NewsWrap for the week ending December 14th, 1996 (As broadcast on THIS WAY OUT Program #455, distributed 12-16-96) [Compiled & written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Brian Nunes, Jason Lin, Josy Catoggio, Dean Elzinga, Ron Buckmire, Graham Underhill, Bjorn Skolander, Gynie Villar, Rex Wockner, Lucia Chappelle and Greg Gordon] Pope John Paul II came out against same-gender marriage this week, although he referred to it only obliquely. His audience was a group of Latin American bishops who were visiting the Vatican to plan for a conference on families scheduled for October in Brazil. The Pope said, "In recent years, we have observed with growing concern a systematic, growing dissatisfaction toward the family, a dissatisfaction which has put its eternal values into question. On the pretext of giving attention to and protecting the family, and all families, some have forgotten that there is a model loved and blessed by God...the conjugal relationship of a man and a woman ... At the same time, there has been an attempt to introduce other forms of unions of couples contrary to the initial design of God for the human race. In this way, the rights of the family are turned upside down, threatening society at its very foundations ... the Church and its clergy must not remain indifferent in the face of such attempts at substantial changes affecting family structure." The Pope may have made this speech to this particular audience because of Brazil's seemingly inevitable progress towards legally recognizing gay and lesbian couples. A bill to establish registered civil partnerships for same-gender couples in Brazil won approval this week from a Senate committee by a vote of 11 to 7. It will next be considered by the full Senate and Chamber of Deputies, in what is expected to be some heated debate. The civil partnership contract resembles traditional marriage in terms of inheritance and other property rights, pensions, credit, health care, joint income tax returns, and immigration, but does not confer any adoption or parental rights. Despite opposition from a majority of Brazilians, even the Catholic Church there appears more or less resigned to some form of this bill becoming law. Norway's Labor Party has planned legislation to force the Church of Norway to comply with national anti-discrimination laws like any other public institution. Both gender and sexual orientation are categories protected from workplace discrimination under the national Equal Status Act. The Church of Norway saw this as disrespectful treatment, and bishops on the Church's National Council agreed that they would rather dissolve the relationship between the national church and the government than extend equal treatment to gays and lesbians. Canada's national gay and lesbian group EGALE - Equality for Gays & Lesbians Everywhere - is campaigning for their country's recognition of legal same-gender marriages which may be performed in Hawai'i in a year or two. EGALE has asked Prime Minister Jean Chretien to meet with them, hoping to convince him to publicly affirm that Canada will recognize Hawai'ian marriages. EGALE members are concerned that Chretien recently told a group of students that he "is not personally very comfortable" with same-gender marriages and "doesn't know how that works in a society." He may have to put aside that personal discomfort, though, because EGALE believes that Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms justifies legal gay and lesbian marriages the same way Hawai'i's equal rights amendment does. Belgium's beleaguered gay Deputy Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo was cleared this week by the Parliament of allegations that he had sex with underage teens. The special Parliamentary committee investigating the case declared any charges against him to be entirely unjustified. The full Parliament voted by a 4-to-3 margin to preserve the immunity from prosecution that Di Rupo enjoys as one of its members. This was the second time that the committee and the Parliament voted in Di Rupo's favor, responding the first time to charges made by a single witness who proved unreliable, and this time to further anonymous charges. The politics involved have become increasingly divisive. Di Rupo and his supporters claim the entire affair was concocted as a political scheme against him, while his political opponents maintain that the closure of the case is a purely political decision. The Belgian public is just as divided: one newspaper's opinion poll found that a large majority wanted the case closed as it was, while another found a sizable majority who believed the conclusion was political. The case came very close to ending Di Rupo's career and perhaps to toppling the ruling coalition. It did end the career of another veteran politician, Jean-Pierre Grafe, who was also accused of sex with underage teens at the same time as Di Rupo, and who like Di Rupo is gay, a French-speaking Socialist and a native of the Walloon region, where Grafe was minister of education. Although Grafe also maintained his innocence, he stepped down before his regional parliament considered the matter, saying he could no longer work effectively under the circumstances. The Philippines saw its First National Lesbian Rights Conference last weekend in Silang. The theme was, "Hearing Our Voices in Unity: Claiming Our Rights, Controlling Our Lives". The gathering of 75 lesbians was the culmination of a series of regional meetings that involved more than 200. They represented more than a dozen groups with wonderful names including Lucky Guys, Can't Live in the Closet and Women of Liquid Fire, or WOLF. Participants committed to national and international advocacy to advance the understanding of lesbian rights as human rights, and also committed to specific actions