NewsWrap
for the week ending September 4, 1999
(As broadcast on This Way Out program #597, distributed 9-6-99)
[Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Brian Nunes,
Jason Lin, Martin Rice, Rex Wockner, Chris Ambidge, Alan Reekie,
Greg Gordon & Lucia Chappelle]

Anchored by Cindy Friedman and Leo Garcia

  Britain's leading AIDS charity, the Terrence Higgins Trust, this week 
launched what's believed to be Europe's first large-scale media campaign 
against homophobia.  The Trust justified its effort on the grounds that 
homophobia increases HIV transmission, by creating depression among gay men 
that leads to high-risk behavior and by damaging the confidence they need to 
negotiate safer sex, as well as more generally harming gay men's physical, 
mental and emotional health.  The campaign is called "It's Prejudice That's 
Queer," and many of its slogans are reversals of homophobic cliches, such as 
"I can't stand homophobes especially when they flaunt it" and "Homophobes 
shouldn't be left alone with kids."  These messages are appearing as ads in a 
variety of newspapers and magazines, posters including signs in the London 
Underground, a film version to be shown in movie theaters, and a series of 
presentations and workshops to be held around the country.  One special 
target of the campaign is teachers, who are being urged to intervene against 
homophobic taunting and harassment among students.

  Massachusetts has had a Gay and Lesbian Students Rights Law in place for 
more than five years, but the Department of Education still hasn't gotten 
around to revising its policies to match.  This week the Governor's 
Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth wrote a stern letter to the chair of the 
state Board of Education, calling for the Department and some 30 percent of 
the state's schools to promptly update their policies and student handbooks, 
"reflect the protection afforded gay and lesbian students under Massachusetts 
law."  The new chair of the state Board of Education appeared more 
sympathetic to this request than his predecessor.

  Seattle, Washington has a new parent-teacher group, the Gay Lesbian 
Parent-Teacher-Student Association of Greater Puget Sound.  The group is open 
to anyone who supports its mission of addressing the "unique challenges and 
difficulties" public school can present to lesbigay and transgendered 
students, families and educators.  That includes combating anti-gay 
harassment, youth suicide and dropping out.  The Washington State 
Parent-Teacher Association is expected to grant a formal charter to the group 
shortly.

  Also in Seattle, the City Council voted unanimously this week to add 
"gender identity" as a category protected from discrimination.  The 
protections for transsexual and transgendered people was added to all 
anti-discrimination provisions in the Municipal Code.  Only a handful of U.S. 
cities have explicitly protected the human rights of transgendered people.

  But there's no movement on civil rights issues by the state government of 
West Australia, despite the second-class status of lesbians and gays there 
being detailed for the national Senate by open gay Brian Greig.  As a new 
Senator, Australian Democrat Greig was given twenty minutes of silent 
attention for his traditional "maiden" speech.  But the content was quite 
non-traditional, as he outlined the impact his sexual orientation had on his 
life and relationships.  In calling for enactment of federal civil rights 
laws and recognition of same-gender couples, he described Australia as a 
regime of sexual apartheid.  He touched on a range of issues including youth 
suicide, school harassment, gay-bashing, child custody, and even the Senate's 
own discrimination in not requiring him to list the financial interests of 
his long-time partner.  He pledged the support of himself and his party to 
all lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgendered people who have suffered 
abuse, discrimination and unjust imprisonment, and warned that his is the 
last generation that will tolerate such conditions.

  Belgium's Federal Coalition Government has reached agreement on a bill to 
create domestic partnership contracts, which are now expected to become 
available on January 1st.  The so-called Statutory Cohabitation Contract is 
available to any two adults not otherwise married or contracted, regardless 
of their gender or blood relationship.  But it appears that the only real 
advantage of the contract is to grant access to the courts when break-ups 
lead to property disputes.  The bill specifically notes that the couple will 
be treated as separate individuals for purposes of taxation, inheritance, 
parenting, social security and pension benefits, and immigration.

