NewsWrap for the week ending January 24th, 1998 (As broadcast on THIS WAY OUT Program #513, distributed 01-26-98) [Compiled & written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Brian Nunes, Jason Lin, Rex Wockner, Greg Gordon & Lucia Chappelle] Anchored by Cindy Friedman and Christopher David Trentham The Sicilian gay man who set himself afire outside Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome, to protest the Catholic Church's attitudes towards gays and lesbians, has died from his burns. Alfredo Ormando was 39 years old. The Italian national organization ArciGay proposed that the January 13th date of Ormando's self-immolation be observed as an "international anniversary of the fight against discrimination against gays and lesbians for religious motives." ArciGay called Ormando "the new hero of the struggle for liberation and for the civil rights of homosexuals" and said that, "The Roman Catholic Church should beg forgiveness for the sufferings inflicted on homosexuals." ArciGay has charged that the powerful influence of the Church in Italy has served to feed homophobia and to support official indifference to rampant violence against gays. That violence had been the subject of a candlelight march by ArciGay earlier on the date of Ormando's protest, a demonstration following up on the highly publicized murder this month of former Papal assistant Enrico Sini Luzi. Two murders in Milan have followed Luzi's, with similar modus operandi that have police considering if they might be related to at least 18 murders of gay men in Rome since 1990. Those victims were Milan gallery owner Renato Degni and then this week the chaplain of Milan's All Saints Episcopal Church, U.S. citizen Gregory Beheydt. Exemptions for religious organizations from a proposed human rights bill were defeated this week in Britain's House of Lords. Three separate amendments, introduced by Conservative Lords with the support of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, and the Chief Rabbi of the United Syn gues, were put forward in part so that churches would not be forced to ordain openly active gays and lesbians or to celebrate gay and lesbian unions. The amendments were defeated 93 to 82, as the Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine of Lairg, said for the Blair government that, "Nothing in the proceedings of the Bill has convinced us that it would be right to create any further exemptions." The proposed Human Rights Bill is an attempt to incorporate the European Convention on Human Rights into British law. The Evangelical Alliance UK, which represents churches of some 30 denominations with membership totalling one million, this week issued a public apology for past "un-Christian" responses to gays and lesbians -- but the group hasn't budged an inch from the notion that homosexual acts are sinful and should be a bar to ordination. The Alliance was releasing a new report called "Faith, Hope and Homosexuality," which calls for church leaders to "welcome and accept" gays and lesbians and to extend "love and compassion" to them -- but it also asks them to "save" gays and lesbians by supporting their "reorientation" to heterosexuality or, at the very least, their celibacy. In fact, it recommends "stringent disciplinary action" against congregants who won't stop "promoting" homosexual activity, and opposes recognition of same- gender partnerships as tending to undermine attempts at celibacy. Alliance General Director Joel Edwards said, "There is no place for homophobia within the Church. It hardly reflects the character of Christ and we reject it totally. We apologize unreservedly for the hurt which has been caused by our insensitivity and un-Christian behavior which has so often marked our response to gay and lesbian people." However, he immediately went on to make it clear that homosexual acts are "against God's will" and sinful -- it's just that they're no more sinful than other sexual sins, such as adultery and fornication. Another apology of sorts has come from the lawyer representing Paula Jones in her s arassment lawsuit against U.S. President Bill Clinton. John Whitehead is the founder and principal of the Virginia-based conservative legal assistance group, the Rutherford Institute. While Jones' is the first sexual harassment case the Institute has ever taken up, it's been ubiquitous throughout its 15-year history in its courtroom opposition to gays and lesbians across the U.S. -- and it's frequently appealed to homophobia in its fund-raising mailings. But in a recent interview, Whitehead said, "I should never have done those [homophobic fund-raising] mailings. They were wrong. About 95% of my opinion on the whole gay thing started changing a while ago. I was working with some gay people on a video project and I talked to them and started reading about the subject, and I saw that not only was I wrong but a great majority of evangelicals are out to lunch on the subject. Christ would not have been that way," he