Serbia bans Belgrade gay pride march.

The Serbian Ministry of Interior has banned the gay pride march in Belgrade, just three days before it was due to take place.

Serbia's Ministry of Interior has banned Belgrade Pride today, just three days before it was due to take place.

The Serbian authorities also banned the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender event in 2009 and 2011, claiming they were worried about public safety.

The National Security Council chose to outlaw the march, as well as the three other large public gatherings on 6 October, shattering any hope of the organizers even marching a few meters at the center of the city with their private security service.

Several Members of the European Parliament, including Marije Cornelissen, Jelko Kacin and Keith Taylor, had planned to attend the event.

Reacting to the ban, Jelko Kacin MEP, European Parliament Rapporteur for Serbia, said: 'I regret that freedom of expression and assembly, two cornerstones of all European democracies, cannot be exercised freely by all Serbian citizens. This ban is a lost opportunity for Serbia, and it gives an impression the country does not deserve.

'Serbian police are professional and capable of ensuring public law and order. I feel safe walking the street of Belgrade, and I am convinced state authorities could have ensured the safety of both the public and participants had they wanted to. This decision was a political one.'

Marije Cornelissen and Keith Taylor MEPs from the Greens/EFA Group, added: 'Unfortunately, homophobes won by threatening large-scale unrest and violence.

'Why does Serbia continue to allow high-risk football matches, providing police protection from hooligans but not homophobes? A decision like this should weigh heavily against Serbia in a decision on the opening of EU negotiations.'

The European Commission will publish the next accession reports for Serbia and several other countries in November 2012.

This follows the EU Home Affairs Commissioner, Cecilia Malmstrom, voicing her support for the gay pride march, stressing that homo- and trans-phobia issues in Europe need to be raised.

Malmstrom wrote on her blog: 'This week, all eyes are on Serbia, where a pride week is organized, which hopefully ends well with a pride parade on Saturday.'

She then added that the 'gay pride' event is likely to be banned yet again by the Serberian Authorities.

'I have heard that there are posters and graffiti calling for violence against pride participants in Belgrade.'

About a month ago, Dacic said that the country needed no European Union if its admission ticket was a gay parade.

He said: 'Cut the talk about human rights. What human rights, people's safety is in question.

'There are countries where there are no gay parades and they are still members of the EU. Is it possible that this is still the main topic, that we are still preoccupied with the gay parade as a major problem, as a ticket to the EU, this is ridiculous.'

The march was scheduled to take place alongside a parade of war veterans, a gathering of patriotic organizations and the transfer of the remains of Prince Pavle Karadjordjevic from Belgrade's Cathedral Church of St Michael the Archangel to the crypt of the Church of St George in Oplenac, all on the same day.

Πηγή:www.gaystarnews.com

Europe may punish Ukraine for gay censorship law.

European Union may put new visa rules on hold to punish Ukraine if it presses ahead with ‘homosexual propaganda’ law plan.

Photo by Jurij Skoblenko.

Foreign ministers could punish Ukraine for voting for a new law to ban ‘homosexual propaganda’ by not allowing it visa-free access to Europe.

GSN broke the news that the Ukrainian Parliament had pushed forward the bill, number 8711, with a landslide vote yesterday.

If it is passed, the new law would give up to five years jail to people importing, producing or spreading positive messages about lesbians, gays and bisexuals.

The laws authors even claim gays are a risk to Ukrainian national security.

They said: ‘The spread of homosexuality constitutes a threat to national security as it leads to an HIV AIDS epidemic and also destroys the institute of family and can trigger a demographic crisis.’

International bodies including Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have condemned the law.

But perhaps the most significant threat comes from Netherlands Foreign Affairs minister Uri Rosenthal.

Speaking in the Dutch parliament, he has already said that if the law passes the European Union (EU) should suspend plans to allow Ukrainians visa-free access to Europe.

His threat is significant because all European foreign ministers have to agree to visa changes. So just his one vote could push the visa liberalization off the agenda.

Ukraine's relations with the European Union are already under strain after the EU shelved a landmark association agreement with Kyiv due to a seven-year prison sentence handed down to opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko.

The EU has rarely pushed LGBT rights so vigorously in the past but its diplomacy with Ukraine, which wants to join the EU, has the potential to be significant.

The European Parliament has already said the proposals breach free speech obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Meanwhile Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have been quick to condemn yesterday’s anti-gay vote in the Ukrainian Parliament, the Verkhovna Rada.

Ulrike Lunacek MEP, co-president of the LGBT Intergroup in the European Parliament, said: ‘Ukraine has set itself on a collision course with the rest of Europe. This law is not only backward-looking; it is purely anti-democratic, informed by nothing else than prejudice, and fully disrespects Ukraine’s legal obligations.

