Moscow Mayor Sued for 'Queer' Comments

MOSCOW - Gay rights activists in Moscow plan to take the city's rampantly homophobic mayor to court for insulting their dignity during an interview in which he said "queers" undermined a morally healthy society.
A Moscow court rejected a previous case made by gay rights campaigners against 72-year-old mayor Yuri Luzhkov in 2007 after he described their marches as "satanic" and banned one.
Prominent gay rights activist Nikolai Alexeyev said on Wednesday that lawyers would present a new case against Luzhkov to a Moscow court this week and later to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
"Nobody in Russia can win against the authorities. This is about raising awareness," he told Reuters by telephone.
Besides banning several gay parades in Moscow, Luzhkov has also blamed homosexuals for the spread of HIV/AIDS.
The issue of gay rights in Russia heated up in May, which saw the rejection of a lesbian couple's attempt to apply for a marriage license and the banning of a gay rights march to coincide with the Eurovision Song Contest, held in Moscow for the first time.
Police detained around 80 people, including Alexeyev, who tried to hold the march anyway.
Luzhkov's latest comments, urging Alexeyev and other activists to take him to court, were broadcast on Tuesday by a state-run television program.
"Our society has healthy morals and rejects all these queers," Interfax news agency quoted Luzhkov as saying on TV Center. "If you even imagine that they get permission to hold their parade and gather, they will simply be killed."
In 2006, militant Russian Orthodox believers and neo-fascists attacked a gay rights protest, injuring some of the demonstrators.
The gay scene in Moscow is relatively small and low profile but accessible. Most clubs and bars aimed at the gay community are known through word of mouth rather than being openly advertised.
Alexeyev said Luzhkov was using security concerns as a smokescreen and did not want to see gay activists on Moscow's streets.
"If the mayor of Moscow cannot provide security for a group of 100 people then he should not be mayor," Alexeyev said.
The vocal gay activists are a minority in Moscow's homosexual community and have not attracted large numbers to their protests.
from Reuters India

ACLU Demands LGBT Website Access For TN Students

KNOX COUNTY, TENNESSEE - The ACLU is threatening the Knox County, Tennessee, school system with a lawsuit if it does not meet their web demands.
The American Civil Liberties Union is demanding that the school system unblock "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" websites by April 29, 2009, or face a lawsuit. The ACLU claims the filtering software employed by Knox County -- which is provided by Education Networks of America -- blocks students from viewing nonsexual websites that host content they consider protected free speech.
According to an ACLU press release, the default settings on the ENA software block LGBT websites such as Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG); the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN); and Human Rights Campaign (HRC). The latter is the largest pro-homosexual lobbying group in the U.S.
Knox County schools are engaging in "illegal viewpoint discrimination," claims the ACLU, by denying students access to "political and educational information about LGBT issues" on school computers. In the ACLU's eyes, that constitutes "censorship" and denies students information for research purposes.
Matt Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel, says the ACLU is throwing its weight around again. "This new threat by the ACLU against these schools in Tennessee is simply an attempt to push the homosexual agenda down the throats of every American. This in fact is blatant bullyism," says the attorney.
According to Staver, the school does not have to comply with the ACLU's demands. Many of the websites that are blocked do indeed have inappropriate content, he says.
"They're not just talking about general issues with respect to homosexuality," he explains. "They're pushing a very sexualized agenda in their advertisement and in their content. The school is doing the right thing not to allow these websites to be made available to students in school."
The Christian attorney argues that homosexual activists want to use the schools as "an incubator to sexualize the next generation."
Meanwhile, the ACLU says it is "eager" to find out if any other Tennessee school districts that use the ENA filtering software are "violating students' Constitutional rights by restricting access to LGBT sites."
from One News Now

