NewsWrap for the week ending July 15, 2000 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #642, distributed 07-17-00) [Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Chris Ambidge, Alan Reekie, Martin Rice, Brian Nunes, Jason Lin, Rex Wockner, Greg Gordon & Lucia Chappelle] Anchored by Cindy Friedman and Donald Herman Canada's most conservative national party has voted by a landslide to make its most conservative candidate its leader. Stockwell Day has never served in the national parliament, but is now the leader of the new Canadian Alliance party. He has a record of anti-gay activism in Alberta's provincial parliament and Cabinet that's bound to feature strongly as the ruling Liberals campaign against him. He opposed the addition of gays and lesbians to Alberta's human rights law, and when the Canadian Supreme Court required that they be "read in" to the law, Day called for invoking the so-called "notwithstanding" clause to override the court. Early in his political career, he opposed opening military service to gays and lesbians and called AIDS a warning from God against sodomy. As Social Services Minister, he denied foster placements to gays and lesbians. As Treasurer, he tried to cancel a small grant to the Red Deer Museum for assembling materials on the history of gays and lesbians in the area. In the Alliance leadership campaign, he won the support of anti-gay religious right groups, one of which criticized one of Day's opponents for including gays in the top ranks of his campaign team. Day has tried to downplay social issues in his campaign, preferring a libertarian approach of getting government out of personal lives. More recently he’s actually supported legal registered partnerships as long as they are open to any economically interdependent couple, regardless of the nature of their relationship. While some gays and lesbians vowed to quit the Alliance party if Day became leader, his flat tax proposal has appealed to some others who prioritize their economic interests -- and his attractive, youthful image has appealed even to some gay men who reject his politics. Day has been a Pentecostal lay preacher and Christian school administrator, although he has promised not to force his religious views on the party. Jens Torstein Olsen has become the first openly partnered gay pastor in Norway's Lutheran state church. The Church of Norway's National Church Council in 1997 adopted a policy explicitly barring non-celibate gays and lesbians from serving in roles requiring ordination. Olsen himself had lost his post as a deacon consultant in 1988 when he revealed his partnership to the National Church Council. He then sued the church for reinstatement, but lost. This year, though, he was the unanimous choice of Oslo's Majorstua congregation. The Oslo Bishop's Council approved the appointment by a 4-to-3 vote, but the three dissenters appealed to the Ministry of Churches and Education. Because the Church of Norway is the state church, that department is technically the employer of all its clergy. This week Minister of Churches and Education Trond Giske announced he had hired Olsen, declaring him the best qualified for the job. Giske said, "I had to decide whether the National Church Council can bind a Bishop's Council regarding an employment issue. The rules clearly state it cannot do so." The National Church Council responded that, "No one wants a government minister as the church's judge in theological questions." Seven of the church's eleven bishops had declared an emergency when the Oslo Bishop's Council approved Olsen's appointment in June, but they're not expected to meet to discuss it until August. Olsen and Norway's gays and lesbians are delighted. Norway has had registered partnerships giving same-gender couples almost all the benefits of marriage since 1993. Olsen's partner is Oslo City Councilmember Erling Lae. Recognition of same-gender couples was one of the biggest issues this week as the Episcopal Church USA held its triennial General Convention in Denver. A special committee crafted a resolution that never used the words lesbian, gay, homosexual, or same-sex, referring instead to committed relationships other than marriage. It also never used the word bless, although it included a resolve to develop a ritual to express support for those relationships. The ritual clause fell just short of a two-thirds majority among delegations of lay people, although it reached the two-thirds mark among delegations of priests. Bishops defeated it by a 57% majority. But both the House of Bishops and the House of Deputies overwhelmingly approved the other seven sections of the resolution, which acknowledge the existence of committed relationships other than marriage, list a set of values for both those relationships and for marriage, agrees to support those relationships, and affirms those on both sides of the issue. A spokesperson for the bishops called this a