NewsWrap for the week ending December 8, 2001 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #715, distributed 12-10-01) [Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Chris Ambidge, Brian Nunes, Jason Lin, Rex Wockner, Chang Hwei Liu, Lucia Chappelle and Greg Gordon] Anchored by Cindy Friedman and Brian Nunes In a landmark for Chinese culture, open gay Stanley Kwan this week won Best Director honors for his first gay-themed film "Lan Yu" at Taiwan's Golden Horse Awards, known as the Chinese language "Oscars". "Lan Yu" had been nominated in 10 categories and also won Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing, and Best Actor for mainlander Liu Ye in its title role. While it didn't take Best Picture in the official judging, it did win the People's Choice Award in that category. Adapted from the Internet novel "Beijing Story", "Lan Yu" deals with a gay male couple's stormy ten-year relationship in the period surrounding the massacre at Tiananmen Square. Hong Kong director Kwan, who came out publicly in 1996, identified the relationship with his own. Despite China's widespread intolerance of gays, "Lan Yu" was shot on location in Beijing, although much of the filming was done behind closed doors. "Lan Yu" will be seen in the U.S. in the coming year, first at the Sundance Festival in January and later in general release. An anti-gay leader in the U.S. "culture war" stepped down from one key post this week. Pat Robertson announced his resignation from the presidency of the Christian Coalition, the spearhead of the anti-gay religious right, which Robertson founded in 1989. Robertson, now 71 years old, said he felt a renewed call to Christian ministry and that he intends to focus more on his Christian Broadcasting Network and Regent University. In a statement, Robertson proclaimed that the Christian Coalition had achieved all the ten-year political goals it had set in 1990, and credited it with a pivotal role in placing George W. Bush in the White House and Republicans in control of the House of Representatives. President Bush this week named former Montana Governor Marc Racicot chair of the Republican National Committee. The Human Rights Campaign, as well as the gay and lesbian Log Cabin Republicans, view the selection of the leading Bush campaigner as positive. Racicot strongly denounced the notorious 1998 gay-bashing murder of Matthew Shepard and at the end of his 8-year tenure as governor ordered a rewrite of conservative Montana's state employment policies to protect gays and lesbians from discrimination. The only openly gay legislator in the President's home state of Texas announced this week that he will not seek reelection. Austin Democrat Glen Maxey said on the steps of the state capitol, flanked by the U.S., Texas and rainbow flags, "I came here as the gay representative. I'll leave here as the representative who just happened to also be gay. That in itself is my most important achievement." Maxey headed the Lesbian/Gay Rights Lobby of Texas before beginning the first of 6 terms in the Texas House in 1991. Attributing his exit from politics in part to redistricting that would have pitted him against two political allies, Maxey will continue as a professional lobbyist in the state legislature on issues of health and human services. Karen Geraghty was sworn in this week as Mayor of Portland, Maine. There was loud applause at the ceremony when a speaker noted she is the first open lesbian or gay ever to hold that office. She was unanimously elected to the post by the City Council, where she'd served for 5 years. Her top concern is the city's serious housing problems. An ordinance in the other Portland -- Portland, Oregon -- served as the model for a Civil Rights Ordinance adopted unanimously last week by the Board of Commissioners of Multnomah County, where Portland is located. Both sexual orientation and gender identity are included as categories protected from discrimination. Those who believe they have experienced discrimination can turn to either an administrator or the courts for redress. And in a year-end marathon session this week, the Atlanta, Georgia City Council voted 12-to-1 to approve its own version of San Francisco's pioneering Equal Benefits Ordinance, requiring city contractors to extend the same benefits to their unmarried workers' domestic partners as they do to legally married workers' spouses. The bill's sponsor, outgoing Councilmember Michael Julian Bond, managed to bring it to the table at literally the 11th hour, after it had appeared to have died in committee. But because of the circumstances, the bill did not include a long list of waivers Bond had planned, and even he admits it could create real problems if it goes into effect in January with most city contractors not in compliance. Gay-supportive exiting Mayor Bill Campbell must decide the measure's fate. At least four other cities and two counties in the U.S. have adopted similar ordinances following San Francisco's 1996 lead. Equal benefits for domestic partners also won support this week at a meeting of the American Medical Association. The AMA adopted a resolution called "Equity in Health Care for Domestic