Focus On The Rainbow

read the full article from ABC News and NIGHTLINE

Anti-Homosexual Bill Creates Global Uproar

Mexico City’s mayor says he will defend the capital’s gay-marriage law and insists the ordinance will take effect in March despite an appeal by federal prosecutors.

Mayor Marcelo Ebrad says the federal appeal on constitutional grounds is wrong. He says nothing in Mexico’s constitution prohibits same-sex marriage or adoption by gay couples.

The city’s legal adviser, Leticia Bonifaz, said Thursday the first gay marriages will be performed in early May while the Supreme Court hears the case.

The federal Attorney General’s Office said Wednesday it filed a challenge with the Supreme Court arguing the law violates constitutional provisions on the family and the protection of children.

The law is a first for Latin America.

Source - Associated Press

The Moscow City Court has upheld the refusal of the city civil registration office to register a marriage of two Russian women, who legalized their relationship in Canada.

Irina Fedotova (Fet) and Irina Shipitko appealed to the Moscow City Court after the Tverskoy District Court had turned down their request, an Interfax correspondent reported from the courtroom.

The women will now apply to the European Court of Human Rights, leader of the Russian sexual minority movement Nikolay Alexeyev said.

“The European Court will hear a similar appeal lodged by an Austrian couple on February 25, and that will create a precedent,” he said.

The city civil registration office turned down the application of Fedotova and Shipitko on May 12, 2009, under the pretext that the Russian Family Code allowed only different-sex marriages. The Tverskoy District Court said that the denial was legal on October 6. The couple registered their relationship in Canada on October 23.

Source – Interfax

And in another story from Russia, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov has today (Monday) fired his customary broadside at the Russian Capital’s annual Gay Pride, repeating his usage of such descriptions as “satanic”. – Source and full article at Gay Russia.ru

A magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck the Caribbean island nation of Haiti on Tuesday, January 12 near the capital city, Port-au-Prince, causing widespread damage. Many buildings have collapsed and hundreds of dead are lying in the streets. Currently there is no official death toll, but thousands have been injured, hundreds of thousands are now homeless, and many remain unaccounted for. Water and power services are out due to the severe damage to Haiti’s already fragile infrastructure.

Since 2004, Rainbow World Fund has supported ongoing projects in Haiti focusing on improving nutrition and developing safe drinking water access. We have been able to help improve the lives of thousands of Haitians.

You can make a difference! Help grow RWF’s current aid commitment of $50,000. Our disaster relief partner, CARE, is already on the ground providing emergency food, safe water, plastic for shelter, blankets, and basic medicines. 100% of your donation will go to these life saving services. Every donation helps no matter how small.

About the Rainbow World Fund, Founded in 2000, Rainbow World Fund (RWF) is an international relief agency based in the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and friends community. RWF’s mission is to promote LGBT philanthropy in the area of world humanitarian relief. RWF works to help people who suffer from hunger, poverty, disease, oppression and war by raising awareness and funds to support relief efforts around the world. RWF provides a united voice, a large visible presence, and a structure to deliver LGBT charitable assistance to the larger world community.

RWF works in the LGBT and friends community educating people about world need. Along with raising our community’s consciousness, RWF raises funds to support humanitarian relief projects. RWF works with partners around the world on various relief and sustainable development projects. By doing extensive research, RWF develops partnerships with the most effective organizations that best reflect our guiding principles: empowerment, sustainability, peacemaking, measurable impact and ecological awareness. Our partners include Adopt-A-Minefield, Africare, America’s Second Harvest, CARE, and Water Partners International. RWF also conducts global awareness tours to Central America.

Currently our work focuses on global HIV/AIDS, water development, landmine eradication, hunger, and disaster relief. RWF currently supports projects in Africa, Asia, Central America, the Caribbean, and the United States.

RWF’s is a volunteer run 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Our EIN is 94-3372560. We are Guidestar registered.

Donate online at: http://www.rainbowfund.org/donate and specify “Haiti”.

Donate by check at: Rainbow World Fund, 4111 – 18th Street, Suite 5, San Francisco, CA 94114.

Ugandan and American human rights activists came together Thursday to testify against the proposed Uganda “Anti-Homosexuality Bill” at a hearing of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission of the U.S. Congress. The hearing is the latest in a series of actions by the U.S. government to signal its disapproval of the measure under consideration in the Ugandan parliament.

The “Anti-Homosexuality Bill,” introduced in the Ugandan parliament last October, would increase the penalty for “same sex sexual acts” to life in prison, limit the distribution of information on HIV through a provision criminalizing the “promotion of homosexuality,” and establish the crime of “aggravated homosexuality” punishable by death for anyone in Uganda who is HIV positive and has consensual same-sex relations. Further, the bill includes a provision that could lead to the imprisonment for up to three years of anyone who fails to report within 24 hours the identities of everyone they know who is lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender to the government.

