“NewsWrap"
for the week ending July 11, 2009
(As broadcast on "This Way Out" program #1,111, distributed 7-13-09)
[Written by Greg Gordon, with thanks to Rex Wockner with Bill Kelley]

Reported this week by Pam Marshall and Chris Wilson

  Petitions were filed this week with India’s Supreme Court challenging a state court ruling that declared the country’s law against “unnatural sex,” Penal Code Section 377, to be unconstitutional.  Only a reversal by the nation’s highest court, or parliamentary legislation, would prevent the Delhi High Court decision from becoming the law of the land.
Swami Baba Ramdev, a yoga guru and Hindu television personality, filed one challenge, telling the “Indian Express” that homosexuality is a "disease [that] can be treated like any other congenital defect... by yoga, breathing exercises, and other meditation techniques."
Astrologer Suresh Kumar Koshal also filed a petition against the decision, falsely claiming that “Even animals don't indulge in such activities."  He also warned that AIDS would be more easily spread if gay sex becomes legal.
The Delhi High Court ruled on July 2nd that the ban on consensual same-gender sex between adults, enacted in 1860 during British colonial rule, violated human rights provisions of the Indian Constitution.
The Supreme Court notified the Government, whose ministers have been unable to agree on a unified position, and the Naz Founda tion, the nongovernmental group that led the legal fight against Section 377, that an initial hearing would be held on July 20th.

  As the summer Pride season wound down in the Northern hemisphere, an estimated one million people celebrated in Madrid on July 4th.  The annual parade in the Spanish city featured more than 30 floats and colorfully costumed participants.  The marchers, who included the country’s Minister of Education and other politicians, union groups and youth organizations, focused on better protecting LGBT students and ensuring equal educational opportunities.

  London’s annual Pride parade on the same day hosted crowds variously estimated at from 500 thousand to a million people.  British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s wife Sarah joined the parade after the couple hosted an official reception for organizers and the LGBT press at 10 Downing Street.  A rally and concert capped off the day in Trafalgar Square.  Some speakers criticized the continuing ban on gay men donating blood, while others demanded full marriage equality instead of the all-but-the-name civil partnerships currently available to U.K. same-gender couples.

  About a half-million people thronged the center of Cologne on July 5th for the German city’s annual Pride parade, known as Christopher Street Day to honor the liberation-movement-sparking Stonewall Riots on that street in New York City’s Greenwich Village in June, 1969.   According to a “Deutche Presse Agent ur” report, “more than 90 brightly colored floats snaked their way through the streets in pleasant summer temperatures,” accompanied by marchers in what the report called “fancy or revealing costumes.”

  “Agence France Presse” counted an “estimated 100,000 raucous participants” at Vienna’s 14th annual Pride parade on July 4th.  “Latex- and leather-clad marchers converged on the Austrian capital's main avenue,” the news agency reported, “many on colorful floats.”  The participants’ banners and chants called for national marriage equality.

  And around 300 people marched in the second LGBT Pride parade in Bulgaria’s capital of Sofia on June 27th, reportedly twice as many as last year.
Police and private security officers, hired by event organizers, protected the marchers to prevent a recurrence of last year's violence.  Skinheads and right-wing extremists attacked the city’s first parade with bottles, rocks, eggs, smoke bombs and Molotov cocktails.  Police made 80 arrests.  This year's parade encountered nothing more serious than some booing.  Marchers called for passage of a workplace anti-discrimination law.

  In the U.S., the state of Massachusetts is suing the federal government over DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act.  That 1996 law denies federal recognition to legally united same-gender couples, and allows states to refuse to recognize such legal unions performed elsewhere. =2 0Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley argues in the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Boston this week, that DOMA interferes with her state’s ability to define and regulate marriage.  For example, Coakley said, DOMA requires Massachusetts, which enacted marriage equality in 2004, to violate the constitutional rights of its citizens by treating married heterosexual couples and married same-gender couples differently in its distribution of federal Medicaid benefits and Social Security payments to spouses.
A federal challenge to DOMA was also filed in March by the Boston-based Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, the legal advocacy group that won marriage equality in the state.

