NewsWrap for the week ending December 16, 2000 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #664, distributed 12-18-00) [Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Chris Ambidge, GAIN (Gender Advocacy Information Network), Brian Nunes, Jason Lin, Rex Wockner, Greg Gordon & Lucia Chappelle] Anchored by Cindy Friedman and Greg Gordon The Supreme Court of Canada this week ruled in the long-running case of Canada Customs' abuses against Vancouver's gay and lesbian Little Sisters bookstore. The small store relies on U.S. imports for 80 to 90% of its stock, and since 1984 Canada Customs has seized more than 260 titles headed there on grounds of obscenity. Many of those same titles crossed the border to mainstream stores with no problems and some can even be found in the Vancouver Public Library. Other gay and lesbian materials were held by Customs to be obscene when nearly identical depictions of heterosexual acts were allowed to pass. The trial judge who first heard the case in 1994 found that Customs agents were systematically targeting Little Sisters' imports for wrongful delay, confiscation, destruction, damage, prohibition, and misclassification. The Supreme Court was also very sympathetic to Little Sisters and highly critical of Customs' actions, but its ruling did little to change them for the future. It upheld the obscenity law as a "reasonable" infringement on free expression rights, and it upheld almost all of the Customs law as well. The one change it ordered is that it will now be up to Customs to prove that an item is obscene, rather than the burden of proof being on the importer to show it is not. That could mean Customs paying out significant damages for its mistakes when importers go to court. But to a six-member majority of the nine-member high court bench, it is not the Customs law supporting obscenity seizures that is flawed but only its implementation, and they left the law intact while calling on the department to improve its performance. Three dissenters argued vigorously that the extent of the abuses prove that the law is flawed in its failure to offer any protections to free expression, and wanted to strike down Customs law as it applies to expressive materials. University of Toronto law professor Brenda Cossman, an expert in obscenity law, called it a "profoundly disappointing decision." Law professor Nicole LaViolette, speaking for the national group EGALE, Equality for Gays and Lesbians Everywhere, called it a "partial victory." She said, "The real victory in this is the Supreme Court of Canada recognizing gays and lesbians have been unfairly treated in applying the laws on obscenity." Little Sisters manager Janine Fuller said, "My message to Canada Customs today is that it's not business as usual any more. The Supreme Court has told you definitively to clean up your act." Effectively reversing a U.S. Supreme Court ruling relating to free expression, a federal judge has found the University of Wisconsin's handling of mandatory student fees unconstitutional. Many state universities in the U.S. use similar systems. For more than four years a group of Christian conservative students have been attacking the UW fee system because it has forced them to give financial support to groups they disagree with, including the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Campus Center. The actual contribution of a single student to any given campus group is well under a dollar. Earlier this year in a case named for plaintiff Scott Southworth, the U.S. high court unanimously rejected the argument that the fee system constituted "forced speech" that violated the students' First Amendment rights. It accepted instead the University's argument that the fee system creates an "open forum" for a diversity of views. But the high court left a loophole that allowed a trial court to consider whether the system of allocating the funds is truly "viewpoint-neutral". The conservative students seized on that even though in the Southworth case they had stipulated that the system was viewpoint-neutral. In a case named for plaintiff Kendra Fry, U.S. District Court Judge John Shabaz, who had decided for the plaintiffs in the Southworth case, found that, "To require University of Wisconsin students to pay a fee to subsidize expressive speech without any protection of the rights of students who object to the funded speech is a violation of the First Amendment." He objected to the broad discretion allowed to the student committee determining allocations, describing committee members as acting as "government officials" and equating their election to a campus referendum on funding student groups. Giving the University sixty days to revise its system, he ordered an end to the use of mandatory student fees to support "political and ideological activities". The University has not yet decided whether to appeal. There are no appeals left for Oklahoma lesbian Wanda Jean Allen, who is scheduled in January to become the first African-American woman to be executed since the U.S. reinstated the death penalty in 1976. She will be the first woman executed in Oklahoma since it became a state. Unimpressed by her plea to "Please let me live" and the presence of about 100 demonstrators, Oklahoma's Pardon and Parole Board this week voted 3-to-1 to let her sentence stand. Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating has indicated he will not intervene. Allen was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced in 1989 after shooting to death her partner Gloria Leathers in front of a police station. The women had met in prison where Allen was serving time for manslaughter after shooting to death her previous partner Dedra Pettus. A number of gay and lesbian civil rights groups had joined death penalty opponents in taking up Allen's cause. They say that as a result of childhood brain injuries she has a low IQ and a tendency to become confused and act impulsively, problems which were diagnosed early in her life but were never treated, and which did not come to light until after her trial. They also say she had inadequate legal representation, in particular a lawyer who had never before tried a capital case, who tried to withdraw because of that but was denied by the court. They allege the trial was tainted by classism, racism and homophobia. British judges this week received some basic training against homophobia, with the Judicial Studies Board's publication of the second installment of its "Equal Treatment Bench Book". The book is distributed to all 4,000 full-time judges and tribunal chairs in England and Wales, designed to sensitize this group overwhelmingly composed of older white heterosexual males of higher socioeconomic classes to the experiences of others. The material on sexuality warns against stereotyping and assumptions that can lead to offense and injustice. Some of its specific lessons are: that homosexuality is not an illness and not contagious; that it has nothing to do with pedophilia and poses no special risk for abusing children; and that for transgendered people, cross-dressing can be an "inescapable emotional need." It also notes that if gays and lesbians appear less than candid, judges should remember that it may represent a lifetime of fear of exposure. Bullying in schools was also taken on in Britain this week, as the Education Department issued new guidelines called "Don't Suffer in Silence". The materials include a specific discussion of "bullying because of perceived sexual orientation." Education Secretary David Blunkett said he wanted never again "to hear that a school denies the fact that bullying takes place within their classrooms or their playground, never again to hear a parent saying they were ignored or that someone was too busy to do something." He urged victims to tell their parents and teachers. The new guidelines differ from those issued in 1994 by calling for the use of suspensions and expulsions of bullies in cases involving violence or sexual assault. A lesbian in the Australian state of Victoria has conceived through in vitro fertilization for the first time since a Federal Court struck down the state's restriction of reproductive treatment to women in relationships with men. That highly controversial decision is being appealed by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, but this month the Australian Government dropped from its legislative priorities a bill to override it. Two non-lesbian single women have also conceived by IVF in Victoria, while four more lesbians and eighteen other non-lesbian single women are currently undergoing treatment. All of the lesbians are in long-term relationships. Domestic partners will be able to receive spousal benefits from two more major U.S. employers, America Air West and communications giant BellSouth. America Air West is the eighth of the top ten air carriers in the U.S. to give benefits to domestic partners, and they'll be available regardless of gender. BellSouth, a Fortune 100 company, is the last of the so-called "Baby Bells" created when Bell Telephone was broken up to offer the benefit, which will be available only to gay and lesbian couples. And finally... A new employment opportunity has emerged for India's hijras. Although often translated as "eunuchs," most hijras are not castrated males but transsexuals, transgenders, cross-dressers and gay men. Only now emerging into the mainstream culture, they've long been marginalized as an outlaw group, surviving as beggars, entertainers, and casters of blessings and curses. It's the general public's revulsion for their campy antics and fear of their curses that has suited them for their new role as debt collectors. India's legal system has a tremendous backlog of debt cases despite the addition of specialized courts to hear them. Collection agencies found that when they sent traditional strong-arm types to debtors, they themselves were often becoming liable to assault claims. Now a number of banks and other firms are sending hijras instead, finding they have a high rate of success as small businesses are eager to be rid of their embarrassing presence. The hijra collectors try persuasion, noisy taunting and curses. When all else fails, they threaten to strip.