Gay sex ruling: HC judge accused of judicial impropriety in India
NEW DELHI: A Supreme Court advocate has raised the issue of “judicial impropriety” on the part of Justice S Murlidhar, who had sat on the bench that delivered the judgment in the ‘gay sex’ case.
In two separate letters written to the Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court Justice A P Shah and Members of Parliament, the advocate Janak Raj Jai contended that Justice Murlidhar had himself filed a writ petition in 1994 as a lawyer in the high court seeking quashing of Section 377 of the IPC.
When contacted, Justice Murlidhar’s secretary said the judge was aware of the letter (of the advocate) but had no comments to make.
Jai said Justice Murlidhar had appeared as intervenor in the original writ petition on behalf of an organisation “AIDS Bedhav Virodhi Andolan.”
“Propriety demands that a judge who had been an advocate in a similar case, should not have heard the present petition (Naz Foundation) challenging parts of Section 377 IPC,” the letter, written by Jai to the Chief Justice three days before the judgment was delivered, stated.
In his letter, Jai had sought deferring of the judgment and pleaded that the matter be posted before another bench. See Gay sex ruling: HC judge accused of judicial impropriety
Times of India
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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.
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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“Gay sex shouldn’t be legalised at any cost’ Sez Indian Pol
RJD chief Lalu Prasad denounced Delhi High Court’s ruling decriminalising gay sex and felt the Centre should appeal against the judgement in the Supreme Court.
“Gay sex should not be legalised at any cost and the Centre should appeal against the verdict in the Supreme Court. I am dead against legalisation of gay sex and will strongly raise the issue in Parliament. Section 377 of the IPC should not be amended,” Prasad said.
Asked whether homosexuality is still a crime, he said: “Yes, it is a crime… Such obscene acts should not be allowed in our country. The society is adversely affected.”
“Such things which affect the society should not be permitted at all… Government has a greater responsibility towards the society,” Prasad said.
“I don’t want to talk about such rubbish things. These are obscene things which our country and culture do not permit,” he said.
See Gay sex shouldn’t be legalised at any cost: Lalu
Indian Express -
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Australian Gay parents welcomed. Just not for adoption
Katherine Eastaughffe and Una Harkin are lesbians.
They’re also mothers, to six-month-old Daniel, whom Katherine gave birth to after undergoing fertility treatment.
The Queensland Government has no problem with lesbians using IVF to have children.
Neither do they have a problem with taking on Katherine and Una as registered foster carers.
But they draw the line at gay adoption, meaning Una cannot be legally recognised as one of Daniel’s parents.
The Bligh Government’s refusal to consider same sex adoption is being used as part of a renewed push for federal laws preventing discrimination against gays and lesbians.
A Galaxy poll released today reveals 85% of Australians support the case for a national law on the issue.
Ms Eastaughffe told brisbanetimes.com.au the State Government’s Adoption Bill 2009, reintroduced to Parliament in April, was clearly discriminatory.
“It was a joint decision to have Daniel. He is very much both of ours,” Ms Eastaughffe said.
“If Una was a man, there’d be no issue either way. Either by having her name on the birth certificate or by being able to adopt him as a step-parent.
“It doesn’t make sense to me. A man might not be the biological father but he is still treated as the parent, but not if it’s a woman who’s the “non-biological parent”. That just seems outright discrimination.”
See Gay parents welcomed. Just not for adoption
Brisbane Times
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In Australia, Gay couples’ access to IVF delayed
GAY couples wanting access to IVF and donor sperm will have to wait for authorities to develop a way to make sure they are fit to be parents.
Laws allowing same-sex couples access to donor sperm and extra IVF services will be delayed at least five more months amid claims the Government doesn’t have the technology or resources to implement mandatory police checks in the legislation.
The Assisted Reproductive Treatment Bill, passed in December, gave lesbian and single women access to donor sperm and additional IVF services, but it also made it compulsory for all women and their partners, and any man donating sperm, to have police and child protection record searches.
