CZECH REPUBLIC: Pastafarian Wins Right To Wear Pasta Strainer For ID Photo

A man in the Czech Republic has won his religious battle to wear a pasta strainer on his head for his official government ID photo.

Prankster Lukas Novy, from Brno in the Czech Republic, claims that his Pastafarian faith means he has to wear the sieve at all times. Officials ruled that turning down Novy's request would be a breach of the country's religious equality laws. Brno City Hall spokesman Pavel Zara explained: 'The application complies with the laws of the Czech Republic where headgear for religious or medical reasons is permitted if it does not hide the face.' Novy claims to be a member of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, when emerged in the USA as spoof on organised religion. According to its tongue-in-cheek website their 'only dogma ... is the rejection of dogma'. Members claim to believe that an invisible alien made of spaghetti and meatballs created the universe after 'drinking heavily.'

All praise His noodly appendage!

Hate Groups Protest U.S. Embassy's Participation In Czech Pride

An international coalition of anti-gay hate groups have signed a denouncement of the U.S. Embassy in the Czech Republic for their plan to participate in gay pride celebrations in Prague this weekend. The letter from the World Congress of Families reads in part:

At the directive of the president of the United States, Washington is aggressively promoting the "gay" agenda internationally, including same-sex “marriage” and the stigmatization and marginalization of any who object to the same. Regarding 'gay rights,' those caught up in this lifestyle have the same rights as other citizens. This does not include the 'right' to force others to validate a lifestyle they find objectionable, for religious or other reasons. It also does not include the right of men to marry men and women to marry women. The foregoing pseudo-rights do not advance human freedom and dignity but debase them.

Signers of the letter are a who's who in American fascism. Here's just a few of the ones that have been covered on this blog: Scott Lively, Peter LaBarbera, Linda Harvey, Dave Daubenmire, Jim Garlow, Janet Crouse, Tim Wildmon, Bill Donohue, Brian Camenker, Yahuda Levin, Daniel Lapin, Mike Huckabee, Matt Barber, Lou Sheldon, Diane Gramely, Alveda King, Jennifer Morse, and Brent Bozell. There are 116 names on the letter.

Czechs Mourn Vaclav Havel

A Gay Caveman?

The discovery of a 5000 year-old skeleton in the Czech Republic has scientists speculating.

During that period, men were traditionally buried lying on their right side with the head pointing towards the west; women on their left side with the head facing east. In this case, the man was on his left side with his head facing west. Another clue is that men tended to be interred with weapons, hammers and flint knives as well as several portions of food and drink to accompany them to the other side. Women would be buried with necklaces made from teeth, pets, and copper earrings, as well as domestic jugs and an egg-shaped pot placed near the feet. The ‘gay caveman’ was buried with household jugs, and no weapons.

Archaeologists do not think it was a mistake or coincidence given the importance attached to funerals during the period, known as the Corded Ware era because of the pottery it produced. From history and ethnology, we know that people from this period took funeral rites very seriously so it is highly unlikely that this positioning was a mistake,’ said lead researcher Kamila Remisova Vesinova. ‘Far more likely is that he was a man with a different sexual orientation, homosexual or transvestite. What we see here does not add up to traditional Corded Ware cultural norms.’ An oval, egg-shaped container usually associated with female burials was also found at the feet of the skeleton.

EU To Czech Republic: Stop Boner Tests

The European Union is telling the Czech Republic to cease testing the homosexuality of gay asylum seekers by hooking them up to a penile tumescence monitor while they watch straight porn. According to Czech immigration officials, getting an erection while watching heterosexual porn meant the applicant was lying about escaping gay persecution in their home country. The Czech Republic is the only EU nation performing such tests.

Czech Republic To Gay Asylum Seekers: Let's See If Straight Porn Gets You Hard

The Czech Republic is being criticized for its bizarre requirement that gay men seeking asylum from persecution in their home countries must first prove their gayness by submitting to a penile tumescence test while viewing straight porn.

According to information provided by the Czech Ministry of the Interior, ‘phallometric testing’ for asylum seekers who claim to be gay may be used “where inconsistencies appear in [an] interview”. This procedure came to light in a German court regarding the claim of a gay Iranian man. In principle, asylum seekers cannot be forced to undergo the test and must give written consent and be fully briefed about the technique. However, those who refuse the test may be assumed to be lying and may fear that their application will be rejected outright if they refuse. In addition, bisexual people are unlikely to pass the test. Hungary is also said to have been using psychiatrists to test whether asylum seekers are really gay.

According to rules set forth by the European Union, such a test violates their ban on inhumane or degrading treatment.

Beer Numbers

(Via - Andrew Sullivan)

The Czechs Are In The Males

Julie Bolcer at the Advocate points us to this look at Prague's booming gay porn industry, which is fueled by both a sluggish economy and the fall of the Iron Curtain. Many Czech porn actors are gay for pay, which probably won't surprise anyone who's seen their emotionless performances. Possibly NSFW.

Your Czech Is In The Mail

The Czech Republic has come up with a novel way to deal with unemployment.

The Czech Republic will offer a free plane ticket and 500 euros ($649) to foreign workers who voluntarily agree to return home after losing their jobs in the economic downturn, the government said on Monday. The sweeteners are among measures to cope with security risks stemming from rising unemployment among foreign workers in the EU member country, Interior Minister Ivan Langer said. In the past years, the fast-growing Czech economy, led by the car industry, lured cheap labor mainly from Ukraine, Slovakia, Vietnam, Mongolia and Moldova. Langer said many unemployed foreigners lacked cash to pay for a ticket home, as they had been saving to pay excessive fees or bribes -- up to $12,000 -- to agencies that secured them jobs in the Czech Republic.

Czech unemployment is 6.8%, almost a full point lower than the United States.

New EU Prez: Global Warming Is A Myth

The Czech Republic took over the six month rotating presidency of the European Union from France last week. The EU's new figurehead leader, Czech President Vaclav Klaus, believes that global warming is a myth, prompting Prague to scramble to keep Klaus as far away from Brussels as possible.

The European Union's new figurehead believes that climate change is a dangerous myth and has compared the union to a Communist state. The views of President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic, 67, have left the government of Mirek Topolanek, his bitter opponent, determined to keep him as far away as possible from the EU presidency, which it took over from France yesterday.

The Czech president, who caused a diplomatic incident by dining with opponents of the EU’s Lisbon treaty on a recent visit to Ireland, has a largely ceremonial role. But there are already fears that, after the dynamic EU presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy - including his hyper-active attempts at international diplomacy over the credit crisis and Georgia as well as an historic agreement to cut greenhouse gases - the Czech effort will be mired in infighting and overshadowed by the platform it will give to Mr Klaus and his controversial views. Czech diplomats in Brussels insist that Mr Klaus is not a big part of their plans and are trying to limit him to one speech to the European Parliament in February and chairing one international summit, either the EU-Canada or EU-Russia meeting.

The Czech Republic is the only member of the 27-nation EU that has not yet voted on the Lisbon Treaty, a sweeping set of reforms for the now bigger EU. Ireland voted against it and Poland's president refused to ratify it without those two nations, citing the treaty's unanimous vote requirement.

The treaty was rejected by Irish voters in a referendum on 12 June 2008 and, under EU rules, it cannot enter into force if any of the 27 member states fails to ratify it. Since then, the Czechs have delayed their parliamentary ratification and Poland's President Lech Kaczynski has refused to ratify the treaty for the time being, calling it "pointless". The treaty, signed in Lisbon in December 2007, was drawn up to replace the draft European constitution, which was thrown out by voters in France and the Netherlands in 2005.