LA Times Editorial: A court battle California doesn’t need
The Supreme Court’s ruling last week in the case of a grandiosely unethical West Virginia justice opened a new field of constitutional review — the high court may now consider when an elected state court jurist has been so tainted by politics that due process requires him to recuse himself from a case.
In West Virginia, a coal executive spent more than $3 million to unseat a sitting state Supreme Court justice; it was money well spent, as the justice was defeated by voters and replaced by Brent Benjamin. Benjamin then did what was expected of him and cast a deciding vote in overturning a $50-million jury award against the executive’s coal company.
Indeed, California has wrestled with this problem before — and quite possibly could again.
California’s system for selecting Supreme Court justices is much better than West Virginia’s. Candidates for the court here are nominated by the governor, confirmed by a state commission and then placed on the bench. They must periodically stand for retention, but they are not, as they are in West Virginia, subject to direct challenge by rival candidates. A retention election can cost a justice his or her seat, but it does not let voters kick out one justice and install their own replacement.
California’s rules have helped balance the judiciary’s independence with the public’s fair insistence on accountability, but even this state’s reasonable retention process has been subject to tilt. Most notable was the 1986 retention election that removed Chief Justice Rose Bird and two associate justices, Cruz Reynoso and Joseph Grodin. Much reflection has gone into that race in the decades since, and opinions differ on its merits. Two truths, however, stand the test of deep inquiry: The forces arrayed against Bird were not motivated solely by her opposition to the death penalty — that was cover for a second complaint, which was her defense of consumer rights against corporate power — and Reynoso and Grodin were victims of a special-interest crusade against a vulnerable chief.
Would that we could relegate that episode to California’s history. In fact, the state rumbles with discontent over its high court and chief, and those stirrings contain alarming echoes of the battle of 1986.
At issue are the court’s rulings on same-sex marriage and Proposition 8, and its chief justice, Ronald M. George. In May 2008, the court overturned the state’s ban on gay marriage, striking a victory for civil rights in the grandest tradition of constitutional protection of minorities. A few months later, after voters approved Proposition 8 and amended the state Constitution to ban the same institution that the court had upheld, George and his colleagues upheld the amendment. Both times, George wrote for the majority. He thus angered opponents of gay marriage in 2008 and supporters of it in 2009.
By California’s rules, George faces a retention election in 2010, and some predict that he could face challenges from either side — or even both — in this polarizing debate.
That would be a shame for the state’s judiciary, an unfortunate attack on judicial independence and an unfair castigation of one of this state’s most principled and admirable public officials. In the gay-marriage cases, George’s votes demonstrated conscience, professionalismand restraint. He voted to uphold same-sex unions out of the strong conviction — which this page shares — that the Constitution does not allow society to deny the protection of marriage to gay couples any more than it once denied it to those united across race. The ruling was right on the law, and will certainly be validated over the long march of history.
Months later, voters tacked in the other direction, narrowly rejecting gay marriage and amending the Constitution to allow California to recognize only the unions of heterosexual couples. That was challenged, naturally, and the lawsuit offered the court the opportunity to extend its earlier ruling, though on shaky constitutional grounds — advocates for same-sex marriage argued that Proposition 8 was such an affront to the rights of Californians that it revised the Constitution rather than merely amending it. Scholars split on the merits of that argument, and although the strong consensus of legal opinion rejectedit, an opportunistic justice might have seized the chance to solidify his legacy.
Instead, George subordinated his politics — as evidenced by his writing — to the weight of constitutional opinion. He voted to uphold the proposition, even though it undid his own work. Permitted latitude within the strictures of the Constitution in the first case, George was able to vote his conscience; bound by the Constitution in the second case, he yielded.
Such is the lot of a principled judicial officer, but those concerned only with results already have signaled their unhappiness with George. The moneyed interests that supported Proposition 8 last fall are considering whether to finance a campaign against George next year. Supporters of gay marriage, who championed his heroism in 2008, were bitterly disappointed when the court upheld the hateful initiative.
