GLBT DIGEST - October 19, 2009

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Truth Wins Out
http://www.truthwinsout.org
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American Evangelicals Play Role In Uganda Effort To 'Wipe Out' Gays
October 19, 2009
In March, American anti-gay activists traveled to Uganda for a conference that pledged to "wipe out" homosexuality. Seven months later, a draconian bill has been introduced that pledges to make good on this threat. The "Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009" is so severe that it is designed to shred the spirit and suffocate the soul of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Ugandans. If it passes, Uganda will become a predator state that actively hunts down GLBT people to destroy them. Uganda already punished gay intimacy with life in prison. But, apparently that was not harsh enough,
with this bill penalizing anyone who "attempts to commit the offence" with up to seven years in jail. Additionally, a person charged will be forced to undergo an invasive medical examination to determine their HIV status. If the detainees are found to be HIV+, they may be executed.
http://www.truthwinsout.org/pressreleases/2009/10/4397/

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Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
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God vs. Gay? Black vs. White? Marriage Equality's False Divides
By Dennis W. Wiley and Robert M. Hardies
As the struggle for marriage equality moves to the nation's capital, the District of Columbia is debunking many of the myths surrounding this important human rights issue.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/16/AR2009101601977.html/

'It doesn't seem right'
A group plagued by service, cost complaints is awarded $4.5 million. How?
By Debbie Cenziper
Alexander Harrington walked into the house "where miracles happen every day" with a single suitcase and $3 to his name, fresh out of prison and determined not to spend another day doped up in dark alleyways. At 59, he had been living with HIV for more than a decade. Now, he was four years sober with grandchildren he wanted to see. While visiting a local medical clinic, he had heard about a house of second chances, part of a District-funded AIDS nonprofit group called Miracle Hands Community Development Corp., that provided emergency housing, counseling, job training and help with finding a permanent place to live.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/18/AR2009101802571_pf.html/

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Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/
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Gypsies, Jews, Homosexuals Beware: Fidesz Eyes 2010 Elections
By Veronika Gulyas
Are you a Jew, a Gypsy or attracted to your own sex? Members of Hungarian opposition party Fidesz, widely expected to win power in spring 2010, may have a word or two for you. “I love Hungary, I love Hungarian people, and I prefer Hungarian interests to global financial capital, or Jewish capital, if you like, which wants to devour the whole world, but especially, Hungary,” said Fidesz Member of Parliament Oszkar Molnar, who is also mayor of Edeleny, a town of 10,300 inhabitants in Eastern Hungary. Molnar made his remarks at the end of 2008 on a local TV channel, but they’ve just burst into national prominence. (Video in Hungarian here.) The same official in the summer claimed as fact that pregnant Roma women take medication to give birth to “fools to receive higher family subsidies. I have checked this and it’s true; they hit their bellies with a rubber hammer so that they’ll give birth to handicapped kids.”
http://blogs.wsj.com/new-europe/2009/10/19/gypsies-jews-homosexuals-beware-fidesz-eyes-2010-elections/

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Sun-Sentinel
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/
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Gays in the military might hinder its duty
E-mail Cal Thomas at tmseditors@tribune.com.
I am sympathetic to the story told by Joseph Rocha, who claims in a Washington Post opinion column that he was discharged from the Navy because he is gay, though he says he never told anyone. Rocha says his male colleagues concluded he was gay when he wouldn't laugh at their dirty jokes about women or visit prostitutes with them.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/opinion/sfl-19thomassboct19,0,7144831.story/

Obama must make time for gay rights
E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.
As if he didn't have enough headaches. President Barack Obama has to decide not only whether to deploy more troops to Afghanistan but also whether gays and lesbians will be allowed to serve there.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/opinion/sfl-19pagesboct19,0,7794342.story/

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The Advocate
http://advocate.com/
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Straight Women Hot for Gay Vampires
By Julie Bolcer
In an essay for Esquire magazine, writer Stephen Marche sinks his teeth into the current vampire trend, arguing that, “Vampires have overwhelmed pop culture because young straight women want to have sex with gay men.”
http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2009/10/19/Straight_Women_Hot_for_Gay_Vampires/