The Act was to be proclaimed on July 1, but Melbourne IVF director Dr John McBain said the Government had stalled, unable to handle the hundreds of expected record checks.
“The Government is telling us it doesn’t have the resources in place to cope with the police checks,” he said.
“The bureaucracy isn’t in place in the relevant department to screen the very large numbers of people who will be trying to get police checks.” See Gay couples’ access to IVF delayed
Melbourne Herald Sun
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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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In Sinagpore, no change in Govt’s stance towards gays
JUDGING by the flurry of letters and online posts after recent events, conservatives have been worrying about possible efforts to lobby the Government to relax the OB markers on homosexuality.
Yesterday, Deputy Prime Minister Wong Kan Seng made it clear this would not happen. “The Government was not going to be pressured into changing its position on homosexuality before the takeover of Aware (the Association of Women for Action and Research). Nor does the Government intend to change its position now that the Old Guard has recaptured Aware,” he said in response to questions put to him by Today.
.And that position — as stated by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in Parliament in October 2007, and reiterated by Mr Wong — is this: “Singapore is basically a conservative society and … a heterosexual stable family is the norm.”
.At the same time, homosexuals are “entitled to their private lives”. See No change in Govt’s stance towards gays
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Hungarian gays win partnership rights
(Budapest) Same-sex couples in Hungary will be able to register their relationships in a new domestic partner registry beginning July 1.
The legislation was signed into law by President Laszlo Solyom after winning passage in Parliament.
Under the law partners must be over 18, live together and be financially interdependent. It will …
Tags: Budapest Sex, Domestic Partner, Gays Sex, Hungarian, Hungary, July 1, Laszlo Solyom, Law Partners, Legislation, Parliament, Partnership Rights, Relationships, Same Sex CouplesRomania considers gay adoption ban
The Romanian GLBT group ACCEPT and the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission expressed opposition April 22 to a proposed amendment to Romania’s civil code that would prohibit same-sex couples from adopting children.
In a letter to the government and Parliament’s civil-code commission, the groups set forth legal and other arguments against the plan.
“The amendment is discriminatory in light of domestic and international law and runs counter to the interests of the children and to the findings of social research,” the organizations said. “The European Court of Human Rights found that sexual-orientation discrimination regarding the adoption of children is prohibited by the European Convention.”
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This is how weak the GOP is today: for some, Virginia Foxx, GOP Hero
Virginia Foxx is decent church-goin’ woman with a mean, pinched, bitter evil face and she is the GOP’s parliamentary superstar, handling the Rules Committee and the familes of hate crimes victims with the same grace.
The Rules Committee is one of the most important committees in Congress. It decides amendments, debate length, and basically determines when and how bills get to the floor. So Virginia Foxx’s role, as a member of the minority party, is to be as big a pain in the ass as possible. Which is why she keeps making other members cry!
In January, Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) was testifying on the stimulus bill but left the committee room and did not return after Foxx drew a comparison between his handling of the bill and his habit of fiddling with a pencil.
Now this is not too terrible, because Dave Obey can be kind of a dick himself.
But:
She has also been an effective attack dog on the House floor. In March, Foxx caused freshman Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy (D-Ohio) to become so flustered after an exchange about Kilroy’s vote on the American International Group Inc. bailout that Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) soon held a parliamentary boot camp for Democratic freshmen to avoid future incidents.
Once again, not too bad. Parliamentary dickery is a time-honored House tradition, and the Dems could probably use a toughening up.
But where is the anecdote that basically proves that this is a small-minded, hateful, simplistic, miserable excuse for an elected official? Oh, here it is:
Foxx’s most public gaffe came last week during debate over the hate crimes bill. One of the pieces of the bill is named for Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old man murdered in 1998 because of his sexual orientation. Foxx said naming the bill for Shepard was a “hoax” because his murder “wasn’t because he was gay.”
It should be noted that Foxx said this while Matthew Shepard’s mother sat a couple feet away from her. It should also be noted that Matthew Shepard was, in fact, tortured and murdered because he was gay.
See Virginia Foxx, GOP Hero Gawker
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