NewsWrap for the week ending July 5th, 1997 (As broadcast on THIS WAY OUT Program #484, distributed 07-07-97) [Compiled & written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Brian Nunes, Graham Underhill, Martin Rice, Rex Wockner, Lucia Chappelle and Greg Gordon, and anchored by Cindy Friedman and Brian Nunes] U.S. District Judge Eugene Nickerson this week declared the so-called "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy on gays and lesbians in the military to be unconstitutional. When Nickerson issued a similar decision in 1995 in the same case, "Able versus USA", it was based solely on free speech issues, and the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals asked him to reconsider the case. In his new ruling, Nickerson also rejects the military's rules prohibiting behavior between people of the same gender that is allowed between people of opposite genders. While the military has consistently maintained that open gays and lesbians would damage "unit cohesion", Nickerson wrote that "'unit cohesion' is a euphemism for catering to the prejudices of heterosexuals." He went on to say, "It is hard to imagine why the mere holding of hands off base and in private is dangerous to the mission of the armed forces if done by a homosexual but not if done by a heterosexual," and "The fact that the prejudice arises in the military context does not legitimate the discrimination." He also wrote that, "To require those self-identifying as homosexuals to hide their orientation and to pretend to be heterosexuals is to ask them to accept a judgment that their orientation is in itself disgraceful. To impose such a degrading and deplorable condition for remaining in the armed services cannot in fairness be justified on the ground that the truth might arouse the prejudice of some of their fellow members." Currently the ruling applies only to the six gay and lesbian plaintiffs in "Able versus USA", which has been designed by gay and lesbian legal activists to be the chief test case against "don't ask, don't tell". The Department of Defense has said it will appeal the ruling, and however the appellate court decides, the case will inevitably be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Montana's so-called "deviate sexual conduct" law, the harshest in the U.S., was unanimously struck down this week by the Montana state Supreme Court. Although not recently enforced, the 1953 sodomy law provided for felony convictions carrying sentences of up to 10 years in prison and a $50,000 fine for private, non-commercial sex acts between consenting adults of the same gender. The court rejected all of the state's arguments in defense of the law as failing to warrant overriding privacy guarantees in the Montana state constitution. The court recognized a correlation between anti-gay sodomy laws and homophobic violence, and accepted the gay and lesbian plaintiffs' argument that the law appeared to condone discrimination based on sexual orientation. The Montana state Supreme Court decision is final; there can be no further appeals. About half the U.S. states have laws criminalizing private sexual conduct between consenting adults, but only five apply exclusively to same-gender acts. Ecuador's sodomy laws were protested this week by about 40 gays in the town of Cuenca, according to a UPI report. The marchers were reacting to arrests made at a local bar last week, which could result in sentences of four to eight years. Ecuador is a signatory to international human rights conventions prohibiting persecution and arrests based solely on sexual orientation. Zimbabwe's Attorney-General Patrick Chinamasa has announced that the nation's first post-colonial President, Canaan Banana, will be formally charged in the coming week with 11 counts of sodomy, attempted sodomy and indecent assault. Last week, Banana had vehemently denied those charges and claimed that people had been bribed to testify against him. Allegations against Banana first became public in February when one of his former palace guards was on trial for murder and claimed diminished capacity as a result of being sexually harassed and raped by Banana during his 1980's Presidency. Numerous other allegations followed from other former Presidential aides, members of Banana's soccer team, and his students in the University of Zimbabwe's religion department. Hawai'i this week began distribution of applications for registering what it calls "reciprocal beneficiaries", the first statewide registry of unmarried couples in the U.S.. Reciprocal beneficiaries can be any two adults who cannot legally marry, whether gay or lesbian couples or blood relatives. Registration qualifies couples for 52 of 300-some benefits of legal marriage in Hawai'i. The legislation specified the law would go into effect July 1st, and benefits will be retroactive to that date, but applications will not be processed until July 8th; that's because Governor Ben Cayetano has not signed the bill, even though it's too late for him to veto it. He said he wanted to give the Health Department as much time as possible to consider how to prevent fraudulent applications. The reciprocal beneficiaries law was approved by the legislature in tandem with a proposed constitutional amendment to reserve legal marriage for "one man and one woman". Voters will consider that measure in November 1998. In Canada, the Ontario provincial Human Rights Commission