North Korean Leader Kim Jong-il } Dead

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il had suffered from poor health since his stroke in 2008

BBC

 North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has died at the age of 69, state-run television has announced.

Mr Kim, who has led the communist nation since the death of his father in 1994, died on a train while visiting an area outside the capital, the announcement said.

He suffered a stroke in 2008 and was absent from public view for months.

His designated successor is believed to be his third son, Kim Jong-un, who is thought to be in his late 20s.

The BBC's Lucy Williamson in Seoul says Mr Kim's death will cause huge shock waves across North Korea.

The announcement came in an emotional statement read out on national television.

The announcer, wearing black, said he had died of physical and mental over-work.

South Korea says its military has been put on alert following the announcement and its National Security Council is convening for an emergency meeting, Yonhap news agency reports.

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Kim Jong-il was one of the world's most reclusive and enigmatic leaders, presiding over a secretive and internationally isolated country.

The world's only hereditary communist ruler, he was criticised for flagrant human rights abuses and for threatening the stability of the region by pursuing a nuclear weapons programme and testing long-range missiles.

When he assumed power after the death of his father, Kim Il-sung, in 1994, very little was known about Kim Jong-il. He had seldom been seen in public.

He was said to have personally ordered the shooting down of a South Korean airliner in 1987.

The South Korean media portrayed him as a vain man, a playboy with a bouffant hairstyle and sporting platform shoes in order to appear taller.

Anecdotal evidence suggests he was not as stupid as his southern neighbours made out, though his over-fondness for food and drink was probably true.

Konstantin Pulikovsky, a Russian emissary who travelled with Mr Kim by train across Russia, reported that the North Korean leader had live lobsters air-lifted to the train each day which he ate with silver chopsticks.

The two men, he said, shared champagne with a bevy of female companions of "utmost beauty and intelligence".

He was seen draining 10 glasses of wine during his 2000 summit with then South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and is known to have a taste for Hennessy VSOP cognac.

Personality cult

Those who met him say he was well-informed and he was said to have followed assiduously international events.

 Some saw him as a clever manipulator, willing to take risks to underpin his regime.

Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said that Kim Jong-il was "very much on top of his brief".

His image in North Korea was one of a hero in the typical manner of the dictator's cult of personality.

Official North Korean accounts say he was born in a log cabin and the event was reportedly marked by a double rainbow and a bright star in the sky.

They say he wrote six operas in two years and designed one of Pyongyang's most famous landmarks.

In fact, according to outside experts, Mr Kim was born near the Russian city of Khabarovsk where his guerrilla father was receiving Soviet military support.

Subsequently, the young Kim spent the Korean War in China.

Like most of North Korea's elite, he graduated from Kim Il-sung University.

In 1975, he acquired the title Dear Leader and five years later joined the Central Committee of the Korean Workers Party and was given special responsibility for art and culture.

In 1978, he ordered the abduction of a South Korean film director, Shin Sang-ok and his actress wife Choi Eun-hee.

They were held separately for five years before being reunited at a party banquet.

They said afterwards that Mr Kim had apologised for the kidnappings and asked them to make movies for him. They completed seven before escaping to the West in 1986.

Kim Jong-il's love of the cinema bordered on the obsessive. He is said to have collected a library of 20,000 Hollywood movies and to have even written a book on the cinema. Elizabeth Taylor was believed to have been his pin-up.

He is also believed to have visited the state film company hundreds of times and produced a patriotic 100-part serial on North Korean history.

Famine

In 1991, he was elected supreme commander of the Korean People's Army. Analysts believe he was given the position to counter potential resistance to an eventual succession.

 By now, North Korea's rigid centrally-controlled economy had slipped into an ever-deepening economic crisis exacerbated by the collapse of the country's main trading partner, the Soviet Union.

Trade dried up and the regime even ran out of fuel for factories and offices.

Natural disasters led to crop failures and hundreds of thousands are believed to have died. Potential unrest was quashed by the authorities.