to continue their developing activism beyond the conference. A Russian lesbian activist refugee this week became the first gay or lesbian to bring a request for asylum before a U.S. federal appeals court. Should her appeal fail, Alla Pitcherskaia will be deported to her homeland, where she believes she will again be threatened both by the so-called Russian Mafia, who once kidnapped her, and by Russian police, who detained and beat her on a number of occasions, and threatened her with psychiatric hospitalization and electroshock therapy. When the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service argued that the psychiatric treatment was intended to help her, one of the three judges reminded them that the Inquisition once used the rack to "help" save people's souls. The central question in the case appears to be just how much things have or have not changed for gays and lesbians in Russia in the four tumultuous years since Pitcherskaia left. The I.N.S. points to the 1993 decriminalization of private homosexual acts between consenting adults, while the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund's Suzanne Goldberg says that the same arrests are still taking place under more general charges. The Swedish Parliament this week approved a major revision of basic legislation regarding foreign nationals, which explicitly mentions gays and lesbians as a persecuted group requiring asylum. Every Member of Parliament voted for at least some of the sexual orientation provisions. The Green, Liberal and Left Parties wanted to make an even stronger statement than the government's proposal, by defining gays and lesbians as refugees under the terms of the Geneva Convention. Sweden's rejection of an application for asylum by an Iranian gay man is currently under investigation by the European Court of Human Rights. The U.S. Navy this week settled a lawsuit against them, rather than trying to defend an investigation that apparently violated the "Don't Pursue" element of the so-called "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy on gays and lesbians in the military. It's believed to be the first such lawsuit brought against the military under the current policy, which was intended to end the so-called "witch hunts" used to identify gays and lesbians. In pre-trial hearings, the Navy had claimed that discharges were valid even when the investigations leading to them were illegal. Plaintiff Amy Barnes was a seaman serving on the U.S.S. Simon Lake who was rumored to be a lesbian after she reported sexual harassment by a male superior. At least a dozen women were interrogated in the process of following up on those rumors, one of them for more than six hours, and two others under threat of jail if they did not name names. As many as 60 women may have been targeted in the course of the investigation. The settlement gives Barnes a new discharge form which makes no mention of "homosexual conduct", and a cash payment roughly equal to education benefits she would have received under the G.I. bill. She hopes the real victory will deter commanders from taking action based on mere rumors, saving others from her own ordeal. A former Vice Chair of the Ford Motor Company publicly identified himself as a gay man this week. It was a remarkable coming out, because the higher up the corporate ladder you look, the fewer open gays and lesbians you see, and Allan Gilmour came very close to being number one at Ford. He resigned in 1994 when another candidate won that post, but says he'll never know what role rumors of his sexual orientation may have played in that promotion. Financial analyst Gilmour is still a major player, currently sitting on the boards of Prudential Insurance, Whirlpool, Detroit Edison, and Dow Chemical. He chose to come out now because of some high-visibility charitable fund-raising work he's doing with Michigan's HOPE fund for gays and lesbians ... and also, he says, because he's in love for the first time at age 62. And finally ... actress Glenn Close played a real-life lesbian in the TV movie biography of Colonel Margarete Cammermeyer, but the U.S. National Center for Lesbian Rights has complained that she's playing a lesbian stereotype in her latest movie role: Cruella de Ville, the villainess of the smash hit remake of "101 Dalmatians". The Center describes Cruella's style as that of the stereotypical "stiff, man-hating, ball-breaking lesbian". Some critics agree that Cruella seems rather obsessed with her assistant Anita, reacting with violent rage on hearing that Anita plans to marry and with disgust on learning she's pregnant. Filmmaker Disney, already taking flak from Christian fundamentalists for offering spousal benefits to its employees' gay and lesbian partners, declined to comment. But whether or not Cruella is a lesbian, she's certainly a "diva", and Robert Bray of the U.S. National Gay and Lesbian Task Force predicts you'll "see a lot of men in drag as Cruella de Ville next Hallowe'en." -----------*------------- Sources for this week's report included The Associated Press; Belgium TV; The Detroit Free Press; The Detroit News; The Electronic Telegraph (London); The Independent (London); NandO News; The New York Post; Reuter News Service; The San Francisco Examiner; United Press International; Vatican Information Service; The Washington Post; Euro-Queer Digest; NORWAVES (Norway); GLAADAlert; News from Swedish Lesbian/Gay Politics; Rex Wockner News Service; and cyberpress releases from The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD); The International Lesbian & Gay Association (ILGA); The Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund (U.S.); The U.S. Servicemembers Legal Defense Network; The Swedish Federation for Gay and Lesbian Rights (RFSL); and Women Supporting Women Committee (Manila, The Philippines)