NewsWrap for the week ending June 3, 2000 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #636, distributed 06-05-00) [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 Cindy Friedman and Greg Gordon Italy's Minister of Agriculture Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio this week identified himself as bisexual in an interview with the weekly news magazine "Panorama". He's believed to be Italy's first Cabinet minister ever to openly identify himself as other than heterosexual, and "Panorama" captioned his photo, "Courageous." When the interviewer asked him directly if he is gay, he said, "I'm against choosing just homosexuality or heterosexuality... Me, I choose absolute sexual liberty. ... I think a one-way choice is self-restrictive." A member of the Green Party, Pecoraro Scanio will continue to keep opposition to genetically modified food at the top of his agenda, noting that, "Sexuality is important, but it isn't the central thing in my life." Italy's only openly gay Member of Parliament, Communist Niki Vendola, praised Pecoraro Scanio and said, "A double morality is in force in our country in which some things can be done, but they can't be talked about. I think a lot of colleagues are afraid to come out of the darkness." Pecoraro Scanio made his announcement at a time when the July celebration of World Pride 2000 in Rome is being hotly debated. The Vatican and right-wing groups maintain that it's offensive to the Church for gays and lesbians to celebrate pride in the holy city in the Jubilee Year, even though World Pride was planned before the Pope declared the Jubilee Year. Pecoraro Scanio said, "It's a normal demonstration against discrimination and in Italy, both the right to demonstrate and the right to choose one's own sexual orientation exist. I don't see where the offense to religion is. The Church is trying to portray Gay Pride as some sort of sex show." But the continuing opposition to World Pride seems to have worn down Rome's Mayor Francesco Rutelli. After months of staunch support for Pride, this week he turned against it. He was ready to withdraw the city's substantial grant to the celebration. The City Council overruled him, but he's now limiting financial support to specific events rather than the entire ten-day festival. He also required Pride to remove the city's logo from all its materials, indicating withdrawal of sponsorship. But the City Council called on Rutelli to ensure that permits were provided for all of World Pride's scheduled events, while last week the Minister of the Interior had wanted them all moved out of central Rome for security reasons. Gay and lesbian activists demonstrated outside Italian embassies and consulates in a number of cities this week demanding that World Pride be allowed to proceed. A former long-time Australian Cabinet member who once filed lawsuits against those who said he was gay, this week owned up to his long-standing relationship with another man, in an interview with the "Herald-Sun". Dr. Neal Blewett first met his partner Robert Brain when they were university students nearly fifty years ago. They were lovers then, but after serving in the military together, they separated. Blewett went on to have a 26-year heterosexual marriage and two children, but after his wife died in 1988, Brain moved in with him and his son. Rumors began to circulate and at the time Blewett vigorously denied them, saying they were a smear campaign by doctors who disagreed with his policies on AIDS and other health issues. He sued two doctors and a radio station, and one of the doctors actually paid him damages. Five years later, Blewett was posted to London as Australia's High Commissioner to Britain, and there Brain was described as "helping out in the kitchen" when Blewett entertained. Since Blewett's retirement, he and Brain have lived quietly in Australia’s Blue Mountains. Brain is an ethnographer, writer and needlework artist. The powerful Australian Medical Association this week elected open lesbian Dr. Kerryn Phelps to serve as its president. It was something of an upset because Phelps was running against the AMA's sitting vice president, and the group had always previously picked someone from its national executive. Phelps has been serving as the AMA's New South Wales president. She's best-known as health editor on a daily television show and a columnist for the "Australian Women's Weekly". She's also board chair of Satellite Group Limited, the world's first gay-identified company to go public. She was "outed" by a tabloid in 1998 after celebrating a commitment ceremony with her partner Jackie Stricker, a former teacher who now serves as Phelps' personal assistant. Phelps maintains a general practice in Sydney. An Israeli lesbian couple also celebrated a victory this week, as Israel's highest court made them the nation's first legally recognized same-gender parents. Nicole and Ruti Berner-Kadish both hold dual Israeli-U.S. citizenship, and although they met in Israel and intend to live there permanently, they’ve both been studying in the U.S. Ruti bore their son Matan by artificial insemination in California, where