NewsWrap for the week ending January 31st, 1998 (As broadcast on THIS WAY OUT Program #514, distributed 02-02-98) [Compiled & written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Brian Nunes, Jason Lin, Rex Wockner, Susan Gage, Greg Gordon & Lucia Chappelle] Anchored by Cindy Friedman and Jon Beaupré Romanian President Emil Constantinescu this week promised to pardon all prisoners convicted under the nation’s sodomy law. He said, “homosexuality is the last remaining human rights problem we have to address in Romania, and we will address it.” The promise came in an unprecedented meeting with representatives of IGLHRC, the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, and Human Rights Watch. While Constantinescu’s promise is hopeful news for the prisoners, by law each of them will have to make an individual application to the president -- and there’s still considerable work to be done to identify who they are, as official records can’t even provide a count of their numbers. Reform of the sodomy law was a condition of Romania’s entry into the Council Of Europe in 1993, but it took legislators months to make any progress on the question. The reform they finally instituted left a huge loophole for relations that “create a public scandal,” and its use for abuse of gays and lesbians by the courts and police has continued. The law has long been a subject of a variety of international protests. A judge’s ruling this week was the first to find that a branch of the U.S. military had actually violated the so-called “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy on gay and lesbian servicemembers. U.S. District Court Judge Stanley Sporkin made final his preliminary ruling in the case of Senior Chief Petty Officer Tim McVeigh, declaring that the Navy should never have undertaken an investigation of mcveigh based solely on the “gay” content of a profile associated with one of his several america on-line screen names. Sporkin also found that the Navy had violated the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act when an investigator acted under false pretenses to find out from America Online that the screen name actually belonged to McVeigh, without having obtained either his consent, a warrant or a court order. Sporkin ordered McVeigh back to active duty, although he did not believe it was within his powers to discuss McVeigh’s actual tasks. The decorated 17-year-veteran had been chief of the boat, the top enlisted man, on a fast-attack nuclear submarine. But since the Navy began to investigate him in September, he’s been doing construction work onshore at a substantially reduced salary. The Navy says he will now work as a librarian, coordinating technical publications. McVeigh’s attorney also raised concerns about the hostile reception he was receiving from his colleagues, but the commander of the pacific fleet has denied that there is any such problem. The Navy, which denies any wrongdoing in the case, is preparing to appeal Sporkin’s ruling, but would apparently prefer to negotiate a settlement that would allow McVeigh to retire early. In the Australian state of Victoria, police spying is the subject of a major scandal. It was discovered this week that records of covert operations which were supposed to have been destroyed in 1989 are actually still extant, with police apparently having intentionally misled a government ombudsman overseeing the process. The records reflect a period in which police infiltrated a broad range of liberal organizations, and did it so completely that they ended up doing the work of those organizations -- including producing programming for a community radio station. Gay and lesbian activists were among the many targets of police spies, leading the president of the lesbigay ALSO Foundation, Kris Sanderson, to say that, “Never in Australian history has the need for enumerated civil rights and human rights been greater than the discovery and disclosure of secret police files held by the Victorian police.” Sanderson said relations between Victoria’s gay and lesbian community and police are at an all-time low. It’s a different story in the Australian state of New South Wales, though, as police in Sydney pilot enhanced response to hate crimes which is planned to extend statewide. Gay and lesbian activists lobbied hard for the new program, in the face of 31 homicides in the state last year officially found to have been motivated by homophobia. Police are receiving special training to ensure a sensitive response to victims of hate crimes. They are to treat as a hate crime any crime apparently motivated by prejudice, from assaults to graffiti, and to ask victims if they believe a crime to be bias-motivated. Police are then to provide additional support to those victims, including specialized counseling services. They will also be collecting information about offenders, which will be compiled in a central database for the first time. In Italy, a young shepherd was kidnapped, tortured and left for dead by the ‘Ndrangheta, the Calabrian Mafia, because of his relationship with an