Gay France News and Reports 2006-08

5 February 2006

1
High Court in France Rules Both Members of Gay Couple Exercise Parental Authority

by Benjamin Cohen
The highest court in France yesterday ruled that both members of a gay couple are entitled to exercise parental authority over a child, rather than just the biological parent. The Cour de Cassation, decides how French law should be interpreted but does not hear actual trials. The decision is likely to open the way for further debate in France over the rights of gay couples in terms of marriage and adoption, which remains illegal.

" The civil code is not opposed to a mother, as sole holder of the parental authority, delegating all or part of the duties to the woman with whom she lives in a stable and continuous union," the court said in its verdict which also applies to gay male couples where one partner is the biological parent of a child.

The court also decided that the right for gay couples to exercise parental authority must be balanced with the best interests of a child. Prior to yesterday’s ruling, French courts have only delegated parental responsibility to a person other than a biological or adoptive parent in very rare and unusual circumstances. The ruling coincided with the first gay marriage to be held by a French couple. However, the ceremony took place in neighbouring Belgium. " It’s a shame to have to go abroad to get married," said Dominique Adamski, 52, who married Francis Sekens, 60, in Mouscron, a small Belgian town just over the border from France. The French government does offer financial rights and responsibilities to gay couples who have entered into a civil union.

Press Release

14 May 2006

2
Second Toulouse Gay Pride

For the second year in a row the association Arc-En-Ciel Toulouse is organizing the Toulouse Gay Pride (Marche des Fiertés LGBT).

Arc-En-Ciel Toulouse is a member of the Coordination Interpride France and of the Alliance des Centres LGBT. Arc-En-Ciel is mixed (lesbian-gay-bi-trans (“LGBT”)) and open to all, develops projects and actions in partnership with the 13 associations that form its membership and that are represent many sectors: the fight against homophobia in the workplace and in educational settings, actions for LGBT visibility, the organization of cultural activities, assistance in the prevention of AIDS, or groups that allow for exchanges, whether regarding lobbying for change or simply for conviviality.

Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transsexuals must still acquire new rights in their effort to obtain an equality that will not be simply a melding in with the masses. Foremost, this access to equal rights for all must fully respect our differences.

It is in this sense that Arc-En-Ciel Toulouse is preparing the Toulouse Gay Pride (Marche des Fiertés LGBT) 2006. It will take place on June 17th in Toulouse. Besides the Parade (Marche) which promises to be even more festive than last year, many other activities will be offered in the context of the Festival of Diversities (Festival des Diversités) during the month of June: film projections, meetings with authors, debates, concerts, are being prepared in partnership with many cultural venues in Toulouse.

This is in addition to the parties and events that are organized by our commercial partners – most of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transsexual establishments in Toulouse.One can find all necessary information on the Gay Pride poster and in the program which will be published around May 17th, the Second International Day against Homophobia, as well as on the web site of Arc-En-Ciel Toulouse (www.arc-en-ciel-toulouse.com).

Finally, this year the Gay Pride precedes many important election deadlines in France and we will not hesitate to solicit all political representatives so that they clearly and publicly expose their intentions with respect to LGBT rights so that we can better exercise our civic duty during the 2007 elections.

If you would like to join us, you are most welcome to do so. It’s together that we may build a better, more useful vision for tomorrow.
Contacts: arcencieltoulouse@yahoo.fr
Director of the Gay Pride

AFP

May 16, 2006

3
Ground-breaking gay mayor Andre Labarrere dies

Paris – André Labarrère, socialist mayor of the southern town of Pau and one of the first French politicians to declare his homosexuality, died Tuesday of cancer at the age of 78, the Socialist Party (PS) said. A popular local figure famed for speaking bluntly, Labarrère was elected mayor of Pau in 1971 and never left the post. He also served several terms in the National Assembly and was a minister under President François Mitterrand.

Of his homosexuality he said: "To live as a homosexual is very difficult. When I declared myself gay it was to help young people, to say to them: look, you are homosexual. Accept the way you are. You’ll see the world doesn’t come to an end."
But Labarrère opposed gay marriages, saying: "There are enough cuckolds in the world not to add the gays."

AFP

June 11, 2006

4
French Communist Party breaks with Russian Communists over Moscow’s Gay Pride Ban

The French Communist Party has broken off relations with the Russian Communist Party over the latter’s homophobic opposition to the attempt to hold a Gay Pride march in Moscow on May 27, the Russian daily Pravda reports. Moscow Pride was banned by Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, who deployed 1,000 police to crush it; and the police permitted hundreds of anti-gay thugs, many of them fascists, to violently attack the gay demonstrators

The leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Gennady Zyuganov (LEFT) publicly condemned the initiative to hold a gay pride parade in Moscow, calling it an ‘unhealthy’ idea, and refused to comment the critical position of his French colleagues." Pravda reports. "Zyuganov’s press secretary Alexander Yushchenko expressed his boss’s attitude on the matter anyway: ‘The French communists can support whoever they want there in France: either homosexuals or onanists,’ said he," added the Russian daily.

‘Moscow is not Berlin or Paris. Any displays of unconventional sexual orientation look revolting in Russia. The gay parade was originally initiated by a small group of people. They were interested in their own promotion. They probably worked someone’s investment too,’ Ivan Melnikov said," according to Pravda.

Pravda quoted a member of the French CP’s Politburo, Richard Sanchez, as condemning the Russian CP’s position against the Gay Pride March, saying, “It is nonsense for European communists. Being a communist and a homophobe at the same time is so typical of the Communist Party of Russia.”

This past Friday, the French Communists’ daily newspaper in Paris, l’Humanité, published a lengthy interview with Moscow Pride’s chief organizer Nicolas Alexeyev, who was arrested by Moscow police when he tried to lay flowers on Russia’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier commemorating those who died in the struggle against fascism in World War II — an action meant to symbolize the struggle against homophobic Russian fascism today.

Once the largest political party in France in the years after World War II, the now de-Stalinized French CP garnered only 4.8% of the vote in the last presidential election in 2002. The French CP was part of the Socialist-led "governing left" legislative coalition (along with the Greens) under the late President Francois Mitterrand in the ’80s and also in the ’90s, and is in negotiations with the French Socialists for a repeat electoral alliance in the 2007 legislative elections.

