NewsWrap for the week ending March 31, 2012

SUMMARY

Russian Bias Spreads - A national bill to criminalize exposing minors to pro-LGBT "propaganda" – much like the recently enacted measure in St. Petersburg – is introduced in the Russian parliament, while a judge in the Russian city of Sochi, which will host the 2014 Winter Olympics, upholds a ban on Pride House, a specific venue for LGBT athletes and their supporters that was introduced at the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver …

Fighting Words - Mladen Obradovic, the leader of Serbia's extremist group Obraz, is sentenced to 10 months in prison for inciting violence against LGBT people …

STFU - Albania's Prime Minister Sali Berisha quickly counters calls by a deputy minister of defense for participants in the country's upcoming first-ever LGBT Pride march to be beaten with batons …

One Parent to a Customer - Slovenia voters approve a referendum to overturn a new family law that would have allowed same-gender couples to adopt the biological children of their partners …

Wake Up and Smell the Genocide - Chile confronts anti-gay brutality and the need for national anti-bias and hate crime protections following the horrific neo-Nazi gang beating death of 24-year-old "out" gay man Daniel Zamudio at a park in Santiago …

Not Made in Heaven - newly-released internal memos issued by the U.S. National Organization for Marriage expose the rabidly-anti-equality group's strategies to drive wedges between LGBT people and both African-Americans and Latinos …

Let's Pretend - in what organizers call "the largest illegal mass wedding ever held," more than 200 lesbian and gay couples say "I do" at a mall in Cleveland, Ohio, while Australian comedian Adam Hills presides over the mass weddings – though also not legal there – of 41 same-gender couples on his popular nationally-televised evening talk show to demonstrate to viewers that such marriages are not "as scary" as they might think they are ….

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