Nicole legally adopted him. But Israel's Ministry of the Interior did not want to recognize Nicole's parental status on the grounds that a child could not have two mothers. Two of the three judges on the High Court of Justice disagreed, and maintained that foreign adoptions should be recognized. This would seem to open the door to gay and lesbian couples leaving the country to obtain second-parent adoptions they cannot get in Israel. Already heterosexual partners who cannot marry in Israel because one is Jewish and the other is not, routinely go to nearby Cyprus for marriages which are then recognized on their return. Zimbabwe's Supreme Court this week rejected the final appeal of the nation's first post-colonial President Canaan Banana, who was convicted of eleven counts of sexual harassment and sexual assaults against nine men. Banana's attorney had asked the court to strike down Zimbabwe's sodomy law as a violation of privacy. Although the justices were divided on that issue, a majority believed the law should stand in recognition of prevailing social attitudes. Banana's was no test case for consensual acts, since most of his convictions were for actions he committed during his 1980's presidency against lower level staff serving under him. The court described him as using "his immense superiority of status to beat down the resistance" of his young victims. Banana's sentence was upheld by the court, and unless his long-time political colleague the notoriously homophobic President Robert Mugabe pardons him, he will have to serve at least one year in prison. Banana, now 64 years old, is a married father of four, and before his trial he was a distinguished international diplomat in Africa, an ordained minister and head of the theology department at the University of Zimbabwe. He has always denied all the charges against him and denies that he is gay. But Massachusetts state Senator Cheryl Jacques is gay, she wrote this week in an op-ed piece in the "Boston Globe". The four-term Democratic Senator from Needham was defending the state's continued funding of its pioneering Safer Schools programs for lesbigay, transgender and questioning youth. Those programs have come under a concerted attack from a parents' group that claims they are pursuing a "gay agenda" in the schools instead of preventing suicide and anti-gay harassment. But public safety issues, particularly those involving children, are a top priority for Jacques, a former criminal prosecutor. The previous week she had successfully defended the school programs' funding in the state Senate, and in her oped piece she was making her case to the public as well. She included the statement, "As a gay person myself, I understand in a very personal way the tremendous pressure these young people feel." She said later, "If I were writing a column about anti-Semitism and I were Jewish, I would point that out." School programs continue to be the hot issue in Scotland, where the Government is working to repeal Section 28. That Thatcher-era statute prohibits local governments from devoting resources to the "promotion of homosexuality" and bars the teaching of same-gender couples as "pretend family relationships." According to surveys, it has also inhibited educators from intervening in anti-gay harassment in schools. But among the vocal opponents of repeal is Brian Souter, until recently the richest man in Scotland, and this week he announced the results of the mail-in poll of Scottish voters that he and his allies paid at least one million pounds for. Well over 1.2-million Scots returned ballots opposing repeal. Almost everyone who supported repeal did not participate in the unofficial poll, and the return was a modest 32%. Souter has taken the result as a mandate to spend the next three years using his millions to defeat politicians who support repeal as they seek election to both the British and Scottish Parliaments. Despite that threat, the Scottish Parliament continues to move towards repeal. And finally... Bill Clinton was the first U.S. President ever to issue a proclamation of June as Gay and Lesbian Pride Month, and this week he did so for the last time. He took the occasion to renew his calls for enactment of federal anti-discrimination and hate crime laws to protect gays and lesbians. He wrote that, "Gay and lesbian Americans have made important and lasting contributions to our Nation in every field of endeavor. Too often, however, gays and lesbians face prejudice and discrimination; too many have had to hide or deny their sexual orientation in order to keep their jobs or to live safely in their communities... "This June, recognizing the joys and sorrows that the gay and lesbian movement has witnessed and the work that remains to be done, we observe Gay and Lesbian Pride Month and celebrate the progress we have made in creating a society more inclusive and accepting of gays and lesbians... "I encourage all Americans to observe this month with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities that celebrate our diversity and recognize the gay and lesbian Americans whose many and varied contributions have enriched our national life."