And the French CP was part of the massive campaign finance scandals in the ’90s involving a highly organized system of kickbacks in government contracts that included all major political parties of right and left (except for the Greens), which is one reason the Communists have lost control of most of the mayoralties in France’s working-class suburbs they had long dominated politically. Its alliance with the tepid Socialists is also considered a major factor in the rapidity of the French CP’s decline in the last two decades; it now holds only 21 seats in the French parliament (out of 567.) But it still controls France’s largest labor federation, the CGT. The party is currently led by Marie-George Buffet (left), who was Minister of Youth Affairs and Sport in the Socialist-led government of Prime Minister Lionel Jospin from 1997-2002.

On Friday, at an International Culture of Diversity Conference in Warsaw that was part of the Gay Pride celebrations in the Polish capital, Volker Beck (left) — an openly gay member of the German Bundestag (Parliament) from the Green Party and the father of Germany’s domestic partnership law — gave a speech condemning Russia’s crushing of Moscow Pride. In his speech, Beck — who had been beaten bloody by anti-gay fascist thugs when he joined Moscow gay pride demonstrators, and who was also arrested by Moscow police — said that, "The mayor of Moscow deprives people who advocate tolerance and equal rights of their freedom to demonstrate. A tacit understanding exists between the perpetrators of violence, religious preachers of hate and Moscow’s policymakers. This is wholly reprehensible…By banning the demonstration, Mayor Luzhkov is leaving the field open for people of violence and prophets of murder. That is a crime against democracy."

Beck also condemned Russia’s Foreign Minister’s attitude: "The Russian foreign minister, Sergi Lavrov, justified the oppression of homosexuals by saying that varying views on human rights exist in Europe and Russia. Mr. Lavrov, there is no European or Russian interpretation when it comes to human rights. Freedom of opinion, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly are fundamental democratic rights. Like all citizens, lesbians, gays, bisexual and transgendered people have the right to demonstrate in order to draw attention to their problems and their political demands."

Related Reading:
False Accusations Against Moscow Pride:
Moscow Pride 2006 has just published the complete budget for its operations — showing how it spent its money and where it came from. Nicolas Alexeyev and the Russian organizers of the events took out personal loans to help finance Moscow Pride, which ran up a substantial deficit of nearly 28,000 Euros. Publishing their budget and their sources of financing is a remarkable example of responsible organizational transparency (would that our U.S. gay organizations were as open about their spending.)

This was a necessary step, since some gay bar owners with sinister motives have slanderously accused Moscow Pride organizers of pocketing some of the monies. The shady Moscow gay bar owners were afraid of having problems with Moscow’s authoritarian city government that would hurt their businesses because of the banned Moscow Pride, so they opposed it.

We are all too familiar with under-the-table payoffs to police made by gay bar owners in many countries, including the U.S., especially in times past. Moscow gay bar culture is rather like that of the U.S. in the ’50s, ’60s, and early ’70s, when nearly all gay bars were linked to organized crime. I can well recall the famous struggle in 1975 for control of New York Citry’s Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade Committee — which then ran New York’s gay pride march — and which had been taken over by mobbed-up gay bar owners, who reaped an enormous profit from the end-of-parade festival on Christopher Street.

Gay activists under the leadership of the late, beloved Vito Russo (pinoneer gay liberation activist, author of The Celluloid Closet, and later a leader of ACT UP) conducted an effective struggle to take back the Christopher Street Parade Committee from the shadowy bar owners, and defeated them in a vote at a huge and tumultuous gay community meeting (at which the "connected" bar owners tried to pack the meeting with rather obviously non-gay, louche types from Little Italy.)

The opposition for commercial reasons of the sleazy and compromised Moscow bar owners to Moscow Pride — and their deliberate sabotage of the closing Moscow Pride party, which would have helped erase the deficit, but instead wound up increasing it when it was cancelled by the bar owners at the last minute — is shameful.

The Associated Press

September 26, 2006

5
French court drops high-profile case of attack on gay man

Lille – A court in northern France has thrown out a case involving an attack on a gay man that drew nationwide attention and helped lead to a law penalizing homophobic statements, judicial officials said Tuesday. Attackers allegedly doused Sebastien Nouchet with gasoline in his garden and setting him ablaze in the January 2004 incident. He was hospitalized for several weeks with severe burns. He told investigators that the aggressors used anti-gay epithets during the attack.

After more than two and a half years of investigation and court proceedings, the judge in Bethune dropped the case on Monday, court officials said. No reason for the decision was given, though the defense has long cited the lack of witnesses or solid evidence in the case. A suspect was detained in May 2004 and placed under investigation, but he was later released for lack of evidence. Nouchet’s lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment. The attack drew national attention and was seen as a key factor leading to measures that make homophobic statements punishable by fines. The measures were part of a December 2004 law that created a government agency called the High Authority for the Battle Against Discrimination and For Equality, or HALDE.

Pink News
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-3771.html

21 February 2007

6
French court blocks lesbian adoption

An attempt by a French mother to allow her lesbian partner to adopt her child has failed. The Appeals Court in Paris ruled yesterday that the only way the mother could legally allow her partner to adopt the child would be to renounce her own parental rights. If the lesbian couple were allowed to marry, then they could share parental responsibility.

However, France does not allow same-sex marriage, and only grants limited rights to such couples. The French will go to the polls to elect their next President on 22nd April. The Socialist candidate, Segolene Royal, made 100 pledges earlier this month as part of her campaign. Proposition 87 of her manifesto demands equal rights for same-sex couples, paving the way for future anti-discrimination legislation should the French population elect Royal to the presidency.

The 53-year-old socialist party candidate would become France’s first woman president if elected. In contrast, Nicholas Sarkozy, the candidate for the rightist UMP, and current Interior Minister, said in a TV debate earlier this month that he is opposed to any form of gay marriage. Polling carried out in June 2006 suggests that the French population might support Royal’s policies on gay rights.

