Western European officials have denounced Russia over the May 27 Pride rally mêlée in which hundreds of police officers watched anti-gay thugs violently beat gay activists, visiting European parliamentarians and other foreign dignitaries. (Story: www.gaylesbiantimes.com/?id=9858)

The police arrested several of the gay people but few of their attackers.

“I have to denounce the unacceptable violence perpetrated once again by extremists against peaceful demonstrators who participated in a rally for homosexual equality in the Russian capital,” said openly gay Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë. “In front of police forces obviously reacting in an inappropriate manner, these acts of intolerance and discrimination didn’t spare anybody, including participating MPs from different European countries.”

London Mayor Ken Livingstone wrote to Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, who had banned a planned Pride parade. Luzhkov has called Pride parades “satanic.”

“I am writing to convey my deep concern at the reported physical violence against, and arrest of, [leading British gay activist] Peter Tatchell, a Parliamentary candidate for the Green Party in Britain, and other supporters of lesbian and gay rights, during their participation in an event in Moscow seeking to present a petition to you to lift a ban on the Gay Pride parade in Moscow,” Livingstone said. “I would urge you to use your good offices to seek the lifting of all charges against Mr. Tatchell and his fellow demonstrators. I would also urge you to resolve the root cause of this protest by lifting the ban on the Gay Pride parade in Moscow in line with the practice of most cities throughout the world.”

In an official statement, Sweden’s government said: “The Swedish government takes very seriously what happened in Moscow May 27 when an unsanctioned demonstration was held to protest against the city’s ban on gay parades. Protesters were … exposed to violence from Russian police and counterprotesters. One of the organizers and several foreign politicians were seized during the tumult. ‘The fact that the demonstration for human rights for LGBT persons did not have a permit should not be taken as a reason to view the participants as fair game,’ says Integration and Equality Minister Nyamko Sabuni. ... ‘We expect Russia, as a member in the Council of Europe, to live up to the council’s democratic core principles.’”

College student Audrey Vachon has filed a complaint with the Quebec Human Rights Commission after the Montreal bear and leather bar Le Stud kicked her off its outdoor patio on a Tuesday afternoon because it doesn’t allow females on the property.

Vachon had gone to the bar with her dad, Gilles.

“I thought it was a bad joke,” Ms. Vachon told the Canadian Press wire service.

Le Stud’s policy apparently isn’t unusual in Quebec. In 1989, several people from ACT UP/New York raised a ruckus during the International Conference on AIDS when the group’s female members were prevented from entering gay bars with their male friends.

Gisèle Cloutier, a spokesperson for the Quebec Human Rights Commission at the time, said the bars were in violation of Section 15 of the provincial Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms.

“No one can inhibit the access to a public place based on sex, but we have never received any complaints about this,” Cloutier said in an interview then. “I think people accept that some people want to have their own places.”

Meanwhile, in Melbourne, Australia, a gay pub called the Sir Robert Peel Hotel (which no longer offers hotel rooms) won a ruling from the state of Victoria’s Civil and Administrative Tribunal in late May allowing it to refuse entry to heterosexuals and lesbians.

The bar’s owner requested an exemption from the state Equal Opportunity Act because gay-male patrons had been subjected to “sexually based insults and violence” from other customers.

In defending the ruling, tribunal Deputy President Cate McKenzie referred to so-called “hen’s nights” at which female customers allegedly used gay men as entertainment.

“Sometimes heterosexual groups and lesbian groups insult and deride and are even physically violent towards the gay male patrons,” she said. “To regard the gay male patrons of the venue as providing an entertainment or spectacle to be stared at, as one would at an animal at a zoo, devalues and dehumanises them.

“[This exemption gives] gay men a space in which they may, without inhibition, meet, socialize and express physical attraction to each other in a non-threatening atmosphere.”

A transgender Pakistani man, Shumail Raj, 31, and his legal wife, Shahzina Tariq, 26, have been sent to separate women’s prisons for three years after officials discovered that Raj used to be a woman.

The Lahore High Court found the couple guilty of perjury for “lying” about Raj’s gender.

The two are threatening to kill themselves if they are not reunited.

Full details on the case, as well as suggestions on how to help the couple, are on the Web site of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. See http://tinyurl.com/ysvltk.

HIV care is a mess in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, The New York Times reported June 5.

Patients are routinely experiencing interruptions in the supply of their antiviral-drug cocktails because of what the Times called “an overstretched health care budget,” “rivalries between the commonwealth and the San Juan city governments” and poor management of federal funding for HIV care.

“The state of HIV treatment here is a catastrophe,” said Dr. José Varga Vidot, director of San Juan’s Community Initiative, a private group that cares for 1,600 patients.

Some 15,000 people marched through Tel Aviv June 8 in the city’s 10th Pride parade.

The procession began at Rabin Square and ended with a party and variety show at Gordon Beach.

A small group of anti-gay protesters was kept isolated by police. They held up posters saying “God hates debauchery” and shouted slurs at the marchers.

Assistance: Bill Kelley