'Spot a gay' list in Malaysian newspaper sparks outrage

KUALA LUMPUR -- A stereotype-laden checklist for spotting gay men and lesbian women published by a popular Malaysian newspaper has sparked outrage in the Muslim-majority nation, with activists warning it could endanger lives.

The Malay-language tabloid Sinar Harian claimed gay men love to go to the gym -- just to check out other men -- wear tight clothes to show off their physiques and tend to sport beards, while their eyes widen when they see handsome men.

Lesbians, the paper said, "hate men" and enjoy hugging.

The list, published Friday, was swiftly met with derision online, while campaigners warned it could further stoke animosity against LGBTQ groups, who have been increasingly targeted with violence and discrimination in recent years.

"It exposes these people to bullying, which could lead to violent hate crimes towards them," Eric Paulsen, Lawyers for Liberty executive director, told AFP Tuesday.

Malaysia has experienced growing religious fundamentalism in recent years, sparking friction between conservative forces and those campaigning for greater rights. The country retains its colonial-era criminal ban on sodomy, which is punishable by up to 20 years in prison, caning or a fine.

Human Rights Watch said in a 2017 report that discrimination against LGBT people was "pervasive" in Malaysia.

One of the country's biggest social media stars, Arwind Kumar, railed against the list in a video posted on YouTube.

"How the hell does a gay person endanger your life? With an article like this you are only going to take away lives," he said. "Are you dumb? How can having facial hair make someone gay?" 

Kumar said in the video, pointing out that religious leaders were also known for their abundant facial hair. The clip has been viewed thousands of times.

Sinar Harian has not yet issued any response to the controversy.

Malaysia hit the headlines in March 2017 over its attitudes to homosexuality when the country's film censorship board demanded cuts to Disney's hit movie "Beauty and the Beast" because of a "gay moment." But the entertainment giant refused and the film was released in full.

In June, Malaysian health authorities were forced to backpedal on plans for a contest to "prevent" homosexuality, but in December the state of Terengganu sparked alarm by announcing plans for a conversion therapy course aimed at transgender women.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Indonesian men sentenced to caning for gay sex

A sharia court Wednesday sentenced two men to be publicly caned for gay sex for the first time in Indonesia's conservative province of Aceh, the latest sign of a backlash against homosexuals in the Muslim-majority country.

The pair, aged 20 and 23, were sentenced to 85 strokes of the cane each after being found guilty of breaking Aceh's strict Islamic laws.

They were caught together in bed in March by vigilantes who burst into the boarding house where they were staying in provincial capital Banda Aceh.

Presiding judge Khairil Jamal told the court that the men had been "proven legally and convincingly guilty of committing gay sex, the defendants are sentenced to 85 strokes of the cane in public".

Officials have not revealed the men's names due to the sensitivity of the case. The sentence will be carried out at a later date.

Aceh is the only part of Indonesia, which has the world's biggest Muslim population, that is allowed to implement sharia law and public canings for offences ranging from gambling to drinking alcohol were already common.

But the men found guilty Wednesday will be the first to be subject to the punishment for gay sex, which was banned in Aceh under a regulation introduced in 2015. Gay sex is not illegal in the rest of Indonesia.

The verdict is the latest example of growing hostility towards Indonesia's small lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community, which faced a backlash last year with government ministers publicly making anti-gay statements.

After the men were caught in the raid in March in the provincial capital Banda Aceh, phone footage circulated online showing the vigilantes kicking, slapping and insulting them, with one of them slumped naked on the ground.

They were then turned over to the sharia police. Authorities said the pair admitted to being in a relationship and having had sex three times.

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Gays cannot enter Catholic priesthood, insists Vatican

VATICAN - A decree on training for Roman Catholic priests published on Wednesday stresses the obligation of sexual abstinence, as well as barring gays and those who support "gay culture" from holy orders.

"The Church, while deeply respecting the people concerned, cannot admit to a seminary or into holy orders those who practise homosexuality, show deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support what is called gay culture," said the document.

The new comprehensive guide to the training of Catholic clergy, which runs to about 100 pages, was approved by Pope Francis and published by the Osservatore Romano, the Vatican's official journal.

It updates a previous version dating back 30 years. But the barring of people who present homosexual tendencies was already stipulated by the Catholic Church in 2005.