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365Gay.com
http://www.365gay.com/
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In Mideast, marriage too can be a battlefield
By The Associated Press
(Nicosia, Cyprus) The two couples had never met each other, and probably never would. They had come from opposite sides of a border between longtime enemies. But Elie Wakim and Nada Ghamloush from Lebanon, and Dimitri Stafeev and Olga Zaytseva from Israel, had a problem in common: Belonging to different religions, neither couple could get married in their home country, and had to fly to the Mediterranean island of Cyprus to tie the knot.
http://www.365gay.com/news/in-mideast-marriage-too-can-be-a-battlefield/

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Pink News - UK
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/
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Trans woman found murdered in burnt-out flat
A graduate who was found strangled in her Brighton flat was a trans woman, police have confirmed. Andrea Waddell, 29, a graduate of Durham University, was found dead on Thursday night.
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2009/10/19/trans-woman-found-murdered-in-burnt-out-flat/

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Daily Queer News
http://www.dailyqueernews.com/
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The Other Gay Ballot Battles
John Corvino, columnist, 365gay.com \ 365Gay.com
I’ve spent the last week traveling through rural Wisconsin for a series of diversity lectures at small technical colleges. Lecturing on gay issues at such venues can be eye-opening. It’s a big country out there, and while students today may be a good deal more gay-friendly than they once were, not everyone shares the views of a typical liberal-arts major at NYU or UC-Berkeley.
http://www.dailyqueernews.com/news/10808/

Russian Stars Urge Gay Acceptance
Gay Russia
A group of well-known Russian singers and writers has called for an end to discrimination against gay people. They met after a local official tried to close Moscow’s longest-running gay club, Dusha i Telo, where many of the artists have performed.
http://www.dailyqueernews.com/news/10806/

Got Pot? It’s Legal to Take It on the Plane in Oakland
Josh Richman \ Oakland Tribune \ AlterNet
Oakland International Airport may be the nation’s only airport with a specific policy letting users of medical marijuana travel with the drug. The policy is spelled out in a three-page document quietly enacted last year by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office. It states that if deputies determine someone is a qualified patient or primary caregiver as defined by California law and has eight ounces or less of the drug, he or she can keep it and board the plane.
http://www.dailyqueernews.com/news/10805/

Three Questions for…Theodore Olson
San Francisco Chronicle
Of all the lawyers who might have challenged California’s ban on same-sex marriage, one of the least likely candidates would seem to be Theodore Olson: a high-ranking Justice Department attorney under Ronald Reagan, U.S. solicitor general under George W. Bush, and lawyer for Bush in the Bush vs. Gore case that decided the 2000 presidential election. But when a federal judge in San Francisco held a critical hearing last week in a suit by two same-sex couples challenging Proposition 8, they were represented by Olson and David Boies, his courtroom adversary in Bush vs. Gore. Before the hearing, Olson talked with Chronicle staff writer Bob Egelko about the case.
http://www.dailyqueernews.com/news/10803/

Rebranding America
BONO \ New York Times
A FEW years ago, I accepted a Golden Globe award by barking out an expletive. One imagines President Obama did the same when he heard about his Nobel, and not out of excitement. When Mr. Obama takes the stage at Oslo City Hall this December, he won’t be the first sitting president to receive the peace prize, but he might be the most controversial. There’s a sense in some quarters of these not-so-United States that Norway, Europe and the World haven’t a clue about the real President Obama; instead, they fixate on a fantasy version of the president, a projection of what they hope and wish he is, and what they wish America to be.
http://www.dailyqueernews.com/news/10801/

Preaching the Gospel Would Be Against the Law! (and Other Hate Crime Myths)
David Gibson \ Politics Daily
With a Senate vote expected soon to expand federal hate crimes laws to include sexual orientation, religious conservatives are ramping up the rhetoric against the bill, which passed the House last week. Their anxiety is understandable. Democrats are behind the legislation, and at this month’s gala for the Human Rights Campaign, the leading gay rights lobby, President Obama renewed his pledge to sign the bill.
http://www.dailyqueernews.com/news/10800/

Evangelical Explains Why He’s for Gay Rights
Brent Childers \ Newsweek Web Exclusive \ Newsweek
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Americans are a diverse, extraordinary, resilient, and passionate group of forgiving men and women. I wouldn’t be standing beside them demanding full and equal treatment under the law and speaking out against the harm caused by religion-based bigotry at the National Equality March in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 11 if I thought they were not created in God’s image the same as myself, same as my family, as we all are—we are all God’s children.
http://www.dailyqueernews.com/news/10799/

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