NewsWrap for the week ending April 11th, 1998 (As broadcast on THIS WAY OUT Program #524, distributed 04-13-98) [Compiled & written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Jason Lin, Graham Underhill, Brian Nunes, Martin Rice, Rex Wockner, Ron Buckmire, Greg Gordon & Lucia Chappelle] Anchored by Cindy Friedman and Dean Elzinga Namibia's High Court has allowed a foreign national to immigrate based on a same-gender relationship for the first time. The decision overruled the country’s Immigration Selection Board, finding the Board had failed to take into account that the couple was unable to win immigration rights through legal marriage. Permanent residence was granted to German educator Liz Frank, who's been living in Namibia for eight years and involved with her Namibian lesbian partner for 7-1/2 years. Her lawsuit maintained that the Immigration Selection Board's rejection of her applications violated her rights to equality, privacy, freedom from discrimination, and protection of family under the Namibian constitution. Namibia's gay and lesbian advocacy group the Rainbow Project called the ruling "a mark of recognition of lesbian and gay relationships." The ruling was particularly welcome since a year ago Namibian President Sam Nujoma and his SWAPO party were declaring that "homosexuals must be condemned and rejected in our society" and calling homosexuality an "alien practice" and a "hideous deviation" which was destroying traditional Namibian culture. Two-time U.S. Presidential candidate Ross Perot made his company Perot Systems the first in the country to stop offering spousal healthcare benefits to the same-gender partners of its gay and lesbian employees. The computer services company extended spousal benefits to gay and lesbian domestic partners at the end of 1996, in a decision Perot protested. He was not actively involved in the management of the company at that time, but over the last nine months he's taken the reins again as both CEO and Chairman of the Board. Perot insists that he has never discriminated against gays and lesbians, but he believes it's unfair to extend spousal benefits to same- gender partners while denying them to those in other kinds of shared housing relationships. However, he believes that a broader domestic partners policy would be prohibitively expensive. The gay and lesbian advocacy group the Human Rights Campaign called Perot's action "totally unnecessary and mean- spirited" and "completely out of step with American business -- especially the information technology business," in which domestic partner benefits have become an industry standard. A U.S. federal judge's ruling this week seems to have pleased both sides in the leading legal challenge to San Francisco's pioneering law requiring that its contractors give their employees' domestic partners the same benefits as legally married spouses. The national Air Transport Association had argued that the city could not override federal regulations to impose its local requirements on carriers using San Francisco International Airport. U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken generally agreed with the airlines, but she made a distinction between the city's role as a regulator of the use of public property at the airport, and its role as a contractor with providers of goods and services. She affirmed that as a contractor the city does have a right to impose its requirement, not only for those contractor employees who work in San Francisco, but also for those who work elsewhere but are directly involved in manufacturing goods or providing services to the city. San Francisco's attorneys believe Wilken's ruling is the first major court decision to uphold a domestic partners ordinance. In the wake of the Canadian Supreme Court's landmark ruling forcing Alberta to consider sexual orientation a protected category under its provincial human rights law, a homophobic campaign by the religious right has led to harassment and threats against gays and lesbians at a level not seen for a decade. The Canada Family Action Coalition and church groups used phone calls, letters, leaflets, press conferences, and paid print, radio and television announcements, to demand that Alberta's parliament sidestep the court's decision by invoking the so-called "notwithstanding" clause. Despite their intensive lobbying, Alberta Premier Ralph Klein was able to convince his Conservative Party caucus to stand behind civil rights for gays and lesbians. About one-third of the Tory MP's, mostly from rural areas, vigorously opposed him. Klein also plans to mount a public education effort to counter the exaggerated claims of the religious right with the modest facts about the court decision's real impact. The main effect of the ruling is to simply allow gays and lesbians recourse to the provincial Human Rights Commission if they feel they've experienced discrimination. One specific area in which further controversy is brewing is the possible effect of the decision on three Alberta mayors who refuse to issue proclamations for gay and lesbian pride observances. The U.S. Department of Defense this week previewed its long-awaited internal study of the so-called "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy on military service by gays and lesbians. Although the Pentagon counted a steady increase in the number of discharges for homosexuality from almost 600 in 1994 to almost 1,000 in 1997, Secretary of Defense William Cohen insists that overall the policy