The new decree does however allow an exemption for "homosexual tendencies which may only be the expression of a transitory problem, such as for example that of adolescence which is not yet complete".

The document also says it would be "seriously imprudent to admit (to holy orders) a seminarian who had not reached a mature, settled and free emotional state, chaste and faithful in celibacy," while saying that future priests also need to understand "the feminine reality".

The document broaches several other issues including the digital revolution.

"One must be prudent in the face of inevitable risks of frequenting the digital world, including different forms of dependency which can be treated with adequate spiritual and psychological means," it notes.

At the same time it recommends that "social media form part of daily seminary life," because they offer "new possibilities of interpersonal relations (and) to meet other people," added the document by the Vatican, which has come to use social media widely.

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Thousands march in Rome for gay rights

ROME - Thousands of people marched in Italian cities Saturday to demand legal recognition for gay couples and their children, days before lawmakers begin addressing the deeply divisive issue.

Italy is the only major Western European country not to have enacted civil union legislation allowing same-sex couples to have their relationships acknowledged and protected in law.

A bill, which the Senate will start examining on Thursday, is the first to get to parliament.

If approved, the draft legislation will enable same-sex couples to commit themselves to one another before a state official, to take each other's names and, in certain circumstances, adopt each other's children and inherit each other's residual pension rights.

"The first time I marched with these slogans, it was 10 years ago, and I was pregnant. I hope this time it works," said bank worker Costanza Tantillo, who joined the Rome protest with her partner and their two children, nine-year-old Beatrice and Ludovico, four.

Two women who marched nearby held up a sign that read: "Stella and Paola, we've been together for 30 years and you still don't acknowledge us."

Protests had been planned for 90 towns and cities across Italy, under the slogan "Wake up Italy! It's time to be civil."

Opponents of the bill, in contrast, are planning a show of strength at a demonstration scheduled for January 30 in Rome's Circus Maximus.

Hundreds of thousands are expected to attend the self-styled "Family Day," organised by mainly Catholic groups under the battle cry of "Defend our Children".

Angelo Bagnasco, the chair of the Italian conference of bishops, has denounced the whole debate as a "grave and irresponsible distraction from the real problems of the country".

In the world of politics, dividing lines cut across party loyalties. A minority faction within the ruling Democratic Party supports junior coalition partner the New Centre Right (NCD) in opposing a reform championed by Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.

Renzi, who has allowed his allies a free vote on the "issue of conscience", can however count on backing from most of the opposition Five Star movement, left-wing fringe parties and even sections of Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia.

Most observers expect Renzi will get the bill adopted in the end.

- 'Historic day' -

According to Italian media, there were at least 7,000 demonstrators in Turin, 5,000 in Milan, thousands in Rome and Bologna, a thousand in Bari in the south, and hundreds in Naples and Venice among others.

"It is a historic day for this country, an immense protest that was fed by the desire and enthusiasm of a lot of people who hold the belief in equality close to their hearts," said Gabriele Piazzoni, the national secretary of Italy's biggest gay rights group, Arcigay.

In what many saw as papal intervention in the debate, Pope Francis on Friday ruled out any form of union except Catholic marriage.

"What he said didn't surprise me, all he did was to repeat the church's anthropological viewpoint," said Andrea Rubera, a gay man who married a fellow homosexual in Canada.

They came to the demonstration with their three young children.

"But he chose to say this on the eve of the day when we took to the streets to defend the rights of our children to have a little security."

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Pope, ending synod, excoriates bishops with 'closed hearts'

VATICAN - Pope Francis, ending a contentious bishops' meeting on family issues, on Saturday excoriated immovable Church leaders who "bury their heads in the sand" and hide behind rigid doctrine while families suffer.

The pope spoke at the end of a three-week gathering, known as a synod, where the bishops agreed to a qualified opening toward divorcees who have remarried outside the Church but rejected calls for more welcoming language toward homosexuals.

It was the latest in a series of admonitions to bishops by the pontiff, who has stressed since his election in 2013 that the 1.2 billion-member Church should be open to change, side with the poor and rid itself of the pomp and stuffiness that has alienated so many Catholics.

In his final address, the pope appeared to criticize ultra-conservatives, saying Church leaders should confront difficult issues "fearlessly, without burying our heads in the sand."

