India: Legal gay sex ruling challenged
A landmark ruling that legalized gay sex between consenting partners in India was challenged Thursday in the country’s high court, lawyers said.
Activists protest against the ruling to decriminalize gay sex in New Delhi on Sunday.
The supreme court issued a notice to the nonprofit Naz Foundation that had won a lower-court verdict after a seven-year legal fight to decriminalize gay sex.
Notices also were issued to the federal government and the New Delhi high court, which ruled last week that consensual sex between partners of the same gender was legal.
An astrologer filed a petition challenging the ruling. The petitioner argued that no constitutional right is violated by the Indian penal code’s Section 377, which had outlawed gay sex, said his lawyer Praveen Agrawal.
The petition also cited Indian culture and health as grounds for seeking a stay on last week’s ruling, he said.
The supreme court posted the next hearing for July 20.
Last week’s ruling meant the law — Indian penal code section 377, which had previously criminalized consensual homosexual acts between adults — was partly struck down but remains in place as far as forced homosexual acts are concerned.
The verdict affects law enforcement all around India because it deals with a law enacted by the federal parliament.
See India: Legal gay sex ruling challenged
CNN Internationa
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Fort Worth mayor says apology for injury, not raid
(Fort Worth, Texas) Fort Worth’s mayor says an apology he issued at a City Council meeting wasn’t for law enforcement’s raid on a Texas gay bar, but for the fact that a man was seriously injured.
Mayor Mike Moncrief (MAHN’-creef) made an impromptu apology during Tuesday night’s meeting where officials and …
Bar raid demands independent probe
Don’t expect law enforcement agencies involved in Rainbow Lounge incident to police themselves
It’s not exactly clear how the Fort Worth Police Department and the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission will wiggle out of the public relations stranglehold the LGBT community now has on the two agencies, but I know from years of watching these dramas unfold that they will unless there is an independent investigation.
The local police officers and the state agents who descended on the Rainbow Lounge on Sunday morning, June 28, about 1 a.m. — arresting some patrons for public intoxication and apparently seriously injuring one — will all watch each other’s backs.
The official police reports that the law enforcement officials filed following the raid — which ironically occurred on the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion and the birth of the gay rights movement in New York City in 1969 — already hold the arresting officers and agents harmless.
The officers and agents claim in the reports that they encountered belligerent drunks in the one-week-old nightclub who threatened them in a sexually suggestive manner. That’s possibly the most preposterous part of the official version of the incident.
See Bar raid demands independent probe
Dallas Voice
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Group: Gay bias killings highest since 1999
national advocacy group says the number of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people killed in bias-motivated incidents increased by 28 percent in 2008 compared to 2007.
The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs released its report Tuesday. It says last year’s 29 killings is the highest it has recorded since 1999. It documented the same number of slayings then.
The New York-based coalition says the overall number of victims who reported anti-LGBT violence in 2008 increased by 2 percent.
The coalition says its figures are more accurate than those from law enforcement agencies. As an example, the group says the FBI doesn’t record bias crimes against transgender people because gender identity isn’t covered by federal hate-crime law.
See Group: Gay bias killings highest since 1999 Houston Chronicle
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Oregon urges passage of federal hate bill
(Salem, Oregon) The Oregon State House of Representatives has unanimously passed a resolution calling on the United States Congress to pass the Matthew Shepard Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act.
The 59-0 vote also condemned the recent brutal beating of two gay men at a Seaside, Ore. beach. The two …
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.
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Peru to sack ’scandalous’ gays from police force
(Lima, Peru) Peruvian police officers who “damage the image” of law enforcement by engaging in homosexual behavior can lose their jobs under a new law designed to overhaul an unpopular national police force.
The new law that went into effect Tuesday also says officers will be fired for taking bribes and …
WATCH GOP Rep: Story of Matthew Shepard’s Murder A “Hoax”
As the House of Representatives debates an expansion of hate crimes legislation, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) has taken the rhetoric to a new level, claiming that those who say Matthew Shepard was murdered in Wyoming for being gay are perpetrating a “hoax” on the American people.
“I also would like to point out that there was a bill — the hate crimes bill that’s called the Matthew Shepard bill is named after a very unfortunate incident that happened where a young man was killed, but we know that that young man was killed in the commitment of a robbery. It wasn’t because he was gay. This — the bill was named for him, hate crimes bill was named for him, but it’s really a hoax that that continues to be used as an excuse for passing these bills,” said Foxx.
A Foxx spokesman didn’t immediately return a call. The Matthew Shepard “hoax” notion is a popular meme on right-wing blogs.
The Matthew Shepard Foundation is dedicated to reducing hate crimes.
The New York Times reported in 1998: “According to the local police and prosecutors, the two men lured Mr. Shepard out of a bar by saying they were gay. Then, the Laramie police say, the pair kidnapped Mr. Shepard, pistol-whipped him with a .357 Magnum, and left him tied to a ranch fence for 18 hours until a passing bicyclist spotted Mr. Shepard, who was unconscious.”
“She should be ashamed,” said Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), himself a victim of a hate crime during the struggle for civil rights. “That is unreal, unbelievable. The law enforcement people and almost every reasonable person I know believes he was murdered because he was gay.”
WATCH GOP Rep: Story of Matthew Shepard’s Murder A “Hoax”
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Hate crimes bill reintroduced in Congress
(Washington) Legislation to add sexual orientation to the list of categories covered under federal hate crime law has been reintroduced in Congress.
The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, also known as the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act for the college student who was murdered in an anti-gay hate crime …