This grave state of affairs continued after Kim succeeded his father on his death in 1994. However, Kim Jong-il did relieve the crisis somewhat by appealing for international assistance, particularly from China.

He also visited China several times, and was known to be interested in how communist China had adapted its socialist principles to a market economy.

After visiting Beijing and Shanghai in 2000 and 2001, North Korea began experimenting, on a small scale, with private entrepreneurship.

He also moved some way to improving relations with South Korea.

In June 2000, he met the South's leader, Kim Dae-jung, the first inter-Korean summit since the Korean War in 1953 which divided the nation.

The summit's main achievement was to increase links between the states, including allowing the reunion of families separated by the Korean War. More than a million Koreans were affected in this way.

Missiles and rumours

In August 2008 a report appeared in a Japanese news magazine claiming that Kim Jong-il had died in 2003 and that his supposed public appearances had, in fact, been undertaken by body doubles.

A month later US intelligence sources claimed Kim had suffered a stroke, following reports that he had failed to appear at a military parade to mark the country's 60th anniversary.

Amid rumour and counter rumour the North Korean authorities released a video in April 2009 which claimed to show Kim making official visits to factories during November and December 2008.

He made a dramatic appearance in August 2009 when former US President, Bill Clinton, flew to North Korea to secure the release of two American journalists, who had been arrested after allegedly illegally entering North Korea in March.

After meeting Mr Clinton it was reported that Kim Jong-il had agreed to pardon the two journalists and they returned to the United States.

Kim Jong-il's devoted commitment to his father's particular Marxist-Leninist vision was fundamental.

His insistence on maintaining the North's nuclear weapons programme in the face of international criticism, and the development and testing of long-range missiles capable of hitting American cities, cast Kim Jong-il as both a pariah and a maverick, and ensured that his country remained isolated.

His death at the age of 69 on 17 December 2011 was announced on state television.    

Vaclav Havel, Dead } Dissident Czech playwright and xPresident

Vaclav Havel, the dissident Czech playwright who helped bring down Communism in his home country and became a national hero during the Cold War, has died in his sleep aged 75.

The playwright, who was Czechoslovakia's former president, oversaw the country's turbulent transition into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993.

Havel was his country's first democratically elected president after the nonviolent 'Velvet Revolution' that ended four decades of repression by a regime he ridiculed as 'Absurdistan.'

Vaclav Havel, pictured in 2005, died at his weekend house in northern Czechoslovakia this morning, according to his assistant

Even out of office, the diminutive Czech remained a world figure. He was part of the 'new Europe' - in the coinage of then-U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - of ex-communist countries that stood up for the U.S. when the democracies of 'old Europe' opposed the 2003 Iraq invasion.

A former chain-smoker, Havel had a history of chronic respiratory problems dating back to his years in communist jails. He was hospitalised in Prague on Jan. 12, 2009, with an unspecified inflammation, and had developed breathing difficulties after undergoing minor throat surgery.

Havel left office in 2003, 10 years after Czechoslovakia broke up and just months before both nations joined the European Union.

 

He was credited with laying the groundwork that brought his Czech Republic into the 27-nation bloc, and was president when it joined NATO in 1999.

Shy and bookish, with wispy mustache and unkempt hair, Havel came to symbolize the power of the people to peacefully overcome totalitarian rule.

'Truth and love must prevail over lies and hatred,' Havel famously said. It became his revolutionary motto which he said he always strove to live by.

Revolutionary: Havel waves to massive crowds of demonstrators in Prague's Wenceslas Square in 1989, following the collapse of communism and introduction of a new government

National hero: President Havel and his wife Dagmar wave from the balcony of Prague Castle after Havel was sworn in for a second term as president in 1998

Havel was nominated several times for the Nobel Peace Prize, and collected dozens of other accolades worldwide for his efforts as a global ambassador of conscience, defended the downtrodden from Darfur to Myanmar.

