Gay Today: World

British Colonies Must Legalize Gay Sex

Asian Women Start E-mail List

By Rex Wockner
International News Report

British Colonies Must Legalize Gay Sex

Britain will offer U.K. citizenship to the residents of its colonies on the condition that the colonies end corporal punishment, legalize gay sex and tighten financial controls to prevent money laundering and other problems, Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said last week.

The dependent territories include Anguilla, Ascension Island, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Montserrat, the Pitcairn Islands, St. Helena, South Georgia, Tristan de Cunha, and the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Territories that presently have no permanent residents are also included -- the Chagos Islands, the British Antarctic Territory, and the South Sandwich Islands. People in Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands already have British citizenship.

"We require changes in the law in a minority of Overseas Territories which retain corporal punishment and criminalize consensual homosexual acts in private," Cook said.

Gay sex is banned in the Virgin Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, Cayman Islands, Anguilla and Montserrat.

If a territory refuses to decriminalize homosexuality it will be forced to do so by London, Cook said.

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Asian Women Start E-mail List

A new e-mail discussion list targets "les/bi/transgender/queer wimmin of Asia," according to a press release.

"This step is going to help us to create our own cyber community of Asian queer wimmin from all over the world and ... help us to reach out to each other wherever we are," the founders said.