NewsWrap for the week ending September 28, 2013

SUMMARY

Ring of Allies - Eleven countries and the European Union reaffirm their support for LGBT rights during the 68th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York …

Worlds Apart - Gambian President Yahya Jammeh uses his address to the General Assembly to call gays & lesbians one of the three "biggest threats to human existence," Cameroon's Ambassador to the U.N. office in Geneva suggests that brutally-tortured and murdered gay activist Eric Lembembe had it coming, while Bangladesh also rejects a recommendation by the U.N. Human Rights Council to abolish its colonial-era sodomy law …

Slip-knotted Loophole - a family court judge in Costa Rica refuses to allow a gay couple to register as married even though legislators "accidentally" removed gender references in the country's marriage laws in July …

Second Place Not Good Enough - a Superior Court judge in New Jersey orders civil marriage opened to same-gender couples in the U.S. state on October 21st, though Republican Governor Chris Christie vows to appeal …

Old Friends - Republican former President George H.W. Bush officially witnesses the civil marriage of a lesbian couplenhn in Kennebunkport, Maine …

Credit Where It Isn't Due - notoriously rights-resistant ExxonMobil announces that the giant oil conglomerate will extend spousal benefits to the same-gender partners of its legally married gay and lesbian workers – but only because the U.S. Labor Department requires it …

Spaghetti Opera - CEO Guido Barilla gets his global pasta company in hot water by telling an Italian radio audience that their advertising will never feature a gay couple because "we like the traditional family," and "if gays don't like it they can buy another brand" …

Too Easily Satisfied - Amnesty International joins a chorus of global human rights groups criticizing the International Olympic Committee for being "completely satisfied" with Russian assurances that its "no promo homo" law won't put LGBT athletes or visitors to Sochi in harms way …

Frontlines - ten LGBT activists are arrested outside Russia's Olympic headquarters in Moscow for protesting the "no promo homo" statute …

Shades of Gray - prosecutors in the Russian region of Chelyabinsk assure a local citizen that a rainbow-colored lamppost does not violate the law ….

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