NewsWrap for the week ending December 9, 2000 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #663, distributed 12-11-00) [Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Chris Ambidge, Alan Reekie, Brian Nunes, Jason Lin, Rex Wockner, Greg Gordon & Lucia Chappelle] Anchored by Cindy Friedman and Chase Schulte Germany this week issued a long-awaited apology to gay victims of the Nazi Holocaust. The lower house of the German parliament, the Bundestag, unanimously approved a Government resolution saying, "The parliament is convinced that the honor of the homosexual victims of Nazism must be rebuilt and apologizes for the harm done to homosexual citizens up to 1969 in their human dignity, their opening out and their quality of life." 1969 was the year Germany finally repealed the infamous Paragraph 175, an anti-gay law the Nazis extended to the point that even a look between two men could lead to arrest. It's generally accepted that some 10,000 gays were sent to concentration camps, although some believe the number may be much higher, and they were usually the worst-treated of any prisoners there. Unlike other Holocaust victims, gays were still considered criminals after liberation, so most tried to hide the reason for their incarceration. Other Holocaust victims received official apology years earlier. This week's resolution also called for a Government report on appropriate compensation for gay Holocaust victims. Another horrific historical revelation came out of Norway this week, where a review of health archives revealed that 370 men and 44 women were victims of forced castration between 1934 and 1969. Many of the male victims were homosexuals who had been incarcerated either in mental institutions or facilities for young offenders; many were less than 20 years old. The practice was first instituted with the idea of preventing repeat offenses by rapists, but was soon extended to other groups including even epileptics. Lesbians and gays seeking asylum in Britain should have a better chance at a full hearing after the introduction this week of new so-called "gender guidelines" for immigration judges. Although primarily directed at raising judge's awareness of forms of persecution directed specifically at women, the new guidelines discuss lesbians and gays as well. Judges are instructed that sexual orientation can be a basis for persecution, and are asked to give special consideration to gay and lesbian couples in "stable relationships". The guidelines note that forced heterosexual marriage violates gays' and lesbians' right to a private sexual life. They also say that those who "fail or refuse to conform to behavioral norms" including standards of dress may be punished and persecuted. The guidelines also seek to sensitize judges to the special difficulties asylum applicants may have in giving testimony regarding sexual abuse. The U.S. also issued guidelines this week discussing special issues of women refugees. An Iowa court this week struck down a gubernatorial order prohibiting discrimination in state employment based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The September 1999 executive order by Democratic Governor Tom Vilsack was the first in the nation to protect transgendered people. Iowa's Republican legislators objected to it immediately. First they tried to repeal it through legislation, but of course Vilsack vetoed the repeal bill. Then in July 23 Republican state lawmakers filed a lawsuit claiming that Vilsack had exceeded his authority in adding four categories to his executive order that are not protected elsewhere in Iowa law, the other two being gender and marital status. Polk County District Judge Glenn Pille agreed, and struck down the order as "a violation of the separation of powers in the Constitution of Iowa." Vilsack had maintained that he was only seeking to implement an Iowa law calling for "equal opportunity in state employment to all persons." Republicans have insisted throughout the controversy that their concerns were strictly constitutional, but Democrats charged they acted out of homophobia and a desire to stir up religious conservatives for last month's elections. Civil rights for gays and lesbians are also under attack in Dade County, Florida, where religious right groups have turned in what should be enough signatures to put a repeal measure before voters in 2002. The same groups had failed to qualify a repeal measure earlier this year. Dade County has historical significance because it passed one of the earliest civil rights measures in the U.S. to protect gays and lesbians in the 1970s, only to have voters repeal the ordinance in the nation's first high-profile religious right anti-gay political campaign, the "Save Our Children" campaign led by singer Anita Bryant. The County didn't reenact an ordinance against discrimination based on sexual orientation until two years ago. The Atlanta, Georgia City Council this week approved broader and stronger civil rights ordinances including protections for gays and lesbians. Previously the city had prohibited discrimination only in city employment, city contracts and certain public accommodations, and