NewsWrap
for the week ending March 4, 2000
(As broadcast on This Way Out program #623, distributed 03-06-00)
[Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Chris Ambidge, 
Martin Rice, Brian Nunes, Jason Lin, Rex Wockner, Greg Gordon & Lucia  
Chappelle]

Anchored by Leo Garcia and Cindy Friedman

  A half-million people jammed the streets on March 4th for Sydney's 23rd 
annual Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade despite some cold weather.  That's 
in spite of a joint call for a boycott of the event by Australia's top Roman 
Catholic Cardinal and a leading Anglican Archbishop, who claimed the event 
promoted homosexuality and immorality.  Of course those clergy were satirized 
in the parade, as a couple of marchers dressed in vestment waved a banner 
saying, "God Loves Men in Drag" at the head of the Sisters of Perpetual 
Indulgence contingent.  There were some 200 floats and 7,000 marchers, led by 
a rainbow-colored Noah's Ark featuring dancing men in animal costumes.  The 
parade was expected to draw some 12,000 tourists and inject more than 40 
million dollars into the New South Wales economy.

  While religious leaders were criticizing the parade in Sydney, the U.S. 
Presidential campaign took an unexpected turn this week when Republican 
hopeful Arizona Senator John McCain slammed religious right leaders Pat 
Robertson and Jerry Falwell.  The religious right has represented a major 
core Republican constituency for 20 years, but a majority of them are 
supporting McCain's opponent Texas Governor George W. Bush.  Robertson is the 
founder of the Christian Coalition and Falwell of the Moral Majority; both 
televangelists have regularly denounced gays and lesbians in the harshest 
terms.  However, McCain's remarks against Robertson and Falwell didn't 
necessarily mean he was moving any closer to gays and lesbians, especially 
since he was accompanied by anti-gay former Family Research Council head Gary 
Bauer at the time.
Still, his attack on Robertson and Falwell appealed to the gay and lesbian 
Log Cabin Republicans, who have been excluded and harassed within their party 
by the religious right.  The group is taking to the airwaves for the first 
time with a national campaign of radio ads.  The ads don't mention McCain by 
name, but they do denounce Robertson in particular, and say that the broad 
base including many independents that's associated with McCain is needed for 
victory against the Democrats in November.

  Democratic hopefuls Vice President Al Gore and former Senator Bill Bradley 
also spoke out against the religious right as they debated this week in 
California.  Bradley said he could only nominate a Supreme Court Justice who 
would move forward on civil rights.  Both candidates reaffirmed their support 
for inclusion of sexual orientation as a protected category in hate crime 
laws and for gays and lesbians serving openly in the military.  Both also 
came out against California's ballot initiative Proposition 22, to deny legal 
recognition to gay and lesbian marriages another state may someday perform.  
Neither supports legal same-gender marriage, but both support a wide range of 
domestic partner benefits.

  Gay and lesbian domestic partnerships known as "civil unions" were approved 
by the Vermont House Judiciary Committee this week with a vote of 10 - 1. 
Openly gay Committee vice-chair Representative William Lippert made the 
formal motion for passage, and declared he is "incredibly proud" of the 
Committee's work in drafting the bill.  The Committee's lone dissenter was 
not so much objecting to the civil unions but wanting full equal marriage 
rights for same-gender couples instead.  Those were the two options offered 
by the Vermont Supreme Court when it ruled in December that the state 
constitution required making the benefits of legal marriage accessible to gay 
and lesbian couples.  The bill the Committee drafted is the most extensive 
legislative proposal to recognize same-gender relationships in the U.S. to 
date, with all the benefits of marriage the state can provide.  There are 
many more benefits of marriage which can only be established at the federal 
level.  The bill also affirms the current heterosexual definition of 
marriage, and creates a new "reciprocal beneficiaries" relationship with much 
more limited benefits for blood relatives who live together and are 
economically interdependent.  Even with those additions, the bill will face 
considerable opposition when it reaches the House floor later this month.  
Currently the House Ways and Means Committee is considering the bill's 
implications for taxation.

