MALAWI, AFRICA – Two gay men arrested in Malawi after getting engaged have pleaded not guilty to charges of gross public indecency.
Tiwonge Chimbalanga and Steven Monjeza appeared at a packed court in Malawi’s biggest city Blantyre, where they will ask for bail on Monday.
The pair held a traditional engagement ceremony over the weekend – believed to be the first gay couple in Malawi to start the process of getting married.
Homosexual acts carry a maximum prison sentence of 14 years in Malawi.
The BBC’s Raphael Tenthani in Blantyre says large crowds of onlookers went to see the couple in court.
He says some people congratulated them but other shouted insults.
Prosecutors say they will send the pair to hospital to prove they have had sex together.
They face three charges of unnatural practices between males and gross indecency.
Mr Monjeza, 26, hinted that he may consider calling off the proposed wedding, as he was sent back to prison.
“I am sad I am going back to Chichiri Prison,” he said. “The condition are terrible there. People are exaggerating this thing. I may just as well dissolve this marriage.”
Mr Chimbalanga, 20, dressed in women’s clothes, refused to speak to journalists, beyond accusing them of writing “stupid” things.
They were arrested on Monday at the home they share.
Malawi is a deeply conservative society but recently a group of campaigners came together to form a gay rights organisation, Centre for the Development of People (CEDEP).
CEDEP’s executive director, Gift Trapence, says the laws used to arrest the couple are invalid because they are against the Bill of Rights enshrined in the 1995 constitution.
Correspondents say some voices in government have also started to call for more openness about homosexuality as the authorities try to tackle high rates of HIV/Aids.
from The BBC
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Supporters of Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in California, have denounced a federal judge’s suggestion that he may allow TV coverage of a lawsuit challenging the law. In a filing with U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, who will preside over the case on the law’s constitutionality, Proposition 8 sponsors said that TV coverage of the trial, which is scheduled to begin on January 11, could expose witnesses to harassment and intimidation and that some have already “indicated that they would not be willing to testify” if the trial is televised. While local and state courts routinely allow trial coverage, federal courts have had a long-standing policy against doing so — a policy likely to be overturned following last September’s approval of a pilot program to televise nonjury civil trials by the federal appeals court in San Francisco. Plaintiffs in the Proposition 8 case said in their own filing on Tuesday that they support TV coverage of the trial, citing “the overwhelming national public interest in the issues.” A media coalition, including all of the broadcast networks, are seeking permission to bring TV cameras into the courtroom, with cable channel In Session (formerly Court TV) asking permission to provide gavel-to-gavel coverage.
from Contact Music

Kevin McDaid & Boyfriend Mark Feehily

UNITED KINGDOM – Westlife are modern pop legends. Under the watchful eye of Simon Cowell they have dominated the charts for a decade, selling more than 45million records.
The Irish heart-throb revealed his homosexuality in August 2005. Up until then he had kept it from his legions of fans, but the burden of secrecy took its toll.
“I spent a lot of my teenage years and early 20s in a very dark place,” says Mark, now 29.
“There’s a real misconception about when I came out.
“I didn’t tell the guys when I was 18 or 16 or anything. It took me a long time to sort everything out in my own mind before I was open to anyone about it.
“I just shoved it all down and ignored my feelings and paused, closing the door and leaving it.”
Mark, now settled with long-term boyfriend KEVIN MCDAID, says: “It wasn’t hiding a secret from the guys or the public. I didn’t have any love life or relationship or sex life at all.
“That’s why things went so dark for me. It was like a ticking time bomb but now I am so happy.”
Bandmate and friend Nicky says he is relieved his pal can finally relax, and that he wasn’t surprised to hear he was gay.
“We are at the best of parties with the best-looking women,” says Nicky, 31.
“Obviously if you have a girlfriend it’s a different scenario but if you looked at Mark, and he didn’t have a girlfriend, we kept wondering why he wasn’t chatting up the girls. I always knew with Mark. He had what people say is a swagger but it was a gay swagger, that thing going on.
“But you never say anything because it’s no one’s business.
“I remember the day he told Shane and me. We were all jumping around, hugging and everything. At last he felt comfortable in himself.
“I remember ringing round when the story came out. I rang one of my mates to tell him Mark was gay and he said, ‘Make sure you tell him we are all behind him’. Then he panicked and said, ‘No, no. Don’t say it like that’. ”
More than four years after going public over his sexuality, Mark says he is happier and stronger than ever.
He says: “I am embracing getting older. I feel more powerful against all the badness because I know how to deal with it better than I did. I know how to protect myself. I know more about life.
“Don’t get me wrong, no one looks forward to getting grey and old and bald and wrinkly but I feel happier now than I ever have.”
from The Sun UK

