Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 14:13:43 -0700 (PDT) From: Rex Wockner Subject: WOCKNER/INT'L NEWS #285/11 Oct 1999 ============================================= = INTERNATIONAL NEWS #285 - Oct 11, 1999 = = (c) Rex Wockner = ============================================= --> KENYAN PRESIDENT BASHES GAYS Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi called homosexuality a "scourge" Sept. 28, saying, "It is not right that a man should go with another man or a woman with another woman. It is against African tradition and Biblical teachings." Speaking at a Nairobi agriculture show, the 75-year-old Moi added, "Now we are seeing men wearing earrings to make it easy for them to be identified by other men." His remarks followed by one day Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's announcement that he had ordered the arrest of all that nation's gays. He said they are guilty of "abominable acts." "I have told the CID [Criminal Investigations Department] to look for homosexuals, lock them up and charge them," Museveni said in remarks to a meeting on reproductive health, reported the daily newspaper New Vision. "Even the Holy Bible spells it out clearly that God created Adam and Eve as wife and husband, but not men to marry fellow men," he said. Uganda's penal code considers gay sex "carnal knowledge of another against the order of nature." The punishment is up to life in prison. --> LATVIA CONSIDERS PARTNER LAW On Sept. 28, Latvia's National Human Rights Office sent a plan for a gay registered-partnership law to the Parliament's Human Rights and Public Affairs Commission. "This is an unprecedented event in Latvia, with a state institution admitting that lesbian and gay rights in the country are being seriously violated and suggesting that it is the state's obligation to adopt a partnership law," said Juris Ludvigs Lavrikovs of the Homosexuality Information Center (HIC). The proposed law, modeled after statutes in Scandinavia, would grant registered same-sex couples nearly every right of matrimony except in the area of adoption. On Oct. 5, HIC members, with help from the gay bars Purvs and XXL, staged a demonstration outside Parliament in support of the legislation. They carried signs reading, "Lesbian and gay rights are human rights," "Families are different" and "Isn't it nice to make people happy?" Three counterprotesters picketed the demonstration and told reporters they were from the newly created group Latvian Society Without Homosexuals. --> GAY AUSSIE COMPANY GOES PUBLIC Australia's Satellite Group, which owns several gay bars and newspapers, believes it is the first gay company to be listed on a stock exchange. The company went public on the Australian Stock Exchange Sept. 24. The group has plans to expand into e-commerce and gay resorts and retirement homes, a spokeswoman said. --> ROMANIAN PEOPLE WITH AIDS FACE DRUG CUTOFF Ten thousand Romanians with AIDS will see their drug treatment terminated this month after cuts in the nation's budget reduced funding to the Health Ministry by $30 million. About 8,700 of the patients are children who were infected in unsanitary health-care settings during Romania's Communist era. "We have no funds," said Dr. Vladimir Strainu, head of Bucharest's infectious-diseases hospital. "Interrupting the treatment for a couple of days would ruin everything we achieved so far." --> BRAZILIAN SOCCER STARS POSE NUDE FOR GAY MAG Three of Brazil's top soccer stars have posed nude in recent issues of the gay magazine G. A report in the Boston Globe called it a "craze." G spokeswoman Nanete Neves said the players "are not gay, [they just] have good bodies and are proud of themselves." But some soccer honchos are not amused. Goalkeeper Roger Jose de Noronto Silva was banned from the next game of his Sao Paulo team by coach Paulo Carpegiani after the magazine appeared. Silva said he didn't understand why. "I told the team about the photos beforehand," he said. "There's no way I would have done something like this without permission. I don't see what their problem is. ... My wife was quite happy for me to appear naked." --> BBC NEWSCASTER COMES OUT BBC Breakfast News TV co-anchorman John Nicolson came out Oct. 3, reported the Daily Mirror. The paper said Nicolson, 36, "revealed that his partner of six years is hunky Spanish landscape architect Luis Buitrago." Speaking of their initial meeting at a dinner party, Nicolson said: "Luis was very dashing and very Castillian. During the evening all the women became more and more disappointed when they realized what was going on between us. What I remember about that evening is laughing and laughing. Luis was very droll and extremely funny." --> BRITISH RAILWAY WORKERS WIN BENEFITS British railway companies will now provide spousal benefits and perks to gay employees' partners, the BBC reported Oct. 5. "It's a case of railways moving with the times," said a spokesman for the Association of Train Operating Companies. "We think we are providing the conditions our staff and customers would expect in the modern age." The change follows a years-long battle against South West Trains by employee Lisa Grant and her partner Jill Percey, and comes despite the fact that the couple lost their case before the European Union's European Court of Justice last year. Grant told the BBC: "I'm pleased that all staff will now be treated and paid the same. Train passes are part of staff's payment. It was something of an insult to be told that I would be paid less because our relationship was not considered meaningful." -end-