Some 87 people arrested in a May 10 raid on a private party in Esfahán, Iran, are to be charged with the crime of “homosexual conduct” (hamjensgarai), Human Rights Watch reported May 16.

Witnesses said police and Basiji militia led the detainees into the street, stripped many to the waist and beat them until their backs and faces were bloody. Several suffered broken bones.

There were four women among the arrestees and eight people who were accused of wearing clothes of the opposite sex.

The women and some of the other detainees have been released, but an unknown number remain jailed facing the homosexuality charges as well as charges of consuming alcohol, which is illegal.

Family members have not been allowed to see the prisoners and they have been denied lawyers, HRW said.

“When the authorities break doors and bones in the name of morality, the rule of law is reduced to a mockery,” said HRW’s Middle East division deputy director, Joe Stork.

The Toronto-based Iranian Queer Organization (IRQO) said the party was a birthday celebration for a man named Farhad, and that Farhad’s parents were among the detainees.

IRQO said two people had jumped from second-floor windows in an attempt to escape the raiding officers “and were in bad condition.”

An IRQO dispatch dated May 13 said the jailed individuals are “gay men” who are “under severe torture and in bad condition in the jail. … Their lives are in danger.”

But IRQO later amended its statement, advising reporters not to call the raid a “gay crackdown” until actual charges are filed.

Up to half a million people protested in Rome’s St. John Lateran piazza May 11 against the national government’s plan to pass a civil-union law for same-sex and other couples.

The measure is pending in Parliament. Prime Minister Romano Prodi has promised to let MPs vote their consciences rather than the party position.

The rally was organized mainly by Roman Catholic groups. Several hundred supporters of same-sex unions staged a counterdemonstration in another piazza.

Lithuania’s first Pride celebrations got off to a rocky start May 14 when bus drivers in the city of Kaunas refused to drive buses displaying ads from the Lithuanian Gay League.

The large ads, which ran the length of the buses and also appeared on the back, said: “A lesbian can work at school,” “A gay man can serve in the police force” and “Homosexual employees have a right to be open and safe.”

A spokesperson for the bus company said the drivers feared they would be mocked by friends and that the buses would be vandalized.

After the company demanded a guarantee it would be reimbursed for smashed bus windows, the agency that placed the ads removed them.

LGL President Vladimiras Simonko said he will file a complaint alleging sexual-orientation discrimination with the Ombudswoman for Equal Opportunities.

The ads, which were set to run later on buses in the capital, Vilnius, cost more than $6,500 to produce and place, and were funded by the European Union and the Lithuanian government.

After the Kaunas brouhaha, Vilnius Mayor Juozas Imbrasas promised to ban the ads’ appearance there as well.

“We tolerate people of any kind of sexual orientation; nevertheless, with priority for the traditional family and seeking to promote family values, we disapprove the public display of homosexualists’ ideas in the city of Vilnius,” Imbrasas said.

The centerpiece of Lithuania’s first Pride events will be the display of a 30-meter rainbow flag in Vilnius’ Savivaldybes Square on May 25.

Other announced activities include seminars, panel discussions, cultural programs, a dance party and distribution of gay-related information to the public.

Gays, lesbians and their supporters plan to parade through Moscow on May 27 even though Mayor Yuri Luzhkov banned the event.

Luzhkov has said Pride parades “can be described in no other way than as satanic” and will never be permitted while he’s mayor.

“The march, from 3-5 p.m., is planned to start close to Moscow’s main post office and pass along Myasnitskaya Street to Lubyanka Square,” said chief organizer Nikolai Alekseev.

He said he expects up to 5,000 participants, including “foreign [and] Russian politicians and famous mainstream human rights activists.”

Last year, organizers canceled the city’s first planned Pride march after Luzhkov banned it. They instead tried to lay flowers at the Kremlin’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and hold a protest rally across from City Hall. Participants in both small events were violently attacked by neofascists, skinheads, Christians and riot police.

A lawsuit over last year’s ban is pending before the European Court of Human Rights.

In St. Petersburg, meanwhile, activists announced plans for that city’s first Pride parade to be held May 26 on Nevsky Prospekt, the main thoroughfare.

City officials refused to authorize the march, saying it would interfere with other celebrations taking place that day, the eve of City Day, which marks the city’s founding in 1703.

Organizers now plan to apply for a permit for a different date.

“Misconceptions about sexual minorities are widespread here,” Alexandra Polyanskaya of the Pride organizing committee told The St. Petersburg Times. “Gay people feel they need to show they are normal human beings.”

The openly gay leader of Quebec’s separatist Parti Québécois, André Boisclair, resigned May 8. The party suffered heavy losses in March’s provincial election.

Struggling not to cry, Boisclair, 41, told reporters, “My leadership has been questioned so intensely that I cannot begin the essential process of reflection that the party needs.”

Elected in November 2005 by a wide margin, Boisclair had hoped to hold “a referendum on the sovereignty of Quebec as rapidly as possible”

Assistance: Bill Kelley