NewsWrap for the week ending March 7th, 1998 (As broadcast on THIS WAY OUT Program #519, distributed 03-09-98) [Compiled & written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Brian Nunes, Jason Lin, Rex Wockner, Frank Stoltze, Greg Gordon & Lucia Chappelle] Anchored by Jean Freer and Brian Nunes In a landmark decision this week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that sexual abuse in the workplace can be sexual harassment in violation of the federal civil rights law, even when the perpetrator and the victim are both of the same gender. The ruling clarifies a question on which lower courts had taken widely different positions. The high court overturned an appeals court ruling that no case of same-gender harassment could ever qualify as sexual harassment, saying, "We see no justification ... for a categorical rule excluding same-sex harassment claims." That position allows gays and lesbians to receive equal treatment in the courts, and may even offer them some protection from discriminatory treatment that the laws of most states don't provide. Some lower courts had found that same-gender harassment only violated the civil rights law in cases where the perpetrator was lesbian or gay, a position with dangerous potential for anti-gay "witch hunts," but the high court did not feel a need to mention sexual orientation at all in its decision. The court did strongly emphasize that to qualify as sexual harassment, the abuse had to be serious and the perpetrator had to treat one gender differently from the other. In response to concerns that the civil rights law might become "a general civility code for the American workplace," the court noted that "That risk is no greater for same-sex than for opposite-sex harassment." Tony Barona, Chief Counsel for the national lesbian and gay advocacy group the Human Rights Campaign, summed up the ruling saying: "What matters is whether the workplace environment has been made ... violent, and pretty much unpalatable for that victim, and that sexual orientation itself isn't at issue." Sexual orientation definitely was an issue for the plaintiff, Joseph Oncale, who was reluctant to pursue his complaint for some time because he worried about being perceived as gay. He alleges that he was seriously abused by supervisors while working in an all-male environment on an offshore oil rig, and that his employer, Sundowner Offshore Services, did not act on his complaints. He ultimately quit the job in fear that he would be sexually assaulted. Lower courts had dismissed his case on the basis of gender alone, but thanks to the Supreme Court ruling, Oncale’s lawsuit will now receive a hearing for the first time. Romanian President Emil Constantinescu seems to be following through on his January promise to two human rights groups to pardon prisoners convicted under the nation's sodomy law, Article 200. This week, he pardoned Mariana Cetiner, who had been adopted as a "prisoner of conscience" by Amnesty International because the human rights group believes she was imprisoned solely because of her sexual orientation. She had completed about two years of a three-year prison term during which she says she was beaten. Although decriminalizing homomsexual acts between consenting adults was made a requirement for Romania's entry into the Council of Europe in 1993, the legislative reform achieved after years of parliamentary struggle includes a large loophole for actions which "cause a public scandal." Some activists say that the situation for gays and lesbians has actually become worse under the new law. The "public scandal" clause was applied to Cetiner in a judgment which found that her overture to another woman "became known to others," who were indignant and repelled. Constantinescu made his promise of pardons after meeting with representatives of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission and Human Rights Watch, but he doesn't have the legal authority to simply issue a blanket order. The law only allows him to grant individual pardons to those prisoners who go through the process of applying for them. The U.S. National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs this week released its fourth annual compilation of homophobic, transphobic and AIDS-phobic bias crimes reported by 14 venues across the country. The group documented 2,445 bias attacks in 1997, up two percent from the previous year, even though serious crimes in general in the U.S. are sharply down. Eighteen of the reported crimes were homicides. The Coalition emphasized two findings in particular. One was an increase of more than three-quarters in hate crimes committed by police officers, with an increase of more than four-fifths in attacks committed inside police stations and jails. The other was a more than one-third rise in homophobic attacks on non-gays. Spokesperson Christine Quinn said that, "This underscores the fact that hate crimes are crimes of perception. Victims are chosen not necessarily because they are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or HIV-positive, but because the perpetrator perceives them to be. No one is safe from hate crimes. It is in everyone's interest to stop this epidemic of hate." The first man ever to be convicted by an Australian Superior Court jury for "reckless endangerment" because he had unprotected sex while infected with HIV, was sentenced this week to 8 years in prison, with no possibility of parole for five years. The defendant, referred to in court only as "F," has led a double life for a dozen years, living with his common-law wife and their child while secretly continuing to have relations with men. He was convicted on 10 counts involving three young men with intellectual disabilities, but he was acquitted of another 7 counts, some involving a fourth individual. In no case did he reveal his HIV status to his partners. Two of them became infected with HIV and one of them went on to infect a woman. In handing down the sentence, the judge said he wanted "to send a clear signal to the community of the requirement for personal responsibility." The convicted man is expected to die of AIDS before completing his prison term. This week for the first time, the Boy Scouts of America lost a round at the appeals court level in defending their policy of excluding open gays. A New Jersey state appellate court ruled unanimously that, "There is absolutely no evidence before us, empirical or otherwise, supporting a conclusion that a gay scoutmaster, solely because he is a homosexual, does not possess the strength of character necessary to properly care for, or to impart [Boy Scouts'] humanitarian ideals to the young boys in his charge." The three-judge panel agreed to order the Boy Scouts of America to reinstate openly gay Eagle Scout James Dale as a member of the organization, but only two agreed that he should be reinstated as an assistant scoutmaster. Dale had been a stellar Scout and became an assistant scoutmaster at the invitation of his troop, but the national organization rejected him after he was featured in a newspaper report in 1990 as a leader of the lesbigay group at his college. When his case went to trial court in 1995, a county judge ruled against him in a decision heavily laden with Biblical references to Sodom and Gomorrah. The appeals court, though, found that the Boy Scouts are a public accommodation subject to New Jersey's Law Against Discrimination, rather than a private group whose freedom of association is protected under the federal constitution. Dale was ecstatic about the ruling: "This is everything that I was taught in the Boy Scouts that said justice will prevail. The irony is that the decision and ruling in my favor is everything that the Boy Scouts taught me all along -- this totally fits into line with every single Boy Scout policy I learned over 12 years, every practice, everything I was taught, and everything I still believe in." Boy Scouts of America spokesperson Greg Shields, however, said the issue is far from settled: "We intend to appeal to the New Jersey Supreme Court. The Boy Scouts of America has a right, as a voluntary association, to teach youths the traditional values it's taught since our founding in 1910, and we have a right to establish membership and leadership standards." But there are signs that the Scouts are beginning to relent. Their national board has decided to split the current Explorers programs for boys age 14 and up into two branches: "Venturing," which would maintain the group's current quasi-religious values, and "Career Explorers," in which individual groups would have some latitude in selecting their own values on issues such as sexual orientation and belief in God. And finally ... film star and producer Jodie Foster has for years been denying rumors that she is a lesbian, but ironically, now that she's pregnant, she may find it even harder to convince people. She admitted her impending motherhood to gossip columnist Liz Smith, but refuses to tell reporters anything about the father or the method she used. She also affirmed that she'll be a single mother, just as her own mother was. But at the same time, one of her three current film projects is something called, "The Baby Dance". It has Laura Dern, who played the love interest on the famous coming- out episode of the ABC sitcom "Ellen," co-starring with Stockard Channing as a lesbian couple who are seeking to adopt.