************************************************* NewsWrap for the week ending June 8th, 1996 (As broadcast on THIS WAY OUT Program #428, distributed 06-10-96) [Compiled & written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Brian Nunes, Bill Stosine, Jason Lin, Greg Gordon, Ron Buckmire and Bjorn Skolander] Iceland's Parliament, the Alltinget, this week enacted a law to give legal recognition to gay and lesbian domestic partnerships, which they call "confirmed co-existence". While generally similar to legal domestic partnerships in Denmark, Norway and Sweden, Iceland's new law goes further, allowing same-gender couples joint custody of each others' biological children. The law will go into effect on June 27th, the anniversary of the 1969 uprising at New York's Stonewall bar that sparked the modern movement for equal rights for gays and lesbians. Finland's gay and lesbian organization SETA plans to celebrate Iceland's domestic partnership law by delivering a wedding cake to their Icelandic Embassy ... and they hope to soon be celebrating themselves. At the same time as Iceland was enacting its law, the Finnish Parliament was engaged in a 4-hour debate on a domestic partnership law of their own. SETA Chair Hannele Lehtikuusi described the debate as "a trying experience" that was "also encouraging". While opponents claimed that most Finns opposed the measure, SETA was able to counter their argument with the results of a new Taloustutkimus poll. That poll found that fully two-thirds of the Finnish public supported the domestic partnership law, and that 44 percent actually supported equal marriage rights for gays and lesbians, while one-third opposed any legal recognition of same-gender couples. Brazil's bill to legally recognize gay and lesbian couples has advanced to a special Parliamentary commission. The measure would extend spousal rights including immigration, inheritance, social security, and pensions, to legally registered same-gender couples. But in the U.S., the campaign against legal gay and lesbian marriages continues. This week, the Michigan state Senate voted 31-to-2 to ban same-gender marriages within the state. Since the bill had already been passed by the state House, it now goes to Michigan Governor John Engler, who is expected to sign it. A companion bill, to refuse recognition of gay and lesbian marriages performed in other states, was also expected to pass the state legislature and go to Engler. Philadelphia Mayor Edward Rendell this week signed an executive order extending family leave and spousal health care benefits to the gay and lesbian partners of non-civil service city employees. Rendell has promised such action for years, but since this order applies to only 500 of Philadelphia's 25,000 employees, gay and lesbian activists are continuing their 5-year campaign for full spousal benefits for same-gender domestic partners. Canada took another step this week towards establishing legal protections from emloyment discrimination based on sexual orientation in federal agencies and federally-regulated companies. The unelected Canadian Senate voted its approval to the bill passed a month ago by the House of Commons. A proposed amendment to exempt religious institutions was defeated. The bill now needs only the routine approval of Canada's titular head of state, Britain's Queen Elizabeth, to become law. Vancouver voters last week gave an openly gay man a seat in British Columbia's Legislative Assembly. Tim Stevenson of the New Democratic Party was the first open gay to be ordained a minister by a mainstream Canadian church, the United Church, and now becomes the second open gay to serve in British Columbia's provincial parliament. Police in Halifax, Canada this week arrested a suspect in the May 20th murders of 3 prostitutes in Toronto. Marcello Palma is being charged with the murders of Brenda Ludgate and of transsexuals Shawn Keegan and Deanna Wilkinson. Russian gays and lesbians are concerned about their national elections next week. After a major convention of gay and lesbian activists in Moscow, movement leader Roman Kalinin told the media, "Under no circumstances will we vote for Russian Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov. A Communist president would be a tragedy not only for gays and lesbians, but for the whole of Russia." An interim agreement has been reached in the gay and lesbian Log Cabin Republicans' lawsuit against the Republican Party of Texas. The Party had first agreed to, and then backed off from, allowing Log Cabin to buy exhibit space and an ad in the program at the upcoming state party Convention. The court has ordered mediation between the parties, and the Republican Party of Texas has agreed not to re-sell the space or to print the program until the matter has been resolved. Gays and lesbians in Oregon can now look forward to a statewide election this year without a ballot initiative to deny them protection from discrimination based on sexual orientation. Professional homophobe Lon Mabon announced this week that his Oregon Citizens Alliance, or OCA, is dropping its campaign to place an anti-gay-and-lesbian measure on the ballot for a third time. The previous measures were defeated in the statewide balloting, although many cities and counties in Oregon passed similar OCA-sponsored measures. Mabon's decision came as a result of the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Romer versus Evans which struck down Amendment 2, Colorado's similar initiative passed by voters in 1992. That decision convinced Mabon that the Court would strike his measure down as well. In addition, the Alliance had collected only one-third of the signatures needed to place the measure on November's ballot, with only a month remaining until the deadline. The Alliance will focus now instead on an anti-abortion measure. It's reserving its anti-gay-and-lesbian activity for the 1998 ballot, when it plans a new measure against same-gender marriages that it hopes will pass Supreme Court scrutiny. But the Idaho Citizens Alliance believes its own proposed initiative against civil rights protections for gays and lesbians will not be affected by the Supreme Court decision, and is continuing to work to place it on the November ballot. ICA Executive Director Kelly Johannsen believes their measure avoids the Court's concerns for equal protection under the law because it would not prohibit the state legislature from extending civil rights protections to gays and lesbians, even though it would stop local governments from doing so. The ICA's similar measure on the 1994 ballot was defeated. ICA founder Kelly Walton was also defeated, soundly, in his bid last week for a seat in the Idaho State Senate, as were four of five other candidates backed by the ICA. And finally ... U.S. National Basketball Association star Dennis Rodman has raised many eyebrows with his propensities for wearing drag and hanging out in gay bars. While he's fond of wearing a t-shirt reading, "I Don't Mind Straight People As Long As They Act Gay In Public", he's an active heterosexual who hasn't publicly admitted to much more than fantasies in the gay arena. A feature writer for the San Francisco Chronicle went to find out what the very gay Castro district thought of Rodman. The answer was pretty much summed up by one man who said, "I think he's straight. He's too weird to be gay." ----------*------------ Sources for this week's report: Icleland Review/Reykjavik; The Chicago Tribune; The Associated Press; Reuter News Service; Interfax News Agency; Rex Wockner International News; The Oregonian/Portland; The Idaho Statesman/Boise; Ballot Access News; The Toronto Star; The Halifax Sunday Daily News; the San Francisco Chronicle; and cyberpress releases from SETA/Finland, the Forum On the Right to Marry/Boston, Log Cabin Republicans of Texas and Basic Rights Oregon. *************************************************