issued its annual report in late June, calling for the immediate amendment of more than 60 laws it says discriminate against same-gender couples. Chief Commissioner Keith Norton had previously written to the provincial government prioritizing a few of the laws he felt were most damaging to gays and lesbians. Couples are defined in Ontario law as two people of the opposite sex, and Norton cited a national Supreme Court decision as suggesting that violates the National Charter of Human Rights. Changing the laws would give gay and lesbian couples status equal to that of unmarried heterosexual couples. Several attempts to enact the amendments in the Ontario legislature have failed in the past, leaving each law to be decided individually in a lengthy series of court battles. Ironically, even the provincial Human Rights Code uses the same discriminatory definition. "Prejudice against gays and lesbians because of sexual orientation continues to be socially acceptable", the report says. "Operating overtly through our laws, policies and regulations, it manifests itself in every aspect of life." Singapore's Ministry of Information and the Arts has punished a mainstream magazine for printing gay personal ads. While not withdrawing altogether the publisher's license for "IS Magazine", the Ministry explained in a letter that, "Despite receiving more than one warning from [the Ministry], IS Magazine continued to carry ads encouraging homosexuality in their recent issues. As they have not heeded our warnings, [the Ministry] has decided not to renew their permit." The Ministry's guidelines prohibit "lewd" ads, phone sex ads and ads promoting so-called "undesirable lifestyles". Asia City Publishing Group is appealing the ruling and offering to drop the personals section in order to continue to distribute the magazine. Indonesian leaders have been expressing their discomfort with TV talkshows. One Moslem leader this week told a newspaper his concerns about the shows' discussions of sexual topics, including homosexuality. The new national Minister of Information, Hartono Hartono, also said he was "embarrassed" by the content of the shows, and called on private TV stations to control them. He said his ministry was looking at ways to improve the moral tone of TV talk. In southern France, the mayor of Vitrolles has fired the head of the town's movie theatre for plans to show a series of short films on gay themes. Mayor Catherine Megret is not only herself a member of the right-wing National Front party, she's the wife of party leader Bruno Megret. Her decision was denounced by the national Minister of Culture Catherine Trautmann, who called the firing "disrespectful, unfair and marked by an ideology that fails to take into account the need for openness in film and other forms of culture." Of the veteran director of Les Lumieres movie theater Regine Juin, Minister Trautmann said, "I know this person's good work promoting creative cinema and in favor of quality films and I will not let her down." Megret and France's three other National Front party mayors have already been under fire for removing leftist and multicultural publications from their local libraries. Another U.S. TV actor has come out: Danny Pintauro, who played Jonathan Bower on the now-defunct Tony Danza sticom "Who's The Boss?". Pintauro, now 21, shared his experience with the tabloid "National Enquirer", including how he came out to Danza and gay-supportive co-start Judith Light. He said, "I couldn't deny it any more. It was just the right time to come out." GLAAD, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, called the article in the July 7th edtion, "The most sensitive, accurate story concerning sexual orientation" they've seen in the "Enqurier" to date. And finally ... there was a confrontation this week in the Australian state of Queensland between gay and lesbian demonstrators and a Christian group. About 150 gays and lesbians, two-thirds of them participants in a student conference in Brisbane, held a protest picnic in a park in Pine Rivers Shire. Their issue was homophobia on the part of a city councillor who recently had the doors removed from all public toilets as a deterrent to sex between men. The protestors wanted to send a message that it was homophobia that drove closeted men to the toilets, while showing that a supportive gay and lesbian community allowed them other options. One placard brought by the much smaller group of Christian counter-demonstrators proved popular with both sides, according to journalist Iain Clacher. As originally drawn, it read, "God Says Sodomy Is Sin". With one small modification, the gay and lesbian group changed it to read, "God Says Sodomy Is In". -------*-------- Sources for this week's report included: The Associated Press; Australian Broadcasting Corporation; The Billings (MT) Gazette; The Bozeman (MT) Chronicle; Canada Press; The Honolulu Advertiser; The Honolulu Star Bulletin; The Los Angeles Times; The New York Times; Newsday (NYC); Reuters; The San Francisco Chronicle; Straits Times (Singapore); The Washington Blade; United Press International; The Washington Post; and cyberpress releases from The American Civil Liberties Union; The (U.S.) Family Research Council; Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation; Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund; National Gay & Lesbian Task Force; and Servicemembers Legal Defense Network.