‘I expected more from my Ukrainian colleagues, but in pre-election times, it is easy to score cheap points by witch-hunting the LGBT community. This is the 21st century, and diversity exists in all our societies.’

Sophie in ’t Veld MEP, vice-president of the LGBT Intergroup, added: ‘Rather than moving closer to Europe, Ukraine is taking a giant step away from Europe and its values. No country that restricts free speech and violates the rights of its LGBT citizens can expect to remain quietly in the family of European nations.

‘I am furious that Ukraine decides to blithely attack a vulnerable minority by denying them the right to free speech, and I expect the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly and Committee of Ministers to be strict and impartial in condemning this move.’

The International Lesbian and Gay Association in Europe (ILGA-Europe) has said the law is so poorly defined it would be open to challenge.

Others have even suggested that Ukraine’s proposals would criminalize children who deliver newspapers if they contained positive articles about gay people.

‘If voted into law, it would lead to the further marginalization of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans community in the country and would limit the work of human rights defenders,” Evelyne Paradis, Executive Director of ILGA-Europe said.

And the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) has also condemned the proposed law.

‘Restrictions on rights may not be discriminatory, and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is clearly prohibited under international law,’ said Alli Jernow, senior legal adviser at the ICJ.

ILGA-Europe has also called for European institutions to take action.

They say if the bill goes further the EU should halt negotiations with Ukraine. And they want the Council of Europe to unequivocally denounce it to the Ukrainian government.

The bill is now due to go before a second vote, which is scheduled for 16 October but may be delayed.

After that the Chair of the Parliament and President Viktor Yanukovich would need to sign the bill before it would become law.

However, the country goes to the polls on 28 October to elect the new Verkhovna Rada parliament and with 78% of Ukrainians viewing homosexuality negatively, according to a 2011 poll, some say the bill could play well domestically.

Πηγή:www.gaystarnews.com

Obama has made FBI and CIA gay, says family activist.

Camenker, a US family rights and pro-life activist said the FBI and CIA have gone gay and that a terrorist movement de-listed homosexuality as a mental illness.

According to Brian Camenker a family rights and pro-life activist the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) became gay and a threat to the family.

He also said that an ‘extreme terrorist movement’ was behind the removal of homosexuality from the list of mental illnesses.

Appearing on the Voice of Christian Youth Americaprogram Crosstalk, with host Jim Schneider, Camenker head of the MassResistance organization said: ‘It’s unbelievable. ... They have started a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender program on their careers website and they apparently have even gone from there to embracing the gay agenda, having a gay advisory committee, welcoming homosexuals as FBI agents, getting involved with pride events, but more than that going to gay pride events and encouraging homosexual activists to report hate crimes and working with them against pro-family groups.

‘…It is very, very frightening to see. The FBI is very powerful and they can do a lot of damage if they are out to get you.

‘We’ve seen that in the schools, we’ve seen that all over the place. We’re really scared about the FBI being this out homosexual organization.’

According to Camenker even the CIA isn’t ‘safe’ anymore from the ‘gay agenda. In the old days you thought of the CIA as being this internal spy organization but now what they are doing is they are actually participating in these activities [like gay pride events]’.

Camenker went on to lament that gays are no longer banned from serving in the CIA but instead the agency is participating in the ‘gay agenda’ adding: ‘Man, this is really, really, really bad.’

Camenker argued on the MassResistance website that: ‘The US military and State Department aren’t the only branches of the US government to “go gay”.

‘Since the Obama Administration took control, the FBI and CIA, the two main federal law enforcement and surveillance organizations, have fully embraced the homosexual and transgender movements, and appear to be poised to crack down on pro-family groups and citizens who are critical.’

Camenker regards Barack Obama as ‘more aggressive at pushing the radical homosexual and transgender agendas than anyone could possibly have imagined.

‘The fact that the mainstream media (and most of the conservative media) is almost completely silent about this gives him even more cover to continue. In a second term, it would unquestionably get even worse.’

Camenker is also concerned that the Republican candidate Mitt Romney has been recruited into the ‘gay agenda’ saying: ‘When Romney announced to a national audience that he would support ‘gay rights’ and in effect be the most pro-homosexual Republican president ever, that didn’t give us much confidence.’

Towards the end of the program on VCY Camenker criticized California’s new law limiting the practice of harmful and discredited sexual orientation conversion therapy on minors. He claimed that ‘an extreme terrorist movement in the medical community’ was behind the removal of homosexuality from mental illness listing.

