NewsWrap for the week ending May 17th, 1997 (As broadcast on THIS WAY OUT Program #477, distributed 05-19-97) [Compiled & written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Brian Nunes, Bjorn Skolander, Alejandra Sarda, Alan Reekie, Rex Wockner, Lucia Chappelle and Greg Gordon, and anchored by Brian Nunes and Cindy Friedman.] Governor Angus King's signature this week made Maine the 10th U.S. state to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, climaxing a 20-year lobbying effort. King said it was "a historic day for a vigorous and self-confident society", and made it a ceremonial occasion in the State House Hall of Flags. The crowd wore pink carnations as a sign of their support for protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodations, and credit. Openly lesbian State Treasurer Dale McCormick said she was moved to tears by the signing, and gave King a big hug. The Christian Civil League of Maine has already set to work on a ballot initiative to repeal the law, and the nationwide Christian Coalition has promised to join that effort. Governor Jeanne Shaheen should shortly be making New Hampshire the 11th U.S. state to ban sexual orientation discrimination. Also signed into law this week was a measure in Indiana to deny recognition to same-gender marriages another state or country may someday perform. Governor Frank O'Bannon felt compelled to sign it by the overwhelming vote it received in the state House of Representatives, but he said, "It gives you some pause because it's already illegal in Indiana, but it also infers some kind of intolerance in Indiana that should not exist." Colorado and Florida are currently waiting on Governors Roy Romer and Lawton Chiles to make one of them the 25th U.S. state to reject legal gay and lesbian marriages, while Minnesota and Wisconsin are expected to follow shortly. There are indications that Denmark's national Lutheran Church will approve church weddings for gay and lesbian couples. The church's 12 bishops will receive a report recommending the move in the coming week, and are expected to approve the weddings in a few months. Although Denmark enacted legal partnership registries for gays and lesbians in 1989, the right to a church wedding was not included, and the national church has been divided on the question ever since. Australia's Uniting Church, the nation's third-largest Christian denomination, has once again caused a stir with sex-positive, pro-gay recommendations. A Church task force has released the final version of its report "Uniting Sexuality and Faith", whose recommendations include convening a group of gays and lesbians to develop ways the Church can support same-gender relationships. The report makes a strong statement against discrimination and "affirms that transgender people are God's precious children and our brothers and sisters in Christ equally with gay, lesbian, bisexual and heterosexual people." The recommendations will be considered at a National Assembly in July, and whichever decision is made there is expected to lead some members to leave the Church. A lawsuit is challenging San Francisco's pioneering new ordinance requiring the city's contractors to extend whatever benefits they offer legally married couples to registered domestic partners, both heterosexual and same-gender. The Air Transport Association, a trade group of 22 U.S. airlines and 3 international carriers, claims that air carriers are governed only by federal laws and are exempt from local control. One member of the ATA and a party to its lawsuit is United Airlines, which had previously agreed to extend the partnership benefits within the next two years in order to continue its long-term contracts with San Francisco's city-owned airport. The U.S. Supreme Court this week declined to hear three cases of special interest to gays and lesbians. The high court left intact a Wisconsin ruling that punished two women for rejecting a potential roommate because she is a lesbian, which for the first time applied the city of Madison's ban on housing discrimination to a group living situation. But the Court also let stand the discharge of gay Navy Lieutenant Richard Dirk Selland, who announced his sexual orientation to his commanding officer the day after President Clinton's inauguration. The Court also let stand the arrests of a number of New York City gays and lesbians who had been protesting their exclusion from the annual Saint Patrick's Day parade. In Northern Ireland, the first police officer to be killed by nationalists since the IRA declared a cease-fire almost three years ago was a gay man shot May 9th in Belfast's best-known gay bar. Darren Bradshaw was on suspension from the Royal Ulster Constabulary at the time, and so was unarmed when a bewigged and disguised gunman entered the Parliament Bar and shot him four times in the back. Bradshaw is said to have been popular at the bar, and both staff and patrons were angry that political violence had intruded into their haven. The Irish National Liberation Army, or INLA, which split off from the Irish Republican Army more than 20 years ago, quickly claimed responsibility for the shooting. The INLA's spokesperson in Britain is also an openly gay man, Simon McGill, who said, "I have no problem with the attack ... He put on a police uniform and became part of a state which oppresses