A Bit More Detail

Last November in Minsk, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko suggested to German Minister of Foreign Affairs Guido Westerwelle that he should cease being gay.

Lukashenko recently acknowledged the incident, telling reporters that he dislikes "faggots" and confirming he told Westerwelle "it is necessary to live a normal life."

Russian gay activist Nikolai Alekseev expressed surprise that there was little reaction to the incident from German gay activists or the German government.

"To leave without reaction what Lukashenko said is nothing else than setting a dangerous precedent," Alekseev said. "If he can bash verbally a German minister on his sexual orientation, then why he would not do it with all Belarusian LGBT people.

"People have to understand that their absence of reaction can have some negative side effects to others."

According to the Polish Minister, the Belarusian President created a diplomatic incident when he told the openly gay German Minister that all gays should be sent to State Farms.

"When I was in Minsk together with Guido Westerwelle, we talked about minorities, and not just national minorities. Similarly (concerning sexual minorities) Alexander Lukashenko also expressed himself. I recognise that it should not be an example for members of the Civil platform" explained Radoslava Sikorsky to the News Agency Regnum on February 14.

Citing sources in the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Polish daily «Wprost» writes that during the meeting of the Polish and German foreign ministers in Minsk, President Lukashenko made a long monologue.

"He said he does not understand how a man can live with a man. It was an obvious allusion to Westerwelle, who has a partner. The German minister looked nervous, but Lukashenko went even further. In very severe form, he said he did not have anything against lesbians, but that he would be happy to send gay men to State farms" writes the newspaper.

On the eve of last December Presidential elections in Belarus, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski together with his German counterpart, Guido Westerwelle, travelled to Minsk, where they both called President Alexander Lukashenko to hold transparent and fair elections. Mr Lukashenko was re-elected on the first round with 79.67% of the votes.

• Acts of Minor Treason's Andrew Barton points out that genes aren't everything, that the environment (in its broadest sense) controls the expression of genes in any species.


• blogTO's guest writer Matthew Harris summarizes the controversy surrounding the Bohemian Embassy condo development on Queen Street West.


• Centauri Dreams speculates about the idea of humanity dispatching biological packages to distant worlds in order to encourage the panspermic spread of our biosphere. The idea is controversial.


• At Crooked Timber, Henry Farrell speculates that the ongoing debt crisis in Greece might accelerate European integration.


• Far Outliers visits anti-Chinese legislation in independent Indonesia and the treatment of Chinese in the Dutch East Indies by Japan during the Second World War.


• A Fistful of Euros' Douglas Muir examines the upcoming examination of the legality of Kosovo's declaration of independence, suggesting that the court's likely to fudge the decision rather than take a controversial stance.


• Joe. My. God announces the good news that the European Union is requiring aspiring member-states to respect gay rights and the sad news that the Roman Catholic diocese of Washington D.C. has closed down its foster child program rather than stop discriminating against same-sex couples.


• Language Hat explores the sorts of largely good-hearted ethnic jokes made by people in the very multiethnic Russian Caucasian republic of Dagestan.


• The Search's Douglas Todd writes about how a Pentecostal preacher has been coordinating chaplaincy services


• Steve Munro points out that, contrary to rumour, the TTC employs ten thousand people.


• Window on Eurasia suggests that Lithuania's overlookied Russophone community is starting to mobilize behind demands for greater recognition.

• At Acts of Minor Treason, Andrew's very skeptical about the good sense of ideas to save money on the TTC by cutting service: positive feedback loops in negative directions are always nasty. (Thanks to mindstalk for correcting my terminology.)


• Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait shows pictures of the footsteps of the Apollo 12 astronauts taken by a recent Moon probe.


• Centauri Dreams reports that, in the recent tradition of astronomers finding smaller and more distant objects, a small chunk of ice a bit less than one kilometre across was found seven billion kilometres away from Earth by the Hubble.


