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Lords OK Equal Age of Consent |
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By Rex Wockner International News Report Turkish Wrestlers Denounce Bears
Organizers of Turkey's 649th Kirkpinar oil wrestling
championships are outraged that the Bears of Turkey group is
organizing an outing to the July 1-2 event near the city of
Edirne.
The wrestlers -- burly, mustachioed men who rub themselves with olive oil, wear leather pants, and stick their hands down each other trousers to get a better grip -- want the government to forbid the bears' attendance. "It's immoral," said Alper Yazoglu, chairman of the Traditional Sports Federation. "We are trying every way to have this stopped. ... We shall pass this matter on to the interior, foreign and other ministries to ask for this disgusting business to be stopped." The bears are advertising their outing at http://www.ayilar.net. Gay 'bears' are hairy and beefy or big-bellied men who, in the past decade, have created bear clubs, bars and magazines that bring together men whose libidos are uninterested in the "twink," "pretty boy," and/or chiseled-body look promoted by the gay media. Lords OK Equal Age of Consent A measure to equalize the ages of consent for gay and straight sex at 16 received an unopposed second reading in Britain's anti- gay House of Lords April 11. Currently gay-male sex is not legal until age 18.
The measure still faces a third reading before the Lords but it is not expected to encounter further serious opposition. The Lords likely will seek their revenge against Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour government by continuing to block repeal of Section 28, a 10-year-old law that prohibits cities from "intentionally promot[ing] homosexuality" or teaching "the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship" in schools. Because the Section 28 repeal bill began in the House of Lords, the Lords' vote on it cannot be overridden via the Parliament Act. |
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