************************************************* The week of 05/27/96 on T H I S W A Y O U T the international gay & lesbian radio magazine * In NewsWrap: The Hungarian Parliament recognizes gay and lesbian couples for purposes of inheritance and pensions following the death of one partner ... the Australian lesbigay community is divided over the issue of same-gender marriage ... U.S. President Bill Clinton says he will sign DOMA - "The Defense Of Marriage Act" - if it passes in the House and Senate [we have a lengthy excerpt from Clinton's press conference discussing the issue] ... and several other stories [anchored by Cindy Friedman and Brian Nunes]. ==> Read the complete text of NewsWrap below! * The U.S. Supreme Court overturns Colorado's anti-lesbigay Amendment 2! Hear a lengthy review of the ruling and its implications, with comments by several community activists and pro-Amendment 2 factions - reported by Lucia Chappelle and Greg Gordon. ==========================*============================= =NewsWrap= for the week ending May 25th, 1996 (As broadcast on THIS WAY OUT Program #426, distributed 05-27-96) [Compiled & written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Brian Nunes, Bill Stosine, Jason Lin, Greg Gordon, Ron Buckmire, Alejandra Sarda, Graham Underhill and Bjorn Skolander] The Hungarian Parliament this week passed by a 3-to-1 margin a measure recognizing gay and lesbian couples for purposes of inheritance and pensions following the death of one partner. The Parliamentary vote was forced by a decision of Hungary's Constitutional Court more than a year ago. With the Australian Parliament soon to consider a bill to extend civil rights protections to gays, lesbians, and transgenders, some activists are lobbying to remove its provisions for recognition of gay and lesbian couples. The Australian Council for Lesbian and Gay Rights claims there is "no consensus in our community about the way in which our relationships should be legally recognized", and argued that recognizing only domestic partnerships neglected the wide range of supportive relationships within the community. The Council did approve of legal recognition of domestic partnerships for purposes of insurance and pensions. They urged Senator Sid Spindler, who plans to reintroduce his Sexuality Discrimination Bill this term, to replace that omnibus rights measure with a series of bills on individual issues. Spindler said that approach would be next to impossible, and that more than two-thirds of gays and lesbians he had surveyed supported rights for gay and lesbian couples equal to those of unmarried heterosexuals. In the U.S., legislative activity continued against recognition of gay and lesbian couples. This week, U.S. President Bill Clinton himself made a clear statement that he would sign DOMA, the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, if it came to his desk in its current form: "... as I understand it, the only legal effect of the bill is to make it clear that states can deny recognition of gay marriages that occurred in other states. And if that's all it does, then I will sign it. Now, having said that, I do not favor discrimination against people because they're homosexual. And you asked me what I would say to gay Americans who may disagree with me about this is -- I say, look at my record. Name me another President who has been so pilloried for standing up for the fact the we shouldn't discriminate against any group of Americans, including gay Americans, who are willing to work hard, pay their taxes, obey the law and be good citizens. And let me just say, even though -- I will sign this bill if that's what it does, and that's what I understand it does. This is hardly a problem that is sweeping the country. No state has legalized gay marriages. Only one state is considering it. We all know why this is in Washington now -- it's one more attempt to divert the American people from the urgent need to confront our challenges together. That's really what's going on here. And I'm determined -- this has always been my position on gay marriage. It was my position in '92. I told everybody who asked me about it, straight or gay, what my position was. I can't change my position on that; I have no intention of it. But I am going to do everything I can to stop this election from degenerating into an attempt to pit one group of Americans against another. Every time we do that the American people make a mistake. We are a better country than that. We're a greater country than that. And we ought not to do it, and I'm going to do what I can to stop it." There's no question that a majority of U.S. citizens disapprove of legal gay and lesbian marriages: a "Newsweek" poll this week of almost 800 adults found 58 percent opposing legal same-gender marriages, even though four-fifths supported equal housing rights for gays and lesbians and even more supported equal employment rights. 