auflusl 5. 2005 - jUSt QUt21
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¡in mews
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Vasco Pereira da Gama, 33, and Dorival de
Carvalho Jr., 41, a couple for 13 years, operate a
M ore L esbians T han G ay M en
beauty shop and a modeling agency in rhe city of
M arry in C anada
Cantanduva in Sao Paulo state. They also write
Initial statistics on same-sex marriage in two social columns for local newspapers.
Canadian provinces show that more female than
In granting the adoption, Judge Julio César
male couples have gotten married—even though Spoladore Dominguez said the Federal
gay men outnumber lesbians.
Psychology Council has determined that
Same-sex marriage became legal nationwide I “homosexuality is not a sickness, a disturbance
July 20 but has been legal in some provinces and or a perversion.”
one territory for up to two years.
Lesbian couples account for 63 percent of
MIDE AST/AFRIC A
same-sex marriages in Saskatchewan and 57 per
cent in British Columbia—despite the fact that N igerian G ay M an S entenced
Statistics Canada says only 46 percent of to D eath by S toning
Canadian homosexuals are women.
A 50-year-old man irt northern Nigeria has
According to Saskatoons StarPhoenix news been sentenced to death by stoning for having
paper, nobody can explain the numbers. gay sex, the United Nations said July 8.
Theories cited include the fact that Canadian
Philip Alston, U.N. special rapporteur on
lesbians are five times more likely than gay men arbitrary executions, called for an immediate
to have children living with them who need review of rhe Shariah law sentence. The man
legal protections and the stereotype that women had been acquitted of having sex with a younger
are acculturated to dream of their wedding day.
man but admitted to the judge, when asked, that
Meanwhile, in Alberta, one of Canadas most he had had gay sex in the past, which led to the
conservative provinces, marriage commissioners sentence.
have been told they don’t have to marry same-
There is a reasonable possibility the U.N.
sex couples if they don’t want to.
intervention will prevent the execution. Several
The provincial government likely will add Nigerian women sentenced to death for adultery
additional commissioners to guarantee that have been spared after international outcries.
everyone who wants to marry will be able to.
Calgary, the province’s largest city, has 26 mar I ran E xecutes G ay T eens
riage commissioners, but many smaller commu
Two male teen-agers were hftnged July 19 in
nities have only one.
Mashhad, Iran, for having sex with each other,
The opt-out clause does not apply to reg the Iranian Students News Agency reported.
istries, the government offices that issue mar The report was translated from Farsi by the
riage licenses.
British gay rights group OutRage.
The teens, one 18 and one younger than 18,
M exican A ctivist M urdered
reportedly were convicted by Court No. 19
A prominent Mexican gay activist was mur under Islamic Shariah law, which punishes
dered in what appears to be an anti-gay
homosexual acts
hate crime, Amnesty International said
with death. They
July 14.
were
identified
Octavio Acuña worked for the
only as “M.A.”
Quereteran Association for Sexual
and “A.M.”
Education in Querétaro and ran a con
The
reports
dom shop. He was found bleeding to
said the couple
death from multiple stab wounds inside
acknowledged
the shop June 21. Nothing had been
having sex but said
stolen.
they didn’t realize
In 2004, Acuña and his partner
it was a capital
filed a complaint with the State
offense. They also
Human Rights Commission alleging
testified that most
that municipal police officers had
Iranian boys have
stopped them in a public park and told
sex with each
them “their sort” should not be there.
other.
A few weeks ago, he publicly criticized
Another re
the commission’s failure to act on his
port, by Iran Focus,
complaint.
claimed
the two
César Cigliutti, shown with partner
Local human rights organizations say Marcelo Suntheim, is pleased with
were hanged not
another gay activist was drugged and the Argentine Senate.
for engaging in gay
beaten the weekend after Acuñas mur
sex but for sexually
der, in another suspected homophobic attack.
assaulting a 13-year-old boy. Neither the Iranian
Students News Agency report nor a report from
A rgentine S enate R ecognizes
the National Council of Resistance of Iran
G ay R elationship
reported this information, OutRage said.
