NewsWrap for the week ending October 19th, 1996 (As broadcast on THIS WAY OUT Program #447, distributed 10-21-96) [Compiled & written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Brian Nunes, Jason Lin, Ron Buckmire, Kevin Jensen, Graham Underhill, Goncalo Diniz, Rex Wockner and Greg Gordon] In Portugal, after several years of relative peace and progress towards equal rights, gays and lesbians in Lisbon are facing a new level of homophobic violence. This week the leaders of both a local AIDS service and the national gay and lesbian rights group ILGA-Portugal received death threats and were told that "bad things are going to happen" to the country's gays and lesbians. The next day, that threat came true. A gang of more than a dozen young men attacked at least two gay men outside a gay club, stabbing them a number of times. At last report, both men were in critical condition and the police had no suspects in custody. It's suspected that the attackers have neo-Nazi connections and that they may have been reacting to the increased visibility of gays and lesbians in Portugal in recent years. In Brazil, a demonstration for equal treatment of gays in the military saw troops deployed against the peaceful protestors. Two busloads of military police arrived at the scene with soldiers by the dozen armed with tear gas, batons and guns. The idea was for them to protect a monument to the Duque de Caxias, who was an important early Brazilian military leader. However, the 30 demonstrators were not endangering the monument, and, having been warned off earlier by threatening phone calls, they weren't even very close to it. They came from the groups Atoba and June 28 to protest military code 235, which they say is being used to expel gay men from the service in violation of anti-discrimination guarantees in the Brazilian constitution. This particular demonstration was sparked by a notorious recent case in which a high-ranking officer was discovered engaging in homosexual activities, leading to loss of his command and possibly an end to his military career. The groups have drafted legislation to amend the offending items in the law. Governor Tom Ridge has made Pennsylvania the 17th U.S. state to enact a law against same-gender marriages. The Pennsylvania law both restricts marriages performed within the state to one man and one woman only, and also denies recognition to any legal gay or lesbian marriages another state may someday perform. Ridge's office announced his signing of the measure on October 17th. The anti-lesbian and -gay marriage law had actually passed the legislature as an amendment to a bill giving grandparents legal standing to petition for custody of a grandchild in some cases. After the state House first passed the bill in June, the Senate added some amendments which the House gave final approval on October 7th by a vote of 189 to 13. In Great Britain, commitment ceremonies for gay and lesbian couples are dividing both the Church of England and the Reform sect of Judaism. After one nationally recognized Reform rabbi told a congregation on the eve of Yom Kippur that she would be blessing the marriage of two of her lesbian friends, the chief executive of the group Reform Synagogues of Great Britain laid down its policy in no uncertain terms: that no "Reform rabbi will be officiating at any form of same-sex 'commitment ceremonies', private or public, until the movement adopts a policy which says otherwise." That policy is already under consideration by a task force within the sect, and at least in U.S. Reform synagogues -- which have come out in favor of legal gay and lesbian marriages -- same-gender couples have been blessed without protest. But Britain's first openly gay Anglican priest has now been fired for defying his bishop to perform a gay couple's commitment ceremony earlier this year. The Right Reverend Derek Rawcliffe, now-retired Bishop of Glasgow and Galloway, first came out publicly as a gay man on a BBC news program a year and a half ago. Not long afterwards, his current Ripon Diocese stopped assigning him even the limited duties appropriate to his 74 years of age and retired status. They might've done better to keep him busy, because he went on to make a media splash both with his support for lowering the age of consent for homosexual acts to 14 years and with his defiant insistence on blessing the couple's commitment. This week, the Bishop of Ripon, the Right Reverend David Young, issued a statement that Rawcliffe's commission as honorary assistant bishop was withdrawn, and left him with no official standing except his license to work as a priest. The diocese claimed that Rawcliffe's sexual orientation had nothing to do with the decision so much as his conflict with the Bishop over the same-gender commitment ceremonies, which they said have no canonical authority in the Anglican Church. Undeterred, Rawcliffe was back on the BBC that very night, promising to continue blessing gay and lesbian couples. Another gay bishop, this one a Catholic and fictional, is dominating