Prosecutors drop case against gay couple accused of trespassing on LDS property
Prosecutors won’t pursue a case against two men accused of trespassing on LDS Church property earlier this month. An LDS Church security guard detained a gay couple on Salt Lake City’s Main Street Plaza on July 9 after observing the pair “kissing and hugging,” according to a police report. Derek Jones and Matt Aune were cited for trespassing after refusing to leave. The incident led to two kiss-in protests against the church in Salt Lake City and one in San Diego. Aune has said the couple’s display of affection was modest, but officials with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which owns the plaza, released a statement that the two men were “much more involved” than a “simple kiss on the cheek.” It said the couple “engaged in passionate kissing, groping, profane and lewd language, and had obviously been using alcohol.” In a statement released Wednesday, Salt Lake City Prosecutor Sim Gill said the trespassing case against Jones and Aune has been dropped. Gill said despite that Main Street Plaza is owned by the church, there “continues to be a mistaken belief by many visitors that there is a public right of way.”
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Gay incident reopens Salt Lake City’s Main Street plaza wounds
It’s the wound that won’t heal. The rift that won’t close. And earlier this month, two gay lovers’ purportedly innocuous late-night kiss — though LDS Church officials insist it was far more amorous than that — ripped it wide open. Utah’s simmering religious divide boiled over — once again — at the geographical and philosophical intersection of church and state: the Main Street Plaza in downtown Salt Lake City. “It is a scab that will continue to be peeled away — and may never heal,” says Dani Eyer, the former ACLU director who fought to preserve First Amendment rights on the plaza. Matt Aune and Derek Jones say they held hands, kissed and then squabbled with security guards on the LDS Church-owned square. Salt Lake City police issued a ticket for trespassing. In protest, supporters of the couple staged a “kiss-in” last Sunday outside the plaza and plan another such demonstration today. The LDS Church — a faith to which 60 percent of Utahns belong — defended its right to regulate “inappropriate behavior” on the plaza. “What we’re seeing now is a manifestation of what should have been obvious from the very beginning,” says former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson. “This block of Main Street never should have been conveyed to the LDS Church. It was a recipe for ongoing resentments between the LDS Church and those who are not members.” The church bought the strip of Main — from North Temple to South Temple — in 1999 after then-Mayor Deedee Corradini and the City Council, with the only two non-LDS members dissenting, signed off on the $8.1 million deal. But the controversy burned for five more years as federal courts were asked to settle the prickly issue of whether the church could govern expression on the plaza and whether the city could retain a public right of way (as outlined in the original deal). “It was meant to be for everybody,” Eyer says. “Where people come and go their constitutional rights go with them.” After a 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in 2002, First Amendment activities returned to the plaza. But demonstrations by anti-Mormon protesters — including cries of “whore” and “harlot” hurled at newlywed brides — “sustained divisions” that “reached to the point of hatred” between Mormons and non-Mormons, Anderson says. In the end, he agreed to trade the public easement for cash and LDS land to build a west-side community center.
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Gay rights advocate questions pick for state civil rights chief in NJ
TRENTON — One of New Jersey’s leading gay rights advocates is raising questions about Attorney General Anne Milgram’s pick for state civil rights chief, a day after two state senators also criticized the choice.
Garden State Equality Chairman Steven Goldstein said Milgram’s nominee to lead the Division on Civil Rights, Chinh Le, is “someone completely unknown” to the state’s gay community, unlike former director Frank Vespa-Papaleo.
“The burden is on the attorney general to further demonstrate that her nominee will continue Frank Vespa-Papaleo’s record of outstanding advocacy for every community, including ours,” Goldstein said.
The state Commission on Civil Rights is expected to vote on Le’s nomination today.
“Chinh Le has an extraordinary background and commitment to justice and civil rights,” Milgram said in a statement. “His experience and involvement in the important social and civil issues facing our state make him well-qualified to lead the division.”