Argentina’s Senate granted spousal rights to
However, The Times of London reported it
one of its employees who registered his relation July 22. The paper said: “Iran’s religiously con
ship under Buenos Aires’ Civil Union Law, local servative judiciary determined that the pair had
media reported July 13.
raped the 13-year-old boy at knifepoint while he
Eduardo Gabriel Crimi will receive 10 days was out for a bicycle ride in the northeastern
off for his honeymoon. The Senate also formally province of Khorassan.”
asked the Ministry of Work’s Social Security
OutRage’ expressed skepticism concerning
Secretariat if Crimi should be granted the special the rape claims.
bonus employers give people who get married.
“The allegation of sexual assault may either
“The Senate’s decision sets a key legal prece be a trumped-up charge to undermine public
dent because through an administrative act, sympathy for the youths—a frequent tactic by
dated and numbered, the Senate of the nation the Islamist regime in Iran—or it may be that
has affirmed the [city’s] Civil Union Law on the the 13-year-old was a willing participant but
national stage,” said César Cigliutti, head of that Iranian law...deems that no person of that
Comunidad Homosexual Argentina.
age is capable of sexual consent and that there
fore any sexual contact is automatically deemed
B razil A llows G ay A doption
in law to be a sex assault,” said OutRage’s Peter
Brazil allowed a same-sex couple to adopt a Tatchell, who broke the story in the English-
child together for the first time July 7.
language media.
AMERICAS
“This is just the latest barbarity by the
Islamo-fascists in Iran,” Tatchell said. “The
entire country' is a gigantic prison, with Islamic
nile sustained by detention without trial, torture
and state-sanctioned murder.
“According to Iranian human rights cam
paigners, over 4,000 lesbians and gay men have
been executed since the ayatollahs seized power
in 1979,” he said. “Altogether, an estimated
100,000 Iranians have been put to death over
the last 26 years of clerical rule.”
OutRage urged the international community
to begin treating Iran “as a pariah state” and to
“break off diplomatic relations, impose trade
sanctions and give practical support to the dem
ocratic and left opposition inside Iran.”
The group also suggested people protest to
their nearest Iranian embassy or consulate.
Iran’s capital offenses include murder, rape,
armed robbery, apostasy, blasphemy, serious dnig
trafficking, repeated stxlomy, adultery, prostitu
tion, treason and espionage, according to the
French Press Agency.
P olice S hoot R ubber B ullets ,
J T ear G as at AIDS P rotesters
Police in Queenstown, Eastern Cape, South
Africa, broke up a demonstration by AIDS
activists with rubber bullets and tear gas July 12,
Human Rights Watch said. Forty protesters were
injured.
The demonstrators, organized by the
Treatment Action Campaign, were protesting
the government’s px>r record in providing anti
retroviral drugs to people with HIV.
In December, the Eastern Cape Health
Department stopped accepting new HIV
patients and referred those already on treatment
to Frontier Hospital in Queenstown, which is
caring for fewer than 200 of the approximately
2,000 people in need. More than 50 AIDS
patients have died while on the hospital’s treat
ment waiting list.
South Africa has some 5.3 million HlV-posi-
tive residents. In November 2003, the federal
government promised to provide 53,000 patients
with free anti-retroviral treatment by March
2004. But a year later, only about half that num
ber were receiving the dnigs.
Eastern Cape province’s largest city is Port
Elizabeth.
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ASI A/PACIFIC
T aiwan P olice R aid B ar
Taiwanese police raided the gay DX Club and
arrested 13 people on dnig charges July 24, The
China Post reported.
More than 300 people were searched.
“Besides finding ecstasy pills all over the dance
fkxir, police were also amazed to discover many
tiny blue Viagra pills,” the Post said.
www.Dharma-Rain.Org
P hilippine S upremes R ule
for L esbian M others
The Philippines Supreme Court ruled last
month that an allegedly lesbian mother can keep
her child—possibly the first such ruling in the
nation.
The decision overturned a Court of Appeals
ruling granting custody of the 4-year-old boy
to his father, Crisanto Gualberto, who claimed
his wife, Joycelyn, is gay.
“To deprive a wife of custixly, the husband
must clearly establish that her moral lapses
have had an adverse effect on the welfare of
the child or have distracted the offending
spouse from exercising proper parental care,”
the court said. jn
Compiled by R ex W<X .KNER, who has reported for
the gay press since 1 985 . He has a bachelor’s
degree in journalism from Drake University and
started his career as a radio reporter.
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