NewsWrap for the week ending September 18, 1999 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #599, distributed 9-20-99) [Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Chris Ambidge, Martin Rice, Brian Nunes, Jason Lin, Martin Rice, Rex Wockner, Alan Reekie, David Williams, Greg Gordon & Lucia Chappelle] Anchored by Greg Gordon and Josy Catoggio Norway's Crown Prince Haakon discussed discrimination in a widely watched television interview this week. Haakon recently returned to Oslo after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, and he said his experience in the U.S. had increased his awareness of diversity. "I wonder if we have given discrimination in our society enough attention,” he said. “I feel I would like to make a difference. In Norway we are doing too little to fight discrimination on the grounds of ethnic background, religion and sexual orientation.” He specifically called on Norwegians to respect gays and lesbians -- and as a demonstration, he later visited an Oslo gay bar. An ordinance against discrimination was passed this week by the City Council of Ferndale, Michigan. It includes sexual orientation and gender identity among a number of protected categories, making Ferndale the 11th city in Michigan to recognize the civil rights of gays and lesbians. Just five years ago, Ferndale voters rejected a similar proposal by a landslide. In Kentucky, bills to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation were introduced both in Jefferson County and the city of Henderson. The Henderson City Commission heard nearly seven hours of testimony before taking a preliminary vote of 3 - 2 in support of the bill. Both the Jefferson County Fiscal Court and the Henderson City Commission will be taking their final votes on September 28, when both bills are expected to pass. Meanwhile, the American Center for Law and Justice has filed a lawsuit challenging Kentucky's first civil rights law protecting gays and lesbians, Louisville's ban on homophobic bias in employment. That lawsuit charges the measure infringes on the religious freedom of a Christian employer, but Louisville officials are confident they will prevail. An alarming level of institutionalized bias against gays and lesbians, women and racial minorities was revealed this week in a report assessing Britain's Fire Service. While the sexism extended to blatant sexual harassment and assaults, and the racism was more covert than overt, homosexuality was found to be such "an absolute taboo" that firefighters couldn't even consider the issue. Only about a dozen gay and lesbian firefighters have come out to their colleagues, and for most of them it resulted in harassment that drove them from the service. The victims of all three forms of harassment have generally been too afraid to use the service's complaints system. The Home Office has given the Fire Service 18 months to clean up its act. The report recommended stripping the Fire Service of its paramilitary trappings as a way to diminish isolation and elitism. A survey has found that a majority of British voters are ready for an openly gay Prime Minister. 60% said they would accept a Prime Minister who was openly gay, while 70% would accept a Prime Minister who was known to have had homosexual experiences in the past. The poll was sparked by last week's revelations by Conservative former Defence Minister Michael Portillo of past experiences with other men, although he said he'd been faithful to his wife throughout their 17-year marriage. Three-quarters of those surveyed said their opinion of Portillo had not changed, and almost as many supported his return to electoral politics. In the U.S., Presidential candidates are clarifying their positions on gay and lesbian issues. In an interview with the national gay and lesbian magazine "The Advocate", Democratic hopeful Bill Bradley supported giving gays and lesbians the full protections from discrimination afforded to race and other categories by the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964. He also supported gays and lesbians serving openly in the military. These are stronger positions than Vice President Al Gore has taken so far. Both Democratic candidates support legal recognition of same-gender couples, but not equal marriage rights. On the Republican side, though, the George W. Bush campaign affirmed some but not all of the provisions of an anti-gay pledge proposed by religious right groups. He rejects same-gender marriages but has not taken a position on domestic partnerships. The Texas Governor also opposes adoption and fostering of children by gays and lesbians, as he had previously indicated when his state legislature considered those issues this past session. He also took a position that the Boy Scouts of America is a private organization and so he opposes the New Jersey Supreme Court's recent ruling requiring their compliance with that state's law against sexual orientation discrimination. It wasn't clear whether Bush