The Ipsos survey shows that 62% support gay marriage, while 37% were opposed. When asked whether same-sex couples should be allowed to adopt children, the survey found more people to be in opposition (55%) than in support (44%). Discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation at work or in the provision of goods and services is illegal in France, and openly gay, lesbian and bisexual people serve in the military. The mayor of Paris is an out gay man.

The Civil Pacts that all non-married couples in France can enter into grant many of the legal protections of marriage, excluding tax breaks, the right to adopt and the right to access artificial insemination.

Courier Mail (news.com.au/couriermail)
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,21379228-23109,00.html

March 14, 2007

7
Court strikes down gay marriage appeal

From correspondents in Paris (Reuters)
Two homosexuals lost their appeal to have France’s first "gay wedding" recognised as legal overnight when the country’s top court ruled only a change in the law would permit same sex unions. As the law stood, marriage was only possible between a man and a woman, the Cour de Cassation said in a statement that accompanied its ruling.

"Only the adoption of a new law by parliament could allow the situation to evolve," said the court. Stephane Chapin and Bertrand Charpentier were united in June 2004 in a controversial ceremony in the southwestern town of Begles, arguing that the law did not explicitly state marriage had to involve persons of the opposite sex. Public prosecutors argued the law implied a union of heterosexuals. The "marriage" was annulled and the Green mayor who officiated was suspended for a month from his duties for a month for breaking the law.

Mr Chapin and Mr Charpentier were later given a suspended eight month jail term for theft, using forged cheques and taking advantage of the vulnerable elderly person with whom they lodged in order to pay for their wedding. The Pope overnight reiterated the Vatican’s opposition to gay marriage, but in France, a country with a long Roman Catholic tradition, the issue of gay rights has won backers among some candidates in next month’s presidential elections. Socialist contender Segolene Royal said gays should be allowed to marry and adopt children while conservative frontrunner Nicolas Sarkozy opposes same sex marriage but said gays should not suffer financial discrimination.

Francois Bayrou, the fast-rising centrist who is challenging for a place in a May 6 run-off ballot, says gays should be allowed to adopt but marriage be reserved for heterosexuals. Last year the Cour de Cassation, which decides how to interpret French law but does not hear trials, ruled that both partners in a homosexual couple could exercise parental authority of a child, rather than just the biological parents.

University of Chicago Press Journals
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070823110231.htm

August 25, 2007

8
Are Homosexual Civil Unions A 600-year-old Tradition?

Science Daily — A compelling new study from the September issue of the Journal of Modern History reviews historical evidence, including documents and gravesites, suggesting that homosexual civil unions may have existed six centuries ago in France. The article is the latest from the ongoing "Contemporary Issues in Historical Perspective" series, which explores the intersection between historical knowledge and current affairs. Commonly used rationales in support of gay marriage and gay civil unions avoid historical arguments. However, as Allan A. Tulchin (Shippensburg University) reveals in his forthcoming article, a strong historical precedent exists for homosexual civil unions. Opponents of gay marriage in the United States today have tended to assume that nuclear families have always been the standard household form. However, as Tulchin writes, "Western family structures have been much more varied than many people today seem to realize, and Western legal systems have in the past made provisions for a variety of household structures."

For example, in late medieval France, the term affrèrement — roughly translated as brotherment — was used to refer to a certain type of legal contract, which also existed elsewhere in Mediterranean Europe. These documents provided the foundation for non-nuclear households of many types and shared many characteristics with marriage contracts, as legal writers at the time were well aware, according to Tulchin. The new "brothers" pledged to live together sharing ‘un pain, un vin, et une bourse’ — one bread, one wine, and one purse. As Tulchin notes, "The model for these household arrangements is that of two or more brothers who have inherited the family home on an equal basis from their parents and who will continue to live together, just as they did when they were children." But at the same time, "the affrèrement was not only for brothers," since many other people, including relatives and non-relatives, used it. The effects of entering into an affrèrement were profound. As Tulchin explains: "All of their goods usually became the joint property of both parties, and each commonly became the other’s legal heir. They also frequently testified that they entered into the contract because of their affection for one another. As with all contracts, affrèrements had to be sworn before a notary and required witnesses, commonly the friends of the affrèrés."

Tulchin argues that in cases where the affrèrés were single unrelated men, these contracts provide "considerable evidence that the affrèrés were using affrèrements to formalize same-sex loving relationships. . . . I suspect that some of these relationships were sexual, while others may not have been. It is impossible to prove either way and probably also somewhat irrelevant to understanding their way of thinking. They loved each other, and the community accepted that. What followed did not produce any documents." He concludes: "The very existence of affrèrements shows that there was a radical shift in attitudes between the sixteenth century and the rise of modern antihomosexual legislation in the twentieth."

Reference: Allan Tulchin, "Same-Sex Couples Creating Households in Old Regime France: The Uses of the Affrèrement." Journal of Modern History: September 2007.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by University of Chicago Press Journals.

pinknews.co.uk
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-5351.html

3rd September 2007

9
Gay French rugby clubs unite as World Cup nears

by Ian Dunt
France’s network of gay rugby clubs are closing ranks to challenge homophobic sentiment on and off the pitch as the World Cup gears up to its first match. French gay rugby clubs game relatively late to the game, sometime after the UK, South Africa and Australia started the trend, but they are intent on making up lost ground.

"It always surprises people when at the beginning of a match we introduce ourselves as a gay team, but once on the pitch, we earn the other side’s respect," Christophe Solignac, trainer for the "Melee Alpine" (Alpine Scrum) team in Grenoble in the French Alps told AFP. Ultimately, we share the same passion regardless of our sexuality. Straight rugby men who play against us know it’s a very tough sport, and our sexuality doesn’t stop us training in the snow in winter, when the temperature falls below freezing! And the old fantasy about gay rugby men mucking around in the showers or the locker rooms really is a load of rubbish," he said.

The UK is proud to boast the world’s first fully-registered gay club – the London Steelers. Other notable teams include Sydney club the POOFTAs and South Africa’s Jamieson Raiders. The French Mediterranean city of Montpellier hosted Europe’s first Union Cup in 2005. This year’s event took place in Copenhagen. But Serge Simon, former international player and author of a study into homophobic sentiment in France, says the battle for equality is far from over. "Rugby is an environment based on archaic values, on the permanent negation of any trace of femininity," he said . "Players constantly have to show who is the most virile, the most powerful."

