NewsWrap for the 2 weeks ending December 1, 2001 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #714, distributed 12-3-01) [Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Chris Ambidge, Brian Nunes, Jason Lin, Rex Wockner, Lucia Chappelle and Greg Gordon] Anchored by Jon Beaupré and Cindy Friedman Moshe Katsav this week became the first Israeli President ever to meet by his own invitation with a delegation of gays, lesbians and transgenders. It was a great stride forward from Katsav's predecessor Ezer Weizman, who met with some gays and lesbians only under political pressure after he'd made public statements disparaging them. The Political Council for Gay Rights solicited and obtained the invitation from Katsav and called this week's meeting "historic". The six conferees said the President was sensitive as he heard them out on issues including the legal status of transsexuals, same-gender couples, and gay and lesbian parents and co-parents. Katsav told the group he'd be happy to help in the future if he could, but concluded by saying, "I thought it was important to meet you and hear what you have to say -- though I don't see how I can help you." Before the meeting Katsav had told reporters it should be interpreted as neither encouragement nor criticism for the group's aims. The Political Council for Gay Rights agrees there is little Katsav can do for them at this time, but views the meeting as a sign of official recognition. At the meeting, openly lesbian Tel Aviv City Councilmember Michal Eden challenged the President to attend her city's Gay Pride celebration in 2002. He responded, "When you're mayor of Tel Aviv and you issue the invitation again, I'll be happy to accept." Eden replied, "You've given me a challenge." The challenge of electoral politics is one gays and lesbians are taking up around the world. Taiwan's parliamentary elections this week featured two openly gay congressional candidates for the first time, independents Chang Ming Chou (also known as James Jan) and Chen Wen Yen (also known as Webster Chen). Taipei gay bar owner Chen's platform focused exclusively on equal treatment for gays and lesbians, but veteran gay activist Jan's campaign in the city of Kao-Shiung emphasized economic and social reforms instead. Both finished last in their races. Taipei's Gender Sexuality Rights Association took an active role in the elections campaign. The group solicited well over 100 candidates' signed pledges to support legislation for gay and lesbian civil rights and registered partnerships, and received 35. The group went on to recommend 10 candidates, 9 from Taipei City and County and one from Shinchu. Openly gay Pim Fortuyn this week was elected leader of the Netherlands' Leefbaar Nederland party, beating out a dozen other candidates with nearly 90% of the vote at the party's national convention. Fortuyn is a writer and former college professor who is often a guest on talk shows. He and his party have caused a stir in the Netherlands with their position that immigrant Muslim leaders who denounce Dutch liberalism -- including the national acceptance of gays and lesbians -- should return to their native lands. Muslims comprise about 5% of the Netherlands population. Leefbaar Nederland also seeks reforms in education, health care and local elections. Polling shows steadily increasing support for the party, which went national only two years ago. The latest poll predicts it will take ten of the 150 seats in parliament in the May 2002 elections. But at least one pundit believes that the Netherlands' high level of public satisfaction offers little chance for a party of protest. In the U.S., openly lesbian Democrat Cathy Woolard won a citywide run-off election this week to become the City Council President of Atlanta, Georgia. She's not only the first "out" gay or lesbian to hold that post, but the first woman. Woolard became Georgia's first openly gay or lesbian elected official when she won the Ward 6 City Council seat four years ago, and she has used that position to advance gay and lesbian civil rights. Her Ward 6 has voted to replace her with another open lesbian, Anne Fauver. But Spokane, Washington lost its first openly gay City Councilmember in a recount this week. Dean Lynch had been appointed to fill a vacancy earlier this year and on election night appeared to have won his seat by a scant 9 votes. But the recount confirmed that absentee ballots gave a 49-vote edge to his opponent Dennis Hession. But the biggest November victory for gay and lesbian civil rights in the U.S. is a vote that won't happen. After a decade of intensive lobbying, the state of Maryland had enacted gay and lesbian civil rights protections that were to have taken effect on October 1st. But a group called TakeBackMar yland had