"Uruguay legalizes same-sex marriage" April 12, 2013
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay — Uruguayan lawmakers have voted to legalize gay marriage, making the South American country the third in the Americas to do so, after Canada and Argentina.
Supporters of the law erupted in celebration Wednesday when the results were announced. The bill received the backing of 71 of the 92 members present.
“We are living a historic moment,” said Federico Grana, a leader of the Black Sheep Collective, a gay rights group that drafted the proposal.
President Jose Mujica, whose governing Broad Front majority backed the law, is expected to put it into effect within 10 days.
Nationalist Senator Gerardo Amarilla opposed the law, saying it “debases the institution of marriage” and affects the family, especially in its “role in procreation.”
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"Prominent gay rights activist killed in Cameroon" by Robbie Corey-Boulet | Associated Press, July 17, 2013
DAKAR, Senegal — A prominent gay rights activist in Cameroon was tortured and killed weeks after issuing a public warning about the threat posed by ‘‘antigay thugs,’’ Human Rights Watch said.
Friends discovered the body of Eric Ohena Lembembe at his home in the capital, Yaounde, on Monday evening after he was unreachable for two days, the rights group said in a statement Tuesday.
One friend said Lembembe’s neck and feet looked broken and that he had been burned with an iron.
Lembembe was among the most prominent activists in one of Africa’s most hostile countries for sexual minorities. First as a journalist and later as executive director of CAMFAIDS, a Yaounde-based human rights organization, he documented violence, blackmail, and arrests targeting members of Cameroon’s gay community. He was also a regular contributor to the Erasing 76 Crimes blog, which focuses on countries where homosexuality is illegal, and he wrote several chapters of a book released in February on the global gay rights movement.
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Had to couple the first article up with something.