Among his many honors were Sweden's prestigious Olof Palme Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest U.S. civilian award, bestowed on him by President George W. Bush for being 'one of liberty's great heroes.'

An avowed peacenik whose heroes included rockers such as Frank Zappa, he never quite shed his flower-child past and often signed his name with a small heart as a flourish.

In an interview just two months ago, Havel rebuked Russia for invading Georgia two months earlier, and warned EU leaders against appeasing Moscow.

'We should not turn a blind eye ... It's a big test for the West,' he said.

Havel also said he saw the global economic crisis as a warning not to abandon basic human values in the scramble to prosper.

'It's a warning against the idea that we understand the world, that we know how everything works,' he told the Associated Press in his office in Prague. 

Respected: Havel in discussion with former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in April 2002

Havel first made a name for himself after the 1968 Soviet-led invasion that crushed the Prague Spring reforms of Alexander Dubcek and other liberally minded communists in what was then Czechoslovakia.

Havel's plays were banned, as hard-liners installed by Moscow snuffed out every whiff of rebellion. 

But he continued to write, producing a series of underground essays that stand with the work of Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov as the most incisive and eloquent analyses of what communism did to society and the individual.

One of his best-known essays, 'The Power and the Powerless' written in 1978, borrowed slyly from the immortal opening line of the mid-19th century Communist Manifesto, writing: 'A specter is haunting eastern Europe: the specter of what in the West is called 'dissent.''

In the essay, he dissected what he called the 'dictatorship of ritual' - the ossified Soviet bloc system under Leonid Brezhnev - and imagined what happens when an ordinary greengrocer stops displaying communist slogans and begins 'living in truth,' rediscovering 'his suppressed identity and dignity.'

Havel knew that suppression firsthand.

Born Oct. 5, 1936, in Prague, the child of a wealthy family which lost extensive property to communist nationalization in 1948, Havel was denied a formal education, eventually earning a degree at night school and starting out in theater as a stagehand.

His political activism began in earnest in January 1977, when he co-authored the human rights manifesto Charter 77, and the cause drew widening attention in the West.

Havel was detained countless times and spent four years in communist jails. His letters from prison to his wife became one of his best-known works. 'Letters to Olga' blended deep philosophy with a stream of stern advice to the spouse he saw as his mentor and best friend, and who tolerated his reputed philandering and other foibles.

The events of August 1988 - the 20th anniversary of the Warsaw Pact invasion - first suggested that Havel and his friends might one day replace the faceless apparatchiks who jailed them.

Thousands of mostly young people marched through central Prague, yelling Havel's name and that of the playwright's hero, Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, the philosopher who was Czechoslovakia's first president after it was founded in 1918.

Havel's arrest in January 1989 at another street protest and his subsequent trial generated anger at home and abroad. Pressure for change was so strong that the communists released him again in May.

That fall, communism began to collapse across Eastern Europe, and in November the Berlin Wall fell. Eight days later, communist police brutally broke up a demonstration by thousands of Prague students.

It was the signal that Havel and his country had awaited. Within 48 hours, a broad new opposition movement was founded, and a day later, hundreds of thousands of Czechs and Slovaks took to the streets.

In three heady weeks, communist rule was broken. Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones arrived just as the Soviet army was leaving. Posters in Prague proclaimed: 'The tanks are rolling out - the Stones are rolling in.'

On Dec. 29, 1989, Havel was elected Czechoslovakia's president by the country's still-communist parliament. Three days later, he told the nation in a televised New Year's address: 'Out of gifted and sovereign people, the regime made us little screws in a monstrously big, rattling and stinking machine.'

Rise to power: Pictured in his days as a dissident playwright, Havel, right, jokes with a member of the Polish dissident union 'Solidarity' in June 1989

Although he continued to be regarded a moral voice as he decried the shortcomings of his society under democracy, he eventually bent to the dictates of convention and power. His watchwords - 'what the heart thinks, the tongue speaks' - had to be modified for day-to-day politics.