Dean Awford

UNITED KINGDOM – A former drag queen, Dean Awford, who was known as “Dean The Queen” has been awarded £30,000 for unfair dismissal.
But claims that Dean Awford, 42, suffered sexual discrimination and sexual harassment were dismissed despite being called “a faggot” and a “poof” by his boss.
Mr Awford, who used to appear in clubs in Birmingham and Manchester as Scarlett Eclipse, claimed his boss abused him about his sexuality and even told a customer he had “knickers to match” his leather shoes.
He sued David Gray, of the upmarket furniture store Grays At Northwick in Worcester, for unfair dismissal and sexual orientation discrimination.
Mr Awford had earlier told an employment tribunal that Mr Gray continually used derogatory terms relating to his sexuality during his employment as a £16,000-a-year sales manager.
The hearing in Birmingham heard that Mr Awford was called a “faggot” when he turned up in a white suit, “a poof” and was constantly refered to as “she” or “her”.
On Monday, Employment Judge David Kearsley found that Mr Awford had been unfairly dismissed.
He said that comments by Mr Gray: “Call yourself a fucking manager – you couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery” and his later response: “Fuck off” constituted unfair dismissal.
He also awarded £118 in unauthorised deductions and a further £67 in holiday pay and in total awarding more than £30,000.
But his further claims for sexual orientation discrimination and sexual harassment were dismissed despite his employer making offensive remarks about his sexuality.
Mr Gray, 56, denied both unfair dismissal and sexual orientation discrimination.
“Many homosexual males would have found the comments made by Mr Gray offensive. The tribunal is not condoning Mr Gray’s behaviour,” Judge Kearsley said.
“Equally many women would have found the comments about their underwear on the chiller offensive.
“But we have considered the character of the claimant and the absence of any complaint during the period of employment.”
He continued: “The tribunal doesn’t accept that Mr Gray made any comments that were particularly capable of constituting harassment.
“He referred to himself as Dean the Queen and would recount details of his sexual activity.
“(Mr Awford) believed he was working in his dream job.”
After the hearing Mr Awford said: “I am delighted that the unfair dismissal claim was upheld. I’ve known all along that my treatment at work was wrong.
“I only hope Mr Gray will ensure that no other employees are treated so shabbily in future. I hope I have helped improve his employee relations ahead of the festive period.
“I suppose as far as Gray’s At Northwick are concerned then I could be the Christmas fairy.”
Mr Gray, who took the case using his employers insurance policy, said: “I am slightly disappointed – I think the compensation was rather too high.
“But I am very pleased on the result of the sexual harassment.
“There were lies told in that court that were vulgar and disgusting.”
from The Telegraph UK
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MEXICO CITY, MEXICO – Mexico City enacted Latin America’s first law recognizing gay marriage Tuesday and said it hopes to attract same-sex couples from around the world to wed.
The law, approved by city legislators on Dec. 21, was published in Mexico City’s official register Tuesday and will take effect in March. It will allow same-sex couples to adopt children and municipal officials say it will make Mexico’s capital a “vanguard city” – and attract extra tourism revenues.
“Mexico City will become a center, where (gay) people from all over the world will be able to come and have their wedding, and then spend their honeymoon here,” said Alejandro Rojas, the city tourism secretary.
“We are already in talks with some travel agencies that are planning to offer package tours that include flights, hotels, guides, and everything they need for the wedding, like banquets,” said Rojas. “We are going to become a city on a par with Venice or San Francisco” – the current leader in the gay travel market segment.
The annual economic impact of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender travelers is about $70 billion in the United States alone, according to Community Marketing Inc., a tourism research company that specializes in gay and lesbian consumers.
Gay marriages of foreigners in Mexico City would presumably only be recognized by countries and states that also have legalized same-sex marriage. An exception is New York State, which doesn’t allow same-sex marriages but which recognizes those which were performed legally in other jurisdictions.
An Argentine couple participated in Latin America’s first gay wedding on Monday, but interpretations vary on whether the law allows such unions in Argentina, and the question is now before its supreme court.