International Herald Tribune
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/31/africa/dubai.php

October 31, 2007

10
Dubai and rape: French youth tells his story

by Thanassis Cambanis
Duabi – Alexandre Robert, a French 15-year-old, was having a dream summer in this tourist paradise on the Gulf. It was Bastille Day, and he and a classmate had escaped the July heat at the beach for an air-conditioned arcade. Just after sunset, Alex was rushing to meet his father for dinner when he bumped into an acquaintance, a 17-year-old native-born student at the American school, who said he and his cousin could drop Alex off. There were, in fact, three Emirati men in the car, including a pair of former convicts, aged 35 and 18. They drove Alex past his house and into a dark patch of desert, between a row of new villas and a power plant, took away his cellphone, threatened him with a knife and a club and told him they would kill his family members if he ever reported them. Then, Alex says, they stripped off his pants and one by one sodomized him in the back seat of the car. They dumped Alex on the side of the road across from one of Dubai’s luxury hotel towers.

Alex and his family were about to learn that despite Dubai’s status as the Arab world’s paragon of modernity and wealth, its legal system remains a perilous gantlet when it comes to homosexuality and legal protection of foreigners. The authorities not only discouraged Alex from pressing charges, he says; they have left open the possibility of charging Alex with criminal homosexual activity, and neglected to inform him or his parents that one of his attackers had tested HIV positive while in prison four years earlier. "They tried to smother this story," Alex said by phone from Switzerland, where he fled a month into his 10th grade, fearing a jail term in Dubai if charged with homosexual activity. "Dubai, they say we build the highest towers, they have the best hotels. But all the news, they hide it. They don’t want the world to know that Dubai still lives in the Middle Ages."

United Arab Emirates law does not recognize rape of males, only a crime called "forced homosexuality." The two adult men charged with molesting Alex appeared in court Wednesday, and will face trial before a three-judge panel on Nov. 7. The third, a minor, will be tried in juvenile court. Men convicted of sexually assaulting other men usually serve sentences ranging from a few months to two years, legal experts here say.

The two adults have pleaded not guilty to kidnapping with deceit and illicit sexual intercourse.

Rape and assault are not unknown in Dubai, a bustling financial and tourist center where at least 90 percent of the residents are not Emirati citizens. Alex’s Kafkaesque journey into the Dubai legal system brings into sharp relief questions about unequal treatment of foreigners that have long been quietly raised among the expatriate majority here. It also throws into public view the taboos surrounding HIV and homosexuality that Dubai residents say have allowed rampant harassment of gays and have encouraged the health system to treat HIV virtually in secret. (Under Emirates law, foreigners with HIV, or those convicted of homosexual activity, are deported.)

Prosecutors here tout their system as modern, Western-style and fair.

"The legal and judicial system in the United Arab Emirates makes no distinction between nationals and non-nationals," said Khalifa Rashid Bin Demas, head of the Dubai Attorney General’s technical office, in an interview. "All residents are treated equally." Dubai’s economic miracle – decades of double-digit growth spurred by investors, foreign companies, and workers drawn to the tax-free Emirates – depends on millions of foreigners, working jobs from construction to senior financial executives. Even many of the criminal court lawyers are foreigners, because there are not enough Emiratis. Lawyers here say that corporate law heartily protects foreign investors, but that equal protection before the law does not always extend to foreigners in criminal court. "Equality exists in theory, but not in practice," said a Western diplomat with close knowledge of the Dubai legal system.

Alex’s case has raised diplomatic tensions between the Emirates and France, whose government has lodged official complaints about the apparent cover-up of one assailant’s HIV status and other irregularities in the case. Demas said that the police and prosecutors followed procedures, and that officials informed the victim’s family of the assailant’s HIV status as soon as they learned it. The Dubai authorities have no intention of prosecuting Alex for homosexual activity, Demas said, and are seeking the death penalty for the two adult attackers. "This crime is an outrage against society," Demas said.

However, the investigation file in Alex’s case and a pair of confidential French diplomatic cables obtained by The New York Times confirm the accounts of inexplicable and at times hostile official behavior described by Alex and his parents. "The grave deficiencies or incoherence of the investigation appear to result, in part, from gross incompetence of the services involved in the United Arab Emirates, but also from the moral, pseudo-scientific, and political prejudices which undoubtedly influenced the inquiry," the French ambassador to the United Arab Emirates wrote in a confidential cable dated Sept. 6. Most infuriating to Alex and his mother, Veronique Robert, they said, the police inaccurately informed French diplomats on Aug. 15, a month after the assault, that the three attackers were disease-free. Only at the end of August did the family learn that the 36-year-old assailant was HIV positive. The case file contains a positive HIV test for the convict dated March 26, 2003. "They lied to us," Robert said. "Now the Damocles sword of AIDS hangs over Alex."

So far the teenager has not contracted HIV, but he will not know for certain until January, when he gets another blood test at the end of the disease’s six-month incubation period. A forensic doctor examined Alex the night of the rape, taking swabs from his mouth for DNA and from his anus. He did not take blood tests or examine Alex with a speculum. Then he cleared the room and told Alex in private: "I know you’re a homosexual. You can admit it to me. I can tell." Alex, outraged, said he told his father in tears: "I’ve just been raped by three men, and he’s saying I’m a homosexual because my anus is distended." The doctor, an Egyptian, wrote in his legal report that he had found no evidence of forced penetration, according to Alex’s family, an assessment that could hurt the case against the assailants.

In early September, after the family learned about the older attacker’s HIV status and the French government lodged official complaints with the UAE authorities, the Dubai attorney general’s office assigned a new prosecutor to the case. Only then were forensic tests performed to confirm that sperm from all three attackers had been found in Alex’s anus. Alex decided to stay in Dubai in order to testify against his attackers, and went back to school in September, despite unsettling flashbacks. In early October, however, the family’s lawyer warned him that the authorities were weighing charges of homosexuality against Alex, which carry a prison term of one year.

