“NewsWrap"
for the week ending September 12, 2009
(As broadcast on "This Way Out" program #1,120, distributed 09-14-09)
[Written by Greg Gordon, with thanks to Rex Wockner with Bill Kelley]

Reported this week by Christopher Gaal and Rick Watts

  Budapest LGBT activists and their supporters held a “Gay Dignity March” on September 5th that successfully braved violent opposition.  About 2 thousand people took part in the Hungarian capital’s Pride march, protected by iron fences and a large contingent of riot police, while, in a repeat of last year’s violent disruption of the event, protestors threw rocks and beer bottles and shouted anti-gay and anti-government slogans.  Several rainbow flags were burned, and police used tear gas to scatter the protesters along the 4-kilometer route.  No serious injuries we re reported.
41 anti-gay demonstrators were detained by police.  17 will face formal charges of assaulting law enforcement officials or possession of explosives, while 12 others face lesser charges.
An international mix of activists and supporters, including former Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany and his wife, gathered in the early afternoon in the city’s landmark Heroes’ Square before marching into central Budapest.  The city’s 14th annual Pride parade capped off a week of related cultural events.
The embassies of Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, the U.K. and the U.S. issued a joint letter supporting this year’s Pride events.  Entertainer Whoopi Goldberg also sent a videotaped message of support.

  Hungary's National Election Committee in late August rejected a proposed voter referendum that would have required Parliament to outlaw "public advertisement of homosexuality."
The committee said that the phrase "advertisement of homosexuality" was unclear, and that the proposed law would violate constitutional free-speech protections.
It also said that “advertising” promotes products or services, and that homosexuality is neither of those.
The referendum's supporters can appeal to Hungary9s Constitutional Court.  Should they prevail there, they would need to collect 200,000 signatures to get the measure on the ballot.

  As expected, Uruguay’s Senate this week approved a bill to open adoption to same-gender couples.  17 of the 23 Senators voted in favor.  The Senate had passed a draft bill on its first reading in July, but a second vote was required to approve slight changes made in the lower house, which passed the bill in August.  The country’s Roman Catholic Church vigorously opposed the move, as did a number of rightwing politicians.
President Tabare Vazquez, the first leftist leader in Uruguayan history, is expected to sign the measure into law.  His government passed a landmark civil unions bill last year, and another to allow open gays an d lesbians to enter military schools.  The South American country of about 3-and-a-half million people is far and away the most lesbigay-protective nation in the region.

  But a British consular official was brutally murdered this week in Jamaica in what appears to have been an anti-gay hate crime.  According to police officials, 65-year-old John Terry died of asphyxiation, but he had been badly beaten.  He was found naked in his Montego Bay residence.
According to the local “Sun” newspaper, a handwritten note left on the blood-spattered bed said “This is what will happen to ALL gays."  It also described Terry as a “batty-man,” derogatory Jamaican slang for a gay person.
Police said there was no sign of forced entry, and they believe he knew his assailant.  His wallet and cell phone were missing, but police don’t believe robbery was the primary motive.
Terry was the British honorary consul in the Montego Bay district.  He had lived in Jamaica for 40 years, and for the past 12 assisted British tourists who had gotten into trouble with local authorities.
Terry separated from his wife, with whom he had 2 children, 3 years ago.  He reportedly was often seen with different male companions.
Police said they as yet have no suspects.

  A Turkish man who allegedly murdered his gay son in a so-called “honor killing” is on the run and being tried in absentia in Istanbul.
49-year-old Yahya Yildiz is charged with shooting his 26-year-old son Ahmet in June 2008 after the young man told him he was having a relationship with a German expatriate.  The prosecution says Ahmet had come out to his family, but they expressed strong religious disapproval.
Ahmet's boyfriend Ibrahim Can told “Pink-news-dot-com” that other people must have helped with the murder and the father’s get-away, and that they should also be prosecuted.  He sai d that Ahmet had been receiving death threats for as long as he knew him.  He worries that the country’s ingrained homophobia, which he described as “unbelievably bad,” may compromise a successful prosecution of the case.

