NewsWrap for the week ending June 23, 2001 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #691, distributed 06-25-01) [Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Chris Ambidge, Brian Nunes, Jason Lin, Rex Wockner, and Greg Gordon] Anchored by Donald Herman and Cindy Friedman British-based human rights watchdog Amnesty International this week released an extensive report on the abuse and torture of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgenders around the world. The first-of-its-kind report called "Crimes of Hate, Conspiracy of Silence" documents cases of physical, sexual and psychiatric abuse in 30 countries and reviews anti-gay laws in even more. It notes that 70 countries criminalize homosexual acts, with 8 applying the death penalty. Amnesty called for prohibition of discrimination based on sexual orientation and for asylum for gays and lesbians at risk for torture in their homelands. It also called for banning treatments purporting to change sexual orientation. The United Nations has begun its own collection of data on gay, lesbian and transgender human rights issues. In early June, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights issued a call from a half-dozen of its Independent Experts for groups around the world to contact them. Those experts, who have broad powers to address national governments, are appointed to investigate human rights violations and report on them to the UN each year. This is the first time that such a high-level group at the UN has moved publicly to take on issues of sexual orientation and gender identity as part of their mandate. Yet the UN this week withdrew its invitation to the only gay and lesbian group that was to appear at its upcoming meeting on AIDS. The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission had been scheduled to participate in the Human Rights Roundtable at the UN General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS. But 11 Muslim nations objected -- even though the UN's own AIDS program's annual report had identified sexual minorities among "vulnerable populations" at high risk for HIV/AIDS. European nations, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are leading a move for IGLHRC's reinstatement. But the official declaration intended as a guideline for action on AIDS by the UN and its member nations has also so far been blocked by Islamic nations and the Vatican, which object to a section calling for special attention to gay men, sex workers and intravenous drug users. The Japanese delegation is trying to mediate this controversy. The religious groups view the statement as tolerance of sex outside of marriage, and an Iranian ambassador claimed that Western nations were seeking "to push the envelope in areas where there is cultural sensitivity, ideological sensitivity, ethical sensitivity." New York-based Human Rights Watch commented that, "Pretending these groups don't exist, or reinforcing discrimination against them, will only accelerate the spread of the epidemic by pushing them further underground and out of reach of the services they desperately need to contain the disease." Romania's Government this week took another step towards establishing equal treatment for gays and lesbians in hopes of winning membership in the European Union. The latest move in the long-running struggle for civil rights there is an emergency decree seeking to equalize sentencing for sex acts in public places. Currently homosexual acts in public places can be punished with up to 5 years' imprisonment while heterosexual acts carry a maximum sentence of only 2 years. 117 Romanians are currently incarcerated for homosexual acts. The public sex ban is said to be the last discriminatory criminal law in Romania. Equal sentencing will have to be approved by the Romanian Parliament. Another former Iron Curtain country also moved for equal treatment in June, as Estonia's Parliament adopted a new penal code equalizing the age of consent at 14. Formerly, the age of consent had been 14 for heterosexual acts but 16 for homosexual ones. The age of consent law had been the only Estonian statute explicitly discriminating based on sexual orientation. The new code was adopted with only one vote in opposition and will take effect in about a year. However, the new code's provisions on discrimination and incitement to violence do not include sexual orientation as a protected category. In the U.S., the American Medical Association this week adopted a resolution denouncing anti-gay discrimination by the Boy Scouts of America and other youth groups. The AMA views gay-exclusionary policies as bad public health policy that contributes to mental health problems among youth. Washington, DC's city Commission on Human Rights also took aim at the Boy Scouts this week, ordering the reinstatement of two adult members dismissed for being gay. The Commission believes the cases of Roland Pool and Michael Geller are not subject to last year's U.S. Supreme Court ruling because neither of the men had engaged in any gay-related political activity, so the Scouts' freedom of expression was not infringed. The