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8 OCTOBER20.2007 *Q-NOTES
GLOBAL
International News Notes
by Jack Kirven . Q-Notes staff
Crackdown on playground slurs
LONDON, England — In some European
nations adults can be arrested for using
homophobic language. In the U.K., it’s been
determined that the 1986 Public Order Act can
also be used against children, especially when
anti-gay epithets are
used on playgrounds for
bullying purposes. The
Act makes it an offense
to use threatening, abu
sive or insulting pyords
or behavior in a way
likely to cause harass
ment, alarm or distress.
Claude Knights, the training manager of
Kidscape, an organization that assists bullied
children, said that to many children the word
“gay” now means only “the opposite of cool.”
Still, youth who use the term risk being
charged. In one case, police in Cheshire dis
missed a complaint against an 11-year-old
boy only after he explained that he meant that
his friend was “stupid.”
Schools ordered a clampdown on the use
of “gay” as a playground slur amid fears it
legitimizes more virulent homophobia after a
survey by the Association of Teachers and
Lecturers showed a huge rise in the use of
playground insults like “poof” and “lezzie.”
The Secretary of State for Children,
Schools and Families, Ed Balls (pictured),
directed the survey. In a statement he said, “I
reject any notion that addressing homophobic
bullying is political correctness for its own
sake. Even casual use of homophobic language
in schools can create an atmosphere that iso
lates young people and can be the forerunner
of more serious forms of bullying.”
Soldiers arrested for bashing
AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands — Two
Canadian soldiers are being held on charges
of attempted manslaughter, attempted crimi
nal negligence causing bodily harm and
public violence after they allegedly attacked
a gay man while on furlough from their
deployment in Afghanistan. The pair, who
are both 22 years old, were arrested on May
26. One is being prosecuted as the actual
attacker and could receive eight months in
prison, while the other could receive six
weeks in a Dutch jail.
The soldiers, whose names have not been
released per a Canadian privacy law, served
more than 60 days in jail before being trans
ferred to a Canadian Forces installation in The
Netherlands. They are required to stay in the
country while their cases are pending. The
soldiers are paying their own expenses and
have secured Dutch lawyers. Their case is
expected to be heard soon.
Police campaign raises concerns
NASSAU, The Bahamas — Police harass
ment of LGBT people and nightclubs has
escalated in recent weeks and gay rights
activists are concerned. Over the course of a
single weekend, three separate clubs and a
private party were all “visited” by local
police, despite the fact that no one present
had been involved in any suspicious or illegal
activity. One of the three nightclubs opened
the same night it was raided. Although sever
al gay men were outside, the
bar had not yet established
itself as a gay venue.
The private party that
police disrupted was host to over 100 LGBT .
tourists at the Hard Rock Cafe and was not
open to the public. “It’s obvious that the
presence of the police had gone far beyond
them determining if any laws had been bro
ken. At a certain point in the evening it was
obvious to everyone present that the pur
pose of them remaining in the building was
to shut the party down, even though the
patrons and the organizers of the event had
broken no laws,” one partygoer told The .
Nassau Guardian.
According to Erin Greene, spokesperson of
the LGBT advocacy group Rainbow Alliance,
the party was an annual event that had been
held for six years without incident. She added
that her group hoped to meet with senior
police officers to discuss the situation.
India’s gay prince turns 42
VADODARA, India — Prince Manvendra
Singh Gohil (pictured), heir apparent to one
of India’s wealthiest men, former Maharajah
Raghubir Singh Gohil, recendy had a large
birthday party involving LGBT people and
LGBT artists from across India. The prince
gathered with hundreds of friends at the
royal palace in an attempt to bring visibility
to a group that normally suffers derision and
harassment in India, where homosexuality is
still illegal and punishable with imprison
ment. India is also home to more people liv
ing with HIV/AIDS than any other nation in
the world.
The prince is the chairman of the
Lackshya Trust, an organization that assists
LGBT people and offers HIV/AIDS education
and prevention. He had been out to his fami
ly since 2002, but when he came out to the
general public in 2006
his father disowned
him. Within weeks his
father relented and
restored the prince to
his tides, inheritance
and rights.
“I was in an awk
ward situation and did
n’t know how do deal with it. Relatives from
all over the country called me up. Rajpipla is a
conservative place. Women still cover their
heads with a pallu; sex is a taboo topic to talk
about. I was in the line of fire,” Raghubir Gohil
told India Times. The prince will speak to
Oprah on her talk show this fall.
Petition drive to lift sodomy law
SINGAPORE — More than 2,000 signa
tures have been collected by
www.repeal377a.com, which is the website
for a campaign to repeal Singapore’s
sodomy law. Under Section 377A of the
Penal Code it is a crime for men to have sex
with men, whether in public or private.
Many signers chose to remain anonymous;
however, a number of high-ranking corpo
rate executives signed using their full names
and the names of their companies. Poh Mui
Hoon, the CEO of Network For Electronic
Transfers, an electronic banking services
and financial payments company, signed the
poll. John MacLennan, Microsoft’s gay
finance director for Asia, also supported the
effort with his signature. I