is working. But to the alarm of gay and lesbian activists, the Pentagon is also maintaining that most of the increase in discharges is due to voluntary statements of sexual orientation by relatively new personnel seeking to leave the service, a claim not at all well-documented in the report. By contrast, the gay and lesbian Servicemembers Legal Defense Network dealt with only 22 "don't tell" violations in 1997, compared with 563 policy violations by commanders. Even a key creator of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," sociologist Charles Moskos, questioned how many of servicemembers' so-called voluntary statements were actually "generated by asking" on the part of higher-ups. Others wondered how many of those statements were made by servicemembers victimized by homophobic harassment. One important point of agreement between activists and the Pentagon, though, is that commanders need more training and information about the policy and its proper implementation, and Cohen has said that they will finally receive it. In the United Kingdom, about 70 diverse gay and lesbian groups have met in their largest congress in over a decade to form a coalition called the Equality Alliance. The Alliance is designed to coordinate members' groups' efforts into a united campaign for equal treatment for gays and lesbians. In the words of OutRage! spokesperson Peter Tatchell, the coalition "signals a new determination to intensify the fight against discrimination." Some of the top targets for reform include lowering the age of consent for sex between men to 16 years, as it is for heterosexual and lesbian acts; increased penalties for homophobic hate crimes; and protections from discrimination in employment. The Alliance is also renewing the struggle against the notorious Section 28, a 1988 law prohibiting local government support for anything "promoting homosexuality," including school-based education and counseling programs. In the future, the Alliance looks forward to international organizing for reforms in the European Union. Leaders of the Council of Europe this week gave Cyprus one last month in which to decriminalize homosexual acts between consenting adults, but the country’s Greek Orthodox Church has mounted a major campaign in defense of the sodomy law. Cyprus was first ordered to reform the law in 1993 in a European Court case brought by gay activist Alecos Modinos. But legislators have stalled and ducked the issue, which has sparked major protests each time it's been raised. Cyprus' government feels it must and will enact sodomy reform, because Europe remains the last best hope for the nation against Turkish incursions, and particularly for the Greek Cypriot refugees who've had to flee the Turks. But Archbishop Chrysostomos said in a televised interview that, "If we don't stand firm and tell Europe [homosexuality] does not conform, not only to Christ's religion, but also to the moral standpoint of our nation, eventually they will come and tell us to be homosexuals in order to be accepted into Europe. If you go and say it's all right to be a homosexual, you will encourage it and the place will be full of homosexuals. ... The Church considers decriminalization to be against what is holy and against human dignity." New Zealand's religious right was alarmed this week when the New Zealand Post Children's Book of the Year prize went to the nation's first lesbian- themed novel for young adults. Open lesbian Paula Boock's "Dare, Truth or Promise" is the story of two teenage girls who fall in love, an experience she describes as "incredibly life changing, even more life-changing if it involves the whole issue of identity." Boock said, "Ten percent of our young women in New Zealand are lesbians. There's no book about that in New Zealand, it's crazy. My book acknowledges that and gives them something to think about and read about without feeling utterly isolated." But Christian Heritage Party leader Graham Capill called a press conference the day of the awards to call on the contest's sponsors to intervene on the grounds that the lesbian content was contrary to the intent of the award. Calling the selection of Boock's book "unbelievably warped," Capill said, "In my opinion such material is inherently unsuitable. It is a sad reflection on the warped moral values that children are now confronted with." And finally ... every so often there's a story about some community trying to change the name of a street or landmark called "gay" -- but in Southern California, the Fullerton City Council was asked by the police department to move in the opposite direction, to make homophobia the new weapon in its efforts to control gang activities. Specifically, Police Chief Patrick McKinley hoped to influence what's now the Baker Street Gang to relinquish its hold by renaming the cul-de-sac "Pansy Circle". He claimed this would "take away the macho image of the area ... and make it not so attractive to the gang." While Police Sergeant Dave Stanko blew a little smoke by describing the pansy as a symbol of rejuvenation, he also said that, "The other connotation besides a flower is something a gang wouldn't want to identify with." The City Council was fearful of being offensive and nixed the pansy idea, but latched on to the concept of flower names and postponed further action to take public input. Councilmember Richard Jones suggested that the gang's graffiti artists might be defeated by the spelling challenge of "rhododendron" or "chrysanthemum."