And post-revolutionary life contained many challenges.

In July 1992, it became clear that the Czechoslovak federation was heading for a split. Considering it a personal failure, Havel resigned as president.

But he remained popular and was elected president of the new Czech Republic uncontested.

He was small, but his presence and wit could fill a room. Even late in life, he retained a certain impishness and boyish grin, shifting easily from philosophy to jokes or plain old Prague gossip.

Freedom fighter: Pictured in May 1978 as the spokesperson for the Czechoslovakian dissident group Charter 77, Havel went on to become a key figure in the country's 'Velvet Revolution'

In December 1996, just 11 months after his first wife, Olga Havlova, died of cancer, he lost a third of his right lung during surgery to remove a 15-millimeter (half-inch) malignant tumor.

He gave up smoking and married Dagmar Veskrnova, a dashing actress almost 20 years his junior.

Holding a post of immense prestige but little power, Havel's image suffered in the latter years as his people discovered the difficulties of transforming their society in the post-communist era.

His attempts to reconcile rival politicians were considered by many as unconstitutional intrusions, and his pleas for political leaders to build a 'civic society' based on respect, tolerance and individual responsibility went largely unanswered.

Media criticism, once unthinkable, became unrelenting. Serious newspapers questioned his political visions; tabloids focused mainly on his private life and his flashy second wife.

Havel himself acknowledged that his handling of domestic issues never matched his flair for foreign affairs. But when the Czech Republic joined NATO in March 1999, and the European Union in May 2004, his dreams came true.

'I can't stop rejoicing that I live in this time and can participate in it,' Havel exulted.

Early in 2008, Havel returned to his first love: the stage. He published a new play, 'Leaving,' about the struggles of a leader on his way out of office, and the work gained critical acclaim.

Theater, he told the AP, was once again his major interest.

'My return to the stage was not easy,' he said. 'It's not a common thing for someone to be involved in theater, become a president, and then go back.’ 

This article posted at  Daily Mail UK

People Magazine and the Sexiest Stud of 2011

   

People Magazine named Bradley Cooper the sexiest man alive, but the United Kingdom has a thing or two to say about that. Gay publication Attitude Magazine bestowed “Sexiest Man of 2011” honors to Harry Judd. Who is he? Well, he’s the 25-year-old drummer for English pop rock band McFly. Usually the band’s frontman gets all the attention, but if he keeps showing off his body, I’m sure Judd will be stealing a bit of that thunder. While it appears Judd is comfortable in his own skin, he’s actually self-conscious and has body issues. Check a couple of contradicting quotes.

‘I used to be very skinny. If someone says I’m skinny now I hate it.

‘But if girls say I’m too muscly, I feel self-conscious about that too.’

Gracing the cover of the January 2012 issue isn’t Judd’s first appearance in the magazine. Him and his bandmates have appeared before showing off their bodies, but it’s Judd who gets solo billing this time around. In recent months, Harry has extended his fanbase beyond teen girls and the gays. The drummer appeared in “Strictly Come Dancing“, the UK version of “Dancing With The Stars” and made it to the finals. Check out a few more shirtless pics of him below.

Showing off his pits for the gays who have pit fetishes.

This and the next pic are from a previous issue and not the January 2012 one, but thought I would include them. Looks super sexy here showing a bit of side butt.

Loving the slightly furry chest.

 

Shhh Don’t Tell Anybody } Anderson Cooper Great Inspirations for Closeted Gays Might Climax- on Him Coming Out

 Author: Tyrell  

Let’s be honest. We’ve known that Anderson Cooper has played for our team for quite some time now. Okay, we may not know, we just assume. But come on. Isn’t it blatantly obvious? Let’s look at the facts. He’s been seen out in public with longtime boyfriend Benjamin Maisani in plain sight and has laughed at himself when called closeted in front of colleagues.