He said the synod had "laid bare the closed hearts which frequently hide even behind the Church's teachings or good intentions, in order to sit in the chair of Moses and judge, sometimes with superiority and superficiality, difficult cases and wounded families".

He also decried "conspiracy theories" and the "blinkered viewpoints" of some at the gathering, and said the Church could not transmit its message to new generations "at times encrusted in a language which is archaic or simply incomprehensible".

The outcome of the gathering, over which the pope presided, marked a victory for conservatives on homosexual issues and for progressives on the thorny issue of remarriage.

The final synod document restated Church teachings that gays should not suffer discrimination in society, but also repeated the stand that there was "no foundation whatsoever" for same-sex marriage, which "could not even remotely" be compared to heterosexual unions.

The 94-article document indicated that the assembly had decided to avoid overtly controversial language and seek consensus in order to avoid deadlock on the most sensitive topics, leaving it up to the pope to deal with the details.

The synod is an advisory body that does not have the power to alter church doctrine. The pope, who is the final arbiter on any change and who has called for a more merciful and inclusive Church, can use the material to write his own document, known as an "apostolic exhortation".

HOPE FOR DIVORCEES

The synod document did offer some hope for the full re-integration into the Church of some Catholics who divorce and remarry in civil ceremonies.

Under current Church doctrine they cannot receive communion unless they abstain from sex with their new partner, because their first marriage is still valid in the eyes of the Church and they are seen to be living in an adulterous state of sin.

They only way such Catholics can remarry is if they receive an annulment, a ruling that their first marriage never existed in the first place because of the lack of certain pre-requisites such as psychological maturity or free will.

The document spoke of a so-called "internal forum" in which a priest or a bishop may work with a Catholic who has divorced and remarried to decide jointly, privately and on a case-by-case basis if he or she can be fully re-integrated.

"In order for this happen, the necessary conditions of humility, discretion, love for the Church and her teachings must be guaranteed in a sincere search for God's will," the document said.

Tally sheets showed that the three articles on the divorced and re-married were the most fought-over, reaching the two-thirds majority needed to remain in the document by only a few votes each. One passed by only one vote.

Progressives have for years been advocating the "internal forum" and some observers said the mere fact that phrase was included in the document was a victory for those promoting merciful change.

During the synod, some bishops said the Church should introduce welcoming and inclusive language regarding homosexuals, such as calling them "brothers, sisters and colleagues" in the document.

But Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn of Vienna told reporters many of the 270 bishops felt homosexuality was still "too delicate a theme" in their countries. During the meeting, African bishops were particularly adamant in their opposition to welcoming language toward homosexuals, saying it would only confuse the faithful.

At a preliminary meeting a year ago, conservative clerics made sure an interim report deleted a passage they thought was too welcoming to gays.

(Reporting by Philip Pullella; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

World Bank postpones Uganda loan over anti-gay law

WASHINGTON - The World Bank on Thursday said it postponed a $90 million loan to Uganda's health system over a law that toughened punishment for gays, an unusual move for an institution that usually avoids wading into politics.

"We have postponed the project for further review to ensure that the development objectives would not be adversely affected by the enactment of this new law," World Bank spokesman David Theis said in an email.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni signed an anti-gay bill earlier this week that strengthens already strict legislation against homosexuals, and makes it a crime to fail to report anyone who breaks the law.

Homosexuality is a taboo in almost all African countries and illegal in 37, including in Uganda where it has been criminalized since British colonial rule.

The World Bank, a poverty-fighting institution based in Washington, typically refrains from getting involved in countries' internal politics or in contentious issues such as gay rights in order to avoid antagonizing any of its 188 member countries.

The bank still has a $1.56 billion portfolio of projects in Uganda, which it ranks as one of the world's poorest countries.

The loan postponement follows the announcement by Norway and Denmark that they would hold back donations to Uganda because of the law. Other donors have also threatened to follow suit, and the United States said it was reviewing ties.

Western anger over the anti-homosexuality law has triggered a sharp fall in Uganda's shilling currency, leading the central bank to intervene for two days in a row.

The World Bank's executive board had been set to approve the Ugandan health project on Thursday. The money was meant to supplement a 2010 health loan that focused on maternal health, newborn care and family planning.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com