NewsWrap
for the week ending August 25, 2001
(As broadcast on This Way Out program #700, distributed 08-27-01)
[Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Chris Ambidge, 
Brian Nunes, Jason Lin, Rex Wockner, and Greg Gordon]

Anchored by Cindy Friedman and Christopher Gaal

  Legal recognition of same-gender partners is now a significant issue in 
Australia's federal elections campaign.  This week Prime Minister John Howard 
restated his position that gay and lesbian couples should not have equal 
marriage rights.  Howard's Conservative Party opposed domestic partner rights 
in 3 recent parliamentary votes, including one which sank the Government's 
own major pension reform bill.  In a radio broadcast discussion with a group 
of students, Howard said, "I don't believe in gay marriage for example, I 
don't think our society would support that.  We should be completely tolerant 
and fair-minded about people's sexual preferences.  I don't think people 
should be in any way discriminated or penalized against if they are 
homosexual.  But I certainly don't think you should give the same status to 
homosexual relationships as you give to marriage."

  The Opposition Australian Labor Party, or ALP -- which has actually voted 
against partner rights 8 times in the last 5 years despite some of its 
members' stated support -- seized the opportunity to distinguish itself from 
the ruling Coalition.  ALP leader Kim Beazley said on national television 
that the Howard Government is behind the times.  He stated publicly for the 
first time that gay and lesbian couples should be recognized under all laws 
applying to heterosexual couples.  He said, "I think that is a reasonable 
thing to do, to give recognition to the fact that there is a relationship 
there."
Openly gay Senator from West Australia Brian Greig of the strongly 
gay-supportive third-party Australian Democrats called Beazley's remarks 
hypocritical, underscored the Democrats' advocacy for equal treatment, and 
called for enactment of the party's federal Sexuality Discrimination Bill.
Openly gay Senator from Tasmania Dr. Bob Brown of the strongly gay-supportive 
Green Party said the Prime Minister had been "left in the wash of a 
sea-change" that had arrived a long time ago.

  The U.S. Senate's most vocal homophobe, Republican Jesse Helms of North 
Carolina, announced this week that he will not run again in 2002, citing his 
age.  Helms will turn 80 in October and has had major health problems.  He's 
now in his 5th 6-year term in the Senate, having never won more than 55% of 
the vote in any election.  He's led almost every anti-gay campaign in the 
federal legislature for nearly 30 years, including homophobic attacks on the 
National Endowment for the Arts and AIDS funding.  Currently he's leading the 
move to ensure public school access to the Boy Scouts of America despite 
their policy of excluding gays.  He's also believed to have played a key role 
in the loss of the International Lesbian and Gay Association's hard-won 
consultative status with the United Nations.  
Helms publicly called openly lesbian Clinton nominee Roberta Achtenberg a 
"damn lesbian" and a "mean lesbian," although she went on to become the first 
open lesbian or gay ever to win Senate confirmation to a federal post, 
Assistant Secretary of Housing in the Department of Housing and Urban 
Development.  
Helms' opposition led Clinton to drop his 1994 plans to nominate open gay 
James Hormel to serve as ambassador to Fiji, although later Helms stood aside 
from the long battle that ended in Hormel's interim appointment without 
confirmation to Luxembourg as the first openly gay U.S. ambassador.
Republican President George W. Bush in a statement this week called Helms "a 
true gentleman" who "has always remained true to his conservative 
principles."  Bush added, "I have no doubt we will continue to seek his 
counsel as a senior statesman."
Veteran North Carolina lesbian activist and former Human Rights Campaign 
staffer Mandy Carter told the "Washington Blade" of Helms' pending 
retirement, "This is truly historic.  But it may be a mistake to say he is 
unique and no one else will be like him."

  In other U.S. political news, openly gay Democratic Rhode Island state 
Representative Mike Pisaturo is taking the first steps towards a run to 
become the state's Secretary of State.  Pisaturo is an AIDS activist who has 
been a strong advocate for gay and lesbian civil rights including civil 
marriage rights.  He is forming a campaign staff and beginning to raise 
funds, and says that if he "can raise the money to run a viable campaign" 
he'll make a formal announcement of his candidacy for Secretary of State 
within the next few months.  Only one open gay or lesbian in the U.S. has 
ever won general election to a statewide office -- former Vermont State 
Auditor Ed Flanagan.

