NewsWrap for the week ending October 4th, 1997 (As broadcast on THIS WAY OUT Program #497, distributed 10-06-97) [Compiled & written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Bjoern Skolander, Martin Rice, Graham Underhill, Alan Reekie, Steffen Jensen, Rex Wockner, Lucia Chappelle and Greg Gordon, and anchored by Tory Christopher and Jean Freer] It's been a week featuring several significant events regarding same-gender couples in courtrooms around the world. An interim opinion this week in a case before the European Court of Justice appeared to herald an historic victory for legal recognition of gay and lesbian couples. Briton Lisa Grant, a ticket clerk for South West Trains, has been seeking spousal travel benefits for her partner Jill Percey. The company offers employees' heterosexual partners, whether married or unmarried, 12 free trips per year anywhere in Britain and 75 percent off all other train fares. Grant's brief estimated the value of that benefit at about 1,000 pounds per year, or about 1,600 U.S. dollars. But South West Trains, joined in the case by the British government, has tried to take advantage of the fact that European law prohibits only discrimination based on gender, not sexual orientation. Its attorneys argued that there was no gender-based discrimination against Grant because the benefit is denied to gay male couples just as it is to lesbian pairs. But the European Union's Advocate General Michael Elmer's interim opinion in the case said, "The grant of the benefit in question depends upon the gender of the employee, in as much as employees must be of the opposite sex to their co-habitees. Gender is thus, objectively, the factor that leads to discrimination relating to pay against a particular group of employees." The EuroCourt's 15-judge panel follows such interim opinions in the large majority of cases, although its ruling isn't expected for another six months. Should the court agree with Elmer, it will definitely impact every form of employee compensation, including salaries, pensions, loans, mortgages, and other benefits. It is very likely to have even greater ramifications extending to issues of military service, age of consent, fostering and adoption of children, and equal marriage rights, not only for Britain but for all of the European Union's member countries. However, while Grant's counsel is confident of success, opponents suggest the judges may take a different tack from Elmer precisely because of the wide-ranging effects of such a decision. In Canada, an Ontario Court judge this week ordered inclusion of gay and lesbian couples in the definition of "spouse" in the provincial Insurance Act. Justice Douglas Coo also ordered Axa Insurance to pay Kelly Kane the $25,000 death benefit specified in its policy covering her late partner Robin Black. Coo's landmark ruling both sets a precedent and retroactively justifies other same-gender couples' past claims. He wrote in his decision, "The denial of equal benefit contained in the legislative provisions is deliberately based only on sexual orientation and runs against the preservation of human dignity and self-worth for part of our society ... The declaration simply carries forward and nurtures now abandoned stereotypical concepts that have no place in the fabric of our community." The insurance industry seemed quite relaxed about the decision, expecting that same-gender partners would make up only a small number of cases. The defendant in Coo's court was not the insurance company, which had previously been found to comply with the law as written, but Ontario's provincial government defending the law itself. The Ontario attorney general's case actually admitted that the law was discriminatory, but argued that the discrimination was justified, partly because some 90 other statutes share the same gendered definition of "spouse." Many of those laws have been tediously and expensively challenged in court through round after round of appeals, but the provincial legislature has repeatedly rejected proposals to amend them. A settlement was reached this week in a key legal challenge to Hawai'i's new "reciprocal beneficiary" relationships, the first statewide partnership registry in the U.S. Registration as reciprocal beneficiaries extends about one-seventh of the benefits of marriage to any two people who cannot legally marry each other, as part of a legislative compromise intended to stave off full equal marriage rights for gays and lesbians. Five of the state's largest employers had filed a federal lawsuit as soon as the legislation took effect in July, fearing they would have to pay out millions of dollars for additional family health insurance benefits. In fact, less than 250 couples in the state have registered in the first three months. The companies claimed that a federal law to maintain uniformity in health coverage does not recognize the new relationships and takes precedence over the state's law. However, the companies have agreed to a settlement based on state attorney general Margery Bronster's discovery of a loophole. Although the legislature required employers using private insurance carriers to provide family coverage for reciprocal