GLBT activists staged a groundbreaking press conference in Kampala, Uganda, Aug. 16 to launch a media campaign called “Let Us Live In Peace.”

They hope to engage the nation in a public conversation, humanize gay people and reduce routine police abuse.

“We step into the public today to give a face to the many who are discriminated against every day in our country,” the group Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) said in a statement.

“[Y]ou see homosexuals and transgender people every day without realising that it is what we are. We do not harm anyone. We are your doctor, your teacher, your best friend, your sister, maybe even your father or son.”

In response to the event, Ugandan Minister of Ethics and Integrity James Nsaba Buturo told the BBC that the nation will not grant gays any rights or decriminalize gay sex, which is punishable with life in prison.

Government spokesman Kirunda Kivejinja responded that “homosexuality is repugnant.”

Five days later, hundreds of Christian, Muslim and Bahai residents staged an angry anti-gay rally.

They denounced homosexuality as immoral and demanded that U.S. journalist Katherine Roubos be deported. She is a Stanford University student who has been writing about gay issues while interning at Kampala’s Daily Monitor newspaper.

In conjunction with the rally, Buturo and Ugandan Deputy Attorney General Fred Ruhindi called for the arrest of people who ignore the ban on “carnal knowledge against the order of nature.”

Brazil’s national health-care system will pay for sex-change operations following a decision by a regional federal court in Porto Alegre that the surgery falls within the constitution’s guarantee of access to medical care.

The court said transsexuality is “a sexual-identity disturbance where individuals need to change their sexual designation or face serious consequences in their lives, including intense suffering, mutilation and suicide.”

Candidates for the procedure will have to undergo psychological evaluation for two years and receive approval from a medical panel.

The government had argued it could not afford to offer the surgeries, but opted not to appeal the ruling.

A sex-reassignment operation costs approximately $1,000 in Brazil and could be sought by one in every 10,000 residents, the Ministry of Health said.

The president of Madeira, an autonomous Portuguese archipelago located 360 miles (576 km) off the coast of Morocco, called same-sex marriage “filth” and “degradation” at an Aug. 18 political rally on Porto Santo Island, reported PortugalGay.PT.

“Wanting the marriage of homosexuals and all these things that the socialist government is preparing, these are not causes – this is filth, this is degradation,” said Alberto João Jardim. “This is killing the values that we Portuguese – our national soul – have learned from the cradle and that our parents have taught us.”

Jardim also denounced a new Portuguese law that permits abortion until the 10th week of pregnancy. He has refused to implement the statute in Madeira.

“When you make laws against human life, it is a precedent that we can’t accept and then, afterward, they cover other rights or offend other people’s rights in the name of the absolute state,” the president said.

Madeira and another group of Portuguese islands, the Azores, have autonomous regional governments but are supposed to enforce Portuguese national laws.

Madeira has some 250,000 residents, of which about 101,000 live in Funchal, the capital city on Madeira Island.

Despite several mainstream-media reports to the contrary, 18 men arrested in Bauchi, Nigeria, Aug. 5 on charges of vagrancy, cross-dressing and practicing sodomy as a profession will not face the death penalty.

The men, who were detained at a wedding party at the Benko Hotel, were charged under Section 372, Subsection 2(e) of the Bauchi State Shariah Penal Code, which allows for punishment of one year in prison and 30 lashes.

In addition, at an Aug. 21 hearing in the Tunda Al Khali Area Court, Judge Tanimu Abubakar determined the men should have been charged only under the section’s vagrancy and cross-dressing provisions.

Prosecution of the case was turned over to the Bauchi State Ministry of Justice, instead of the police. The next hearing is Sept. 13.

Tanimu released at least five of the men on $158 bail and returned the others to jail.

An angry mob of Muslims, hopeful that the men would be sentenced to death, threw rocks at them as they left the court building. Police fired tear gas to disperse the mob, which also tried to set the court house on fire.

Activist Joseph Akoro of the Nigerian gay group The Independent Project has told the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission that the men actually were not dressed as women when they were arrested.

“This leads us to believe that the charges have been drummed up to incite hatred against gay people,” Akoro said.

Police, working together with the Hisbah Islamic anti-vice squad, also had detained several other people at the wedding party, but released all the women and non-Muslims.

International gay activists consider Nigeria to be highly homophobic.

Earlier this year, the National Assembly considered, but did not act on, an extreme anti-gay bill that would have outlawed gay marriage, public or private gatherings of gay people, visiting a gay Internet site, and nearly everything else associated with being gay. Local activists worry that the bill could be reintroduced at any time.

In addition, the head of Nigeria’s Anglican church, Archbishop Peter Akinola, is the leading anti-gay voice in the worldwide Anglican Communion. There are more Anglicans in Nigeria (15 million) than in any other nation except the United Kingdom (26 million). The denomination has 77 million members worldwide.

Assistance: Bill Kelley