the nominations announced this week for Canada's prestigious Genie Awards in the John Greyson feature film "Lilies". In the film, the bishop is taken hostage when hearing a prison inmate's confession. But "Lilies" is more or less holding the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television hostage, leading the field by far with 14 nominations in a dozen categories including Best Picture, Best Director and not one but 3 nominations for Best Actor. The winners will be announced November 27th. The U.S. Presidential campaign touched on the gay and lesbian community this week with paid political announcements on radio stations. Last week, Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole had placed ads specifically on midwest Christian stations that generally blamed incumbent Democrat Bill Clinton for a national "moral crisis" and specifically denounced the President's support for military service by open gays and lesbians and for school-based AIDS prevention programs. This week, Clinton responded with ads of his own on the same stations. The spots highlighted some of his more conservative actions while in office, and included the statement that he signed into law DOMA, the anti-gay so-called Defense of Marriage Act. Before this, Clinton had been careful to downplay his role in DOMA's enactment, and had spoken out against its political motivation and its potential contribution to homophobic discrimination and violence. After a hue and cry from Clinton's gay and lesbian supporters, the ads were finally withdrawn ... only to be reincarnated in an ad the Republican National Committee placed in the San Francisco area, which was designed to encourage gays and lesbians to mistrust Clinton. The gay and lesbian Log Cabin Republicans applauded this step as an outreach to the gay and lesbian community. By the best available estimates, the total size of the gay and lesbian voting population is too small to make a difference either way in light of the commanding lead Clinton has had in the polls so far. New Zealanders went to the polls this past week in their first election under a new system of proportional representation of parties in the national parliament. Of seven openly gay candidates, one -- Labour Party candidate Tim Barnett -- managed to win election as a member for central Christchurch. New Zealand's first openly gay Member of Parliament, Auckland's Labour Party incumbent Chris Carter, was involved in the country's closest race as he sought reelection against two other sitting MP's. While Carter appeared to have lost, the margin of defeat was small enough that it's quite possible that absentee ballots still being counted could put him over the top. It will probably be another week before the final tallies are official. Meanwhile, in party politics, the dangerously homophobic Christian Coalition will not be represented in the parliament: all its candidates lost, and at less than 5% of the national voting for party control of the government, it did not qualify for proportional representation either. Six other parties won seats and are currently negotiating hard to develop a governing coalition, a process unlikely to be completed in less than a month. And finally ... another of the numerous parties to win no seats in the New Zealand parliament is named the McGillicuddy Serious Party. It drew about one-quarter of one percent of the nation's party vote with its remarkable platform -- to make homosexuality compulsory. --------------*------------- Sources for this week's report included: The British Daily Telegraph; The Daily News Bulletin of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency; Reuter News Service; Daily Variety; United Press International; The Associated Press; The Washington Post; the Washington (D.C.) Blade; Queer News Aotearoa; The Melbourne Age and The Melbourne Herald Sun (Australia); The Australian Broadcasting Corp.; the official website for the 1996 New Zealand Parliamentary Election; and cyberpress releases from Log Cabin Republicans; The Philadelphia Lesbian & Gay Task Force; ILGA-Portugal; The National Gay & Lesbian Task Force; The Human Rights Campaign; The Coalition for Democracy; Spectrum; and The Network of Lesbian & Gay Democratic Clubs & Organizations. ======================================================= Clinton and Dole Field Queer Questions As U.S. President Bill Clinton and Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole faced off in their second and final debate before November's elections, audience members twice raised the question of civil rights protections for gays and lesbians. Although both were quick to switch to other subjects, and neither actually said the words "gay" or "lesbian", they did respond. The first queer query came from a gay San Diego Democratic activist: "I'm Bob Goldfarb. I'm a travel agent. Can you please explain your policy on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act that would have prohibited people from being fired from their jobs simply for being gay or lesbian?" Bill Clinton: "I'm