NewsWrap for the week ending March 15th, 1997 (As broadcast on THIS WAY OUT Program #468, distributed 03-17-97) [Compiled & written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Brian Nunes, Jason Lin, Ron Buckmire, Rex Wockner, Graham Underhill, Bjorn Skolander, Lucia Chappelle and Greg Gordon, and anchored by Cindy Friedman and Brian Nunes.] The European Court of Justice will be deciding the future of Britain's ban on military service by gays and lesbians. That's the outcome of a High Court decision this week in the case of Terry Perkins, a 5-year Royal Navy medical assistant with an exemplary record who was discharged after someone tipped off the Special Investigations Branch that he is gay. Perkins' case will test if the European Union's Equal Treatment Directive prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation. The High Court Justice and others believe the EuroCourt will say it does, based on an earlier decision rejecting job discrimination against a transsexual. Should the EuroCourt find that the Directive protects gays and lesbians, the British government would be required to establish workplace discrimination protections for all gays and lesbians, not just servicemembers. The government would also be likely to pay out millions of pounds in damages to as many as 2,000 gays and lesbians discharged from the military over the last two decades. The Ministry of Defense will argue that the national military is exempt from European control, based on other EU agreements. But with an election fast approaching, the Labour Party has taken this occasion to take a strong position that they will lift the military ban if they gain power -- and with the polls showing Labour 25 percent ahead of the ruling Conservatives, chances for lifting the ban look good. The EuroCourt's decision in Perkins' case is expected in about 18 months. Thirty similar cases are said to be in the pipeline to follow Perkins' into the European Court of Justice, while four other gay servicemembers' cases will be heard by the European Court of Human Rights. A made-for-television movie scheduled to air in May should also help to keep Britons talking about their military ban on gays and lesbians. "The Inspector" dramatizes the real-life story of an anonymous woman who carried out investigations of gays and lesbians for the Special Investigations Branch of the Royal Military Police. She later discovered that she herself is a lesbian, and then had to hide her sexual orientation as she became the subject of an investigation. The first commercial television broadcast of Sydney's Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade was a great success. In Sydney itself, the show led its timeslot by far, and also topped the ratings in Adelaide and Perth. The broadcast was second only to rugby in Melbourne and followed both rugby and a movie in Brisbane. The telecast was not carried in Tasmania, home of Australia's last remaining sodomy law. Tasmania's independent Senator Brian Harradine is working with increasing success to clamp down on sexy media. Australia's national Attorney-General's Department is currently drafting legislation to ban both X-rated videos and R-rated cable TV. Meanwhile, federal and state officials have agreed to create so-called "community assessment panels". Those advisory committees meant to represent a broad cross-section of the community will work with the government Classification Board responsible for censorship and ratings labels, helping to establish those always-elusive local community standards. Financial difficulties have closed the Triangle Center, Moscow's pioneering gay and lesbian group. The Board of Directors announced they have suspended all activities but will maintain information contacts through their post office box and e-mail. Doors have also been closed to gay and lesbian couples at pay-by-the-hour motels in Malvinas Argentinas, a town near Buenos Aires. The so-called "transitory hostels" or "love motels" offer privacy to young people living with their parents, among others. The town's mayor, Jesus Cariglino, was not convinced by gay and lesbian activists' complaints that the heterosexual-couple-only rule was discriminatory. He said, "We would be discriminating if in this new by-law we had specified that fat people can't use them, or that preferably only blondes with blue eyes should go there." British tabloids leaped to cover the trial of a gym teacher charged with indecent assault for her lesbian affair with a student. The unnamed student met teacher Ceri Bevan and became infatuated with her on a field trip Bevan supervised. A relationship developed and for two years the student would sneak out of her home at night for trysts in Bevan's car or home. But when cross-examination found that the incidents in question occurred after the student had turned 16, the age of consent for lesbian sex in Britain, the judge directed the jury to find Bevan not guilty. As soon as Bevan's trial was over, though, a disciplinary hearing fired her from her job, a decision Bevan will