generally opposes civil rights laws protecting gays and lesbians. South Africa's Law Commission has proposed a major overhaul of the nation's criminal code regarding sex offenses, including lowering the age of consent for homosexual acts from 19 to 16. Another proposal, heartily endorsed by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance political party, would replace the heterosexual definition of rape with a new gender-neutral offense of "unlawful sexual penetration." The requirements for prosecuting that crime would also change, from a tradition of victims having to prove they did not consent, to requiring defendants to prove there was consent. A new book has revealed that an attempt to find a sex partner in a Moscow men's room forced a gay Member of the British Parliament to serve as a Cold War spy. The late Labour MP Tom Driberg's leftward leanings were quite public and the "open secret" of his sexual orientation was considered to make him vulnerable to blackmail, so he was never given access to any major state secrets. His financial records also made it very clear that he did not significantly profit from his service to the Soviets. Apparently his greatest value to the USSR was writing a positive biography of his close friend, the notorious spy Guy Burgess. Another Briton famously caught in so-called lewd behavior in a public men's room is pop star George Michael, and now the police officer who arrested him has filed a ten million dollar lawsuit against him. Michael came out as a gay man in the wake of the incident, but also went on to spoof it in the video of his popular song "Outside". Beverly Hills Police Officer Marcelo Rodriguez charges that Michael "profited greatly" at his "expense" by the video, and that in a number of interviews Michael alleged entrapment and illegal behavior on Rodriguez' part. Rodriguez claims he was so wounded by this as to be unable to perform his duties, and is seeking not only punitive damages but also compensation for his humiliation, mental anguish, emotional and physical distress, medical bills, and lost earnings. Michael has not yet commented on this except to describe it as an "irritation," when he called on the media to promote the international NetAid concert to benefit Kosovo refugees and others. Michael himself has contributed a half-million pounds to that cause. Another openly gay British pop star, Sir Elton John, has been selected in a poll of more than 30,000 people to be part of a "National Identity Zone" exhibit at the Millennium Dome. Those surveyed were asked to pick 50 people and 50 things to represent the best of the last thousand years of British history. Sir Elton was in the top ten. Number one was his close friend, the late Diana, Princess of Wales. In other show business news, openly-gay Paris Barclay this week won the Emmy Award for best directing in a drama series. The prize came for the "Hearts and Souls" episode of "NYPD Blue," in which Jimmy Smits' popular character Detective Bobby Simone dies. It was Barclay's second consecutive directing Emmy for "NYPD Blue". It was deja vu this week for Jonathan Schmitz, who in 1995 shot openly-gay Scott Amedure to death, three days after Amedure had confessed his "secret crush" on Schmitz when both men were guests on "The Jenny Jones Show". In 1996, a jury found Schmitz guilty of second-degree murder and he was sentenced to 25-to-50 years in prison. Last year the Michigan Court of Appeals ordered a retrial because of a judicial error in jury selection. Last month Schmitz was again found guilty of second-degree murder, and this week he was sentenced once again to 25-to-50 years. His attorneys plan another appeal. A Canadian prosecutor used "Crown discretion" this week to drop charges against 18 men arrested on public sex charges in Toronto's exclusively gay male Bijou Theatre bar. Prosecutor Paul Culver said that prior police inaction had led the men to believe that the Bijou was a private space, but added that future arrests would lead to prosecution. The public sex charges carry a maximum penalty of six months in jail. The Bijou, now closed, advertised only in the gay press and was entered only through a locked unmarked door off a small alley after payment of an admission fee. And finally ... a lot of people have been paying admission to John Cameron Mitchell's play "Hedwig and the Angry Inch". Actress Ally Sheedy, whose performance as a lesbian photographer in the film "High Art" was much praised, is taking on the transgender role of Hedwig in New York City this coming week. Mitchell himself picked Sheedy for the challenging part, and remarked, "I guess historically drag queens were imitating movie stars ... It's kind of nice to have a movie star imitating a drag queen." In a similar vein, in "Get Bruce!", a documentary about openly-gay comedy writer Bruce Vilanch that opened in general release this week, the much-imitated Bette Midler remarks, "For years I never said a word that Bruce didn't charge me for."