[Reminder: There will be no "NewsWrap" segment on next week's program.] --------------------------- NewsWrap for the week ending November 17, 2001 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #712, distributed 11-19-01) [Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Chris Ambidge,Brian Nunes, Jason Lin, Rex Wockner, Lucia Chappelle and Greg Gordon] Anchored by Cindy Friedman and Jon Beaupré Verdicts and sentences were pronounced in Cairo this week for 52 Egyptian men arrested in a May police raid on a gay-friendly Nile riverboat club. One man the prosecution portrayed as the ringleader was convicted of both obscene behavior and contempt of religion, and sentenced to 5 years hard labor. A second man convicted of the same two charges was sentenced to 3 years hard labor. Twenty more men were convicted of obscene behavior and sentenced to 2 years hard labor, while another man convicted on the same charge was sentenced to 1 year hard labor. Because the trial was held in the Emergency State Court, the convicts have no right to appeal. Their only hope is that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak will pardon them instead of certifying their sentences. However, the 29 men who were declared not guilty could face an appeal by the prosecution in a month, and they have not yet been released from jail. All 52 men have been incarcerated throughout the six months since their arrest and many have claimed police abuse and torture during their detention. The men have been so sensationally portrayed in Egyptian media that it's believed that even those cleared of charges may never live normal lives again. Previously the lone minor arrested in the raid was sentenced in a civilian court to three years imprisonment, and his appeal is now in process. All the men had pleaded not guilty. It's believed that the convicted men were those who "confessed" -- quite possibly under duress -- to having had sex with other men, and those who were presumed to have had anal intercourse based on medical examinations. International human rights groups -- including British-based Amnesty International and U.S.-based Human Rights Watch as well as U.S.-based IGLHRC, the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, Brussels-based ILGA, the International Lesbian and Gay Association, and the U.S.-based international gay and lesbian Muslim group Al-Fatiha -- have condemned the trial proceedings as unfair and the arrests and prosecutions as violations of international treaties. They are demanding pardons from Egyptian President Mubarak and calling on the U.S. government to join in pressuring him. Egyptian human rights groups have generally stood aside from the proceedings, ostensibly to protect their credibility on other issues. Homosexuality is so frowned upon in Egypt that the head of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights told London's "Guardian" newspaper that to support the defendants "would have been like jumping into water, not to try to save a drowning man but to die with him." Observers have suggested that for the Egyptian government, the arrests and trial served to appease conservatives, to distract the public from other issues, and to halt a perceived growth in promotion of gay tourism. Certainly many gays and lesbians are now calling for a tourism boycott of Egypt. For Egyptian gays and lesbians, who lived in fear even before the May raid, the nightmare continues. It's now confirmed that four more men were arrested this week for suspected homosexual activity. A young gay Iranian national has won refuge in Sweden from persecution in his homeland. Interestingly the Swedish Aliens Appeals Board found that gays and lesbians are not persecuted in Iran for their sexual orientation per se, but believed that 16-year-old Shahin Khaneabad would suffer there because he has criticized the Iranian government in speaking out for gay and lesbian civil rights. The appeals board admitted that homosexual acts in Iran could lead to harsh punishment and even the death penalty. The Government of the state of Western Australia this week formally introduced its omnibus bill for sweeping legislative reform for equal treatment of gays and lesbians. Western Australia's laws have been the worst for gays and lesbians of any Australian state. The bill would amend 19 state laws to ban sexual orientation discrimination in employment, housing, education, and provision of goods and services; to equalize the age of consent; and to recognize same-gender couples in areas including pensions, inheritance and adoptions. The ruling Australian Labor Party hopes to pass the bill by year's end despite intense opposition on several fronts. The Opposition Liberal Party says it opposes discrimination but claims the bill is too radical in its scope, was developed with insufficient public input, and would undermine the general public's "basic value structures." Christian conservatives last week rallied some 2,000 people to protest. Also this week, the Anti-Discrimination Commissioner of the Australian state of Queensland called for a similar review and reform of the state's civil rights laws, including acting to protect gays, lesbians and transgenders from discrimination. In her annual report, Commissioner Karen Walters said that, "Our legislation, once at the forefront of human rights legislation in Australia, now falls significantly behind." Much of the opposition to civil rights in Western Australia has focused on equal access to fertility treatment for women who are not in relationships with men. Access to fertility treatment became the subject of national debate in Australia after a Federal Court struck down as marital status discrimination Victoria's state law limiting it to women in relationships with men. The Australian High Court is currently deliberating an appeal of that ruling. But the issue came to the fore again in Victoria this week when it was reported that the state's Infertility Treatment Authority had drafted new guidelines to open taxpayer-funded fertility treatment to lesbians and other single women. The Catholic Church, other Christian conservatives, and Opposition state lawmakers immediately and vociferously objected, claiming the state's Australian Labor Party Government was trying to sidestep the parliamentary process and public opinion. Victoria's Health Minister John Thwaites responded by saying the issue was still under discussion and the guidelines were still in draft -- although they had been distributed to clinics at the beginning of October with a letter saying he'd already endorsed them. Thwaites went on to say that new guidelines had to comply with the Federal Court ruling but promised strict controls to ensure access extended no farther than that ruling required. Victoria Premier Steve Bracks was forced to speak to the issue, and promised that for a single woman to access treatment, it would have to be "clinically proven by a doctor" that she was what the court had called "psychologically infertile" by reason of aversion to sex with men. In the U.S., the Fort Wayne, Indiana City Council voted 5-to-3 this week to add "sexual orientation" as a category protected under the city's anti-discrimination ordinance. The move has been debated for four months, and it was adopted only conditionally. The civil rights protections will last only a year after they go into effect March 1st, pending a further City Council vote in 2003. Meanwhile, though, Fort Wayne will be the largest city in Indiana to bar sexual orientation discrimination, something the cities of Bloomington, Lafayette and West Lafayette have already done. Also in the U.S., the national leadership of the Salvation Army this week forced its western region to drop the domestic partner benefits it had announced just two weeks before, bowing to intense criticism from Christian conservatives. The Salvation Army's Western Corporation, which serves 13 states, had said it would expand its definition of "family" to include registered domestic partners. That would have once again made the Salvation Army eligible for contracts with the City of San Francisco. Previously the Salvation Army had sacrificed millions of dollars rather than comply with San Francisco's Equal Benefits Ordinance, which requires that contractors extend the same benefits to domestic partners as to married couples. But the announcement sparked a deluge of protests -- some 20,000 e-mails in 48 hours, according to the Salvation Army's national commission. The national commission had decided in October to let each of its four regions set its own benefits policies, but this week vowed that, "We will not sign any government contract or any other funding contracts that contain domestic partner benefit requirements." There was something of a scandal earlier this year when it appeared that the Salvation Army had made a deal with the Bush administration to lobby hard for federal funding of church-run social services in return for a legal exemption from state and local civil rights laws. Despite its employment policy, the Salvation Army insists that it maintains a strict policy against discrimination in providing services. And finally... in the face of burgeoning e-commerce, Britain's Royal Mail felt it was important to advertise its role as the carrier for two-thirds of all online purchases. In the words of the ad agency exec handling the postal service account, the campaign "needed a celebrated shopper." You may already have guessed that the man he says "fitted the bill perfectly" is openly gay singer-songwriter Elton John, whose shopping addiction was recounted for the public in endless detail in a lawsuit he lost earlier this year. In the ad, a squad of mail carriers burst in to shower Sir Elton with parcels in the wake of some vigorous e-buying.