Veteran lawyers here say the justice system is evolving, like the country’s entire system of governance, which has blossomed as the economy and population have exploded in just a few decades. Despite its shortfalls, the United Arab Emirates has combined Islamic values with best practices from the West to create "the most modern legal system among the Arab countries," said Salim Al Shaali, a former police officer and prosecutor who now practices criminal law. "We are very proud of what we’ve achieved," Shaali said. In business and finance, the UAE has worked hard to earn a reputation for impartial and speedy justice. But the criminal justice system has struggled, balancing a penal code rooted in conservative Arab and Islamic local culture, applied to an overwhelming non-Arab population of foreign residents.

A 42-year-old gay businessman who would speak only if identified by his nickname, Ko, described routine sexual harassment by officials during his 13 years living in Dubai. Ko, an Australian of Asian origin who described himself as a "queen," said that his effeminate walk and tight clothes frequently attracted censure from police officers and labor and immigration officials, who would demand sex in exchange for not filing criminal charges or for issuing a work permit. He cut his shoulder-length hair to avoid attention, he said, but after years of living in fear of jail or deportation, he is selling his businesses and is leaving the country. "On the outside Dubai is beautiful, but on the inside it’s still the third world," Ko said. "It’s a dictatorship with a softer touch." Ko said violent rape was common, and that most foreign victims remained silent rather than face deportation or a prison term for homosexuality if they reported an assault.

Although victims generally keep quiet, others who have been raped in Dubai have shared testimonials in recent days on boycottdubai.com, a Web site started by Veronique Robert as a result of her son’s case. Prosecutors moved forward with the case against her son’s attackers only as a result of public pressure and diplomatic complaints, Robert believes. Now, she hopes, the attention could prompt more humane and even-handed justice for future rape victims here. Alex says he wants to see his attackers executed or jailed for life, but he does not want to return to Dubai, no matter how crucial his appearance in court would be to the case. "Sometimes you feel crazy, you know?" he said. "It’s hard, but we have to be strong. I’m doing this for all the other poor kids who got raped and couldn’t do anything about it."

Follow-up comments to this story: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1945456/post

365gay.com
http://www.365gay.com/Newscon08/01/011008pdel.htm

January 10, 2008

11
Gay Paris Mayor Targeted By Terrorists

by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff
Paris – French police have beefed up protection for Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe after an Islamist website used by Al-Qaeda members listed him as a target. The threat was relayed to the French government by the United States after it was discovered by the CIA which monitors Al-Qaeda messages on the Internet. The message, according to radio network RTL said that terrorists had pinpointed Delanoe and the city of Paris in an effort to bring the downfall of President Nicolas Sarkozy.

"The threats are not specific and do not come from a site linked directly to Al-Qaeda," a Paris police official told RTL.

"We are adapting to the situation, without losing our nerve, without overly worrying," Delanoe told the network. Delanoe is a Socialist and Sarkozy a conservative who has aligned himself with the war in Iraq. It is believed that Delanoe was chosen as a target because security around the president is already more intense and more difficult to penetrate. Delanoe is widely popular as Paris’s mayor but has come under criticism from the city’s sizable Moslem community because he is openly gay. Nevertheless, he is expected to have little difficulty in winning another term at the helm of France’s biggest city when Parisians go to the polls in March is frequently mentioned as a potential candidate for the French presidency in the 2012 national election.

In 1998, while he was a relatively obscure city councilor, Delanoe came out in a television interview, breaking and unwritten French law that a politician’s private life should remain private. He later said that friends urged him not to go public, but that he overruled them because of the good he felt it would do to advance gay rights. "Would not my intervention help even if only in a small way to lighten the burden of secrecy borne by so many people," he wrote in his 2004 biography.

In 2001 Delanoe was elected the capital’s first ever Socialist mayor and the first gay person to head a city government in a major city. A year later Delanoe was stabbed by a deranged homophobe as he presided over an all-night cultural party at city hall. He was rushed to hospital suffering a single stab wound to his abdomen. Doctors at Pitie-Salpetriere hospital operated on Delanoe for more than three hours. He would spend nearly a month in hospital. Police arrested a man at the scene. During interrogations he told investigators he hated gays and politicians.

From: Gay New Zealand
http://www.gaynz.com/articles/publish/3/article_5878.php

April 29, 2008

12
In memorium – Jean-Daniel Cadinot

One of the good things about being gay, I think, is that we generally seem to have less hang ups about discussing pornography – its importance in our lives, our reactions and preferences and how many of us have learned so much about ourselves from these reactions and preferences. Some of us probably got the first inklings of our sexuality from our reactions to inadvertently found gay porn. And there’s little doubt that Cadinot was one of the best. Partly it was his use of reasonably real looking actors, partly it was storylines that were even vaguely plausible, partly it was the fact that his actors seemed less exploited or drugged or straight boys doing it for pay, but actually gay and enjoying it, but mostly it was for just the style and passion he brought to his films. Some of the early ones, its true, are a bit troubling because the actors seem a bit too young and the sex was done without condoms a bit beyond the point at which awareness of AIDS should have stopped it. But in the later films the actors are obviously of age and the condoms definitely (if rather mysteriously) come on. There might be some compunctions about his exoticisation of men of colour, but as I said, it generally seems to be voluntary and quite happy, and perhaps there’s a limit to how politically correct one can be!

Here’s a summary of his career and his last message posted on his site. Its hard to imagine a more appropriate line for him to go out
on: "An erect phallus is a symbol of life, a cross a symbol of death."

Jean-Daniel Cadinot (1944-2008)

Jean-Daniel Cadinot, French pornographer extraordinaire, attracted an international following for his audacious films, which manage to be both unusually artistic and enormously arousing. Cadinot was born in 1944 in Paris, at the foot of Montmartre hill in the Batignoles Quarter. His parents were tailors who custom fit clothes. In reference to his parent’s occupation, Cadinot noted the irony that whereas they clothed men, he earned a reputation for undressing them. Cadinot realized he was gay at the age of twelve, but he did not delve into gay erotica until 1972. Prior to that, in the early 1960s, he studied at École des Arts et Métiers and at the National School of Photography. He then began his professional career at Valois Studios, where he directed mainstream films for French-speaking audiences. Cadinot’s professional coming out as a gay photographer began in 1972, when he created nude photographs of gay author Yves Navarre and popular singers Patrick Juvet and Pascal Auriat. These photographs, which circulated only among a small, appreciative coterie, did not receive widespread notice.

