“NewsWrap"
for the week ending August 22, 2009
(As broadcast on "This Way Out" program #1,117, distributed 8-24-09)
[Written by Greg Gordon, with thanks to Rex Wockner with Bill Kelley]

Reported this week by Leigh Moore and Michele Pleasant

  A report issued by the international advocacy group Human Rights Watch this week, detailing horrific acts against gays in Iraq, has finally prompted corporate media attention.  LGBT outlets have for many weeks been reporting on an intensive “sexual cleansing” campaign of abductions, torture, beatings, and murder, carried out against gay men, or those perceived to be, by Muslim fundamentalist-backed militia in the U.S.-occupied country.  Titled “They Want Us Exterminated: Murder, Torture, Sexual Orientation and Gender in Iraq,” the 67-page report is based on recent interviews conducted by a Human Rights Watch team in Iraq with more than 50 men who identified as gay, as well as with doctors, journalists, and United Nations officials.
It confirms the deaths of hundreds of Iraqi sexual- and gender-variant men in the wake of the security chaos created by the U.S. invasion and occupation.  The report includes heart-wrenching interviews with gay Iraqis, describing – sometimes in horrifying detail – the abuses they’ve suffered or witnessed.  It said doctors confirmed earlier accounts of men being killed by having their anuses glued shut before being force-fed laxatives, causing painful and slow death.

  The militiamen invade homes, abduct men without warning, and interrogate and brutalize them to get names of other people suspected of being gay.  Mutilated bodies are then often left in garbage dumps or on a road in the neighborhood the next day.  Some corpses have been found with the word “puppy”, an Iraqi slang word equivalent to “faggot”, on placards, or carved onto their bodies.
Many believe that Iraqi officials know about the murders but are doing little to stop them.  The country’s human rights minister told the “Washington Post” this week that the closeted nature of Iraq's gays makes it hard to protect them.
Openly gay U.S. Congressman Jared Polis of Colorado expressed deep concerns about the butchery to U.S. officials in Baghdad during a visit there in April, but there’s been no reported response by the Obama administration.
“Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the campaign,” the Human Rights Watch report says, “is its publicity and impunity.  The death squads treat murder as a message, aimed at other presumed ‘deviants’ and at the population at large... As one man told us, ‘It is a slaughterhouse on the streets.’”
Human Rights Watch LGBT rights program director Scott Long said that the violence has subsided a bit in recent weeks – partly because many gay men have gone deep underground.  Another reason, he said, is that "the militias have run out of people to kill."

  An ultra-Orthodox Jewish Web site in Israel posted a letter this week calling for criminal prosecution of the managers of Tel Aviv’s LGBT center.  A murderous assault on a youth group meeting at the center on the evening of August 1st left 2 dead and at least 10 injured.  The posting on the ultra-Orthodox haredi Web site “Tzofer” said center officials should be charged with child sexual abuse, and that "many citizens are sick of this depraved behavior that lacks any moral boundaries.”
The motive of the masked gunman, who indiscriminately sprayed the center’s youth group meeting with bullets, is still not known, and he remains at large.  A number of activists have blamed ultra-Orthodox Jewish clerics, and some ministers in the coalition government, for fueling the violence by relentlessly railing against homosexuality, and calling gays and lesbians child molesters.
In the wake of the Tel Aviv tragedy, the LGBT center in Jerusalem, which has in the past felt the brunt of Israel’s homophobic violence, this week hired an armed security guard for the first time.  Jerusalem Open House officials said they’re taking other security precautions.

  But the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America – or ELCA – voted this week to welcome same-gender-partnered clergy.  Previous policy had allowed only celibate gay pastors.  Heterosexual pastors are also expected to remain celibate – until they marry.  By a vote of 559-to-441, the ELCA National Assembly, meeting in Minneapolis, approved a resolution to permit pastors in "accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships to serve as rostered leaders of this church."  The Assembly earlier voted 619-to-402 to allow its churches to conduct ceremonies of their choosing to recognize same-gender couples, although marriage is still not an option.
A number of clergy and other speakers during an emotional day-long debate inferred or stated directly that their congregation would leave the 4-and-a-half-million-member denomination, the largest Lutheran church in the U.S., if it welcomed gays and lesbians in these ways.  The Assembly still has to approve procedural changes to allow the resolutions to go forward, which officials said would be in place by 2010.
The move follows the lifting in July of a temporary ban by the Episcopal Church on the consecration of partnered openly gay bishops.  The U.S. branch of the Anglican Communion is also in the process of developing official liturgies to bless same-gender unions.  Both actions have driven traditionalist Episcopal congregations to leave the Church, and seriously strained Episcopal ties with several conservative regions of the global Christian denomination.

