members.  Some LGBT Iraqi expatriates=2 0say that the government has been complicit in the upsurge of violence against gay men in the U.S.-occupied country.

  But finally, openly gay Scottish actor and rights activist Alan Cumming has received an O.B.E. - Officer of the Order of the British Empire – in the annual Queen's Birthday Honours List.  Cumming, whoo now lives in New York City, used the occasion to criticize the "inaction" of the U.S. government on LGBT equality.
Writing on his blog, he said he was proud to be cited for his activism as much as for his work as an entertainer, and that it’s “something I am very passionate about... I see this honour as encouragement to go on fighting for what I believe is right, and for what I take for granted as a U.K. citizen... It makes me very proud to be British, and galvanised as an American."



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