In the early 1970s, Cadinot continued his mainstream career, but took ever more photographs of nude men, gradually earning a reputation as a skilled still photographer. By 1978, when he turned to filmmaking, he had published 17 photo albums, which had sold more than 170,000 copies. In 1978, Cadinot established his own production company, French Art, and issued his first 16mm film, Tendres adolescents.

Cadinot explained his embrace of filmmaking as an expression of gay activism: "The still photo became too limiting. I quickly reached its boundaries and I had a desire for action and movement," he remarks. "I wanted to go further, to tell our collective stories as gay men. Video enabled me to do just that. I have to say that when I’m shooting photos I prefer to work as an artist and make artistic photos because otherwise it’s not long before it gets pornographic and I don’t like that. In that sense there was a progressive evolution towards films in order for me to tell stories about men. In a way it was my first gay activism to illustrate our sexual stories."

While Cadinot disliked the term "pornography, " because of its pejorative connotations, he had no apologies for the depictions of sexual action that animate his films. This action is often raw and even brutal, but sometimes tender and sweet. Cadinot’s films are plot driven, usually featuring interesting and strong narratives. They also usually involve a journey, either literally, as in Sex Bazaar (1982) and Sex Oasis (1984), which feature young Frenchmen in North Africa; or figuratively, as in Tough and Tender (1989), which chronicles the search for love in a boys’ reformatory. In Sex Drive (1985), the journey is imaginary. There the protagonist is supposedly running away from home, but in the end it turns out to be a dream. Of course, all the journeys are picaresque; they, quite naturally, involve many adventures, especially of the sexual kind. Another characteristic of Cadinot’s films is that they feature young men in their late teens or early twenties. They are not the pumped up, well-endowed, hot-waxed men who now dominate American pornography, however. Although they often interact with older and larger men, frequently of non-European background, the protagonists tend to be youthful and nonmuscular, and they tend to be more sexually versatile than actors in American pornography, who are often limited to top or bottom roles.

Regarding his young actors, Cadinot had this to say:
"To me they represent the freshness and innocence of youth. They are provocative: a 20-year-old is more subversive than a 30-year-old; there is not yet the weight of socialization and education on his shoulders; he is not yet molded into society. I like the freshness but also the intelligence of these guys. I do not choose Apollo-type men with big penises. I want men that could be your average next door neighbors, fresh, natural without any complexes regarding their sexuality or their sexual tastes." In devising his sex scenes, Cadinot stated: "I write a scenario that fits the young guys. This is the essence of my films. The performers do not portray things that are imposed on them by me, but things they like to do themselves. These ‘puppies’ kiss each other with real passion, with real lust. It is emotions that make my particular style. I tell a story. I don’t do things that are ‘robotical’ like we often tend to see in the porn industry, my scenarios are based on the actors’ tastes."

Although Cadinot said that he tailored his films to his actors, he also, rather paradoxically, insisted that his films are autobiographical, which may account for their intensely personal quality. He said that his works constituted a saga "that traces my life from the age of twelve when I became aware of my homosexuality, with all of the problems of religion and existentialism. " While the films are not literally autobiographical, they are informed by events in the director’s life. For example, Cadinot did not spend time in a reformatory, the setting of Tough and Tender, yet the film nevertheless derives from his own experience: "It is a transposition of my vacations as an adolescent in religious camps," he explained. "The universe was, for me, similar (like a concentration camp, and the product of hierarchy among the teen-agers). The same with the time I spent in the Boy Scouts." The time Cadinot spent in the Boy Scouts is used to good effect in Hot on the Trail (1984), a film that is notable for its fetishization not only of youth and genitalia, but also of underwear, especially jockey style briefs.

Cadinot made more than sixty films, usually limiting himself to directing no more than four a year. In 1992 he bought and restored a farm, which he subsequently utilized as his studio. "It is very satisfying to have this studio now," he commented, "to live with the actors for many days, to discuss with them and understand their personalities, which helps me to develop scenes. Here, there is space for more than a dozen people and each youth can do whatever pleases him, whether it is staying with the group and having fun or having some privacy." Cadinot’s films earned an international audience and numerous accolades. In 1997 Cadinot was honored with a Venus Award as Best Director at the International Erotic Film Awards in Berlin, the first time the organization recognized gay erotic films. In 2002, he won an AVN award, the adult Oscars in Los Angeles, for his entire body of work, and another Venus for C’est La Vie (2001). He completed his autobiography, Premier, but it has not yet been published in the United States.

On April 23, 2008, Cadinot died, following a heart attack.

Time
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1736987,00.html

May 02, 2008

13
Gay Marriage Costs Him Citizenship

by Bruce Crumley/Paris
Frenchman Frederic Minvielle has been a productive, happy resident of the Netherlands for the past six years, and even married a Dutch national in 2003. But his placid existence took on Kafkaesque twist earlier this year, when French authorities informed Minvielle that his expatriate idyll had cost him his French citizenship. The main reason, according to Minvielle and his supporters: because his spouse was another man. The Netherlands recognizes official gay unions, but France does not. That, in essence, is what led to the revocation of Minvielle’s French citizenship, though the bilateral Franco-Dutch immigration accords pertaining to the case are complex. The trouble began when Minvielle adopted his Dutch husband’s citizenship in 2006 — a right extended to foreign spouses of officially wed couples in the Netherlands, whether gay or heterosexual. Indeed, Minvielle says the main motivation for his naturalization was to show gratitude to a Dutch society that makes no distinction between gay and heterosexual marriages. Although the Franco-Dutch immigration treaty pertaining to his situation generally forces nationals from one country to surrender their original citizenship when naturalized in the other, there is a key exception that allows dual citizenship accorded through marriage. Minvielle figured that would work for him.