  Washington, D.C.’s law recognizing lesbian and gay marriages legally performed elsewhere took effect on July 7th after opponents lost a court challenge seeking a public referendum on the matter.  Congress, which has oversight on all D.C. laws, had 30 days to review the bill.  It took no action, allowing the measure to become law.  Openly gay City Councilmember David Catania says it’s the first step toward passing a marriage equality law in the city.

  House committees held hearings in the nation’s capital on the Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Act, which would provide gay and lesbian federal employees with the same spousal benefits given to heterosexual workers... and the Safe Schools Improvement Act, which would fund school programs to prevent bullying and harassment on the=2 0basis of actual or perceived sexual orientation and gender identity.

  And an Iraq War veteran has become the lead sponsor of a bill to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”.  U.S. Representative Patrick Murphy, a Pennsylvania Democrat, is a former West Point professor who had earlier earned a Bronze star, rising to the rank of captain, in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division.  He takes over as lead sponsor for Ellen Taucher, who reintroduced the Military Readiness Enhancement Act earlier this year.  She’s leaving Congress to take a position with the Obama administration.  The bill currently has 150 co-sponsors in the House.

  Family members of murdered gay sailor August Provost III arrived in San Diego from their Houston home this week to claim his body, and to keep the pressure on military officials to be forthcoming about the circumstances of the 29-year-old African-American man’s murder.
His family said the Navy told them that he was shot 3 times while serving sentry duty on June 30th at Southern California’s Camp Pendleton Marine Base.  His feet and hands were bound, his mouth was gagged, and the body had been burned.  Naval investigators have insisted that the murder was a random act unrelated to his sexuality, but his family � and community activists, joined by some local and state electedd officials � have charged that it was more likely a hate crime.&nbbsp; A “person of interest” is reportedly in custody, but no charges have been filed to date.
About a hundred people gathered near Camp Pendleton on the evening of July 10th for a candlelight vigil for the slain sailor.
Family member Rose Roy said her nephew had complained about being harassed for being gay.  She told the “Associated Press” that the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy discouraged him from asking for help from military officials.  “That phrase is just stupid,” she said, “because it tells them they have no one to speak to.”

  At the request of Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief, the head of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas agreed this week to review the results of an investigation into allegations that law enforcement officers used excessive force during a June 28th raid on a newly-opened gay bar, the Rainbow Lounge.  City police and state alcohol control agents arrested 7 men on public intoxication charges in the raid, and at least 2 were seriously injured.  One of them, Chad Gibson, was released this week from a hospital after suffering a head injury that led to a blood clot in his brain.  Witnesses during the raid say he was thrown headfirst into a wall and knocked to the floor by officers, who later accused him of grabbing the groin of one of them.
Gibson told local television stations this week that he did nothing of the sort, and witnesses said that he was roughed up for no apparen t reason.  The “New York Times” reported that another patron at the bar suffered broken ribs, and a third received a broken thumb during their arrests.
The Fort Worth Police Department has temporarily suspended joint operations with the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, and both agencies say they’re conducting internal investigations.
Peaceful protests against the raid continued this week outside the Rainbow Lounge.

  And finally, a gay kiss proved to be too much for security guards and a local police officer in another city in the Lone Star State.
Carlos Diaz de Leon says he and 4 friends were at a Chico's Tacos restaurant in late June in El Paso � a popular local chain � whenhen security guards noticed 2 of the men kissing and ordered them to leave.  According to news reports, the guards told the men that "faggot stuff" wasn't allowed in the restaurant.  De Leon, who described the kiss between his 2 friends as “brief,” called the police to complain.  But an officer sided with the security guards, citing the Texas sodomy law � which was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court inn 2003.  The city of El Paso passed an ordinance banning sexual orientation discrimination the same year.
De Leon and his friends filed a complaint this week with the police department’s internal affairs unit.  A police spokesman told a local television station that the responding officer was a rookie who “misinterpreted” the l aw.



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