  Virginia has its first openly gay major party nominee for a seat in the 
state legislature -- and he's a Republican.  Danny Smith will be running in 
November against Democratic incumbent Robert Hull for the 38th District seat 
in the House of Delegates.  Smith is a federal government worker who served 
under both the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.

  Northern Ireland's Human Rights Commission this week issued a major report 
documenting extensive discrimination against lesbigays in the province's laws 
and policies.  The report called "Enhancing the Rights of Lesbian, Gay and 
Bisexual People in Northern Ireland" was compiled for the Commission by the 
University of Ulster.  It found discrimination in criminal law, taxation, 
social security, immigration, employment, education, health care, and 
housing.  The Commission called on both the British Government and the 
Northern Ireland Assembly for sweeping legal reforms towards equal treatment. 
 The Commission also called for legal recognition of gay and lesbian couples, 
noting with special concern that same-gender partners are not legal parents, 
to the detriment of children.  
The Workers Party immediately endorsed the report and called on other 
political parties to follow suit.  
In addition to the Human Rights Commission's review, a report now being 
drafted by Northern Ireland's Social Services Inspectorate called "the levels 
of social intolerance towards gay and bisexual men in Northern Ireland 
startling in its raw viciousness and ignorance."

  Also in the UK, Wales' National Assembly has joined with Stonewall Cymru to 
establish the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Forum Cymru to combat discrimination.  The 
Forum will be officially launched in the coming week by the chair of the 
National Assembly's Equal Opportunities Commission.  Forum co-chair John Sam 
Jones said, "The LGB Forum can achieve landmark changes in the lives of 
lesbians and gay men in Wales by providing a national voice that will 
articulate the concerns and needs of the LGB community to the National 
Assembly and to every other public body in Wales.  From today, lesbians and 
gay men in Wales are destined to be dealt with fairly and without 
discrimination."  One 1994 study suggested that gays in Wales are 7 times 
more likely to commit suicide than those elsewhere in the UK.

  The BBC's Radio 1 has been broadcasting a Jamaican reggae song whose chorus 
calls for burning gay men alive.  The song is "Chi Chi Man" -- a derogatory 
term for gay men -- by the Jamaican group known as TOK or Touch of Klass.  
TOK members insist they intend the term to refer to all corrupt people, 
although they admit they view homosexuality as a form of corruption.  Radio 
1's Ian Parkinson told reporters the song, which has topped the charts in 
Jamaica for 13 weeks, "has almost become an unofficial national anthem for 
some people in Jamaica, and for a specialist reggae show not to play it I 
think would be a distortion."  Ironically it was a documentary about Jamaica 
on the BBC's Radio 4 called "The Roots of Homophobia" that drew attention to 
the song's encouragement of anti-gay violence.  In the last ten years at 
least 38 Jamaicans have died from homophobic violence, and Jamaican gay 
activist Ian McKnight believes that two of those deaths can be directly 
traced to the song.

  There were anti-gay hate attacks in August in Copenhagen and Jerusalem.
Despite Denmark's history of tolerance, young men described by reporters as 
immigrants threw bottles and stones at Copenhagen Pride marchers, resulting 
in two injuries requiring treatment, and one arrest.
In Israel, vandals burned the rainbow flag at the gay and lesbian Jerusalem 
Open House on the eve of a first visit there by the city's mayor.  The 
vandals left a note reading, "God will humiliate those that have pride."  It 
was the third attack on the center in the last three months. Mayor Ehud 
Ulmert went ahead with his visit and denounced the attack as "a barbaric act 
that should be condemned."

  And finally... political speech took a very odd turn this week in Germany, 
as a member of an anti-gay party announced he had copyrighted the phrase 
Berlin's new gay mayor used in coming out.  Interim Mayor Klaus Wowereit 
publicly identified himself as a gay man for the first time when speaking to 
his Social Democratic Party in June just days before his election by Berlin's 
legislature.  He said, "I'm gay and it's good that way," also translated as 
"and that's a good thing."  The phrase quickly came into popular use 
throughout Germany.  When one pundit commented that rights to the phrase 
could be very profitable, Christian Democratic Union Member of Parliament 
Siegfried Helias seized the opportunity.  Helias hopes to make commercial use 
of the phrase but said he would not take legal action should Wowereit use it 
again, especially in campaigning for elections in October.  The campaign 
manager for Wowereit's party commented that, "Widespread use of the slogan is 
only good for us."