"France does not recognize marriage between people of the same sex as the Netherlands does, and therefore considers Mr. Minvielle an unwed man living with another man," explains Minvielle’s French lawyer, Caroline Mecary. Because of that, she says, France has applied the bilateral accord the way it would to any single French national adopting Dutch nationality: by revoking French citizenship. "It marks French exportation of marriage laws discriminatory to same-sex couples to its citizens abroad," Mecary continues. "In this case, that means applying French laws to a citizen with the result of stripping him of that very citizenship. That has proven to be a staggering loss to Mr. Minvielle." Minvielle was not available to respond to TIME’s requests to discuss his case, but he has told French media he feels humiliated and repudiated by his native country. In addition to feeling cast off by his motherland, he says, Minvielle has also said being shorn of the liberties and legal rights attendant to French citizenship has left him feeling like he’s been treated as a criminal.

Ironically, it was his effort to exercise his rights and duties as a citizen that led to Minvielle’s troubles. Following his visit to the French embassy in Amsterdam in late 2006 to register for France’s then approaching presidential elections, consular officials forwarded Minvielle’s dossier to justice authorities for examination. When the review ruled that he had surrendered his French citizenship according to terms of the bilateral accord — and in light of France’s refusal to recognize gay marriage — Minvielle was ordered to surrender his passport and French papers last December. Despite the summons, Minvielle has held on to his French documents, and is fighting to have his citizenship restored. There may be hope of that happening. Mecary says she has been told by French and European authorities that France has applied to revise the terms of its bilateral accords with the Netherlands to take into account social and legal changes that have taken place in both countries since its last update in 1996. Though Mecary says she’s still awaiting official confirmation of that move, she notes it would only be the first hurdle. "When it comes to decisions of citizenship, especially revocations based on legal grounds, the state is entirely free to do as it chooses," she warns.

Still, Mecary hopes France will do right by native son Minvielle, if for no other reason than to avoid more bad publicity over gay rights. Last January, Mecary notes, the European Court of Justice overturned French court rulings barring a single lesbian from adopting a child, judging French regulations blocking the adoption to be discriminatory. Meanwhile, France’s history of social enlightenment and pride as the birthplace of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been overshadowed as nations like Spain, Belgium, and the Netherlands have passed progressive laws on gay rights while the French have lagged behind. Given that, critics argue the real solution to resolving Minvielle’s case isn’t tinkering with bilateral treaties, but modernizing marriage laws in France.

pinknews.co.uk
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-7675.html

May 19, 2008

14
To Russia with love: world’s biggest Pride to twin with Moscow

by Staff Writer, PinkNews.co.uk
They could not be more different events. In Sao Paulo, a multitude of toned, tanned gays take to the streets in a carnival atmosphere that happens to be the biggest gay parade in the world. With Brazilian flair, the event has mushroomed in the past decade with estimates of between three and four million revellers on the streets at least year’s Pride. In Moscow, Pride is banned year in and year out, homophobic mobs take to the streets to stop protests about the bans and marching is brave rather than festive. The two worlds have come together with the announcement that Sao Paulo is to ‘twin’ with Moscow Pride.

Associaçao da Parada do Orgulho GLBT (the LGBT Pride Parade Association, APOGLBT), said in a statement: "The presence of Moscow Pride organiser Nicolas Alexeyev will strengthen our fight against homophobia, and for Senate approval of a law criminalising homophobia, We consider that the two Pride Parades are the best examples to homophobia around the world and their organisers and participants represent our best hopes in construction of a world with more justice and respect to the human rights, as well the guarantee of citizenship of LGBT population. We hope this alliance can help them in their local struggle, summing more this support for a better condition in the next Pride Parades."

Sao Paulo Pride Parade will take place on Sunday 25th May. Mr Alexeyev will be flying in from Russia to take part and will be awarded the Pride "Citizen Award for Respecting Diversity" at a ceremony on Thursday.

direland.typepad.com
http://direland.typepad.com/direland/2008/05/france-pledges.html

May 24, 2008

15
France Pledges to Lead on Gay Decriminalization

by Doug Ireland
This year’s observance of the International Day Against Homophobia (IDAHO) on Sunday, May 17 was marked by key victories for the global campaign when it was officially endorsed by the governments of France, Cuba, and Costa Rica. Significantly, France’s minister of human rights, Rama Yade (right), convened a meeting with gay activists on Sunday to announce that France would push for "a European initiative calling for the universal decriminalization of homosexuality," according to a statement released by the minister afterward. Yade said Paris would submit the initiative to the United Nations after it takes over the rotating six-month European Union presidency in July – during which time France will speak for all EU member states at the UN General Assembly, according to Agence France Presse.

The conservative French government’s unprecedented action followed year-long negotiations with it led by Louis-Georges Tin, president of the International Committee for IDAHO, and the meeting with Minister Yade came just hours after a "die-in" at the Elysée Palace, the presidential headquarters and residence, in which Tin and a dozen other LGBT activists were arrested and briefly detained. The protestors at the die-in wore T-shirts with the names of some of the 86 countries in which, according to an International Lesbian and Gay Association study released earlier this year, homosexuality is still considered a crime.

"It was rather amusing," Tin told me by telephone from Paris. "Just as the police were arresting me and bundling me away, I got a call on my cell phone from the minister’s office asking me, ‘Can you come to the Elysée right away?’ ‘Well, I’m already here!’ I replied." Police told Tin he had no right to use his telephone while being arrested, but when he told them, "I’m on the phone with the minister for human rights," they relented. The International Day Against Homophobia was the brainchild of Tin (left), a remarkable young French university professor born in the overseas French department of Martinique, in the Antilles chain in the Caribbean. Tin, 33, is not only one of the most creative gay leaders internationally, he is also a rising star of France’s emerging black activist community.