  Anti-gay actions by the 13-million-member Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, have also become a lightning rod for LGBT activism.  A gay male couple who kissed on the Church-owned public walkway outside the temple headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah in July were accosted by security guards and arrested for trespassing, although city prosecutors dropped those charges.  The Salt Lake City incident, and a similar confrontation in El Paso, Texas, prompted online bloggers to call for a Great Nationwide Kiss-in on August 15th.  Couples of all sexual orientations defiantly but peacefully demonstrated their support for public affection in several U.S. and Canadian cities.  About 200 people filled a downtown amphitheater in Salt Lake City, while about 50 people gathered for a 5-minute kiss-in at Piedmont Park in downtown Atlanta.  A few kissing couples braved the scorching sun on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. with placards that read “Equal Opportunity Kisser” and “A Kiss Is Not A Crime.”
A lesbian couple was asked to leave a diner in Silver Spring, Maryland this week for displaying affection for one another, prompting a kiss-in protest by about a dozen couples a few days later.  As in other incidents, restaurant management claimed the two were doing more than just kissing.

  The Mormon Church was also a major funder and supporter of Proposition 8 in California, which last November overturned a state Supreme Court marriage equality ruling.
There were developments this week in a high-profile federal lawsuit challenging the validity under the U.S. Constitution of barring same-gender couples from marrying.  Ted Olson and David Boies, who opposed each other in the Bush v. Gore election case before the U.S. Supreme Court, filed the suit in May on behalf of 2 same-gender California couples who were denied marriage licenses because of Proposition 8.
Vaughn R. Walker, Chief Justice of the U.S. district court for Northern California, scheduled a trial date of January 11th.  He also denied a motion by the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Lambda Legal, and the American Civil Liberties Union to join the plaintiffs in the case.  Their attorneys had successfully argued the marriage equality case before the state high court.  The judge also rejected a motion by the conservative Campaign for California Families to join the defense of the marriage ban.  He’d already allowed the Alliance Defense Fund, a right-wing legal organization, to intervene in the defense of Proposition 8.  The judge did allow the City and County of San Francisco to join the case, but only to offer information about Proposition 8’s impact on local government.
Olson and Boies had argued that intervention by other parties would unnecessarily slow the legal process, and Walker seems intent on a speedy trial.  The case is eventually expected to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.

  Meanwhile, Anchorage, Alaska Mayor Dan Sullivan this week vetoed an ordinance to ban discrimination against LGBT people in employment, credit, public accommodations, and housing.  Churches and other religious institutions would have been exempt.  Sullivan said he did not believe that pervasive discrimination existed in his city.  The Anchorage Assembly approved the bill last week by a vote of 7-to-4, but 8 votes are needed to override the veto.
Equality activists have battled for decades to get an anti-bias ordinance enacted in Anchorage.  The first lesbigay rights ordinance passed the Assembly in 1976.  But it was vetoed by then-mayor George Sullivan, the father of the current mayor.
Local observers don’t believe the Assembly will muster the votes for an override this time, either.

  City commissioners in Kalamazoo, Michigan voted earlier this month to put a similar anti-bias ordinance they had approved in July before the voters in November.  Officials verified the required number of signatures on a petition by opponents to overturn the measure and put the issue on the ballot.  Enforcement of the ordinance was suspended pending the outcome of the November vote.

  But finally, a court in Poland has ordered a woman to pay her gay neighbor the equivalent of 5,200 U.S. dollars for repeatedly calling him a “pedal”, Polish slang for "faggot," in public.
The court decided that her continued verbal assaults injured Ryszard Giersz's dignity and privacy.  Giersz, his partner Tomasz, and the woman, identified only as “Anna S”, live in the small northwestern town of Wolin.
The woman, who maintains her innocence, said she may appeal the verdict.
The Polish organization Campaign Against Homophobia said the case represented the first time a gay person had pursued his or her rights so openly in the country’s court system.