AU STRALIA
he manager of the Townsville branch of
the Queensland A ID S Council was
stabbed in the throat with a syringe July 21 in
the parking area of his office building.
According to media reports, the attackers
were two men with skinhead-like haircuts, and
the incident is believed to be part of a “hate
campaign” against gay men and lesbians.
The victim, Darrel Colbert-Whitford, 28,
was also injured in a June 10 bombing of the
A ID S Councils offices.
Townsville is located more than 500 miles
north of Brisbane, the state capital.
T
B ELA R U S
n July 23, police in Minsk confiscated a
rainbow flag from a display of A ID S quilt
panels after the chairman o f the Russian
N A M ES Foundation, which arranged the
exhibit, charged that “exposing the gay flag dis
credits heterosexuals” living with AIDS.
The flag was brought by the gay group
Belarus Lambda League. W hen group members
ignored Mikhail Nedelski’s demands to remove
the flag, Nedelski called police, who in turn
confiscated the flag.
Police officers also ordered Lambda to stop
distributing its magazine, Forum Lam bda, during
the event.
O
CANADA
ame-sex couples in British Columbia are set
to get equal rights in matters of wills, estates
and inheritance. They currently have equal
rights in areas such as adoption, spousal support
and pension benefits.
The provincial government has introduced a
bill to expand
the definition of
spouse in several
laws to include
“a person who
has lived and
cohabited with
another person,
for a period of at
least two years immediately before the other
persons death, in a marriagelike relationship,
including a marriagelike relationship between
persons of the same gender.”
Provincial Attorney General U jjal Dosanjh
said: “This government is committed to sup
porting stable family relationships whether they
involve traditional families, common-law fami
lies or same-sex relationships. That support is
essential in the healthy, thriving and diverse
society that forms British Columbia. All British
Columbians deserve the same rights and bene
fits in life and in death.”
Following the action, John Fisher, head of
the national lobby group Equality for Gays and
Lesbians Everywhere, noted: “The federal gov
ernment is rapidly falling behind the courts and
the rest of Canada in its commitment to equali
ty. EGALE calls on the federal government to
stop following and start showing some leader
ship by introducing omnibus legislation as soon
as the House [of Commons] resumes in the fall.”
S
out which four of them would get a year’s worth
of antiviral treatment.
The clinic had secured enough donated
drugs from the United States to treat four peo
ple for one year and held a lottery to determine
which patients would receive them.
“It was the most depressing lottery 1 have
ever seen. In fact, to call it a lottery is really a
misnomer, because one envisions cash prizes and
television sets handed out to gleeful winners,”
says Costa Rican AID S activist Richard Stem ,
who attended the event.
“I told them that I hoped this would be the
first and last lottery of this kind, and I encour
aged them to commit themselves to the kind of
activism that has brought stunningly successful
results to people with AID S in two of the
region’s six nations: Costa Rica and Panama,
where all people with AID S can now receive
retroviral treatment provided by their govern
ment,” Stem says.
Only 15 percent of Guatemalans are covered
by the nation’s health insurance system.
MALAYSIA
n Islamic court in Kuala Lumpur fined 22
transvestites $210 and one transvestite
$105 on July 27 as punishment for competing in
a beauty pageant in the northern state of Kedah.
Judge Sheikh Zainol Embon declared:
“Based on the photographs taken [at the
pageant], all of you as participants of the beauty
pageant wore women’s clothes and lipstick.”
Cross-dressing is illegal for Malaysian Mus
lim men.
A
M EXICO
gay pride group is organizing in Guadala-
. jara.
More than 50 people attended a July 23
meeting to set up the Tapatio Gay Pride Com
mittee. Participants hope to stage pride events
and a parade in the nation’s second largest city.
Meanwhile, the city of Veracruz on Mexico’s
southeast Caribbean coast saw its first pride
march July 18. Thirty-five people marched
without incident.
A
B
etween 1995 and 1998, roughly 165 people
were murdered in Mexico because of their
sexual orientation, the Citizens’ Commission
Against Homophobic Hate Crimes reported
July 28.
The actual number of killings may be three
times higher than what has been documented,
says Carlos Monsiviais, co-author of a report
that was delivered to the Mexico City Human
Rights Commission.