• The Global Sociology blog tackles the nurture-versus-nature debate on gender differences and argues strongly on nurture's side.


• Joe. My. God lets us know that a North Carolina politician mocked the sexual orientation of another politician's dead gay son, and that Rwanda is also considering strongly homophobic legislation on the Ugandan model.


• Language Log's Geoff Nunberg discusses the question of how linguists should respond to conflicts of interest, with the discussions expanding upon what a conflict of interest for linguists actually is.


• Murdering Mouth wonders how, or if, you can break through to someone operating under a completely different paradigm.


• Inspired by Douglas Muir's posts from the Congo at Halfway Down the Danube, Noel Maurer uses Mexican history to demonstrate that banks and breweries can survive extreme levels of violence.


• Slap Upside the Head reports on anti-gay freakouts, among gamers unhappy with a same-sex encounter in a video game, and with homophobes who don't like a Nova Scotia MPs inclusion of a picture of him with his husband on his Christmas mailing.


• the F OR V M discusses the question of whether or not the failing of US companies to bid on Iraqi oil means that they expect significantly greater instability in that country in a year's time.

• blogTO's Robin Sharp reports on the latest fears that the Annex, arguably the signature neighbourhood of Jane Jacobs' urbanism philosophy, is on the verge of changing hugely.


• James Bow thanks the opposition parties in the Canadian parliament for passing a resolution forcing the Conservative government to release documentation relevant to the torture of Canadian detainees.


• Daniel Drezner lets us know that North Korea's revaluation of its currency is producing measurable levels of popular unrest and fears this may help hardliners be all the more in control and remain aggressive internationally.


• English Eclectic's Paul Halsall thanks American conservative preacher Rick Warren for condemning Uganda's anti-gay law.


• At Gideon Rachman's blog, the Financial Times' Victor Mallet documents the latest tiresomeness of the Anglo-Spanish confrontations re: Gibraltar.


• Global Sociology notes that poor countries are great places to dump toxic waste.


• Douglas Muir at Halfway Down the Danube explores the machinations behind Congo's bizarre seafront and Angola's enclave of Cabinda.


• Marginal Revolution points out that, contrary to libertarian fantasies, the Confederate States of America was actually quite a strong state.


• Normblog's Norman Geras points out that using Saudi Arabia's low level of religious tolerance as a standard anywhere in the world is a Bad Thing.


• Noel Maurer follows up on Douglas Muir's post on Congo's weird maritime border by examining how that border created the oil-rich Angolan enclave of Cabinda, and documents Venezuela's now-finished oil-driven economic boom.


• Strange Maps documents another case of long-standing cultural differences driving politics, here dialectal differences mapping onto support for conservative and liberal parties in Denmark.


• At Understanding Society, Daniel Little examines how recent community surveys in southeastern Michigan document the recession's severe effects, and examines Arthur Koestler's fictional take on Bukharin.


• At the Volokh Conspiracy, Eugene Volokh reveals that even states which explicitly don't recognize same-sex marriage recognize the parenting rights of same-sex couples, split or otherwise, as per long-standing practice.

• Acts of Minor Treason's Andrew remarks--with pictures--on how there isn't very much old Toronto at all.
  
• Anthropology.net reacts to a neuroscientist, one David Eagleman, who seems to argue that he human capacity for synaesthesia--briefly, the ability for people's sensory impressions to cross-connect in an unusual way--has interesting implications for human consciousness.


• Bad Astronomy reacts to the news that astronomers have found a correlation between the likelihood that a star hosts planets and that of low lithium abundance. Centauri Dreams pays attention to the same findings.


• A BCer in Toronto's Jeff Jedras considers the ongoing Romanian presidential election campaign from his position on the ground.


• John Quiggin at Crooked Timber argues that the European leaders who started the First World War are mass murderers on the scale of a Hitler or a Stalin.