Now an annonymous source who has tipped off Gawker is claiming that Anderson may be ready to come out of the closet on his daytime talk show during February sweeps. We know that the show has already been picked up for second season so they aren’t that desperate for ratings. But, it would finally be the news we’ve all be dying to hear, am I right boys? Here’s Gawker’spublished tip.

Daytime talk show “Anderson” is having their first Christmas party [tonight], 15 December, at the Russian Tea Room. Anderson Cooper is bringing Benjamin Maisani. And introducing him as his “boyfriend” to the staff. The staff is prepping Anderson’s “coming out” show for the next sweeps. Check the ratings. They’re getting desperate.

Brian Moylan from Gawker placed a call to the Russian Tea Room who confirmed that Anderson was indeed hosting his Christmas party there. While some of you may be shocked that Anderson will be introducing Benjamin Maisani as his boyfriend, I’m sure he’s being doing it with close friends and family for a while. Rumor has it the two live together in a firehouse turned condo. PS, if you’ve seen pictures of Benjamin, you know these two have the hottest gay sex you can fantasize.

In all fairness, if Anderson has been gay this whole time like we’ve been assuming, then it’s about time he made the announcement. I have understood his reasoning behind it due to the fact that he’s wanted to stay neutral with his journalism. However, with the way things have been going for the LGBT community worldwide, it would be a great opportunity for him to take the giant leap.

 

Kobe and Vanessa Bryant } After A 10 Yr Marriage It Takes Years Before Anybody Utters The Word Divorce

    by NATALIE FINN

 

Johnny Nunez/WireImage

We've got to admit, we didn't see this coming.

Well, we saw it coming eight years ago, but when Vanessa Bryant (née Laine) filed for divorce from NBA superstar Kobe Bryant this afternoon after more than 10 years of marriage...it was a bit of a sucker punch.

But the point is, now Kobe is getting divorced. If you will, here's a trip down memory lane, from "I do" to "irreconcilable differences":

November 1999: A 21-year-old Kobe Bryant meets 19-year-old Vanessa Laine while he was at a recording studio working on a never-released hip-hop album and she was working as a backup dancer in a music video for Tha Eastsidaz' "G'd Up."

May 2000: The couple announced their engagement while Vanessa is still a senior at Marina High School in Huntington Beach. She eventually gets her diploma via independent study after the media made it tough for her to walk the halls like a regular person.

April 18, 2001: Kobe and Vanessa tie the knot at St. Edward Roman Catholic Church in the beachside town of Dana Point, Calif. Kobe's parents and sister, rumored to be opposed to the union, do not attend. Not exactly your most auspicious of wedding-day blessings. Heck, even his longtime agent, Arn Tellem, didn't attend. (Maybe Tellem was too upset by the rumors—that are being reported as truth today—that there was no prenuptial agreement.)

January 2002: The couple move into a palatial $4 million home in Newport Beach.

Jan. 19, 2003: Their first child, daughter Natalia Diamante Bryant is born. Kobe's estrangement from his parents ends upon their grandchild's arrival.

July 4, 2003: An arrest warrant is issued for Kobe in Eagle, Colo., after an employee at the hotel where he was staying (while in town to have knee surgery) accused the three-time NBA Championship winner of raping her on June 30.

July 18, 2003: Kobe is officially charged with sexual assault, a felony that could net him anywhere from probation to life in prison. With Vanessa at his side, the Lakers star tearfully admits to reports that he had a sexual encounter with his accuser—and insists it was consensual.

July 21, 2003: Seemingly in penance, Kobe gives Vanessa an 8-carat purple diamond ring worth a reported $4 million. (Ensuing reports have him ordering the ring two weeks beforehand, implying it wasn't a Hail Mary gift.) The first of his tattoos appears, as well: Vanessa's name with a crown, two angel wings and, underneath, the inscription "Psalm XVII."

