BY NATASHA BARSOTTI - The de rigueur clampdown on Pride events in several Eastern European countries, plus the proliferating moves to pass anti-gay laws in the region, has prompted a majority of European Parliament members to adopt a resolution "strongly condemning" discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

The May 22 resolution comes on the heels of the seventh consecutive prohibition of Moscow Pride and the violence that erupted during an aborted attempt to stage a Pride march in Kiev, Ukraine.

Activist Svyatoslav Sheremet, of the group Gay Forum of Ukraine, was left beaten and bloodied when a group of youths attacked him following a media briefing about the march's cancellation, half an hour before its scheduled start, because of police fears of an attack by ultra-conservative counterprotesters.

About a dozen youths tear gassed people who had gathered for the march. 

The day before what was supposed to be the first-ever Pride parade in the Ukrainian capital, vandals also damaged a photo exhibit that showcased the lives of queer families in the former Soviet Republic, which became independent following the USSR's dissolution.

But like several cities within the Russian Federation, its neighbour Ukraine is on the road to passing so-called gay propaganda legislation that would criminalize queer human rights efforts and ban information about queer issues.

In its resolution, the European Parliament "condemns the violence and threats surrounding the Kiev Pride event," notes that EU agreements are conditional on respect for fundamental rights, and calls on Ukraine to introduce legislation to prohibit discrimination, including discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation.

The European Parliament also calls on Ukrainian authorities to immediately revoke proposed anti-gay legislation, as well as "commit to making a safe Kiev Pride event possible next year." It also "regrets" the gay propaganda laws already in place that are legitimizing homophobia "and sometimes, violence, as in the case of the violent attack on a bus carrying LGBT activists on 17 May 2012 in Saint Petersburg." 

These laws and proposals are "inconsistent with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which precludes discriminatory laws and practices based on sexual orientation, and to which Russia, Ukraine . . . and all EU Members States are parties," the resolution states. It further calls on the Council of Europe to "investigate these human rights violations, verify their compatibility with the commitments linked to Council of Europe membership and the European Convention on Human Rights." 

 

BY NATASHA BARSOTTI - Gay Ohio high schooler Maverick Couch has won the right to wear his once-prohibited 'Jesus Is Not a Homophobe' T-shirt to school when he pleases -- and will collect $20,000 in damages and court costs from his school district.

Couch tried last spring, and then again this year, to wear the shirt in recognition of the national Day of Silence on April 20, to highlight how queer students are bullied into keeping their heads down.

But after his Waynesville High School principal, Randy Gebhardt, threatened him with suspension if he tried to wear the offending shirt a third time, Couch turned to the courts for relief, with the help of Lambda Legal. 

"I've been bullied and called names. I wanted to wear the T-shirt to encourage respect for all students, gay or straight," Couch said, according to an April 4 Gay Star News report. "I wish my school would help me create an accepting environment for LGBT kids, not single me out for punishment."

Couch filed a lawsuit, plus a motion for a temporary restraining order, against the school district, which temporarily relented and said the then-junior could don the shirt for one day.

Not good enough, said Couch's lawyers.  

A student's First Amendment rights are not restricted to one day of the year. "We will continue to fight until Maverick is allowed to express who he is on any day he chooses."

Mission accomplished just more than a year later. 

Lambda Legal attorney Christopher Clark to Gay Star News: "If school officials had any doubt before, it's clear now. First Amendment rights apply to all students on every day of the year, and efforts to silence LGBT youth will not go unchallenged."

 

BY NATASHA BARSOTTI - Even as the "It's the economy, stupid" mantra of the Clinton vs Bush #1 presidential campaign is the issue at the forefront of the current run for the US presidency, the fallout -- both boo- and yay-worthy -- from Obama's supportive statement on gay marriage continues to cascade into the 2012 election discourse.

On the yay side, the May 19 release of a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) resolution on same-sex marriage:

". . . the NAACP has opposed and will continue to oppose any national, state, local policy or legislative initiative that seeks to codify discrimination or hatred into the law or to remove the Constitutional rights of LGBT citizens," the resolution states. "We support marriage equality consistent with equal protection under the law provided under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution."

Remember that in his own evolved gay-marriage stance, Obama, unlike the NAACP, was careful not to trod on individual states' abilities to give a thumbs-up or -down to marriage rights for same-sex couples.

Even so, The Washington Post's Eugene Robinson points out that the current president of the more than 100-year-old civil rights organization, Benjamin Jealous, was also nuanced in his statement about civil marriage being "a civil right and matter of civil law." Religious marriages are a different species as far as the NAACP is concerned, and churches should not be coerced into giving their blessings to same-sex marriages. 

Still, almost all of the NAACP's 64-member board voted in favour of the landmark resolution, an evolved decision in itself. Its decision to take a public stand lends increasing weight to the ongoing, but often disputed, argument that gay rights are part and parcel of the multifaceted American civil rights struggle.  

In stark contrast, there's the homophobic paroxysm in North Carolina of the rant-and-rave religious kind, in tandem with the state's recent passage of the anti-gay-marriage, anti-civil-union Amendment One. 

You perhaps recall one North Carolina pastor's advice (Sean Harris) that parents punch their male children and crack their wrists if they are not masculine enough. Then another (Ron Baity) invoked a return of the good old days when queers were prosecuted, and a third (Tim Rabon) conjured up the now more than yawn-inducing stereotype  about "redefinitions" of marriage that include human and beast unions.

Now another, Charles Worley, has a somewhat novel idea to stop queers in their tracks: "Build a great, big, large fence -- 150 or 100 mile long -- put all the lesbians in there."  

And he elaborates: 

"Do the same thing for the queers and the homosexuals and have that fence electrified so they can't get out . . . and you know what? In a few years, they'll die out . . . do you know why? They can't reproduce!"

Quite frankly, it's not marriage that's the worry here. It's the quality of North Carolina's water supply. 

 

Landing image: transgriot.blogspot.com

YouTube video posted on huffingtonpost.com

   

BY NATASHA BARSOTTI - For the seventh year in a row, Moscow Pride organizers applied for a permit to stage the event.

And for a seventh time, city authorities turned them down, ignoring a 2010 European Court of Human Rights ruling that the repeated bans are discriminatory, illegal and a contravention of the European Convention on Human Rights, to which Russia is signatory. 

Even before the application was submitted, gay rights activist Nikolai Alexeyev told Xtra he had no reason to believe that the city, under new mayor Sergei Sobyanin, would break with precedent and give Pride the green light. 

Previous refusals have not stopped Moscow's activists from proceeding with some form of march or protest, and Alexeyev told media that a rally will be held in spite of the ban. He also told Gay Star News that he plans to appeal the city's decision in court May 21. 

According to Gay Star News, a security official said the proposed march would provoke a negative public reaction and cause "moral harm to children and teenagers."

The latest Pride ban follows the increasing and incremental institution of so-called gay propaganda laws in several Russian cities that prohibit the spread of homosexuality among minors, with calls from Orthodox Church officials and certain politicians for the national implementation of such legislation.

A sanctioned International Day Against Homophobia rally in St Petersburg, one of four cities to have passed anti-gay legislation, was marked by violence when dozens of neo-Nazis attacked and injured participants. 

 

 

BY NATASHA BARSOTTI - In her first state-of-the-union address since becoming Malawi's new president, Joyce Banda signalled her intent to reverse several of her predecessor's policies, including so-called indecency laws.

"Some laws which were duly passed by the august house . . . will be repealed as a matter of urgency . . . these include the provisions regarding indecent practices and unnatural acts," Banda reportedly said May 18.

The BBC is reporting that Banda has support for the move from a majority of parliamentarians but will likely face opposition from the African country's church leaders and the wider society. 

In 2010, two Malawians, Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga, were sentenced to 14-year jail terms for "gross indecency and unnatural acts" after getting engaged. In the wake of international condemnation, the late president, Bingu wa Mutharika, who said the couple had "committed a crime against our culture, against our religion and against our laws" pardoned them on "humanitarian grounds."

Monjeza and Chimbalanga were put on notice by the then-minister of gender and children that the pardon didn't mean they could resume their relationship.

From the outset, media reports referred to Monjeza and Chimbalanga as a gay couple, but Chimbalanga, also known as "Aunt Tiwo," is quoted in a February 2010 New York Times report as saying, "Inside I am a complete woman." She had reportedly filed for asylum in Canada.

President Banda's decision to move for repeal is an anomaly on the African continent, where most countries criminalize gay sex.

South Africa is the only country where same-sex marriage is legally recognized, and discrimination based on sexual orientation is prohibited in the constitution that came into effect in 1997.