Argentina’s Constitution is silent on whether marriage must be between a man and a woman, effectively leaving the matter to provincial officials, who approved Monday’s wedding. But a law specifically legalizing gay marriage has been stalled in its Congress since October.
But even as Mexico City officials celebrated enactment of the law, others vowed to stop the marriages from taking place.
In a Sunday Mass, Roman Catholic Cardinal Norberto Rivera said “the essence of the family is being attacked by making homosexual unions equivalent to matrimony between a man and a woman.”
Armando Martinez, the president of a local Catholic lawyers’ group, said he was planning demonstrations against same-sex marriages, and will also support legal efforts to overturn the Mexico City law.
“We are going to carry out exhaustive campaigns at the offices of the justices of the peace in the city, using acts of peaceful civil resistance to prevent homosexual couples from being married,” Martinez said.
Mexico City’s law allows same-sex couples to adopt children, apply for bank loans together, inherit wealth and be included in the insurance policies of their spouse, rights they were denied under civil unions allowed in the city.
The conservative Nation Action Party of President Felipe Calderon has vowed to challenge the law in the courts. However, homosexuality is increasingly accepted in Mexico, with gay couples openly holding hands in parts of the capital and the annual gay pride parade drawing tens of thousands of participants.
Only seven countries in the world allow gay marriages: Canada, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium. U.S. states that permit same-sex marriage are Iowa, Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut and New Hampshire.
Latin America also has become and increasingly tolerant place for gays.
Same-sex civil unions have been legalized in Uruguay, Buenos Aires, and some states in Mexico and Brazil, but marriage generally carries broader rights.
In Argentina, Latin America’s first gay newlyweds – Alex Freyre and Jose Maria Di Bello – were eager to relax and honeymoon.
“We want to rest now. It was a time during which we suffered a lot of humiliations,” Freyre told The Associated Press after returning to Buenos Aires from Ushuaia, the world’s southernmost city, where the couple were wed.
The men tried to get married in Argentina’s capital but city officials, who had earlier said the ceremony could proceed, refused to wed them on Dec. 1, citing conflicting judicial rulings.
from The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – The Los Angeles Police Department’s Explorers youth program will end its nearly 50-year relationship with the Boys Scouts of America, pledging not to tolerate discrimination.
As of New Year’s Day, LAPD Deputy Chief Earl Paysinger said the department will run the youth program under a different name independent of the Boy Scouts, with the program being funded in part through donations.
The Boy Scouts started the Explorers program in 1949 as a career-oriented program for boys.
The LAPD began participating in 1962. Since 1998, the LAPD has been running the Explorers program while Learning for Life – an organization created by the Boy Scouts – provided insurance coverage to participants.
But the Police Commission voted last month to sever ties with Learning for Life, saying the Boys Scouts’ policy of barring gays, atheists and agnostics from being troop leaders violates the city’s non-discrimination policies.
“It’s bittersweet in the sense that the Boy Scouts or Learning for Life have been part of this for a long time – in name only – but the LAPD is committed to a better program and we can do that without having discrimination,” said Police Commissioner Alan Skobin.
Commissioner Robert Saltzman, who is openly gay, said that because he cannot support the Boy Scouts, he has invested a lot of time to ensure the new youth program is “as good or – I’m confident – better than the program it replaces.”
“The Boy Scouts are clear that they discriminate based on sexual orientation, gender identity and religion, and the result of that is I could not be active on the Boy Scouts,” Saltzman said.
LAPD’s Explorer program provides training to youths ages 14 to 20 who are interested in law enforcement careers. About 1,000 Explorers are assigned to the 20 police stations around the city.
Wearing special uniforms, they help officers with searches for evidence and provide crowd control at special events. They also provide tours of police stations, assist with clerical work and participate in educational camping trips.
The Boy Scouts’ policy of banning gays from being troop leaders faced legal challenges in the 1990s. However, the Supreme Court ruled the Boy Scouts had the right to decide who can join its ranks.
The Boy Scouts had argued that accepting gays would violate its constitutional right to freedom of association and free speech.
from The Daily Breeze