• Daniel Drezner is skeptical of the idea that China will escape the nearly iron-clad law that countries of a certain income will democratize, based on China's past precedent.


• English Eclectic's Paul Halsall pronounces himself decidedly in favour of the European Union and the Lisbon Treaty.


• Everyday Sociology makes the argument that the exceptionally tight structure of military life helps create people predisposed to random violence.


• Far Outliers describes anti-Greek violence by Ottoman authorities in Thessaloniki in 1821, and quotes Niall Ferguson's suggestion that 1979, not 1989, saw the biggest break from the past with the rise of China and radical Islam.


• Global Sociology examines the arguments of Afghan woman parliamentarian Malalai Joya and her despair at the continued fundamentalism of Afghanistan's leaders and reports on findings that although women tend to live longer than men, they have a lower quality of life.


• The Grumpy Sociologist points out that the selection of Laos as host of the Southeast Asian Games makes the poor country into a field for economic competition between powerful neighbouring states for influence.


• Language Hat takes note of the ubiquity of Hungarians.


• Language Log's Mark Liberman really doesn't like the idea that differences in landscape necessarily translate into huge differences in language and meaning.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money's Sek rightly despairs for Camille Paglia's good sense.


• Erin's Lost & Found, heavy on art, features an excellent picture of me.
  
• Marginal Revolution hosts a discussion on whether or not the sheer size of the economic gap between many developing countries and their developed counterparts is promoting an unproductive despair on the part of the former.


• Noel Maurer reports that the fact that uranium production is tightly-linked to particular states means that there isn't any integrated, elastic, uranium market.


• Slap Upside the Head reacts to news from the United States that same-sex couples behave quite similarly to opposite-sex ones in terms of parenting and whatnot.


• Torontoist reviews Torontonian David Sax's work on the deli and its decline as related to Jewish assimilation.


• Towleroad announces that an opposite-sex couple in the United Kingdom want a gay civil partnership in order to protest the exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage. (Peter Tatchell has pronounced himself in favour of the extension of these basic rights to opposite-sex couples.


• The Yorkshire Ranter reports on Nigeria's defeat of the various Niger Delta militias demanding control of local oil reserves.

I walked with purpose, my boots hitting the floor in a tempo that echoed my urgency. My mouth was dry and anxiety had sunk into the creases on my face. My family walked behind me, no one daring to talk in case my composure collapsed. I knew where to go and what to do. In my hand — now sweaty — I gripped an unassuming brown envelope that carried my family’s future in it. Our Canadian immigration papers.

It was just after midnight in early March 2007. We were walking down a wide hallway from the plane into Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, towards a glass window with signs directing new immigrants inside. We entered the room and went to the last counter that was open, handed our papers over to a small woman who, in a matter of fact way, stamped our papers, took our photographs and confirmed our permanent resident status before shuffling us toward customs. Like it was nothing.

It didn’t register right away that we were basically home free. Less than an hour later we walked out of the airport. We were tired but exhilarated — the relief was palpable. Only then could I let myself breathe. We hugged: me, my partner Tamara and our two boys. But it was Sebastian, our eldest son, who stirred up the emotion in all of us when he stopped and, referring back to the immigration officer said, “Mum, I like this country. That was the first time we have ever been called a family.”

Walking out of the airport that night, stamped papers in hand, was the last step on a journey that began when I first came out as a lesbian in Lusaka, Zambia in 1993. At 30 years old, I left a seven-year marriage and, with two young sons, embraced my sexual orientation in a country where proven incidents of homosexual conduct could land you in jail for up to 40 years.

It was then that I began my search for a place that my family could call home. It was a journey that, when I met my partner Tamara, turned epic. It took us from Zambia via the United States to Canada.

My partner is American and I am Zambian. We have been together for 12 years and have raised two sons — we are a family in our eyes, in our friends’ eyes, in the eyes of the Canadian government — but not according to the Zambian or United States governments. There, we have no status and no chance of living as a couple or a family.

