Anti-gay texts in British schools
Thousands of Muslim children in the United Kingdom are being taught the Saudi national curriculum with textbooks that contain homophobic and anti-Semitic lessons, according to a BBC documentary.
The BBC reported that BBC Panorama found that more than 40 Saudi Students’ Schools and Clubs are teaching the official Saudi national curriculum to about 5,000 pupils.
While the Saudi government denied any official ties to the schools, the BBC reported that the Saudi government owns one London building where the textbooks were found, and that the Saudi embassy oversees the network of schools.
According to the BBC, “One of the textbooks asks children to list the ‘reprehensible’ qualities of Jewish people. A text for younger children asks what happens to someone who dies who is not a believer in Islam: The answer given in the textbook is ‘hellfire.’”
Another text describes the punishment for gay sex as death and states a difference of opinion about whether it should be carried out by stoning, burning with fire or throwing the person over a cliff. In a book for 14-year-olds, Sharia law and its punishment for theft are explained, including detailed diagrams about how hands and feet of thieves are amputated.
The Saudi embassy said the materials were being taken out of context and often referred to historical descriptions.
Suspects held in Rio shooting
The Brazilian army is holding two soldiers in connection with the shooting of a young gay man following Rio de Janeiro’s pride parade.
An army statement says one of the suspects acknowledged shooting 19-year-old student Douglas Igor Marques Luiz. The two sergeants were arrested last Thursday and will be questioned by police.
Luiz claimed he was with friends at the Arpoador, a rocky outcrop between Ipanema and Copacabana beaches, Nov. 14 when three men in military uniforms approached. The 19-year-old said they told everyone to leave, but held him back and started verbally abusing him. The aggression escalated and he was shot once in the stomach.
The army initially denied any involvement.
Luiz was treated and released at a local hospital.
The shooting created particular attention because it came at a moment when Brazil’s LGBT community was holding its biggest celebration.
Advocates called the shooting an example of lingering homophobic attitudes that mar the city’s reputation for tolerance.
LGBT tourists make up one quarter of Rio’s approximately 3 million international visitors every year, and the gay-pride march drew nearly a million participants, organizers estimated.
Despite Rio’s reputation as a gay-friendly and sexually uninhibited place where anything goes, there have been 600 complaints of anti-LGBT violence in the last year just in Rio state.
“We’ve gotten very far, but we need more political will to really improve conditions for the LGBT community in Brazil,” said Julio Moreira, president of the advocacy organization Grupo Arco-Iris de Cidadania LGBT, the Rainbow Group for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Citizenship.
Activists are demanding a thorough investigation of the attack on Luiz, and calling for Brazil’s Senate to pass a law banning discrimination based on sexual identity or orientation.
Gay coffins for sale
Two German undertakers are offering coffins designed with nude male images to appeal specifically to the gay market.
Cologne-based Thomas Brandl and his 34-year-old business partner Michael Koenigsfeld say they are expanding into the gay market to satisfy the increasing number of special requests from same-sex couples they have received.
“We believe you should be able to have a coffin that lets you embark on your last journey in a way that reflects how you lived your life,” Brandl says. “People are really interested because it’s so unique. Reactions have been very positive so far.”
In a statement, the two men said, “Even though the Lord Mayor of Berlin, the vice-chancellor and many others openly admit to being homosexual nowadays, marginal groups still face prejudices and bureaucratic hurdles.”
The pair also sell coffins and urns in rainbow colors and offer burials around a tree reserved exclusively for gay people. The coffins cost approximately $2,300.
Homophobia fueled by gay priests
A German theologian says that much of the homophobia in the Catholic Church can be traced to the large number of gay priests who are attempting to suppress their sexual orientation.
David Berger, an expert on St. Thomas Aquinas and former publisher of a Catholic magazine, called on the church to acknowledge its many gay priests and change its teaching on homosexuality in an interview with Der Spiegel magazine.