This is not West Virginia. Corporate interests are not knocking off justices who disagree with them and seating more accommodating replacements. But intimidation has no place in our judicial life any more than it does in Appalachia. The 1986 campaign against Bird and her colleagues now stands for many as a reminder that well-intentioned systems of accountability may be hijacked by special interests, a lesson learned too often and at great cost in California. It was misguided in its first iteration; it would be regrettable in its second.
See A court battle California doesn’t need
Los Angeles Times -
* Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual
| Published by |
 |
Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/06/la-times-edit…
MoxieQ Launches First Mobile “Gay Sensibility” Destination for Consumers Who Want the Gay POV
MoxieQ, the first mobile-centric gay entertainment publisher, today announced its official launch as a mobile and online entertainment destination with a gay sensibility. MoxieQ was founded by two pioneers in the mobile advertising industry — Heidi Lehmann, co-founder of Third Screen Media (which was acquired by AOL in May 2007) and Kim Olson, a founding member of the Sprint Mobile Media Network. The service appeals to the more than 16 million, $712 billion-spending members of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community as well as other consumers who want the gay perspective.
The Premier Gay Mobile Entertainment Destination
The publisher debuted its editorial talents at the GLAAD Media Awards in New York, March 28th and in LA, April 18th, where MoxieQ media personalities Ryan and Caroline, formerly of Clear Channel’s Pride Radio, conducted red carpet interviews with celebrities including Suze Orman, Tyra Banks, Judith Light, Kathy Griffin and Wilson Cruz. The GLAAD awards recognize accurate and fair LGBT portrayals and news content in the media.
“We are proud to share our TV ‘Gayed’ weekly guide to what’s LGBT on TV and outstanding LGBT-inclusive commercials from GLAAD’s online ad library with MoxieQ as they bring important and entertaining content to our community on the go,” said Neil Giuliano, President of GLAAD.
Leading Brand and Celebrity Partners
MoxieQ partners include a number of leading LGBT celebrities and brands: BRAVO’s “The Fashion Show” personality and underwear designer Andrew Christian, DishMiss, Gay Cities, GLAAD, LOTL, Ryan and Caroline, Under the Pink Carpet and Witeck Combs Communications.
“I am excited to have my products featured in the ‘Daily Briefs’ section of MoxieQ,” said Andrew Christian. “My viewers and customers are young, hip, and on the move which means the mobile channel is a primary way for them to discover new products. MoxieQ is a perfect match for us to expose our latest designs directly to our target consumer.”
For Advertisers Targeting the LGBT Community
MoxieQ exclusives deliver sassy, short-form content such as Test your Gay IQ, Psychic Snacs (“gay” horoscopes), Ask Mr. Moxie, “Bite, Sip and Buy” recommendations for gay and green businesses, and up-to-the-minute Gay Weather.
“The LGBT and LGBT-friendly demographics are a perfect fit for both mobile and advertising, with an audience that is increasingly looked to by the mainstream consumer as trendsetters with tremendous influence and insight into what is hot and cutting-edge,” said MoxieQ founder and CEO Heidi Lehmann. “MoxieQ is designed to provide both a primary source of entertaining content and interactivity with a gay twist and an extremely targeted environment for brands who want to reach this valuable community.”
MoxieQ is designed to appeal to the gay community and people who want access to fun and irreverent gay themed content, games, and “in the know” advice and insights. The destination is ad-supported with future revenue models to include premium, syndicated and online content. MoxieQ Media is available now on the mobile phone at: http://m.moxieq.com or on the web at www.moxieq.com.
About MoxieQ Media, Inc.
Based in New York City, MoxieQ is an entertainment and advocacy site with a gay sensibility. It features original, syndicated, and user generated content, formatted for mobile phones and the PC. MoxieQ’s unique mix of information, games, recommendations, audio, video and interactivity, captures the irreverence and trendsetting perspective of this hip and influential demographic. Through MoxieQ, Fortune 500 brands will be able to reach the LGBT market directly. For more information, visit us at http://m.moxieq.com or www.moxieq.com.
* Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual
| Published by |
|
Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/06/moxieq-launch…
Gay Filipino professor wins political asylum after revealing a 30-year secret of sexual abuse
After his visitor’s visa expired in 2006, Philip Belarmino, an English professor from the Philippines, consulted a San Francisco attorney. He wanted to see if he could stay longer to be with his parents and sister who are permanent residents in the Bay Area. That bureaucratic immigration path led instead to revelation of a stunning personal secret, recounted during an emotional testimony in an immigration courtroom in San Francisco last month: When he was 9, 11 and 16, Belarmino said he was repeatedly sexually assaulted by other boys. Recounting the abuse, said the 43-year Bay Area resident, was “like forever. It was like re-entering a harrowing, hellish experience.” He feared a forced return to the Philippines, “of being hurled back in the world of cruelty.” That wrenching testimony convinced Judge Loreto Geisse to grant Belarmino political asylum in the United States, ending for now the government’s effort to deport him. The Department of Justice, which has until June 22 to appeal, could not be reached for comment Monday. Political asylum in the United States for gays and lesbians who fear persecution if returned to their home countries is not new and no one knows how many such cases are granted each year. Immigration Equality, a New York City group that advocates for gay and lesbian immigrant rights, won 55 similar cases last year.
* Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual
| Published by |
|
Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/06/gay-filipino-…
Voices of Witness Africa New documentary tells stories of gay Anglicans
Voices of Witness Africa is a new 30-minute documentary intended to help Episcopalians listen to the views and experiences of Anglicans who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) and to emphasize that homosexuality is “not just a North American or European issue,” says the Rev. Cynthia Black.
Co-produced by Black, rector of Christ the King Church in Kalamazoo/Texas Corners, Michigan, and Katie Sherrod, a writer and commentator based in Fort Worth, Texas, the documentary features GLBT Africans who talk about their lives and their relationships with God and the church.
“The voices of LGBT folks from around the world need to be heard,” says Black.
Among those interviewed for the documentary is the Rt. Rev. Christopher Senyonjo, retired bishop of the Diocese of West Buganda in the Anglican Church of Uganda, who leads a study and prayer group for gay Anglicans. “I’m sorry about what the church is saying. God loves you, God loves you,” Senyonjo says in support of GLBT Christians. While he acknowledges that speaking out has been “very risky,” Senyonjo adds, “When you know the truth, it should make you free.”
Although homosexuality is illegal in most African countries, “several people in the film cite cause for hope,” said a news release from the Chicago Consultation, a sponsoring organization of the documentary.
“Many, many years ago, when the townships were in smoke and people were dying, we never thought that we would be where we are now,” Yvonne Daki, manager of iThemba Lam Center of Inclusive and Affirming Ministries in South Africa, says in the documentary. “We will have one day a situation where gay people can speak openly about their sexuality.”
For Black, one of the surprises when working on the documentary was “how willing participants were to have their name and image used publicly, even when they knew their bishop would be receiving a copy of the film, and even when there could potentially be horrific consequences for doing so … Their courage is incredible.”
Sherrod was most impressed how the interviewees’ faith “informs their actions every minute of every day. All of them spoke of God as a intimate part of their lives, a presence who gives them hope and strength in the face of terrible oppression and active persecution, not only by the state, but in most cases by the Anglican church leaders in their country. To witness the depth of their faith was inspiring and humbling.”
“Viewers who have followed the plight of GLBT people in Africa will hear familiar and tragic stories of fear, imprisonment and abuse,” the Chicago Consultation news release said. “However, they may also be surprised by the support and hope voiced by some of the film’s subjects, including African Anglican bishops and priests.”
Black said that much inspiration can be found in the stories of hope that were heard — “hope that one day the church will have moved beyond the issues of sexuality that divide it.”
All the instruments of communion have supported a process of listening to the experiences of homosexual people throughout the Anglican Communion. At the 1998 Lambeth Conference, resolution 1.10 committed all the provinces of the Anglican Communion to a listening process. It was not until 2005 that the Listening Process was officially launched with the appointment of a facilitator who would monitor the work being done, share the results and enable further listening.
The Anglican Consultative Council, the communion’s most representative policy-making body, met in Jamaica in May 2009 and supported the renewal of the Listening Process, which has received a 2.5-year grant from the Satcher Health Leadership Institute at the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia to run five “pilot conversations” around the communion.