Breaking The Silence Around Bullying

Despondent over daily bullying and harassment at his middle school in Springfield, Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, a sweet-faced 11-year-old, hanged himself earlier this month. His mother, Sirdeaner L. Walker, found him hanging by an extension cord in their home.
Before this tragic moment, she had attempted to get help and support from the administrators of his school, the New Leadership Charter School, where her sixth-grader endured taunting and threats of violence, some of which included anti-gay epithets. Carl played football, soccer, and basketball. He belonged to a Boy Scout troop, was active in his church, and did not identify as gay. Another young person ended a promising life, alone and scared and crushed by his peers' degradations.
The terrible truth is that Carl was not the first child to end his life, nor the last.
Eric Mohat, 17, from Mentor, Ohio, went home from school on March 27, 2007, and shot himself in the head. According to court papers filed in a lawsuit by his parents against his school, Mohat suffered harassment and bullying that took the form of constant name-calling, teasing, and verbal intimidation as well as pushing, shoving, and hitting both in class and in hallways of the high school. His parents do not seek punitive damages; instead, they want the school district to recognize the suicide as the result of homophobia and to implement an anti-bullying program to prevent other similar tragedies.
According to the National Youth Violence Prevention Center, nearly one in three youths nationwide report either being bullied, having bullied someone, or both. For students who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT), the statistics are grimmer. "Nearly 9 out of 10 LGBT youth (86.2 percent) reported being verbally harassed at school in the past year because of their sexual orientation, nearly half (44.1 percent) reported being physically harassed, and about a quarter (22.1 percent) reported being physically assaulted," according to the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network 2007 National School Climate Survey of more than 6,000 LGBT students.
The report continues, "Nearly two-thirds of LGBT students (60.8 percent) who experience harassment or assault never reported the incident to the school. . . . Of those who did report the incident, nearly a third (31.1 percent) said the school staff did nothing in response."
Nothing in response? Nothing to help young people who rise each morning not knowing if school brings another day of hell on earth or something a bit more tolerable? As parents and school leaders, we cannot tolerate this status quo.
Here in Massachusetts, legislators have filed 14 bills that address bullying in schools. As caring adults, we must work for an anti-bullying law that guarantees public school environments are free of bullying and harassment based on actual or perceived race, national origin, ethnic group, religion, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, weight, or sex. While a listing of actual or perceived characteristics like race or sexual orientation and gender identity/expression may seem unnecessary, it is important that school personnel be attuned to the specific ways that students are targeted.
The Golden Rule hasn't created safe school environments.
My eighth-grade son reports that he often hears and challenges anti-gay slurs and name-calling on the playground, in the hallways, and on his school bus. Would that every kid could be so brave, but many children do not have the self-confidence and support to challenge anti-gay slurs slung around the schoolyard. Students, teachers, and school leaders all need to help end the scourge of bullying.
Carl would have celebrated his 12th birthday yesterday; instead, his mother was expected to "break the silence" at an event in Springfield marking the end of the national Day of Silence, a program to raise awareness about LGBT bullying and harassment at school.
Let's join Sirdeaner Walker by breaking the silence around bullying. Let's ensure that our political leaders take fast action to implement strong school safety policies that include accountability mechanisms, training for school personnel, and specific definitions of bullying behavior and its lonely targets.
from The Boston Globe

Brazil Judge Doesn't Want Gay's Playing Soccer

A Brazilian judge faces legal action for homophobia after giving a judgment in which he said football was a masculine sport, not a homosexual one.
The judge is reported to have said no-one who had watched the golden era of Pele and others in the 1970s could ever consider having a homosexual idol.
His comments emerged in a case brought by Brazilian footballer Richarlyson.
Richarlyson, who plays for Sao Paulo, was named on national TV as a gay player by the manager of another team.
The suggestion that a leading Brazilian footballer was gay had already been the subject of considerable public speculation.
Richarlyson started legal proceedings against the manager, claiming that the public outing on television had damaged his image.
Controversial
In reaching a decision to effectively set the case aside, Judge Manoel Maximiniano Junqueira Filho said football was a virile masculine sport and not a homosexual one.
If you were a homosexual, it would be better to admit it or to conceal it completely, the judge was reported as saying.
However, if that was the case, it would be better to abandon the playing field, he added.
The judge said those who remembered the World Cup of 1970 and saw golden players such as Pele and Tostao would never consider a homosexual idol.
It was not shown to be reasonable to accept homosexuality in Brazilian football because this would damage the equilibrium and uniformity of thinking of the team.
A complaint is to be lodged about the judge's comments, which seem likely to become more controversial than the original legal action and his decision to shelve the case is also the subject of an appeal.
from The BBC