major shift in the thinking of the 2.4-million-member denomination. The Episcopalian gay and lesbian group Integrity said, "With the passing of this resolution... the question is no longer whether our relationships exist or are of God. The question is how they should be celebrated. Noting the overwhelming support for the resolution, the trajectory... is clearly toward full acceptance and celebration..." The Convention did nothing to change the current unofficial policy that each diocese can make its own decision whether to bless same-gender couples, which 61 of 108 dioceses do. Gays and lesbians were favorably acknowledged in many other items of business at the General Convention, and Integrity founder Dr. Louie Crew was elected to the denomination's national Executive Board. A lesbian co-parent became the first in New York state to win a court order for visitation with the children her former partner bore by artificial insemination. Just two days later an appeals court blocked that temporary order, but the co-parent's case for a permanent order will continue in August. Previous New York state rulings had found that a same-gender partner is not a parent under the state's Domestic Relations Law. In Belgium, lesbian Lily Hubrechts won her long-running legal battle for custody of her own children. When she divorced her husband, an Antwerp court had called her lesbian partnership a "serious fault." Last year Belgium's highest court, the Cour de Cassation, ordered a new trial for her. Now a court in Antwerp has given her custody of her two youngest children, saying that "a person's intimate orientation is no grounds for discrimination with regard to the exercise of parental rights." Six men were executed in Saudi Arabia this week for what the Interior Ministry called "committing the extreme obscenity of homosexuality and imitating women." All six were also convicted of molesting boys, while three were charged for having same-gender marriages. Three of the men were Saudi and three Yemeni. Saudi Arabia leads the world in executions under its strict interpretation of Islamic law. Amnesty International has complained that suspects there do not always get fair trials. Sodomy reform was protested in Romania by 2,500 Christians who marched for two hours with banners reading "No to homosexuality." Members of the Romanian Orthodox Church, who make up more than 80% of the population, were joined in the protest by Catholics and Baptists. Romania is once again attempting to meet Council of Europe standards of equal treatment for gays and lesbians, as it has since 1993, but gay and lesbian activists are still dissatisfied with the over-broad wording of the bill now in process. British law reform may be in trouble, according to a report in London's "Independent" newspaper. Home Secretary Jack Straw will soon be publishing a bill to overhaul the UK's sex crimes laws, and it was expected to include repeal of the 19th-century "gross indecency" law. That felony punishable with up to five years in prison applies only to gay men, making homosexual acts a crime if any third party is present. There were 354 reports of gross indecency last year. But unnamed inside sources said that Prime Minister Tony Blair met with Straw this week to ask him to delay gay sex law reform, fearing a backlash in the general elections. Straw is expected to go ahead with the rest of the reforms but to say more consultation is needed on the gay-related laws. In Namibia, a magazine which has called for equal treatment of gays and lesbians suffered an arson attack on its offices. "Sister Namibia" editor Liz Frank believes her group's pro-gay stand motivated the arson, and that recent anti-gay rhetoric from President Sam Nujoma contributed to it. Namibia's National Society for Human Rights agreed. Just a week before, Nujoma had declared that gays and lesbians are "ungodly," "unAfrican" and "destroying the nation." And finally... As the 13th International AIDS Conference was held in Durban, South Africa's openly gay High Court Justice Edwin Cameron wowed a crowd of 10,000 with his keynote speech. He described his own experience with AIDS, noting that he would be dead by now if it were not for drugs, and saying, "I am here because I can afford to pay for life itself. My presence here embodies the injustice of AIDS because, on a continent in which 290-million Africans survive on less than one US dollar a day, I can afford medication costs of about $400 per month." He went on to criticize both governments and pharmaceutical companies for the lack of drug access, noting that India, Brazil and Thailand have proven most drugs could be produced cheaply. He said, "No more than Germans in the Nazi era, no more than white South Africans during apartheid, can we... say that we bear no responsibility for 30-million people in resource-poor countries who face death from AIDS unless medical care and treatment is made accessible to them."