“NewsWrap"
for the week ending October 3, 2009
(As broadcast on "This Way Out" program #1,123, distributed 10-05-09)
[Written by Greg Gordon, with thanks to Rex Wockner with Bill Kelley]

Reported this week by Rick Watts and Greg Gordon

  The newly installed president of the United Nations General Assembly, Ali Abdussalam Treki, has called homosexuality "not really acceptable".
Treki, who is the Libyan Secretary of African Union Affairs, held a press conference late last week as he convened the 64th session of the General Assembly.  He was asked about a U.N. resolution, passed by the General Assembly last December, calling for the universal decriminalization of homosexuality.  "That matter is very sensitive, very touchy,” he said.  “As a Muslim, I am not in favor of it... I think it's not really acceptable by our religion, our tradition.”
“[T]here are some countries that allow that, thinking it is a kind of democracy,” he added.  “I think it is not.”
A large coalition of predominantly Muslim countries strongly opposed the U.N. resolution.
The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission condemned Treki’s remarks, saying that “The worrying and serious implications of this attitude, coming from the new head of an institution which is supposed to regard human rights – all human rights – as the most sacred value, cannot be overstated.”
Openly gay British Member of the European Parliament Michael Cashman this week called Treki’s comments "inappropriate and unacceptable... his religious beliefs... must remain private.  He must realise that the implications of his words could legitimise violence towards LGBT people."
Openly gay U.S. Congressman Barney Frank told the LGBT “On Top” Web site that "This is par for the course for a Libyan official – offensive, stupid and bigoted."

  Guido Westerwelle, who’s spent 8 years leading Germany’s pro-business Free Democratic Party, may very well soon be the country’s first openly gay Foreign Minister.  His party is expected to be part of the coalition government of newly-re-elected conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Westerwelle doesn’t consider himself to be a gay activist, but he’s said that his success may be "encouraging for some young gays."  "I can only tell all young gays and lesbians to not be disheartened, if not everything goes their way," Westerwelle told a Berlin-based gay magazine.  "This society is changing for the good in the direction of tolerance and respect... though slower than I would wish."
Westerwelle basically “came out” in 2004 when he brought his male partner to Merkel's 50th birthday party.
Klaus Jetz of Germany’s Lesbian and Gay Association said he expects Westerwelle to push for greater LGBT equality in the new government, and told reporters that "It's important that as foreign minister he will openly talk about human rights and the persecution of gays and lesbians in other countries."

  Same-gender couples in Portugal are waiting to see whether their re-elected prime minister will deliver on his promise to enact marriage equality.  José Sócrates and his Socialist Party government were returned to power last week.  They don’t have a parliamentary majority, but left wing parties hold a majority of the seats, and they’ve all supported marriage rights for lesbian and gay couples.  But marriage equality remains an uphill climb in Portugal, which has a large Roman Catholic population.  The Church strongly opposes the legal recognition of same-gender couples.

  El Salvador’s Roman Catholic Church joined rightwing parties last week in support of constitutional amendments to ban same-gender couples from legally marrying or adopting children.  But the governing leftwing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front opposed the moves, and the bills failed in Congress.
Amending the constitution in El Salvador requires approval in one legislative session and ratification, by at least a two-thirds majority, in the next parliamentary session.  President Mauricio Funes has said that the proposed amendments would violate the civil rights of LGBT people.  But the proposed constitutional changes were sent back for review by a commission.  They can still be reintroduced at a later time during the current legislative session.

  The Vatican itself took another shot at gay men this week in its relentless attacks on sexual minorities.  A statement read by Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s permanent observer to the United Nations, claimed that the vast majority of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church was committed by homosexuals, not pedophiles.  "Of all priests involved in the abuses,” Tomasi said, “80 to 90 per cent belong to this sexual orientation minority, which is sexually engaged with adolescent boys between the ages of 11 and 17."  He said that it would be "more correct" to refer to ephebophilia, a homosexual attraction to adolescent males, than pedophilia.
The statement followed a meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, and charges by the International Humanist and Ethical Union that the Vatican is continuing to cover up child sex abuse cases.