The “Voices of Witness Africa” documentary is being released just before the Episcopal Church’s General Convention, which will be held July 8-17 in Anaheim, California. “At the meeting, deputies and bishops will discuss both the church’s mission in the developing world and the inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people,” the Chicago Consultation news release said. “The film is being mailed in advance to all deputies and bishops. It is also being mailed to all bishops of the Anglican Communion, including those who lead churches that are hostile to GLBT Christians.”
“With General Convention approaching, some people focus on what effect its actions might have on the part of the Anglican Communion that is more conservative than the Episcopal Church,” said Black. “I think the film helps us to remember that there are hundreds of thousands of LGBT folks in the communion who are watching what the Episcopal Church does.”
Further information on the film, including a study guide for use in Episcopal parishes, is available here.
Future public screenings of Voices of Witness Africa will be held on:
June 5: All Saints Church, Pasadena, California
June 6: Christ Episcopal Church, Dearborn
June 7: Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge
June 8: All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Chicago
June 10: Church of the Ascension, Silver Spring, Maryland
June 12: Christ Church Cathedral, St. Louis, Missouri
June 14: St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Houston, Texas
| Published by |
|
Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/06/voices-of-wit…
As more states take up…
As more states take up the debate on same-sex marriage, some advocates of legalization are taking a very specific lesson from California, where the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints dominated both fundraising and door-knocking to pass a ballot initiative that barred such unions. With the battle moving east, some advocates are shouting that fact in the streets, calculating that on an issue that eventually comes down to comfort levels, more people harbor apprehensions about Mormons than about homosexuality. “The Mormons are coming! The Mormons are coming!” warned ads placed on newspaper Web sites in three Eastern states last month. The ad was rejected by sites in three other states, including Maine, where the Kennebec Journal informed Californians Against Hate that the copy “borders on insulting and denigrating a whole set of people based on their religion.” “I’m not intending it to harm the religion. I think they do wonderful things. Nicest people,” said Fred Karger, a former Republican campaign consultant who established Californians Against Hate. “My single goal is to get them out of the same-sex marriage business and back to helping hurricane victims.”
* Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual
| Published by |
|
Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/05/as-more-state…
Gay & Lesbian community responds to Gov. Gibbons veto
Monday, Governor Jim Gibbons vetoed SB 283-the Domestic Partner Bill that Revises provisions governing the rights of domestic partners. SB 283 would establish a Domestic Partner registry through the Secretary of State’s office where couples, whether same-sex or opposite-sex, could register their relationships with the state and enjoy the protections granted to spouses under Nevada Revised Statutes. State Senator David Parks introduced the bill in an effort to provide same-gender and opposite-gender couples the legal protection and obligations for one another not otherwise allowed under current law in Nevada.
Gibbons writes that he vetoed the bill based on his opinion that it violates Section 21 of Article 1 of the Nevada Constitution. He surmises the will of the voters expressed in Question 2-which amended the Nevada Constitution in 2002, to define Marriage as, “Only a marriage between a male and female person shall be recognized and given effect in this state,” without providing any basis for his opinion. Legal opinions expressed by experts in legislative testimony during hearings on SB 283, and the opinion issued by the Legislative Council Bureau contradict his reasoning. Gibbons also claims in his letter that couples can contract privately through “estate planning…living wills..and amendments to leases and deeds of trust.” “If legal contracts were as simple as Governor Gibbons claims, more people would enter into them-same-gender couples or otherwise. The process of drawing up legal documents is expensive, time consuming and easily challenged in court. There is no guarantee that these contracts will stand up in court. LGBT couples seek only to provide security for their partners and families and that the decisions they make for one another will actually be binding,” said, Jennifer Bolton, Center Board Vice President. See Gay & Lesbian community responds to Gov. Gibbons veto
KTNV Las Vegas * Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual
| Published by |
|
Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/05/gay-lesbian-c…
Levi’s Adopts a Tie-In With a Gay Marriage Symbol
LEVI’S is getting in the spirit of the season by dressing its storefront mannequins in white. In Levi’s-owned stores in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco, that means more than just marking the passing of Memorial Day, the traditional date to begin wearing white: in 20 stores, the mannequins’ white Levi’s jeans and shirts are adorned with White Knots, a symbol of solidarity with the same-sex marriage movement.