  Milwaukee, Wisconsin's new domestic partners registry for gay and lesbian 
couples opened this week.  Even though it carries no legal rights or 
responsibilities, twenty couples were eager to take their first chance to 
sign up, and another one-to-two-hundred are expected to do so in the coming 
year.  The Domestic Partnership Task Force, which lobbied long and hard 
against major opposition to win the registry from the city council in July, 
joined the couples in a celebratory reception held at City Hall that evening.

  But couples who are not legally married can no longer serve as foster 
parents in Utah, following a 5-to-2 vote this week by the Board of the 
state's Division of Child and Family Services.  The same Board had previously 
banned adoptions by unwed couples of children in state care.  Because there 
are already nearly twice as many children needing placement in Utah as there 
are foster homes for them, the Board's move was unanimously opposed by all 
the department's advisory boards, as well as the American Bar Association and 
the American Civil Liberties Union.  Because of the ban, the department was 
forced to remove from its manual a statement that its policies were "in 
accordance with the standards of the Child Welfare League of America."

  The word "lesbian" can now appear in advertisements in San Diego, 
California's "Union-Tribune" newspaper.  When the paper refused to run 
Trimark Pictures' ad for the film "Better Than Chocolate”, it soon heard 
complaints from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and many 
others.  The paper had not had the same problem with using the "L" word in 
its news reports, having used it well over 4,000 times in the last 15 years.

  Anglican Archbishop of Southeast Asia Moses Tay announced in a letter this 
week that he's boycotting the denomination's international executive meeting, 
the Anglican Consultative Council.  The meeting is being held this month in 
Scotland and therefore hosted by Primus of Scotland Richard Holloway, and Tay 
wrote that he finds Holloway's views "horrendous and heretical."  One of 
Tay's beefs is Holloway's long-standing and vigorous advocacy for equal 
treatment of gays and lesbians within the Anglican Church.  But Tay is also 
irate that there has been no disciplinary action against Holloway since the 
recent publication of his book "Godless Morality," in which Holloway is 
tolerant not only of homosexuality, but of consensual sadomasochism, 
promiscuity and marijuana use.  Holloway expressed regret at the loss of 
Tay's "distinctive contribution to our deliberations" and hoped he would 
reconsider.

  Maintaining community despite ideological and political differences was a 
theme of this past week's annual conference of the Log Cabin Republicans in 
New York City.  But although the featured speakers included an unusual range 
of diverse opinions, outside the conference there were protests from both the 
left and the right.  Religious right pundit Peter LaBarbera called on the 
Republican Party to reject Log Cabin, and tried and failed to hold his own 
press conference in the same hotel.  A group of demonstrators called Fed Up 
Queers attempted to disrupt the conference's keynote speech by New York City 
Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and became embroiled in an altercation with hotel 
security that resulted in five arrests, a broken nose, and a slew of 
complaints.  But the conference carried on with its training and support for 
members' successful involvement in electoral politics.  Log Cabin's first 
"straw poll" on Republican Presidential hopefuls went to Arizona Senator John 
McCain by a landslide.

  The Western Montana Gay and Lesbian Community Center opened in Missoula, 
the first center there in fifteen years.  During the interim, to find 
anything similar, Montana gays and lesbians had to leave the state for 
Washington or Idaho.  

  And finally... in Australia, incarcerated sexual minorities may be denied a 
visit from proud gays and lesbians on the outside.  After months of 
discussion, West Australia's Lesbian and Gay Pride Festival announced that 
next month's festivities would include a nighttime tour emphasizing the 
homosexual habits of certain denizens of the Perth Zoo.  But while zoo staff 
had been quite excited about it, their boss didn't like seeing the zoo's name 
linked with the festival, something he said no one had mentioned to him.  Zoo 
CEO Brian Easton was concerned that the zoo would appear less family-friendly 
if its educational night tours were presented as "an opportunity for 
voyeurism."  Since San Francisco's zoo, among others, has offered a very 
popular similar tour for years, we doubt it makes much difference to the 
lesbian seagulls or the male bonobos who like to smooch.