NewsWrap
for the week ending December 2, 2000
(As broadcast on This Way Out program #662, distributed 12-04-00)
[Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Chris Ambidge, 
Matt Alsdorf, Martin Nel, Brian Nunes, Jason Lin, Rex Wockner, Greg Gordon & 
Lucia Chappelle]

Anchored by Chase Schulte and Cindy Friedman

  The long struggle in Britain to equalize the age of consent for sex between 
men with that for heterosexual acts finally ended this week.  The Government 
invoked the rarely-used Parliament Act to override the House of Lords' 
repeated rejection of equalization.  The House of Commons has repeatedly 
approved the move by large margins since the Labour Party won its sizable 
majority there in 1997.  When Britain first decriminalized consensual sex 
between men more than thirty years ago, the age of consent was set at 21.  In 
1995, a move to equalization ended in a compromise that lowered the gay age 
of consent to 18 instead.  Now it will be 16 in England and Wales and 17 in 
Northern Ireland.  Conservative opponents continued their resistance to the 
very last, including announcing a survey finding that even Labour supporters 
in Prime Minister Tony Blair's home district opposed both equalization and 
its passage by means of the Parliament Act by more than 70%.  Britain's 
Church of England, Roman Catholic and Muslim religious leaders all signed a 
published letter of protest, calling anal intercourse "the most dangerous of 
sexual practices."  Although opponents insisted that their concern was to 
protect young people from sexual exploitation, activists' concerns were for 
the hundreds of young people who have been treated as criminals for the same 
acts heterosexuals could perform legally.
Activists hailed the move as a breakthrough.  The national gay and lesbian 
advocacy group Stonewall's executive director Angela Mason said, "When the 
history books come to be written, I believe it will be seen as the moment 
when this country finally began to change, when lesbians and gay men started 
to take their place as equal members of society."

  The Boy Scouts of America's policy of excluding gays is costing it more and 
more as communities across the U.S. reconsider their relationships with the 
Scouts.
This week the Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to enforce its 
nondiscrimination policies with respect to the Scouts.  Scouts will now have 
to pay the same fees as others for the use of city facilities and the Los 
Angeles Police Department will take over the Explorers program it's run with 
the Scouts for nearly forty years.  All city departments will review their 
contracts with the group.  Openly lesbian City Councilmember and state 
Assemblymember-elect Jackie Goldberg said, "While the Supreme Court has given 
them the right to discriminate, we will not."
Also this week, Chancellor Harold Levy, a former Scout himself, announced 
that New York City schools will not enter into any new contracts with the 
Scouts and will not sponsor Scout troops.  Three of the 32 school districts 
within the New York City system had already prohibited their schools from 
sponsoring Scout troops.
Some smaller cities in the U.S. have also determined to end Scouts' 
sweetheart deals for use of facilities and access to public school students.

  Tokyo may become the first city in Asia to protect gays and lesbians from 
discrimination, after reinserting "sexual orientation" in its draft human 
rights guidelines.  Gays and lesbians had been included in the process of 
developing those guidelines, but when the draft was first published for 
public comment in June the category was omitted.  The deletion was justified 
with claims that Tokyo's citizens "do not fully understand homosexuals," and 
Tokyo's Governor Shintaro Ishihara asked a press conference how they were 
discriminated against.  Gay and lesbian activists and allies lobbied hard for 
inclusion, calling on the international community for support as well.  The 
pressure convinced the city government to put the sexual orientation category 
back in.

  There was an advance for gay and lesbian couples in South Africa last week 
as the Parliament gave them a spousal exemption from inheritance taxes, 
retroactive to the establishment of the post-apartheid constitution in 1994.  
That constitution was the first in the world to prohibit discrimination based 
on sexual orientation, but many laws and government policies have yet to be 
made consistent with it.  Under the newly-passed Revenue Laws Amendment Bill, 
the Estate Duties Act redefines "spouse" to include "a permanent same-sex 
life relationship."

  Germany's bill to officially register gay and lesbian life partners was 
rubber-stamped this week by the national legislature's upper house, the 
Bundesrat, but a second Government bill to attach a number of valuable 
benefits to registration was stalled there.  Next year gay and lesbian 
couples in Germany will be able to register their partnerships and be 
recognized for purposes including medical decisions, tenancy, insurance, 
spousal support, and even residency rights for the foreign partners in 
bi-national couples.  But marital tax breaks, health coverage and pensions 
are among the changes to the tax, welfare and labor codes that the 
conservative-dominated Bundesrat was unwilling to extend.  One of the 
unpleasant ironies this creates is that life partners will have standing to 
inherit from their partners absent a will, but will not get the inheritance 
tax breaks married couples enjoy.