said, adding, "Homophobia is wrong." Whitehead also still believes that homosexuality is wrong, but no longer blames gay and lesbian people and feels they should be left in peace. He says his earlier fascination with the "reconstructionist" movement of R.J. Rushdoony, which seeks to make the U.S. a theocracy where homosexuality is punished with death, was just a passing enthusiasm. He says the Institute is now helping some gays with a legal case in Boston and has offered legal assistance to a group of Fairfax, Virginia teens in trouble for wearing drag to school. A non-gay Oakland, California boy with poor grades and Attention Deficit Disorder has lost his legal bid to return home after being sent by his parents to a behavioral modification center in Jamaica. The case of David Van Blarigan was closely watched by gay and lesbian youth advocates because David's experience is common among gay and lesbian teens whose parents cannot accept their sexual orientation. David was rousted from his bed at midnight, bundled off with two large strangers in a locked car for a 700-mile ride despite his pro sent off to the Tranquility Bay center in Jamaica. There he lives behind a high fence, with all his access to the outside world limited by staff who have been authorized by his parents to control him with pepper spray, Mace, physical restraints, or a stun gun. He was able to manage a phone call to a neighbor from the Jamaica airport, and as a result Deputy District Attorney Robert Hutchins filed a civil petition in an Alameda County court to order David's return home. Hutchins charged that David's parents were "aiders and abettors" in David's kidnapping and false imprisonment, and that they had exceeded the law by signing all their parental authority over to Tranquility Bay. David's parents are convinced they have done the best thing for David and believe that he is "safer" in Jamaica than he would be in Oakland. Since David was unable to testify at the hearing, the judge found that no evidence had been presented that he is in imminent danger, although the case could be reopened should that evidence be found. While about 100 parents of children in residential centers celebrated the ruling with cheers and high-fives, Shannon Minter of the San Francisco-based National Center for Lesbian Rights said that, "You should not be able as a parent to have your child forcibly abducted and sent to another country against his will." The lawsuit filed by U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer Tim McVeigh, to block his discharge based on the "gay" content of the profile associated with one of his America Online screen names, did not reach a conclusion this week, but there was plenty of activity related to it. America Online finally admitted that one of its employees had inappropriately provided a Navy investigator with the connection between the screen name and McVeigh, but in the same statement blamed the Navy for not having used its regular liaison and for the investigator's failure to identify himself as such. Attorneys representing the Navy argued in court that no law had been broken in the process of obtaining the informa America Online. McVeigh's case against the Navy was joined by the chief author of the Clinton administration's so-called "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. Charles Moskos, an expert in military sociology on the faculty of Northwestern University, gave the court a written statement charging that, "the Navy violated the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy ... by launching an investigation without there being credible evidence that Senior Chief McVeigh had engaged in homosexual acts or had openly stated that he was a homosexual." He added that it is such actions by the military that "pose the greatest threat to the efficacy of the policy." Additional support for McVeigh came in a letter to the Secretary of the Navy signed by 21 Congressional Representatives, including at least one Republican. They called for a reversal of the decision to discharge McVeigh, calling his case a "dramatic example of the Armed Forces' misapplication" of ‘Don't Ask, Don't Tell’" ... and they even charged that, "McVeigh's continued service has apparently been determined to be inconvenient for someone in a position to effect his discharge, notwithstanding his unblemished 17-year record." And finally ... transgender fish are causing serious alarm in Britain. A major study has found that water pollution including estrogen and synthetic chemicals that mimic it have caused a high level of egg production among males of one of Britain's most common fish, the roach. While even in "pristine" rivers about 10 percent of male roach show evidence of transgenderism, in polluted waters the percentages rose to 25 to 60%, and in Yorkshire's River Aire every single fish studied was affected to some degree. Legislation is being developed to ban the pollutants in the fear that they may begin to affect human males as well.