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Stephen Gately

UNITED KINGDOM – Stephen Gately smoked cannabis and drank alcohol the night he died, a forensic report has confirmed.
But the Boyzone singer’s death was caused by an undiagnosed heart condition and was not linked to drink or drugs.
A report handed to a Spanish judge investigating the tragedy revealed the star suffered from atheromatosis, a thickening of the arteries. It also revealed he was dead for eight hours before his body was found.
Mr Gately, 33, died on October 10 in his £1million holiday home in Port d’Andratx, Majorca, after a night out with his 33-year-old partner Andy Cowles and a Bulgarian student, Georgi Dochev, 25.
Mr Dochev later told police he had seen Mr Gately smoke a cannabis cigarette back at the flat. He and Mr Cowles raised the alarm after finding Mr Gately’s lifeless body at 1.30pm.
A preliminary pathology report said the star died from an acute pulmonary oedema, a build-up of fluid on the lungs caused by the atheromatosis and said the death was due to ‘natural causes’.
from The Daily Mail
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WASHINGTON, D.C. – Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton won praise in June after pushing to extend many federal benefits traditionally provided to diplomats’ spouses to gay and lesbian partners.
Since then, unmarried heterosexual couples have been lining up to ask for benefits too. They have approached the State Department’s personnel office and the diplomats’ union, arguing that they are entitled to equal treatment. At least one couple has threatened to challenge the rules in court as discriminatory.
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management, which is responsible for policy on federal workers, is weighing such an extension of benefits, U.S. officials say — to the consternation of conservatives.
“They should have seen this coming,” said Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who had opposed extending benefits to gays. “It’s a Pandora’s box.”
The family benefits, although a small part of diplomats’ overall benefit package, are important to Foreign Service officers. Benefits include paid travel for the partner to and from overseas posts; visas and diplomatic passports; emergency medical treatment; shipment of household possessions; emergency evacuation in times of danger; and education benefits for minor children. Health insurance is not included for gay partners, although spouses are covered.
Foreign Service officers contend such help is only fair, especially given the conditions they face in remote and often uncomfortable posts.
Conservatives who oppose easing the rules cite the federal Defense of Marriage Act. Passed in 1996 and signed by President Clinton, it defines marriage as between a man and a woman, and says that no state shall be required to recognize a gay marriage performed in another state.
“A good argument can be made that even these relatively limited steps violate at least the spirit of the Defense of Marriage Act,” said Peter Sprigg, a fellow at the Family Research Council, which advocates for socially conservative causes.
He said the pressure from unmarried heterosexual couples “illustrates one of our concerns — that once you open the door to anyone other than married couples, you’re beginning a process of the deconstruction of marriage.”
Michelle Schohn, spokeswoman for the advocacy group Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies, said her group was cautioned during the closing days of the George W. Bush administration about the consequences of demanding family benefits for same-sex partners.
“If you included opposite-sex domestic partners, you could potentially be running afoul of [the Defense of Marriage Act] by creating this ‘marriage light’ category,” she said.
Nationally, most employers — including almost all public employers — that extend benefits to same-sex partners also offer them to unmarried, opposite-sex partners, said Ilse de Veer, a principal in the international consulting group Mercer.
Those that offer benefits to same-sex partners but not to opposite-sex mates typically cite heterosexual couples’ option of marriage, de Veer said.
Unwed heterosexual couples in the United States comprise about 10% of opposite-sex couples living together, census data show.
Schohn said her group supported extending benefits to unmarried heterosexual couples. “They’re our natural allies,” she said.
The American Foreign Service Assn., the diplomats’ union, has not yet taken a position, said spokesman Tom Switzer, but it “has heard from a number of members who believe that the same benefits should be extended to opposite-sex, unmarried partners as well.”
A senior State Department official said any benefit extension was up to the White House.
“We’re prepared to take that step if that’s what the White House wants to do,” the official said.
In June, Obama signed a presidential memorandum extending family benefits to same-sex partners — a concept opposed by Bush’s administration.
The issue gained visibility in 2007 when the former U.S. ambassador to Romania, Michael Guest, quit the Foreign Service in protest over the issue.
Supporters of extending benefits to unmarried heterosexuals include such key Congress members as House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard L. Berman (D-Valley Village) and the committee’s top Republican, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida.
Obama’s June memorandum omitted health insurance and pension benefits for same-sex partners. Federal officials estimate that including the broader benefits would have cost $56 million in 2010, several times the price of the narrower benefits.
Some legal experts say including the broader benefits could violate the Defense of Marriage Act — a law that Obama has said should be repealed.
from The Los Angeles Times

