Fridae

Russian pair seeks gay marriage license
Two Russian men tried to register a gay marriage in Moscow on Tuesday but they were turned away by authorities who told them marriage is a union between a man and a woman.

Eduard Mishin, who edits the Russian Kvir (Queer) newspaper, fails to register his 'marriage' with Edvard Murzin, a legislative deputy.

According to media reports, Eduard Mishin, who edits the Internet site Gay.ru and the Kvir newspaper and Edvard Murzin, a legislative deputy from the region of Bashkortostan in central Russia handed in a marriage declaration to Moscow City Hall but were denied a certificate at the registration office.

According to a BBC report, Murzin claims he is not gay but supports gay rights. He hopes that their action will lead to a legal challenge to the Russian Family Code, which, the two men say, contradicts the Constitution of Russia.

"The Russian constitution does not say that people of the same sex cannot get married. It says in black-and-white that sex-, race- or religion-based discrimination is banned," said Mishin.

Murzin has campaigned frequently for marriage equality. His recent case against the Russian State Duma on legalisation of same-sex marriage was ignored by the Supreme Court. Homosexuality was a criminal offence in Russia until 1993.

Bush camp clarifies marriage ban support
The White House sought on Sunday to reassure conservatives that President George Bush would continue to support the proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, backtracking from remarks Bush made in a published interview suggesting that he would not press the Senate to vote on the amendment this year.

In an interview with The Washington Post published on Sunday, Bush said many senators did not see the need for the amendment as long as the law known as the Defense of Marriage Act is in place.

Within hours of the Post hitting newsstands, conservative groups and voters – who shared Bush's rallying cry to support an amendment defining marriage as an institution between a man and a woman in the 2004 presidential campaign – wasted no time in making their views known.

One reported quoted an unnamed White House employee who said that the switchboard at the White House "lit up like a Christmas tree" shortly after the Post article hit the streets as Bush aide Dan Bartlett and other conservatives were on the TV Sunday talk show circuit to "clarify" the president's statement. Bartlett said that in the Post interview, Bush was referring only to the reality of legislative vote counting and it “does not change President Bush's view about an amendment, the need for an amendment. And he'll continue to push for an amendment.”

Pentagon confirms 1994 “gay bomb” proposal
A Pentagon spokesman confirmed last Friday that the gay bomb was a real proposal - an idea floated by Air Force researchers in Dayton, Ohio that would make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other.

The papers which date from 1994, obtained by the New Scientist and the Sunshine Project – a chemical and biological weapons watchdog group – showed that during the Clinton presidency the military attempted to create a series of non-lethal chemical weapons that would disrupt discipline and morale among enemy troops.

According to the documents the Pentagon believed that "provoking widespread homosexual behaviour" among troops would cause a "distasteful but completely non-lethal" blow to morale.

Marine Captain Daniel McSweeney was quoted in several reports stressing that “’Gay Bomb’ is not their term” and the suggestion was not taken seriously and was not considered for further development.

Other weapons that never saw the light of day include one to make soldiers obvious by their bad breath, a "sting me/attack me" chemical weapon to attract swarms of enraged wasps or angry rats towards enemy troops and a substance to make the skin unbearably sensitive to sunlight.

Malaysia’s The Star reports on reparative therapy
Malaysia’s The Star newspaper on January 12 carried a 4-article package trumpeting reparative therapy to help “homosexual persons resolve long-standing issues” (screamed a headline). The report detailed the life of Edmund Smith who is the founder of Real Love Ministry (RLM), a Malaysian NGO that conducts reparative therapy for homosexuals. He admitted to spending “11 years of his life living a homosexual lifestyle” and not being able to "overcome his sense of wanting to be a female” before “finally breaking free from homosexuality” by joining Choices, a Singapore-based Christian organisation.

Edmund Smith’s debut album, Wake Up was released recently.

He attributes homosexuality to be caused by a lack of parental love. “Everyone needs the ‘V’ love. A mother’s love flows down one side, and a father’s love flows down the other, and a child needs both parents’ love. Most gay guys have never had a father’s love.”

His wife and himself run The Seasons of Recovery, a recovery programme where a member must graduate from one season before he moves on to the next. Season One is the “educational season” where the member must overcome any “self” issues he may have regarding his appearance or gender before he enters the “celibate season” during which the member must abstain from sex and romance followed by Season Three, the “dating season” during which a member goes out with those of the opposite gender. Finally, the candidate enters the final stage, ‘the “marriage season” in which a person is committed to a long-term relationship and becomes a parent.

One article pictured drag queens at a Bangkok gay parade and alleged that homosexuality is more about politics than biology while another “Changing sexual orientation through reparative therapy” quoted a study conducted by Dr Robert L. Spitzer who challenged the widely-held assumption that a homosexual orientation is an intrinsic part of a person’s identity that can never be changed. In “Circumstances may lead to homosexuality,” the writer highlighted several personal stories of “homosexuals” who were abused as children, had a strained relationship with his mother who was harsh and had a nasty temper and another who ran away from her abusive mother and was sent to a girls home where she decided to become a butch to pursue her female house-parent.

The articles have sparked discussions on Malaysian email lists with many readers writing to the paper to protest.

One writer, SC, wrote on plupenang: “If the article was fair, it would have mentioned that the much touted study conducted by Dr Robert L. Spitzer, was not based on random sampling of gay men. In fact, a high percentage of the men and women who participated in the study were referred by ex-gay ministries (43%) or by the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH; 23%). In other words, this study is only relevant to the portion of the gay community that is NOT happy with themselves, and are willing to go great lengths to change their own behaviour. With nearly half of them ridden by guilt, it is no wonder that most of the participants are not satisfied with their relationships, simply because it isn't the way they think their world should be.

”Dr Spitzer was well aware of this when presenting the article, and caution in his paper, that it would be a misuse of the results to ’assume that it shows homosexual orientation is changeable for most highly motivated individuals.’”

He added: “It seems that anything bad these days can be attributed to childhood trauma, no thanks to Freud. It certainly helps as well when you know what the hypothesis is when one reasons his way to explain a phenomenon. Take homosexuality for instance. If a gay man has been abused by his father, his homosexuality is attributed to the yearning for male attention; whereas if he has strained relations with his mother, his homosexuality is then blamed on the inability to establish close relationships with women. Either way, there is no winning it.”

Another writer, Darrel, posted on the same discussion group: “It is laughable that the articles seen to suggest that homosexuals are plagued with unresolved issues concerning self-hate and even hatred for the other gender, and that if these issues are resolved, then the homosexuals would be able to be converted to heterosexuality. Well, the undeniable fact is, this certainly doesn’t apply to every homosexuals. Many homosexuals are well adjusted, well balanced, decent, socially adept individuals who are just extraordinarily ordinary like everyone else, except for the fact that they are attracted to members of their own sex. Furthermore, it is certainly arguable whether the supposed homosexuals who claim to have been converted to heterosexuality, were even homosexuals to begin with. They may very well just be bisexuals with unresolved issues.”

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