President Obama has nominated HBO executive James Costos as the U.S. ambassador to Spain and Rufus Gifford—a former finance official for the Presidential Inaugural Committee, Obama for America and the Democratic National Committee—as the U.S. ambassador to Denmark, according to a White House press release. Together with Daniel Baer (a hopeful for ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe), Obama has nominated three out gay men to ambassadorships in the past two weeks. If all three are confirmed, they would become the fourth, fifth and sixth openly LGBT people to serve as a U.S. ambassador. Spain and Denmark are two of the 13 countries in the world that have marriage equality.
In Australia, controversial former Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi said in an interview that he does not regret a September comment linking gay marriage to bestiality, according to Gay Star News. His statements prompted opposition leader Tony Abbott to ask Bernardi to resign as shadow parliamentary secretary. The senator, whose comments were condemned by the UK's Conservative Party after he pulled out of a speech at a conference in Oxford, said his words were not "intended to offend people" and some "drew inferences from it that they should never have done."
Italy's senators are to start debating new laws that may give same-sex couples full marriage rights, according to Gay Star News. The gay marriage debate in the upper chamber of parliament will start June 18. The draft, called "Norme Contro Le Discriminazioni Matrimoniali" (rules against marriage discrimination) would make same-sex marriage fully legal in Italy if it is passed. However, the parliament still seems unlikely to back the bill, as the majority of deputies and senators are Catholic and will block the proposals.
The International Olympics Committee (IOC) has said it will embrace openly gay athletes when it travels to Russia in 2014, Gay Star News reported. After the State Duma passed the 'non-traditional relationships propaganda' law, there were fears of repercussions regarding next year's event. An IOC spokesman said that organizers were "concerned" about the bill becoming law but added, "The IOC is an open organization and athletes of all orientations will be welcome at the Games."
Robert Biedron, the first and only openly gay member of Poland's parliament, was verbally harassed and assaulted during a gay pride event in Warsaw, according to Salon.com . Biedron said, "An aggressive man insulted us, using homophobic statements. He began to choke one of my friends and punched him in the face. When he recognized me he spat in my face, raised his fists and and kicked me in the stomach."
Also in Poland, Prime Minister Donald Tusk has backed down in the face of strong cross-party opposition to civil unions for same-sex couples, and admitted that the country will not adopt measures to allow it in the near future, according to Pink News. Despite slowly working toward a measure allowing civil unions, there have been many disagreements and party factions have not been able to come to a consensus on how to implement it.
A mayor in southwestern France refused to marry a gay male couple—although he would reportedly marry two women, according to an Advocate.com item. Claude Binaud, the mayor of Matha, reportedly told Bernard Rouhaud and his partner that he would not issue a marriage license to the couple. Binaud later told local daily paper Sud-Ouest, "Two girls, I might have said yes, if my back was against the wall. But that's totally different—they can have children."
Venerabilis, an unofficial gay dating site for priests and the people who love them, is allegedly based in Vatican City, according to a Gay Star News item. The site reportedly says it is run by a "fraternity of homo-sensitive Roman Catholic Priests" looking to find "like-minded priests" via chatrooms. The site offers five chat rooms in different languages.
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe has promised hell for gays and lesbians, if his Zanu PF party wins the upcoming elections, according to Gay Star News. The president stated that current sentences imposed on child rapists, sodomizers and pedophiles are "too lenient." During a speech at a Roman Catholic Church-run Bondolfi Teachers' College's graduation ceremony, he said, "We do not have a culture of men marrying men or women marrying women."
An Australian radio presenter has been sacked after asking embattled Prime Minister Julia Gillard on air if the politician's hairdresser boyfriend, Tim Mathieson, is gay, the Japan Times reported. Howard Sattler, known as a shock jock for his blunt style, posed the "gay" question after challenging Gillard to answer a series of rumors and innuendos. Gillard, Australia's first female prime minister, accused Sattler of making generalizations about male hairdressers.
In the United Kingdom, an injunction has been granted for a lesbian asylum seeker who was due to be deported to Uganda with only hours to spare, according to Pink News. Human-rights campaigners say Happy Rwehobuganzi, a lesbian from Uganda, is at risk of anti-gay persecution in the African country. In March, the deportation flight of another female asylum seeker to Uganda was cancelled with just hours remaining.
John Oliver—currently substituting for Jon Stewart of The Daily Show—mocked global gay-rights opponents on a recent episode, the L.A. Times noted. Of the anti-gay riots that erupted in France after passage of marriage-equality legislation, Oliver said, "I guess they just feel very strongly about preserving traditional marriage in France—which is of course one man, one woman, and her sister, once, and their maid, and the college-age daughter of friends who stayed with them for the summer." As for the Vatican, Oliver said, "I don't know if I'd call a Vatican gay lobby a stunning revelation, really. The whole building is basically a Liberace fever dream."
A Brazilian congressional human-rights committee has approved a measure allowing psychologists to treat homosexuality as a pathology or disorder, according to USA Today. Led by evangelical pastor Marco Feliciano of the Social Christian Party, the group seeks to lift a ban on so-called "gay cures" that has been instituted since 1999. (Feliciano has angered LGBT-rights activists by tweeting that AIDS is a "gay cancer.") The psychologists' council had called on commission members to vote against the new bill.
Nigel Evans, the openly gay deputy speaker of the United Kingdom's House of Commons, was arrested on suspicion of three more sex assaults, Gay Star News reported. In May, it was revealed Evans was being questioned over two allegations, one of rape and another of sexual assault against two men in their late 20s. Evans has not yet been charged and has disputed the allegations so far.
The lower house of Russia's parliament has initially approved a ban on adoption of Russian orphans by foreign same-sex married couples or by single persons from countries where same-sex marriages are allowed, the L.A. Times reported. Some lawmakers said the measure was intended as a response to a French law passed last month allowing same-sex marriage. The latest measure would not currently apply to U.S. residents because they are already banned from adopting Russians.
