NewsWrap for the week ending June 26, 1999 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #587, distributed 6-28-99) [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 A suspect in the widely-reported bashing murder of Alabama gay Billy Jack Gaither pleaded guilty this week, escaping the death penalty. Steven Eric Mullins' voice was barely audible as he admitted to kidnapping and killing Gaither, but he offered no details. The other suspect in the case, Charles Butler, Junior, renewed his plea of not guilty, but dropped an additional plea of not guilty by reason of mental defect. Both Mullins' sentencing and Butler's trial are scheduled for August 2nd. Sheriffs had reported that both men had confessed while in jail, saying they were retaliating for Gaither having made a pass at Butler. Gaither's acquaintances say that would have been out of character for him. Also dropping a plea of not guilty by reason of mental illness is Aaron McKinney, a suspect in the notorious bashing murder of openly gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard. McKinney will go to trial in October and could receive the death penalty. McKinney's friend Russell Henderson has already pleaded guilty in the case and received a life sentence. Despite previous reports that McKinney and Henderson were punishing Shepard for having made a pass at one of them, McKinney told a Cheyenne radio station this week that the attack had nothing to do with Shepard's orientation. McKinney insisted that he "doesn't have anything against anybody" and that he "doesn't hate gay people and has a good friend who is gay." Hate crimes legislation was a topic emphasized by Vice President and Democratic presidential hopeful Al Gore this week as he visited the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center. The visit was an important demonstration that Gore continues to support gays and lesbians at a time when he's been talking a lot about "family values," a term which has often been used by the religious right to justify anti-gay actions. Gore's lone challenger for the Democratic nomination, former Senator Bill Bradley, had visited the Los Angeles center a week before. Gore also spoke to students at a Los Angeles high school, and when one young lesbian there burst into tears describing the homophobic harassment she'd suffered, Gore crossed the room to give her a hug. He assured her that he supported measures for school safety. But to the anti-gay Oregon Citizen's Alliance, school safety means censoring classroom discussion of homosexuality. The OCA is currently gathering signatures for a statewide ballot initiative it calls the "Student Protection Act," to prohibit public schools from "encouraging, promoting or sanctioning" homosexuality. The Oregon Republican Party's central committee last week voted behind closed doors to endorse that measure in principle, but rejected a motion to assist the OCA in signature gathering. In New Zealand, a record eleven open gays and lesbians are already candidates for Parliament, with the elections yet to be called. Evana Belich, selected by the Alliance party to stand in Titirangi, may be the first "out" lesbian to actually run in a head-to-head race for the New Zealand Parliament. The Alliance has also listed three gay men, and the Green Party has listed one gay man so far. The Labour Party has listed six "out" candidates, including incumbent Member of Parliament Tim Barnett, New Zealand's first openly gay MP Chris Carter, and transsexual Carterton Mayor Georgina Beyer. In Australia, drag television host Tamara Tonite has made an early announcement that she's running as an independent for Lord Mayor of Brisbane, Queensland. Tonite is refusing to give any name except her drag persona's. She said, "I would like to kick-start politics again and remind politicians that people have a voice. If I don't agree with some policies, others may feel the same. I may be a comedian, but this campaign is no joke." The election will be held in March. Now-openly bisexual Member of the British Parliament and the Welsh National Assembly Ron Davies is determined to hang on to his job, despite pressure from his own Labour Party to resign. Davies was the leader of the Labour Party in Wales and Secretary for Wales in the British cabinet until he was forced to step down in October, when he said he was robbed on London's Clapham Common, an area notorious for gay cruising and drug sales. Davies then and now denies that he ever had sex in a public place, but after eight months of tabloids screaming that he is gay, he finally identified himself as bisexual in June, and admitted there were probably "bisexual undercurrents" to the Clapham Common incident. But when a week later he told a newspaper that he was undergoing treatment for risk addiction, it was too much for Welsh Labour leaders, who publicly called for his resignation. This week they held a private meeting with Davies and emerged saying only that Davies had "agreed to reflect on their views." But Davies himself expressed the greatest confidence that he would retain his last remaining leadership role, as chair of the Welsh Assembly's Economic Development Committee. A bill to protect gays and lesbians from employment discrimination was reintroduced in the U.S. Congress this week. ENDA, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, is the only gay and lesbian civil rights bill ever to come to a floor vote in either house in the 25 years since one was first introduced. In 1996, ENDA fell just one vote shy of passage in the Senate, on the same day that the so-called Defense of Marriage Act was overwhelmingly adopted. President Bill Clinton has repeatedly voiced his support for ENDA, and did so again in a statement this week. But although there are several Republicans among ENDA's almost 200 co-sponsors, openly gay Democratic Congressmember Barney Frank, a lead sponsor, believes the Republican leadership will never allow the bill to come to the floor. Openly partnered gay Gene Robinson was a close second as the Episcopal Diocese of Rochester, New York selected Reverend Jack McKelvey to be its next bishop. It took several ballots and ultimately the withdrawal of the three other nominees for McKelvey to win the necessary majority of both clergy and lay delegates, and at one point Robinson actually had a majority among the clergy. There wasn't a lot to distinguish the two -- McKelvey said he couldn't think of an issue on which they would differ. This was the second time that Robinson was a finalist in seeking to become the US' first openly gay Episcopal bishop, and it's likely not the last. The American Baptist Churches USA had not planned to discuss any issues relating to homosexuality as it held its biennial General Assembly this week. But the denomination's General Board voted to expel four California churches for having joined the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists. That group seeks to incorporate gays, lesbians and bisexuals into all aspects of church life, and some of its 37 member congregations have violated the denomination's policies against gay ordination and same-gender union ceremonies. The four "disfellowshipped" churches and their allies protested by singing outside the convention hall and carrying on parallel workshops and study sessions. Also holding its General Assembly this week was the Presbyterian Church USA, which determined not to open ordination to sexually active gays and lesbians for at least another two years. A committee recommended this week that the denomination drop its three-year-old requirement that ordinands maintain "fidelity" in "marriage between a man and a woman or chastity in singleness." But the church's General Assembly wouldn't even vote on that repeal. Instead, it replaced the committee's majority report with its minority recommendation for another two years of study and discussion, and adopted that by about two-to-one. The Presbyterian Church has already been discussing this issue for more than 20 years, adopting a ban on ordination of "self-affirming, practicing homosexuals" in 1978. One of the key figures throughout that debate is lesbian minister Jane Spahr, who was ordained before that policy went into effect. Spahr, lesbian Yale Divinity School professor Letty Russell, and a non-gay supporter of gay ordination, retired Princeton professor Jane Dempsey Douglass, all received Women of Faith Awards at this General Assembly. Their selection by the Women's Ministries Program Area was so controversial that it was overturned by the National Ministries Division, only to be reinstated by the General Assembly Council's executive committee, which called for a review of policy on all awards. And finally ... Gay and lesbian pride events all over the world are observing the anniversary of the June 1969 uprising at the Stonewall Inn in New York City. Those three days of riotous resistance to a then-routine police raid at the gay and transgender bar are credited with sparking the contemporary global civil rights movement. Today, the Stonewall Inn as it was then is long gone. But this June, thirty years after the rebellion, the location of the Stonewall Inn and its environs have finally been listed by the U.S. Department of the Interior on the National Register of Historic Places, which was celebrated with a ceremony this week.