NewsWrap for the week ending March 11, 2000 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #624, distributed 03-13-00) [Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Chris Ambidge, Martin Rice, Brian Nunes, Jason Lin, Rex Wockner, Doug Case, Greg Gordon & Lucia Chappelle] Anchored by Cindy Friedman and Leo Garcia There was a landslide victory in California this week for Proposition 22, a ballot initiative to deny legal recognition to same-gender marriages another state may someday perform. Marriages within the state are already restricted to heterosexual couples. Although the initiative has no immediate direct effect, activists fear the vote will retard the state's progress in recognizing domestic partnerships and generate lawsuits challenging adoptions and other family rights. The campaign for Proposition 22 bent over backwards to insist it was not anti-gay, with individual campaigners even saying they would not oppose recognition of domestic partnerships. But although conservatives are overrepresented in primary elections, if there is any clear message, it is that a majority do not want the word "marriage" used to describe gay and lesbian couples. Proposition 22 prevailed in all but 5 of California's 58 counties, among all racial and income groups, and among both men and women. Voters under 30 opposed it. Republicans supported it 6-to-1 but Democrats opposed it by 2-to-1. The No campaign spent 5-1/2-million dollars but the Yes campaign spent $8 million, receiving strong support from Catholic, Mormon and evangelical churches. In Vermont, the only state where there's even a slim chance of same-gender marriages any time soon, traditional Town Meetings this week also strongly opposed the idea. At the annual community gatherings in the state's 245 municipalities, some 50 held various non-binding votes to advise their legislators on the marriage issue. All of them rejected the idea of same-gender marriages, and some supported the idea of a constitutional amendment to expressly prohibit them. A majority supported legal domestic partnerships -- or, as the legislature proposes calling them, "civil unions" -- in only ten towns. But for lesbian candidates, election day in California was a great success. Gerrie Schipske narrowly topped a field of five to win the Democratic nomination for a Long Beach area seat in the U.S. Congress. She'll face a Republican incumbent in November. Sheila Kuehl, the first open lesbian or gay ever to be elected to the state Assembly, will now almost certainly become the first open lesbian or gay ever to be elected to the state Senate. She overwhelmed her gay-friendly Democratic opponent Wally Knox to win the primary in a Los Angeles district so heavily Democratic that victory in November is all but assured. That's also the case for the Los Angeles state Assembly district where Los Angeles City Councilmember and former school board member Jackie Goldberg won the Democratic nomination by a landslide. Her leading opponent was openly gay AIDS activist Cesar Portillo. San Francisco's incumbent Assemblymember Carole Migden took nearly 80% of the votes in her district and will almost certainly be returned to Sacramento. San Diego City Councilmember Christine Kehoe two years ago became the first open lesbian ever to be nominated by a major party for the U.S. Congress, only to lose to a Republican incumbent by a heartbreakingly narrow margin, but this year she turned her sights to the California Assembly. No Democrats opposed her in the primary, and in a field of six she not only won a solid majority, she had three times as many votes as her nearest challenger. Kehoe's aide Toni Atkins ran to replace her on the San Diego City Council and fell just 2% short of winning a majority vote in a field of five. She had half again as many votes as the opponent she'll face in a November runoff. Political newcomer Rebecca Kaplan of the Green Party surprised everyone by forcing a November runoff against a six-year incumbent for an at-large seat on the Oakland City Council. Openly gay community college board member Ken Yeager will also face a tough November runoff for a seat on the San Jose City Council, after leading a field of six. Among the day's losers were Republican transwoman Liz Michael in her bid for a Glendale area Assembly seat, 22-year-old Shane Stahl in his race for Mayor of Bakersfield, and open gay John Ladner, who missed the cut for a runoff for a Los Angeles municipal court judgeship by less than 1%. The so-called Super Tuesday elections in the U.S. also ended any suspense as to the major party Presidential nominations: Vice President Al Gore will represent the Democrats and Texas Governor George W. Bush will represent the Republicans. Just two days before the vote, Bush said he "would consider meeting with" the gay and lesbian Log Cabin Republicans. His Republican opponent Arizona Senator John McCain's earlier meeting with Log Cabin was the only real distinction between those two candidates on gay and lesbian issues. Previously, Bush had told a national television audience that he would "probably not" meet with Log Cabin, but this week his campaign tried to deny that, saying it was only a couple of Log Cabin's national leaders' support for McCain which had deterred him. Bush's change of heart came just as Log Cabin was launching a naitonal campaign of radio ads criticizing his connection with the religios right. Log Cabin's executive director Rich Tafel said, "If a meeting is now a reality, there won't be a need for that ad." Electoral politics were very much on the agenda this week in Britain as well. The Conservative Party announced its first-ever choice of an openly gay man, David Gold, to run in the next general elections for what may be a winnable seat in the Parliament. Gold will be running for Brighton, where he grew up, and where gays and lesbians may account for 20% of the vote. Labour took the seat with a margin of 13,000 votes in 1997, but before that it had always been a Conservative stronghold. Of course Gold's candidacy was preceded by that of the Tories' "Shadow Chancellor" Michael Portillo, who while he said publicly that he had had affairs with men in the past, has been leading an exclusively heterosexual life for at least the 17 years of his marriage. The mix of sex and politics plays out very differently in other parts of the world. Both Zimbabwe's first post-colonial President Canaan Banana and Malaysia's former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim were in appeals courts this week. Banana was convicted in 1998 of 11 counts of sexual assaults against 9 male victims, most of them underlings during his years in the Presidency. His attorney argued both that there was no corroborating evidence for victims' testimony and that an interaction the trial court deemed to be consensual should not be considered a crime at all. Banana is appealing both his convictions and his sentence, which was ten years in prison with all but one year suspended if he paid compensation to one victim and met other conditions. Anwar is currently in the midst of being tried for sodomy, but last year was convicted on four counts of corruption relating to covering up allegations of sexual misconduct, and it was those convictions he was appealing. Malaysian and international observers were appalled by the handling of that trial at the time. Both Banana and Anwar have consistently denied all the charges against them. Both are devoted to their religions and long-married. But the charges against Anwar appeared more overtly political, since they served to remove him from his long-time role as "prime minister in waiting" under the aging Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed. When Banana was charged, he was largely retired from national politics, although he continued to serve as a respected elder statesman in international negotiations in Africa. Anwar's ouster made him into a symbol of a reform movement that won more votes in opposition to Malaysia's ruling UMNO party than ever before, and that in turn even advanced some opposition within UMNO to Mahathir and his new deputy. And finally, one of Canada's greatest gay activists, Jim Egan, died this week at the age of 78. Throughout his adult life he was outspoken in confronting homophobia among politicians, clergy and media portrayals. But he is best known as the plaintiff in a landmark eight-year lawsuit -- one that has laid the groundwork for most of the gay and lesbian civil rights gains in Canada since. In 1995, Egan went before the Supreme Court of Canada to seek a government spousal pension benefit for his partner Jack Nesbit. The court decided in that case that the national Charter of Rights and Freedoms did serve to protect gays and lesbians from discrimination even though it didn't name them. The court also decided that it was in fact discrimination to deny Nesbit the benefit, and strongly urged the Parliament to reconsider its definition of "spouse." But the court ruled that in this instance the discrimination was justified, because the benefit in question had been intended for impoverished older women who had been dependent on their husbands. Nesbit and Egan had been together 52 years at the time of his death. A 1996 Vision TV documentary about them was entitled, "Jim Loves Jack."