enforcement provisions were weak. A package of bills by openly lesbian City Councilmember Cathy Woolard now prohibits discrimination in private employment, housing and all public accommodations, with two mechanisms for enforcement. One is a restructured city Human Rights Commission, which can hear complaints, investigate them, mediate between the parties, issue "orders of enforcement," and punish offenders by terminating their city contracts and licenses. The other allows those who believe they have experienced discrimination to file civil lawsuits in Atlanta Municipal Court. Activists in Hawai'i made public this week a recent court ruling granting second-parent adoptions to lesbian co-parents for the first time. Three lesbians were allowed to adopt children their partners had borne, without the biological mothers losing their own parental status. The legal ruling had been intentionally kept under wraps to avoid influencing last month's elections, in which state Board of Education races were already heated by controversy over a policy to protect gay and lesbian students. The public announcement came as part of the launch of a new "Civil Rights - Civil Unions" campaign for the upcoming state legislative session. Finland's Government announced last week its acceptance of a proposal from its Justice Ministry for legal recognition of gay and lesbian couples. The bill will be introduced in the parliament within the next few weeks and come to a vote in the new year. Three political parties are almost unanimous in their support, two are divided and a conservative party opposes it. Activists are fairly confident of its passage, despite the failure of a similar bill in 1996. While the proposed partnerships include some benefits of marriage, they will not be called marriages and will not include adoption rights. Belgium's Government is ready to move ahead on adding some real benefits to the essentially ceremonial "statutory cohabitation" contracts that went into effect this year. Those were so pointless that hardly any couples have used them. But earlier this year the Government set up an all-party working group to review the laws for discrimination against gay and lesbian couples, and now it's preparing to implement some of that group's recommendations. The Government's draft family policy paper for 2001 was presented to the parliament last week, and it included lifting the ban on adoptions by gay and lesbian couples. However, they will only be able to adopt Belgian children because of international conventions. Toronto's gay-affirming Metropolitan Community Church, MCC, believes it may be able to achieve the world's first gay and lesbian marriages through a method that's several centuries old. The practice is called "publishing the banns of marriage," which simply means announcing at three consecutive church services or in three weekly church bulletins that a couple intends to marry. The familiar Anglican formula for those announcements asks "if any know any cause or just impediment why these two should not be joined in holy matrimony, you are to declare it." Under common law, which the Toronto MCC says is still recognized in Ontario's provincial law, once the banns are published the church can issue a marriage license to the couple. The church's pastor Brent Hawkes intends to begin the practice in the new year, and church legal counsel are prepared to defend it if objections are raised as anticipated. Certainly the idea has already sparked controversy. The office of Ontario's Registrar-General has said it will not accept the church's licenses, and the provincial Government is reviewing the legalities. The conservative province of Alberta has already announced it will not recognize MCC's marriages. A national effort is already underway to sue for full marriage rights for Canada's gay and lesbian couples. And finally... "Rolling Stone" this week published a lengthy interview with outgoing U.S. President Bill Clinton. He reaffirmed his view that equal treatment of gays and lesbians is a civil rights issue, and denounced the Boy Scouts of America's policy of excluding gays. He also reminisced at length about the Republican political maneuvers that forced the military policy on gays and lesbians to the top of the agenda at the beginning of his first term in 1993. Senator Bob Dole's strategy denied him the chance to eliminate the ban on military service by gays and lesbians as he'd envisioned, and he took the only action he could to prevent the legislators from codifying the complete ban into law. He developed the so-called "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in consultation with then-head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Colin Powell and won the agreement of the War College. Clinton said he has never been satisfied with this policy or its implementation. However, his dissatisfaction was not expressed with the use of a quite un-Presidential phrase that appeared in "Rolling Stone" and was quoted in the "New York Times". "Rolling Stone" had to apologize for a transcription error that had Clinton referring to the policy not as "Don't Ask" but as "dumbass".