In three of the 1998 murders the victims
were castrated.
Anti-gay crimes are rarely solved because of
societal homophobia, Monsiviais says. He also
blames the Catholic Church and right-wing
organizations for fomenting anti-gay hatred.
“More than anything else, these hate crimes
are characterized by society’s complete indiffer
ence,” Monsiviais says.
Bames says he was then informed by a nurse
that his blood was unwanted.
“I told her I was gay and was engaged to my
partner,” Bames explains. “I was shocked and
asked her why my blood was not good enough.
She replied that, according to the World Health
Organization, gay men were a high-risk group
with regard to the spreading of HIV.”
He adds: “I’ve spoken to the National Coali
tion for Gay and Lesbian Equality and my com
plaint is with their national executive. I’ll take
it to the International Court of Justice in The
Hague if 1 have to. All people
sympathetic to gay rights
should consider boycotting
the call to donate blood until
T
the rules have changed.
Homosexual men are not the
»
highest risk group [in South
Africa]. I don’t think they
should have a blanket ban on
gay men giving blood.”
The blood service’s medical director, Arthur
Bird, responds: “I accept totally that these type
of questionnaires and safety margins that we
have do cast a net. We accept that we some
times sweep in safe donors unnecessarily. But
that’s the nature of the beast.”
\
&
UNITED KINGDOM
anchester, England, has launched an
ambitious campaign to attract lesbian and
gay visitors from the United States.
W ith funding from the European Union and
local bars, hotels and nightclubs, Marketing
Manchester will run advertisements across the
States promoting the city as “an international
centre for gay culture and lifestyle,” the Man
chester Evening News reports.
“We have to look at Manchester’s strengths,”
says campaign spokesman Andrew Stokes. “It
does have a thriving gay community. W e’ve got
the gay village, the fantastic Mardi Gras event
and the Queer Up North festival. We have a
really marketable gay product and it’s good busi
ness sense. It’s a valuable niche market and we
are building on what we have.”
According to research conducted by the
British Tourism Authority, the United States
has 18 million gay men and lesbians with a typ
ical income 70 percent above the national aver
age.
M
O
n July 29, a British Court of Appeal upheld
a ruling that the National Health Service’s
North West Lancashire Health Authority was
wrong in refusing to pay for three men’s sex-
reassignment operations.
The judges said the surgery is a necessary
medical treatment, not a cosmetic procedure.
“The health authority’s policy...does not in
truth treat transsexualism as an illness but as an
attitude or state of mind which does not warrant
medical treatment,” wrote Lord Justice Auld.
The cases were filed by Miss A, 21, Miss D,
50, and Miss G , 50, after they were refused oper
ations because they failed to show “overriding
clinical need.”
SOUTH A FRICA
COLOM BIA
T
he Constitutional Court ruled unanimous
ly July 14 that the armed forces cannot bar
gay people.
Magistrate Vladimiro Naranjo Mesa said gay
service members are now free to reveal their sex
ual orientation, live on base with a partner and
be affectionate with their partner away from
work.
GUATEMALA
inety people living with A ID S gathered in
Guatemala City’s Luis Angel Garcia C lin
ic at San Juan de Dios Hospital June 29 to find
N
ndrew Bames, the news editor of Radio
KFM in Cape Town, is vowing to sue after
the Western Province Blood Transfusion Ser
vice refused his donation because he is gay.
“Everyone is being urged to go (give blood] so
I went to Picbel Arcade in Strand Street,”
Bames told the C ape Argus newspaper. "I was
asked to fill in a form asking for medical history,
any recent operations or current medication.
Then there was a section on HIV and AIDS
asking about sexual history. One of the ques
tions asked was whether, as a male applicant,
you have ever had sex with another male. I cir
cled yes on the form.” •
A
VEN EZUELA
n July 19, the Supreme Court ordered the
Ministry of Health to provide all AID S-
related drugs to all HIV-positive Venezuelans
and foreign residents of the country.
The ruling was spawned from a lawsuit filed
by 168 people with AID S and the organization
Citizens’ Action Against AIDS.
The health ministry was also ordered to pro
vide viral-load testing and all tests necessary for
the treatment of AIDS-related opportunistic
infections.
O
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