International LGBT Roundup: Hong Kong Celebrates Pride, and Moscow's Mayor Obsesses Over Gays

Published December 14, 2008 @ 01:50PM PT

Hong Kong

A world first: Hong Kong celebrated its first pride rally this weekend, with more than 1,000 paradegoers stopping traffic to "celebrate love." Of course, Moscow's mayor this week had a different take on his own city's attempts to host a pride parade. And LGBT groups in Africa are coming together to urge the continent to do more to fight against HIV/AIDS. All in all, a busy week around the globe. To the roundup!

Hong Kong: Homosexuality was finally decriminalized in 1991 in Hong Kong, but stigma has remained large and has kept many a number of LGBT folks in the closet. But those closet doors came busting down this weekend, with Hong Kong's first-ever gay pride rally. According to Time, "For a few hours, a city that usually seems immune to surprises watched in awe as approximately 1,000 paradegoers stopped traffic, filled the streets and spread their message to 'celebrate love.'" Ariel Wong, a 21-year-old student at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, said that he came out this weekend to show that queer people are normal people, too. Parade organizers are hopeful that this becomes an annual event, and that it may spill over to other cities in the region, too. And, who knows, maybe it will help push forward progress for China's gay community, too.

HIV Aids Ribbon Senegal: This week marked an annual conference by the International Conference on AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Infections in Africa (ICASA). Yet, Africa's handling of HIV/AIDS when it comes to the gay community it terribly inadequate, with only 7 African countries including men who have sex with men (MSM) in their HIV/AIDS prevention work. The results of this bare horrific facts across the continent: MSM in Africa are nine times more likely to be HIV positive than their heterosexual counterparts. "Same-sex practicing people have always been excluded from major African policy meetings because of homophobia," said Joel Nana, Program Associate for Southern and West Africa with the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. In an effort to address this exclusion, LGBT activists held a three-day conference in Senegal (prior to the ICASA gathering) to demand an urgent response to the HIV pandemic affecting their communities.

Russia: From Russia, with love? Well, there's not much love coming from Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov toward LGBT rights supporters. Mayor Luzhkov again affirmed his opposition this week to any form of gay rights organizing in his city, warning a European television/variety show that its homosexual performers better not organize, assemble, or plan any marches. "We do not allow gay parades," the mayor said. Doesn't get any less subtle than that, folks. Organiser of Moscow Gay Pride Nikolai Alekseev reacted immediately to the words of Moscow Mayor, "We are not going to surrender our right to freedom of assembly and expression because it is given to us not by Mayor Luzhkov but by the Constitution on this country." Now that's an organizer talking!

United Nations: We wrote about this here and here, but this week saw a formal statement presented to the UN that will call on all governments around the world to ensure that sexual orientation and gender identity are not subjected to criminal penalty, and that individuals are not executed, arrested or otherwise detained because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. The statement was submitted by France, and has been endorsed by every member of the European Union. Who hasn't signed the statement so far? The Vatican. United States. Sudan. Saudi Arabia. Yemen. Iran. Which begs the question -- why is the Vatican and the United States keeping such repressive company? But not all is lost...efforts are underway to push the U.S. to sign onto the statement, and protests continued this week against the Vatican for its failure to endorse a statement that protects LGBT people from being systematically brutalized by oppressive governments.

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Comments (7)

Thank you, Michael, for such wonderful threads. All of them make you want to become more informed and aware about what happens throughout the world.

One of our board members, a lesbian sister in AR who is a physician, has spent time in Hong Kong and Macau, SAR. China has an enigmatic approach to our rights in China and the Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macau.

We will be visiting with our representatives in the European nations who are same sex marriage nations in February of next year.

Who does it surprise that the former Soviet Union and the former Warsaw Pact Eastern European nations are homophobic? We know too many associates who have children adopted from Russia or from now independent republics of the CCCP.

The United Nations piece bothered me. Of course, France could choose any time to push this piece.....but nothing would show US intention during the lame duck tenure of the George Bush administration.

It is my hope that after Tuesday, January 20, 2009, that Ambassador Susan Rice would, on instruction from President Obama, sign the French resolution.Again, if you want a good Christmas feeling today.....I have no connection to them but support their endeavors for years, is www.soulforce.org and on the front page you will see the video DON'T TELL ME WHO TO LOVE....get some tissues, and you will thank yourself for viewing and listening to that great song.