See Gay rights advocate questions pick for state civil rights chief NJ.com
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Football and art against homophobia T
The Justin Campaign will be making a stand against homophobia in football on Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth this Wednesday the 22nd July 2009.
Over the summer, sculptor Antony Gormley has been inviting people to help create an astonishing living monument as part of his “One & Other” exhibition.
Every hour, 24 hours a day, for 100 days without a break, a different person will make the Plinth their own. And on Wednesday the plinth will be the Justin Campaign’s.
Campaign founder and Brighton-based artist Jason Hall will be donning the Justin Fashanu All-stars strip and creating a top-secret installation atop the plinth between 7:00 am and 8:00 am.
The campaign was founded in memory of Justin Fashanu, the first openly gay professional footballer, who committed suicide on 2nd May 1998.
The aim of the Justin Campaign is to demonstrate the prevalence of homophobia in football and show how damaging the consequences of this can be on a society that holds the sport in such high regard.
Through art, events, education and football the organisation hopes to persuade the football authorities in England to observe Saturday 2nd May 2009 as Justin Fashanu Day and more generally, want 2nd May to become the annual international day of protest against homophobia in sport.
Campaign Founder Jason Hall said: “I wanted to use my hour on the Plinth to highlight the fact that gay and bisexual men are equally passionate about both playing and supporting ‘the beautiful game’, whilst increasing awareness as to how absurd it is that there have been no other ‘out’ gay players since Justin Fashanu.”
Like Hall maintains, “gay and bisexual men are equally passionate about playing and supporting” football, as are many lesbian and bisexual women and people in the trans community.
No doubt all LGB&T football and sports fans will be supporting Jason in challenging homophobia tomorrow night.
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The Lesbian and Gay Foundation -
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Sex toys and leather-clad men cause storm at student art gallery
LEATHER-clad men and a tiny crucifix-shaped sex toy have been branded too hot by a Melbourne TAFE and removed from a student gallery.
First-year visual arts student Steven Carter says his collage, cut from free gay and music street magazines, was unfairly taken down from NMIT’s student gallery in Preston, the Moreland Leader reports.
“There is nothing pornographic about the collage … it is about the objectification of men,” said Carter, of Preston.
“If it had been a man with women, no one would have complained.”
“The work was removed (following the instruction from visual arts department head Peter Kartsounis) without anyone even asking me.”
NMIT associate director of arts and social sciences Peter Lamburd in Fairfield said that the piece was removed because teachers believed it would be offensive to some people.
Read more at the Moreland Leader
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What will parents do to avoid having a gay son?
In the early 1990s, when genetic research was far less advanced than today, Jonathan Tolins posed the question: If a woman knew in advance that her male baby would be born gay, would she still go through with the pregnancy?
That’s the premise of his 1992 drama “The Twilight of the Golds,” which was filmed for cable television in 1997 and which receives an emotionally gripping staging courtesy of Theatre Out.
Through her husband’s medical research firm, which has devised genetic testing of fetuses, the pregnant Suzanne Gold-Stein (Jennifer Pearce) has discovered that her baby boy has the genetic markers of homosexuality.
The question of whether to keep the baby is, in fact, illuminated by the family’s firsthand experience: Suzanne’s brother David (Tim Woods) is gay, a factor that has, despite their denials, always affected his bond with her and with their parents.
The play is told from the opera-loving David’s point of view, its title a pun drawn from “The Twilight of the Gods,” the fourth opera in Wagner’s “Ring” Cycle. He frames the play’s focal issue when he asks, “What difference does being gay make?” As the story progresses, its ethical complications are magnified, even as Tolins takes time out to assail the materialism of the 1980s.
Complicating the ethical dilemma posed by Tolins is the way it splits the family. For David, who is, ironically, pro-choice, aborting the baby is tantamount to killing him. As much as she dotes on David, mom Phyllis (Karen Harris) has to admit that “it hurts to see your child become something different.”