Alex Freyre & Jose Maria Di Bello

BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA – They had to travel to the ends of the Earth to do it, but two Argentine men succeeded in becoming Latin America’s first same-sex married couple.
After their first attempt to wed earlier this month in Buenos Aires was thwarted, gay rights activists Jose Maria Di Bello and Alex Freyre took their civil ceremony to the capital of Argentina’s Tierra del Fuego province, where a sympathetic governor backed their bid to make Latin American history.
The couple exchanged rings Monday in Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world, closer to Antarctica than Buenos Aires. The informal ceremony was witnessed by state and federal officials.
“My knees didn’t stop shaking,” said Di Bello. “We are the first gay couple in Latin America to marry.”
Di Bello, 41, an executive at the Argentine Red Cross, met Freyre, 39, executive director of the Buenos Aires AIDS Foundation, at an HIV awareness conference. Both are HIV-positive.
At the indoor civil ceremony, the grooms wore sport coats without ties, and had large red ribbons draped around their necks in solidarity with other people living with HIV.
Argentina’s Constitution is silent on whether marriage must be between a man and a woman, effectively leaving the matter to provincial and city officials. The men tried to get married in Argentina’s capital but city officials, who had earlier said the ceremony could proceed, refused to wed them citing conflicting judicial rulings.
Di Bello said Ushuaia initially declined to authorize the marriage, but went ahead after the couple received backing from Tierra del Fuego province.
Gov. Fabiana Rios said in a statement that gay marriage “is an important advance in human rights and social inclusion and we are very happy that this has happened in our state.”
An official representing the federal government’s antidiscrimination agency, Claudio Morgado, attended the wedding and called the occasion “historic.”
Many in Argentina and throughout Latin America remain opposed to gay marriage, particularly the Roman Catholic Church.
“The decision took me by surprise and I’m concerned,” Bishop Juan Carlos, of the southern city of Rio Gallegos, told the Argentine news agency DyN. He called the marriage “an attack against the survival of the human species.”
But same-sex civil unions have been legalized in Uruguay, Buenos Aires, Mexico City and some states in Mexico and Brazil. Marriage generally carries more exclusive rights such as adopting children, inheriting wealth and enabling a partner to gain citizenship.
Legal analyst Andres Gil Dominguez said the Tierra del Fuego government appeared to base its authorization on a broad interpretation of the Argentine Constitution and obligations under international treaties.
Rios said her province’s approval was based on a ruling by a Buenos Aires judge who declared two provisions of the constitution discriminatory and gave the go-ahead for the Dec. 1 marriage, which was then blocked by another judge’s ruling based on civil law.
Individual provinces may not have final say over same-sex marriages for long.
A bill that would legalize gay marriage was introduced in Argentina’s Congress in October but it has stalled without a vote.
Argentina’s Supreme Court currently is analyzing appeals by same-sex couples whose marriages were rejected. A Supreme Court justice said on Monday that the high court would likely rule on issues of same-sex marriage sometime in 2010, but could defer to Congress if legislation moves forward.
Only seven countries in the world allow gay marriages: Canada, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium. U.S. states that permit same-sex marriage are Iowa, Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut and New Hampshire.
Earlier this month, lawmakers in Mexico City made it the first in Latin America to legalize same-sex marriage. Leftist Mayor Marcelo Ebrard was widely expected to sign the measure into law.
from The Associated Press

