NewsWrap for the week ending April 5th, 1997 (As broadcast on THIS WAY OUT Program #471, distributed 04-07-97) [Compiled & written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Brian Nunes, Graham Underhill, Martin Rice, Bjorn Skolander, Darren Spedale, Alejandra Sarda, Lucia Chappelle and Greg Gordon, and anchored by Cindy Friedman and Brian Nunes.] A Glasgow newspaper last week alleged that leading Scottish Conservative politico Sir Michael Hirst had past gay affairs. Hirst began the last week of March headed for a political comeback as the likely nominee for what was known as "the safest Tory seat in Scotland" ... and ended the week apparently forced by his own colleagues to resign from even his current post as the Conservative Party's Scotland chair. Ironically, it was to replace a candidate felled by a heterosexual scandal that Hirst had been put forward for the Eastwood, Renfrewshire seat in Parliament -- and he was chosen precisely because he seemed so clean-cut: a father of three, a partner in a distinguished accounting firm, and an elder in the Church of Scotland. But according to the "Globe and Mail" the day following Hirst's resignation, he'd not only been involved with men, he'd been most involved with a man connected to the Tories' biggest payola scandal. Earlier this year, a man claimed to have had a lengthy past affair with Tory MP Jerry Hayes, but Hayes' local constituents were apparently satisfied by his denial of the story. As May 1st elections approach, Prime Minister John Major continues to push the Tories as the party of family values, but the myriad scandals plaguing the party have kept its campaign from getting off the ground. In Kenya, the scandalous rumors have been about an unnamed former cabinet minister's wife and two women staffmembers of the United Nations Environment Program, who've allegedly been tempting teenage girls into selling sexual favors to wealthy older women. Police, child protection advocates and politicians have all leaped on the case. Lesbian acts even between consenting adults in Kenya are punishable by up to 14 years in prison. A feminist professor at Kuwait University is being fired just for having allegedly remarked that lesbianism exists on the campus. Fines for obscenity have already been levied against two staffmembers at the "al-Hadath" magazine for printing what a student claimed Doctor Alia Shoaib had said in informal conversation. Shoaib herself will be on trial for obscenity in May and her books are being suppressed. She denied the remarks attributed to her, but an investigation led her University colleagues to vote for her firing -- and she has even been threatened with loss of her citizenship. The case has generated much comment from Kuwaiti public officials. Because Islam prohibits homosexuality, some of them maintain that it does not exist in their country, others know it exists but believe it should remain hidden, and a few maintain it's actually an integral part of the nation's history and culture. The renowned openly gay U.S. poet Allen Ginsberg died this week of complications of liver cancer at the age of 70. Ginsberg was a seminal figure from the Jack Kerouac/Beat Generation milieu of the 1950's and 1960's. An outspoken activist against the war in Viet Nam and a National Book Award winner, Ginsberg is probably best known for the epic poem "Howl", which was the subject of a landmark obscenity trial. He asked that memorial donatoins go to the Jewel Heart Buddhist Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Marvin Liebman, a leading U.S. conservative who came out publicly as a gay man in the heyday of the Bush administration at the age of 67, died this week of heart and lung problems at the age of 73. After decades in the closet spent organizing, fund-raising and campaigning for conservative causes on the national level, by 1990 the Republican Party's homophobia had left him feeling, in his own words, "like a Jew in Germany in 1934 who had chosen to remain silent, hoping to be able to stay invisible as he watched the beginnings of the Holocaust." Liebman declared his sexual orientation in a widely-reprinted letter, and went on to become an activist for lesbian and gay equality and a syndicated columnist in the gay and lesbian press. Openly gay and lesbian students in Australia are turning to the courts to demand protection from homophobic abuse and harassment they suffer in school. Fourteen-year-old Christopher Tsakalos this week filed the nation's first such lawsuit against his school in Penrith, New South Wales. He claims teachers there watched without intervening while he was attacked by up to 20 students at once, and in one case had a pair of scissors held to his throat. He's being assisted by the Gay and Lesbian Teachers and Students Association, which says