The symbol was made more timely by the California Supreme Court’s decision on Tuesday to uphold Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in the state. Developed by Frank Voci, a digital media consultant, as a response to Proposition 8′s passage last November, the White Knot for Equality is a white ribbon tied in a knot.
It has been worn by the actress Anne Hathaway at President Obama‘s Inauguration; Dustin Lance Black, the screenwriter of “Milk,” at the Oscars; and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, at a May 17 Manhattan rally supporting gay marriage. At the GLAAD Media Awards in Los Angeles in April, the comedian Kathy Griffin wore a bikini with a strategically placed White Knot. See Levi’s Adopts a Tie-In With a Gay Marriage Symbol New York Times
| Published by |
|
Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/05/levis-adopts-…
Global video mashup for International Day Against Homophobia & Transphobia 2009 hits the Internet
359 people from 48 countries take part in massive global web video project to mark the IDAHO 2009
A global project to create a public awareness video for the International Day Against Homophobia & Transphobia (IDAHO) on May 17 has attracted the participation of 359 people from 48 countries across six continents around the world. The groundbreaking project is a joint undertaking of the Paris-based IDAHO Committee and the social network Gays.com, attracting 50,000 people to its website within a month.
Said Louis-Georges Tin, founder of the IDAHO committee, “We are overwhelmed and, at the same time, humbled by this torrent of enthusiastic support that has poured in from all four corners of the world since we kickstarted the video project in April. People have made the effort to go to such places as the Statue of Liberty, the Great Wall of China, the Sydney Opera House, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Merlion, the Petronas Twin Towers and the Eiffel Tower to shoot their video, contributing to the spectacular visual feast you see in the mashup.”
In April, members of the global LGBT community were invited to step out in front of the camera and in their own language introduce themselves, state where they are from and how proud they are to be gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. The result is a video that sends the powerful message that LGBT individuals are present in every country, every society and every corner of the world. Participants submitted videos in all of the world’s key languages, including Afrikaans, Arabic, Cantonese, English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Tamil and even American Sign Language.
In addition to the groundswell of support from local communities from around the globe, renowned celebrities, activists, politicians and web personalities have also participated in the project. These include (in alphabetical order):
Ali Hili: Gay Iraqi activist now living in exile in London and founder of the Iraqi-LGBT group
ANT: Host of VH1 reality series Celebrity Fit Club and U.S. of ANT on MTV’s LOGO channel
Lizzy the Lezzy: Animated lesbian standup comedy character with a cult following on Youtube
Michael Buckley: Celebrity host of the entertainment show What the Buck, the 5th most subscribed comedy channel of all time on Youtube
Michael Kauch: German member of parliament and coordinator of the gay and lesbian policy for the Free Democratic Party
Stephen Williams: British Liberal Democrat member of parliament for Bristol West
Said Kenneth Tan, spokesperson for Gays.com, “Much has been said about Stonewall 2.0 and netroots activism since the Proposition 8 vote against gay marriage in California. This project was made possible only by the Internet, and we believe there are a limitless number of opportunities for the LGBT community to harness the power of the Internet to educate, raise awareness, promote equality, and to debunk myths. We have been honoured to partner with the IDAHO Committee in the execution of such an amazing project.”
Prior to the launch of the video, Gays.com announced that it experienced a massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack which began at approximately 3.50am Hong Kong time on May 15, 2009, causing the entire website to be inaccessible.
A distributed denial of service attack occurs when a multitude of systems attempt to flood the bandwidth or resources of a targeted system with illegitimate website requests. The flood of traffic by these requests cause the Internet bandwidth of the attacked site to be consumed to such an extent that the website is inaccessible to other legitimate users.
Said Kenneth Tan, Gays.com spokesperson, “The timing of this DDoS attack on Gays.com is by no means a coincidence. We have been working for weeks on this high profile video campaign together with the Committee for the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia. The final product of this campaign, a public awareness video, was going to be launched on the campaign site at http://gays.com/idaho on Sunday. This is a well-timed, well-orchestrated assault by a large botnet with tens of thousands of PCs sending requests to our site. Engineers with our Internet Service Provider remarked they have never seen an attack of this intensity before. We deplore these unscrupulous actions by an organised group to harrass, intimidate and silence us for what we are doing.”