  Committee hearings were held this week in nearby Rhode Island on a bill to 
extend civil marriage to same-gender couples.  Although openly gay 
Representative Mike Pisaturo has introduced the same bill before, this is the 
first time it reached the hearing stage.  No vote was taken, and the bill is 
not expected to pass, but a majority of those giving testimony before a 
packed meeting room supported the measure.  Among them was attorney Mary 
Bonauto of the Boston-based Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, who 
helped represent the three Vermont couples in the landmark "Baker" case.

  The Human Rights Commission of the Canadian province of Ontario has issued 
a new policy on discrimination based on sexual orientation that reflects the 
new common-law status of same-gender couples there.  It emphasizes that 
employers must extend the same spousal benefits to same-gender domestic 
partners that those in "opposite-sex relationships" receive.  It also 
clarifies the nature of anti-gay harassment in the workplace, including 
so-called teasing that creates a "poisoned environment," and the singling out 
of a lone gay worker for so-called practical jokes that may not be explicitly 
anti-gay.  It further notes that anti-gay discrimination is prohibited even 
when it's mistakenly aimed at someone who is actually heterosexual.

  And the Ontario Human Rights Commission also took action this week against 
a Toronto printer who refused a job from the Canadian Lesbian and Gay 
Archives.  Printer Scott Brockie claimed that because he is a born-again 
Christian, he cannot "promote" a "cause" he views as sinful.  The Commission 
ordered him to stop discriminating and to pay C$5,000 to the Archives.  But 
Brockie says he intends to appeal to the Divisional Court of Ontario and to 
continue to discriminate.

  One gay man has finally completed a long and difficult journey in hopes of 
finding asylum in Canada.  Denis Dementiev grew up in Siberia, and first came 
out to a friend when he was 16.  Word got around, and by the time he was a 
19-year-old college student he was experiencing almost daily beatings from 
groups of his schoolmates.  He dropped out of school, afraid to leave his 
house.  Finally his parents sold their car to finance his trip to Canada.  He 
didn't qualify for a Canadian visa, though, so he hoped to enter Canada from 
the U.S.  He took the long train ride from Siberia to Moscow and flew to 
Amsterdam, Mexico City and Tijuana.  But as he went to walk across the 
Mexican border into the U.S., he was attacked by muggers who took everything 
he had, including his papers.  Without identification, he couldn't enter the 
U.S. legally, so he attempted to cross without permission.  He was caught and 
detained for eleven weeks in Florence, Arizona, celebrating his 20th birthday 
in detention.  To make matters worse, he does not speak English.  It appeared 
he would be deported all the way back to Siberia.  But his luck changed when 
he got legal help from the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project.  
Its director publicized his plight, and Tucson's P-FLAG group -- Parents, 
Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays -- began fund-raising for him.  
Both gay and lesbian groups and Jewish groups joined in, raising enough money 
to pay his bond and buy him a ticket to Buffalo, New York.  From there it was 
an easy drive across the Canadian border, where he submitted his application 
for asylum, almost four months after he'd left home.

  And finally ... legendary U.S. stage and screen star Tallulah Bankhead, who 
described herself as "ambisextrous," was the toast of London when she lived 
there in the 1920's.  But her lifestyle so horrified some people in the 
British government that the Home Office initiated three separate 
investigations in hopes of deporting her, according to papers just made 
public this week.  In particular, the intelligence service MI5 developed an 
inch-thick dossier which really contained nothing but unsubstantiated rumors. 
 Set off by tabloid headlines, an investigator believed she had "corrupted" a 
half-dozen boys at prestigious Eton, although Eton's headmaster denied it and 
refused to cooperate.  The investigator believed Bankhead had kept women in 
both the U.S. and London, as well as "generously" bestowing her favors on 
men.  He noted that, "her circle is a center of vice patronized by at least 
one of the most promiscuous sodomites in London," and added there were other 
matters regarding her male friends that were too shocking to put in writing.  
Nonetheless, the Home Office never did manage to come up with a case to 
deport Bankhead, and when she left London it was to take a movie offer from 
Paramount.  Bankhead herself was never the least bit shy about her sexuality, 
once saying she was "pure as the driven slush."  One story has her receiving 
a telegram from a male fan saying, "I want you for my wife," and Bankhead 
responding, "Splendid.  Is she good-looking?"