The Mr. Gay Poland contest was delayed by a bomb threat March 27 in Warsaw.

Police searched the club Tango for two hours as the 400 attendees, including Secretary of State Barbara Labuda and several members of Parliament, waited outside in the cold. No bomb was found.

Poland's most-popular female singer, Kayah, performed at the event, which also included handing out of the "Rainbow Laurel Awards" honoring individuals and institutions for their contributions to the struggle for gay equality.

Wienczyslaw Gasz, 26, from Knurow was selected Mr. Gay Poland 1998. He works in a men's clothing store where he was threatened with firing if he opted to go ahead as a contestant.

The evening was covered by every major media outlet, including the Public TV, Nasza TV and RTL 7 television networks, the Program 3, RMF-FM and Radio Z radio networks, all major daily newspapers, and the magazines VIVA and Cosmopolitan.

The contest and awards were organized and sponsored by the gay magazine Nowy Men. All profits from the evening were sent to the new Bosnian Gay Group in Sarajevo.

AFGHANISTAN EXECUTES SODOMITES

In accord with orthodox doctrine, Taliban Islamic authorities in Afghanistan's Herat province bulldozed a wall onto two convicted sodomites, the Voice of Sharia reported March 23.

Bismellah, 22, and Abdul Sami, 18, had confessed to having gay sex. They died in the rubble.

In February, Islamic authorities in Kotal Morcha, Afghanistan, collapsed a stone wall on three convicted sodomites, but when the men still were not dead after half an hour, they were taken to a hospital for treatment, reported the Afghan Islamic Press.

Orthodox Islamic scholars believe homosexuals must be punished by having a wall felled on them or being flung from a hilltop, the report said.