Added Tan, “Our technical staff are now working round the clock to restore services to legitimate users. In the meanwhile, we are going through our access logs, gathering information through various mechanisms and connecting the dots to identify the origin of the attacks. We will be working with law enforcement officials to bring the cyberterrorists to justice.”
The video “IDAHO 2009: One Voice, One Message, Heard Around the World” is now accessible at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2Rp8ep_ezE
The Committee for the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHO) is a network of activists, present in over 50 countries, who seek to promote the idea of an international day against homophobia and transphobia. This day has been recognized officially by a number of governments around the world and provides an opportunity for the LGBT movement across the world to unite in a powerful demonstration of collective visibility.
Gays.com was designed for members of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community as the world’s first LGBT social networking website that designed for real people with real names an real world connections. The site aims to build an authentic social environment that helps people maintain their relationships with people they actually know. Launched in May 2008, Gays.com is headquartered in Hong Kong with a development team spread between Shanghai, China and Bielefeld, Germany.
Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual
| Published by |
|
Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/05/global-video-…
Gay Pride in Moscow: Report from a Chicago Activist
MOSCOW, May 14, 2009 (Gay Liberation Network) – After 14 hours of flights, last night I found myself in Eastern Europe for the first time in my life, warmly greeted by lesbian and gay activists who, despite state repression, are organizing their fourth annual pride event in this city. This year’s event is dubbed ‘Slavic Pride’, denoting the significant participation of activists from around the region.
The previous three years’ events have gone forward despite bans from the authorities and violence from neo-fascists in Russian orthodox and skinhead garb. This year the authorities not only banned the Pride event, but for good measure, approved the anti-gays’ application to hold their own event this past Tuesday.
That same day, our Moscow friends countered with their own unsanctioned action at the Department of Registration of Acts of Civil Status – an attempt by two lesbian activists to get a marriage license.
Leading Slavic Pride activist Nikolai Alekseev said the action was inspired in part by a February civil disobedience action at a marriage license bureau in Chicago. The Moscow action received widespread international press coverage, including from the New York Times.
As I shadowed Alekseev around the city last night, press coverage if anything seemed to build, with Nikolai’s two cell phones ringing incessantly and meetings with Finish and Slovenian journalists held near midnight just outside of Red Square.
Slavic Pride is slated for this Saturday, amidst the big ‘Eurovision Fest’ being hosted this year by Moscow. For those not familiar with what Eurovision is, think American Idol times ten, with a profusion of media coverage and street banners that puts Chicago’s 2016 Olympics bid hype to shame.
While our specific plans for Saturday are necessarily secret at this time, the aim is to cause maximum embarrassment to the government if they attempt to arrest us or allow the neo-fascists to attack.
In response to Moscow activists’ application for a permit this year, police chief Vladmir Pronin told the Russian news agency Interfax that gay pride parades in the capital are “unacceptable – gay pride parades shouldn’t be allowed”.
“No one will dare to do it, such ‘braveheart’ will be torn to shreds,” he added. “The West can say we’re bad guys, but our people will see it is right. Our country is patriarchal, that’s [sic] sums it up… I positively agree with the Church, with the Patriarch, politicians, especially with [Mayor] Luzhkov, who are convinced that man and woman should love each other. It is established by God and nature.”
However, Moscow Pride organizers have vowed to move forward with this year’s Pride event despite the police chief’s threats.
“Mr. Pronin already showed his incompetency last year when his services were unable to prevent us unveiling a banner directed against the Mayor, right opposite his office,” said Alekseev.
The main pride event successfully took place nearby at the monument to the famous Russian gay composer, Peter Tchkaivosky, while the authorities and neo-fascists were hoodwinked in to thinking that it would take place outside of homophobic Mayor Yuri Luzhkov’s office.
Today at the start of a gay rights conference at an undisclosed location east of the city, I was joined by British gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell and LGBT activists from around Russia and Belorussia Minsk, Rostof, Sochi, Ufa, St. Petersburg, Krasnodar, Ekaterinbourg, Volgodonsk, Ryazan and of course Moscow.
