Unsurprisingly, the Vatican and the Organisation of Islamic States are leading the fight against the UN declaration. The opposition of the Pope is truly sickening, depraved and shameless.

Of course, the Vatican has form. In 2004, it teamed up with Islamist dictatorships in the UN Commission on Human Rights to thwart a resolution sponsored by Brazil that opposed homophobic violence and discrimination. The Holy See is so viciously homophobic that it opposed the UN condemnation of the murder of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

The family eventually ended in west-central New York State in Palmyra in 1816 when Joseph was ten, an area of the Burned-Over District which had the usual fairly high level of superstition. One of these superstitions concerned glass-like stones which existed in the area, and these were called "magic" or "peek" stones. The father and the boys spent much of their time with dowsing rods and "peek stones" which they believed could locate buried or stolen treasures.

Joseph thus had little schooling since all in the family had to help in their economic survival. He could read easily, but his writing was halting and not truly of a literate standard. He had only the rudiments of arithmetic. He was often the but of practical jokes in the neighborhood since others considered him as not quite bright. As a result he compensated with fanciful claims to powers and wealth which others did not have.

Actually, the text is a mixture of many strands common at the time. Much of the original text is in the King James Bible style of English, as Joseph would have been familiar with the spoken version of the Bible from church services ... but where it departs from the language of the King James scriptures it is ungrammatical, repetitive, and awkward. It is the language one would expect from one of Smith's educational level. Later revisions of the text by others were to enhance the language, the grammar, and the flow of the text.

In addition, the book reflects the religious ideas and the social activities of the 1820s. Its oaths are close to those of the anti-Masonic movement of the times, and almost every religious concern and error under discussion in the decade of the 1820s can be found here, particularly those ideas of the Campbellite dogma and the perfectionism of the time. The Campbellite doctrines of Protestant Christianity reflect the influence of Sidney Rigdon, one of the most influential of Smith's early converts who had been a Campbellite minister after having been a Baptist and a Disciple minister. The text also reflects aspects of Shakespearean language such as one heard from traveling actors who appeared in New York State towns. The question also arises as to how much of the account is based on an unpublished novel by an eccentric Presbyterian minister, Solomon Spaulding, which details the supposed origins of the American Indians.

Police closed portions of Westwood Boulevard and Santa Monica Boulevard around the temple, and traffic in the area quickly became clogged.

The actual number of demonstrators is in dispute. A Los Angeles Police Department official earlier estimated the crowd to be about 3,000. But another LAPD spokesman later placed the estimate at 500 to 1,000.

With 100% of precincts reporting, 52.5% or (5,387,939) voted in favour and 47.5 (4,883,460) against. Opponents of Prop 8 claim "there are more than 3 million and possibly as many as 4 million absentee and provisional ballots yet to be counted."

The California Secretary of State is expected to reveal today how many votes are yet to be counted as well as where they are from.

The American Civil Liberties Union, Lambda Legal and the National Center for Lesbian Rights have filed a writ petition before the California Supreme Court urging them to invalidate Proposition 8.

The petition charges that Proposition 8 is invalid because the initiative process was improperly used in an attempt to undo the constitution’s core commitment to equality for everyone by eliminating a fundamental right from just one group – lesbian and gay Californians.

Proposition 8 also "improperly attempts to prevent the courts from exercising their essential constitutional role of protecting the equal protection rights of minorities."

The groups also claim that radical changes to the organizing principles of state government cannot be made by simple majority vote through the initiative process, but instead must, at a minimum, go through the state legislature first.

Based on the true story of two Iranian teens who were put to death after a trial in 2005 in Mashad, Iran, Haram Iran, written by Jay Paul Deratany and directed by David Zak, is set to open on Saturday, November 8th, at 8:00 p.m.

Perhaps the most tragic aspect of the story is that it is not even clear that the two boys, both fifteen, were gay. Many heterosexual youths experiment sexually with same-sex friends before determining their innate preference.

Either way, Ayaz Marhjouni and Mahmoud Asgari were hauled up before a religious court and accused, under the strict and anti-gay tenets of Sharia law, of crimes against God in a play that, while true to names, dates, and places, is partly fictionalized by necessity, filling in details that are not known in the West.

The factual details on which the play is based include the initial charges of homosexuality and the fact that the judge reacted to international pressure not by showing lenience, but by changing the charge to the more serious crime of rape.

Cabaret, street performance and film will all be on show at next week's Queer Beograd X5 in Belgrade.

The festival begins on Thursday 18th with cabaret Direcktno featuring activists turned performers from London, Amsterdam and Berlin, and runs until Sunday.

"Serbia has seen some changes in the last year, a referendum, the 'passing' of the so called constitution, the fall of government, the independence of Kosovo, yet another election. All the time the political climate moves increasingly to the far right neo fascist identity.

"It is from this position that we place the agenda for our festival as direct action and antifascism – because we always want to take the most concrete steps to build bridges to smash borders, to see our liberation linked with everyones."

Referring to the attitude to gay people of the Catholic church and Pope Benedict - the former cardinal Joseph Ratzinger - Guzzanti said: "In 20 years Ratzinger will be dead and will end up in hell, tormented by queer demons - not passive ones, but very active ones."

(What the Eshaghian) film reveals is a culture so steeped in hatred of gays and lesbians that it deems a sex change preferable to simply accepting differences in sexual orientation. The shift in policy came more than two decades ago, when Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini issued a fatwa (religious decree) declaring sex changes permissible for “diagnosed transsexuals.” Be Like Others introduces us to a number of the people who have been given this label. Some have accepted their fate, and feel the sex change to be a way to avoid further persecution; others are clearly uncomfortable with the idea, but have agreed to it simply because of intense outside pressure.