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BELGIUM
bout 15,000 people turned out for Brussels’
Gay Pride festival May 3.
This month Belgium will become only the
second nation in the world to let same-sex
couples marry under the same laws as straight
people. But the law change did not extend
adoption rights or the right to marry a for
eigner, so this year’s Pride slogan was “We
want more.”
Belgium’s first full same-sex marriages will
take place at 8:30 a.m. June 16 in Ghent City
Hall, activists said. They were having trouble
finding couples who wanted to go first and get
married amid a media frenzy, but now someone
has stepped forward.
A
SPAIN
jf he Basque Parliament extended the legal
1 rights of marriage to unmarried same-sex
and opposite-sex couples May 7.
All matrimonial rights— including those
related to adoption, taxation and health care—
were included. A majority of European Union
nations now extend most or all marriage rights
to same-sex couples, and the Netherlands and
Belgium let same-sex couples marry under ordi
nary marriage laws.
UNITED KINGDOM
lanned laws to protect U .K. gays from
discrim ination in the workplace will
exem pt employers “with an ethos based on
religion or belief,” The Independent reported
May 10.
T h e U nited Kingdom is enacting the
measures to comply with a European Union
directive on worker rights. The Independent
said the decision to limit the legislation
might have been made by Prime Minister
Tony Blair himself.
“The statutory instruments slipped out to
Parliament last week were watered down fol
lowing direct intervention by Downing Street,”
the paper said. “A Whitehall source said the
decision was made ‘at the highest level’ and
that Barbara R(x:he, the equalities minister,
had been overruled.”
G ay
cam paigners
denounced
the
development.
“The government has given in to pressure
from religious bodies and created a bigots’ char
ter," said Terry Sanderson of the Gay and Les
bian Humanist Association. “ It specifically per
mits organized religions to deny jobs to, and
sack, gay people.... It’s an anti-discrimination
law that encourages discrimination. The gov
ernment has been weak and cowardly.”
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A
bout $16,400 raised at Brighton, England’s
annual Pride festivities is missing.
Sussex police are investigating. This year’s
Pride celebration will go ahead as planned
Aug. 2 to 10.
A
bout 43 percent of British gay men
wouldn’t want to have sex with someone
who is HIV-positive.
The question was included in the ninth
Gay Men’s Sex Survey conducted by the
Sigma research group. About 17,000 men were
questioned.
Three-fourths of the men surveyed expect an
HIV-positive individual to reveal his status before
sex. Half of the respondents had been tested for
HIV, and 14 percent had tested positive. About
20 percent of those questioned said they’d likely
had unprotected anal sex with someone whose
HIV status was different from their own.
Among other findings: 34 percent of respon
dents had experienced homophobic verbal
abuse in the past year, mostly from strangers in
public. About 7 percent had been physically
attacked because of their sexuality.
The Internet is now the second most popular
place to meet sex partners, after bars and clubs.
The results were summarized in the June issue of
Gay Times.
Swinburne, 72, later
attempted damage con
trol, saying: “My words
have been taken out of
context. People can do
what they like as long as
it’s legal. I have no prob
lem with gays.”
In a second interview
he added: “If I came across
as homophobic, I can only apologize to people
who took that view because it is not my posi
tion. What I did say was that I didn’t understand
the problem because my generation swept it
under the carpet.”
CANADA
bout 100 people staged a protest May 23 in
central Saint John, New Brunswick,
against Elsie Wayne, who represents the city in
the national Parliament
and is deputy leader of the
Progressive Conservative
Party, the Tories.
She said May 8 in the
House
of Commons:
“When it comes to people
who wish to live together,
whether they are women
or men, why do they have E |s ie Wayne
to be out here in the pub
lic always debating that they want to call it mar
-5»
riage.7 Why are they in parades7 Why are they
member of Scotland’s Parliament has come out
dressed up as women on floats.7
after hearing that a newspaper was preparing to
“They do not see us getting up on the floats,
out her. Margaret Smith, 43, said she is involved
for heaven’s sake, to say we are husband and
with a woman who just
wife. We do not do that. Why do they have to
recently left her husband.
go around trying to get a whole lot of publicity?
“This is first and fore
| If they are going to live together, they can go
most a personal matter,”
live together and shut up about it. There is not
said Smith, who represents
any need for this nonsense whatsoever, and we
Edinburgh West for the
should not have to tolerate it in Canada.”
Liberal Democrats. “But I
The protesters said Wayne’s outburst did not
am happy to confirm that I
represent the mind-set of her constituents.
am in a relationship with a
Tory leaders said her opinions are not those of
female partner. My family
the party. Gay MP Scott Brison, who is running for
are aware of the relation Margaret Smith
the party leader job, accused Wayne of “rabid prej
ship and have been very
udice,” according to a Canadian Television report.
supportive. My partner is not in the public eye.
We would hope that the media would respect the
privacy of both families at this time."
ontreal police raided the gay stripper club
Meanwhile, another Scottish MP is under
Taboo and arrested 23 dancers, seven
fire for gay-bashing. John Swinburne, who rep other employees and four customers May 10.
resents the Central Region for the Scottish
Charges included being an inmate or patron of
Senior Citizens Unity Party, said: “I really don’t a common bawdy house. Police said they had staked
know what’s wrong with these people. There
out the bar for several months amid allegations that
must be something we can do to help them.
it employed underage strippers and that strippers
They must be sick or something.”
and customers were having sex with each other.
Montreal’s last big gay bar raid was in 1977,
according to the Toronto-based Web site
365Gay.com.
A
A
M
IRAQ
raq’s most famous gay blogger, Salam Pax, has
returned to cyberspace at dearraed.blogspot.com.
“Let me tell you one thing first,” he writes.
“War sucks big time. Don’t let yourself ever be
talked into having one waged in the name of
your freedom. Somehow when the bombs start
dropping or you hear the sound of machine guns
at the end of your street you don’t think about
your ‘imminent liberation’ anymore.
“N o matter what the outcome is,” he con
tinues, “these things leave a trail of destruction
behind them. There were days when the Red
Crescent was begging for volunteers to help in
taking the bodies of dead people off the city
street and bury them properly. The hospital
grounds have been turned to burial grounds
when the electricity went out and there was no
way the bodies can be kept until someone
comes and identifies.
“I confess to the sin of being an escapist,” Pax
says. “When reality hurts I block it out, unless it
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U .K . Prime Minister Tony Blair (right, with President Bush) has been accused of watering
down an anti-discrimination law to exempt religious bigots