  In other news, a lesbian who deserted the U.S. Army after she’d been repeatedly harassed and threatened by fellow soldiers is seeking political asylum in Canada.  Private Bethany Smith says the harassment began after other soldiers at Fort Campbell, Kentucky saw her holding hands with another woman at a local shopping mall.  She claims to have received anonymous hate letters every evening, including a death threat that read, "We will suffocate you in your sleep."  S he knew that gay soldier Barry Winchell had infamously been beaten to death in his bed with a baseball bat at the Fort Campbell base in 1999.
Before she was scheduled to be deployed to Afghanistan, Smith formally came out to her first sergeant and requested a discharge.  But it’s widely believed that an unspoken “stop loss” policy is in force that keeps discharges under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” to a minimum because the Pentagon doesn’t have enough trained soldiers to ship overseas.  "He told me straight-up,” Smith said, “'We'll figure out the paperwork when we get back from deployment.'"
Other U.S. soldiers who’ve sought asylum in Canada based on their opposition to U.S. wars in Iraq or Afghanistan have been deported.  Some have served prison sentences following U.S. military trials.
Smith’s attorney says she has a completely different case, however, since her client was threatened because of her sexual orientation.
A Canadian immigration board rejected Smith’s original asylum request, and an appeal is now being considered by the Federal Court in Ottowa.
If she’s forced to return to the United States, Smith would likely face military charges of homosexual conduct, as well as charges of being absent without leave and desertion.  Such cases are decided by tribunal members from the accused's own military unit, which means that the same soldiers who drove Smith to seek asylum in Canada could sit in judgment of her.

  Elsewhere, supporters of Washington’s recent expansion of domestic partnership rights for same-gender couples announced this week that they won’t appeal a state judge’s ruling that approved Referendum 71 for the November 3rd ballot.  That measure, sponsored by Protect Marriage Washington, a coalition of conservative religious groups, asks voters to repeal the “everything but marriage” expansion of domestic partnership rights passed by the legislature and signed by the governor earlier this year.  Equality activists had challenged the legality of the signature-gathering process on several petitions that qualified the measure, as well as the validity of a significant number of those signatures.  Washington Families Standing Together chairwoman Anne Levinson said her group won’t appeal to the state Supreme Court because it needs to prepare for the election "without the distraction of an ongoing legal debate.”
But state Attorney General Rob McKenna said that his office would appeal a federal judge’s ruling that the names of those who signed the petition be kept secret.  A U.S. district judge said that releasing those names would violate their First A mendment free speech rights, but McKenna said not doing so is a clear violation of the state’s Public Records Act.  The equality groups know-thy-neighbor-dot-org and who-signed-dot-org want to post online the names and addresses of everyone who signed Referendum 71 petitions.  McKenna will ask the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to review the decision on a fast track, and in the meantime, he wants the appeals court to lift an injunction that blocks the release of the names.

  Meanwhile, the Roman Catholic Church in Maine ordered its priests to make a second collection during masses this weekend to support Stand for Marriage Maine’s efforts to overturn the state’s marriage equality law.  It passed earlier this year and was to take effect on September 12th b efore the petition-gathering effort by opponents qualified the so-called “People’s Veto” for the November 3rd ballot and put same-gender marriages in the state on hold.
Activists with NO on 1/Protect Maine Equality said this week that the Church has already started a disinformation campaign using the same scare tactics by supporters of Proposition 8 in California about children and school curricula.  That’s no surprise, since Stand for Marriage Maine has hired the same group that produced those scurrilous television ads in California.

  But finally, almost 31,000 people signed a petition on British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Web site urging the Government to issue a formal apology recognizing “the tragic consequences of p rejudice” that led gay World War II hero Alan Turing to commit suicide.
Turing was a mathematical genius who helped turn the tide of the war by deciphering German Enigma codes.  His Turing machine was a forerunner of the modern computer.  But after his conviction in 1952 of "gross indecency" for having a homosexual relationship, Turing was forced to choose between prison and chemical castration.  He chose the latter, but became increasingly depressed, and ended his own life 2 years later at the age of 41.
Writing in this week’s “Telegraph” newspaper, Brown said, “I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him.  Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted, as he was convicted, under homophobic laws, were treated terribly... This recognition of Alan's status as one of Britain's most famous victims of homophobia is another step towards=2 0equality, and long overdue."