International News
By Larry Nichols
PGN Staff Writer
© 2007 Philadelphia Gay News

Tutu ‘ashamed’ of anti-gay Anglicans

South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu criticized the Anglican Church on Nov. 18 for being “obsessed” with homosexuality.

The election of the Rev. Gene Robinson in 2003 as bishop of New Hampshire divided the denomination; Robinson is the first openly gay man to be made a bishop in the Anglican faith.

Tutu said the church has become “extraordinarily homophobic” and criticized the worldwide leader of the church and Anglican conservatives on a BBC radio program.

Tutu accused Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams of failing to follow a “welcoming God” and said he was ashamed of what the Anglican Church has become.

“Our world is facing problems — poverty, HIV and AIDS, a devastating pandemic, and conflict,” he said. “God must be weeping looking at some of the atrocities that we commit against one another.”

Tutu also chastised church conservatives who say that homosexuality is a choice and gays and lesbians need to repent.

Death sentence for sodomy reversed

Iran’s chief justice recently spared the life of a young man who had been sentenced to be executed for accusation of homosexual acts.

Amid international criticism for Iran’s persecution of gays, Ayatollah Seyed Mahmoud Hashemi Sharudi nullified the imminent death sentence of Makvan Mouloodzadeh, 21.

“This is a stunning victory for human rights and a reminder of the power of global protest,” said Paula Ettelbrick, executive director of the New York-based International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission.

Mouloodzadeh was just 13 when his cousin accused him of homosexual acts. His case captured the attention of a number of international groups that are trying to improving human rights for women, gays and children in Iran.

Some of those groups have criticized Iran’s increased use of the death penalty for people convicted of crimes that occurred when they were children or teens.

“Iran leads the world in executing children,” Human Rights Watch said in a June 2007 press release that charged the nation with putting to death at least 17 juvenile offenders since the beginning of 2004, “eight times more than in any other country in the world.”

Mass gay marriage

A simulated mass marriage ceremony was staged in Melbourne on Nov. 18 to draw attention to the Australian government’s reluctance to recognize gay relationships.

Fifteen same-sex couples, 12 of them lesbian and three gay, participated in the ceremony, which was held as part of the GLBT festival called Feast.

“What we wanted to do as a festival was celebrate diverse love and put it out to the wider public so it can be recognized as equal to straight marriage,” said Feast artistic director Daniel Clarke. “Of course it’s political, but it’s a very personal day and it’s going to be a very, very moving day.”

Under Prime Minister John Howard, Australia passed legislation limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples in 2004.

Howard, now facing a difficult reelection campaign, is starting to reconsider his stance on recognizing the country’s gay and lesbian couples and said that, if reelected, his government would give same-sex couples the same rights to pensions as married couples have.

Jerusalem gay bar closes

Jerusalem’s only gay and lesbian bar, Shushan, has closed.

Shushan’s owners recently decided to close after operating for four years and weathering religious disapproval and arson.

“Shushan was one of the few places where we could feel that we were in a free world,” Yan Carmel, a 21-year-old student at Hebrew University, said of the bar where drag queens mixed with Palestinians and Orthodox Jews.

Gays and lesbians frequently face violence and religious hatred in Jerusalem.

In 2005, arsonists attacked Shushan. No one was injured, but the incident helped galvanize the city’s small GLBT community.

Gay bar patrons in the city will now have to travel 60 miles to Tel Aviv, which is more liberal and has several gay bars and clubs.

Ban on game with lesbian kiss nixed

Singapore’s Censor Board reversed a Nov. 16 decision to ban the sale of a new Xbox video game that contains a scene with a lesbian kiss.

The game, Microsoft’s “Mass Effect,” is a futuristic space adventure scheduled for release later this month. The board initially banned the game because of a scene where a woman and a female alien kiss and frolic, calling it “immoral.”

The board has now decided to allow the sale of the game while it completes work on a new rating system for video games.

The video-game ban is just the latest in a number of concerns for Singapore’s GLBT community this year.

In October, Singapore’s Parliament upheld the criminalization of sodomy between two people of the same sex while repealing a similar law for opposite-sex sexual contact.

In August, Singapore banned gay events held in public parks during an attempt to celebrate Pride.

Gay sex now legal in Nicaragua

Under a new civil code, gay sex will no longer be a criminal offence in Nicaragua.

The Nicaraguan National Assembly recently announced the new legislation, will go into effect in March.

The old legislation, passed in 1992, punished “anyone who induces, promotes, propagandizes or practices sexual intercourse between persons of the same sex” with one to three years of imprisonment.

Nicaragua’s new code removes that reference, reflecting changing social mores in the country. A number of countries throughout the Americas have abolished their sodomy laws.

José Pallais, president of the Nicaraguan Parliament’s Commission of Justice and Legal Issues, said the changes marked a move towards modernization.

“We are not creating a code of the Catholic Church here, we are creating a democratic code under modern principles and principles of legality,” he said.

Buenos Aires Pride draws thousands

Thousands people attended the annual gay pride parade in Buenos Aires Nov. 17-18, marching, dancing atop sound trucks and waving rainbow flags.

Argentina held its first Gay Pride Parade in 1992.

The Argentine capital became the first city in the region to pass same-sex civil-union laws in 2002. This year also saw the city host the Gay World Cup soccer event and open the first five-star hotel catering to gays.

Despite the gay-friendly status of the city, some activists have said that more needs to be done to correct discrimination against GLBT individuals.

“It’s a society that projects an image of equality, but if you really get on the inside, there’s discrimination,” said Alejandra Victoria Portatadino of the Homosexual Community of Argentina (CHA).

CHA leader Marcelo Suntheim said the organization is lobbying to expand same-sex unions nationwide and outlaw job discrimination based on sexual orientation.

“We need pensions for widows, inheritance rights and adoption rights,” he said.

Larry Nichols can be reached at larry@epgn.com.