“NewsWrap"
for the week ending September 19, 2009
(As broadcast on "This Way Out" program #1,121, distributed 09-21-09)
[Written by Greg Gordon, with thanks to Rex Wockner with Bill Kelley]

Reported this week by John Torres and Michael LeBeau

  Organizers of the September 20th LGBT Pride Parade in downtown Belgrade cancelled it just a day before it was to be held.  While the Serbian Government had promised to protect the event from rightwing nationalists and neo-Nazis, who had threatened to violently disrupt it, officials concluded that they could not guarantee the safety of the marchers.  Threatening posters appeared in recent days in the Serbian capital saying “We’re Waiting For You.”
Pride organizer Dragana Vuckovic told reporters that her group rejected a police proposal to move the event to a large open field across the Sava River from the central city and decided instead to cancel it.  "The message of equal rights is transmitted symbolically,” she said, only “when a group on the margins is able to parade in the center of the capital."
About a thousand people had been expected to join the parade, including a number of public officials, foreign diplomats and LGBT activists from neighboring countries.
The last attempt to hold an LGBT Pride event in Belgrade was in 2001.  Police were unable to protect the participants from violent protesters.  Dozens of activists and police officers were injured.
The ultra-nationalist Serb Popular Movement 1389 hailed the cancellation of this year’s march as "a great victory for normal Serbia." "In our city,” their statement added, “infidels and Satanists will not pass.”  The Serbian Orthodox Church called the proposed march a “Shame Parade... of Sodom and Gomorrah.”
Serbia seeks membership in the European Union.  Its parliament passed a law in March protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination, but it was vigorously opposed by nationalist extremists and religious leaders.  Hostility toward sexual minorities remains rampant in the country.
Pride organizers issued a statement vowing to continue their efforts.  “The Republic of Serbia has capitulated,” it said.  “We have not."

  The European Parliament passed a resolution this week condemning Lithuania’s recently-passed so-called “no promo homo” legislation.  Called the Law on the Protection of Minors from the Detrimental Effects of Public Information, the bill includes a ban on any discussion of homosexuality in schools, or in media accessible to young people.
The European Parliament resolution, passed by a vote of 349-to-218, states that the Lithuanian law is in breach of E.U. and international treaties and anti-discrimination statutes.  It also reaffirmed the European Union’s commitment to fight against all forms of discrimination.
Lithuania’s outgoing president vetoed the law in June, but parliament overrode him in mid-July by a vote of 87-to-6.  It’s scheduled to come into force on March 1st, 2010.
The European Parliament also resolved to follow the issue through its Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs.

  Alarms rang out at human rights groups around the world this week with news that lame-duck religious conservative lawmakers in the Indonesian province of Aceh had approved so-called “morality” legislation that proscribes from at least 100 lashings to death by stoning for adulterers, and public lashings and prison terms of at least 8 years for anyone convicted of homosexuality.
Amnesty International said the new measures, approved in a unanimous voice vote by Aceh’s 69-seat provincial legislature, violate international human rights laws and treaties signed by Indonesia.
A strict version of Islamic law, Shariah, was introduced in Aceh in 2001 after the central Indonesian government acquiesced to the change. It already bans gambling and drinking alcohol, and makes it compulsory for women to wear headscarves.
But the majority of Indonesia’s nearly 200 million Muslims, the largest such population in the world, practice a much more moderate form of the faith.
Rights activists hope that the new more moderate incoming government in Aceh will rescind or at least somehow soften the new morality laws.  None of its members voted against them in the legislature, however.  The new laws are scheduled to take effect in mid-October.  A legal challenge to them in Jakarta has also been discussed.

