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ÏWT ïï ITI news
aiwanese President Chen Shui-bian met
with five gay activists Sept. 4 after the first-
ever gay pride festival staged by the Taipei
Bureau of Civil Affairs.
He invited N an H unter and M ichael
Bronski of the U nited States to meet with
him , and they brought three Taiwanese
activists along. “[The request] came com
pletely out of the blue and was stunning to
local activists,” H unter said.
She and Bronski discussed gay rights issues
with C hen and gave him a rainbow flag and a
rainbow lapel pin. T he local activists urged
him to enact laws to protect gays from
discrimination.
The pride festival featured a band, dancers, a
gay history exhibit and booths staffed by gay
organizations. In preparation for the events, the
city printed pamphlets for the general public
explaining gay history and culture and that
homosexuality is biologically based. Officials
also published a guide to the island’s gay groups
and meeting places.
T
THAILAND
olice are refusing to close Silom Road for
Bangkok’s Nov. 5 gay pride parade.
They say it would create traffic chaos.
Organizers are confused, because access was
granted in previous years.
The Bangkok Post said the turn of events
has thrown plans for the parade into “disarray.”
Organizers are seeking a meeting with police
officials.
P
ITALY
he Vatican said
Oct. 9 that Oscar
Wilde’s deathbed conver
sion to Roman Catholi
cism was real, even
though he was only semi
conscious. “T he time
spent behind bars [on a
gay-sex conviction] was
decisive,” said the Rev.
Antonio Spadaro, writ
ing in the Vatican-endorsed Jesuit publication
La Civilita Cattolica.
The priest summoned to Wilde’s deathbed
was “absolutely sure” that the conversion was
authentic and that Wilde had renounced his
life o f degradation, vanity and frivolity,
Spadaro said. The Jesuit magazine, founded in
1850, previously had condemned the famed
gay author based on his poem “The Ballad of
Reading Gaol.”
T
ope John Paul II denounced gay families
Oct. 14.
Speaking to 300,000 people in St. Peter’s
Square for the Jubilee of the Family, part of the
Roman Catholic Church’s millennium celebra
tion, he said: “No
one but parents
can know just how
important it is for
children to have
both figures— that
of a mother and of
a father. It is not a
step forward for
civilization
to
favor those ten
dencies which put
in the shade that
elementary truth
and would like to see themselves put on the
same legal footing.”
P
RUSSIA
R
ussia’s National Center for the Fight
Against AIDS began running newspaper
advertisements Oct. 11 recommending “virgini
ty, masturbation and telephone sex” in place of
intercourse. More cases of HIV have been
reported nationwide this year than in the past
13 years combined.
T he ads also promote “oral sex, condom
use and limiting the num ber of sexual part
ners.” U p to 400,000 Russians are thought to
be HIV-positive.
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will spend $20,000
to print brochures and
set up a toll-free tele
phone line for gay and les
bian visitors, the
local newspaper
»■■■r i iji -----— i^~ r | Xtra! reported.
“For about two
\\X X M \ LC4ÜÜ 11 or three years,
_
Tourism Toronto
has been looking
•
at a Visit gay-friendly
Toronto’ campaign,” said Patrick
Barry of Rainbow High Vacations, which lob
bied for the campaign. “They’re putting a lot of
money into it.”
COSTA RICA
Ventral America’s only gay leather bar has
✓ opened in San José, Costa Rica. The Back
Room is located downtown, just north of the
Hotel Europa.
Costa Rica is more prosperous than most
Latin American nations. The listing of gay bars,
bathhouses, restaurants, organizations, hotels,
stores and travel agencies in the local paper
Gayness now takes up half a page.
C
• Every book of erotic fiction and nonfiction
•Foreign and domestic mags, always at 10% off
North
Portland
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FRANCE
ore than 46,0(30 couples have registered
under France’s Civil Solidarity Pact law
since it took effect in November 1999. Officials
estimate between 50 percent and 70 percent of
them are same-sex partners.
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and obligations in areas such as income tax,
inheritance, housing, immigration, health care,
job transfers, synchronized vacation time, debt
responsibility and social welfare. The law does
not grant parental, adoption or medically assist
ed procreation rights.
Polls show 70 percent of the French popu
lation supports the law. Several other Euro
pean nations— including Denmark, Iceland,
the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden— have
gay-only registered partnership laws that
grant more than 99 percent of the rights and
obligations of matrimony.
The Netherlands also is in the final stages
of legalizing traditional marriage for gays. It
should be available to Dutch residents by
Jan. 1. J H
Compiled by REX WOCKNER, who has reported
for the gay press since 1985. He has a bachelor’s
degree in journalism from Drake University and
started his career as a radio reporter.
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