“The bill does not only affect homosexual Ugandans, it affects all Ugandans,” said American Jewish World Service (AJWS) grantee Julius Kaggwa, a leader of the Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights and Constitutional Law in Uganda. “We believe that the character of our country, and of the rights afforded its citizens is at stake.”

In addition to Kaggwa, witnesses at the hearing included Deputy Assistant Secretary Karl Wycoff (U.S. Department of State), Cary Alan Johnson (International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission), Reverend Kapya Kaoma (Political Research Associates) and Christine Lubinski (HIV Medicine Association, Infectious Diseases Society of America).

“Ensuring human rights for sexual minorities is perhaps the truest barometer of the full integration of human rights principles in a society, because their enshrinement in law and integration into societal norms and practices are not always a matter of popular opinion,” said Cary Alan Johnson of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission.

The Uganda bill is part of a disturbing trend on the continent and worldwide. In the last three years, five African countries have moved to strengthen criminal penalties against LGBT people. In addition to human rights and global health groups, a large number of U.S. faith groups have spoken out in opposition to the bill, including Catholic, Evangelical, mainline Protestant and Jewish organizations. The timing for a parliamentary vote on the legislation in Ugandan is unclear as international outcry over the bill has created divisions among its supporters in the country.

“Stigma already poses a formidable barrier to HIV services for persons living with or at risk of HIV in Uganda and elsewhere in southern Africa. This law, if enacted, would render every person with HIV a potential criminal,” said Christine Lubinski, director of the Center for Global Health Policy and vice president for global health at the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

Added Lubinski: “Passage of this law will make the continuing AIDS crisis in Uganda even worse. Knowledge of HIV status is one of the foundations of HIV prevention, but this law will make Ugandans even more reticent to be tested for HIV infection, to ask candid questions about their HIV risks, or to access HIV care if they do discover they are infected.

Source – PR Newswire

As often happens with LGBT blogs and websites, the author(s) pick up and run with a story using one LGBT blog/website, then another and another and another as their “source” without any real fact checking or confirmation from “reliable” sources.

This is one reason why on FOTR some stories or articles may appear days later than other LGBT blogs/websites, or not even at all, if this author has any doubt as to the accuracy of what is being reported and cannot find “sources” other than LGBT blogs/websites which, from time to time, have “been bitten in the butt” when finding inaccurate information, or information which may leave some room for definitive confirmation, and then copying that info to their own blogs/websites.

This story about Bahati reportedly going to attend a Prayer Breakfast in Washington, DC which the LGBT blogs/websites picked up and have been running with since Saturday and continued through Monday is a perfect example of stating as fact rather than “has been reported” which leaves room for the information to be incorrect.

According to an article in the Ugandan newspaper The Daily Monitor, In February, David Bahati, the mover of the controversial Anti-Homosexuality Bill is expected to attend a prayer breakfast in the American capital of Washington DC.

A proposal to give the partners of gay priests some of the same rights that are awarded to priests’ spouses is likely to spark a new row over homosexuality.

Bishops and senior clergy will debate at next month’s General Synod whether the Church should provide same-sex couples with the same financial benefits as are awarded to married couples.

Traditionalists have expressed strong opposition to the move, which they claim would give official recognition to homosexual relationships.

They warn that affording equal treatment to heterosexual and homosexual couples would undermine the Church’s teaching on marriage.

At present, the Church bars clergy from being in active gay relationships, although it bowed to pressure to allow them to enter civil partnerships on the condition that they are celibate.

Liberals believe that the motion, to be unveiled this week, could be a major breakthrough in securing rights for gay clergy.

Source – The Telegraph

During a weekly drop-in group held by the Albert Kennedy Trust in London, Suni, a 20-year-old London student, helps himself to a warm mince pie and a steaming cup of coffee.

In 2008, during a holiday to Pakistan to visit relatives, his parents suspected the truth about his sexuality. They believed marriage would “cure” him of what they considered to be a psychological disorder.

“They told me I’m going to be forced into marriage and they’re looking for a girl and I’ll be married in two to three months and I won’t be able to come back to London,” Suni said.

When he refused, he was imprisoned in his family’s ancestral home in a remote village of Pakistan and subjected to regular beatings and abuse as he had brought “shame” on the strict Muslim family.

“I stayed there for three months and he was always beating me. He was telling me I had blackened our family name and he was saying it’s a sin. I know it was just for honour.”

Read the full article at the BBC.