NewsWrap for the week ending February 9, 2002 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #724, distributed 2-11-02) [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 Dean Elzinga Sweden's Government this week presented a draft bill to extend adoption rights to gay and lesbian couples. Although Sweden has for years offered registered partnerships granting same-gender couples most of the benefits of marriage, adoption rights have until now been specifically excluded. The Government's bill would allow both for one partner to adopt the other's children and for couples to adopt an unrelated child together. The bill is expected to be introduced in the parliament in March and to win a vote there in June. Social Democratic Member of Parliament Marianne Carlstrom told reporters, "Many children are growing up in homosexual families and this is about their rights." Another ringing endorsement of adoption rights for same-gender couples came this week from the American Academy of Pediatrics. The respected 55,000-member association of physicians working with children issued a policy statement entitled "Coparent or Second-Parent Adoption by Same-Sex Parents". It calls on courts and legislatures to give what may be 9-million children of U.S. gays and lesbians what it called "the security of two legally recognized parents." Currently only three U.S. states have explicitly established second-parent adoptions through legislation and four more through appellate court rulings, although some trial courts have granted them in about half the states. The laws of three states – Florida, Mississippi and Utah -- effectively prohibit second-parent adoptions. The American Academy of Pediatrics declared that "there is a considerable body of professional literature that suggests children with parents who are homosexual have the same advantages and the same expectations for health, adjustment and development as children whose parents are heterosexual." But the Academy is concerned that most of those children do not enjoy the same security as others in terms of health and survivor benefits, child support, or the guarantee of a continuing relationship with the co-parent should the biological or adoptive parent fall ill, die or separate. While religious right groups were quick to criticize the relevant research and to accuse the Academy of succumbing to "political correctness," Academy spokespeople insisted that the issue is not politics but the best interests of the children. The pediatricians' policy statement is expected to have significant impact, in part because the group is viewed as more conservative than others which have issued similar resolutions, such as the American Psychological Association. The more liberal National Education Association, the U.S.' largest teachers union, also waded into political controversy with a new set of recommendations for making schools safer for gays and lesbians. This week the board of the gay-supportive 2.6-million-member NEA approved the results of a months-long study by its Task Force on Sexual Orientation. The group will not only be calling on school districts to establish strong policies against anti-gay harassment and discrimination against students and school employees, but will be encouraging them to provide classroom discussions on homosexuality. It specified that those discussions should be age-appropriate, non-judgmental, and relevant to curricula, and the NEA will offer what it called "accurate, objective and up-to-date information" to that end. A growing number of U.S. school districts have established policies against anti-gay harassment. A bill requiring school districts to do so was passed this week in the Washington state House by an overwhelming 81-to-16. The bill now moves to the Washington Senate, which passed a similar measure last year. The Boy Scouts of America this week renewed the policy of discrimination against gay men that it successfully defended before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2000. The BSA national executive board said in a statement that it "reaffirmed its view that an avowed homosexual cannot serve as a role model for the traditional moral values espoused in the Scout Oath and Law and that these values cannot be subject to 'local option' choices." Three proposed resolutions to modify the controversial policy were sent to a committee. Charleston this week became the first city in West Virginia to enact a hate crimes ordinance including sexual orientation as a protected category. West Virginia's state hate crimes law does not include homophobic attacks. The state capital's city council voted by an overwhelming 23-to-3 to augment sentences for hate-motivated attacks by up to $500 and 30 days in jail. The lead plaintiffs in a lawsuit to win domestic partner health benefits from Montana's state university system barely escaped an arson attack on their home this week. Missoula lesbian couple Adrianne Neff and Professor Carla Grayson had to scramble out a bedroom window with their baby when their house was set afire at 3 AM. The house was gutted. The couple had received hate mail including death threats after a press conference this week announcing the lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union. ACLU Lesbian and Gay Rights Project director Matt Coles said, "Whoever set this fire did not intend simply to frighten or intimidate this family. They meant to kill them." Police are considering the arson attack an attempted triple homicide and federal officials are assisting in the investigation. Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe renewed his homophobic rhetoric in launching the most hotly-contested election campaign of his two-decade regime. Speaking to a rally of his ZANU-PF party, he vowed to jail gays in Zimbabwe and to punish any attempts to form what he called "homosexual clubs." He taunted Britain for its openly gay cabinet members, remarking that, "I have people who are married in my cabinet. [British Prime Minister Tony Blair] has homosexuals and they make John marry Joseph and let Mary get married to Rosemary." He joked this meant they did not know as much biology as his own dogs and pigs. In fact Britain does not legally recognize same-gender couples, much less marry them, but the domestic partners of those gay Cabinet members and other unmarried Members of Parliament are expected to receive spousal pension benefits soon, the Cabinet Office announced this week. The enabling amendments to the Parliamentary Pension Scheme are expected to be approved in October, following a study by pension trustees that the Parliament had ordered last year. Egypt's campaign against gay men continued this week with the conviction of four Cairo area men, who were each sentenced to three years in prison followed by three years probation. According to IGLHRC, the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, the prosecution presented almost no evidence against them, and the judge had "described them in abusive language" before their hearing took place. One of the men told an IGLHRC representative that the four had been beaten and ill-treated during the four months of incarceration since their November 10 arrests. Those arrests had been announced immediately after the verdicts were pronounced on 52 men arrested in a police raid on a gay-inclusive Nile riverboat club. Another eight gay men who will be tried soon in Damanhour are already being referred to in the press as the "Beheira Perverts' Group". To IGLHRC these and other cases amount to a pattern of persecution, and the group denounced the U.S. and Europe for giving billions in foreign aid to the Egyptian government. IGLHRC is not alone in its protests. Openly gay U.S. Congressmember Barney Frank refused an invitation from the Egyptian government with an open letter denouncing its treatment of gay men. Six thousand French citizens, including some major celebrities, signed a letter of protest to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in advance of his upcoming visit to Paris. Antwerp's gay and lesbian community center, Het Roze Huis or Pink House, had Egypt's ambassador to Belgium come for a visit and grilled him about the riverboat raid; he told them that the case "had nothing to do with the persecution of homosexuality" but with the defendants' debauchery and contempt of religion, which could be equally punished for non-gays. There have been several developments regarding José Mantero since he became the first Roman Catholic priest in Spain to publicly identify himself as a gay man last week. Mantero's bishop announced that he must regretfully withdraw Mantero's ministerial licenses for having broken his vow of celibacy and having failed to show up to celebrate Mass on the Sunday following his announcement. Indeed Mantero had largely disappeared in the face of a continuing media firestorm, although he did make a television appearance this week in which he declared his desire to continue as a priest. There were expressions of support for him from his parishioners, although they had been as surprised as anyone by his coming-out in the Spanish gay magazine "Zero". Spain's Association of Gays and Lesbians has called for Spaniards to stop financially supporting the Catholic Church until it ceases "insulting and condemning" gays and lesbians. And Carlos Alberto Biendicho, a gay leader within Spain's ruling People's Party -- a party which has generally blocked gay-supportive legislation -- threatened to "out" three bishops he claims to have had sex with, in retaliation for any punishment of Mantero. And finally... the Roman Catholic Church came in for more criticism as the annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras launched in Australia this week. The three-week festival leading up to the climactic parade opened with a gathering of 20,000 people at the Sydney Opera House. Keynote speaker for the event was Nan McGregor, the mother of a gay man who was herself denied communion by now-Archbishop George Pell when she joined the Rainbow Sash campaign in support of gay and lesbian Catholics. McGregor told the crowd, "Being told by Archbishop Pell to remove my sash if I really wished to receive communion was to me the epitome of hypocrisy. I was in effect being asked to choose between the church of my birth ... and my gay child, and I would always choose my child."