NewsWrap for the week ending January 25, 2014

SUMMARY

Lynching Season - Thousands of demonstrators stone a courtroom in northern Nigeria demanding quick convictions and executions of several men accused of belonging to gay advocacy groups as attacks on sexual minorities in Nigeria escalate following the mid-January enactment of draconian anti-gay legislation …

New Chapter - well-known award-winning Kenyan writer Binjavanga Wainaina comes out to protest the anti-gay law in Nigeria and a similar law apparently still pending in Uganda …

Charging Generals - marriage equality actions in U.S. states continue to mushroom, with Virginia's new Attorney General announcing that he would not defend his state's ban on civil marriage for same-gender couples, while Idaho and Nevada Attorneys General each defend their state's ban in federal lawsuits …

Slow Ski Lift - Utah gets more time to prepare its defense of the state's marriage ban, while four legally wed same-gender couples who married during the 17 days that they could file suit for state recognition of their marriages …

Fitting for Wedding Suits - a federal judge in Oregon consolidates two marriage equality lawsuits while rights activists push a petition to get the issue on the November state ballot, while six same-gender couples file suit for the right to marry in Florida …

Shell Game - thanks to what Democrats call a "power play" by Republican Indiana House Speaker Brian Bosma, a bill to constitutionally outlaw marriage for same-gender couples passes in committee and heads to the full chamber …

Homophobia Ain't So Bad - Russian anti-gay thug Maxim Martsinkevich is arrested in Cuba and heads home to stand trial for "extremism" – though his online video postings of gangs trapping and abusing young gay men are apparently not part of the charges against him …

I Hear Nothing … Nothing - Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev tells "CNN" that he hasn't heard of any virtually-silenced LGBT person complaining about his country's law banning "gay propaganda," and falsely claims that it's not even being enforced …

Audacious Olympians - marriage equality-supportive female ice hockey star Hayley Wickenheiser is named by the Canadian Olympic Committee to be her nation's Opening Ceremonies flag bearer at the Winter Games in Sochi, while out Australian Olympic snow board cross rider Belle Brockhoff looks forward to the competition, and then to talking to anyone who will listen to her angry condemnation of Russian President Vladimir Putin for his defense of the so-called "no promo homo law" ….

Complete NewsWrap text and this week's podcast to be posted January 28, 2014.