NewsWrap for the week ending November 9th, 1996 (As broadcast on THIS WAY OUT Program #450, distributed 11-11-96) [Compiled & written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Brian Nunes, Jason Lin, Ron Buckmire, Ines Rieder, Riki Anne Wilchins, Bjorn Skolander, Graham Underhill, Andy Quan, Rex Wockner, Lucia Chappelle and Greg Gordon] Australia's Democratic Party has negotiated for an employment anti-discrimination clause protecting gays and lesbians in the federal government's new legislation to overhaul workplace regulations ... but that seems to be as far as they're willing to go. Senator Dee Margetts of West Australia this week made three further proposals only to be soundly defeated each time, lacking the Democrats' support. One would have explicitly added "harassment" to the prohibitions of the anti-discrimination clause, providing a basis for legal redress for victims. Another would have defined "family" to include same-gender domestic partners, making them eligible for benefits including leave to care for an ailing partner or to mourn the loss of one. When Margetts proposed adding "transgender identity" as a protected category in the anti-discrimination statement, the only Senator to vote with her was the only openly gay man in the Senate, Doctor Bob Brown of Tasmania. About 200 Austrian lesbians, gays and transgendered people gathered last week in Dornbirn for their sixth annual national Lesbian and Gay Forum. Their main goal this year was to mobilize for the Parliamentary debate coming up later this month which they hope will lead to reform of sodomy laws. They have the support of the Green, Liberal and Socialist parties, but need to gain at least three more votes from more conservative members of parliament. They set legal recognition of non-traditional couples as their next goal for 1997, naming it "The Year of Partnerships". The Forum also affirmed a series of resolutions including one in support of transgender rights. Some notable politicians spoke at the conference. But in the eyes of the media, the goals of the Forum were overshadowed by local reactions to the gathering. The mayor of Dornbirn had refused to rent out the city's cultural center as a site for the Forum, because in his mind they were working to destroy basic societal values of family, but they were able to find a supportive hotel instead. Their presence sparked internal dissension in the Roman Catholic hierarchy, as a state leader in the church warned his colleagues to avoid contact with the conference and local gay-friendly priests protested. The first nationwide U.S. transcommunity organization had its official birth this past weekend. A dozen transgender advocacy groups gathered in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, to sign the original Articles of Association forming GenderPac. GenderPac is a public advocacy coalition working to end gender oppression and discrimination based on race and affectional orientation. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI, has issued its annual report of hate crime statistics. Local police authorities' participation in the data collection process is voluntary, but there was considerably more participation than last year. The law enforcement agencies participating serve 45 states and three-quarters of the national population. They reported a total of almost 8,000 bias crimes in 1995, and about 1,000 of those were motivated by homophobia. Gay men were attacked about six times more often than lesbians. The largest number of bias crimes nationally, though, were committed against blacks by whites, with non-Jews attacking Jews the next largest single group, and gay men third in the ranking. You may recall the incredible news that "Fly High, Lesbian Seagulls", as performed by Engelbert Humperdinck, would be the theme song for the upcoming movie starring MTV cartoon couch potatoes Beavis & Butthead. The song was written by open gay Tom Wilson-Weinberg, a veteran performer and recording artist known within the gay and lesbian community for his "Ten Percent Review". The song refers to a real group of lesbian seagulls discovered off the Southern California coast in the 1970's. More recently, the seagulls have reverted to heterosexual behavior, and in this instance Beavis & Butthead have also reverted to type. Without Weinberg's knowledge, the end of the film and of its soundtrack CD album had some sound effects added: first, the sound of seagulls aloft, followed by a rifle shot, a pause, a thud, and the trademark cackles of Beavis & Butthead. While Weinberg was able to convince Paramount and Geffen Records to remove the audio vignette from the film and future pressings of the CD, Geffen did not agree to recall the 200,000 CD's it's already made, many of which are headed for radio stations. GLAAD, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, has called for letters to the two companies underscoring the danger of encouraging homophobic violence. But gays and lesbians were on the other side of censorship battles this week in the U.S. and in Taiwan. One of open gay Gregg Araki's films had been scheduled to screen at Taiwan's Golden Horse Film Festival, but its explicit portrayal of gay sex among teens was too much for the government's Information Bureau. They ordered it restricted to a one-time audience of film professionals, saying, "The moral values in our society simply aren't compatible with those of other cultures." Festival organizers are filing an appeal, especially since the gay-themed films are usually the first at the festival to sell out the house. And speaking of censorship, we can't say the title of the banned Araki film on the air. In the U.S. this week, a federal appeals court struck down the so-called "decency" requirement that Congress attached to National Endowment for the Arts funding in 1990. It was the case of the artists known as the "NEA 4", three of whom are openly gay or lesbian and create gay-themed works. In 1992, they had all been recommended for NEA funding by the Endowment's normal peer review process, but those grants were denied them as offending "general standards of decency and respect". A federal district court found in their favor, but the government appealed. The appellate court ruled 2-to-1 that the "decency" law was too vague, violated the artists' free speech rights, and could easily be applied by the government in a discriminatory fashion. In Lafayette, Indiana this week, a measure to remove sexual orientation as a category protected under the city's Human Relations Ordinance was defeated. The outcome was a pleasant surprise for activists because the proposal had been given tentative approval by the City Council a month before. But when the local group Citizens for Civil Rights threatened to sue the city, two Councilmembers chose to change their votes rather than spend city resources on a costly lawsuit. Most of the 80 or so residents who testified before the Council supported civil rights protections for lesbians and gays. San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown this week signed into law a measure requiring the city's contractors to extend the same spousal benefits to their unmarried employees' domestic partners as they do to legally married couples. It's a U.S. "first" that will affect 8,000 firms doing business with the city and may benefit as many as 1,000 of San Francisco's 3,500 registered domestic partnerships. The business community put up only token resistance, and the city is extending itself to accommodate those firms which make a good faith effort to comply. A few other cities have already requested copies of the new law. The California Bar Association has become the first in the U.S. to call on its members to extend full spousal benefits to their employees' gay and lesbian partners. To make it easy, the Bar has arranged for spousal benefits to be available through the group health coverage it offers its membership. The California Bar has already made discrimination based on sexual orientation a basis for disciplinary action, asked its members to institute anti-discrimination policies and recommended they arrange anti-homophobia training for their staff members. And finally ... among those who start early to prepare for Christmas is the U.S. cable TV channel Comedy Central. With some slick legal advice and a contract with a comedy group called the Upright Citizens Brigade, they set about rescripting the ultimate classic holiday film, "It's A Wonderful Life". Using an edited version of the original photography, a satirical new story is told called "Escape From A Wonderful Life", in which Jimmy Stewart's character George Bailey is completely fed up with the traditional film. Among other things, he hopes to escape marrying the Donna Reed character, which he tries to do by telling her he's gay. The original film's owners Republic Films and Comedy Central were threatening lawsuits against each other, but there's a peace-on-earth-good-will- towards-men theme to this story: the company that owns Comedy Central and the company that owns Republic Films are both owned in turn by Viacom. Viacom declared there would be no lawsuits and an amicable agreement would be reached. -------------*----------------- Sources for this week's report included: The Associated Press; Reuter News Service; The Melbourne (Australia) Star Observer; United Press International; The (Indiana) Journal & Courier; The Fort Wayne (Indiana) News Sentinel; The San Francisco Chronicle; Variety; The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation's "GLAADAlert"; and cyberpress releases from The International Lesbian & Gay Association and InYourFace.