He also claimed that conversion therapy works as ‘there is a whole world of ex-gays around’.

He warned that the new California law will be especially bad for ‘these kids who have been preyed upon by the homosexual movement’ and that homosexuality for them should be seen as ‘just a fad.’

Later, Camenker and program host Schneider agreed with a caller’s rant against homosexuality and said that it is not a sexual orientation but an ‘addiction’ and ‘deviation that goes against nature itself.’ 

Πηγή:www.gaystarnews.com

French mayor says gay marriage would lead to polygamy, incest and paedophilia.

Mayor of the 8th borough of Paris warned that France's proposed marriage equality bill would lead to taboos like incest and paedophilia being legalised. His words were sharply criticized.

The mayor of Paris’s 8th borough (arrondissement), François Lebel, stated, in his official municipal publication, that France’s upcoming legalization of same-sex marriage could open the door to polygamy, incest and paedophilia.

Quoted in the French dailyLibération, Lebel wrote: 'If the immemorial taboo of heterosexual marriage will be blown away, who and what will now oppose that other taboos, much less ancient, much less universal, will fall in turn?’, asked Lebel, who states that he is ‘personally opposed to a marriage of this nature’.

'For example: how could we oppose polygamy in France tomorrow, which is taboo in Western civilization? Why should a legal age for marriage be maintained? Why continue to prohibit consanguineous marriage, paedophilia, incest that are practices still commonplace worldwide?

‘The door is now open to a lethal spectacle of the age of legal marriage with everyone doing anything with anyone and anything!’, he concluded.

François Lebel, a member of the opposition right wing party UMP, who was not available for comments, was clear that he had written his critique of marriage equality before a similar condemnation from France's Catholic Cardinal Philippe Barbarin.

Former prime Minister of France, François Fillon, of the UMP, refused to condemn Lebel’s statements: ‘I think that the president of the republic and the prime minister would do well to think twice before opening this debate [on gay marriage] now.

‘Because I think that in our current political, social and economic climate that is o, we will attend the proliferation of these kinds of arguments (...) on both sides.

We will see deeply divided and offended French [people].

We will see the return of homophobia’, warned François Fillon who is also a candidate to the presidency of the UMP party.

Others politicians strongly condemned Lebel’s statements.

The leader of the Left Front in the council of Paris, Ian Brossat, slammed Mr. Lebel words as ‘monstrous’ saying that: ‘they are clearly homophobic. It is distressing that a borough mayor transforms a municipal newsletter in tabloid of the far right at the expense of the taxpayer'.

Christophe Girard mayor of the 9th borough of Paris, of the ruling socialist party, tweeted that Lebel’s statement was 'pathetic and insulting to millions of men and women who love like everyone else'.

Mayor of the 1st district Jean-François Legaret and leader of the UMP in the council of Paris council also disapproved of Lebel’s statements: ‘these are words that I obviously do not share and do not seem likely to advance thinking on the law’.

French Association of LGBT families (ADFH) denounced Lebel's statement: 'It is by constant undermining of the identity and family life that some people like François Lebel help fuel homophobia'.

Πηγή:www.gaystarnews.com

Jamaica to teach kids to be straight,not gay.

Jamaica’s minister of education says schools should promote heterosexual relationships, but not gay.

Jamaica minister of education Ronald Thwaites said that the 'homosexual lifestyle' would not be promoted in the education system.

The decision follows an announcement by the minister last month to withdraw and to revise the Health and Family Life Education (HFLE) curriculum for public schools as the teaching manual mentioned homosexuality.

Thwaites emphasised the importance of the HFLE curriculum but said only heterosexual relationships would be promoted in the education system, while expressing tolerance for those who chose alternative lifestyles.

‘I wish to make it quite clear that in the rewrite of that particular aspect of it, however it came to be, we are not going to be promoting homosexuality in this country. We're just not going to do it.

‘We are going to promote healthy heterosexual relationships, but with a tolerance and compassion for those who adopt a different lifestyle. There is a difference between grooming and conditioning, and being tolerant; and that distinction is quite possible for us to craft’, quoted in the daily Jamaica Observer.

Last month Thwaites ordered the withdrawal and a revision of the sections of the HLFE manual to be used in grades seven to nine, following a media storm about it touching upon the subject of homosexuality.

Thwaites promised to have the ‘offending sections’ rewritten and back in schools in two months.

Some of the questions in the manual asked if teenagers had anal sex; whether they ever thought they were gay; knew their HIV status and if they had multiple partners.

The daily Jamaica Observer reported that some education experts said the questions pertinent as some adolescents were having sex from an early age and were indulging in anal sex.