Kevin Mazur/WireImage.com

2004: Hearings begin in Eagle, during which Kobe's attorney, Pamela Mackey, presents evidence that his accuser was taking anti-psychotic drugs to treat schizophrenia when she had her encounter with Kobe and that she had been hospitalized as a danger to herself for four months beforehand. On the prosecution's side, investigators testify that a T-shirt Kobe was wearing that night had a few drops of his accuser's blood on it.

Aug. 10, 2004: Kobe's accuser files a civil lawsuit against him.

Sept. 24, 2004: Eagle County District Judge Terry Ruckriegle dismisses the charge against Kobe after the alleged victim informs prosecutors that she will not testify against him. Kobe issues a public apology, stating: "First, I want to apologize directly to the young woman involved in this incident. I want to apologize to her for my behavior that night and for the consequences she has suffered in the past year. Although this year has been incredibly difficult for me personally, I can only imagine the pain she has had to endure...I also want to make it clear that I do not question the motives of this young woman. No money has been paid to this woman. She has agreed that this statement will not be used against me in the civil case. Although I truly believe this encounter between us was consensual, I recognize now that she did not and does not view this incident the same way I did."

Spring 2005: Vanessa suffers a miscarriage due to an ectopic pregnancy.

May 2005: Kobe and Vanessa renew their vows in a surprise recommitment ceremony planned by Kobe in Laguna Beach.

May 1, 2006: The couple's second daughter, Gianna Maria-Onore Bryant, is born.

August 2007: The pair deny a new round of rumors that their marriage is in trouble.

April 3, 2010: Kobe signs a contract extension with the Lakers worth roughly $90 million through the 2013-14 season.

Dec. 1, 2011: Vanessa signs her divorce petition. Kobe signs a response Dec. 7.

Dec. 16, 2011: Vanessa's divorce petition is filed in Orange County Superior Court. She is asking for joint custody of their children but requests that they live with her most of the time and that their father have regular visitation rights.

"The Bryants have resolved all issues incident to their divorce privately with the assistance of counsel and a Judgment dissolving their marital status will be entered in 2012," their publicist said in a statement, to which the duo added, "We ask that in the interest of our young children and in light of the upcoming holiday season the public respect our privacy during this most difficult time."

 

Kathy Griffin Was Not Ready to See Hugh Jackman Gayed Up

 In new comedy special, the D-Lister has trouble reconciling Jackman's movie image with his antics in current one-man show 

  BY GREG HERNANDEZ

http://greginhollywood.com/

Kathy Griffin seems shocked to have discovered what a versatile star Hugh Jackman is.

The commediene tells the audience in her upcoming Bravo special that when she was in New York and took in Hugh Jackman: Back on Broadway, she was not prepared for the show's 'level of fabulousness.'

'I did not know how gay his show is,' she says in her Tired Hooker special premiering Dec. 20. 'I kind of know him more as Wolverine where he has knives that come out of his hands. ... He's just hot. What I did not know is that really he's a song and dance man and it was just kind of disarming to see Hugh Jackman on Broadway. ... Wolverine comes out singing Oklahoma!'

'I loved it but he burst into song for no reason, just fabulous showtunes. I guess I just thought he was going to stop the song and say. 'I'm just kidding. I'm Wolverine! What's up bitches?'

While Jackman is best known for playing Wolverine in a series of X-Men films, he also won a Tony Award for playing gay Australian song and dance man Peter Allen in the musical The Boy From Oz.

Griffin, despite her huge gay following, claims to not have been aware of any of that in her routine.

'He goes into the audience a lot, he sits on people's laps a lot and he gives a guy a lap dance at one point!' she says. 'When he's playing Peter Allen, at one point Wolverine is on stage in gold, leather disco pants ... and a tied shirt like Maryann from Gilligan's Island.'

She adds: 'He's singing and moving his ass and I'm so confused. I want to [expletive] Wolverine but I'm not sure he wants me anymore - and I waxed!’