Gay Couple Wins Homophobia Case

MONTREAL - Theo Wouters and Roger Thibault are arguably the most high-profile homosexual couple in Quebec and, partly as a result, they say their lives in a quiet corner of suburbia have been "sheer hell."
Ever since they went public with complaints of threats and harassment by their neighbours in the bedroom community of Pointe Claire, they say they have been victims of homophobia.
And now, in the latest chapter in their public and acrimonious battle, they have won a victory at the Quebec Human Rights Commission, which has ordered a local youth and his father to pay them $10,000 in damages for violating their rights.
The agency ruled that Mr. Wouters and Mr. Thibault, retirees who have been a couple for more than 30 years, were the victims of harassment by a local teenage boy who threw projectiles onto their lawn and threatened to smash their faces.
The incidents unfolded in 2003, one year after Mr. Wouters and Mr. Thibault boosted their public profile by becoming the first gay couple in Quebec to join in a civil union.
"This is happening because we're an open gay couple," Mr. Wouters said from his home yesterday. "We didn't accept being harassed in the first place, and it all escalated from there. The last 10 years have been sheer hell for Roger and I."
The Quebec commission said, in a ruling issued in June and made public by the couple yesterday, that Mr. Wouters and Mr. Thibault had suffered discrimination based on their sexual orientation. Bolstering their case were video cameras that had been installed outside their home and paid for by Quebec's victim-compensation agency.
Although the couple says a group of teenaged boys in a pickup truck harassed them, the commission did not pursue the case against the other youths because they live in Alberta, commission spokesman Robert Sylvestre said.
But it did uphold the case against a youth from Pointe Claire, aged 17 at the time, who openly admitted his disdain for the couple. He acknowledged to the human-rights agency that he'd thrown a lit fuse and rolls of toilet paper onto the Wouters-Thibault property, and threatened the couple with violence once while they were in their car.
The youth, whose name was not released, also stated about the couple: "I didn't like their lifestyle, found them arrogant and it bothers me that they make their story so public," the commission wrote.
The boy's father is being held accountable for paying moral damages because his son was a minor, Mr. Sylvestre said.
The Montreal civil rights group that fought the couple's case says the pair paid a price for their notoriety and their choice to live in suburbia. "We tend to see Quebec as a very tolerant society, but in practice it all depends on where you live," said Fo Niemi of the Centre for Research-Action for Race Relations. "The suburbs are very conservative and family-oriented and heterosexual, so sometimes [gays] aren't seen as very positive by the neighbours."
In 2002, the Quebec Human Rights Commission ordered two of their neighbours to pay the pair $36,000 in damages. But in a separate, criminal case, a Quebec Court judge in Montreal later that year cleared one of those neighbours of criminal harassment and assault.
And the couple's fight isn't over. Mr. Wouters and Mr. Thibault have another case pending before the human rights commission, this time because they say a neighbourhood father came to their door in 2005 and threatened their lives.
"We have no choice," said Mr. Wouters, a 65-year-old former couturier and milliner. "We have suffered greatly for the last 10 years and I simply don't want this to happen to other people."
from The Globe And Mail

