Montreal Gay Village Mired In Violence By Addicts And Homeless As City Continues To Prove Futile In Resolutions, Duluth Minnesota City Council Aims To Pass Resolution Opposing Proposed Constitutional Amendment Prohibiting Same Sex Marriage, Group Cancels Protest Of Troy Michigan Mayor Citing Compromise, Christians Boycotting British Supermarket Chain Over Pro-Same Sex Marriage Stance, Federal Court Upholds Ruling That Georgia College Can Require Anti-Gay Counselling Student To Adhere To Ethics Code

Gay Village boutique owner Ghislain Rousseau never made it to last week’s Ville-Marie borough public council meeting to challenge Mayor Gerald Tremblay about rising crime and violence in Montreal’s Gay Village because Rousseau’s store was attacked by a homophobic pedestrian the very same evening, just minutes before he was supposed to leave. “I was wrapping up with a client [around 6:15 pm on December 12] and getting ready to go to the [7:00 p.m.] meeting when my store was the victim of a homophobic assault,” Rousseau explained to The Montreal Gazette. “I have a poster of two men [holding hands] in my window display and I heard this big bang on the window, and this girl is trying to smash it in with her foot. I said, ‘What are you doing!’ And she said, ‘This is a fucking faggot store! This is nudity! I don’t want my children to see this! Are you a homo?’ I replied to her, ‘We are in the Gay Village and I am proud to be a fucking homo!’” Rousseau continues, “I stopped her before she could smash my window. Then two police cruisers arrived, took her aside and body-searched her. They were actually quite supportive [of me]. But she was still aggressive and homophobic. The police were very firm with her and told her to leave. But that’s all they can do with the mandate they have. There is no zero tolerance for this. This was a homophobic attack and the police can’t take her in.” There have been more violent attacks in the Gay Village in recent weeks. In fact, Rousseau has collected 32 similar incidents in just the last two months on his Facebook page Alliance des résidants et commerçants de Ville-Marie. While Rousseau was dealing with the police at his store on December 12, a reporter for the Gazette was actually at the Ville-Marie borough public council meeting where during question period they asked Mayor Tremblay (mayor of both the City of Montreal as well as Ville-Marie borough) in French, “Over the last few months several assaults have been reported in the Gay Village. There are complaints that city parks Serge Garant [behind the Beaudry metro station] and Emilie-Gamelin [Berri Square] are too dark and not properly light up. Does the city have a short-term plan to deal with this problem, to ensure the safety of residents, before the issue affects gay tourism?” Tremblay answered, “The city will check out the possibility of better lighting and increased police presence in the parks,” pointing out he will be meeting with Quebec Health minister Yves Bolduc soon to discuss the province’s plan to deal with indigence in Montreal, specifically the high ratio of indigents with severe drug and psychiatric problems concentrated in Ville-Marie, especially in and around the Gay Village. Seventy-three of the city’s 75 groups servicing the indigent, drug addicts and sex workers are located in Ville-Marie. “Homeless people are not the problem,” Rousseau notes. “It is the concentration of these services in one neighbourhood that is a problem.” Add to that the gang-related drug dealers in Serge Garant and Emilie-Gamelin parks and you have a combustible situation. “They are concentrating these services and their vulnerable clientele in a lion’s den,” says Rousseau, who added, “These drug dealers are selling cheap, highly addictive drugs that bring in consumers who need to get a fix and they are assaulting and stealing from people, and most of the time they are homophobic. This is a new thing. I now hear stories from everybody about homophobic comments in the Village.”

The issue of same sex marriage will come before the Duluth Minnesota City Council Monday night when Councillors Jeff Anderson and Sharla Gardner introduce a resolution opposing an amendment to the state Constitution that would allow Minnesota to legally recognize only opposite sex unions. Councillor Todd Fedora criticized the resolution at a Thursday night agenda session, saying, “It has nothing to do with the city of Duluth.” The matter of whether to disallow same sex marriage will be put to a state-wide public referendum November 6, 2012, and Fedora contends the city has no business telling people how to vote. He sarcastically asked whether resolutions on Canadian oil pipelines or a new Viking stadium would be next, reports The Duluth News Tribune. “If it affects our city, we might,” said Council President Sharla Gardner, explaining that the marriage rights of homosexuals are an issue of concern to many citizens. She defended the resolution, saying that it was in keeping with previous City Council actions. “We’re the third-largest city in the state, and we’ve traditionally taken the lead on a lot of social issues,” Gardner said. Anderson joked that if Fedora wanted to bring forward a Vikings stadium resolution, he would be happy to consider co-sponsoring it. Councillor Jim Stauber asked that the council consider delaying action on the resolution. “My guess is that this will spark a fair amount of debate,” he said, pointing out that tonight’s meeting already is expected to be lengthy and well-attended, as the city sets its budget for 2012. “Sometimes it makes sense to spread out issues, instead of bunching them up. Could this wait until next year?” he asked. Gardner pointed out that tonight’s meeting will be Anderson’s last, as he leaves office to run for the 8th District congressional seat. Accordingly, she deferred the decision to him. However, Anderson chose not to pull the resolution.