“It must be acknowledged that a large number of Catholic clerics and trainee priests in Europe and the United States are homosexually inclined,” said Berger.
He added, “The worst homo-phobia in the Catholic Church comes from homophile priests, who are desperately fighting their own sexuality. Obviously, those who follow their urges are repudiated more fiercely when one is so painfully repressing that disposition oneself.”
Berger, who is gay, recalled spending time in conservative Catholic circles with upper-class Germans who praised Hitler for imprisoning and murdering gay people in concentration camps. Now a teacher near Cologne, he has written a book, “Der heilig Schein [The Holy Illusion],” which tells the story about his experiences with the church.
Violence ends St. Petersburg event
A gay-rights demonstration in St. Petersburg, the first such state-sanctioned event to be held in Russia, was greeted by egg-throwing protesters on Nov. 20.
Orthodox Christians and other radicals tried to break up the march, which lasted less than one hour due to the violence. Antigay demonstrators threw eggs and shouted insults, leading to the arrest of 10 people.
The dozen or so gay-rights marchers were outnumbered by protesters including older women and skinheads.
Last month, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the repeated bans on gay-pride parades in Moscow violated the European Human Rights Convention.
U.N. ends lesbian, gay protections
A United Nations General Assembly panel dropped a specific reference protecting gays in a resolution condemning executions.
Every two years, the panel passes a resolution condemning extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions. In 2008, the resolution included a reference to killings due to sexual orientation. In fact, it has included such a reference for the past 10 years.
This year, however, Morocco and Mali introduced an amendment on behalf of Muslim and African countries that replaced the term “sexual orientation” with “discriminatory reasons on any basis.” The resolution does specify that it condemns targeted attacks on racial, national, ethnic, religious, linguistic and other groups.
Many Western delegations, including the U.S., expressed their disappointment at the amendment and also voted against it.
A British statement to the panel said: “The subject of this amendment — the need for prompt and thorough investigations of all killing, including those committed for … sexual orientation — exists in this resolution simply because it is a continuing cause for concern.”
The amendment eventually passed by a slim margin of 79-70, and the U.N. General Assembly committee approved the final resolution with 165 in favor and 10 abstentions.
Countries that voted to remove sexual orientation from the condemnation resolution included Iran, Nigeria, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iraq and Uganda, where homosexuality is criminalized and even a capital offense in some cases.
The resolution is now expected to be formally adopted in December.
A Human Rights Watch spokesperson, Philippe Bolopion, said, “It’s a step backward and it’s extremely disappointing that some countries felt the need to remove the reference to sexual orientation, when sexual orientation is the very reason why so many people around the world have been subjected to violence.”
Pope relaxes views on condoms
Sexual-health charities, politicians and gay-rights advocates have welcomed what appears to be a relaxation in Pope Benedict XVI’s opposition to condoms. In an interview for an upcoming book, the pope argued that, in some cases, the use of condoms is the first step in the direction of “moralization” of an individual.
In 2009, the pope told journalists on a flight to Cameroon that HIV/ AIDS was “a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems.”
But recently, speaking to a German journalist Peter Sewall for his “Light of the World” book, the pope said, “There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants. But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection. That can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality.”
In a clarifying statement, the chief spokesperson for the Vatican, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the comments by the pope do not indicate “reforms or changes” to church teaching, which forbids the use of condoms.
“With this, the pope isn’t reforming or changing the teaching of the church, but reaffirming it, putting it in the context of the value and the dignity of human sexuality as expression of love and responsibility,” he said.
Nevertheless, Lisa Power of U.K. sexual health charity Terrence Higgins Trust said, “We’re relieved that the pope has accepted the reality that condoms are a major weapon in the fight against HIV.”
Gay-rights advocate Peter Tatchell said the pope “seems to be admitting, for the first time, that using condoms can be morally responsible if they help save lives … Benedict seems to realize that his unrelenting, blanket opposition to condoms has damaged his own authority and that of the church.”
Larry Nichols can be reached at [email protected].