NewsWrap for the week ending September 21st, 1996 (As broadcast on THIS WAY OUT Program #443, distributed 09-23-96) [Compiled & written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Brian Nunes, Jason Lin, Ron Buckmire, Bjorn Skolander, Andy Quan and Greg Gordon] Without ceremony, in the wee hours of September 21st, U.S. President Bill Clinton signed into law DOMA, the so-called Defense of Marriage Act. He said earlier that DOMA would allow each state to make its own decision regarding the legitimacy of same-gender marriages and also establish a federal definition of marriage. He emphasized that DOMA would not impact existing or future civil rights protections from discrimination based on sexual orientation, and wanted to be clear that the law should not be "an excuse for discrimination, violence or intimidation against any person". He also called on the Congress to enact the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), a bill to establish federal civil rights protections from workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation. Through procedural maneuvering, ENDA came to a vote in the Senate alongside DOMA on September 10th, only to be defeated by a single vote. The President did not appear to perceive anything discriminatory in the way DOMA will prohibit a number of federal benefits routinely available to legally married heterosexual couples ever being awarded to gay and lesbian couples. DOMA, and similar legislation considered in 70% of the U.S. states and enacted in nearly one third of them this year, was sparked by the possibility of same-gender marriages becoming legal in Hawaii as a result of the lawsuit "Baehr v. Miike". But while equal marriage rights were being argued in court and denied by the U.S. federal government, electronics giant IBM announced this week that it will be extending full spousal benefits to the gay and lesbian partners of its 335,000 employees worldwide. To qualify for the benefits, gay and lesbian IBM employees must sign statements attesting to their financial and emotional interdependence with their gay and lesbian partners. The new policy does not include unmarried heterosexual couples because the option of legal marriage is available to them. IBM's action is expected to encourage other companies to follow suit. The Denver, Colorado City Council voted this week to extend spousal benefits to the partners of its gay and lesbian employees, a measure Mayor Wellington Webb is expected to sign. Denver's plan would also apply only to gay and lesbian couples. Denver had been working towards this move before Colorado's anti-gay Amendment 2 was first passed by voters in 1992. Amendment 2's journey through the legal system delayed the city's action until after the measure was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year. In early September, Atlanta, Georgia established domestic partners benefits for all its unmarried employees, only to find the measure challenged in court. When Atlanta had enacted domestic partners benefits in 1993, a lawsuit led to the benefits being prohibited by the state. The city government believed it had solved this problem by replacing the word "family" with the word "dependent", but the conservative Southeast Legal Foundation believes the same legal issues still apply. Although Atlanta's plan applies to unmarried heterosexuals as well as to gays and lesbians, the Foundation seems all but exclusively concerned with the benefits to same-gender couples. The Foundation's attorney Robert Proctor told the press, "We don't believe the government should encourage homosexual conduct."118 The European Parliament this week agreed to a non-binding resolution against Romania's move to increase criminal penalties for private homosexual acts between consenting adults. The resolution described the Euro-Parliament as having "profound indignation" and being "shocked" at the Romanian Chamber of Deputies' vote a week before to up the maximum sentence from three years imprisonment to five years. The resolution said the Euro-Parliament "condemns any attempt to criminalize sexual relations between adults of the same sex." The President of Romania was called on to block any such measures, while the European Union member states were asked to "exert pressure" to prevent their adoption. Romania's original admission to the Council of Europe was conditional on its repealing its Ceausescu-era sodomy statutes to conform with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. The Romanian Parliament has been struggling with the issue ever since, first falling into a complete chaos of macho posturing during debate; then approving reform, only to reject the Penal Code legislative package including it; and now, in the case of the lower house, actually enhancing criminal penalties. The recent debate featured open expressions of contempt for the international community, including a statement that a third of the members of the Euro-Parliament were themselves gays and lesbians. Romanian party politics are building towards November elections, making reform of the sodomy laws a political football. The Orthodox Church is also using the influence it has with 80% of Romanians to strenuously oppose sodomy reform. In an effort to counter these pressures, Romanian activists are requesting support from around the world. Germany's Green Party is introducing a measure in the parliament there to establish protections from discrimination based on sexual orientation and to legally recognize gay and lesbian couples. The legislation was drafted by German gay and lesbian activists. After decades of taboo against even discussing sexual issues, the city of Taipei, Taiwan is leaping into a new era of tolerance of sexual diversity -- literally. The first signs were a new gay and lesbian publication and religious organization. Then the city government stepped in, providing airtime on its radio station for a daily program by, for and about gays and lesbians. When a local man of some celebrity announced his plans to marry another man in November, Taipei's mayor was quick to say he'd officiate. Now the mayor has the city's Culture and Information Division helping Taipei's gays and lesbians to organize a dance to be held in a city-owned building on Christmas eve. Against a background of increasing neo-Nazi violence in Sweden, the national gay and lesbian advocacy group RFSL is emerging as a special target. Within the last three weeks, the RFSL clubs in Helsingborg and Goethenburg both received bomb threats. The Goethenburg threat was a hoax, but in Helsingborg a hand-grenade was found in a bag outside the club. In an anonymous warning to police, an informant said the device had been put there to protect the Aryan race. Tabloids throughout Great Britain have been screaming this month about a gay couple in Edinburgh, Scotland who hired an Illinois woman to bear a child for them -- apparently the first such case to be publicized in the United Kingdom. The mother, Andrea Gibson, has no qualms about the matter -- in her mind, it was a kindness to the men even more than a way to make money, and she's impressed by the way the men adore and care for her baby daughter, Sarah Clare. Gibson had already decided to become a so-called surrogate when she saw a newspaper personal ad reading, "Loving couple wishing