The group that protested Troy Mayor Janice Daniels for her anti-gay Facebook post outside Troy City Hall before the December 5 City Council Meeting has cancelled Monday's scheduled protest after meeting with the mayor last week, according to a post on the event page on Facebook, reports The Troy Patch. Four members of the Troy High School Gay-Straight Alliance, including senior Skye Curtis, met with Daniels on Thursday to discuss the recent controversy surrounding the mayor. Although Daniels refused to attend a Troy High GSA meeting, Curtis said, she did agree to speak at an anti-bullying event in January. "She repeatedly refused to attend a GSA meeting, but invited the club to 'her community center' at a time convenient for herself," Zach Kilgore, a Troy High School senior and member of the GSA, wrote on the Facebook event page for the protest. "We came to a compromise of sorts and decided to hold an event featuring her as a speaker." Curtis said that, "We’re going to host some kind of ant-bullying conference where we’re focusing on how her words have hurt others, and how others’ words have hurt her. We’re trying to pull something positive out of all of this." The group cancelled tonight's protest as a compromise, Curtis said, though she and other members of the GSA are still bothered by Daniels' words and actions. "It bothers me so much that she keeps trying to be the victim," Curtis said. "I do understand that she’s been very hurt by this and that it’s gone too far, but she won’t acknowledge the fact that this has really hurt a lot of people.” Instead of protesting, the group encouraged people to meet at the Troy Public Library's Cup and Chaucer cafe Monday starting at 4:30 p.m. "There, we can talk about our ideas of what to do next," Kilgore wrote. “We're giving people a chance to air their grievances," Curtis added. Daniels said she was impressed to see how politically active the students are at Troy High School, and added that she is excited about the upcoming event in January and hopes that something good can come out of the controversy, adding, "It should be interesting.”

Religious groups are boycotting British supermarket chain Tesco after a senior executive described Christians as “evil” for their opposition to same sex marriage. The Telegraph reports that Nick Lansley, Tesco’s head of research and development, said he was actively taking a stand “against evil Christians” who opposed the right of same sex couples to marry. In a message on his profile page on Flickr.com, he said that he was, “campaigning against evil Christians (that’s not all Christians, just bad ones) who think that gay people should not lead happy lives and get married to their same-sex partners.” The remarks, which have now been removed from the photo sharing website, caused outrage among Christian groups, who said they would refuse to shop in the chain’s stores in protest. Colin Hart, director of the Christian Institute, said, “I won’t be shopping at Tesco this Christmas, and I am repeatedly hearing from other Christians who have already come to the same conclusion. Mr Lansley is entitled to his opinions, and Christians are entitled to choose not to shop at Tesco.” The controversy comes a month after Tesco provoked controversy by reducing its support for the charity Cancer Research’s Race for Life while deciding to sponsor Pride London, Britain’s largest gay festival. A Tesco spokesman said, "Mr Lansley’s comments, made in a personal capacity in 2008, in no way reflect the views of Tesco. Our values as a company are such that we abhor criticism of any religion, and we knew nothing about Mr Lansley’s comments until they were brought to our attention. We are very sorry that anyone might have thought that there was any blurring of the boundary between his personal comments and his work for Tesco. We have therefore asked him to remove the comments, and he has done so.”

A federal court has upheld a ruling that Augusta State University in Georgia was within its rights to require a graduate school counselling student to keep her biblical views on gays to herself. According to The Associated Press, a three-judge panel ruled Friday that the university was following protocol when it put Jennifer Keeton on a remediation plan and threatened to expel her after she repeatedly said she would have difficulty working with gay clients. The university argued that it would risk its accreditation if it did not hold Keeton to a code of ethics. Keeton filed suit, claiming the institution was punishing her for her Christian views. The Phoenix-based Alliance Defense Fund, which brought the suit, declined comment on the ruling. A spokeswoman for the state Attorney General’s office, representing Augusta State, declined comment.