GLBT DIGEST December 27, 2008

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New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/
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-Islamic Revival Tests Bosnia’s Secular Cast
Thirteen years after a war in which 100,000 people were killed, a majority of them Muslims, Bosnia is undergoing an Islamic revival.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/27/world/europe/27islam.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=GAY&st=cse

-Boy Scouts of America Plans Campaigns to Lure Hispanics
As it prepares to turn 100, the Boy Scouts of America is facing a huge test: drawing Hispanics into its declining, mostly white ranks. “We either are going to figure out how to make scouting the most exciting, dynamic organization for Hispanic kids, or we’re going to be out of business,” said Rick Cronk, a former national president of the Boy Scouts and chairman of the World Scout Committee.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/27/us/27scout.html?scp=3&sq=GAY&st=cse


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Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
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-Religion's Big and Unprecedented Role in '08 Politics
From the Presidential Election to the Debate on Gay Marriage, Faith-Based Issues Dominated
By Kevin Eckstrom
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/26/AR2008122601421.html

-Ending Impunity for Rape
Marianne Mollmann
In too many cases, forced sex is seen as not rape but 'bad luck' or something 'much deserved.'
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/26/AR2008122601493.html


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Forwarded from Kenneth Sherrill - Ken's List
Kenneth.Sherrill@hunter.cuny.edu
kenslist@groups.queernet.org
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Contact rays.list@comcast.net if can't access the article

-On Transition Website, Obama Promises More to Gay Community
This is interesting -- and I'm not entirely certain what it means. Obama's transition website, Change.gov, includes a section called 'Agenda' that outlines the administration's objectives in any of a couple dozen policy areas. For the most part, the 'Agenda' section is a near carbon-copy of the 'Issues' section on Obama's campaign website, BarackObama.com. In the area of 'Civil Rights', however, there is a significant difference between the campaign website and Change.gov, the transition website. Specifically, the transition website makes a much broader range of commitments to the gay and lesbian community.
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/12/on-transition-website-obama-promises.html

-Calif. attorney general's ballot fight is first in 4 decades
California Attorney General Jerry Brown's refusal to defend the Proposition 8 marriage ban in court marks the first such opposition to the outcome of a ballot measure since 1964. That year, Attorney General Thomas Lynch declined to defend a ban reversing a fair-housing law that would have permitted racial discrimination in property sales and rentals. Brown's decision is getting a mixed reaction from former attorneys general, according to this article. San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/24/MNB414U5HV.DTL

-Michigan: Triangle Foundation
Alicia Skillman to Lead Triangle Foundation
Triangle Foundation is pleased to announce attorney and long-time community advocate Alicia J. Skillman as Executive Director.
http://www.tri.org/


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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
www.dailyqueernews.com
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-Spanish Judge Suspended Over Lesbian Adoption Bid
Associated Press | Boston Herald
MADRID, Spain — A Spanish court says a judge has been suspended for attempting to thwart a woman’s effort to adopt her lesbian partner’s child. The Superior Justice Court in the southeast Murcia region says it suspended Judge Fernando Ferrin Calamita for two years. The court also ordered the Catholic judge to pay the woman €6,000 ($8,400) in compensation. The woman had been trying to adopt the child born to her partner after they were married in 2005. Read more

-Hour Magazine Give Honor to Hero to Arsham Parsi Among Others!
Richard Burnett | Iranian Queer Railroad
http://www.hour.ca/columns/3dollarbill.aspx?iIDArticle=16328

Here is my 13th annual column of the year’s heroes and zeros.
*Hero After giving birth to a baby girl in July, trans man Thomas Beatie, 34, announced in November that he is pregnant with his second child. “I feel it’s not a male or female desire to have a child,” Beatie says. “It’s a human need.”
*Zero David Letterman, who called Thomas Beatie an “androgynous freak show.”
*Hero Actor James Franco who - when David Letterman demanded on-air what it was like to kiss Sean Penn in the biopic Milk - leaned over and kissed Letterman.
*Zero Heinz, for pulling its U.K. Deli May TV ad featuring two men kissing.
*Hero The New York Rangers, for trying to prevent further homophobic taunting and chanting at Madison Square Garden.
*Heroes The 60 marchers who braved hundreds of violent thugs at their May 11 Gay Pride parade in Chisinau, Moldova; the 35 Pride marchers arrested by police in Moscow on May 31; the 45 Pride marchers attacked by ultra-nationalists in Budapest on July 6; the 2,000 Pride marchers who defied protesters in Warsaw on June 7; the 500 who marched in Calcutta, 700 in Bangalore and 800 in Delhi on June 29; the 18,000 in Taipei on Sept. 27, the largest Pride parade in Asia; and the five million marchers who waved rainbow flags in São Paulo on May 25.

-A Historic Day at the UN
By: DOUG IRELAND
Louis-Georges Tin, the intelligent moving force behind the decriminalization declaration, appeared in New York last week to talk about his initiative and also to sing a vibrant a capella rendition of In an international affirmation of LGBT rights without precedent, a declaration calling for the universal decriminalization of homosexuality, signed by 66 nations, was read from the podium of the United Nations on December 18. At a press conference following the reading of the “Statement on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity” to the UN General Assembly by Argentina’s envoy to the world body, Ambassador Jorge Argüello, the foreign minister of the Netherlands, Maxime Vergahen, declared that “human rights are for all people” and that “there can be no excuse for the prosecution, discrimination, or violation of the human rights of gay, lesbian andtransgendered people.” Verhagen added that the reading of the non-binding declaration and its “broad support” by 66 member states meant that the question of LGBT rights was “no longer taboo [and]… now firmly inscribed on the agenda of the United Nations.” At that same press conference, Rama Yade, the minister for Human Rights in France, which took the initiative in creating the declaration during that nation’s six-month term in the rotating presidency of the European Union, called the reading of the statement “a historic day for LGBT peoples and an excellent day for all who struggle for human rights. ” Read more

-Warren-Endorsed Nigerian Archbishop Backed Anti-Gay Laws
Worse Than Third Reich’s
Bruce Wilson | Talk2Action
As seems to be happening with increasing frequency, a story I’d previously posted at Talk To Action, almost exactly two years ago in this case, has suddenly become rather timely. A number of political bloggers [1, 2, 3] have noted Rick Warren’s support for the virulently anti-gay Archbishop of Nigeria, Peter Akinola, but the story has lacked some needed historical context; In 2006, Warren publicly lionized (literally) Akinola three monthsafter the Archbishop had endorsed legislation more draconian than comparable anti-gay statutes passed prior to World War Two under the Third Reich. topic: Gay Rights As I described in my December 18, 2006 post, a schismatic faction of Virginia Episcopalian churches had just voted to align themselves with the Archbishop of Nigeria, Peter Akinola, who at the time (and probably still) supported draconian anti-Gay legislation that would, among other strictures, “make it illegal for gay men and lesbians to form organizations, read gay literature or eat together in a restaurant.”Although I missed it at the time, the proposed legislation was apparently denounced, according to the current Wikipedia writeup on Akinola, by the US State Department: “The proposed legislation was formally challenged by the United States State Department as a breach of Nigeria’s obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.” It was one of those rare examples from the last eight years, it would seem, in which United States foreign policy clearly aligned in support of basic human rights. Rick Warren, however, appeared to be on the other side of the issue.

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