IDAHO’s founder also launched France’s Representative Council of Black Associations. Created in November 2005 during the ghetto riots that shook 150 French cities and towns, CRAN – an alliance of roughly 120 associations – gave French blacks their first national organization, and since its founding has been recognized by the political establishment as a force to be reckoned with. Tin, CRAN’s spokesman, is the author of a number of scholarly books, and of a "Dictionary of Homophobia" published in translation here in the US earlier this year. (A link to this reporter’s May 4-10, 2006 profile of Tin, "Going Global on Gay Rights" appears in the web version of this story.) "We had had numerous conversations over the past year both with top counselors to President Nicolas Sarkozy and with Minister Yade, whom I know because she’d been a member of CRAN, and with her staff," Tin told this reporter. "But we kept being told that it was ‘not possible’ for the government to endorse IDAHO. But after we were arrested on Sunday morning at the Elysée Palace, there was a flurry of protests from members of parliament quickly broadcast on the radio, and the arrests became an embarrassment for the government’s claims to be fully supportive of human rights. So, by the time later on Sunday that we were called to the meeting with Minister Yade, we were told to expect a surprise. So, instead of the symbolic meeting with champagne and petit-fours, which we thought were all we’d get, we were informed that the government would not only endorse IDAHO but press for global decriminalization of homosexuality at the UN by using its EU presidency to do so."

In addition to the International Committee for IDAHO, other French organizations represented at the meeting with the minister included ACT-UP, Solidarité Internationale Lesbiennes, Gays, Bi et Trans, l’Intersyndicale LGBT (which organizes the huge Gay Pride in France every year), Homosexualités et socialism (the LGBT arm of France’s Socialist Party, the nation’s second largest), and GayLib, the organization of gay conservatives affiliated with Sarkozy’s ruling Union pour un movement populaire (UMP). Tin specifically credited the gay conservatives: "The GayLib lobbied hard and well, their work was very effective, and we might well not have achieved the results we did without them." The French government has been embarrassed by recent European Court of Human Rights decisions criticizing it over its refusal to allow same-sex adoptions and recognize gay marriages performed in other EU countries. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kochner recently sent an official memorandum to all embassies and consulates advising them not to perform PAC ceremonies, the French version of civil unions, for citizens living in countries where such unions are not recognized.

The Sarkozy government undoubtedlyhopes the initiative will help it skirt thornier issues, like equality in adoptions and marriage, which would raise the hackles of the more conservative and devout Catholic portions of its political base. In Cuba on May 17, hundreds of gay men and women gathered at an outdoor cultural center for a rare display of public solidarity in support of IDAHO as the culmination of a week-long festival of LGBT events, including film screenings, lectures, debates, and book fairs. The Cuban IDAHO events were organized by President Raul Castro’s daughter, Mariela (left), director of the Cuban National Center for Sex Education. She is considered the country’s premier sexologist, and her Center fights both for acceptance of LGBT Cubans and for AIDS prevention. "This is a very important moment for us, the men and women of Cuba, because for the first time we can gather in this way and speak profoundly and with scientific basis about these topics," said Ms. Castro, who insisted that defending equal rights for Cubans of all sexual orientations is a key principal of the her uncle’s 1959 revolution. The freedom of sexual choice and gender identity [are] exercises in equality and social justice," she proclaimed, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Cuban National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon (right) said he supported the IDAHO celebrations. "I think that it’s a good initiative," he said. "It’s an issue that raises concern around the world and I think it’s good that in Cuba it is also marked in a proper way." Alarcon told reporters that the government needs to do more to promote gay rights, but said many Cubans still need to be convinced. Things "are advancing, but must continue advancing, and I think we should do that in a coherent, appropriate, and precise way because these are topics that have been taboo and continue to be for many." The day before the IDAHO Havana rally, Cuban TV gave prime-time play to the film "Brokeback Mountain." When Tin launched the first IDAHO in 2005, he chose May 17 for the annual event because it was on that date in 1990 that the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from the International Classification of Diseases. Coincidently, on the same day in 2004, the same-sex marriage ruling by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court took effect.

IDAHO’s international campaign for a United Nations decriminalization resolution was launched in November 2006 with a petition campaign endorsed by five Nobel Prize winners, ten Pulitzer Prize winners, six Academy Award winners, and two former French prime ministers. (A link to this reporter’s November 21-27, 2006 article, "Bold Move for UN Action" appears in the web version of this story.) Other governments that previously endorsed IDAHO include the European Parliament, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Mexico, and several provinces of Canada, Brazil, and Spain. The day is now observed in more than 60 countries worldwide. The UK held the most extensive IDAHO observances this year. The Trades Union Congress, the Communications Workers, and other large British unions joined in, and the effort was even endorsed by the UK Football Association, which included an article about homophobia in its program for the FA Cup Final at Wembley Stadium.

"Football has already waged a positive war on racism in the game and the FA are now hoping that a similar campaign to ban homophobic behavior from grounds across the country will also make its mark," the article read.

"One of our key messages is football for all and our aim is to confront aggressive issues such as homophobia and making the game family-friendly," the FA’s equality manager, Lucy Faulkner, told the UK Gay News. And for the first time, the New York-based International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission this year endorsed IDAHO. Noting that 2008 is the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, IGLHRC said it will employ IDAHO in two of its "top priorities" – challenging violence and discrimination targeting lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered women and ending the criminalization of homosexuality and abuses resulting from arbitrary arrests.

The US, however, remained one of the world’s few democracies in which leading LGBT groups failed to organize even one single public IDAHO event. IDAHO’s web site is at http://www.idahomophobia.org/. The IDAHO UK web site is idaho.org.uk/.

dailyqueernews.com
http://www.dailyqueernews.com/news/1763/

September 4, 2008

16
France to Call for EU, UN Action on Women and Gay Rights

Posted by Daily Queer News
Paris (AFP) — France is to call for a European Union drive to tackle violence against women worldwide and for the United Nations to step up action against homophobia, the French human rights minister said on Wednesday. Junior Human Rights Minister Rama Yade told the 61st annual conference of non-governmental organisations at UNESCO headquarters in Paris that a text would be submitted to the EU in the coming days.

France, as holder of the six-month EU presidency, hopes to “set the criteria for EU intervention” in the fight against violence towards women, including by mobilising Europe’s diplomatic networks. Paris also plans to submit a draft declaration to the UN General Assembly in December aimed at combating homophobia and decriminalising homosexuality, which is punishable by prison in 90 countries and in theory by death in six of them, Yade said.

Link

Gay France News and Reports 2006-08

Search

Countries

GlobalGayz: The Book

Life and Death in a Global Gay World

by Richard A. Ammon

True Stores and In-Person Interviews From a Hundred Countries From Persecution to Pride From Australia to Zambia

ADS