beneficiaries, it neglected to amend the state code sections covering health maintenance organizations and group health associations. Those types of providers cover all but about 2,000 members of the state's workforce and do not have to extend coverage to reciprocal beneficiaries. But in the courts, the current settlement appears to buttress the plaintiffs' arguments in the gay and lesbian marriage case "Baehr versus Miike" by proving that only legal marriage can ensure equal treatment for gays and lesbians in the key benefit of health coverage. Costa Rica's Supreme Court has ruled in two separate cases that the government-supported health care system must provide combination drug treatments for people with AIDS. Previously, the government health care agency Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social, CCSS, had claimed there was not enough data to prove the so-called "cocktails" to be effective, and cited their high cost. However, that cost will be much lower for the government than it has been for individuals, and pales in comparison with the cost of hospital days the drugs will hopefully prevent. AIDS has become Costa Rica's leading cause of death by disease, and the large majority of the country's estimated 120,000 people with HIV are gay men. A local newspaper editorialized that, "It's hard to ignore the possibility that discrimination figures in the CCSS's 'hands-off' policy based on chronic ignorance." Even so, the health agency has been more progressive than the legislature, whose response to AIDS has been to consider harsh prison sentences for failure to inform a sex partner of one's HIV infection. Openly gay singer-songwriter Elton John's tribute to the late Diana, Princess of Wales, continues to smash sales records around the world. As of October 1st, more than 26 million copies of "Candle in the Wind 1997" had been shipped out, making it second only to Bing Crosby's legendary "White Christmas" as the best-selling single of all time. Now in release in more than 40 countries, the song has reached the top of the charts in 21 of them and remains there in five: Britain, Canada, France, Germany, and the U.S.. In its first six days in U.S. release, "Candle" sold almost 3-1/2 million copies in record stores alone, five times as many as the previous one-week high for a single, and moved to number three on the all-time sales list. It's already the all-time best-selling single in Austria, Belgium, Britain, Israel, Norway, and South Africa. In the coming week, it will lead the charts in Japan, only the second foreign release ever to do so. In the wake of "Candle's" phenomenal success, John's new album "The Big Picture" charted number nine in its U.S. debut. U.S. President Bill Clinton has appointed two lesbians and a gay man to three high level positions. This week he named veteran activist Ginny Apuzzo to serve as assistant to the president for management and administration. In terms of Washington protocol, this makes the former executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force the highest-ranking lesbian or gay in U.S. government to date. The position doesn't promise much visibility, but does offer extensive access to the president. Apuzzo's new job does not require a Senate confirmation, but there will be a Senate hearing in the coming week on Clinton's nomination of open gay John Berry as assistant secretary of the Interior for policy, management and budget. Clinton recently also made local Washington, D.C. activist Karen Tramontano both a deputy assistant to the president and counsel to the Office of Chief of Staff. And finally ... as Britain's Labour Party held its big party conference this week, for the first time the gay and lesbian contingent was allowed to stage a party at the same site, the Metropole Hotel in Brighton. For some time there have been Irish, Scottish and Welsh celebrations, but gays and lesbians had previously been forced to the fringes. The tickets sold like hotcakes and the party itself was the most spectacular, colorful and joyous of the conference events. But the advocacy group Stonewall, which organized the celebration, was somewhat disappointed that Stephen Twigg was the only one of Labour's four openly gay and lesbian Members of Parliament to attend. Much more disappointed were dozens of slightly nervous news reporters, who'd come hoping for titillating tales of the depravity of the Left. Instead they found only enthusiastic disco dancing, leading one to remark, "I really hate the New Labour. Even the gays are straight." -----------*------------- Sources for this week's report included: Agence France Presse, British Broadcasting Corporation, Entertainment Wire, Globe & Mail (Canada), Hollywood Reporter, Honolulu Advertiser, Honolulu Star Bulletin, The Independent (London), Irish Times, London Times, The Mirror (London), Press Association (Britain), Reuters, Telegraph (London), Toronto Star, Toronto Sun, Variety, Washington (DC) Blade; and cyberpress releases from European Court of Justice, Human Rights Campaign (U.S.), National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (U.S.), Triangulo Rosa (Costa Rica), Victory Fund (U.S.), and the White House.