petitioned for a ballot initiative to repeal that law, putting it on hold. The gay and lesbian civil rights group Free State Justice undertook a complex legal challenge to the initiative, and the courts found problems with thousands of the signatures TakeBackMaryland had collected on its qualifying petition. Last week TakeBackMaryland formally conceded that it had no chance of winning the lawsuit, and Maryland's civil rights protections went into effect November 21st. Gay and lesbian activists in the Australian state of Tasmania are claiming a David-and-Goliath victory in preserving their civil rights. The state Government had been moving to amend the state Anti-discrimination Act to exempt religious institutions. Weeks of intensive lobbying by the Tasmanian Gay and Lesbian Rights Group resulted this week in the state Government scaling back those proposed exemptions dramatically. The Government will not seek exemptions for religious-based hospitals, old age homes and welfare agencies, and it affirmed that religious schools will not be allowed to discriminate against lesbigay and trans teachers and students. Tasmania's Roman Catholic Archbishop Adrian Doyle said the Government had reneged on promises made to the church, and threatened retribution at the ballot box. There's been international criticism of some countries' unequal treatment of gays and lesbians. The European Commission issued a statement that praised Latvia's new Labor Law against discrimination, but specifically noted its failure to explicitly include sexual orientation as a protected category. The Commission said the omission violates a European Union Council Directive. Although sexual orientation had been included in the Latvian Justice Ministry's original draft of the law, the Parliament deleted it, and it was only lobbying by the Latvian National Human Rights Office that forced the inclusion of an open-ended clause that may or may not be interpreted by the courts to cover sexual orientation. If a test case should fail, Latvia will have to explicitly protect gays and lesbians before it can become a member of the European Union. The United Nations AIDS program's regional advisor for the Caribbean called for decriminalization of homosexual acts there. Advisor Ruben Del Prado said that gays and sex workers would "not come forward to be tested, educated and .. treated, because there are laws against them." The Caribbean region is second only to sub-Saharan Africa in its HIV infection rate. The Swedish Government this week introduced a bill to make sexual orientation a category protected under laws banning incitement to hatred. The current criminal law against incitement covers only ethnicity and religion. The Government bill would provide for prison sentences ranging from 6 months to 4 years. The Canadian Government this week announced its plans to add sexual orientation to the national law against incitement to hatred, also referred to as "hate propaganda". Justice Minister Anne McLellan said there is unanimous agreement for the move among the nation's federal, provincial and territorial justice ministers, but that it would not go on the legislative agenda for several months. The previous week, British Columbia's openly gay New Democratic Party Member of Parliament Svend Robinson introduced a private member's bill to amend the incitement law, saying, "It's critically important that society and leaders in government send out the strongest possible signal that hatred and violence directed at gay people is totally unacceptable." The move to amend the law has gained impetus from the widely-reported brutal bashing murder of gay Aaron Webster in Vancouver. Sexual orientation is already included in Canada's laws providing for harsher sentencing for hate-motivated crimes. Government ministers in Belgium vowed to push ahead with their plans for legal gay and lesbian marriages despite an adverse opinion by the nation's top administrative court. That court, the Council of State, had rejected the Government's bill on the grounds that legal marriage can only be a "union between a man and a woman". But Deputy Prime Minister Laurent Onkelinx said, "I'll ask my colleagues to regard this opinion with astonishment and to set it aside." And finally, some 5,000 life-size figures representing "Australian Heroes" are decorating the grounds of the Parliament House in Canberra in an observance of Australia's centenary known as Peoplescape. Nominations were accepted from the general public and at least four selected for inclusion represent the gay and lesbian community: festival director Robyn Archer, Rodney Croome of the Tasmanian Gay and Lesbian Rights Group and formerly of the Australian Council for Lesbian and Gay Rights, Gay Games activist Richard Hogan, and environmentalist Adrian Vlok.