Commission ordered payment of $50,000 to each man as compensatory damages and ordered the Scouts to "cease and desist from revoking of memberships of individuals solely because of their status as homosexuals." The Texas state Supreme Court this week dismissed a legal challenge to a Houston mayoral order prohibiting sexual orientation discrimination. A city councilmember and a voter had charged that Mayor Lee Brown's executive order usurped the city council's authority and violated a 1985 citywide vote repealing a civil rights ordinance the city council had passed. The state's high court did not comment on the merits of the policy but found that neither man had legal standing to challenge it. Even the Bush administration took a first-of-its-kind step for gay and lesbian civil rights this week. The U.S. Department of Agriculture placed a job notice for a program specialist to serve as the department's gay and lesbian employment manager, the first time any administration has advertised a hire to address gay and lesbian workplace issues. The USDA's 98,000 staffers already include program specialists for the needs of women, African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans, and indigenous peoples. In California, gay Robert Rosenkrantz has been granted parole after serving 17 years for murdering the schoolmate who "outed" him to his father. Rosenkrantz was a model prisoner who earned advanced degrees for himself and tutored other inmates while in prison. His parole was ordered by a Los Angeles court this week after a protracted legal struggle against Democratic Governor Gray Davis' stated opposition to granting parole to any convicted murderer. But in Oklahoma, where a gay man and a lesbian have been executed for murder this year, a man who killed a gay man has been granted a stay of execution by Governor Frank Keating. The Oklahoma parole board had recommended commuting the sentence of Mexican national Gerardo Valdez from death to life because he had not been advised he could seek aid from the Mexican consulate and because he is brain-damaged. On the media front, London's staid "Financial Times" newspaper this week rejected a rather innocuous ad from the British magazine "Gay Times". Promoting "Gay Times"' July feature on manipulation in the pop music industry, the ad was captioned with the title of a '60s song, "Bend Me Shape Me Any Way You Want Me". Although it had passed several stages of copy approval, the "Financial Times" editor ultimately found the caption's "suggestive" tone would be "offensive to most of their readers." But in Canada, the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission ruled against a man who had placed an anti-gay ad in the Saskatoon "Star-Phoenix" newspaper 4 years ago. That ad portrayed two stick-figure men holding hands inside the red circle-with-a-slash symbol for "prohibited" and listed the citations of Bible passages viewed as condemning homosexuality. The ad was placed by anti-gay activist Hugh Owens, who was ordered not to publish it again and to pay C$1,500 to each of the three gay men who filed the human rights complaint. In France, TV regulators blocked an ad purportedly denouncing homophobic harassment on the grounds that the public will see the ad itself as anti-gay. The ad was made in the UK to promote a temporary employment agency, and tries to show the downside of full-time employment. The censored ad shows a boss railing against gay employees, but similar ads portraying sexist and racist employers passed muster. What's believed to be Cuba's first gay wedding ceremony was celebrated this week. In a double ceremony, two young male couples exchanged vows before their friends and families at a recreation center in the Havana suburb of San Miguel del Padron. Although many locals had been critical of the young men, neighbors reportedly climbed up their rooftops to view the wedding. And finally... this week Toronto named a park for George Hislop, believed to be Canada's first public monument to a gay activist. The move to honor Hislop with the park in Toronto's "gay village" was led by openly gay Toronto City Councillor Kyle Rae. Hislop was an outspoken advocate for 30 years, making frequent media appearances in the 1960s and '70s and founding Canada's first formal gay and lesbian rights group, the Community Homophile Association of Toronto -- CHAT. He led successful campaigns to make sexual orientation a category protected under Ontario and federal human rights codes, and opposed police harassment. In 1979, he organized the first pride event in Toronto, where the annual pride parade is now one of the world's largest. In his own estimation, Hislop's greatest achievement was encouraging others to publicly identify themselves as gays and lesbians. He told 365gay.com, "Numbers are important. As we came out people couldn't promote misconceptions about us any more. They saw how many of us there are. They saw our faces and recognized their children, their neighbors, their co-workers." But George Hislop, now in his 70s, found one problem with Hislop Park. "The park needs bushes," he said. "What's a gay park without bushes?"