  There were reports this week that questioned interpretations of a recently passed bill in Uruguay to open adoption to same-gender couples.
Lawyers, judges and even the law’s own authors have voiced doubts about how the law will be applied.  The measure awaits the signature of President Tabaré Vázquez, who supported it.
Equality groups have been celebrating the prospect that Uruguay could become the first country in Latin America to give gay and lesbian couples the opportunity to adopt.  The new law drops a requirement that children can only be adopted by legally married couples or single parents.  But the “Associated Press” noted that nowhere does it specify that same-gender couples have a right to adopt.  And in some places, it appears to suggest otherwise.  For example, the wire service reports, the new law describes how the adopted child should take its mother and father’s surname.
Attorney Juan A. Ramirez, an expert in civil rights law, told Uruguay’s leading newspaper “El Pais” that lawmakers “either... forgot to mention that gay couples can adopt, or they didn’t want to mention it.  They didn’t want to take the bull by the horns and resolve it clearly.”  Others insist, however, that since last year same-gender couples have been able to legally join in civil unions, and that they’re covered in the new adoption law.
But family judge Estrella Perez said the judges association plans to meet “to see how to resolve these doubts... We all have them.”

  The TV ad wars began in earnest this week in Maine, where voters will be asked Question 1 on November 3rd to overturn the state’s marriage equality law.  It passed the legislature and was signed into law by the governor earlier this year, and was to have taken effect on September 12th before the so-called “People’s Veto” qualified for the ballot.
Broadcast ads for Yes on 1 are being produced by the same political advertising firm that spearheaded the Proposition 8 campaign in California.  As they did there, the ads in Maine exploit people’s fears about the supposed “threat” that marriage equality poses to children.  NO on 1/Protect Maine Equality reacted quickly with a memorandum to the media and general public this week denouncing those ads, signed by Maine Senate President Elizabeth Mitchell, House Speaker Hannah Pingree, former Attorneys General Steve Rowe and James Tierney, and several noted law professors.  "... [T]he claims in these ads are false and misleading," said Tierney.  "It is important to get the facts right, to dispel these mistruths and return the debate to where it should be, which is treating all Maine families equally."
The first ads from No on 1 feature a variety of Maine families, headed by both heterosexual and same-gender couples, and extol the unique character of the state’s residents and their sense of fairness and equality.
In a survey released this week by the “Daily Kos,” 48 percent of likely voters said they planned to vote yes on Question 1, 46 percent would vote no, and 6 percent were undecided.
The poll has a margin of error of 4 percent, so it’s virtually even with less than 2 months before voters cast their ballots.

  Many of Washington’s largest employers issued a joint statement this week in favor of Referendum 71, which will ask voters to uphold the “everything but marriage” expansion of the state’s domestic partnership law.
It passed the legislature and was signed into law in May, but is on hold pending the religious conservative-initiated November 3rd vote.  In a joint statement, the Boeing Company, Nike, Microsoft, Puget Sound Energy, and RealNetworks said that the law “recognizes that, regardless of their sexual orientation, people may enter into partnerships and create family units that deserve respect and equal treatment... We embrace everyone's fundamental right to be judged on their merits and contributions rather than factors such as their sexual orientation."

  But Arizona Governor Jan Brewer has signed a budget that, among other things, strips away health coverage for the domestic partners of state workers.
Some legislators had been working to kill the benefits since former Governor Janet Napolitano approved them last year. She’s now the federal Secretary of Homeland Security.
Tara Borelli, staff attorney for Lambda Legal, called the benefits reversal "a cruel and cynical ploy by the far right to target and hurt the families of gay and lesbian state employees under the guise of cost-cutting... [It] pulls the rug out from underneath hardworking state employees and saves the state next to nothing."

  But finally, TV’s venerable “The Newlywed Game” is getting its first gay couple.  Producers announced this week that George Takei, who played “Mr. Sulu” on “Star Trek,” will appear in a celebrity edition of the game show with his partner Brad Altman.  They’ve been together for 22 years, but celebrate their first wedding anniversary this month after being married in Los Angeles last September during the brief time when those marriages were legal in California.
“The Newlywed Game” first aired on prime time U.S. TV in 1967.  It asks participants sometimes-intimate questions about their partners.  The latest version appears on the cable Game Show Network.
According to the “Associated Press,” Takei and Altman are quietly preparing for their appearance.  Takei says he's taking careful note of what his partner orders in restaurants and what he wears.  "To be included in something we never felt we'd be included in,” he said, “is very satisfying.”