Partnerships" affirming the group's support for both equal health care benefits and for legal recognition of domestic partners for hospital visitation and medical care decision-making. The AMA also added the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association to its Specialty and Service Society, a first step in advancing the GLMA to organizational voting status in the AMA. In Canada, Quebec's provincial Government this week introduced a bill to create legal domestic partnerships for gays and lesbians. The proposed Partnership Union Registry would confer marital benefits in areas including inheritance, healthcare, insurance, and taxation, but would not recognize couples for adoptions or co-adoptions. Nova Scotia is the only Canadian province to have enacted similar legislation. Quebec Justice Minister Paul Bégin called the bill the most gay-positive legislation in North America, noting that the province lacked the authority to extend full marriage rights to same-gender couples and hinting that an independent Quebec might have done so. With a major lawsuit in progress in Montreal seeking equal marriage rights, Quebec's gays and lesbians are divided between those who support the partnership registry as at least a temporary remedy and those who oppose it as discriminatory inequality. Canadian gays and lesbians outside of Quebec last week filed two class action lawsuits against the federal government seeking survivor benefits to the tune of C$400-million. The lawsuit represents some 10,000 gays and lesbians whose partners died after the national Charter of Rights and Freedoms went into effect in 1985 but before the January 1998 date the Canada Pension Plan set for benefits to same-gender couples. The national Government has vowed to fight the lawsuit, claiming it was already being generous last year when it made the benefits retroactive to two years earlier. But activists claim the C$450-per-month benefits have effectively been confiscated from survivors, since all Canadians have been required to contribute to the plan throughout their working lives. Quebec is not part of the action because it has a separate pension plan. The main case was filed in Ontario on behalf of gay and lesbian survivors in all the provinces, with a second filed in British Columbia because of that province's separate rules for class actions. The issues are very different for same-gender couples in India, where a woman was reportedly arrested in November after marrying a girl in a secret Hindu ceremony in the central state of Chattisgarh. The father of the 13-year-old named Rukmani told police the 20-year-old woman had abducted her, and the woman was jailed and denied bail. Elsewhere in India, activists have asked the Delhi High Court to stop the government from enforcing the sodomy law, which provides for a maximum sentence of life imprisonment for sex between men. The filing came from the Naz Foundation, a group which itself was charged this year in connection with that law because of its AIDS prevention efforts. Naz asserts that the law both impedes prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS and violates the Indian Constitution's right to life and liberty. The government has not yet filed its response. As World AIDS Day was observed December 1st with numerous marches, vigils and other events around the globe, Barbados saw the official launch of its first gay and lesbian organization. The 60-member group in Bridgewater is called United Gays and Lesbians Against AIDS Barbados. Nicaragua's National Committee of the Latin American Council of Churches has selected an open gay as its Executive Secretary. Reverend Doctor Armando Sanchez is the Ecumenical Officer for Central America for the gay-affirming Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, as well as senior pastor of Managua's Iglesia de la Comunidad Metropolitana Paz y Alegria. The Latin American Council of Churches includes more than 70 member denominations, and earlier this year granted UFMCC Fraternal Membership status. And finally... a New Hampshire high school's senior class has chosen a lesbian couple as their "class sweethearts". When Dover High School seniors voted on 20 categories of so-called "senior superlatives" -- best dressed, most athletic, most likely to succeed, and the like -- more than 77% named Nicole Salisbury and Ashley Lagasse to be honored in their yearbook as their favorite couple. Perplexed yearbook staff turned to Principal Robert Pedersen, who declared the runner-up couple should be used instead, because ballot instructions had required students to pick "a male and a female" in each category. That riled the senior class as well as Dover's Gay-Straight Alliance, and petitions began to circulate to give Salisbury and Lagasse their due. But then school Superintendent Armand La Selva intervened to insist the vote should stand, saying, "I believe that even if there was confusion about the ballot, the senior class members spoke. I don't believe I have the right to throw out the ballot, because we didn't have any hanging chads on this one." Or as one student told reporters, "If people think they are the cutest couple in the school, then why not?"