NewsWrap for the week ending March 14th, 1998 (As broadcast on THIS WAY OUT Program #520, distributed 03-16-98) [Compiled & written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to UFMCC’s Reverend Mel White, and to Graham Underhill, Brian Nunes, Jason Lin, Martin Rice, Rex Wockner, Greg Gordon & Lucia Chappelle] Anchored by Brian Nunes and Jean Freer A United Methodist Church jury this week fell one vote short of convicting a minister who performed a ceremony blessing a lesbian couple. Pastor Jimmy Creech of Omaha, Nebraska's First United Methodist Church could have been stripped of his credentials, but instead is back in his pulpit this weekend, for the first time since being suspended in November. The leaders and most of the members of his congregation support honoring same-gender couples, but Creech's bishop had specifically ordered him not to carry out the ceremony. A neighboring minister filed the complaint that led to this week's church trial, the first test of the authority of the denomination's 1996 policy against "homosexual union ceremonies." Of the 13 jurors, all Nebraska Methodist ministers themselves, 11 found that Creech had indeed performed a "homosexual union ceremony." Apparently the other two agreed with Creech that that term has never been defined, and that what he did was bless two women's covenant with each other. The second question, and larger issue of the trial, was whether the church's so-called Social Principles actually carry the force of church law, but some of the jury apparently agreed with Creech that they are only guidelines. It would have taken 9 jurors to convict Creech of having violated the order and discipline of the church, but only 8 found that he had. Creech was thrilled by the outcome: "I'm exhilarated, I think this is a victory for the United Methodist Church. We had a jury of very courageous pastors who understood the need for pastors to be able to respond to their members without restrictions and be able to be sources of God's grace to them all." Others disagreed as to the broader impact of the ruling. After the trial, Nebraska Bishop Joel Martinez, the man whose direct order Creech violated when he performed the ceremony in September, shook hands with Creech before telling the media: "This jury trial, uh, was about this case, this time ... it doesn't make Church-wide law, it just relates to this verdict." But before the verdict was announced, President Bill Clinton's pastor, Reverend Phil Wogaman of Washington, D.C.'s Foundry United Methodist Church, who had testified in Creech's defense and declared that the church must support loving relationships, said that the impact of the decision would be significant: "What happens here in Nebraska will affect the Church all over the country, and probably all over the world." A Roman Catholic bishop in South Africa has called on his colleagues not to oppose the establishment of legal same-gender marriages there. Acting assistant Bishop of Cape Town Reginald Cawcutt made his emotional plea to the South African Catholic Bishops' Conference as the cover story in the church periodical "Southern Cross." He noted the unequal treatment of gay and lesbian couples in pension funds, insurance, ownership of property, hospital visitation, and inheritance. At least one priest supported Cawcutt, describing what he called "a sophisticated difference" between the legal recognition of a union and Church recognition of a marriage. But Archbishop Wilfred Napier, vice president of the Bishops' Conference, criticized the magazine for "sensationalizing" the story and slammed Cawcutt for being so concerned with "material matters" that he neglected "the moral question." Napier also doubted that discrimination based on sexual orientation is widespread. The movement to reject gay and lesbian marriages continues in U.S. state legislatures. The House of Representatives in both Iowa and Kentucky this week passed by overwhelming margins bills to deny legal recognition to same- gender marriages another state may someday perform. In Alaska, a proposed state constitutional amendment to restrict marriage to "one man and one woman" was passed by a state Senate committee, and the Alaska House approved a resolution calling on the state Supreme Court to act quickly in reviewing a gay couple's lawsuit to obtain a marriage license. But in the Australian state of Victoria, the Equal Opportunity Commission has called on the state government to grant gay and lesbian couples the same legal recognition as unmarried heterosexual pairs for almost all purposes. The occasion was the Commission's release of a report based on eight months' investigation and more than 500 submissions. Its findings were acceptable to at least some social conservatives, because it did not call for extending equal marriage rights for same-gender couples, and stated that adoption and in vitro fertilization services were areas that needed more debate. Victoria's state attorney general is now reviewing the report and will present the government's response to the state parliament. And Chrysler Canada will now be extending spousal benefits to the domestic partners of its gay and