The Civil and Administrative Appeals Tribunal in the Australian state of Victoria has revoked an exemption it granted to Lesfest 2004 that would have allowed the weeklong January event to ban attendees and service providers who are not female-born lesbians.

The exemption from state human-rights laws was withdrawn because Lesfest organizers failed to inform the tribunal that a transsexual organization had objected to the waiver, the Australian Associated Press reported Sept. 30.

The Australian WOMAN Network had complained that the exemption was offensive because male-to-female transsexuals are legally and medically women.

Lesfest spokeswoman Anna Holland-Moore expressed disappointment at the new ruling.

“We just wanted a week together to consolidate our culture and discuss relevant issues,” she told AAP.

The rural festival will feature political forums, art performances, healing space, workshops and talking circles. Boys over age eight and heterosexual girls over age 15 also were to be banned.

Indonesia’s Justice Ministry has drafted laws to ban premarital sex, extramarital sex, living together without being married, reneging on a promise to marry, visiting a prostitute, performing as a stripper, witchcraft, and promotion of communism, local media reported Sept. 30.

Although the proposed legislation reportedly would allow gay sex between adults, it was unclear why gay sex would not be considered to be premarital or extramarital sex.

The proposed new crimes would draw penalties of two to 20 years in prison.

The Indonesian Bar Association and the Indonesian Lawyers Association oppose the proposals. IBA Chairman Gayus Lumbuun told a local newspaper, “Not all ethical and moral offenses are crimes.”

Some Muslim groups and political parties have been pushing for the incorporation of Islamic law into legal codes. Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim nation.

The 600 pages of proposals face at least a year of discussion in parliament before they could become law, according to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Four members of the U.S. House of Representatives with responsibility for overseeing immigration policy wrote the commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection Oct. 1 urging repeal of the policy under which a married Canadian gay couple was refused entry to the United States when they insisted on filling out a single Customs form designed for families.

Kevin Bourassa and Joe Varnell were turned back by U.S. Customs Sept. 18 at the Toronto airport, where the Department of Homeland Security clears U.S.-bound passengers in order to avoid operating customs and immigration facilities in smaller U.S. cities where the only international flights arrive from Canada. The couple got married this summer in Ontario after full same-sex marriage was legalized by court order.

U.S. officials said the two men were legally single and needed to fill out separate forms.

In the letter to Commissioner Robert Bonner, Democratic U.S. Reps. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, Sheila Jackson-Lee of Texas, Jerrold Nadler of New York and Loretta Sanchez of California said: “We do not understand why it should be American policy to insist that people seeking to enter our country as tourists from another country repudiate their own country’s rules and engage in what are to them wholly inaccurate self-descriptions, and in a way that they understandably found to be degrading. Forcing people to deny their own important values, when this has no legal bearing in the U.S., serves no public purpose, and whatever its motivation, becomes a form of meanness — inflicting emotional pain on people for no reason other than to express our official disapproval of them.”

Jackson-Lee is the senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims. Sanchez is the senior Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee’s Subcommittee on Infrastructure and Border Security. Nadler is the senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution. Frank, who is gay, is the senior Democrat on the Financial Services Committee.

Well-known South Korean actor Hong Suk-chon, who was blacklisted from the television industry three years ago after coming out as gay, is appearing in a new program.

He plays a gay designer on the SBC network’s twice-weekly miniseries “Perfect Love.”

“The night before [we started taping], I didn’t sleep; I was too nervous,” Hong told The New York Times. “I was terrible.... I made a lot of bloopers. But the other actors, they understood.

“Before I came out, no one talked about homosexuality in Korea,” Hong added. “But then everybody was talking about it. I think Koreans are starting to accept homosexuality.”

The European branch of the International Lesbian and Gay Association says the Vatican should be denied membership in organizations such as the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe because of its hostility to human rights.

“We ... consider its recent attacks on lesbians and gays as incitement to hatred, and its call upon lawmakers and politicians to oppose legislation in favor of same-sex couples as an assault on human rights, disqualifying the Holy See to be a serious part of such organizations,” said ILGA-Europe co-chair Kurt Krickler.

“The Vatican is one of the fiercest opponents to non-discrimination and equal rights for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people,” ILGA said. “We strongly doubt that the Vatican, with such attitudes, can make any credible and convincing contributions to the international human rights and anti-discrimination discourse.”