They also said the manual, funded in part by international agencies, had undergone extensive review among teachers and guidance counsellors.

Thwaits however insisted that some of the questions should not be asked and only heterosexual lifestyles should be promoted.

‘It was totally unacceptable that that material should even have been issued.

‘The important thing is that we balance an appropriate exposure of sexuality and of human relationships to young people, but in an instance where you are not promoting and advancing a particular lifestyle which many consider to be inappropriate.’

The minister also thanked a number of churches and concerned groups which placed a full-page advertisement in the Jamaica Observer on Monday (1 Otcober) expressing grave concern about the curriculum and supporting his decision to have the offending parts withdrawn and rewritten.

Speaking with Gay Star News, Maurice Tomilson, Jamaican lawyer and leading LGBT rights advocate commented: ‘Jamaica’s minister of education, Roman Catholic Deacon Ronald Thwaites, has finally shown his true colours. He flatly rejects established scientific evidence that homosexuality is naturally occurring in 450 species in nature (including humans) and also wants Jamaican students to remain ignorant of that fact.

‘His claim to be in support of tolerance is hollow, when he clearly states that the only “healthy” relationship is a heterosexual one.

‘Thanks to his now stated policy of exclusion, LGBT students will continue to be denied accurate information on how to negotiate issues of sexuality.

‘These students will also continue enduring horrific acts of bullying and abuse by their homophobic classmates who will remain ignorant about homosexuality.

‘Thanks to this Minister, yet another generation of Jamaicans will never know what our national motto “Out of Many, One People” truly means. They will therefore be ill-equipped to function in modern pluralistic societies.’

Πηγή:www.gaystarnews.com

Ukraine votes for anti-gay propaganda law.

Ukraine Parliament deputies approve law against homosexuality with landslide vote in first reading

02 OCTOBER 2012 | BY TRIS REID-SMITH

The Ukraine Parliament has voted massively in favor of a new law which would ban ‘propaganda’ about homosexuality.

Within the last hour 289 deputies voted for bill 8711, nobody voted against and just one abstained. Another 60 deputies were absent from the chamber.

The vote today (2 October) had only been announced yesterday, giving LGBT rights campaigners little time to organize against it.

Despite that 20 community activists and campaigners representing various organizations and initiatives gathered to protest against the proposed law.

They urged members of parliaments to reject it, saying it is against human rights. Police attended to protect the protestors.

Olena Shevchenko, of Insight organization, is at the forefront of the campaign to stop the homophobic law.

She told Gay Star News: ‘It is quite serious. It is not just about LGBT rights. It can be about anything, because it is just censorship.

‘It is not clear what is counted as “propaganda” under the proposed law. It could be an interview in the media or a protest. Or you could just be out on the street with your partner and someone could complain to say that is propaganda.’

It introduces administrative and criminal liability for the importing, manufacturing and distributing products that ‘promote’ homosexuality.

Campaigners say it will censor the media, civil society activists and human rights defenders.

A second vote is now scheduled for 16 October, although it may be delayed. If that goes the same way, the bill will be signed by the chair of parliament and the president and become law.

The law is similar to that passed in St Petersburg in Russia earlier this year, which sparked international condemnation.

In June we reported 60,000 had signed a petition by AllOut against the Ukranian propaganda law.

It has been condemned by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the UN Office in Ukraine, the European Parliament and the Secretary General of the Council of Europe.

Now the activists in the Ukraine want the European Union (EU) and Council of Europe to intervene to stop it going through. Ukraine is a member of the Council of Europe but not the EU.

Πηγή:www.gaystarnews.com

Activism is art in China.

The currator of an exhibition exploring feminism and sexuality in China argues LGBT activism is art.

An exhibition exploring feminism and sexuality in China was a big hit in Shanghai last year and is now showing in San Francisco.

Gay Star News talks to Abby Chen, the currator of WOMEN我們 (the Chinese characters mean 'we' or 'us', pronounced 'wo men') featuring 13 artists, about activism as art, sexual harrasment on the subway and feminism in China's LGBT movement.

Why did you decide to put on this exhibition now?

I did this exhibition last December in Shanghai for the first time. To my surprise it was overwhelmingly successful and we didn't really get harrassed [by the police] in anyway, probably becase we were off the radar.

And the project continued to evolve and the Chinese Culture Center in San Francisco saw the response and saw the content and asked me if I wanted to bring the show to San Francisco.

Which artists do you have representing the LGBTQ side in the exhibition? How are they doing it?

When I was in the conceptualizing stage for Women我們 we were invited by a feminist conference to Shanghai. They invited me to curate a show in conjunction with the conference.