Seeing genetic testing as a boon to mankind, Suzanne’s husband Rob (Eric James) insists that he and Suzanne “don’t need David to tell us how to live our lives,” while patriarch Walter Gold (Rick Kopps) maintains that “it’s Rob and Suzanne’s decision.”
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BLACK GOLD: A New Film by Nick Francis and Marc Francis
THE SYNOPSIS
As westerners revel in designer lattes and cappuccinos, impoverished Ethiopian coffee growers suffer the bitter taste of injustice. In this eye-opening expose of the multi-billion dollar coffee industry, Black Gold traces one man’s fight for a fair price.
THE STORY
Multinational coffee companies now rule our shopping malls and supermarkets and dominate the industry worth over $80 billion, making coffee the most valuable trading commodity in the world after oil.
But while we continue to pay for our lattes and cappuccinos, the price paid to coffee farmers remains so low that many have been forced to abandon their coffee fields.
Nowhere is this paradox more evident than in Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee. Tadesse Meskela is one man on a mission to save his 74,000 struggling coffee farmers from bankruptcy. As his farmers strive to harvest some of the highest quality coffee beans on the international market, Tadesse travels the world in an attempt to find buyers willing to pay a fair price.
Against the backdrop of Tadesse’s journey to London and Seattle, the enormous power of the multinational players that dominate the world’s coffee trade becomes apparent. New York commodity traders, the international coffee exchanges, and the double dealings of trade ministers at the World Trade Organisation reveal the many challenges Tadesse faces in his quest for a long term solution for his farmers.
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UK Roman Catholic church-funded marriage agency backs gay and unmaried parents
Terry Prendergast, the chief executive of Marriage Care, claimed there is “no evidence” that children do better if they are brought up in a traditional two-parent family.
He claimed that those who live together out of wedlock are trying to lead good lives but find themselves “consigned to the dustbin” by the church.
His comments – to be made this weekend to Quest, a group of homosexual Catholics – go directly against the church’s teaching, which holds that homosexuality is sinful and that families should be based on the marriage of a man and a woman.
Mr Prendergast said: “We see, for example, that statistically children do best in a family where the adult relationship is steady, stable and loving – you should note here perhaps that I stress adult, not married, since there is no evidence that suggests that children do best with heterosexual couples.”
He claimed that God was present in the relationships of married, homosexual and cohabiting heterosexual relationships where there was “commitment, consent and covenant”.
He went on: “They want to live good lives according to the precepts of the Gospels. They are an advert for the Church, an advert that the Church often ignores or consigns to the wastebin.”
See Catholic church-funded marriage agency backs gay and unmaried parents Telegraph.co.uk
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Gay Kiss Arrests In Utah Defended By Mormon Church
In the wake of one “kiss-in” protest carried out last Sunday and ahead of another one planned for this Sunday, the LDS Church issued a statement Friday defending its Main Street Plaza property rights and its actions involving a pair of men cited there last week for their public displays of affection.
Echoing previous comments made by a church spokeswoman following the July 9 incident, Friday’s statement said the pair were asked “to stop engaging in behavior deemed inappropriate for any couple of the plaza,” which was “more involved than a simple kiss on the cheek.”
“They engaged in passionate kissing, groping, profane and lewd language and had obviously been using alcohol,” the statement continued. “They were politely told that the plaza was not the place for such behavior and asked to stop. When they became belligerent, the two individuals were asked to leave church property.”
The two — Derek Jones and Matthew Aune — were detained by church security, cited by Salt Lake police for trespassing, an infraction of city ordinances, and later released.
The police report stated that Aune said the two had been drinking earlier at the Gallivan Center. After leaving and passing through the plaza, they sat down and he kissed Jones. Aune told police that when the two were confronted by church security and asked to leave, he refused, and he was slammed to the ground as security detained the pair with handcuffs.
See Gay Kiss Arrests In Utah Defended By Mormon Church
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Condemnation for bishop who called for gay people to ‘repent’ Independent
The Bishop of Rochester has been accused of pandering to hate and homophobia after calling on homosexuals to repent. Michael Nazir-Ali provoked outrage among gay groups when he urged Church leaders to stick to traditional values instead of being swayed by “culture and trends”.
