NewsWrap
for the week ending February 16, 2002
(As broadcast on This Way Out program #725, distributed 2-18-02)
[Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Chris Ambidge, 
Brian Nunes, Jason Lin, Rex Wockner, Lucia Chappelle and Greg Gordon]

Anchored by Christopher Gaal and Cindy Friedman

  Poland's Government chose Valentine's Day to announce completion of its 
draft bill to grant gay and lesbian domestic partners the same legal standing 
as unmarried heterosexual cohabitants.  A spokesperson for the ruling SLD, 
the Democratic Left Alliance party, said the measure was designed to meet the 
equality standards of the European Union.  Poland will hold a referendum on 
joining the EU in 2003, and enforcement of the domestic partners bill would 
begin only after that vote if the proposal succeeds.  The Government's bill 
is remarkable because some 90% of Poles are Roman Catholics.  A spokesperson 
for the Polish episcopate denounced the bill as "an attack against the 
institutions of marriage and the family." 

  A Roman Catholic priest in Italy was defrocked and excommunicated on 
Valentine's Day for celebrating gay and lesbian unions.  Father Franco 
Barbero of the northern city of Pinerolo has officiated at some 35 church 
ceremonies for same-gender couples and had continued to do so after formal 
orders to stop.  In fact Barbero's bishop said the Church had spent 30 years 
trying to reform the 63-year-old priest on a range of issues, but that his 
"position ... in terms of morality and in the celebration of pseudo-marriages 
among homosexual people are, basically, in serious contrast to the doctrine 
of the Catholic Church."  According to Agence France Presse, Barbero has 
written 13 books on homosexuality and contributed to the Italian Web site 
www.gay.it.  Barbero's last act as a priest was to bless a lesbian couple, 
saying, "these lesbian women, our sisters, ask the Christian church to change 
its doctrine."

  Finland's state church this week decided against blessing same-gender 
couples, despite the nation's enactment in September of registered domestic 
partnerships for them that carry most of the civil benefits of marriage.  At 
a conference of the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church, to which 85% of 
Finns belong, Archbishop Jukka Paarma said, "We should avoid any kind of 
action that could be interpreted in such a way that the church, or a 
representative of the church, is blessing such a relationship."  Paarma added 
that priests will be free to visit the homes of gay and lesbian couples and 
pray with them there.  He said the church will not be publishing an official 
position on registered partnerships, which is viewed as an indication that 
the church and its clergy are divided on the issue.

  In Mexico City, more than 100 gay and lesbian couples exchanged vows in a 
Valentine's Day demonstration seeking partnership rights.  A bill to create 
so-called "unions of cohabitation" will be reintroduced in the city 
legislature later this year.  Rights conferred by the bill would include 
insurance and inheritance.

  A gay man's struggle to inherit the bulk of his late partner's estate under 
new laws in the Australian state of New South Wales has ended rather like 
Charles Dickens' "Bleak House".  The late Stephen Chuck's estate was 
originally valued two years ago at about A$154,000, but his family of origin 
spent some A$75,000 in legal fees trying to prove he wasn't gay, while his 
partner of more than two years Tim Devonshire spent some A$50,000 to prove 
they had indeed had a relationship.  The NSW Supreme Court found this week 
that only A$32,000 remained in the estate, and awarded A$10,000 to Devonshire 
and A$22,000 to Chuck's family.

  But domestic partners will receive survivor benefits, and in fact the full 
range of employee spousal benefits, from the World Bank, following a vote of 
its board of directors last week.  The move is a triumph for the World Bank's 
nine-year-old Gay, Lesbian or Bisexual Employees group, GLOBE, which had won 
some limited partner benefits four years ago.  Now all distinctions between 
same-gender and heterosexual couples have been eliminated, giving them access 
to survivor benefits, insurance coverage, mobility benefits, and more.  The 
World Bank is a cooperative effort of 182 countries to provide loans to 
developing nations.

