European Court Of Human Rights Historic Ruling Finds Russian Officials Discriminated Against Gays, Serbian Faux-Doctor Prescribes Plenty Of Enemas To Cure The Gay, Facebook Campaign To Appoint Openly Gay Irish President, Facebook Continues To Violate Privacy And Outs Members To Advertisers

According to a report from Reuters, the European Court of Human Rights Thursday said it had fined Russia for banning gay pride parades in Moscow, a victory for the country’s gay community. Gay activist Nikolai Alekseev brought three cases with the court argued that Russia had violated the European Convention of Human Rights, to which it adheres as a member state of the Council of Europe. The court Thursday ruled that Russia had violated the rights of assembly and had discriminated on the basis of sexual orientation, ordering Russian authorities to pay Alekseev almost 30,000 Euros in damages. Russian officials had continually denied gays permission to hold demonstrations because they argued the reaction by citizens would be violent, however the court said “The mere risk of a demonstration creating a disturbance was not sufficient to justify its ban.” Thursday, Alekseev released a statement that in part read “This is a crippling blow to Russian homophobia on all accounts.”

Radio Free Europe on Serbian doctor Mirojlub Petrovic, who is not a doctor, but is opening a clinic in Belgrade this month where the doctor who is not a doctor who practices “original medicine” will begin to “cure homosexuality.” Petrovic, whose certificate is from an American organization called the International Institute of Original Medicine, says that “me and my friends” will cure the gay through the acceptance of “good habits” and the rejection of “bad habits,” which includes a diet that rejects “anything that diarrheic, alcohol, caffeine,” “drink a lot of water,” engage in regular “physical activity,” “think about good things,” and, of course, receive regular enemas. As an aside, Petrovic subscribes to the theory that although “you cannot execute homosexuals” you can support a system that would give gays a choice – change your behaviour or face the death penalty.

The Guardian reports that Irish independent senator David Norris is currently the front-running candidate to succeed Mary McAleese as the head of state in the Irish Republic; the openly gay Norris says that he put his name forward for consideration only after learning that a Facebook group had begun campaigning for him to stand for the largely ceremonial position. “I’ve started very early in response to the Facebook campaign,” Norris laughs. One of the Irish Sunday newspapers rang me up and said, ‘Do you know that nearly 1,000 people have signed on Facebook calling for you to stand for the presidency?’ It was Facebook which started all of this, absolutely.” Of for his sexuality in the mostly Catholic, conservative country,” Norris believes it is a “non-issue with the people of Ireland.”

Facebook, meanwhile, continues to define privacy rather loosely, a new study via Valleywag.com revealing that the social media site is outing members to advertisers, researchers from Microsoft and the German-based Max Planck Institute finding that Facebook regularly targets ads based on sexuality, but that many if not all of the ads targeted exclusively to gay men were absent of any mention of sexuality, the researchers saying that is a concern because “The danger with such ads, unlike the gay bar ad where the target demographic is blatantly obvious, is that the user reading the ad text would have no idea that by clicking it he would reveal to the advertiser both his sexual-preference and a unique identifier (cookie, IP address, or email address if he signs up on the advertiser’s site.)”