45 percent of those polled said they'd be less likely to support a political candidate who favored gay and lesbian marriages, although 25 percent said they'd be more likely to support such a candidate. The U.S. federal bill against gay and lesbian marriages caps a year in which 34 of the 50 states considered legislation to deny recognition to another state's legal same-gender marriages. This week, Governor David Beasley made South Carolina the 10th state to pass one of those bills into law, saying, "[I]n South Carolina we're not going to promote that lifestyle as a state." Missouri is likely to be next: the State Senate last week passed their similar measure on the final day of its session by a margin of better than 6-to-1 -- sending the bill to Missouri's Democratic Governor Mell Carnahan, who has indicated he will sign it. Illinois' similar bill has also passed both houses and awaits action by Governor Jim Edgar. If Edgar neither signs nor vetoes, the bill will automatically become law at the end of June. Michigan's anti-marriage bill has yet to make it to a floor vote, but this week the State House passed a bill to deduct from state universities' appropriations whatever amount they spend on benefits for the gay and lesbian partners of their employees. Governor John Engler supports this measure. The newly-revised penal code in Slovenia includes both a prohibition against depriving anyone of a human right or fundamental freedom based on sexual orientation, and against the granting of a special right or privilege on the same basis. Either action can be punished with up to a year in prison. Activist Bogdan Lesnik said, "[It's] better than nothing. It compensates for not including the protection against discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation in the Constitution, which should have been done in 1991." In Brazil, demonstrations were held in several cities in mid-May protesting the lack of civil rights protections for gays and lesbians under the National Human Rights Program. In Brasilia, activist Luis Mott distributed flyers inside the Presidential Palace under a banner reading "Gays Want Justice". In Curitiba and other cities, documents from Brazil's National Human Rights Program were burned. Brazil's Gay, Lesbian and Transvestite Association believes there's a gay-bashing murder in Brazil every 4 days. Some 3,000 gays and lesbians marched through Brussels last week in a noisy and colorful demonstration demanding equal rights. Under the banner "Out Together Now", the group bridged Belgium's language barrier, including both French and Flemish speakers. The European Commission on Human Rights has agreed to investigate the case of Euan Sutherland, who claims that Britain's higher age of consent for gay male sex than for heterosexual acts is discrimination in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights. Sutherland was 16 in 1994 when the British Parliament lowered the gay age of consent from 21 to 18, instead of the heterosexual age of consent of 16, and began working to challenge the law at that time. The current decision is the first step towards a hearing before the European Court, for which Sutherland has the backing of legal aid, renowned British attorney Stephen Grosz, and his own parents. While fireworks exploded in Toronto in celebration of Victoria Day this week, three transvestite prostitutes were shot to death in the space of 3 hours in what may be the work of a serial killer. Toronto Metro Police have found they were all shot in the head by the same gun, but have no suspects yet. The victims were Deanna Wilkinson, Brenda Ludgate and Shawn Keegan. Only a week before, dozens of demonstrators in Chicago protested the brutal murder of transsexual Christian Paige. In late March, Paige, a nightclub performer, was found beaten, strangled, and repeatedly stabbed. There have been no arrests in the case, which police have refused to categorize as a hate crime. In Buenos Aires last week, ten gays, lesbians and transvestites chained themselves to the gates of Chile's Embassy to Argentina protesting homophobic violence and police actions in Chile and the sodomy law there. Police raids of two gay bars on one night in early May in Santiago, Chile were filmed for Chile's Television Nacional and led to the detention of 50 people by police. A week later, Chief Detective Nelson Mery of the Santiago Police told Chile's Movimiento de Liberacion Homosexual that the raids had been "a mistake", and promised both to undertake an internal investigation and to turn over the files from the detentions to the activist group. A huge police raid on a gay club in Melbourne, Australia was ruled illegal this week, and could ultimately cost Victoria police millions of dollars. In August 1994, police strip-searched more than 460 people at The Commerce Club, also known as Tasty. Sally Gordon, Marketing Director of The Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras, was the first of the patrons to get a hearing in court. This week she was awarded $10,000 in damages as a county court judge ruled the raid "unreasonable". Many others involved in the raid have been inspired to seek counsel, and it's estimated they'll receive settlements totalling more than 2-1/2 million dollars. And finally ... a scene in a film now in production calls for two former U.S. presidents pursued by bad guys to escape by joining a parade. The scene in Warner Brothers' feature "My Fellow Americans" will show 2,000 extras as well as Jack Lemmon and James Garner as the presidents, but it won't show the North Buncombe High School Band. The North Carolina high school's principal declined an invitation to appear, saying it "would divide the community", after learning that the fictional parade turns out to be a gay and lesbian pride march. [Sources for this week's report: The Associated Press; Brother-Sister/Australia; Reuter News Service; U.S.A. Today; The New York Times; The Riverfront Times/St. Louis; The St. Louis Post-Dispatch; The Detroit Free Press; Rex Wockner International News Service; The Daily Telegraph/London; The Daily Express/London; TheToronto Star; The Age and The Herald-Sun/Melbourne, Australia; The San Jose (California) Mercury-News; and press releases from The Transsexual Menace, It's Time/Illinois, Lesbianas A La Vista/Buenos Aires, and The International Lesbian & Gay Association.] ************************************************* Some THIS WAY OUT operating expenses are funded by grants from The C.P. 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