  G&L Bank, the Florida-based Internet bank founded specifically to serve 
gays and lesbians, this week announced its plans to liquidate.  The bank's 
voluntary dissolution plan has already been approved by the U.S. Office of 
Thrift Supervision.  There will be no loss to depositors, whose funds are 
federally insured; loans will be purchased by other financial institutions; 
and shareholders are expected to collect about half their investment.  G&L 
opened on National Coming Out Day in October 1999, and as of a year ago it 
claimed 65 million dollars in assets, but it's been operating at a loss of 
about $280,000 per month since it opened.  Founder Steven Dunlap's lawsuit 
continues against the bank, which ousted him last year.

  Elsewhere in the U.S., a court has decided for the first time in Delaware 
that a non-biological lesbian co-parent can be sued for child support by her 
former partner.  The four-year-old boy was conceived by artificial 
insemination during the women's relationship.  For a traditional married 
couple in that situation there would be an automatic presumption of legal 
parenthood for the father, and family court commissioner John Carrow found 
that the co-parent is a second mother, in a decision made public this week.  
The co-parent is appealing his ruling.

  But the Alabama state Supreme Court has upheld a notorious ruling granting 
custody of three teenagers to the father who hit them rather than to their 
lesbian mother.  The trial judge who originally denied the mother's lawsuit 
for custody reviled homosexuality and quoted the Bible in his decision.  A 
state appeals court reversed that decision last year, citing the abuse and 
declaring there was no indication that the mother's current lesbian 
relationship would be detrimental to the children.  But this week the state's 
highest court unanimously reinstated the trial court's decision, saying the 
trial court had been in a better position to evaluate the abuse than the 
appellate court, which had overstepped its bounds by reconsidering the facts 
of the case.  Chief Justice Roy Moore, nationally famous for his past fight 
to keep a huge plaque of the Ten Commandments on his courtroom walls, wrote 
that, "The common law designates homosexuality as an inherent evil, and if a 
person openly engages in such a practice, that fact alone would render him or 
her an unfit parent."

  The future of legal recognition of same-gender couples in Britain became 
murkier this week.  Liberal Democrat Lord Herne withdrew his private members 
bill to create registered partnerships for unmarried couples, choosing 
instead to seek formation of a Select Committee to review the issue.  
Reporters believed that he acted in the expectation that the Labour 
Government would be putting its own partnership bill on the agenda for the 
next legislative session, but a spokesperson for the Cabinet Office quickly 
responded that the Government has "no plans to introduce gay marriage."  
Another private members bill for registered partnerships, by Labour Member of 
Parliament Jane Griffiths, is due for a second reading in the House of 
Commons in May.

  But London Mayor Ken Livingstone sent specially-designed Valentines to the 
city's gay and lesbian bars, to promote the city's own purely ceremonial 
Partnerships Register.
And an online poll by Britain's Rainbownetwork to name the nation's "most 
romantic" gay and lesbian couple chose singer-songwriter Elton John and David 
Furnish and actress Sophie Ward and Rena Brannan.

  Congratulations are due some other stars of British drama as well.
Open gay Sir Ian McKellen was nominated this week for the Best Supporting 
Actor Oscar for his role as Gandalf in the film "Lord of the Rings".  
McKellen was a Best Actor Oscar nominee in 1999 for portraying the late gay 
director James Whale in "Gods and Monsters".
Other Oscar nominations went to film portrayals of famous bisexuals.  Dame 
Judi Dench was nominated for Best Actress and Kate Winslet for Best 
Supporting Actress, both for portraying novelist Iris Murdoch in "Iris".  
Eight nominations honored "A Beautiful Mind", the biopic of bisexual 
economist John Forbes Nash, although the film omitted any depiction of his 
gay side.
And at this week's Olivier Awards, Britain’s top theatre honors, Best Actor 
went to Roger Allam for his role as a transvestite soldier in the musical 
play "Privates on Parade".

  And finally... the approach of Valentine's Day apparently had even 
Republican U.S. President George Bush in a flirtatious mood, according to 
openly gay Democratic Congressmember Barney Frank.  Frank took his boyfriend 
to a recent event, and as he tells it, "When Sergio and I went to the White 
House, Sergio said to the President, 'Senor Presidente'.  And Bush said to 
Sergio in Spanish, 'You know I can speak to you in Spanish, and he can't, can 
he?'"