NewsWrap for the week ending April 3rd, 1999 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #575, distributed 4-5-99) [Compiled & written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Brian Nunes, Jason Lin, Martin Rice, Rex Wockner, Chris Ambidge, Greg Gordon & Lucia Chappelle] Anchored by Leo Garcia and Cindy Friedman The human rights watchdog group Amnesty International held its first meeting of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender activists in London in late March. Participants came from 25 nations on five continents, including an Albanian delegate who arrived only after a thousand-mile detour around the conflict in the Balkans. The meeting was a significant step in plans developed last year to beef up Amnesty's response to human rights violations against lesbigays and transgenders. Participants organized a coordinating committee within Amnesty to spotlight those abuses. Sodomy laws will be a key target of those Amnesty International efforts, and the sodomy law in the Cayman Islands came to the fore this week. The Caymans government issued an official statement opposing repeal of the rarely-enforced sodomy law there. It said, "We abide by the views of the vast majority of Caymanians who live in a Christian community based on firmly held religious beliefs that homosexuality should not be legalized." The statement came in response to a British government proposal to extend citizenship to the residents of its overseas territories, including the Cayman Islands. In exchange, the territories are expected to bring their laws into conformity with Britain's international treaties, which require decriminalization of private non-commercial homosexual acts between consenting adults. Britain has warned that it will impose legal changes on the territories if they do not comply voluntarily. The territories may seek independence instead. The Cayman Islands made headlines early last year when it refused docking privileges to a cruise ship, fearing inappropriate behavior by its 900 gay passengers. But while those Caribbean nations struggle to keep homosexual acts a crime, Canada continues to progress towards equal legal status for same-gender couples. This week Finance Minister Paul Martin said the federal government will be moving to recognize gay and lesbian couples for purposes of income tax and public pension benefits. He said that these significant changes flow naturally from the government's earlier decision to accept a court ruling allowing same-gender partners to benefit from pension funds. That created an inconsistency in the Income Tax Act, defining common-law couples more broadly in one section while restricting them to "opposite sex" elsewhere. Martin said his department is working out the details of amending both the Income Tax Act and the Canada Pension Plan to extend to gay and lesbian couples the same treatment accorded unmarried heterosexual couples. And in British Columbia -- Canada's leader in recognizing gay and lesbian families -- provincial Attorney General Ujjal Dosanjh has announced plans to expand the rights of those who outlive their partners. In the upcoming legislative session, he'll propose expanding the definition of "spouse" in four laws affecting survivors. Same-gender partners would be recognized regarding disposal of remains, amending wills, distribution of estates where there is no will, and collection of damages and benefits in cases of deaths resulting from negligence. Some civil rights measures have also advanced in the U.S.: The New York state Assembly voted to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation by 105-to-43 -- the largest margin yet. Although similar bills have been proposed in New York since the 1970's, in recent years Republican Majority Leader Joseph Bruno has blocked them from reaching the state Senate floor. But several factors suggest this year might be different, including a lobbying visit to the legislature by 150 gays and lesbians as part of the nationwide "Equality Begins At Home" campaign, and the presence of New York's first openly gay state Senator Tom Duane. More likely to achieve passage this session is a bill against job discrimination in Nevada. The Nevada Assembly voted 30-to-11 this week to add sexual orientation to the categories protected by state law, with five Republicans joining all but two Democrats in support. The bill's author openly gay Assemblymember David Parks is confident that his bill will also pass the state Senate and be signed into law by the governor. No one spoke from the floor in opposition to the measure, but the Nevada Eagle Forum lobbied against it, calling it part of the "world expansion of homosexual influence." A bill to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation is headed towards a floor debate for the first time in Colorado's history. Two Republicans joined four Democrats to outvote four Republicans on the state's House Appropriations Committee, but it faces an uphill battle. Both houses of the legislature are dominated by Republicans, and while new Republican Governor Bill Owens has not specifically discussed this measure, he has opposed some other legislation favorable to gays and lesbians. The University of Notre Dame's refusal to add sexual orientation to its non-discrimination policy has led an openly gay tenured professor to quit in protest. Mark Jordan said that the Catholic university "is no longer a place that I think I can be a Catholic scholar." Jordan has won international recognition in Catholic and mideval studies. His books include "The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology" and "Homosexuality in the Modern Catholic Church." He's taking a named chair at Methodist-affiliated Emory University, which not only protects gays and lesbians from discrimination, but provides spousal benefits to domestic partners. But in New York, a judge this week dismissed two lesbians' lawsuit to have their partners live with them in their school-subsidized housing at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Students Sara Levin and Maggie Jones claimed the school's married-couples-only policy discriminated against them based both on sexual orientation and marital status. Supported by the American Civil Liberties Union's Lesbian and Gay Rights Project, they intend to appeal. Spousal health and insurance benefits for unmarried employees' domestic partners have also been unanimously rejected by the Regents of New Mexico State University. By contrast, the University of New Mexico has offered the same benefits to same-gender partners of its gay and lesbian employees for five years. Another campus issue will be taken up for consideration by the U.S. Supreme Court. That's the case of five Christian University of Wisconsin law students who object to a portion of their required student activity fees supporting the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Campus Center, among other groups. The students have won the first two rounds in court, claiming violation of their free speech rights in being forced to support the politics and ideologies of groups they disagree with. The nation's highest court has agreed to take up the University's appeal, which claims the funds are used to create a public forum rather than to support any specific political agenda. A decision is expected next year. Any single student's contribution to any single campus group amounts to well under a dollar per year. A civil lawsuit got underway this week as the family of murdered gay Scott Amedure seeks damages from the TV talk show they claim drove Jonathan Schmitz to kill him. The Amedures are asking $50-million from the nationally syndicated "Jenny Jones Show", its producer Telepictures, and its distributor Warner Brothers. Schmitz killed Amedure three days after a 1995 taping of the show in which Amedure was revealed as Schmitz' "secret admirer." Schmitz, who had said this "humiliation" contributed to his action, was convicted of second-degree murder in 1996, but now awaits a retrial since the conviction was overturned on a technicality. A court in Canada has confirmed that transgenders need not undergo genital reconstruction to obtain amended identification. The Quebec Superior Court has issued a ruling that will establish formal criteria for just how far a gender reassignment must progress before the province will issue a revised birth certificate. The transsexual who filed the lawsuit -- known in court by the alias "Daniel Aronoff" -- has already undergone double mastectomy, ovariectomy, and hormone treatments, and has been living as a male for about five years. Japan's commemorative day association has named April 4 Transgender Day. Although the first legal gender reassignment surgery was performed in Japan only six months ago, the day is intended to increase public awareness and understanding of gender identity issues. Appropriately enough, in the Japanese calendar Transgender Day falls halfway between the March 3 Dolls' Festival for girls and the May 5 Boys' Festival. And finally ... two beauty contests were held on a single night in Thailand, both broadcast live on television. One was the traditional Miss Thailand competition; the other was the Miss Tiffany Universe pageant for transgenders, known there as "katooeys." Some newspapers ran side-by-side photos of the new Miss Thailand and the Miss Photogenic of the Miss Tiffany competition. In water-cooler conversations around the country, most found Miss Photogenic by far the more attractive, although others defended Miss Thailand because no plastic surgery is allowed in that contest. But one shop owner snorted, "They all look like katooeys to me -- too much make-up and too much hairspray."