By Gary Barlow

Sorry, We don’t do gay…
Well, the election may be over but the bitter taste will probably linger in North Carolina’s GLBT community.

That’s because the Human Rights Campaign and the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund refused to back an openly gay candidate in a tight race for the Democratic nomination to oppose Republican U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole this November.

“Maybe I’m not gay enough,” gay candidate Jim Neal told the New York Blade last week.

Going into the May 6 primary, polls showed Neal in a close race with his more conservative opponent, North Carolina state Sen. Kay Hagan, the favorite of Democratic Party leaders in North Carolina and Washington. The reluctance of HRC and GLVF officials to buck those leaders has upset some in North Carolina, who say that Neal’s support for marriage equality for gays and other GLBT community issues make him the easy choice for GLBT voters.

And, oh, yeah, he’s gay.

“I’ve always said that voting for me because I’m gay is not good enough reason,” Neal told the Blade.

Um, well, yes, but it does rank high enough for some who urged HRC members last week to send their HRC membership fees to Neal’s campaign instead of to the D.C.-based group.

The Senate seat Neal’s after, by the way, was occupied by none other than Jesse Helms until 2004.

Nepal’s pride
As mentioned, by the time this edition of CFP hits the stands we’ll know whether North Carolina Democrats are ready for a gay senator.

That’s no longer an open question in Nepal, where gay activist Sunil Babu Pant won a seat in the country’s national assembly May 1.

Pant is head of Nepal’s Blue Diamond Society, a GLBT rights group that’s fought for years for equality in the conservative Hindu-dominated country. He is a member of the Communist Party, which won five seats in the 601-seat assembly.

The country is rewriting its constitution after unrest in recent years that saw the governing monarchy stripped of power. Pant founded Blue Diamond in 2001 and survived numerous threats as the group became more public.

“I will make sure the new constitution protects sexual groups, people with disabilities, small indigenous castes and others,” Pant told AFP.

That kind of lesbian
I’m not sure about openly gay candidates but it’s a safe bet that any candidate who declared herself a lesbian would cause a stir on the Greek isle of Lesbos.

That’s right—it’s now controversial to be a lesbian in Lesbos—well, at least that kind of lesbian.

“My sister can’t say she’s a Lesbian,” Dimitri Lambrou explained. “Our geographical designation has been usurped by certain ladies who have no connection whatsoever with Lesbos.”

Lambrou and two other friends who live in Lesbos filed suit last month against the Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece, saying the group’s name “insults the identity” of people who live in Lesbos.

Well, OK—it just seems a tad late to us. Lesbians (those kind) have been called lesbians since sometime in the 1800s. The name grew out of admiration for the works of Sappho, the female poet who lived on Lesbos in the 7th and 6th centuries B.C. and wrote passionate love poems to other women.

These days, the isle is a popular tourist destination for, well, lesbians (yes, those kind). Even Lambrou doesn’t seem to mind that.

“This is not an aggressive act against gay women,” he said. “Let them visit Lesbos and get married and whatever they like. We just want them to remove the word lesbian from their title.”

Somehow, I don’t think we’ll need to come up with a new name for, you know, lesbians (yep, those kind again).

Nouveau chic
Finally, town officials in Knysna, in South Africa, let everybody know ahead of time that police would be on “high thong alert” status at last weekend’s gay Mardi Gras Parade.

They even went so far as to issue a warning to an 80-year-old man with a history of exposing his rear end in the parade—last year he was “Archbishop of the Moon.”

Well, look, if the dude is 80 and doesn’t mind wearing a thong, who’s to say there’s something wrong with that.

And who knows? Maybe some Calvin Klein ad designer will be watching and go, “Hmmm.” Next thing you know we could be looking at ads full of 80-year-old rears tucked into stylish CK briefs. Here’s to the year of 80-year-old rears.