By Rex Wockner
Poll: Registrars shouldn't have to marry gays
Fifty-seven percent of Canadians think marriage registrars should be allowed to refuse to marry same-sex couples if homosexuality offends a registrar's religious beliefs, a COMPAS poll has found.
The federal government reportedly has considered introducing such an exclusion, along with protections for organizations and businesses that don't want to deal with gays for religious reasons and for religious leaders who want to denounce homosexuality.
The poll also found that 72 percent of those questioned think clergy should be allowed to reject same-sex couples seeking to marry, and 68 percent think a print shop should be allowed to refuse to print a gay brochure.
Pollsters said the late-October telephone survey of 502 people would be accurate to within 4.5 percentage points 19 times out of every 20 times it was conducted.
Catalonia creates gay-equality program
The Spanish region of Catalonia, where Barcelona is located, has created a gay-equality program within the office of the governor.
Director Marius Tarraga said officials have mapped out a four-year plan to advance LGBT equality.
The initiative is similar to programs for women and youth in the governor's office.
According to veteran Barcelona gay activist Jordi Petit, "This is an unprecedented governmental institution in the worldwide LGBT panorama that can be a future model for many nations."
Italian MP horrified by tranny in toilet
Italian Member of Parliament Elisabetta Gardini, a former showgirl, said Oct. 28 that she felt sexually violated and "ill" upon encountering transgender MP Vladimir Luxuria in the women's restroom.
She has called for a third bank of toilets at Parliament designated solely for transgender people. Parliamentary officials are considering the request.
Luxuria, 40, dresses as a woman but is biologically male. A former gay activist and drag queen, she was elected to Parliament in April as a member of the Communist Refoundation party.
"It would be absurd for me to go pee with the men," she told reporters. "There would probably be bigger problems."
Gardini, of the Forza Italia party, is former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's spokesperson.
Aussie department store closes toilets
The big Australian department store Myer has closed the first-floor toilets at its Pitt Street Mall location in Sydney because of what the Sydney Morning Herald called "rampant homosexual activity."
"Homosexuals were using the facility as a meeting point, often having sex in full view of other horrified users," the paper said.
The report blamed a listing on the Canadian Web site Squirt.org, which publicizes cruising locations, for contributing to the problem. It said Squirt also points cruisers to toilets at the Sydney Opera House, the Royal Australian Air Force base in Richmond and 15,000 other hotspots in Australia.
China gets first gay student union
Sun Yat-sen University in Zhuhai, China, has become the first university in the nation to formally set up a gay student union, the South China Morning Post reported.
The organization, called Happy Together, will raise awareness of LGBT issues and provide HIV education, chairwoman Liao Mingzhu said.
In Beijing, meanwhile, the city's first gay clinic opened Oct. 28, the Xinhua news service reported.
A project of the Chaoyang Chinese AIDS Volunteer Group and the Chaoyang District Disease Prevention and Control Center, the clinic offers free, anonymous testing for sexually transmitted diseases and HIV, and free treatment for syphilis, gonorrhea and herpes.
People who test HIV-positive will be sent to free national treatment programs, which presently provide antiviral drugs to 25,000 people in 31 provinces, Xinhua said.
Gay HIV rate jumps in Switzerland
Like many nations, Switzerland is seeing a sharp rise in the number of gay men contracting HIV. The rate has doubled in the past three years.
The Federal Health Office blamed safe-sex fatigue, ineffective safe-sex messages, better HIV treatments, the Internet, drug addiction, alcoholism, depression and anxiety.
Improved treatments have made people believe HIV infection is no longer such a serious matter, the office said, while the Internet facilitates casual sex hookups in private homes which, unlike sex clubs and bathhouses, cannot be targeted by safe-sex campaigners.
Gay couple takes on Australian Tax Office
The Australian Tax Office has rejected the tax return of a gay couple who got married overseas, saying there's no such thing as same-sex marriage in Australia and the couple should not have ticked boxes on their return that suggest otherwise.
The unnamed couple responded that they will file no additional tax returns until the office recognizes they are spouses.
The couple had filed as married in previous years, but new sections on this year's documents made it obvious to officials for the first time that both individuals are of the same gender.
Faroes gays demand equality
Gay activists are demanding that the Faroe Islands ban antigay discrimination and pass a registered-partnership law to bring the islands into line with the rest of the Nordic region.
The Faroes, population 47,000, are a self-governing overseas administrative division of Denmark located halfway between Norway and Iceland. In 1989, Denmark became the first nation in the world to pass a registered-partnership law granting same-sex couples the rights of marriage.
Last year, the Faroese parliament rejected an antidiscrimination law by a vote of 20 to 12.
The new push for the law follows a homophobic attack in a bar in Torshavn, the capital, on popular local radio host Rasmus Rasmussen, who is openly gay. Rasmussen and his family also received threatening phone calls after local media reported on the beating.
For more information, see http://www.act-against-homophobia.underskrifter.dk/.