“We considered a marriage between Noreen and my gay brother but what kind of a message is that to give your children?” says Tam when people ask her about other options. “Trying to teach them tolerance and pride, telling them there is nothing to be ashamed of — but, you need to lie to the social workers, your teachers, just about everyone.”

When it came down to it, living in the US was a short-term answer to a lifelong commitment. My sons and I moved there from Zambia in 2000 knowing that the chances of living there permanently depended heavily on the political climate. After four years of living together in the US, with no recognition as a couple or a family in sight, we applied to immigrate to Canada — something we later learned is a common strategy for binational same-sex couples.

The decision was wrought with emotion. Tam was devastated that she would have to leave the US, her family and her job. In turn, I was angry that, as a queer couple, we had to pay a high price for living in the US — higher taxes because Tam was considered a single person, $20,000 a year in university fees in order to keep my student visa. There was no possibility of socking away any money with a family of four living on one salary and with no idea of what the future held.

In the end, it was the boys’ future and our desire to see them in a welcoming environment that caused us to buckle down and start the lengthy application process. We spent months completing paperwork and pooling family funds. After the application was in, we waited anxiously for two years until we were finally accepted as permanent residents of Canada.

By Aug 11, 2008, we were ready to finally move. We packed the last of our things in a minivan and headed off to Canada, leaving behind our friends and our community in Carrboro, North Carolina. It was one of the hardest things that I have ever done — to leave friends who had become like family to us. Leaving them was, and still is, a harsh reminder of the sacrifices we have made in order to be accepted as a family. Though we’re certainly not the only ones.

The PACS at its adoption was assailed by opponents on the grounds that it would lower the birth rate of France and it would devalue marriage. With a fertility rate that exceeds two children per woman, France ranks alongside Ireland as the champion of the birth rate in Europe. INSEE in its Demographic Balance in 2008 report was the beginning of the observation that France was the top European countries in terms of births and the number of marriages remained relatively stable.

But is the success of the PACS that does not contradict this. 146,084 PACS were registered in 2008 by the Statistical Office of the Ministry of Justice, an increase of 43% compared to 2007 (against 32% between 2006 and 2007). With these figures, France had passed since the millionth PACS mark. PACS' endings are also stable: 23,354 civil partnerships were broken in 2008, against 22,783 in 2007. Finally, same-sex couples constitute a stable rate percetnage of about 6% of registered partnerships in total, but their number continues to grow in absolute numbers although less so than for same-sex couples.

The critics of Pacs suggest that PACS are unstable despite the facts without commenting on specific statistics of divorce, which continues to grow in number and has risen percentage-wise (over 72 000 divorces in 2007) and to a lesser extent the acceptance of divorce has almost doubled in ten years (28 000 divorces in 2007), only twenty years after it became possible. the fault is now 20 years into a minority when it was the rule.In 2007, the number of divorces totaled 134,477, after a period of stability around 120,000 divorces a year from 1996 to 2002.

It is society as a whole that wants more flexibility in organizing our families, as is reflected in the success of PACS and the modes of termination of marriage; births and unions are increasingly disconnected with number of births outside marriage in the majority.

• blogTO's Rick McGinnis blogs about the disappearance of the former Bohemian district of Gerrard Village thanks to rising real estate prices.
  
• James Bow comments on the Louisiana judge opposed to interracial marriage. Racist, that last guy.


• Far Outliers links to a source discussing how Fijians of Melanesian background, not just Indo-Fijians, are beginning to become sailors on the world stage in larger numbers. The blog also tackles the remnants of Thessaloniki's multiculturalism.


• Language Log reports on language conflict in Taiwan and Guangdong, as locals try to reassert their languages against Putongua. In a related post, the blog wonders what exactly constitutes an ethnic group.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money's Robert Farley savages American conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer.


• Peter Rukavina links to a video tour of Toronto's Coach House Press.