Obama Draws Fire for Opposing Persecution of Gays

 

Earlier this month, the Obama administration announced a new effort to “end discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) persons” around the world. (Ricardo Moraes, Reuters Photo / May 18, 2011)

Steve Chapman

  chicagotribune.com

Back when Ronald Reagan was president, conservatives relished skewering liberals who, in approaching international affairs, "always blame America first." A generation later, with Barack Obama in the White House, they are proving they can indict the USA with the best of them.

Earlier this month, the administration announced a new effort to "end discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) persons" around the world. President Obama issued an executive memo outlining the campaign, and Secretary of StateHillary Clinton made a speech on International Human Rights Day arguing that "gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights."

 

This didn't get much attention, if only because the commitment is mostly rhetorical. It doesn't mean the United States will invade a country that denies equal treatment to gays, or impose economic sanctions, or cut off aid, or refuse to work together on other matters.

It just means our diplomats will occasionally raise the issue, deliver a lecture once in a while and note such abuses in the State Department's annual report on human rights in the world. Not a big deal, really.

Except, that is, to religious conservatives who regard any charitable words about gays as the death knell of Western civilization.

Rick Perry said the decision proved Obama is "out of touch with America's values." Rick Santorum said Obama was promoting "gay lifestyles." The conservative Liberty Counsel Action said Obama was exporting our "immorality to other nations that are trying to adhere to traditional principles relative to human sexuality."

As it happens, they're mistaken. Gay rights are America's values, according to America's people.

Most Americans now support legalizing same-sex marriage. A poll this year found that 73 percent favor a ban on job discrimination against gays. A similar majority supports letting gays serve openly in the military.

But the administration is not demanding that other countries legalize gay marriage, induct gay soldiers or give out awards for the most outrageous float in the gay pride parade. The chief goals are less ambitious: ending violence against people because of their sexual orientation and repealing laws that make homosexuality a crime.

It may be hard to believe, but some 76 countries outlaw gay sexual relations. At least five —Iran, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen — make it punishable by death. In September, an Iranian human rights group reported that three men had been hanged for homosexual sodomy.

In many places, abuse is the norm. Gays across Africa "have been denied access to health care, detained, tortured and even killed," reports The Washington Post. The Gambian president promised to "cut off the head" of any homosexual. These nations, we are told, are just trying to uphold traditional morality.

It's one thing to say, as most Republicans do, that gays and lesbians should not be entitled to marry or enjoy protection against private discrimination. It's another to say they deserve to be harassed, imprisoned or executed for being gay.

But some conservatives say it's wrong for the U.S. government to protest such policies. They seem to think governments have a moral obligation to make homosexuality as miserable as possible.

This is a minority view. There was no groundswell of public anger in 2003, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down laws against gay sodomy. Nor has the GOP pushed a constitutional amendment to overturn that decision.

Americans may disagree on gay marriage. But they really don't favor locking gays up — or harshly mistreating them — over private, consensual sex.

So what's the problem if the State Department encourages foreign governments to stop punishing gays? You might say, as Santorum does, that we should "give out humanitarian aid based on humanitarian need, not based on whether people are promoting their particular agenda." But has he ever objected to the U.S. habit of criticizing countries that persecute Christians?

You might also say that in a dangerous world, the U.S. can't afford to base its foreign policy on human rights considerations. That's true, but there is no evidence that Obama intends to sacrifice national interests in the pursuit of gay equality.

All he and Clinton are really doing is shining a spotlight on governments that treat homosexuals as criminals, subhumans or second-class citizens and urging them to stop. That stance puts them at odds with many governments over a matter of individual freedom.

You could fault Iran and Saudi Arabia and others for the disagreement. But some people would rather blame America first.

Steve Chapman is a member of the Tribune's editorial board and blogs at chicagotribune.com/ chapman

schapman@tribune.com

Twitter @SteveChapman13