As we gathered on a coach to go to the conference, Moscow activist Nikolai Baev explained how a group of young activists from Ryazan, about 200 miles south of the capital, got involved in organizing this year’s Slavic Pride:
“There is a very discriminatory law in the Ryazan region which prohibits so-called propaganda about homosexuality20and among minors. The law passed in 2006 and we had pickets that said that homosexuality is absolutely normal and we are proud of our situation. We picketed in front of schools in Ryazan and we were detained because it was illegal.”
Two people were found guilty and fined 1500 roubles (about $45 US) each. Alekseev came to Ryazan to help in the campaign and in the appeal of their cases to the Constitutional Court of Russia.
Then, Sergey Yenin, 19, explained how he became involved in gay rights organizing in Belorussia :
“I felt myself to be gay from my early childhood, he explained.
“Last year I came to Minsk and there I got acquainted with some gay activists and I thought it would be great if I fought for my gay rights. There are a lot of people who don’t fight for their rights, who don’t participate in such activist movements, and they just consume our achievements.
“For example, we fought for our gay club, our one gay club in Minsk. It was in danger of being closed [by the government], but it still exists, due to us.”
I asked Sergey if he had participated in Minsk Pride events before.
“Yes, of course. The most outstanding Pride parade took place in 2001. But I didn’t participate because I was only 11 then. There were over 300 people participating in this event and 300 watching. This was fabulous This was an historical moment in Belorussia.
“The last one took place in October of 2008. It was named Queer Walk and it took place on the 11th of October 2008, the international day of coming out, and we organized a pride parade. It was a rather private, intimate event, there were fifty participants because we cannot organize such a public event because of our government.
“If we applied for an event, we would be denied.
“There is an action that takes place [each year] called Chernobyl Way, and all of the opposition parties take place there, and our LGBT group participated last year and this year. Last year we raised the rainbow flag and there were a lot of bad comments about it, there were a lot of thre ats [of violence]. There were such political parties as Right Alliance, and they threaten us all of the time. This year we didn’t20raise our rainbow flag because the organizer of the Belorussian National Front, the main opposition party, they coordinated a call to us, do not raise your rainbow flag, not because we have anything against you, because our fight for clean air, free of radiation will turn into a fight for gay rights.”
I asked Sergey why he personally joined the 15 others for the ten hour train ride from Belorussia to join this Saturday’s Slavic Pride: “I [only] made the conclusion [to come] on May 12 because I was really very frightened about myself and my friends. I know that there is some information that Pride is going to be canceled, and more than this, that Pride participants are going to be beaten.
“Because this is my fight really.If I don’t go to the pride parade, who will go there? My reasons to come was to support my friends – and of course to support gay rights.”
SEE ALSO
Tatchell To Attend Moscow Gay Pride. Despite threats to bash and arrest the marchers, British gay human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell will attend this Saturday’s Moscow Gay Pride parade – this year renamed Slavic Gay Pride to support the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) equality struggles in all Slavic countries, Russian and non-Russian. (UK Gay News, May 11, 2009)
Gay Marriage Campaign Starts in Russia. Two women will apply for a marriage license in Moscow on May 12, it emerged this afternoon. The announcement was made today during a press conference for Slavic Pride which is planned for later this month in Moscow. (UK Gay News, May 5, 2009)
| Published by |
|
Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/05/gay-pride-in-…
Hallmark, Having Dipped Toe In Gay Greetings, Plunges In
Hallmark Cards is set to ramp up its greeting card business for those “non-traditional” families on your list, supplying its stock of wedding and civil unions greeting cards to all 500 corporate-owed stores.The firm, the very name of which is synonymous with wholesome greetings on any occasion, is responding to consumer needs by making the cards more available starting this summer.Last year, Hallmark made a splash by introducing its first congratulatory greetings for two-groom and two-bride weddings and civil union ceremonies, noted a May 14 article at Contra Costa Times.Now, Hallmark is poised for a mass release of greetings. See Hallmark, Having Dipped Toe In Gay Greetings, Plunges In
EDGE Boston * Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual
| Published by |
|
Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/05/hallmark-havi…