• Slap Upside the Head notes that yet another group of "concerned citizens" want to forcibly exclude a GLBT-themed book from a public library.


• Towleroad reports that American gay writer Edmund White thinks that same-sex marriage is radical simply because it normalized same-sex couples.


• Window on Eurasia observes that an opening of the Turkish-Armenian frontier would transform the mental maps and national identities of Armenians and Turks alike, and also comments on Russia's emergence as a supplier of raw materials to China.

A gay Toronto couple was detained for 28 days in Dubai for carrying the prescription arthritis drug Celebrex, which is banned in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Rocky Sharma and Stephen Macleod, who have been together for 10 years, were stopped upon arrival in Dubai on Aug 2, where they planned to spend the day before returning to Toronto from a vacation in India.

Macleod had a bottle of the prescription arthritis medication Celebrex in his suitcase. They were told Celebrex is a controlled substance in UAE and, even though they did not present themselves to border officials as a couple, both partners were detained.

“I think they thought we were gay and we would have some party drugs with us,” says Sharma, who is now safely back at home with his partner. “They were definitely targeting people who are young, from the western world and nicely dressed, like they are going to party.”

The UAE has very tough drug laws. Even over-the-counter medications that include traces of codeine are restricted. Possession can result in lengthy jail sentences, heavy fines or the death penalty, according to an advisory issued by the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT).

[. . .]

They were not given an opportunity to contact a lawyer or consular officials but Sharma managed to contact friends at home on his Blackberry, which he had on him at the time of his arrest. Those friends gave him the emergency contact number of the Canadian embassy in Abu Dhabi, which Sharma called before his Blackberry was confiscated. Sharma’s family also contacted DFAIT in Canada but their efforts were stymied by the long weekend.

[. . .]

For the next 18 days, Sharma and Macleod could only communicate with each other via the case worker provided by the Canadian consulate.

“That was one of the worst parts, because I had no idea how he was doing, he had no idea how I was doing,” says Sharma. “We were told by the embassy not to even hint that we were a couple, to act like we were only friends, and that’s what we did.”

Homosexuality is punishable by death in UAE.

Even when the couple was formally declared innocent by the Dubai prosecution on Aug 18, they were kept another 11 days while their paperwork was processed.

• 3 Quarks Daily links to Robert Kaplan's article in the Atlantic Monthly praising al-Jazeera as an authentic and interesting expression of Third World opinion.


• Acts of Minor Treason celebrates Germany's new interest in using nuclear energy.


• James Bow bids farewell to Toronto's mayor David Miller, who has announced that he won't run in the next election in 14 months' time. Bow thinks that he did reasonably well, especially considering the innate conservatism of the city's bureaucracy.


• Centauri Dreams explores new observations made of pre-planetary dust disks, soon to become planets, orbiting any number of stars. Of note is a dusk disk found in orbit of a massive and terrifically energetic B blue star. If these disks can form there, commenters suggest, surely they could form anywhere.


• Far Outliers documents the series of annexations made by Western powers in Polynesia over the 1840-1906 period, and perhaps not coincidentally notes the popularity of sailors from the Pacific islands.


• A Fistful of Euros' Alex Harrowell points out that the canceled American anti-missile program that would have made use of bases in the Czech Republic and Poland wasn't very useful anyway. Meanwhile, the inimitable Edward Hugh observes that the very low interest rates in demographically aging countries like Germany and Sweden has helped provider countries like the United States and Spain with far too much capital to be managed responsibly.


• Noel Maurer finds the area of a disenchanted American military staging a coup against the elected government ludicrous, and rightly so.


• Slap Upside the Head follows the lawsuit and counter-lawsuit involving a gay man forbidden from donating blood, and reports on the inability of American same-sex couples married in Canada to get divorces back home.


• Over at Torontoist, we see a sensitive, productive discussion on bicycles and their role in Toronto in the somewhat critical post "Terence Corcoran Hates Your Bike".