NewsWrap for the week ending December 14, 2013

SUMMARY

Repression Rewind - India's Supreme Court re-criminalizes private consensual adult same-gender sex by overturning the 2009 Delhi High Court ruling that had struck down the colonial-era Penal Code Section 377 that outlaws "carnal intercourse against the order of nature" …

Instant Annulments - Australia's High Court overturns the marriage equality law passed by the Australian Capital Territory …

First Shall Be Last - the U.K. government announces that the Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Act 2013, approved by parliament in July, will take effect in England and Wales on 29 March 2014, but military couples and those already in civil partnerships will have to wait longer to be legally married …

More Than One Way - even though two in three Croatians voted to constitutionally ban marriage equality earlier this month, the center-left government of Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic introduces a "life partnership" bill that would give same-gender couples a few marriage–like rights …

Rebellious Phase Passes - with Mississippi being the last to end its defiance of a Pentagon order this week, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announces that legally married lesbian and gay National Guard enlistees will now have access in all 50 states to the same spousal benefits as their heterosexual peers …

Malicious Mouthpiece - Russian President Vladimir Putin shuts down his nation's venerable state-run news agency RIA Novosti, replacing it with a Kremlin-controlled multimedia venture called Russia Today, and tapping to head it up a leading TV anchor who infamously called for burning the hearts of dead gay people …

Plant-Based Polemic - Putin defends the national so-called "no promo homo law" during his annual address to both chambers of Parliament, saying that Russia needs to be protected from "genderless and fruitless so-called tolerance" …

Maiden Who Protest Too Much - a Putin spokesman dismisses as "rubbish" claims by the founder of a Moscow-based think tank that President Putin may be a latent homosexual ….

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