homosexual sex.

Boston-based In Newsweekly, which claims a weekly circulation of nearly 100,000, said that despite the pink houses and sand, Bermuda was no place for gays.

"The homophobia that exists in Bermuda is beyond belief,'' the article in the February 6 issue said.

"This small weird-shaped nation, only 250 miles east of the Virginia coastline, is populated by 55,667 highly stuck-up Bermudians with severe attitude.

"A product of ultra-conservative British colonialists, their rules are as strict and obsolete as the Dark Ages.'' The article said that Bermuda's law making sex between adult males illegal contravened the European Convention on Human Rights signed by the United Kingdom.

It quoted a public statement by Premier the Hon. Sir John Swan that changing the law was "not a priority''.

"We've always told our friends and customers that they should not spend their hard-earned gay and lesbian dollars in Bermuda,'' the article said. "Unless we are accepted for who we are, we will find our `Pink Paradise' somewhere else.

"So, Sir John Swan, put that in your (stuck-up) British pipe and smoke it!'' A spokesman for the Bermuda Human Rights Alliance said articles about recent anti-gay marches and a bottle-throwing attack on a gay meeting in Hamilton Parish were faxed to the magazine. He believed the anti-Bermuda publicity could snowball.

"It's detrimental to tourism,'' he said, adding that gay rights groups in the US planned news releases about the recent marches.

A private member's bill from United Bermuda Party MP the Hon. John Stubbs to legalise gay sex has sparked two recent marches and petition campaigns by some local churches and others who oppose the move.

They said they were not gay-bashing, but considered gay sex "an offence against morality.'' The bill is not expected to be debated before March 11.

The article advised gays who did visit Bermuda to "proceed with caution''.

The Southampton Princess was the place to stay, because a popular International Gay Guide described its pool area as "cruisy''.

"We did not find that to be the case,'' the article said.