older man. The attack is believed to have been undertaken at the behest of the older man’s relatives. Two men have been arrested and several others are under investigation. The young man, who was abducted, beaten with sticks, threatened with a gun, tied up with barbed wire, and hung from a tree, is now in hiding. In South Africa, a lesbian police captain went to court this week to obtain health care coverage for her partner in a case believed to be the first of its kind there. Should Captain Jolanda Langemaat’s lawsuit succeed, it could be a meaningful precedent for all gays and lesbians in public employment. South Africa’s new constitution and policies of the South African Police Service itself both take strong positions against discrimination based on sexual orientation. But when Langemaat tried to enroll her partner for spousal coverage under the POLMED program, the couple were viewed as merely friends because they are not legally married. Langemaat and Beverly-Ann Myburgh have been together for more than 11 years, bought a house together in 1990, share all responsibilities, and have life insurance policies naming each other as beneficiaries. Langemaat says she would marry Myburgh if she could, and declares their relationship to be “equal to any marriage.” She has the support of the South African Police Service Gay And Lesbian Network and of the National Coalition For Gay And Lesbian Equality. POLMED fears that extending the definition of “spouse” would lead to massive new enrollment that would bankrupt the program altogether. It looks as if legal registered partnerships won’t be coming to Belgium any time soon. Even though a parliamentary committee spent six months developing a legislative proposal on the subject, it’s turned out to be too controversial to proceed. The strongest opposition has come from Francophone MP’s who object to granting equal parental and adoption rights to same-gender couples. Ironically, France itself is about to take up consideration of a strong domestic partnership measure. Key West this week became the first city in Florida to approve extending benefits to its unmarried workers’ domestic partners, including family leave and other benefits in addition to healthcare. At the same time, the city established a domestic partners registry, which is open only to local residents. But Florida’s Constitution Revision Commission this week rejected a plan for an amendment to the state constitution to add “sexual orientation” as a category protected from discrimination, by a vote of 16 to 14. The voting has begun on a ballot initiative to repeal Maine’s new civil rights protections for gays and lesbians, as absentee ballots became available this week. Many voters aren’t even aware that the special election has been scheduled for February 10th, since the civil rights question is the only issue on the ballot and there’s been little political advertising. The outcome will probably depend primarily on voter turnout, which has been predicted to run less than 20%, particularly if there is bad weather; as one repeal supporter put it, the election “will be decided by the ideologues.” Repeal supporters are campaigning largely through churches and phone banking. Civil rights supporters are only about halfway to their fund-raising goal, and although they’ve raised considerably more than the repeal campaign, they had to outspend their opponents by 10-to-1 to win a victory for gay rights in the state’s 1995 general election. Charges have been dismissed against the man who rode a horse into a National Coming Out Day Rally in Minnesota as the state Supreme Court decided this week that the law used against him is unconstitutional. There is no dispute that self-styled preacher Kurtis Machholz rode his percheron into the crowd in Rochester in 1995, knocking over its sign and yelling homophobic insults at the demonstrators; he admits that he intended to disrupt the rally. But although a state appeals court found this to be “plainly harassing conduct,” the state’s high court found that the anti-harassment law Machholz was charged with violating was so broad as to infringe on free speech rights, and struck it down. Disappointed Olmstead County Prosecutor Ray Schmitz is considering refiling with lesser charges. And finally ... Sotheby’s London auction house expected to clear more than 2.5 million dollars this week from sales of the belongings of the late Bunny Roger and his two brothers. The big-time fashion designer was legendary for being fabulously “out” as a gay man long before Stonewall, from his ouster from Oxford in the 1920’s for “corrupting” practices to his 80th birthday celebration in 1991. There he made an entrance amidst smoke and flames in a skintight sequined costume with an organza cloak and a bird-of-paradise headdress. Roger was noted for his bravery in World War 2, even though he went through the war wearing a chiffon scarf and clutching a copy of “Vogue”. One enduring tale has his sergeant asking Roger what to do in the face of a German advance, to which he replied, “When in doubt, powder heavily.”