Gay Pride, Italian Style

Italy gay pride march protests against government and Church
Sat Jun 7, 2008 12:46pm ED
ROME (Reuters) - Some 10,000 dancing and singing homosexuals and gay-rights supporters marched through Rome on Saturday, many of them chanting slogans against the Vatican and Italy's conservative new government.
The yearly Gay Pride march took on added political significance because city officials denied a request for the march to end with a rally near the Basilica of St John's in Lateran, the pope's cathedral in his capacity as bishop of Rome.
[...] The new conservative government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has made it clear it has no intention of passing legislation that would give gay couples some sort of legal recognition.
That promise had been made by the previous centre-left government of Prime Minister Romano Prodi but was blocked by opposition from the Vatican and the Italian Catholic Church.
Berlusconi and the Vatican see eye-to-eye on many issues and his government's relationship with Church is much more cordial than that of the previous government.
"Berlusconi kisses the pope's slipper and says 'yes' to everything. We risk a theocracy and clerical dictatorship," said Franco Grillini, a homosexual who was a parliamentarian in the previous government.
Mock marriages were performed on some of the floats drawn through the city as scantily clad homosexual men danced on other floats.
Some of the demonstrators carried placards accusing conservative politicians of being "hypocritical slaves" of the Vatican. Several of the gay men were dressed in papal masks or bishops' garb.
(Reporting by Philip Pullella, editing by Mary Gabriel)
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL078594220080607

Simon Property Group: No Free Speech in Our Mall!

Police arrest anti-war protester, 80, at mall
BY ANASTASIA ECONOMIDES and MATTHEW CHAYES
matthew.chayes@newsday.com
12:04 AM EDT, March 30, 2008
An 80-year-old church deacon was removed from the Smith Haven Mall Saturday in a wheelchair and arrested by police for refusing to remove a T-shirt protesting the Iraq War.
Police said that Don Zirkel, of Bethpage, was disturbing shoppers at the Lake Grove mall with his T-shirt, which had what they described as "graphic anti-war images." Zirkel, a deacon at Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal in Wyandanch, said his shirt had the death tolls of American military personnel and Iraqis -- 4,000 and 1 million -- and the words "Dead" and "Enough." The shirt also has three blotches resembling blood splatters.
Police said in a release Saturday night that Zirkel was handing out anti-war pamphlets to mallgoers and that mall security told him to stop and turn his shirt inside out. Zirkel refused to turn his shirt inside out and wouldn't leave, police said. Security placed him on "civilian arrest" and called police. When police arrived, Zirkel passively resisted attempts to bring him to a police car, the release said.
But Zirkel said he was sitting in the food court drinking coffee with his wife Marie, 77, and several others when police and mall security officers approached and demanded they remove their anti-war T-shirts.
The others complied, but Zirkel said he refused, and when he wouldn't stand up to be removed and arrested, authorities brought over a wheelchair. "They forcibly picked me up and put me in the wheelchair," said Zirkel, a deacon at one of the poorest Catholic parishes on Long Island, where a devastating fire recently destroyed the rectory and storage areas.
Zirkel was charged with criminal trespassing and resisting arrest. He was released on bail. A spokeswoman for mall owner Simon Property Group did not immediately return calls seeking comment.[...]
http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2008/03/95898.html

Do As We Say, But Not Superstars?...

From http://www.corpwatch.org/ is a very intriguing article about tax evasion which seems to implicate some super stars don’t exactly practice what they preach:

Will the Pope tell Gucci and Prada to please pay their taxes? (Mick Jagger and Microsoft too!)http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14641