Posted by A B on 12/14/2008 @ 02:54PM PT
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Patriarch Alexis II of Moscow and All Russia has had, like his predecessor, some time in re-establishing its role in Russian life it held in Czarist Russia.

The difference is that many fundamentalist Protestant Christians, especially from the USA, has come to bring " JAY.............SUS" to a nation that accepted Christianity through Greek Orthodoxy one millenium ago. This is one of Patriarch Alexis' troubles.

He shares another with the Ukraine, in that the Roman Catholic Church has pseudo-Orthodox " Eastern Catholic rites or subsidiaries" who were forced to become Russian or Ukrainian Orthodox under the Stalinistic era. The Vatican City State took its property back from the Russian Orthodox, and with it many parishes became Russian Eastern Catholic or Ukrainian Catholic Christians.

His third dilemma was to join the Roman Catholics and Eastern Catholic subsidiaries and the Fundamentalist Protestant Russians in the one issue they can connect around......US. GAY RIGHTS.

This strategy is being played out throughout the Russian Federation....the now independent Soviet republics, especially in Georgia and Ukraine. We also know the problems in the old Warsaw Pact nations, especially Catholic Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Posted by A B on 12/14/2008 @ 04:18PM PT
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In Newsweek Magazine, there was the first honest liberal Christian exposition against the Right Wing Religionists. It was so effective that the full force of the RW Dominionist Theocrats went after Newsweek for yet another commercial for theocratic oppression.

Posted by A B on 12/15/2008 @ 05:09AM PT
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I have friend at Amnesty International who was recently sent to Moscow to observe the gay pride march. She said that there were more protestors than marchers and that some of them had taken the time to produce and throw human faeces at the pride marchers! Can you imagine?! Not just the throwing part, but actually taking the time to produce it.. I mean they didn't find it from animals but 'made' it themselves.. so I guess it still was from animals..

And I've also heard of really savage assaults on marchers during gay pride marches in Warsaw. Again, can you imagine? In such a public environment with police all around, that you have to fear for your life to show your pride?

These people really need our support. I'm shocked that this still happens in European cities.

Posted by Chad Rains on 12/18/2008 @ 04:00AM PT
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I have friend at Amnesty International who was recently sent to Moscow to observe the gay pride march. She said that there were more protestors than marchers and that some of them had taken the time to produce and throw human faeces at the pride marchers! Can you imagine?! Not just the throwing part, but actually taking the time to produce it.. I mean they didn't find it from animals but 'made' it themselves.. so I guess it still was from animals..

And I've also heard of really savage assaults on marchers during gay pride marches in Warsaw. Again, can you imagine? In such a public environment with police all around, that you have to fear for your life to show your pride?

These people really need our support. I'm shocked that this still happens in European cities.

Posted by Chad Rains on 12/18/2008 @ 04:01AM PT
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Chad - of course, you realise that this is the former Warsaw Pact nations or the former CCCP nations who feel this way. In Poland, the memory of Pope Wytola is still fresh in their minds, and of course, he had Cardinal Ratzinger with his "objectively disordered" phony science and even phonier theology. Now the latter is the Papenfuhrer, and a man who is deeply closeted in Prada and self-hatred directed at his own.

It will be the responsibility of the EU to enforce our rights by translating the Anglo-French and German second-class distinctions and join the Nederland, Belgique/Belgie, Espana, and Norway and Canada of course LOL, and the Union of South Africa and Nepal of all places to declare a federal civil MARRIAGE law.

Posted by A B on 12/18/2008 @ 04:12AM PT
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Raymond, I agree. Hopefully, many of these countries membership to the EU will bring pressure on them to take care of these issues..

Also, I just remembered.. It was Riga (Latvia), and not Moscow, where the human excrement story was from.. Sorry about that..

BUT still Moscow doesn’t even have a mayor that supports them. I find in most Western European capitals, the mayor is one of the few politicians who tend to overwhelmingly support gat right – I would guess because of the larger proportion of the population living in the these places.

Posted by Chad Rains on 12/18/2008 @ 04:18AM PT
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Michael is the Communications Director for the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School, and previously was Communications Director for Pax Christi USA, a progressive Catholic human rights organization.