  Elsewhere, same-gender couples in the Australian island state of Tasmania will soon be able to have marriage celebrants preside at their civil union ceremonies.  Couples have been able to register their relationships since 2003 by signing a deed at the registry of births, deaths and marriages.  But the administrative change, to take effect on November 1st, will also allow a more formal registration of the relationship.
Rodney Croome of the Tasmanian Gay and Lesbian Rights Group said he expects to see a rise in registrations because it’s been important to many couples to be able to celebrate their unions in official ceremonies witnessed by family and friends.
Attorney-General Lara Giddings told reporters that "In the past what they did was turn up to the registry office as you do to register your dog, you would turn up to register your relationship.  Now quite rightly,” she added, “people felt that that did not give their relationship the dignity they wanted it to have."

  And in the U.S., Nevada’s domestic partnership law, which grants many of the legal rights of marriage to cohabiting same-gender and heterosexual couples, went into effect on October 1st.
The first couple to be issued a certificate – Lee Cagley and Larry Davis – shared tears and laughter as they were congratulated by Secretary of State Ross Miller.
While Nevada’s constitution bans same-gender marriage, the domestic partnership law extends rights similar to those held by married couples – including community property and the right to seek financial support after a breakup – to cohabitating couples.  It allows but doesn’t require employers to extend insurance benefits to domestic partners.
The measure was vetoed by Governor Jim Gibbons, but overridden by the legislature in May.  About 750 couples had applied as of midday on October 1st.
Nevada joins 16 other states that have laws recognizing some form of same-gender domestic partnerships.  Voters in Washington will be asked to uphold that state’s “everything but marriage” domestic partnerships law on November 3rd, while Maine voters will be asked to repeal the state’s marriage equality law.  And voters in Kalamazoo, Michigan will be considering a ballot measure to repeal the city’s law protecting LGBT people from discrimination.

  An unlikely battle over marriage rights – and divorce – began in Texas this week.
State District Judge Tena Callahan ruled in Dallas that 2 men who’ve been together for 11 years and married in Massachusetts in 2006 could be divorced in the Lone Star State, even though its voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional ban on same-gender marriage in 2005.  She declared that the ban violates equal protection provisions of the Texas and U.S. constitutions, and that her court "has jurisdiction to hear a suit for divorce filed by persons legally married in another jurisdiction."
The men in the case are asking not to be identified because one of them is not out to his employer.
Attorney General Greg Abbott said he would vigorously appeal the ruling "to defend the traditional definition of marriage that was approved by Texas voters."
But Dallas attorney Peter Schulte, who represents one of the men, argued that “If a divorce is granted in the case, the court is NOT creating, recognizing or validating a marriage between persons of the same sex; rather the effect of a divorce immediately ends a marriage, which furthers the 'public policy' of this state as written in the Family Code."

  And finally, the children’s book “And Tango Makes Three,” about a real-life male penguin couple in New York’s Central Park Zoo who incubate a rejected egg and raise the resulting baby chick, has for the third straight year topped the American Library Association’s list of most-banned books.
Opponents who’ve wanted the book removed from public library shelves complained about its “homosexual content,” and called it "anti-ethnic, anti-family, and unsuited to the age group".
“And Tango Makes Three” is also scheduled to be published in Poland.  But rightwing politicians have reportedly called for a ban there.  M.E.P. Tadeusz Cymanski of the Law and Justice Party said the book “promotes homosexuality.”
But in what the “New York Times” reported this week as “yet another example of life imitating art, or at least humans imitating animals,” the authors of “And Tango Makes Three”, Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, are raising their own baby.  The gay couple, who live in New York City’s West Village, welcomed their first child in February.  Gemma Parnell-Richardson was born to a surrogate mother.  The egg was fertilized by sperm from one of the men – though which one was left to chance.
The two penguins, Roy and Silo, had been an identifiable couple for 6 years when they tried to hatch a rock in their nest.  A sympathetic zookeeper gave them a fertile egg from another penguin couple that had problems tending to 2 eggs.  Roy and Silo sat on the egg, which hatched, and the baby penguin was named Tango, since “it takes two.”
Richardson told the “Times” that “We tried to incubate a rock, and that didn’t work.”