Gay couple wins bullying suit
A Vancouver, Canada, family has been forced to pay $15,000 to a gay couple following two years of homophobic abuse.
Rod Boggs and his partner of 30 years, Bill Hart, moved to a condo in 2006 and, according to their testimony, their neighbors, the Harrisons, told them that gays “weren’t welcome.”
The Vancouver Sun reported the family went on to play loud music, report false accusations to the police, tried to instigate fights, deflated the couple’s tires and threatened to kill their cat.
The Harrisons denied all charges, claiming the couple had made them remove their basketball hoop, trampoline, glass sound barrier and other furniture from the front veranda.
Justice Doug Halfyard said that although these constituted “rational reasons” for the family to resent Boggs and Hart, the Harrisons had still behaved in “malicious and intolerable” ways and would have to pay $7,500 to each man in damages.
During the six-day trial, Hart claimed Mrs. Harrison told him: “You two have ruined this place. It is disgusting. And so are you. I have so much on you. You are going to be very sorry.”
However, Boggs and Hart were told they would not receive greater damages because, “to a limited extent,” they had provoked the Harrisons.
Pastor: Gays an ‘abomination’
The pastor of a Northern Ireland church has attacked homosexuality, saying it is associated with shortened lifespans and mental-health problems and that people should change themselves.
In language strikingly similar to that used by homophobic Northern Ireland MP Iris Robinson last year, Pastor Mark Bradfield, of Bethel Baptist Church, also said being gay was “an abomination” and against God’s will.
Bradfield’s tirade was published in a letter to the Derry Journal. He was responding to an article published in the newspaper earlier this month, in which the local Rainbow Project welcomed U.S. President Barack Obama’s decision to proclaim June LGBT Pride Month.
He claimed that being gay was “unfulfilled, lacking, impulsive, compulsive and fraught with health risks,” adding that anyone who might “dabble in this lifestyle” does so “to their severe detriment.”
Bradfield, whose church is non-denominational, continued: “When those in the gay community look around — seeing a young husband and wife with a pram and a baby, an older husband and wife holding hands, churches preaching that it is God’s plan ‘for one man to be with one woman till death do us part’ — they are reminded that they are wrong, plainly and simply.”
He ended his letter with an apparent comparison of the gay movement to Nazism, stating: “Hitler said that the lies most easily believed were the biggest, loudest and most repeated.”
Earlier this year, police said Robinson would not be prosecuted over remarks she had made about gays.
Last summer, she said: “I cannot think of anything more sickening than a child being abused. It is comparable to the act of homosexuality. I think they are all comparable. I feel totally repulsed by both.”
Shortly after her outburst, Robinson’s son Gareth was photographed kissing a man and sitting on his knee at a Belfast party.
Gay man murdered with banjo
The trial of a Hungarian tourist who allegedly killed a 69-year-old gay man with a banjo began June 22 in the Auckland High Court in New Zealand.
The man on trial, Ferdinand Ambach, is accused of beating Ronald James Brown around the head with a banjo before shoving the instrument’s neck repeatedly down his throat.
Brown died in hospital three days after the attack in December 2007 when his life-support machine was turned off.
Ambach has denied the charges and claims to only remember parts of what happened that night.
The prosecutor for the case, Nick Williams, told the jury that a “misunderstanding” had erupted between the two men, when they went back to Brown’s house after meeting in a bar in the Onehunga district of Auckland. The misunderstanding appeared to be Brown’s incorrect assumption that Ambach was gay.
According to Williams, neighbors called the police after hearing violent disturbances in Brown’s residence. When the police arrived, they found Brown severely injured and bleeding profusely, while Ambach, who was swearing loudly in Hungarian, threw furniture, including a double bed, through an upstairs window.
Ambach’s lawyer, Peter Kaye, said the jury must consider the possibility that the Hungarian man suffered a “sudden and temporary loss of self-control,” which would make the case one of manslaughter rather than murder.
Indian city plans first gay parade
The city of Chennai, in Tamil Nadu, is set to hold its first Rainbow Parade on June 28.
The event aims to raise awareness of the challenges facing the state’s LGBT population.
“We would like to look at discrimination of homosexuals by families and society. But most importantly, we would try to bring the role of medical practitioners — primarily mental-health professionals who try to ‘cure’ patients of their sexual orientation,” said Dr. L. Ramakrishnan, director of Solidarity and Action Against the HIV Infection in India.
According to Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which criminalizes “carnal intercourse against the order of nature,” a gay man can be given life imprisonment for having consensual sex with another man.
Although this law is very seldom enforced, it makes any sort of support or safe-sex program extremely difficult to carry out.
The criminalization of homosexuality, and the homophobic attitudes held by many across the country, have also led many psychiatrists to prescribe antidepressants and even electro-shock therapy as “cures” for gay people.
Although India still has a very conservative attitude regarding gay rights, there is a long history of trans and eunuch communities. Trans performers often dance at weddings and trans people in Tamil Nadu are given ration cards and have a welfare board.
“There is a cultural acceptance of transgenders,” said Kalki, a trans activist. “Ours is an issue of gender identity, so the government and media have had a soft spot for us. But homosexuality and bisexuality are related to sexual orientation and society is not as accepting of that. Most transgenders do not identify with the concept of a Pride, as most are uneducated and not too Westernized, unlike the LGB individuals. But this is an opportunity to support them because their state is quite backward in many ways.”
China preps sex-change guidelines
China’s first medical guidelines on sex-change surgery could require patients to gain police approval before the procedure, according to the Health Ministry’s Web site.
The proposed guidelines, posted June 16, said candidates for surgery must show an agreement from police to change their sex on their identification cards once the procedure is complete.
The ministry posted the draft guidelines to invite public and professional opinions before July 10. China has no laws against sex-change surgery, and the ministry says the guidelines are necessary to regulate the procedure.
One bioethicist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences criticized the proposed requirements of police agreement and requiring patients to live openly in their desired gender for at least two years before surgery.
“As long as a person meets the physical and mental requirements, she or he should be granted the permit to have the surgery. The police should change the sex of the receiver on the identity card accordingly,” Qiu Renzhong said.
Although attitudes about sex in China have become increasingly relaxed, especially in big cities, the country remains a conservative society where sexual identity issues are not freely discussed.
Experts estimate that nearly 2,000 Chinese have undergone sex-change surgery, while 100,000 to 400,000 people are “considering it.” No official statistics on transsexuals in China are available.
China’s proposed guidelines also states that candidates must show they have no record of criminal offenses and have told their immediate family that they are undergoing the operation. In addition, patients also must be over 20, single and have undergone psychological therapy for at least a year.
Larry Nichols can be reached at [email protected].