they receive up to 20 calls each week from abused students, and that up to 10 similar lawsuits will soon follow. The Tasmanian Gay and Lesbian Rights Group announced that two college students in Hobart are now also preparing lawsuits against their state Department of Education. Despite a rocky start, Argentina's Second National Conference of Gay, Lesbian, Bi, And Transgendered Activists turned out to be a positive experience that climaxed with the first-ever pride march in the city of Salta. Before some 50 activists from 16 organizations arrived from Buenos Aires and Rosario, religious leaders in Salta had promised protests that would prevent them from even entering their hotel. Also, at the very last minute, the University backed out of providing promised meeting space. But the protests never materialized, a local gay bar became the meeting site, the people of Salta proved to be generally supportive, media coverage was both extensive and respectful, and by the time of the pride march the local gays and lesbians felt safe enough to join in. In addition to holding a wide range of workshops, the conference determined to mount campaigns to establish a National Transvestite/Transsexual Day and a national law explicitly prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. The U.S. Supreme Court this week refused to hear a challenge to New Jersey's law protecting the civil rights of gays and lesbians. Orthodox Presbyterian pastor David Cummings claimed that the law's provisions against aiding or coercing another person into committing discriminatory actions would punish him for, in the words of his brief, "advancing the viewpoint that sexual conduct should have moral limits". The nation's high court let stand the rulings of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and a district court that the law was directed not at speech but at conduct -- for instance, making threats against a business if it wouldn't fire its gay and lesbian employees. The Orthodox Presbyterian Church holds that all sex outside of marriage, including homosexuality and bisexuality, are "grievous sins". A group of Orthodox rabbis' vehement declaration this week that the other branches of Judaism "are not Judaism at all", was partly fueled by the Orthodox' resentment of the other branches' increasing tolerance of gays and lesbians. Although assimilation and intermarriage were the main themes of the announcement by the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada, the group said they intended to oppose "homosexuality" as "repugnant not only to Torah Judaism, but also to common morality." The other branches of Judaism -- Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist -- allow for ordination of gays and lesbians, and some of their leaders have spoken in support of legal same-gender marriages. Most Danes are ready to see gay and lesbian unions celebrated in churches, according to a recent newspaper survey. Denmark became the first nation to legally recognize gay and lesbian partnerships in October 1989, and now both civil and religious authorities are considering removing the few distinctions between those registered partnerships and legal marriages. A poll by the "Berlinske Tidene" newspaper found that 54 percent of Danes are now in support of some form of church ceremony for same-gender couples, while only 40 percent are flatly opposed. While one-fifth of respondents were amenable to a "marriage-like" church ceremony, fully one-third favored gay and lesbian church weddings identical to those for heterosexuals. And finally ... a political cartoon by Dick Adair in the "Honolulu Advertiser" poked fun at the Hawai'i state legislature. Bills intended to block the Hawai'i Supreme Court's anticipated legalization of gay and lesbian marriages have stalled in a House-Senate conference committee with the end of the legislative session fast approaching. The leaders of the House and Senate contingents are shown holding their respective versions of the bills, standing back to back before a judge's bench. The frustrated judge remarks, "If you two can't reconcile your differences, your only solution is ... divorce!" ----------*----------- Sources for this week's report included: The Associated Press; The Honolulu Advertiser; Wired News; Reuters; The Mercury (Australia); The Melbourne (Australia) Herald Sun; The Australian Broadcasting Co.; Features Africa Network; BBC Radio 5 Live's "Out This Week"; The New York Times; The Advocate; The Washington Post; Etcetera; OutNow (San Jose, CA); The Australian; The Age (Australia); Press Association (Great Britian); The Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald; The London Times; The London Herald; The Independent (London); The Scotsman; and cyberpress releases from the International Lesbian & Gay Association.