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Question: My son’s friend “Josh’’ confided to their group that he is gay. Josh’s parents are pretty strict and often comment that they have to keep an eye on him because he is a teenager and “interested in girls.’’
Since Josh came out to his friends, he doesn’t socialize with them as much and spends a lot of time on his computer. I am concerned that he is meeting the wrong kinds of people through the Internet. It doesn’t matter to me whether he is gay or not. If he is socializing over the computer, it could be dangerous.
Do I have an obligation to say anything to his parents about his sexual orientation? I know he will eventually tell them when he is ready, but I am worried about what he is going through now.
A CONCERNED MOM

Answer: Please don’t tell Josh’s parents that he is gay. That is up to him. You can, however, talk to his parents about the risks of meeting people over the Internet, which are the same for every child. You can find a way to bring up your concerns without betraying any confidences. You also can discuss this with Josh if you have the opportunity. And, it wouldn’t hurt to have this conversation with your son as well.
from The Boston Globe
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UNITED KINGDOM – Prisoners have lodged 40,000 complaints in three years on subjects ranging from the quality of razor blades to access to gay pornography and satellite television after midnight.
The complaints also included a ban on kissing visitors, which is enforced to prevent drug smuggling. Others complained after they were denied a Christmas bonus for work carried out in the workshop.
One inmate was angry at being refused access to a Wicca priest when he converted to paganism.
William Beggs, a killer who left the limbs of his dismembered victim in Loch Lomond, protested after being denied the right to access gay pornography books on a computer.
He also launched a legal action against the authorities whom, he claimed, were invading his privacy by monitoring his prison computer.
Other common complaints included challenging the quality or brand of razor blades, tobacco and toiletries provided. Some prisoners said they had special dietary requirements in order to obtain better food. The most common matters raised were access to confidential files and medical treatment.
The highest number of complaints came from Glenochil prison (5,179), followed by Edinburgh (4,772) and Barlinnie (4,543). Of 13,000 complaints last year, only 421 were referred to the Scottish Prison Complaints Commission and, of those, seven were upheld.
It costs the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) up to £100,000 a year to process the complaints, which have been exacerbated by European human rights legislation.
Under the SPS code of practice, every complaint must go through a formal grievance procedure. Complaints have risen by about 25 per cent since the adoption of the human rights legislation nine years ago.
Dave Melrose, the chairman of the Prison Officers Association Scotland, said complaints were taking up an increasing proportion of staff time. “Prisoners are looking for more and more rights,” he said.
“We don’t have the same amount of prison officers as we did 10 years ago. This can distract from their core duties. I would just like to see the system used and not abused.
“That’s the reason it was introduced, to make the lives of prisoners and staff much more compatible.”
A spokesman for the Scottish Prison Service admitted that the number of complaints was high, but pointed to the fact that about 50,000 people entered prison each year.
He said: “You have a lot of time to think about things and one of the coping mechanisms people use is complaining. A lot of the complaints are low level and are resolved internally.”
Last week, the SPS closed Noranside prison, near Forfar, Angus, and sent the inmates home for the festive period on a coach after record numbers of them qualified for Christmas leave.
from Express UK

