Brazil Senate committee OKs gay civil unions

ASSOCIATED PRESS

BRASILIA, Brazil -- A measure allowing same-sex civil unions passed its first legislative step in Brazil's Congress, where it has lingered for 16 years.

The human rights committee in Brazil's Senate approved a measure Thursday that would change law to say a civil union is between two people, without specifying gender. It doesn't approve gay marriage.

However, Brazil's judiciary has already cleared the way for gay marriage in the nation, setting national precedent.

Last year, the top court approved civil unions for same-sex couples. State courts have since allowed those unions to become full-fledged marriages.

The bill is sponsored by Sen. Marta Suplicy, who says legislators need to put into the penal code what courts are already allowing.

The bill must pass other Senate committees before going to a full vote.

Zimbabwe's president dismisses gay rights; says same-sex partners are 'lower than dogs and pigs'

BY GILLIAN GOTORA, ASSOCIATED PRESS

HARARE, Zimbabwe -- Zimbabwe's president said Thursday that homosexuality doesn't belong in Zimbabwe and it violates women's rights by denying the union of men and women needed to bear children.

Robert Mugabe, 88, speaking at a women's HIV/Aids and gender rights conference in Harare, said the "gay world" goes against nature.

After earlier remarks by UN human rights chief Navi Pillay referring to the criminalization of homosexuality in some countries, Mugabe said Zimbabwe and Africa won't recognize same-sex marriage because it leads to human "extinction."

He said male homosexuality took away women's traditional rights of being mothers.

Homosexuality is illegal in Zimbabwe.

Mugabe, who has repeatedly described same-sex partners as "lower than dogs and pigs," has vowed not to allow gay rights to be included in a new constitution being drafted.

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Why 'Paperboy' director kept Zac Efron in his underpants: 'He's a good-looking guy. And I'm gay. What do you want?'

In his new film, The Paperboy, actor Zac Efron spends much of his time in his underpants, according to Associated Press:

"I don't think I was supposed to feel comfortable," the 24-year-old actor told reporters Thursday at the Cannes Film Festival. "It's like life. This character is supposed to be learning the ways of the world, and that can be very uncomfortable. But it's also exciting."

Director Lee Daniels had a shallower explanation for all the Efron flesh on display.

"He's a good-looking guy," the director said. "And I'm gay. What do you want?"

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In U.S., Castro's daughter focuses on gay rights

• Cuban-American gay activists in Miami protest Mariela Castro's visit to San Francisco, New York

BY LISA LEFF, ASSOCIATED PRESS

SAN FRANCISCO -- The daughter of Cuban President Raul Castro brought her fight for gay rights to a U.S. forum Wednesday, stressing the need to secure social equality for all, regardless of sexual orientation.

Speaking in Spanish through a translator, Mariela Castro addressed about 50 medical professionals and transgender advocates at San Francisco General Hospital on Wednesday.

She has an international reputation as an outspoken gay rights advocate and lobbied her father's government to cover sex reassignment surgery under the national health plan, which it has since 2008, and to legalize same-sex marriages, which so far it has not.

"If we don't change our patriarchal and homophobic culture...we cannot advance as a new society, and that's what we want, the power of emancipation through socialism," she said . "We will establish relationships on the basis of social justice and social equality...It seems like a Utopia, but we can change it."

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Official BarackObama.com video: 'President Obama and the Fight for LGBT Rights'

Posted by www.BarackObama.com:

Join LGBT Americans for Obama: https://my.barackobama.com/lgbtpotusvid

Glee star Jane Lynch narrates this documentary about LGBT rights in America. The video features a candid interview with President Obama, who speaks about the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, why he supports marriage equality, and what's at stake for the LGBT community in this election.

CNN video | Gen. Colin Powell tells Wolf Blitzer he has 'no problem' with same-sex marriage

From CNN:

Gen. Colin Powell said Wednesday on CNN's "The Situation Room" that he supports legal same-sex marriage, either at the state or federal level.

Click here to read the complete CNN post.

Cuban-American gay activists in Miami protest Mariela Castro's visit to San Francisco, New York

• In U.S., Castro's daughter focuses on gay rights

BY STEVE ROTHAUS, srothaus@MiamiHerald.com

Gay Cuban Americans in Miami are furious that Fidel Castro's niece is meeting this week and next with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender activists in San Francisco and New York City.

"For Mariela Castro, or anybody else under the Castro dictatorship, to say they are representing the rights of anyone is an insult to the hundreds of thousands who have either been killed, jailed or assassinated by their own hands, or the nearly 100,000 people who’ve jumped into the ocean looking for freedom who haven’t made it here," said Herb Sosa, executive director of Unity Coalition, Miami-Dade County's leading Hispanic gay rights group.

Mariela Castro, whose father, Raul, succeeded his brother, Fidel, as Cuban president, is in the United States on a visa granted about a month ago.

An advocate for marriage and transgender equality, Mariela has been a visible gay-rights figure in Cuba, where until several years ago LGBT people were treated as outcasts and often sent to hard-labor camps.

U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Miami, known as both a staunch anti-Castro Cuban American and one of Congress' most outspoken Republicans for LGBT equality, is harshly critical of Mariela Castro's U.S. visit.

“The Castro regime was particularly brutal and harsh in its treatment of members of the Cuban gay community and as part of its revisionist push the dictatorship wants the U.S. to believe its lies because it respects no one's rights," Ros-Lehtinen told The Miami Herald. "The Cuban dictatorship would round up members of the gay and AIDS community and send them to forced labor camps where their most basic human rights came under withering assaults.  This is all a public relations ploy meant to soften Cuba’s image abroad and it will not work."