While calling for the “traditional teaching” of the Bible to be upheld, the Bishop said of homosexuals: “We want them to repent and be changed.”
His controversial remarks were published just hours after more than half a million people, including the Prime Minister’s wife, Sarah, took part in the Gay Pride parade in London.
Sharon Ferguson, of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement, condemned Dr Nazir-Ali for making comments that she said would encourage hatred.
“It feeds to the more fundamental individuals who are looking to have their opinions ratified and speak hatefully and behave hatefully,” she said.
“His comments are likely to cause more of a schism within the Church of England. He’s saying their [gays and lesbians] sexuality is a sin. It’s not. It’s a gift from God. God made us all.”
She added: “He is telling people ‘You have to repent’ for something they have no control over. It’s like asking someone to repent because they have blue eyes.”
Peter Tatchell, the gay rights campaigner, said he was “shocked” at the level of anti-gay prejudice voiced by the bishop. “Homophobia is a social and moral evil, just like racism. Bigotry, even in the guise of religion, has no place in a compassionate, caring society,” he said. “I call on the bishop to repent his homophobia. His prejudice goes against Christ’s gospel of love and compassion.”
Labour MEP Michael Cashman accused the Bishop of Rochester of being “selective” about which parts of the Bible he upheld. “When he calls for the closure of all the banks, finance houses and credit card companies because of what it says in the Bible about usury, then I’ll take him seriously,” he said. “Until then, unless he can say anything good, he should shut up.”
In his comments, made to a Sunday newspaper, the bishop said homosexuals should be welcomed into the Church but that a person’s sexual nature could only be correctly expressed in a heterosexual union within marriage. His remarks reopened the row over homosexuality that has for years threatened to tear the Anglican Church apart.
He made them on the eve of today’s official launch of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans at Westminster Central Hall in London where he is expected to speak in support of the organisation. The UK branch of the Fellowship is regarded by many liberals within the Anglican movement as an attempt to create a church within a church with the aim of heading off moves to ease rules on homosexuality. Dr Nazir-Ali is to step down in the autumn and he is expected to play an important part in the Fellowship’s activities.
The Very Rev Colin Slee, the Dean of Southwark and a prominent liberal, was so alarmed by the the impending departure of Dr Nazir-Ali from the See of Rochester that he described it as “clearly a move towards a sectarian alternative church intentionally designed to create turbulence in the Anglican Communion”.
Canon Chris Sugden, of the Fellowship, said a message from the Queen will be read out during the ceremony but a Buckingham Palace spokeswoman called it nothing more than a “standard response” to the many requests made to the monarch each year. “It isn’t endorsing anyone’s point of view,” she said.
Zeal of the convert: The Bishop of Rochester
*Michael Nazir-Ali has been one of the most vocal and controversial of bishops of the past decade and has rarely been afraid to speak out.
He was a leading contender to become Archbishop of Canterbury when George Carey stood down but has found himself at odds with Rowan Williams, the incumbent.
The issue of homosexuality has been one of the biggest causes of friction between Dr Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, and the liberal wing of the Anglican Church.
In 2008 the rift was so marked that he boycotted the Lambeth Conference, a meeting of Anglican Church leaders held once a decade, because of the row over homosexuality. He is part of an evangelical wing urging the Church to stick to a traditional interpretation of the scriptures regarded by liberals, especially on the issues of homosexuality and women priests, as backward.
This year he announced he would step down as Bishop of Rochester in September to allow him time to concentrate on representing the Church in parts of the world where Anglicans are a minority religion or oppressed.
Born in Pakistan to Catholic parents, he converted at the age of 20 and holds dual British and Pakistani nationality. Appointed the 106th Bishop of Rochester in 1994, he was the first non-white diocesan bishop in the Church of England. Since then he has been a frequent critic of the rise of Islam in Britain.
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