to bear children." The ad had been placed by Martin Adam and U.S. expatriate William Zachs, and it was Zachs who fathered Gibson's baby. Reportedly both men's names appear on the birth certificate in New York City. But while all seems peaceful among the four individuals involved, religious leaders, politicians, and journalists in Britain and Scotland have been in an uproar. However, child welfare workers say they have no grounds to initiate an investigation of the gay family. Ironically, at a time when the state of Tasmania is struggling to defend the last sodomy law on the books in Australia, the island state is represented in the national parliament by the country's first openly gay senator, Bob Brown ... and the federal government is acknowledging his gay partner. Private homosexual acts between consenting adults can be punished in Tasmania with up to 25 years in prison, although the law hasn't been enforced in fifteen years. The Tasmanian Gay & Lesbian Rights Group is currently challenging it before Australia's High Court, culminating an eight-year legal odyssey that included winning an international judgment against the state. Meanwhile, the federal government is giving Brown's gay partner all the benefits and allowances granted to traditional spouses, including seating at official events and extensive free air travel. The possibility that the title character played by Ellen Degeneres on the U.S. ABC-TV sitcom "Ellen" may come out later this season as a lesbian appears to have impressed the media more than anyone else. On the upside, none of the series' sponsors has abandoned the show, and two of them said publicly that they'd keep buying its advertising time even if the character came out. But while it's probably more attributable to stiff new competition in the timeslot than to the possible outing, the viewers weren't there for "Ellen"'s season debut this week: the ratings showed a drop of 28% from last year's season premiere and a record low for the show. "Ellen" came in second overall in the timeslot even though ABC led the networks for the evening. But "Ellen" did lead in the ratings for the largest urban markets and among the advertisers' favorite age group, 18 to 49. And finally ... in the grand gay tradition of joking our way through tragedy, we offer these anagrams of the words "Defense Of Marriage Act", with thanks to their author, Mike Morton: "Farce of a disagreement" ... "Fanatic oafs re-emerged" ... "America: a gender offset" ... "I fear act of same gender" ... and "Fear decrease of mating". --------------------------*---------------------- Sources for this week's report included: The Associated Press; USA Today; The Philadelphia Daily News; The New York Times; Brother-Sister/Australia; Rex Wockner International News Service; The Chicago Tribune; The Denver Post; Reuter News Service; United Press International; The Washington Post; National Public Radio; and cyberpress releases from the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation; the International Lesbian & Gay Association; and the Human Rights Campaign. ==================================================== Special Report on the Hawaii Marriage Trial: The Litigants Rest - But Not The Judge Hearings concluded this week in the case of "Baehr v. Miike" in the Honolulu, Hawaii courtroom of Judge Kevin Chang. As a result of a 1993 Hawaii Supreme Court decision in this case, the state was required to prove its "compelling" interest in maintaining marriage discrimination. Hawaii Deputy Attorney General Rick Eichor argued that that compelling interest lay in promotion of the optimum situation for child-rearing, and that that optimum situation was a household including both the child's biological parents. In the first week, Eichor presented four witnesses to that effect, only to have counsel for the gay and lesbian plaintiffs score significant points on cross-examination. This week the plaintiffs presented four witnesses, three of them of national stature in their fields, who testified that gay and lesbian couples could be just as effective at parenting as heterosexuals, even though one member of the couple would be an adoptive rather than biological parent. The first was sociologist Pepper Schwartz of the University of Washington at Seattle. Schwartz is best-known as co-author of the 1983 book "American Couples," which discussed ten years of research with more than 12,000 people as subjects, to compare legally married heterosexual couples, unmarried heterosexual couples, lesbian couples, and gay male couples with respect to economics, work and sex. She found the similarities among these types of couples to be much greater than their differences. What she found all four groups want from their relationships is intimacy, security and trust. She believes that the enthusiasm of so many gays and lesbians to get married could actually strengthen the institution of marriage in general. The second witness for the plaintiffs was psychologist Charlotte Patterson of the University of Virginia, who performed two studies of lesbian parenting. She interpreted her findings to mean that lesbians raise normal children who are comparable to children raised by heterosexual couples. Patterson said the quality of the parent-child relationship meant more than biological connections for the development of children. The plaintiffs' third witness was psychologist David Brodzinsky of Rutgers University, who has testified in several other celebrated U.S. cases as an expert on adoption, and he pulled no punches. He said he found it "offensive" that the state claimed only biological parents could provide an "optimum" home for children. He claimed that marriage discrimination "punishes" the children of same-gender couples ... leading Eichor to respond that the gays and lesbians were the ones punishing their children, by their refusal to live married to the child's other biological parent. The plaintiffs' final witness was Honolulu pediatrician Robert Bidwell. He said not only had every teen he'd known in a gay or lesbian household survived "intact" the teasing and embarrassment they'd experienced for being different -- they actually grew stronger from that struggle, and benefitted from learning about diversity. Although the trial ended after brief closing arguments from both sides, before Judge Chang rules in November, he will continue to accept briefs not only from the attorneys in the case, but also from outside parties. The American Civil Liberties Union, the Hawai'i Women Lawyers, and the Honolulu Chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League will file in support of equal marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples. In support of the state's case for marriage discrimination, briefs will be filed by eight Hawaii state representatives, the Hawai'i Catholic Conference, Hawai'i's Future Today, and the Mormon Church. Whichever way Chang rules, the case will be appealed. -----------------------*---------------------- Sources for this special report included: The Honolulu Advertiser; The Honolulu Star-Bulletin; United Press International; The Associated Press; and cyberdispatches from Bill Woods of GCNews; Tom Ramsey of the Hawaii Equal Rights Marriage Project; Hawaii resident Martin Rice; and the Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund.