just out ▼ march 3. I M S ▼ S
world briefs
CANADA
A gay man from Venezuela was granted refu­
gee status in Canada on Jan. 24, after officials
convinced themselves he had been tortured and
raped three times by Venezuelan police because
he is gay.
Jose Luis Ortigoza showed both physical and
psychological signs of torture, Canadian doctors
told a panel of the Immigration and Refugee
Board.
‘There are no words for how I feel,” Ortigoza
told the Toronto Star.
Ortigoza arrived in Toronto on Nov. 6 to meet
his lover, Carl Rizzo of New York. They met in
1992 in Venezuela. The two originally intended
to stay briefly in Toronto to improve Ortigoza’s
chances of getting a visa to live with Rizzo in New
York.
Rizzo now plans to seek Canadian citizenship.
V V V
A new statement from Prime Minister Jean
Chrétien has lesbian and gay activists worried
that the federal government has put its promise to
ban discrimination based on sexual orientation on
the back burner, reported Toronto’s Globe and
Mail.
The government has pledged repeatedly in
recent years to amend the Human Rights Act to
prohibit discrimination against gay men and les­
bians, and it was looking like Justice Minister
Allan Rock was going to be the man to finally pull
it off this year.
Then Chrétien stated, ‘‘[The antidiscrimina­
tion measure] is part of our committment and we
have...four more years in our mandate.”
Eight of Canada’s 12 provinces and territories
already ban discrimination based on sexual orien­
tation.
GREAT BRITAIN
Britain’s Ministry of Defense has a “secret
index of lesbians and gay men,” reports the BBC
Radio Five Live program Out This Week.
A former sergeant in the Royal Military Po­
lice, Caroline Meaghr, told the program that data
on the “sexual life” of all persons whose names
have come up in military investigations are stored
on computers in an office in London’s Earls
Court.
The information has been shared with civilian
21 YEARS EXPERIENCE
▼ V ▼
April 1995 marks the 100th anniversary of
British gay playwright Oscar W ilde’s conviction
for sodomy, and
gay actor Sir
John Gielgud,
90, kicked off
c o m m e m o ra ­
tions this month
by unveiling a
plaque honoring
Wilde at Lon­
don’s Theatre
Royal.
During the
ceremony,
G ielgud
re ­
vealed that he
had met Wilde’s
lover, Lord Al­
fred Douglas.
"I found him rather disappointing,” Gielgud
confessed.
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NETHERLANDS
The Netherlands recently passed a new law
banning discrimination based on sexual orienta­
tion in employment (hiring, recruitment, salary,
promotion and firing), education, and the provi­
sion of goods and services, reported The Euroletter,
a publication of Denmark’s National Organiza­
tion for Gays and Lesbians.
SERBIA
Government response to H1V/AIDS in Serbia
amounts to nothing more than a periodic release
of statistics, reports the Belgrade publication
Women in Black Notebooks.
Two hundred forty people have died from
complications of AIDS and 298 are living with
HIV. Statistics show that of those who are cur­
rently positive, 206 shared needles, 29 were in­
fected via straight sex, 16 are hemophiliacs, and 8
were infected through gay sex.
The news report said the incidence of HIV
transmission from gay-male sex was probably
vastly underreported.
“From time to time the number of people
deceased, ill and infected by HIV is announced
publicly, and that is all,” the article said. “That is
the end of the state’s care. In Serbia condoms
were never available in public places and free
distribution of syringes is, for us, equal to science
fiction.
“There is only one institution which is accept­
ing AIDS-infected people for treatment—the Sixth
Ward of Belgrade’s Infectious and Tropical Dis­
ease Clinic,” the report continued.
SPAIN
The government will consider creating regis­
tered partnership for same-sex and heterosexual
couples this spring, Madrid sexual minority lead­
ers report.
Legislation written by lesbian and gay groups
has received support in the media, regional parlia­
ments, and the federal parliament, which last
month voted to tell the government to write its
own proposal.
Most, if not all, rights of marriage except
adoption are expected to be included in the final
plan. Individuals may adopt in Spain regardless of
their sexuality.
Some 30 Spanish cities register “civil unions,”
including Barcelona, Cordoba, Granada, Ibiza,
Toledo and Valencia (which has a regional law).
Compiled by Rex Wockner
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GERMANY
Berlin’s new band of Lesbian Avengers staged
a kiss-in the Sunday before Christmas at west
Berlin’s popular Christmas Market. “[We] were
first going around the market in small groups of
two to six, kissing constantly, before assembling
in the center [to] sing some rearranged Christmas
songs with new dyke text,” participants wrote on
the Internet.
“There were 50 to 100 dykes.... Some of the
hets didn’t really know how to deal with us. Some
tried very hard to look away, while others tried
very hard to look friendly.”
One woman told the group they ruined her
Christmas by desecrating sacred songs. One man
shouted, “Under Hitler you would have been
lined up against the wall and shot—bang, bang,
bang.”
B R IA N M A R K I F R A M I N G
KAA a a
CUBA
A drag queen living in the U.S. refugee camp
at Guantánamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba talked to
the Associated Press in hopes that gay men in San
Francisco would read the article and help him and
his friends emigrate to the United States.
The refugee camp houses people who tried to
flee Cuba last year in homemade boats.
The man is one of 21 gay men housed apart
from the other 1,900 inmates for their own protec­
tion, said U.S. Army Capt. David Lee.
Lee added that the shows the man and his pals
present at the camp are “good,” and said the
military is trying to get more drag props and
supplies for the troupe.
police, she said, giving those dismissed from the
military for homosexuality a criminal record.
Britain’s data protection registrar is investi­
gating the report, because the military’s failure to
register the fact that it keeps information on a
person’s “sexual life” would violate Britain’s
Data Protection Act.
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