lesbian employees, after losing an arbitration with the Canadian Auto Workers Union. The only exception to equal treatment for same-gender couples is pension benefits, because of federal tax regulations ... but even there, the arbitrator specified reconsideration once a pending appeals court ruling has been issued. General Motors established domestic partner benefits for its small number of Canadian employees following contract negotiations in 1996, while Ford Motor Company of Canada is already facing a grievance because it has not. The U.S. employees of the Big Three automakers are not directly affected by the decision. Some primary and special elections were held in the U.S. this week, with happy outcomes for some openly gay and lesbian candidates. Liz Malia will become the first open lesbian or gay to sit in the Massachusetts state legislature in 20 years, following her landslide win of a Boston area seat. Tempe, Arizona Mayor Neil Giuliano was re-elected to a third term in his first campaign since publicly coming out as a gay man. Although Giuliano's opponent tried to campaign on the issues, the Arizona Christian Coalition attacked the entire city leadership as "anti-family," and several Giuliano campaign signs were spray-painted with the word "gay" just a day before the vote. Open gay Gary Resnick won an at-large seat on the City Council of Wilton Manors, Florida. Openly gay Oregon state Representative George Eighmey and openly lesbian first-time candidate Barbara Willer both won spots in a May runoff election for the Board of Multnomah County. A string of anti-gay protests in the Caribbean began with the Cayman Islands' refusal of docking privileges to a gay cruise, but didn't end there -- although the demonstrators could make better choices about their targets. Save The Bahamas, a group originally formed to protest the group rejected by the Caymans, gathered several hundred demonstrators to protest a visit by the Holland America line ship "Veendam." As it turned out, contrary to rumors, the Veendam had not been chartered by a gay group. Bahamian Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham, despite heavy public criticism, continues to say that his nation welcomes all tourists, and cannot discriminate based on sexual orientation because it is a signatory of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Also this week, the leader of the Jamaica Council of Churches spoke out against a scheduled appearance by the band The Village People at the Negril Music Festival on the grounds that the group highlights gay behavior. At least one member of the band that was famous in the 1970's has been actively denying that any of the group were ever gay, but as it turns out the whole issue is moot: the Village People have cancelled their Jamaica gig because of an injury to one of their members. While Britain has been pressuring its Caribbean overseas territories to decriminalize consensual sex between men, its own laws still require a higher age of consent for gay acts than for heterosexual or lesbian ones. That should finally change in the next three months, as the government agreed this week to have the House of Commons take up the question before its summer recess. The question will probably take the form of a backbencher's amendment to the Crime and Disorder Bill, and is expected to pass by a wide margin. An alternative procedure would have delayed equalization going into effect until 1999. British authorities this week continued their assault on the works of the late openly gay photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Earlier this month, Birmingham area police, tipped off by a photo lab, seized from an art student a copy of a 1992 Mapplethorpe collection she'd checked out of the library of the University of Central England. The Crown Prosecution Service went on to decide that two 20-year-old photos of gay male sex acts in the book violate the Obscene Publications Act as being likely to "deprave and corrupt." Detectives this week met with a representative of the book's publisher, Random House, demanding either the removal of the two photos from all copies of the book or the destruction of the entire stock. As did the University before them, the publishers refused, turning the matter over to attorneys. Random House CEO Gail Rebuck said, "We consider this investigation to be wholly misguided, and are astonished that a scholarly work of such acknowledged artistic and literary merit should be at risk of prosecution. We ... still hope that sense will ultimately prevail." And finally ... it's never easy for those who seek to censor electronic media to screen out material they find offensive. Rick Bray has been developing something called TVGuardian that scans the captions provided for the hearing impaired. When the device finds what Bray has programmed as an offensive word, it mutes the audio, and substitutes another term in the caption that appears on the screen. Yet sometimes editing demands a human touch. One problem Bray ran into involved reruns of a squeaky-clean 1960's sitcom. When TVGuardian processed "The Dick Van Dyke Show", the star's name was translated to "Jerk Van Gay."