NewsWrap for the week ending January 11th, 1997 (As broadcast on THIS WAY OUT Program #459, distributed 01-13-97) [Compiled & written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Brian Nunes, Jason Lin, Ron Buckmire, Graham Underhill, Pere Cruells, Bjoern Skolander, Andy Quan, Rex Wockner, Lucia Chappelle and Greg Gordon] Britain was rocked by scandal this week when a tabloid revealed a Tory Member of Parliament's past infatuation with a teenager. Although some gay and lesbian organizations had promised a slew of political outings in the course of Britain's current election campaigning, they had not targeted MP Jerry Hayes. Despite his image as the ultimate "family man" with a wife and two children, Hayes has been a strong advocate for gays and lesbians and people with AIDS. The story of Hayes' alleged affair with gay activist Paul Stone was brokered for at least 75,000 pounds to the "News of the World" newspaper by Max Clifford, who served recently as O.J. Simpson's publicist in Britain. He chose the timing of the revelations to damage the Tories' multi-million-pound "family values" election campaign, which Prime Minister John Majors had kicked off just two days before. There is no question that Hayes had a close friendship with Stone, who served as a volunteer researcher for Hayes and was often with him in Westminster Palace and elsewhere. They met at an event sponsored by the gay and lesbian advocacy group Stonewall in 1991, when Stone was 18 and Britain's age of consent was still 21. According to Stone, they began an affair soon after which lasted for 16 months, often on nights that they both stayed at the Sloane Club. Hayes says that although they stayed up late talking, they slept in rooms on separate floors. Stone says they simply mussed the covers on one of the beds to maintain appearances. Most damning in the eyes of Hayes' colleagues are his alleged letters to Stone, which appeared in the newspaper account, and made him sound utterly love-struck. Hayes has not been a major political force in Britain, but he has been a familiar presence in the media. The Tories really can't just kick him out of the Parliament now because defections and 11 previous scandals have left them a minority government that needs every vote. Hayes' Tory constituents want to meet with him before passing judgment, but some of them feel that if he can't disprove the claims in court, he should step down and possibly even be prosecuted. Other than issuing a statement denying a sexual relationship with Stone, Hayes and his family have been avoiding the media since the story broke. Openly gay U.S. Congressmember Jim Kolbe of Arizona has been appointed to chair a House subcommittee, becoming the first openly gay Republican representative ever to hold such a position. He'll be running the House Appropriations Subcommittee on the Treasury, Postal Service and General Government. His duties will include reviewing the budgets of not only the Treasury Department and Postal Service, but also the White House and a dozen other agencies. Kolbe came out in 1996 to pre-empt his outing by the U.S. national gay and lesbian magazine "The Advocate". Democratic Congressmember Barney Frank chaired a committee when the Democrats were in power, and former Democratic Congressmember Gerry Studds chaired a subcommittee. Violence against gays, lesbians and transgendered people in Brazil increased sharply in 1996,veteran gay activist Luiz Mott of Grupo Gay de Bahia announced this week. From their monitoring of national news media, the group counted 126 murders of sexual minorities in 1996, or one every 3 days, compared to 99 in 1995. Since the group began its data collection in 1980, they've documented 1,560 murders, whose style in many cases suggest the work of paramilitary organizations such as guerillas or the police. An article in "Vanity Fair" magazine this week revealed that the FBI's investigation of the bomb blast at a celebration during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia was delayed for weeks by a theory that Richard Jewell was an "enraged homosexual cop-killer". Jewell is the security guard who was first lauded as a hero for his quick thinking in the emergency, only to become the authorities' leading suspect and held under the closest observation until he was finally cleared in October. The FBI theory had Jewell planting the bomb with the help of a male lover who later warned police by phone. The theory is believed to have sprung from a college where Jewell once worked, where students spread rumors about his sexuality in retaliation for his having brought their drug use to the attention of authorities. It probably didn't help that Jewell fits the stereotype of an unmarried man living with his mother. The FBI declined to comment. The upper house of Chile's legislature last month blocked a measure to repeal the national sodomy law. The national gay and lesbian group Movimiento de Liberacion Homosexual has been actively lobbying since 1991 to repeal criminal sanctions against private homosexual acts between consenting adults, which can now be punished by anywhere from one-and-a-half to three years in prison. Although Movimiento won support as early as 1995 in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the legislature, the Senate is dominated by conservatives. A Senate committee slammed the door on the proposed reform measure after an initial review, saying that homosexuality is an "aberration against nature" and that they did not want to send an "equivocal" signal to Chilean society by decriminalizing it. Movimiento has called for an international campaign of letters of protest, and ILGA, the International Lesbian and Gay Association, is responding with an e-mail and fax campaign. Exiting Washington state Governor Mike Lowry's final legislative package includes a parting gift to gays and lesbians: a proposal to the state legislature to extend equal marriage rights to same-gender couples. It's an action no U.S. governor has ever taken before -- most have leaped at the opportunity to sign measures rejecting gay and lesbian marriages. Lowry took the initiative to contact the gay and lesbian advocacy group Legal Marriage Alliance of Washington for assistance in drafting the bill, and openly gay state Representative Ed Murray will introduce it in the coming week. Lowry agrees with the finding of the Hawai'i state Supreme Court that to deny marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples constitutes gender discrimination. Even the Legal Marriage Alliance doesn't believe the marriage measure will make it to a floor debate, but they believe it will make a difference in the legislature's handling of an anticipated measure against same-gender marriage: in the words of Alliance director Janice Van Cleve, "By coming out strongly for same-sex marriage, we change the whole nature of the debate from a frustrated defense to a bold advance." And finally ... when Michele De Caminata shut down Italy's "Brescia Blues" women's soccer team two years ago, he told a Milan newspaper that the team members' lesbian sexual relationships were interfering with their performance on the field. The irate women sued De Caminata for defamation, but this week Judge Luca Pistorelli threw their case out of court. His decision said, "The idea that attributing homosexuality to someone is an insult to the honor, in the sense of an assault on the dignity of their person, must be rejected decisively. In other words, calling someone homosexual cannot constitute in itself a diminishment of the person." --------------*--------------- Sources for this week's report included: The Associated Press; The Daily Record & Sunday Mail/London; The Daily Telegraph/London; The London Evening Standard; L'Unita/Italy; Reuter News Service; The Times of London; United Press International; Vanity Fair; The Washington (DC) Blade; and cyberpress releases from Grupo Gay de Bahia/Brazil; The International Lesbian & Gay Association; The Legal Gay Marriage Alliance/Washington state; Movimiento de Liberacion Homosexual/Chile; and Coordinadora Gai-Lesbiana/Spain.