appeal. Bevan has maintained that the affair did not begin until the student had turned 16, and that the charges were brought in vengeance for her having ended the affair. What's literally a "textbook case" in gender studies has been turned on its head in a follow-up report appearing in the current "Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine". Gender identity pioneer John Money of Johns Hopkins University reported more than 20 years ago the case of a boy who was raised as a girl following a surgical accident that amputated his penis in infancy. At the time, Money saw a child he believed had adjusted well and happily to a new gender role, and the case became an emblem of the theory that gender identity is determined by nurture rather than by nature. But now, doctors Milton Diamond and Keith Sigmundson have followed up on the case, and in retrospect it's a completely different story. While the child had some days of compliance with the feminine role, the family now views those as exceptions to his active rejection of feminine clothing, activities and companions while actively seeking masculine ones. Peers never accepted him as a girl and shunned him. He was given hormone treatments at puberty but didn't like them, and he chose to reject any further treatment or surgeries. At 14, he was suicidal, and his father broke down and told him the truth. He then undertook a reverse gender reassignment into masculinity, with male hormones and reconstructive surgery, and went on to find first friends and then a wife whose children he adopted. Diamond and Sigmundson are using this re-examination to encourage physicians to more often assign infants with so-called "ambiguous genitalia" to masculine gender, especially those with "y" chromosomes. But their work comes at a time when intersexed people are beginning to protest what they call "infant genital mutilation", urging doctors to leave babies' ambiguous genitalia intact instead of surgically enforcing conformity to either gender. Bank of America, the third-largest bank in the U.S., this week announced it would extend spousal benefits to its 80,000 employees' dependent relatives or domestic partners, including same-gender partners. B of A is the first major U.S. bank and the 17th Fortune 500 company to recognize gay and lesbian relationships. Although B of A has its headquarters in San Francisco, where a new law requires the city's contractors to extend to their employees' same-gender partners benefits equal to those of married partners, the bank says it had already been exploring the move before the law was enacted. But U.S. religious conservatives went on a media rampage this week, and Bank of America's announcement made them the second target. The first was American Airlines. The Family Research Council and three other leading right-wing organizations coordinated letters demanding an end to the airlines' domestic partner employee benefits, domestic partner "twofer" deals for customers, and sponsorship of gay and lesbian community events. That first salvo expressed the concern that "Anything that serves to reinforce [homosexual] behavior holds back the healing process by which homosexuals achieve restored gender identity and the chance at a fuller life." But the second round, targeting Bank of America, said the move to domestic partners benefits "shows that the bank has joined forces with those trying to destroy marriage as the core institution of civilization." This time the concern expressed was for children, as a letter from the Family Research Council said, "By subsiding non-marital relationships, Bank of America is helping to doom more children to lives of insecurity and heartache." And finally ... international media glommed on to the story of a gay bar in San Francisco's very gay Castro district which in August ejected a heterosexual couple for kissing. Morgan Gorrono, owner of the bar known as The Cafe, says the couple was primarily ejected for being drunk, and that the kissing was extreme. Nonetheless, the City's Human Rights Commission reprimanded him for discrimination based on sexual orientation, and he's being pressured to post an apology to the couple and to run it in the local paper. Gorrono is refusing to comply with those requests, but has changed his policy to no heavy kissing for anyone. The whole situation led openly gay San Francisco Supervisor Tom Ammiano to remark, "Gay bar bans smooching, City Hall stands firm on butt-kissing -- no matter what your orientation." -------*---------- Sources for this week's report included: The Advocate; The Associated Press; The Electronic Telegraph (London); The Independent (London); The London Times; The Melbourne (Australia) Herald Sun; The Melbourne (Australia) Star Observer; The New York Times; Reuters; The San Francisco Chronicle; The San Francisco Examiner; United Press International; and cyberpress releases from the Family Research Council; The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (U.S.); The (U.S.) Servicemembers Legal Defense Network; and Stonewall (Britain).