  New Zealand's Parliament has approved access to the courts for property 
division when domestic partners split up.  Any couple of at least three 
years' standing will be covered by the law unless they arrange a different 
contract of their own.  The bill gives equal standing to married and 
unmarried heterosexual couples and to gay and lesbian couples.  The basic 
guideline for property division is a fifty/fifty split, although the courts 
have leeway to consider a number of factors including duration of the 
relationship, whether there is a sexual relationship, sharing of 
responsibilities, children, and the economic status of the partners after the 
split.  The Labour Government plans to introduce a broader bill for legal 
recognition of gay and lesbian couples within the year.

  The Australian state of Victoria is also taking a giant step forward, as 
its Government has introduced an omnibus bill to amend more than forty laws 
to give gay and lesbian couples the same legal status as unmarried 
heterosexual couples.  A second bill will follow in the new year to amend 
more than thirty other state laws to the same effect.  The legislation is 
based on recommendations by the state Equal Opportunity Commission's 1998.  
The first round of changes will empower one partner to make medical decisions 
for a disabled partner; will extend spousal tax exemptions to property 
transfers between partners; will qualify partners for pension benefits; and 
will give partners standing to inherit from each other in the absence of a 
will.  Political parties in the state parliament are still reviewing the 
proposal and have not yet taken positions.

  Political success has come to another of India's transgender hijras, with 
her election as mayor of a city best-known as a publishing center for Hindu 
scripture.  Asha Devi ran as an independent and trounced candidates from the 
major parties to become mayor of Gorakhpur in the state of Uttar Pradesh by a 
large margin.  The hijra -- most of whom are not castrated despite the common 
translation of "eunuch" -- include transgenders, cross-dressers and gay men.  
Long kept on the margins of society as an outlaw group, they have begun to 
win mainstream recognition.  Devi is actually the second hijra to win an 
Indian mayoralty this year, and last year a hijra was elected to a state 
legislative assembly.

  In U.S. politics, openly lesbian Southern California Democrat Gerrie 
Schipske this week conceded to incumbent Republican Congressmember Steve 
Horn.  Schipske had hoped that the full vote tally including absentee and 
so-called "provisional" ballots would put her ahead of Horn, but the final 
count ended with Schipske behind by about 1,700 votes, less than one percent. 
 Schipske could have requested a recount but chose not to.  In 1996 she lost 
another Congressional race by an even slimmer 1,200 votes, but she's 
determined to try again in 2002.

  Canada's federal elections this week offered few surprises.  The Liberal 
Party was returned to power, making Jean Chretien the first Canadian Prime 
Minister since 1945 to form three consecutive majority Governments in a row.  
Both incumbent openly gay members of Parliament were returned, the New 
Democratic Party's Svend Robinson from British Columbia's Burnaby-Douglas by 
a small margin and the Bloc Quebecois' Real Menard from Quebec's 
Hochelaga-Maisonneuve by a large margin.  Both of those gay-friendly parties 
lost some seats in the parliament, as did the Progressive Conservative Party. 
 At least one transgender and six openly gay challengers lost their bids.  
But while the right-wing Canadian Alliance Party gained some seats, it did 
not make significant inroads beyond the Western region of the country which 
has always been its base, failing to fulfill its vision of "uniting the 
right" to defeat the Liberals.

  And finally, Canadian Alliance Party leader Stockwell Day was rather hoist 
on his own petard with some humor from the satirical TV show "This Hour Has 
22 Minutes."  Day, a lay preacher with an anti-gay record in the Alberta 
legislature, had proposed holding national referenda on difficult social 
issues such as abortion, the death penalty and gay and lesbian civil rights.  
Although he waffled later, he initially called for the referenda to be 
binding and for them to be triggered by petitions from as little as 3% of the 
electorate.  The TV show set up a petition reading, "We demand that the 
Government of Canada force Stockwell Day to change his first name to Doris."  
With the help of its Web site, the show had collected twice the number of 
signatures required in less than a week.  Clearly the Alliance leader is 
familiar with the work of the former film and singing star who is his 
namesake-to-be, because when advised of the petition he answered with the 
title of one of her greatest hits: "Que sera, sera."