NewsWrap for the week ending March 17, 2001 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #677, distributed 03-19-01) [Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Chris Ambidge, Brian Nunes, Jason Lin, Rex Wockner, Greg Gordon & Lucia Chappelle] Anchored by Cindy Friedman and Greg Gordon Portugal's National Assembly this week approved a bill to grant gay and lesbian couples most of the rights of unmarried heterosexual couples. Same-gender couples of at least two years' standing will be recognized in areas including taxation, inheritance, housing contracts, welfare benefits, and use of sick leave to care for an ailing partner, but will not have adoption rights. A spokesperson for the civil rights group Opus Gay called the legislation "an important victory for human rights, for the Portuguese and for Portugal." The move was supported by the left-of-center majority but opposed by more conservative parties in largely Catholic Portugal. The Presbyterian Church USA has rejected a proposal against blessing gay and lesbian couples. Although the 3.6-million-member denomination's General Assembly approved the proposed amendment to church law, a majority of its 173 regional presbyteries have now refused to ratify it. 23 presbyteries have yet to vote. The Presbyterian Church had prohibited gay and lesbian marriages a decade earlier, but its highest judicial body last year found that union ceremonies can be performed as long as it's clear they are not marriages. The voting on so-called "Amendment O" did not represent any great outpouring of support for gay and lesbian couples, but rather a rejection of limiting the choices of clergy and congregations. The denomination's next General Assembly in June will consider a number of proposals regarding ordination of non-celibate gays and lesbians. Vermont's House of Representatives this week overwhelmingly approved a bill to deny legal marriage to gays and lesbians. Spurred by a legal decision, Vermont last year created "civil unions" giving same-gender couples all the state-level benefits and responsibilities of marriage. The backlash to that move swept Republicans into the majority in the Vermont House, but Democrats retain their hold on the state Senate, where the bill is expected to die in committee. Vermont's lone openly gay lawmaker, Democratic Representative William Lippert, said, "This was a political bill only. It has no chance of passage. This is payback [for] the right wing and anti-civil union forces of Vermont." The Maine House of Representatives this week rejected a move to delay extension of spousal healthcare benefits to unmarried state workers' domestic partners, regardless of gender. The new benefits were approved weeks earlier by the State Employee Health Commission and Democratic Governor Angus King. Republican Representative Brian Duprey had hoped to stall them with a bill requiring public hearings before their inclusion in the state budget, but it was defeated 85-to-56 and will not be taken up by the Maine Senate. Supporters of the benefits noted that the Commission had already held public hearings before giving its approval. Governor King applauded the House vote, saying the benefits were needed to keep Maine competitive in recruiting and retaining its employees. A California bill to extend more legal recognition to the state's registered domestic partners passed its first committee this week, bolstered by testimony from a lesbian whose partner was killed by a neighbor's dogs in a case which has drawn national attention. Under current state law, survivor Sharon Smith has no legal standing to file a lawsuit against the dogs' owners for the death of her partner of seven years Diane Whipple, yet Smith this week filed a lawsuit anyway in hopes of changing the law. The domestic partners bill sponsored by openly lesbian Democratic Assemblymember Carole Migden would also recognize partners for inheritance, conservatorships, unemployment benefits, sick leave, and medical decision-making when a partner is incapacitated. Texas' law against homosexual acts was upheld by a state appeals court this week. The full bench of the 14th Court of Appeals supported the law 7-to-2, reversing an earlier 2-to-1 decision by a panel of three of its members. While the three-judge panel had found the gay-only law violates constitutional guarantees of equal treatment, the full appellate bench ruled that it's up to the state legislature to change the law rather than the courts. The case before the court is one in which sheriffs broke into a private home to find John Lawrence and Tyrone Garner in bed together and arrest them. The sheriffs were responding to a call that an intruder was on the premises, a false claim for which the caller was convicted. Had sheriffs found a heterosexual couple in the same circumstances, there would have been no grounds for arrest. Lawrence and Garner with the help of Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund plan to appeal to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Only Arkansas, Kansas and Oklahoma still have gay-only sodomy laws in force; a dozen other states prohibit oral and anal sex regardless of the gender of the parties involved. The City Council of Henderson, Kentucky voted 3-to-2 this week to repeal civil rights protections from discrimination based on sexual orientation. Henderson had become one of four local governments to enact Kentucky's first gay and lesbian rights bills in 1999. The ordinance had originally been passed by a 3-to-2 vote, but November elections had replaced one civil rights supporter with an opponent. Most of the public testimony at the meeting supported the civil rights ordinance, and the Henderson Fairness Alliance, which backed it, has vowed to continue its efforts. In the Kentucky state legislature, bills this session for statewide civil rights protections and against local civil rights ordinances both died in committee without being heard. Slovakian gays and lesbians this week had their first-ever opportunity to speak to Members of Parliament. Before a parliamentary group devoted to h uman rights concerns, they called for sexual orientation to be added as a category protected under the nation's law against discrimination in employment. In Australia, a transsexual prevailed in the first transgender job discrimination case ever to be heard in the state of Victoria. The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal ruled this week that AstroVac had violated the state's Equal Opportunity Act when it fired Sharon Menzies within weeks of her sex reassignment surgery. Menzies was seeking more than A$400,000 in compensation, but the tribunal has not yet decided that aspect of the case. And in the Australian state of Tasmania, the Upper House this week voted unanimously to repeal an archaic state law prohibiting men from dressing as women between sunset and sunrise. The Lower House had already approved the repeal bill. Pride proclamations have become increasingly controversial in Canada over the last few years. But after a street demonstration claiming sexual orientation discrimination and the threat of a human rights complaint, one Canadian this week won a proclamation of a June pride observance -- Heterosexual Family Pride Day. Regina Mayor Pat Fiacco resisted the move until former mayoral candidate Bill Whatcott of the group Christian Truth Activists threatened to complain to the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission. A Heterosexual Pride Day had also been declared last year in McKenzie, British Columbia. A fund-raising event in Courtenay, British Columbia was hit with a gas attack a week ago. The Vancouver Lesbian and Gay Choir was performing before a full house to benefit P-FLAG, Parents, Families & Friends of Lesbians and Gays when a young man set off a canister of bear repellant. Bear repellant is similar to pepper spray, and as it filled the auditorium the crowd ran gasping for the exits. Taking very much to heart the adage that "the show must go on," the choir continued singing outside while its leader was taken to the hospital and emergency services treated at the site a baby and a number of adults who were suffering from burning throats and eyes. Performers and audience together relocated to a nearby church at the invitation of its openly lesbian minister. "TIME Asia" this week published findings of its survey of adults in five Asian nations on sexual mores. The magazine did not report how many people it questioned. Thailand was the most gay-friendly, with 47% of men saying they had no problems with homosexuality; South Korea was the least gay-friendly, with only 23% of respondents accepting of homosexuality. Falling between those extremes were Hong Kong, the Philippines and Singapore. Thailand also had the highest reports of lesbian activity, with 6% of women saying they'd had sex with another woman; Hong Kong was lowest, with only 1% of women saying they'd had sex with another woman. And finally... the past decade really was the "Gay Nineties," at least in the U.S. The "Journal of Sex Research" has published an analysis of data gathered in the huge biannual General Social Survey of Americans 18 and older by the National Opinion Research Center. In 1988, only 2% of male respondents said they'd recently had sex with another man -- but in 1998 that figure had doubled to 4%. In 1988 only 1 woman in 500 reported having recently had sex with another woman, but in 1998 that figure had risen to 3% -- a fifteenfold increase.