2009 marked a time when the politics of the issue changed, entering what is likely to be a long era of incremental progress as public opinion slowly changes.
For the gay marriage debate, 2009 was transitional instead of transformative, but the year was historic nonetheless. To mangle Churchill, it was not the end, nor even the beginning of the end, but it was at least the beginning of the middle.
This is an issue on which the fundamentals of public opinion change glacially. Support for same-sex marriage is rising, but only by about a percentage point or so a year. Essentially, a third of the public supports gay marriage, another third or so supports civil unions instead, and the remaining third opposes any kind of legal status for same-sex couples.
Although public-opinion fundamentals didn’t change in 2009; the politics of gay marriage did. Here are the ways the year marked a shift to what a storyteller might call the “long middle.”
The preemptive strikes on both sides have failed. Early on, conservatives feared that courts would impose same-sex marriage nationally by fiat. They responded with an attempt to ban gay marriage nationally by constitutional amendment. But the federal courts kept their distance, and the amendment was rebuffed.
As the year ends, it is clear that neither side can knock the other off the field. Gay marriage is firmly established in five states (with the District of Columbia’s likely to follow suit), but it is banned, often by constitutional amendment, in most of the others. Unless the Supreme Court shocks the country and itself by declaring gay marriage a constitutional right, the issue will take years, perhaps decades, to resolve. All-or-nothing activists will be disappointed, but the country will get the time it needs to make up its mind.
Legislators are taking over from judges. For years, the only way same-sex marriage seemed possible was by court order. But with state venues for pro-gay-marriage lawsuits having just about dried up, the fight has moved from the lower courts to the political branches, much as the civil rights struggle did in the 1960s. Now, as then, legislative victories afford the movement more momentum and popular legitimacy than judicial ones ever could.
Opponents were fond of arguing that the gay-marriage movement was not just wrongheaded but antidemocratic. But in 2009, gay marriage was passed by the legislatures and signed into law in Maine and New Hampshire, and it was enacted by a veto-overriding majority in Vermont. Nothing undemocratic about that.
Same-sex marriage has been mainstreamed. In its first decade or so on the national stage, gay marriage was a fringe idea, the property of the political far left. No longer. Gay marriage may still be losing at the ballot box, but in Maine in 2009, as in California in 2008, the margins have grown tight. With its establishment last spring in Iowa, same-sex marriage has penetrated the heartland, by court order but with little backlash. Many Democrats have come to see support for gay unions as a political plus. Increasingly, it is the opponents who are playing cultural defense, insisting that they are the ones who are being marginalized and stigmatized.
There’s a backlash against the backlash. The most important trend of 2009 began Nov. 4, 2008, when California voters passed Proposition 8, revoking gay marriage in their state. Until then, the preponderance of passion lay with opponents. After Prop. 8, however, many heterosexuals embraced gay marriage, taking ownership of an issue that they have come to view as the next great civil rights battle.
For same-sex marriage advocates, the emergence of a dedicated core of straight supporters is a sea change. There is now comparable energy and commitment on both sides.
It was just such passion, indeed, that led two of the country’s most distinguished lawyers — Theodore Olson, a Republican, and David Boies, a Democrat — to join hands across party lines in 2009 and file a lawsuit asking the federal courts to overturn California’s Proposition 8. The case is a long shot legally, but the fact that it has attracted such solidly mainstream legal talent is one more sign that the same-sex marriage issue has come of age.
Jonathan Rauch, a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution, is the author of “Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America.”

