NewsWrap for the week ending August 10th, 1996 (As broadcast on THIS WAY OUT Program #437, distributed 08-12-96) [Compiled & written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Brian Nunes, Jason Lin, Ron Buckmire and Greg Gordon] There's scientific support now for the popular notion that many homophobes are actually gays in denial -- an idea that's been around since Sigmund Freud but hasn't been tested until now. Psychology professor Henry Adams of the University of Georgia studied about 60 male college students. All of them identified as heterosexuals, but a questionnaire divided them into 2 approximately equal groups of those who were tolerant of gays and those who were homophobic. Their physical arousal was measured while they viewed videos of sex between a man and a woman, two women, and two men. While both groups were equally likely to be aroused by the heterosexual and lesbian scenes, more than half of the homophobes were aroused by the gay male scenes, compared to only one-fourth of the gay-tolerant men. Although Adams is inclined to view his findings as supporting the notion that homophobia often reflects latent homosexuality, he notes that male arousal can also be facilitated by anxiety. Another study earlier this year found that the more older brothers a man has, the more likely he is to be gay. Psychologists Ray Blanchard and Anthony Bogart of Toronto's Clarke Institute of Psychology surveyed a group of 600 men, half of them gay and half heterosexual men matched by age. Only 45 percent of the first-born men were gay, but gay men made up 53 percent of those with one older brother and 64 percent of those with 2 older brothers. Of 7 men in the sample with four or more older brothers, 5 were gay. There appeared to be no effects resulting from additional younger brothers or from sisters born either earlier or later, and it also didn't matter whether a previously born brother was actually alive when the research subject was born. These findings are in accord with earlier studies on gay men and birth order, but Blanchard and Bogart offered an original theory to explain them: that carrying male children somehow triggers a mother's immune system in a way that makes her later sons more likely to be gay. A British Broadcasting Company documentary airing this week has reignited interest in the use of aversion therapy to straighten out homosexuals. The documentary "Dark Secret" suggested that the 1962 death of 29-year-old former tank captain Billy Clegg-Hill was probably due to an emetic drug used in his aversion therapy, rather than the "natural causes" shown on his death certificate. Peter Tatchell of the direct action group OutRage called on both Health Secretary Stephen Dorell and the Royal College of Psychiatrists for new guidelines on aversion therapy and for compensation for its past victims. The Home Secretary responded that those who suffered as a result of aversion therapy may be entitled to redress and suggested they seek it through lawsuits against their clinicians. The Royal College of Psychiatrists is not aware of aversion therapy being practiced in Britain currently. The European Union has set high human rights standards for its member nations' treatment of gays and lesbians, and it's acting to see that it meets those standards in its treatment of its own gay and lesbian staff. The European Commission has now extended official recognition to EGALITE, the gay and lesbian organization of employees of the European Institutions, allowing them use of facilities and the opportunity to speak to management on behalf of its membership. In early July, the European Commission adopted a policy allowing employees to register their gay and lesbian partners for the same access to facilities and services enjoyed by heterosexual employees' spouses. The European Commission has also proposed to the Council of Ministers that all spousal benefits, including health care and pensions, be extended to employees' gay and lesbian partners. In a related story, the European Court of Justice will be deciding whether or not the European Treaty's ban on discrimination based on sexual orientation requires all employers in member nations to extend full job-related spousal benefits to same-gender couples, when it hears the case of open lesbian Lisa Grant against her employer, British Rail. For the first time, a judge has ordered a U.S. state to extend full spousal benefits to its employees' gay and lesbian partners. Judge Stephen Gallagher decided in favor of 3 lesbian couples, ruling this week that the Oregon Employees' Benefit Board had unconstitutionally discriminated against them by denying them medical, dental and life insurance benefits. According to the couples' attorney Carl Kiss, the Oregon state constitution prohibits both sex discrimination and discrimination based on the sex of an employee's associates. The judge's ruling was also influenced by Oregon governors' Executive Orders dating back to 1987 which bar state agencies from discrimination based on sexual orientation. The Oregon State Attorney General's office has 30 days in which to file an appeal, and has not yet decided if it will do so. Police in Santiago, Chile arrested 33 men in a late-July raid of the gay bar Yo, Claudio. Although the charge in all cases was "public drunkenness", patrons say the police simply arrested everyone present without regard to their sobriety. While most of the patrons were released after 10 hours, a dozen were unable to pay the $10 fine and spent 2 days in jail. Gay and lesbian groups in Chile are seeking restraining orders to prevent future raids. In Russia, Saint Petersburg police have closed down a cafe run by the gay and lesbian group The Tchaikovsky Foundation for the Cultural Initiatives and Defense of Sexual Minorities. The shut-down followed 5 raids in which police stormed the cafe and used automatic weapons to force all the patrons to lie down on the floor. It's an election year in New Zealand, and the Christian Coalition there is campaigning to end AIDS funding and re-criminalize gay sex. They're making use of the U.S.-produced homophobic propaganda video "Gay Rights, Special Rights", whose showings have prompted pro-gay-and-lesbian demonstrations in Hamilton and Nelson. On the eve of the U.S. Republican National Convention, the gay and lesbian group the Human Rights Campaign has released television ads critiquing the Republican Party's legislative drive to prevent legal same-gender marriages. One ad gets personal with 3 leading Republicans, using Presidential candidate Bob Dole's divorce before his current marriage and the interracial marriages of Senator Phil Gramm and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as examples of marriages once just as illegal and scorned as gay and lesbian marriages are today. The second portrays a pair of campaign strategists, one touting the campaign against same-gender marriages as a winner while rejecting the other's suggestions of a number of other, more substantive issues. It ends with the voice-over, "Tell Bob Dole and Congress to stop trying to score political points by attacking gay Americans. Americans want solutions to bring us together, not drive us apart." And finally ... Caitlin Moran, pop music critic for The Times of London, took on the issue of "outing" in a column last month. Without naming names, she described how some coy stars are able to win the hearts of both gay and lesbian fans who understand their hints and of heterosexual fans who presume their lyrics refer to straight affairs. She notes that after a decade of coverage focused on the probable gay orientation of members of the band Pet Shop Boys, once Neil Tennant finally came out, the press began to actually concentrate on their music. She concludes, "If you can't tell whether a pop star is gay or not, then you're a heterosexual who hasn't got any gay friends, and it's probably for the best that you don't know anyway." ---------*------------ Sources for this week's report included: Knight-Ridder News Service; The Boston Globe; The Journal of Abnormal Psychology; The Associated Press; The American Journal of Psychiatry; United Press International; Rex Wockner International News Service; Capital Q/Sydney, Australia; Queer News Aotearoa/New Zealand; The Los Angeles Times; and The Times/London.