for it. That's my policy. I'm for it. I believe that any law-abiding tax-paying citizen who shows up in the morning and doesn't break the law and doesn't interfere with his or her neighbors ought to have the ability to work in our country and shouldn't be subject to unfair discrimination. I'm for it." With that, Clinton shifted gears to use the remaining time allotted for his answer to address economic issues raised earlier in the debate. He did, however close by returning his attention to Goldfarb to say, "... and I gave you a direct answer." Dole's somewhat disjointed response raised the spectre of "special rights": Bob Dole: "Well, I'm opposed to discrimination in any form, but I'm - but I don't favor creating special rights for any group. That would be my answer to this question. And I'm - you know, there'd be special rights for different groups in America, but I'm totally opposed to discrimination, don't have any policy against hiring anyone - whether it's lifestyle or whatever, we don't have any policy of that kind, never have had in my office, nor will we have in the future. But as far as special rights, I'm opposed to same-sex marriages - which the President signed well after midnight one morning, in the dark of night - he opposed it." The final questioner of the evening, ironically following a conservative Christian minister's question on "morality," was a lesbian clergyperson: "My name is Yvette Dube and I, too, am a minister -- I'm with the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches. President Clinton, perhaps you can help me with something tonight. I've heard Mr. Dole say several times, "All of us together." And when he was asked if he would support equal rights in employment for gay and lesbian people, you said that you favored that, and he said that he did not believe in special rights. And I thought the question was equal rights for all people, and I don't understand why people are using the term "special rights" when the question is equal rights. Could you help me in understanding that?" Bill Clinton: "Now I think I have to let Senator Dole speak for himself. It wouldn't be fair for me to do that. I would wind up - I mean, it's the last question, and I'd mischaracterize it to try to make you happy. Let me tell you what I feel. We have a lot of differences in our country, and some of us believe that other people's decisions are wrong, even immoral. But under our Constitution, if you show up tomorrow and obey the law, and you work hard, and you do what you are supposed to do, you're entitled to equal treatment. That's the way the system works. All over the world, people are being torn apart - Bosnia, the Middle East, Northern Ireland, Rwanda, Burundi, you name it - because of all their differences. We still have some of that hatred inside us - you see it in the church burnings. And one of the things I've tried hardest to do is to tell the American people that we have to get beyond that, we have to understand that we're stronger when we unite around shared values instead of being divided by our differences." Dole reiterated his position in his rebuttal and Clinton returned with an appeal to unity: Bob Dole: "Well, I hope I made my answer clear. I said I'm opposed to discrimination. You know, we've suffered discrimination in the disability community. There are 43 million of us. And I can recall cases where people would cross the street rather than meet somebody in a wheelchair. So we want to end discrimination. I think that answers itself. No discrimination in America. We've made that clear. And I would just say that it seems to me that that's the way it ought to be. We shouldn't discriminate - race, color, whatever, lifestyle, disability. This is America, and we're all proud of it. But we're not there yet. What we need is good, strong leadership going into the next century." Bill Clinton: "Let me say again, there is no more important responsibility for the President than to say if you believe in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence, that's all we need to know. And you can be part of our America, and you can walk across that bridge to the 21st century with us. And we are not well served when we attack each other in a kind of an ad hominem way. It doesn't create jobs. It doesn't educate children. It doesn't solve problems. We need to be disagreeing on ideas honestly and talking about the future. The future will be the greatest time in this country's history if we can beat this division that is bedeviling the whole rest of the world." The brevity of the candidates' answers regarding lesbigay rights probably indicates that neither Dole nor Clinton thought there was much to be gained by belaboring the point. The vast majority of gay and lesbian voters and their supporters are expected to cast their ballots for Clinton, despite the dissatisfaction with his administration expressed by many. Dole, not conservative enough for the Republican right, could never manage sufficient vitriol to make serious anti-homosexual rhetoric believable to them.