Jan 02, 2009  | COMMENTS     

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) — Amsterdam hosted a Christmas celebration for its gay community last week featuring a nativity tableau with a male Mary in drag that church organizations denounced as an affront to traditional values.

Organizers said the event was meant to raise Amsterdam’s profile as a gay capital at a time when homosexuals feel threatened.

Christians for Truth, an independent religious group, had asked the city council to cancel the “Pink Christmas” event, saying it made a mockery of Christian tenets. The city did not comment.

A male entertainer known as Wendy Mills posed as Mary in a blonde wig and high-heeled black boots and holding a plastic doll. Another man played Joseph in black leather trunks and a silver shawl. The five-person manger scene was staged off the street, in the courtyard of a nightclub.
Visitors were invited to be photographed with the group. The first was 3-month-old Lily Pink Albers, Mills’ niece.

“By portraying Joseph and Mary as homosexuals, a twisted human fantasy is being added to the history of the Bible,” Christians for Truth said in a statement ahead of the event.

A few dozen visitors wandered through the 100-yard long Pink Market, past stalls selling leather goods and Christmas cards with gay themes on a downtown street known for its gay nightlife and popular restaurants.

Frank van Dalen, chairman of Pro Gay, which organized the event, said gays were not satisfied with being tolerated, but wanted to be “socially accepted as an indivisible part of society.”

He said Amsterdam City Council sponsored the $21,000 event, which he hoped would become a regular event, like the annual floating summertime gay parade through the city’s canals that attract tens of thousands of visitors.

“Our objective is not be offensive,” he said. “This is about visibility.”

Ecuadorean killed in New York buried at home

CUENCA, Ecuador (AP) — An Ecuadorean immigrant beaten to death in an apparent U.S. hate crime was carried to his grave Dec. 20 in a coffin scattered with roses and his nation’s flag in a town that has seen thousands of others seek their fortunes abroad.

Julie Quintuna, the mother of Jose Oswaldo Sucuzhanay, sobbed as she embraced her 10-year-old grandson Brian, one of Sucuzhanay’s 12 children. Sucuzhanay, a 31-year-old real estate agent, was attacked by a group of men who kicked and beat him with an aluminum baseball bat, shouting anti-Latino and anti-gay slurs as he walked arm in arm with his brother near his Brooklyn home Dec. 7. He died after five days in a coma.

New York City police are still searching for three suspects, and the NYPD’s Hate Crime Task Force is investigating the incident.

“My heart is broken and so is that of all my family,” his brother German said during a funeral Mass in the cathedral of the southern town of Cuenca.

“The brutal killing of my brother Oswaldo is the result of xenophobia, of homophobia and racism that our compatriots are experiencing in these times,” he said, calling on Ecuador’s government to demand that U.S. authorities solve the crime.

Spanish judge suspended over lesbian adoption bid

MADRID, Spain (AP) — A Spanish court says a judge has been suspended for attempting to thwart a woman’s effort to adopt her lesbian partner’s child.

The Superior Justice Court in the southeast Murcia region says it suspended Judge Fernando Ferrin Calamita for two years. The court also ordered the Catholic judge to pay the woman $8,400 in compensation.

The woman had been trying to adopt the child born to her partner after they were married in 2005. The court’s ruling Dec. 23 says Ferrin ignored Spanish laws allowing same-sex couples to adopt and showed contempt for the woman’s sexual orientation while processing her application. Ferrin says he will appeal his suspension.