Homosexuals dispel myth of “progressive”
Each year in Germany, from the end of June through August, gay and lesbian rights’ activists celebrate the “Stonewall” uprising - named after a gay bar on Christopher Street in New York, where homosexuals fought back against police brutality in 1969.
Participants in the German parades known as “Christopher Street Day” join other activists around the world who take to the streets to demonstrate gay pride and demand greater freedoms.
Some of those freedoms would include expanded civil rights. In Germany, civil unions, for instance, have been permitted among same-sex couples since 2001, but full marriages are not. Homosexual couples therefore do not enjoy the same rights as married heterosexual couples when it comes to taxes, retirement, civil servant benefits, or adoption law.
For more on gay and lesbian rights and the community in Germany, click on the links below, or listen to this week’s “Living in Germany” program to hear a more personal account of a homosexual civil union.
DW-WORLD.DE
Audios and videos on the topic
See Homosexuals dispel myth of “progressive” Germany Deutsche Welle
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Black Pastors and Gay Rights: DC Becomes a Battleground
The nation’s capital is suddenly center court in America’s loud argument over gay marriage. Nothing new about that, except that this time the battle is being hashed out in the streets, churches and living rooms in working class wards of the city. While there is something poignant about both sides literally singing the same hymn (”We Shall Overcome”) at its rallies, there is also something refreshing about the debate taking place in the unofficial part of Washington, D.C: For once, it’s not partisan.That is not to say it’s not a touchy issue. Gay marriage pits race and faith together in the same combustible conversation, and does so in a community in which both are sacrosanct subjects. The black Christian church predates Emancipation by more than two centuries, and served as a bulwark against the pernicious effects of slavery, Jim Crow, alcohol and drugs, AIDS, poverty, crime, police brutality and bad schools.
In the face of all that, African-American pastors and their churches have offered up faith and love of family as twin defenses. Thus they have been an institution with a message that at its core is fundamentally conservative. And at the same time, it was from the pulpits of these very same black churches that emanated the commanding voices that demanded fundamental change to the old order. Make no mistake, the moral authority and raw political power of the civil rights movement was rooted in these self-same churches. And in that sense they were a liberating, as well as a stabilizing, force.
These contradictory forces of liberalism and conservatism have coexisted, not always easily, for centuries within the church. But gay marriage has opened a chasm in the black community, in which, to paraphrase (and modernize) Lincoln who, while speaking about the North and South during the Civil War, observed that each side reads the same bible, prays to the same God, invokes His wisdom against the other – and belongs to the same political party.
In the local politics of Washington, the true power brokers are predominately black, monolithically Democratic and tuned into the religious sensibilities of their constituents. Thus, the discussion taking place here over gay marriage is really a series of conversations; some within the black community and some within the Christian churches, and almost all of it within the Democratic Party. This is not altogether a bad thing. For starters, there’s no Republican bogeyman, and for another, the race card is played to establish one’s bona fides, not to stoke prejudice. Finally, the church-bashing rhetoric one finds in other places where this debate is taking place is muted here: Attacking the church would simply be a good way to lose the argument. And judging by the language being invoked by both sides, the stakes of this argument are high: Leaders of competing camps clearly believe that what unfolds here in unofficial Washington will be a harbinger for where this nation is heading on gay rights.
“The march towards equality is coming to this country, and you can either be a part of it or stand in the way,” David Catania, one of two openly gay D.C. Council members, declared on May 5, as the council approved his pro-gay marriage measure.
“This is the Armageddon of the marriage debate,” was the rejoinder offered by Bishop Harry Jackson, pastor of Hope Christian Church in Beltsville, Md., and author of a petition seeking to have the question put on the ballot for every voter in Washington. “It’s a declaration of war.” See Black Pastors and Gay Rights: DC Becomes a Battleground
Politics Daily
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Activist dedicates his life to fight for gay rights
Across the floor of the Geneva human rights conference, Arsham Parsi spotted the Iranian government representative.
This was his chance. In 2005, Parsi fled Iran after police found out he was a homosexual rights activist.
But, Geneva was not the Islamic Republic.
Homosexual rights have been mired in controversy worldwide. At present, there are 58 countries that punish it — nine with death. The regime of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is so horrifying, 28-year-old Parsi has dedicated his life to fighting the extreme brutality.
“A friend once told me I didn’t decide to become an activist,” says Parsi. “Society forced me to.”
Parsi felt his heart pound as he approached the official. Understandable. His government punishes kissing with 60 lashes and sodomy with death. Iranian courts’ requirement for witnesses is little assurance. Police will raid birthday parties and formally charge suspected homosexuals for drinking.
Then, there is the interrogation.
“When my friend was arrested, they asked him to identify people by pictures in an album,” says Parsi. See Activist dedicates his life to fight for gay rights
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Prime Minister honours gay victims in Holocaust Memorial Day statement
Prime Minister Gordon Brown has released a statement ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day tomorrow, the international day of remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust and other genocides.
HMD is marked each year on 27 January – the anniversary of the date of the liberation of Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.
“The theme of this Holocaust Memorial Day is Standing up to Hatred,” Mr Brown said.
“We all like to think that we know what we would do in the face of hatred – that in a moment of decision we would honour our obligations to resist brutality and to stand with its victims.
See Prime Minister honours gay victims in Holocaust Memorial Day statement
PinkNews.co.uk, UK
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Sharpton decries churches pushing Prop. 8
From the pulpit of Tabernacle Baptist Church on Sunday, Rev. Al Sharpton called out the Mormon Church and other conservative faiths for mobilizing to support Proposition 8 to ban gay marriage in California while refusing to be as involved in any other social concerns.
“It amazes me when I looked at California and saw churches that had nothing to say about police brutality, nothing to say when a young black boy was shot while he was wearing police handcuffs, nothing to say when they overturned affirmative action, nothing to say when people were being delegated into poverty, yet they were organizing and mobilizing to stop consenting adults from choosing their life partners,” Sharpton told a packed audience on Jan. 11. See Sharpton decries churches pushing Prop. 8 Southern Voice
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Police offer $10K reward in lesbian gang rape
SAN FRANCISCO—Police in Richmond are offering a $10,000 reward for information in the alleged gang rape of a woman who authorities say was jumped by four men, taunted for being a lesbian and left naked outside an abandoned apartment building.
Detectives say the 28-year-old victim was attacked on Dec. 13 after she got out of her car, which bore a rainbow gay pride sticker. The men, who ranged from their late teens to their 30s, made comments indicating they knew her sexual orientation, said Richmond police Lt. Mark Gagan.
Along with the brutality of the assault, the fact that the woman may have been targeted because she was gay has unnerved the officers assigned to the case, Gagan said. They went public with some details about the case over the weekend hoping it would motivate witnesses to come forward with information about the suspects, who have not been apprehended.
See Police offer $10K reward in lesbian gang rape
San Jose Mercury News, US
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