Sosa calls Castro's public support for gay equality "a dog and pony show."

"The true LGBT leaders are routinely arrested, beaten up or simply disappear at the hands of the Castro leadership every time Mariela marches," he says.

Pedro A. Romanach of Miami calls her visit "patently absurd."

"She may be pro-gay marriage, but the very elementary rights Cubans don't have -- freedom of the press, freedom of assembly -- gay people don’t have those rights in Cuba," Romanach said. "Neither do straights."

Castro started her San Francisco visit attending meetings Tuesday on transgender healthcare at the University of California, San Francisco. She is scheduled to participate in an educational forum on the same topic at San Francisco General Hospital on Wednesday.

Later, the San Francisco LGBT Center is planning to host Castro for a discussion on Cuba's gay rights policies. She also is chairing a panel on sexual politics Thursday at the annual meeting of the Latin American Studies Association.

"She’s going to come over and be welcomed as some kind of hero by gay people and she’s not. There are anti-communist gay people in Cuba who she’s argued with," Romanach said. "She doesn’t represent anybody but herself. The real heroes in Cuba are the gay people who are pro gay and pro freedom, anti-communists who aren’t getting any publicity."

On Tuesday, Castro is scheduled to speak at the New York Public Library, along with Rea Carey, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. The forum is titled, "LGBT Rights in Cuba, the United States and Beyond: Mariela Castro and Rea Carey in Conversation."

From the New York Public Library website:

"In 2010 the Cuban government began providing sex reassignment surgery free of charge as part of their universal healthcare. This was the result of several years of work by the Cuban National Center for Sex Education under the leadership of Mariela Castro Espín, niece of Fidel Castro and daughter of current Cuban president Raúl Castro. The current developments in LGBT rights in Cuba are remarkable given the discrimination suffered by gays, lesbians, and transgender people in Cuba in the 20th century, as well as comparison with current LGBT movements in the U.S. and abroad."

On Saturday, Romanach sent a protest email to Carey:

"I am gay, a registered Democrat, and a member of the Task Force Foundation. (I just sent you $40 renewing my membership a few days ago. In the past, I have also been a member of the Task Force Foundation, sending yearly contributions of around $35.) I am also an anti-Communist Cuban American in Miami," Romanach wrote.

"Ms. Carey, there are many anti-Communist gay Cubans both in Cuba and outside the oppressed island. Mariela Castro represents no one but herself. She does not represent gay Cubans. If you are to meet with her, and I hope you don't, I hope you will vigorously question her about why she supports a despicable dictatorship that denies basic freedoms to its citizens," Romanach continued. "With all due respect, if this is not done, I will not be renewing my Task Force Foundation membership as a protest. Mariela Castro is despised by anti-Communist gay Cubans and Cuban Americans because of her disgusting defense of the dictatorship which oppresses the land where I was born."

This report was supplemented with material from The Associated Press.

Jim Parsons, Sheldon of TV's 'Big Bang Theory,' comes out in New York Times profile

Jim Parsons, the Emmy-winning star of CBS' The Big Bang Theory (he plays Sheldon), has come out in a New York Times profile of the actor.

Parson, who in 2011 starred in Broadway's revival of the AIDS drama The Normal Heart, opens June 14 in a revival of Harvey. He plays the James Stewart role, Elwood P. Dowd.

From Wednesday's New York Times:

“The Normal Heart” resonated with him on a few levels: Mr. Parsons is gay and in a 10-year relationship, and working with an ensemble again onstage was like nourishment, he said.

The news is not exactly a surprise: Parsons thanked his partner, Todd Spiewak, from the stage when he won the 2010 Emmy for lead actor in a comedy series.

Click here to read the complete New York Times article.

Poll: Mitt Romney leads President Barack Obama in Florida, while gay marriage issue matters little

BY MARC CAPUTO, MCAPUTO@MIAMIHERALD.COM

Mitt Romney has crept to a 6-percentage point lead over President Barack Obama in Florida, where a new poll shows a majority of registered voters don’t think the incumbent deserves a second term.

Romney’s 47 percent to 41 percent lead over Obama would grow even bigger — to an 8 percentage-point advantage — if the challenger chose Sen. Marco Rubio a running mate, according to Quinnipiac University’s new survey.

The poll also indicates that Romney has closed the so-called “gender gap” among women voters with Obama, who barely leads among Hispanics. And Obama is enjoying almost no advantage for his widely publicized decision to publicly favor same-sex unions, which a majority of Floridians now favor.

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William Levy comes in third on DWTS, despite encouragement from underwear maker N2N

William Levy came in third Tuesday night on Dancing With the Stars, despite a good-luck shout out from N2N Bodywear, which features the ex-underwear model on its homepage.

Levy posed in see-through underwear about eight years ago, when he was a young model and struggling actor. Now, N2N -- which sells an "erotic" line of underwear clearly aimed at gay men -- has built a shrine called the William Levy N2N Gallery.

Most of the Levy photos are safe for work, assuming your boss wouldn't mind you staring at pictures of Cuban-born Levy wearing nothing but skimpy thongs and bikinis. (Click here for more NSFW photos.)

Says Levy, 31, who has two young children with actress Elizabeth Gutierrez:  “I worked as a model and that’s what models do.”