NewsWrap
                for the week ending July 20th, 1996
       (As broadcast on THIS WAY OUT Program #434,
                        distributed 07-22-96)
[Compiled & written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Brian Nunes, Bill
Stosine, Jason Lin, Greg Gordon, Ron Buckmire and Susan Gage]

Bulgarian gay activist Angel Bliznachki reports that the country's only gay
and lesbian organization has been closed by police.  The group Flamingo had
enjoyed several years of international networking and increasing public
tolerance under Bulgaria's previous administration, and established a
community center in 1994.  But with increasing visibility, police actions
against the gay and lesbian community began to escalate, with spying, phone
taps, robberies, threats, raids of gay venues, and the publication of
homophobic tracts that were followed by some murders.  On July 10th, police
entered the Flamingo center in what Bliznachki describes as "a brutal rush".
 They arrested the employees, confiscated the computer, records and
merchandise, and sealed the center.  More police actions against the
Bulgarian gay and lesbian movement followed the next day, and the state
attorney has banned gay-themed films from Bulgarian national television.
 Bliznachki is seeking asylum for himself and international support for the
restoration of Flamingo.

A recent decision by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal is being appealed by
the federal government.  The same ruling that forced the government to extend
spousal benefits to the gay and lesbian partners of federal employees also
required a review of all federal policies denying benefits to gays and
lesbians.  Although the Canadian government has accepted the spousal benefits
decision, it's appealing the requirement for a policy review.

Taiwan will see its first public same-gender wedding in November.  Openly gay
writer Hsu Yo-shen will be holding the ceremony with his American boyfriend
"Ka Jui" in Taipei, where they hope the mayor will serve as host.  While the
wedding has no legal weight, it will be broadcast on Taipei's new city-funded
daily gay and lesbian radio show.

When Australia holds its national Census of Population and Housing in early
August, gay and lesbian couples will be counted for the first time.
 Previously, they had been counted as "unrelated adults in a household".  As
a reassurance to the closeted, the Australian Bureau of Statistics says it
keeps no records of individual names and addresses and recycles original
forms as soon as they're processed.

A U.S. bill to establish national civil rights protections for gays and
lesbians seemed doomed under the current Republican-controlled Congress, but
it won a hearing this week before a House sub-committee under peculiar
circumstances. 
The Employment Non-Discrimination Act, known as ENDA, has been shelved in the
House Judiciary Committee, but Republican Representative Peter Torkildsen of
Massachusetts gave it a hearing before a subcommittee he chairs, even though
that panel cannot advance the bill.  
The timing was prompted by another measure, the so-called Defense of Marriage
Act, or DOMA, which was overwhelmingly passed by the full House and is now
before the Senate.  DOMA would for all federal purposes restrict the
definitions of "spouse" and "marriage" to legally married heterosexual
couples only, and allow any state to refuse to recognize gay and lesbian
marriages if they became legal in another state.  Since many DOMA supporters
-- including Torkildsen -- have claimed they reject discrimination against
gays and lesbians, the Human Rights Campaign, a gay and lesbian advocacy
group, conceived the strategy of making ENDA's civil rights protections a
rider to the anti-marriage bill in the Senate.  Democratic Senator Edward
Kennedy of Massachusetts has agreed to move that amendment.
So, this week ENDA was the subject of testimony before the government
programs subcommittee of the House Business Committee.  The measure was
supported by all ten witnesses, including businesspeople, gay and lesbian
rights advocates, and victims of discrimination based on sexual orientation.
 Two organizations opposed to ENDA, the Small Business Survival Committee and
the Family Research Council, backed out of the hearing after learning the
line-up was stacked 10-to-2 in support of the measure.  The Family Research
Council's Director of Cultural Studies Robert Knight said, "We won't allow
ourselves to be used as a fig leaf for a propaganda party on a homosexual
 civil rights' bill."
Afterwards, openly gay Democratic Representative Barney Frank of
Massachusetts said of Torkildsen, "It's nice of him to hold the hearing, but
if you ask, 'where do we go from here', I have to say, 'nowhere'."

The organization Outright Scotland this week issued a manifesto called "A
Claim of Right" in a press conference at Glasgow's Gay and Lesbian Centre.
 It calls for a ban on discrimination based on sexual orientation in every
aspect of public life and legal redress for victims of discrimination.

Australia 's anti-discrimination Tribunal will be considering for the first
time whether lesbians have a right to artificial insemination.  The
defendant, Doctor Douglas Keeping of Brisbane, claims that in refusing to
assist a lesbian couple, he was following the 1982 National Health and
Medical Research Guidelines, which reserve the use of donor sperm for what it
calls "appropriate cases".  A new draft revising those guidelines still fails
to clarify the rights of lesbians to assisted reproductive technology, so the
Tribunal will have to consider Queensland government policies as well.

In the former Soviet republic of Estonia, the public is divided on the
question of legal adoptions by gays and lesbians.  A recent media poll found
almost 40 percent of respondents supported adoption rights and 45 percent
opposed them, while more than one out of 7 were undecided.

In the U.S., a Florida appeals court has given a lesbian mother a chance to
regain custody of her daughter.  The First District Court of Appeal has
ordered a circuit court to reconsider its decision to award custody of Kaylin
Maradie to her father at the time of his divorce from her mother, open
lesbian Valerie Maradie.  Circuit Judge Jere Tolton said in his ruling that
"a homosexual environment is not a traditional home environment, and could
adversely affect the child"...despite an evaluation by the court's own
psychologist that found the mother's sexual orientation was causing no harm
to Kaylin.  The appeals court decision says Tolton acted improperly by
stating his opinion in the matter as fact, and has ordered a rehearing.  The
Maradie ruling is of particular interest since the same appellate court on
July 24th will hear the highly-publicized case of open lesbian Mary Ward, in
which the father was granted custody despite a prior conviction for murder.

The 8-day International Festival of the Gay and Lesbian Association of
Choruses held in Tampa, Florida wound up July 14th with no reported problems
for any of its more than 5,000 participants.  The fact that Tampa voters had
overturned the city's civil rights protections for gays and lesbians in 1994
had created concerns of possible harassment, but instead the singers left
favorably impressed by the way the heterosexual community worked together
with the Association to stage the world's largest gay and lesbian choral
festival.

Gay and lesbian media are expanding in Turkey.  The gay and lesbian
organizations Lambda Istanbul and Kaos are both publishing magazines and FM
radio stations in Istanbul and Ankara are broadcasting regular weekly
late-night gay and lesbian programs.

And finally ... baseball has long been considered the U.S. national pastime
and a bastion of tradition, but the precarious financial situation of minor
league professional teams sometimes means that anything goes.  Case in point,
the Suns of Palm Springs, California, who have the worst attendance record in
the Western League.  Seeking to draw more fans -- particularly the large
number of gays and lesbians who live in and visit Palm Springs -- they're
bringing a new meaning to the baseball term "drag bunt": their August 9th
game with the Salinas Peppers will benefit a local AIDS charity, and feature
a parade of cross-dressers, and the crowning of a "Priscilla, Queen of the
Desert ... Suns".


Sources for this week's report included Reuter News Service;  Knight Ridder
Financial News;  Brother-Sister/Australia;  Rex Wockner International News
Service;  The Boston Globe;  The Associated Press;  USA Today;  United Press
International;  and cyberpress releases from the International Lesbian & Gay
Association, the Human Rights Campaign, the Family Research Council and
OutRight Scotland.
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