Sports World Still Won't Accept Gays

New Jersey will very soon become the third state to allow civil unions between same-sex couples. "Queer Eye", a reality show that features five openly gay men, is one of the more popular programs on television. Some mainstream newspapers, including this one, now include same-sex commitment ceremonies in their wedding announcements.
In many ways, it is easier now than ever to be a gay person. Easier, that is, unless you are a gay person who plays a big-league sport.
For two weeks, the Web has been crawling with a rumor that an NBA player has started coming out to his friends and family as bisexual. The original report, which appeared on a gossipy site, quotes an anonymous friend of the player as saying the player has been involved in a long-term homosexual relationship. The lead to the story says the NBA is about to be "rocked by one of the biggest scandals in league history."
Whether or not this particular item is true, maybe it is about time the NBA and the rest of the major-league sports world was rocked. It is about time that sports caught up to the rest of us, and that one's sexual orientation doesn't rank as a big-time scandal.
What sports really needs is a gay Jackie Robinson, someone to shake up the bigoted attitudes that seem to be both prevalent and tolerated in male team sports.
Yes, there are players who have admitted after retiring that they are gay, among them NFL running back Dave Kopay, Giants linebacker Roy Simmons and major-league outfielders Glenn Burke and Billy Bean (not the Oakland general manager).
But hard as it is to believe, no active player in the NBA, NHL, NFL or Major League Baseball has ever come out of the closet.
And there are plenty of reasons why.
"The biggest reason is that no one else has ever done it," said Dan Woog, who has written several books on openly gay athletes, including his most recent "Jocks II: Coming Out to Play."
"People have come out in every other area of life: business, education, the arts, even the military. Right now, no one has done it because no one knows what will happen."
That's right, sports ranks behind even the military as far as proliferating a culture that is openly hostile to gays.
In fact, nearly every month there seems to be another headline about one athlete using a homosexual slur to insult another. The most recent came last week when Steelers linebacker Joey Porter, upset by what he thought was a cheap shot by Browns tight end Kellen Winslow, called Winslow weak, soft and "a fag." (To the NFL's credit, he was fined for the remark, making it possibly the first time a league has fined one of its players for making a homosexual slur.)
In many sports, calling someone gay still passes as the ultimate insult.
"Sports is still one of the last great bastions of what we think is masculine culture," said Eric Marcus, who writes extensively on gay issues and was the co-author of diver Greg Louganis' autobiography. "People treat being gay as if you are an ax murderer. I say, 'What's the big deal?' But if you're someone in sports, it's a very big deal."
Louganis, who came out after his Olympic diving career was over, spent years denying rumors that he was gay. "He was tortured," Marcus said. Now, however, diving is one of those sports, like figure skating and gymnastics, in which no one seems to care about a competitor's sexual orientation. Women's team sports, for a variety of reasons, also have plenty of athletes who are openly gay.
Yet in the big-money world of men's team sports, it isn't so easy. A gay player who might consider coming out has plenty to consider: What will be the reaction of his teammates, his league, his owners, his fans, his sponsors and - maybe most of all - his teammates and fellow competitors?
In contact sports such as football and hockey, living openly as a homosexual could be downright dangerous. In all team sports, it will be a distraction for at least a while. If an athlete is on a good team, or is having a particularly good season, does he want to take away from the focus?
Of course, Robinson faced all that every day, and now he is heralded as a pioneer, an important figure in both sports and civil rights history. The bet here is that there is a gay player in the game today who is capable of doing the same.
from Newsday / Barbara Barker

PM's daughter Slams Lack Of Support For Gay Parade

ISRAEL - Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's daughter Dana told Army Radio on Sunday that the struggle of the homosexual community in Israel has just began, charging that the community's rights remain violated.
"There is a continuing history of violence and hatred, there is homophobia. Coming out of the closet is not a one-time struggle," Dana, a lesbian, said.
She said: "I thought it is important to tell those who were not there what those who were there felt. I was happy to be there with the sweetest people there is.
"But on the other hand there is a sad feeling in that they took us into a closed area. It was a feeling of being in jail. At the entrance we were asked to put on a pink ribbon and the feeling was that the event is too sterile."
She claimed that a violent campaign was waged against the community and the event's organizers.
"After what happened I am sure the community's leader should not give up and therefore we have to march. The fear campaign is a problem. The fact that we were distanced from the public teaches us that something in the separation war succeeded, and that's what turned the event into a bitter victory …
"I think that the community was offended in this struggle but there is another side to that. Now, homosexual and lesbian haredim, and there are haredi homosexuals and lesbian, know they are not alone in the world."
Olmert said that the media presented both sides in an equal manner boosted haredim opposing the parade.
"There is on the one hand a group of people who want to march without violence, and their message is not one of hate. And on the other hand there is a group of people who express themselves violently – and the media presents both sides in a politically correct manner. I believe the media should take a stance."
She was asked about her father's silence over the issue and his unwillingness to support the community.
"I would have been happy if, as Eliyahui Yishai called it 'the abomination parade', someone had answered him from the government system … I don't like to speak as the daughter of my father. I don't act in the public sphere as such, but I keep to myself the right to express myself when I think I am right and this is one such time."
from Y Net News