Gay Today: World

British Gays Zap
Cathedral's Millennium Service

Yugoslav Gay Leader
Dejan Nebrigic Murdered

Zimbabwe's President Mugabe
Attacks Again

By Rex Wockner
International News Report

British Gays Zap
Cathedral's Millennium Service

OutRage! protesters outside Britain's January 2 National Millennium Service at St. Paul's Cathedral.
Photo: OutRage! London

Members of the London gay group OutRage! staged a protest outside Britain's National Millennium Service January 2 at St. Paul's Cathedral.

As Queen Elizabeth II arrived, the demonstrators unfurled a banner denouncing "2,000 Years of Church Homophobia." Fake blood ran from their foreheads "to symbolize two millennia of church violence and discrimination against gay people."

The queen averted her gaze when she saw the demonstration.

"Over the last 2,000 years, church teaching has led to hundreds of millions of homosexuals worldwide being rejected and reviled by their families, driven to depression and suicide, discriminated against by anti-gay laws, and condemned to death for sodomy," said OutRage!'s John Hunt.

"The celebratory, triumphalist tone of the National Millennium Service is an insult to the millions of queers who have suffered as a result of Christian intolerance. None of the churches have ever shown any remorse for their persecution of gay people. We call on Archbishop Carey to express his regret for the pain inflicted on homosexuals by the church, and urge him to offer his apologies to the gay community."

Yugoslav Gay Leader
Dejan Nebrigic Murdered

Dejan Nebrigic, head of the Yugoslav gay group Arkadija, was found strangled in his apartment in early January.

His friends reportedly blamed the murder on a personal vendetta but provided no details.

Investigating judge Nedeljko Martinovic told the local Politika Express newspaper: "Our information is that Nebrigic founded a movement of homosexuals who had access to various funds from abroad. That movement was in effect, a gateway for all kinds of sects conducting a special war against our country."

Akradija member Lepa Mladjenovic called the judge's remark predictable given that the Yugoslav regime "sees all non- government organizations and opposition parties as NATO mercenaries or CIA agents."

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In a March 1999 press release, Nebrigic wrote: "[We are] disgusted at the attacks of NATO. NATO has created a situation which only empowers Milosevic's communist-fascist regime and directly supports further continuation of his terror against both the Kosovo Albanians and every genuine, authentic ... opposition in the Republic of Serbia.

"The coordinators of the Campaign Against Homophobia are directly endangered by these attacks both by the NATO bombs and by the revenge of the local population, as well as of the police, who consider us to be the American 'agents' which, in the Republic of Serbia, means people who fight for democratization of the country. Because of the NATO attacks, every activity toward the democratization of the country had to come to a halt. Which is to say that bombs falling in the Federal Republic in Yugoslavia are not directed against the regime, but on the contrary, paradoxically, against its opponents. Our activities, due to the NATO attacks, are entirely stopped. While the bombing is in process it is impossible to fight against the regime of Milosevic and his wife or to advocate human rights of sexual minorities, or any other human rights.

"We resolutely condemn the Serbian regime, the one indeed responsible for the current situation, which refuses to stop the war by signing the accord. We as well condemn NATO which with its attacks directly undermines our activities toward the democratization of the Republic of Serbia and endangers our lives."

Zimbabwe's President Mugabe
Attacks Again

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe attacked gays again in his New Year address.

"We cannot have a man marrying a man or a woman marrying a woman here. What an abomination, a rottenness of culture, real decadence of culture," he said.

"Once you impose a foreign culture on us then you naturally evoke the devil in us."

Mugabe previously has said: "[Homosexuals are] repugnant to my human conscience ... immoral and repulsive. ... Animals in the jungle are better than these people because at least they know that this is a man or a woman. ... I don't believe they have any rights at all. [Gay sex is] an abomination."