Check out these two stories:
From 365Gay.com:
Poland's LGBT community is fleeing the country as government sponsored persecution mounts an LGBT civil rights activist said on Wednesday.
Robert Biedron, head of the Polish Foundation Against Homophobia, said thousands of gays have packed up and left - many to Germany and the UK.
"It is incredible. The Polish gay community has just moved away because of the climate of fear and persecution," Biedron told The Daily Mail.
"Most of the people I know are now in England because of the current political situation. Not for economic reasons, but because of the persecution of homosexuals going on here.
From Reuters:
Israeli police detained an Orthodox Jewish man carrying a small homemade bomb in Jerusalem on Thursday, as thousands of Israelis marched in support of gay rights in defiance of religious protesters.
"Police stopped a 32-year-old religious Jew who was carrying a homemade explosive device," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said of the arrest before the annual Gay Pride march began.
About 7,000 police officers had deployed inside and around Jerusalem to protect the marchers -- about 2,000 of them by police estimates -- after threats from religious Jews, who take exception to the event being held in a city they hold sacred.
At a separate event some streets away, blocked behind police barriers, religious Jewish men in traditional black and white garb held a separate rally, intoning prayers against the march.
One man evaded police to approach marchers yelling: "Filth! Get out of Jerusalem!." He was escorted away by police.
In 2005, an Orthodox Jew stabbed and wounded three marchers and fears of violence caused a march to be cancelled last year.
Did you catch those numbers, 7,000 police to protect 2,000 marchers? They were braced for a full-scale riot, weren't they? Kudos to the government in Jerusalem for protecting this peaceful gathering.
The Polish government, however, has taken the opposite approach and appears to be accomplishing its goal of driving GLBT people out of the country. I am confident the inhumane treatment the government condoned will come back and bite them at some point.
In the meantime, while there are important issues regarding GLBT equality to deal with here in the United States, I think it helps to place them in a global perspective every now and the.
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