nationalists. His sexuality is irrelevant." The only other known gay man to be killed in Belfast this year was Presbyterian minister David Templeton, who died as the result of a beating by unionists intending to punish him for smuggling gay porn videos into the country. About 1,000 religious protesters demonstrated outside the Parliament of Cyprus in Nicosia this week, once again calling on legislators not to repeal the nation's sodomy law. The Council of Europe has become increasingly impatient with Cyprus' failure to comply with a 1993 ruling by the European Court of Justice, which declared the century-old law violates the European Convention on Human Rights, with its prescription of 5-to-14 years in prison even for private acts between consenting adult males. The Cyprus government believes it cannot expect European justice in the case of Turkey's human rights abuses against Cypriots, if it is not willing to demonstrate its own acceptance of the EuroCourt's authority regarding the sodomy law. But the intense resistance to repeal by the Greek Orthodox Church of Cyprus has led lawmakers to dither, and they delayed making a decision again this week. The government hopes to enact repeal before the legislature closes in July. Lawmakers and media are giving a new level of respectful attention to transgendered people in both the U.S. and Argentina. In Argentina, the media led the way, as a television program which attempts to mediate disputes brought a Buenos Aires tranny activist face-to-face with a former member of the convention that drafted the city's constitution. Activist Lohanna Berkins demanded to know why police were still making arbitrary arrests of trannys despite the city's abolition of the so-called "police edicts" for warrantless arrests, and politician Ines Perez Suarez agreed to present this concern to the city's government. That resulted in an unprecedented meeting earlier this month by representatives of 3 tranny activist groups with Buenos Aires' undersecretary Guillermo Moreno Hueyo, while a crowd of journalists looked on. The development of a local court system that will provide judicial review of cases now judged by the police themselves is months away, but the tranny groups and others are preparing draft legislation to end repressive police actions. In the U.S., tranny activists were able to obtain written statements from 9 Congressmembers opposing hate violence against trannys -- the first time any member of Congress has gone so far in support of a tranny issue. Armed with those letters and a first-of-its-kind national survey of violence against trannys, members of the coalition organization GenderPAC held an unprecedented meeting with representatives of the Department of Justice. A first challenge faced by both sides is that current federal hate crimes legislation fails to authorize the department to deal with violence against transgenders. The successful lobbying efforts and a demonstration against a New York City hospital won media attention on another tranny issue. Both "Newsweek" magazine and "The New York Times" gave significant and sympathetic coverage to the practice activists call "intersex genital mutilation", solely cosmetic surgery performed on infants with what physicians call "ambiguous genitalia". Activists believe there is no justification for performing this surgery before the individual is able to give informed consent, and are hoping to win protections under proposed legislation targeting the drastic ritual practice misnamed female circumcision. Television portrayal of lesbian kisses has now reached Colombia, in a nightly soap opera called "The Perfume of Agony". With major coverage from the newspaper "El Tiempo", the smooch boosted ratings by a whopping 22 percent overnight. But the kiss also scared the soap out of the soap opera, as Procter & Gamble's InExtra de Colombia canceled its 50-million-pesos-per-month advertising on the show, rather than have its products associated with any controversy. And finally ... a respected cultural leader in the former Soviet republic of Estonia hasn't made a big deal out of coming out, but has certainly come out all the way. Linnar Priimaegi is only the second Estonian celebrity of any kind to publicly identify as gay or lesbian -- the first was writer Emil Tode -- and Priimaegi is the first to come out with a partner. Priimaegi's sexual orientation was revealed in Tallinn's first homoerotic art exhibit, where a favorably-reviewed series of pictures by leading photographer Ly Lestberg show Priimaegi making love with his boyfriend. ----------*----------- Sources for this week's report included: The Associated Press; The Australian Age; The Australian Broadcasting Corporation; The Belfast Telegraph; Bogata El Tiempo; The Cyprus Mail; The Cyprus News Association; The Irish Times; The London Times; The Melbourne (Australia) Herald Sun; Newsweek; The New York Times; New York Newsday; The Press Association (Britain); Reuters; The San Diego Union Tribune; The Sydney Morning Herald; United Press International; The Washington Post; and cyperpress releases from Escrita en el Cuerpo (Buenos Aires); InYourFace (U.S.); the International Lesbian and Gay Association; the Uniting Church (Australia); the American Civil Liberties Union; the (U.S.) National Gay & Lesbian Task Force; and the (U.S.) Service Members Legal Defense Fund.