NewsWrap for the week ending July 24, 1999 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #591, distributed 7-26-99) [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 Cindy Friedman and Dean Elzinga U.S. federal authorities would be able to respond to hate crimes against gays and lesbians for the first time under a measure passed by the Senate this week. The language of the Hate Crimes Prevention Act was part of a package of 34 amendments to the Commerce-Justice-State Appropriations Bill, which by prior arrangement between party leaders was passed without discussion by unanimous voice vote. The appropriations bill will next go to a House-Senate conference committee, where some conservative Republicans will attempt to remove the hate crimes language while President Bill Clinton lobbies to retain it. To muddy the waters further, Utah Republican Senator and Presidential hopeful Orrin Hatch also added a narrower hate crimes rider to the appropriations bill, one which would not make sexual orientation a protected category. Meanwhile, a House committee will hold a hearing on a free-standing version of the Hate Crimes Prevention Act in early August. It could be a few months before the final outcome is known. Hate crimes continue to make headlines in the U.S. ... The bashing death of Army Private Barry Winchell in his barracks at Fort Campbell in Kentucky, believed by many to be an anti-gay hate crime, has so far resulted in charges against two other soldiers in his company. About 200 people turned out for a memorial rally in nearby Nashville, Tennessee this week, in part to ensure that the Army keeps its promise of a full and fair investigation. The shooting death of openly gay former Santa Fe County, New Mexico Commissioner Herman Rodriguez resulted in a sentence of 29-1/2 years this week for his confessed murderer Prentice Ivory Davis. That was the maximum sentence the judge could pronounce under a plea agreement Davis made with federal prosecutors. Davis is expected to die of AIDS-related illness before completing that term. Rodriguez had been active with the AIDS charity Santa Fe Cares. Hate crime murder charges were brought this week against brothers Matthew and Tyler Williams in the shooting deaths of Shasta County, California gay couple Winfield Scott Mowder and Gary Matson. The Williams brothers are also being investigated in connection with a number of other hate crimes, including arson attacks against three Sacramento synagogues in June. They possessed quantities of literature from established hate groups but are not yet known to have had a formal connection with any of them. In Australia, the north Queensland city of Townsville has suffered a wave of anti-gay violence for the last several months, but police do not believe there is any organized hate group involved. Gays using a long-established coastal cruising area have been chased off by men with baseball bats, and a cross-dresser suffered a broken leg and jaw in a home invasion bashing. But the main focus has been the local office of the Queensland AIDS Council, with continuing harassment of people going in and out of the office. This week the Council's coordinator Darrel Colbert-Whitford was attacked in the parking lot by two skinheads who stabbed him in the throat with a used syringe. Colbert-Whitford had suffered a bashing previously, and was injured slightly when two bombs were detonated in the Council's office in June. That's been the only bomb attack against any AIDS Council in Australia. The April 30th bombing of the Admiral Duncan gay pub in London's Soho district raised a new civil rights issue this week: Britain's Criminal Injuries Compensation Board does not recognize same-gender relationships. While Julian Dykes may be able to collect up to 10,000-pounds for the death of his pregnant wife Andrea, their friend Gary Partridge can collect nothing whatever for the death of his life partner John Light in the same incident. In fact, Dykes would qualify for compensation even had he not been legally married, while Partridge would not qualify regardless of the length of his relationship or its economic interdependence. Among those outraged by this situation was openly gay Labour Member of Parliament from Exeter Ben Bradshaw. He wrote to the Home Office demanding a change in the Compensation Board's discriminatory rules. A Home Office spokesperson promised that what he called an "obvious inconsistency" would be looked into, and that recommendations will be made to ministers later this year. Same-gender couples in Oregon are celebrating a victory this week, with the state Senate defeat of a proposed ballot measure to define legal marriage as a union between one man and one woman. Conservatives had been confident -- perhaps overconfident -- of its passage. When first introduced in the state House, the proposal was an amendment to the state constitution which would also have prohibited courts from extending spousal benefits to unmarried couples. The state House approved the bill only after removing the clause against recognizing domestic partnerships. In the state Senate, thanks to vigorous lobbying by Basic Rights Oregon, three moderate Republicans refused to support the constitutional amendment, calling it unnecessary and divisive. A committee then redrafted the initiative to simply authorize the legislature to define marriage. But the legislature already has that authority, and has already used it to define legal marriage as between one man and one woman. As the legislative session drew to a close, the Oregon Senate defeated this toothless revision by a vote of 16 - 13. However, the Oregon Christian Coalition has indicated that it may try to place a similar marriage initiative on the ballot by collecting signatures on a petition. Gay and lesbian co-parents suffered a legal defeat in California this week. The California Supreme Court declined to take up an appeal, letting stand a state appeals court ruling that denied a lesbian visitation with her former partner's biological children. Although the appeals court found that she had some characteristics of a "de facto" parent, it could find no legal basis for overriding the wishes of the biological parent short of harm to the children. That ruling now stands as a binding precedent for all California trial courts, to the disappointment of gay and lesbian legal activists. Although it was more difficult when this couple was still together, gays and lesbians in California can co-adopt their partners' children, giving them full parental rights. Living openly with a same-gender partner should not be a bar to ordination in Australia's Uniting Church, the Melbourne-area Maribyrnong Valley Presbytery voted this week. That's believed to be a first for any mainstream Christian group in Australia, and it opens the door for consideration of a lesbian candidate who was rejected last year. The Uniting Church has so far failed to take a position on the question as a denomination, so the choice is left to its presbyteries for now. It's been a very controversial issue in the denomination, whose conservatives are likely to appeal this local decision to the national body. The one denomination that's been celebrating gay and lesbian couples for thirty years, the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, held its 19th General Conference and World Jubilee in Los Angeles this week. 1,500 delegates from 21 countries attended, although it was difficult for some. Blacks from South Africans were initially denied visas while their white counterparts were not, until African-American activist Jesse Jackson intervened. Chinese delegates had visa problems because they were not legally married, and so officials believed they had no ties to bring them home again. And two Australian delegates were stopped before they could board their plane because of U.S. rules against allowing people with HIV to enter the country, leading 500 delegates to demonstrate outside the Federal Building. On a happier note, awards were presented to "Ellen's" mom Betty DeGeneres and to actresses June Lockhart and Zelda Rubinstein. A former president of the generally anti-gay Southern Baptist Convention, Reverend Jimmy Allen, was a keynote speaker. His family's experience with AIDS led him to try to bridge the theological divide, even though he remains convinced that homosexual acts are prohibited by the Bible. But homosexual acts won't be criminal acts for older teenaged males in Britain next year, after a bill to equalize their age of consent with that for heterosexuals is introduced for a third consecutive year. In an unusual advance statement this week, Home Secretary Jack Straw announced that the bill to lower the age of consent for sex between men from 18 to 16, to match that for heterosexual acts, will be introduced yet again in the Queen's Speech in November. This year and last, the measure passed by large margins in the House of Commons only to be defeated in the House of Lords. But Straw also promised that this year the government would invoke the Parliament Act for only the 6th time this century to override the Lords and enact the law. These assurances had to be made in writing to further delay two lawsuits in the European Court of Human Rights, which would otherwise find the age difference in violation of European law and force the change. And finally ... imagine attending your 20th high school reunion as a Grammy-winning rock star. That's what open lesbian Melissa Etheridge was doing this week, and she was determined to enjoy it to the hilt. But the girl the Kansans at Leavenworth High knew as "Missy" was no tormented outcast. She told reporters, "I'm not one of those artists that were tortured in high school. I had lots of friends."