“I would have them all stuffed alive inside an oven.” What kind of human says something inhumane like that about a minority group?
2013 has been a global roller coaster ride when it comes to same-sex sex, gay marriage, transgender bills and fundamental human rights. The year has spun dizzyingly with stories — now you’re married Down Under and now you’re not, Pope named person of the year by gay magazine, “Duck Dynasty,” “corrective” rape continues, Westboro Baptists, Pussy Riot, Russian riots, brutal beatings, man nails his scrotum to Red Square, Utah judge says “yes” to gay marriage — but here are an alternate 10, unordered stories from 2013:
1. H8 Is Gre
at For Children According to Russian Leadership
Putin’s government has banned “propaganda” regarding same-sex love, rainbows, men holding hands, but Dmitry Kiselyov, the head of their new state-run news agency has said on TV, “I think it is too little to fine gays for homosexual propaganda; they should be forbidden from donating blood, sperm. And in the case of an automobile accident, their hearts should be buried in the ground or burned.” And TV star of Russia’s version of “Scrubs,” a man who would like to be president someday, Ivan Okhlobystin said, “I would have them all stuffed alive inside an oven. This is Sodom and Gomorrah. As a believer, I cannot remain indifferent to this, it is a living danger to my children!” The living danger to his children is Ivan Okhlobystin’s hate. My grandfather grew up alongside hate in that part of the world, in a Jewish shtetl during the pogroms. He said, “The Czar gave the Cossacks a Jew-hunting lisence, and the Bolsheviks were no better.” When Granddad was five he witnessed his town’s watchmaker decapitated in front of him by a Cossack and his grandmothers brutally slaughtered. He escaped Hitler’s ovens by fleeing the continent.
2. Birds Do It
Lesbian penguins are making a nest together at Ramat Gan Zoological Center in Israel. This one is for all the straight people who cling to the notion that being gay is a “decadent lifestyle choice” or “unnatural.” One can ask those folks when they decided to be straight, or one can point toward the penguins and ask, “So what about those penguins?” Homosexuality in the animal kingdom is as old as the animal kingdom, and is a part of nature. Humans are homo sapiens, an animal. We’re primates.
3. Obama Flips the Bird to Sochi
The U.S. won’t be sending the president, first lady, or vice president to the Olympic Games. Instead, the delegates attending include tennis champion (and advocate of women’s equality) Billie Jean King — who just happens to be a lesbian — gold medalist figure skater Brian Boitano (who everyone knows is gay) and Olympic medalist Caitlin Cahow, a hockey player and homosexual. The leaders of France, Germany and Canada are also not attending the games.
4. It’s NOT the “Bathroom Bill”
Canadian politicians managed to trivialize an important bill protecting the rights of transgender Canadians from discrimination under the Human Rights Act by dubbing it “the bathroom bill.” Bill C-279 made it through a second reading (vote) this summer and there was great hope for the third and final reading. But now, again, it has been delayed by the senate. This bill will prevent people from being fired, evicted, or from having hate promoted against them, or from being victims of genocide, based upon gender identity. This bill is not about which way you face when you pee.
5. Quick, Get Back in the Closet
India’s Supreme Court has recently taken a giant leap backwards in time to British Colonial law by re-instating penal code 377, which makes “homosexual acts” criminal and states: “Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal, shall be punished with imprisonment for life, or with imprisonment of either description for a term, which may extend to 10 years, and shall also be liable to fine.” Indians who had deemed it safe to step out of the closet now find there is no going back and are in serious danger. After massive protests, the Indian government has petitioned the Supreme Court to review the law.
6. A French Kiss-Off
France’s Constitutional Council (their highest court) ruled that mayors can no longer refuse to marry 
same-sex couples based upon the mayor’s own personal or religious beliefs. So there, mayors — take that! Here come the brides.
7. “Everybody Is Somebody in New Mexico”
New Mexico’s constitution was amended in 1972 with the clause, “equality of rights under law shall not be denied on account of the sex of any person.” In December 2013, five court justices unanimously ruled that the marriage rights of same-sex partners come under that same law. 
New Mexico is now the 17th U.S. state to consent to gay marriage. This law can’t be appealed because not only was it made by the highest court in the state, but it is also contained within New Mexico’s constitution.
8. Gender Switch Without the Blade in the Netherlands
The Dutch senate has now made it possible for transgender individuals to change their gender on legal documents such as passports and birth 
certificates without having to undergo surgery or use gender-modifying hormones. The law passed by the senate needs to be signed by the king and will come into effect in July 2014. Other countries which allow for gender change on legal documents without invasive surgery, sterilization or drugs are: Argentina, the U.K., Portugal, Austria and Germany.
9. Life Imprisonment For Being Gay in Uganda
On Friday, Dec. 20, the Ugandan government passed the bill which carries life imprisonment for homosexual acts. When the bill was first introduced in 2009, it contained the death penalty, but that was recently revised to life imprisonment. Homosexuality is illegal in about 70% of African countries due to laws against sodomy left over since Colonial times. The bill also extends imprisonment to people who aid accused individuals and sickeningly to people who fail to report gay people. There’s also a seven-year jail term for a person who marries a gay couple. How scary could this become in Uganda? Earlier this month, The Observer, a Ugandan newspaper reported that a school expelled over 20 girls for committing homosexual acts. The bill requires President Yoweri Museveni’s signature in 30 days to become law.
10. Foxy Ladies
I couldn’t decide for No. 10 if I should go with the Fox News flub — Fox used a photograph of a lesbian couple’s wedding kiss to support a story about straight marriage — or the Curio Theatre Company’s production of “Romeo and Juliet” that received death threats and hate mail by the thousands for portraying the young lovers as lesbians. The former is hilarious and the latter is insane. But since I personally received flak for writing the story about Philadelphia’s gay production of “R&J,” I’ll don my invisible flak jacket and will review some highlights. Curio Theatre Company is a rep company in West Philly that produces classics and is not a LGBT theater. It decided to artistically experiment with gender this season. Before its autumn production of “Romeo & Juliet” opened it received messages such as “These people should be hunted down and killed.” Once the production opened, support blossomed and it played to sold-out crowds. It is deeply disturbing that in a modern, vibrant city that women cast as Romeo and Juliet could elicit the wrath of a huge hatemongering mob.
2014 is sure to be another roller coaster ride for LGBT rights. Regardless of the president of the IOC asking athletes not to protest at the venue, the Sochi Olympics is the ultimate podium for exactly that. Since it is unlikely that Putin will come out of the closet in 2014, I’ve asked Santa Claus for just one present: the photographs of Ra Ra Ras-Putin loving a Russian queen.
Kirsten Koza is the author of “Lost in Moscow: A Brat in the USSR.”
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Boney M.’s Euro-disco hit from 1978, “Rasputin,” on YouTube
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