from The Los Angeles Times / Jonathan Rauch

Eminem

UNITED KINGDOM – Eminem will return to the British stage for the first time in five and a half years when he headlines the Wireless Festival in Hyde Park next summer.
But before the rapper would sign up, event organisers had to reach an agreement with gay rights campaigners who had threatened to picket the gig and disrupt his performance.
A truce has been struck between the activists and Eminem, whereby they will stay away as long as he does not use gratuitously anti-gay lyrics.
The last time Eminem toured the country in 2001, gay rights group OutRage! protested outside his shows, saying his lyrics were homophobic.
Event organisers were said to be worried that another such protest would cause major disruption to Wireless, which attracts tens of thousands of people.
A festival insider said: “This is a huge signing for Wireless and it will be the hottest ticket this summer.
“The organisers were afraid campaigners could potentially ruin the event. So there was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing and Eminem only agreed to sign up when assurances had been made that there would not be any protests.
“It was very touch-and-go but he has finally agreed to appear. Any kind of demonstration against him could have been disastrous.
“He will be bringing a huge entourage of security with him but there is still the risk that protesters may picket the hotel he stays in.”
OutRage! spokesman David Allison said: “We have a condition that he does not use lyrics that encourage or incite hatred against gay people.
“He is free to express his views on gay people, as long as he stays off the violence and hatred. He has got plenty of other lyrics to choose from. In recent years he has become quite well-behaved.
“I think he realises singing songs advocating hate and violence just won’t wash any more. Society’s moved on in the last 10 years.”
Activists picketed his 2001 shows, waving banners and the rainbow flag of the gay movement while chanting “stop the bigotry”.
Although Eminem claims his lyrics are not meant to be taken seriously, gay rights groups objected to his use of the word “faggot” and called him a “gay-basher”.
Eminem was to perform in London in 2005 but cancelled the European leg of his world tour citing “exhaustion”, although it later emerged he was addicted to sleeping pills.
He returned for a secret show at the O2 Academy in Islington in 2004 — the last time he performed in London.
So far, Pink and The Ting Tings have been officially confirmed for this year’s festival, which takes place from 2 to 4 July.
from The London Evening Standard
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Just One Look... #132

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Submit photos for Just One Look…

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Female ducks have evolved an intriguing way to avoid becoming impregnated by undesirable but aggressive males endowed with large corkscrew-shaped penises: vaginas with clockwise spirals that thwart oppositely spiraled males.
More details of this evolutionary battle of the sexes fought at the level of genitalia are described by Yale researchers in the December 23 issue of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
“In species where forced copulation is common, males have evolved longer penises, but females have coevolved convoluted vaginas with dead-end cul-de-sacs and spirals in the opposite direction of the male penis,” said Patricia L.R. Brennan, lead author of the paper and postdoctoral researcher in the Yale Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. “This coevolution results from conflict between the sexes over who is going to control fertilization.”
The research builds upon a 2007 Yale study that first described the strange morphology of a duck’s sexual organs. While most birds have no phalluses, ducks turn out to have relatively large, flexible penises—up to 8 inches — tucked inside their bodies. During sex, male ducks extend, or evert, their phalluses inside the female. Brennan and her Yale colleagues used high-speed video to document the erection of the duck penis for the first time and found the whole process takes less than half a second—an act the Yale team described as “explosive.”
Such large phalluses are supposed to give males a reproductive advantage when there is much forced mating. However, the Yale team hypothesized that females could make copulation difficult for the males with their complex genitalia. And, they wondered, do the convoluted vaginas of some waterfowl help those females exclude forced copulation?
To test the hypothesis, Brennan and colleagues examined duck penis eversion in a set of glass tubes with different shapes. A straight tube or a tube that spirals in the same counter-clockwise direction as the male penis doesn’t slow down the eversion process. But glass tubes that mimic the female vaginal shapes with a clockwise spiral or a sharp bend can completely stop the penis from everting. These results suggest females have evolved anatomical mechanisms to impede forced copulation, and provide new insights into the evolutionary consequences of sexual conflict over reproduction, say the scientists.
The anatomical evolutionary race to control reproduction is one of the more dramatic examples of sexual conflict in nature.
“Although we predict that sexual conflict should be ubiquitous, finding a system where the ‘arms race’ between the sexes is so dramatic is exceedingly rare. Ducks are providing us with an incredible opportunity to understand the evolutionary consequences of conflict,” said Brennan.
from Press Release