NewsWrap for the 3 weeks ending January 6, 2001 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #667, distributed 01-08-01) [Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Chris Ambidge, Brian Nunes, Jason Lin, Rex Wockner, Matt Alsdorf, Greg Gordon & Lucia Chappelle] Anchored by Cindy Friedman and Donald Herman The Netherlands Senate approved extending legal marriage to gay and lesbian couples by a two-to-one margin last month. The lower house had already passed the bill with an even more lopsided vote in September. The world's first legal same-gender marriages will take place April 1st, with at least fourteen couples holding a communal ceremony in Amsterdam. Only citizens and legal residents of the Netherlands can marry there. The Netherlands had already been registering legal domestic partnerships essentially equivalent to marriage since 1998, and those couples can convert their relationships to marriages if they wish. Although the Senate also approved expanded adoption rights for gays and lesbians, even married same-gender couples will still be barred from adopting children from other countries. A resolution supporting recognition of gay and lesbian couples has been approved by the leading professional organization of U.S. psychiatrists. It reads, "The American Psychiatric Association supports the legal recognition of same-sex unions and their associated legal rights, benefits and responsibilities." Gay and lesbian partners will be recognized as next-of-kin in tiny Liechtenstein, a European nation best known for its postage stamps. Liechtenstein's parliament, the Landtag, voted 25-to-23 last month for this and several other significant criminal code reforms to take effect January 19th. The age of consent, formerly 18 for sex acts between men, will be equalized at 14. Male prostitution will be treated the same as female prostitution. Bans on gay and lesbian organizations and on distribution of positive information about homosexuality will both be lifted. Anti-gay discrimination has been given only secondary recognition in proposals by the Japanese Justice Ministry's Council of Human Rights Promotion. The Council has proposed creation of a National Human Rights Commission to respond to seven forms of discrimination, but mentions "sexual orientation" only among other issues to be further investigated for possible inclusion. Tokyo's gay and lesbian group OCCUR has called for an international letter-writing campaign demanding that anti-gay discrimination be added to the mandate for the Human Rights Commission. OCCUR continues to struggle for inclusion of sexual orientation discrimination in Tokyo's own pending human rights measures, where it has been included, removed, replaced and dropped again. Two exiting U.S. governors took actions against sexual orientation discrimination in state employment. Newly-overhauled state employment policies soon to go into effect in Montana include sexual orientation as a class protected from discrimination, as specifically requested by Republican Governor Marc Racicot, an important ally of incoming U.S. President George W. Bush. Democratic Delaware Governor Tom Carper made one of his last official actions an executive order to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment by the state's executive branch. Democratic Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack had issued a similar order in September 1999 which included gender identity as well as sexual orientation among its protected categories. That set off a lengthy controversy that ended up with 23 Republican state lawmakers winning a lawsuit striking down the order as unconstitutional. Vilsack announced this week that he will not appeal that ruling, but will instead work with legislators to enact laws to the same effect. In Dade County, Florida, where ballots from the November elections are still under review, officials will have to check all 51,000 signatures submitted for a referendum to repeal civil rights protections for gays and lesbians. An association of groups led by the Christian Coalition had failed earlier in 1999 to gather enough signatures to place a repeal measure on the ballot, but used the November polls to try again. When elections officials carried out their usual sampling of the signatures submitted, they found that more than 30% were invalid. That projected to a shortfall of 4% from the minimum number of valid signatures required, which was considered "too close to call". And in Oregon, where voters in November defeated a measure to keep positive portrayals of homosexuality out of public schools, the anti-gay Oregon Citizens Alliance this week filed a slightly-rewritten version it hopes to place on the next ballot. OCA's original proposal, which appeared as Measure 9 on the November ballot, would have prohibited public schools from presenting homosexuality in a manner that "promotes, encourages, or sanctions such behaviors." The revised initiative addresses the key arguments of Measure 9's opponents by specifically exempting "age-appropriate, objective, and factual" AIDS and human sexuality education, instruction "affirming the human worth of all students," and suicide counseling. However the exempted functions are still supposed to be carried out in a way that is consistent with the statute's general principles, which define homosexuality as "yielding, whether in thought or deed, respectively, to urges or temptations to engage in sexual activity with members of the same gender." It also says the measure should not cause the termination of openly gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender teachers. Traverse City, Michigan instituted a campaign for tolerance in mid-December only to drop it this week in the face of protests. In the wake of some recent racist and anti-gay hate crimes, the city printed up 10,000 bumper stickers with the legend "We Are Traverse City," showing a half-dozen linked abstract human forms in different colors on a rainbow background. The stickers were placed on all city vehicles and made available to the public. But the American Family Association of Michigan organized protests against what it viewed as an endorsement of homosexuality, and some city workers driving the vehicles complained as well. At a packed City Commission meeting, the mayor said he thought he'd been conned into supporting the program, unaware of an association between the rainbow and gays and lesbians. The City Attorney convinced commissioners that the stickers should be removed from city vehicles rather than make them a "public forum" for which it would be difficult to deny future requests from other groups. However, private individuals in Traverse City still want to use the bumper stickers and have arranged for more to be printed. Those bumper stickers pale beside a huge billboard in London showing two women clad only in their underwear engaged in a passionate kiss. The promotion for the Queercompany.com Web site is captioned, "Thank God for Women," but some Britons don't agree. In the wake of their complaints, the Advertising Standards Authority is monitoring the campaign, which is believed to be the first but is certainly the most daring of its kind in the nation to date. Queercompany plans to launch a similar campaign portraying gay men this month. London Mayor Ken Livingstone announced last month the appointment to his advisory cabinet of Angela Mason, the executive director of Stonewall, Britain's national gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender advocacy group. Livingstone said he hoped that "Angela's outstanding record in campaigning for lesbian and gay equality will help us to ensure equal rights for all Londoners." Mason, who was inducted into the Order of the British Empire by Prince Charles a year ago for her civil rights work, called her new job "a unique opportunity to help create a modern city where every individual is treated with equality and respect." A Scot who was driven by an "outing" threat to confess to a notorious murder in Northern Ireland in 1953 was finally cleared last month. Now 68 years old, Iain Hay Gordon had been found guilty of the 1952 stabbing murder of Patricia Curran, the daughter of a High Court judge who went on to become Lord Chief Justice. Desperate to close the case, police arrested the 20-year-old Gordon, a friend of Patricia's brother. After three days of intensive interrogation they threatened to tell his mother he'd had an affair with a man unless he confessed to the crime. Gordon was deemed insane and spent seven years in a mental hospital. He was released to his mother's custody and lived under an assumed name. Gordon only took up his quest for justice after his retirement in 1993, and the Criminal Cases Review Commission was only able to investigate after a change in the law that took effect in 1998. Following a hearing in October that offered new evidence and forced the prosecutor to admit Gordon's confession was "not reliable," the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal quashed the guilty verdict. And finally... not many Western publications have done what The Slovak Spectator has done: the international weekly selected a gay activist as its Man of the Year for 2000. Peter Kralik calls himself "a professional gay," and told The Spectator, "I'm trying to help change society so that more Slovaks can come out, and so that others accept the natural fact that homosexuals exist in Slovakia, and that we have always been here and will always be here." Kralik played a key role in bringing together a national coalition of various Slovak gay and lesbian groups called Inakost, meaning "Difference". The group soon gained national media attention when Justice Minister Jan Carnogursky made a series of homophobic pronouncements. Kralik sees the invisibility of gays and lesbians, particularly in areas outside the cities, as the first barrier to winning equality in Slovakia. He believes his vision of an accepting Slovakia will be realized in ten to fifteen years.