All homosexuals should face stoning to death, a Muslim preacher of hate declared yesterday.

Anjem Choudary, the firebrand cleric who wants to see Britain ruled by Sharia law, said such a regime was the only way to fix the country's ills.

Under it, adulterers and homosexuals would be killed by stoning. Asked if that would include anybody - even a Cabinet minister such as Business Secretary Lord Mandelson - Choudary responded with an astonishing diatribe.

Read entire article on dailymail.co.uk

Gauchos take Kate Kellaway on a week-long trail ride along Uruguay's stunning coast, and teach her how to herd cattle on a working farm

Our guide stood in front of a map of South America and pointed to Uruguay, squeezed next to Brazil and tiny in comparison. "Look, it is heart-shaped," she said. Patting herself on the chest, she added: "We have big hearts here." It was a line that from the wrong lips would have sounded contrived, but five days into one of the most wonderful riding experiences of my life, what Rosa said was incontrovertibly true. Uruguay, as well as being heart-shaped, is beautiful - a green and uncrowded land (with a population of only 3 million).

Read the entire article on guardian.co.uk

Wed Mar 4, 2009 2:48pm EST — BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - In an effort to reduce the church's political influence, Argentine atheists and feminists are spearheading a drive to get people who were baptized Roman Catholic but disagree with the church's politics to formally renounce their faith.

The "Not in my Name" Internet campaign, also called Collective Apostasy, encourages people who are Catholic in name only to write to the bishops where they were baptized to officially register that they have left the church.

Read the entire article on reuters.com

Monday, March 16, 2009 — The travel industry seems to be engaged in a curious courtship. Its targets are gay travelers. During a recession, they apparently are the one group that doesn't change leisure habits too much, so airlines, hotels and tour operators are trying to win their business.

Courting gay customers is nothing new, of course. A few years ago, the creators of the popular Showtime series "Queer as Folk," Ron Cowen and Daniel Lipman, told me that, during their research for an episode, they had discovered that gay Americans had hundreds of billions of dollars of disposable income.

Read the entire article on washingtontimes.com

Monday, March 16, 2009; Page A16 — THE UNITING American Families Act would allow gay and lesbian Americans and permanent residents to sponsor their foreign-born partners for legal residency in the United States. The bill, introduced last month in the Senate by Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and in the House by Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), would add "permanent partner" and "permanent partnership" after the words "spouse" and "marriage" in relevant sections of the Immigration and Nationality Act. If passed, it would right a gross unfairness.

Read the entire article on washingtonpost.com

March 18, 2009 3:41 PM — ABC News' Kirit Radia reports: The Obama administration said today it will sign on to a United Nations declaration calling for the decriminalization of homosexuality around the world.

The move is a reversal of the position taken by the Bush administration, which refused to sign onto the document when it was first circulated late last year. It has already been endorsed by 66 other countries, including the entire European Union, Japan, Australia, and Mexico.

Read the entire article on abcnews.com

The Army discharged 11 soldiers in January alone under its failed "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy:

"Democratic Rep. Jim Moran said he has requested monthly updates from the Pentagon on the impact of the policy until it is repealed. In a statement released on Thursday, Moran said the discharged soldiers included an intelligence collector, a military police officer, four infantry personnel, a health care specialist, a motor-transport operator and a water-treatment specialist. 'How many more good soldiers are we willing to lose due to a bad policy that makes us less safe and secure?' asked Moran, a member of the House panel that oversees military spending."

Read the entire article on Towleroad.com

Argentina’s military decriminalized homosexuality and lifted its gay ban Feb. 27. Part of an overhaul of the military justice system, the change was approved by Parliament last year and took effect six months after passage.

U.S.-based Latino-issues blogger Andrés Duque called the move “one more LGBT rights development in a Latin American nation that leapfrogs over current U.S. policy.”
Gays in the U.S. military are required to remain in the closet under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy signed into law by President Bill Clinton. Prior to that time, gays were not allowed in the U.S. military at all.

Read the complete article on SFBayTimes.com

BOGOTA, Mar 2 (IPS) - Members of the gay civil rights advocacy group Colombia Diversa just celebrated their fifth anniversary with a big event, which the occasion clearly merited due to a recent landmark decision by the Constitutional Court recognising equal rights for heterosexual and same-sex partners in common-law unions.

With the ruling, the Court took a historic leap with regard to the rights of gays and lesbians, granting same-sex partners all of the guarantees and benefits offered to unmarried heterosexual couples, except adoption, and placing Colombia at the forefront in Latin America in terms of legal recognition of the rights of gays and lesbians.

Marcela Sánchez, a lesbian activist who heads Colombia Diversa, told IPS that the legal decision handed down by the Court in late January marked the end of a long battle for equal rights for the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) community.

Read the complete article at IPSNews.com

After years of lagging behind, gay rights movements in Latin America are coming out into the mainstream.

Most analysts haven't noticed, but a major social revolution is taking place in Latin America. The region is becoming gayer. It's not that there are more gays and lesbians living in Latin America (we would never know). Rather, the region is becoming more gay-friendly. A generation ago, Latin America was the land of the closet and the home of the macho. Today, movements fighting for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights are taking advantage of the region's more globalized, open regimes. They are promoting their cause through smart, mainstream political and economic alliances. So, though closets and machos are still ubiquitous, Latin America is now the site of some of the most pro-gay legislation in the developing world.

Gay rights expanded in democratic Western Europe starting in the late 1960s, and in the United States more gradually since the 1970s. Despite being democratic and kind-of-Western, Latin America lagged behind. Then, in the late 1990s, legislation started to change. In 1998, Ecuador's new constitution introduced protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation. In 1999, Chile decriminalized same-sex intercourse. Rio de Janeiro's state legislature banned sexual-orientation discrimination in public and private establishments in 2000. In 2002, Buenos Aires guaranteed all couples, regardless of gender, the right to register civil unions.

Read the complete article at ForeignPolicy.com