After I accepted the invitation I decided that it had to be more than just about feminism itself. I wanted to use that as an entry point to expand the topic to the LGBTQ community. They're really not so visible in China, even though in recent years it has got better.

So I was very adament about not only including the visual culture that comes from this community but more importantly the advocacy groups, the NGOs, that are behind the visibility of LGBTQ people in China. I feel like their existence is almost like an artist. They have to be very creative to survive.

So the NGO groups were presented as part of this exhibition, there are a few artists who talk about sexuality and gender ambiguity,  there are artists who are openly gay and artists who are ambigious about their sexual orientation.

The key issue is how do we make the culture visible in China and how do we bring this expression to the public. The three themes that make up the foundation of my exhibition are capabilty, authority and possibility. The artwork in the exhibition needs to be able to convey that.

Which artists specifically representing LGBTQ life?

One of the artists is Eagle Ho, he has three names. He's also known as Er Gao and his real name is He Qi Wo. So just the name already shows about this multi-faceted individual. And he's openly gay and a contemporary dancer.

I first got to know him in Guangzhou [where he's from] when I was doing the gender identity symposium there. As a young dancer he insisted on doing independent projects so he'd have the freedom to do the kind of dance he is interested in and most of his dance is about sexuality and identity.

I really love his work but I was struggling with how I could present his work in an exhibition. They I found out that he made a documentary film called Little One [scroll down to watch a preview] which has his own dancing as well as the living conditions of the LGBT community in Guangzhou.

Another artist Mu Xi does not identify any sort of sexual orientation. But one of the key things when I was doing the show is I wanted to talk about the idea of feminism and the idea of LGBTQ, so the sexual orientation or the gender itself of the artists participating is not the most important part.

Where is feminism at in China?

For us living in San Francisco it's hard to come across a man who will say he's not a feminist. In China, so many women are even afraid of the label feminist, let alone men.

It's a very demonized idea in China, for lots of people. For example one of the participanting artists Elaine Ho, she was born in Florida but is Chinese-American, said she never considered herself a feminist until she was being referred to so many times as a feminist when I was in China. She said I guess that says a lot about feminism itself in China.

But definitely as I have been doing the exhibition and talks in China I started to realize how demonized the word feminism is. I started to realize that people viewed me differently when I associated myself with the label.

Moving away from the terminology, how are women's rights in China generally?

After 1949 the Chinese Communists seemed on the surface to bring more equality for women, including equal pay. So immediately after 1949 women seemed to feel that they got equal status. But they needed to get a job otherwise they couldn't survive.

But we've seen that equality has gone backwards in recent decades, which is frightening. For example, it didn't dawn on me and my mum until she hit 55 and she had to retire five years earlier than the men. Even though a lot of studies show that women live longer than men, but that's not the point. The point is that women don't have equal working opportunity as the men.

One piece that is in the exhibition is a humor piece called Touch Me. It's a metal bra made by female artist Gao Ling that she wore on the subway. This was in response to the Shanghai subway official Weibo [Chinese Twitter] issuing advice to women that said wear less provactive clothes to avoid sexual harrassment.

The protest was really successful. It was reported in the national press and TV, but Shanghai local press were prohibited from covering the story. In the current exhibition in San Francisco we have the whole video of what happened.

So the retirement issue, and the sexual harrassment is coming more and more severe. And in Wuhan right now they have subway carriages only for women which is going back to segregation. It's disappointing.

How to feminsim and the moverment for LGBT rights intersect in China?

With the LGBTQ movement we see that gay men who have taken leadership don't really see femisim as an issue. We're starting to see a nuanced shift that could be troublesome in the future.

At the same time there are more and more issues, like the subway annoucement, that are pushing the issue forward, which is encouraging. For example the Shanghai Nu Ai, the lesbian group, the leader of that group Xiang Qi told me that they can't have a lesbian group without advocating for femism and vice versa.

How was the exhibition recieved in Shanghai and San Francsico?

We had a screening in Shanghai Rockbund Art Museum and it was packed - people could not even come in - lots of people were standing watching the film. And the same thing for the actual exhibition. It was in a remote location because all the gallerys were charging rental money, so the venue was really far away from the center on the subway. But it was super-packed on the opening night. Shanghai Nu Ai were performing The Vagina Monolgues that night.

And then when we got to San Francisco, then it was a new audience at the Chinese Culture Center that we haven't seen there before. The center is located in Chinatown where the community is actually very conservative. I find as a currator I'm expected to deliver something really traditional. But through this exhibition we were able to break that mould and connect to different people.

WOMEN我們 is at the Chinese Culture Center in San Francisco until 30 November.

Πηγή:www.gaystarnews.com