NewsWrap for the week ending August 30th, 1997 (As broadcast on THIS WAY OUT Program #492, distributed 09-01-97) [Compiled & written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Jason Lin, Brian Nunes, Graham Underhill, Rex Wockner, Lucia Chappelle and Greg Gordon, and anchored by Cindy Friedman and Tory Christopher] In Australia, the New South Wales Wood Police Royal Commission this week turned in its final report to the Parliament, including a recommendation to lower the age of consent for homosexual acts from 18 to 16, to match the age of consent for heterosexual acts. For 2-1/2 years, the Commission headed by Judge James Wood has probed pedophilia and police corruption, at a high cost in dollars, police hours, and more than a dozen deaths by suicide and misadventure. But despite Wood's advocacy for an equal age of consent, and the support of New South Wales' gay and lesbian organizations, the equalization is not likely to come out of the current state parliament. Only a handful of New South Wales' ruling Labor Party MP's support the change, while Premier Bob Carr and four other government ministers were among the majority who voted against a similar proposal in 1984. The Opposition MP's began their campaign against equalization even before the Wood Commission report was officially released. The state government's disinterest in equalization has prompted calls within New South Wales' gay and lesbian community to abandon its traditional support for New South Wales' Australian Labor Party. On the national stage this year, the Model Criminal Code Officers Committee had recommended a uniform national age of consent, but Australia's Attorney General Darryl Williams rejected it. However, the Wood Commission report has sparked interest in West Australia equalizing its age of consent, while Tasmania, Queensland, Victoria, and South Australia have already done so. Britain's Labour Government appears poised to make good on its campaign promise to open immigration to U.K. nationals' gay and lesbian domestic partners. This week, the High Court put off until November its hearing of gay Brazilian Antonio Camara's appeal to remain with his British partner. That move was based on the court's expectation that an announcement of the policy change will come in October when Parliament reopens, making Camara's appeal unnecessary. So-called "common law" hetersexual partners of Britons were allowed to immigrate until 1996, when the Conservative Government chose to end their immigration rights rather than extend them to include same-gender couples. The new policy is expected to include both same-gender and heterosexual unmarried couples. In Buenos Aires, gay and lesbian couples looking for some private time together are no longer prohibited by law from using the same rooms-by-the-hour motels as their heterosexual counterparts. An amendment by the city council that removed the heterosexuals-only language from the statute relating to those so-called "love motels" went into effect this week. Although Buenos Aires Mayor Fernando de la Rua had vigorously opposed the change when it was introduced earlier this year, believing that gays and lesbians should perhaps have their own motels, he finally chose not to block it in what he said was a gesture of support for citizens' "free sexuality". However, the new law does not actually require the "love motels" to admit gay and lesbian couples, and several have already declared that they will not, despite the city's anti-discrimination policy. While Buenos Aires was moving to reverse its ban on same-gender couples in "love motels", the neighboring town of Malvinas Argentinas earlier this year enacted a ban for the first time. Paris police this week delivered a magistrate's orders shutting down five of the city's leading gay and lesbian nightclubs for a six-month period, on the grounds that they tolerated illegal drugs. The orders are being appealed in court by the club owners. The closures angered members of France's National Association of Gay Businesses, which has actually been lobbying for two years to give club owners the same kind of authority to turn away customers using or selling drugs, that they now use to turn away drunks. Illegal drugs were about the only charges not raised as Cuban police raided a popular gay-friendly disco this week, even though the drug squad was visibly present in the raiding party. Reportedly 800 people were detained during the raid. A police spokesperson said on Cuba's government radio that the raid found "a bit of everything", including "prostitutes, pimps, some underage minors and several foreigners" at El Periquiton. The club's two managers have been arrested for operating the club illegally, because while there are licenses for running restaurants or cafes out of private homes, there are none for discos. Their sound system and a large amount ofmoney have been confiscated. Earlier reports had Cubans paying the raiding police "a small fine" before being released, while all 25 foreigners present were released after their identification was checked. Although the Cuban government had little concern with "vice" for many years, the influx of foreign currency into the financially troubled island has caused prostitution to skyrocket. Cuba's laws against sex crimes such as pimping and corruption of minors were recently enhanced, and apparently enforcement is being stepped up to match. The so-called "condom riots" in two Jamaican prisons last week went on for four days, leaving a total of 16 men dead and about 30 injured. After the Commissioner of Corrections announced a plan to distribute condoms to both prisoners and guards, both groups took it as an insulting implication that they were engaged in gay sex. The guards went out on strike and the prisoners rioted, attacking fellow inmates they believed to be gay. Negotiations brought the guards back to work after two days, but the rioting only intensified. Two hundred police and soliders helped to restore some order. At last report, police were arresting 16 inmates for murder in connection with some of the deaths. In a U.S. case believed to be the first of its kind, a federal jury rejected an Illinois inmate's lawsuit claiming that prison officials failed to protect him from sexual assaults that infected him with HIV. Five of seven officials named were cleared altogether in the $1.5-million lawsuit brought by Michael Blucker. The jury was unable to reach a verdict in the case of two others who may have ignored Blucker's pleas for help, and the inmate says he'll seek a second trial against them. The Department of Corrections held that Blucker had engaged in consensual sexual activity rather than the forced prostitution he alleged. The Minnesota state Supreme Court ruled this week that sexual harassment is a violation of the state Human Rights Act, even when it's committed by one man against another. The 6-to-1 ruling came in the case of Richard Cummings, a truck driver who claimed daily sexual comments and touching by his supervisor at S & K Trucking and Landscaping. The supervisor said his actions were merely playful and were not covered by the law because he is not gay, a claim a lower court had previously upheld. But the state's high court reversed the lower court's ruling because the language of the state law does not specify gender. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to consider the question of same-gender harassment in its upcoming session, because federal courts have been divided in their rulings based on federal civil rights law. There were payoffs for U.S. activists in two legal cases this week. The Navy was ordered to pay the legal costs incurred by Petty Officer Keith Meinhold in successfully defending against discharge proceedings after he announced he is gay on national television in 1992. That could represent more than $420,000. The Los Angeles Police Department reached a settlement including a payment of a total of $325,000 to 28 of the protestors involved in a 1991 demonstration against Governor Pete Wilson's veto of a civil rights bill. Although the police made no admission of wrongdoing in the settlement, the several hundred gays and lesbians at that peaceful demonstration were first herded onto a main street's median strip and then charged by police in riot gear and on horseback, who allegedly shouted anti-gay epithets while attacking protestors with their batons. And finally ... an anti-gay North Carolina attorney who's a self-avowed "family man" may be forced to come out -- as himself. The lawyer is working to strike down the city of Chapel Hill's policy of extending spousal benefits to its employees' gay and lesbian partners. With the permission of the judge in the case, the attorney has thus far identified himself only as "Publius Heterodoxus", because he fears the vengeance of what he calls "militant homosexuals". But the city's own attorney in the case believes there's little justification for his fear and may be challenging his anonymity in court. The North Carolina Press Association may bring him out with a lawsuit of its own, claiming that his anonymity flouts the state constitution's requirement that "all courts must be open". -------*-------- Sources for this week's report included: Agence France Presse, Associated Press, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Chicago Tribune, CMV-TV/Jamaica, Jamaica Gleaner, London Telegraph, London Times, Los Angeles Times, Minneapolis Star Tribune, News & Observer (Raleigh, N.C.), NewsPlanet, Reuters, St Louis Post Despatch, Sydney Morning Herald, United Press International; and cyberpress releases from the International Lesbian & Gay Association, retired U.S. Navy Petty Officer Keith Meinhold, and the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network.