NewsWrap for the week ending March 2, 2002 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #727, distributed 3-4-02) [Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Chris Ambidge, Brian Nunes, Jason Lin, Rex Wockner, Lucia Chappelle and Greg Gordon] Anchored by Brian Nunes and Cindy Friedman A panel of the European Court of Human Rights this week narrowly upheld French authorities' refusal to allow a gay man to adopt a child. Four of the seven European justices found that the European Convention on Human Rights "did not guarantee, as such, the right to adopt," and so rejected gay plaintiff Philippe Fretté's discrimination claim. The majority ruling said that professional as well as political opinions are divided on the issue of gays and lesbians raising children, and that nations must be allowed some leeway in considering children's welfare under local conditions. The minority comprised of justices from Austria, Belgium and Britain sharply dissented. They wrote that, " Mr. Fretté's homosexuality cannot justify the refusal of consent unless it is accompanied by behavior detrimental to a child's upbringing." French law does not explicitly deny adoptions by gays and lesbians or other unmarried adults. Social services gave a favorable evaluation to Parisian teacher Fretté, and he even won a round in court. The European court did find unanimously that Fretté's right to a fair trial had been violated when he was not advised of the hearing by France's highest administrative court that set aside his favorable decision, and awarded him 3,000 francs in court costs, but did not order a new trial. Fretté can still appeal to the EuroCourt's full 17-member bench. Taking aim at Florida's ban on adoptions by gays and lesbians is U.S. TV talkshow host Rosie O'Donnell. An adoptive parent and vocal adoptions advocate, O'Donnell unequivocally identified herself as a lesbian in stand-up routine at an Ovarian Cancer Research Fund benefit in New York City this week, proclaiming, "I'm a dyke!" More formal and detailed coming-out messages are expected from O'Donnell in TV interviews airing this month and a book to be released in April, as she leaves her hit talk show in May. O'Donnell also maintains a home in Florida, where she's committed to joining the American Civil Liberties Union in its efforts to overturn the state’s adoption ban. At the taping of one TV interview she described parenting a troubled three-year-old and learning that to adopt her in Florida she would have to sign a statement that she was not bisexual or homosexual. The child was taken away when she refused to do so. A lesbian non-biological co-parent in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania has been ordered to pay child support for the five children of her former partner. After several years of living together, Lisa Kove and Helen Naumoff decided together to have children by artificial insemination. Kove bore their first child in 1990, and then in 1993 gave birth to quadruplets. When they separated in 1997, Naumoff was awarded joint legal custody and partial physical custody. Kove first sued for child support in 1998 but only prevailed this week. A recent Pennsylvania state Supreme Court decision in a nother case recognized that a lesbian non-biological co-parent is a parent under state law, with standing to sue for visitation. Also in Pennsylvania this week, the Erie County Council voted 6-to-1 to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in housing, employment and public accommodations. The County Executive is expected to sign the bill into law, making Erie the state's sixth locality to protect the civil rights of gays, lesbians and bisexuals, and the second to protect transgenders. Gay and lesbian civil rights also came up for consideration at the national level in the U.S. this week, as the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions held a hearing on ENDA, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. Committee chair Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts is once again a lead sponsor of the measure, and with his Democratic Party now in control of the Senate, he expects the bill to reach a floor vote soon. In the only previous floor vote in either house in some 30 years of gay and lesbian civil rights proposals, ENDA failed by a single vote in the Senate in 1996 on the same day that the anti-gay so-called Defense of Marriage Act was overwhelmingly approved. To counter opponents who claim that ENDA would damage business interests, there was testimony at this week's committee hearing from representatives of several of the 29 major U.S. corporations which have endorsed the bill. A Gallup poll last year found 85% public support for federal protections from sexual orientation discrimination in private sector employment, but the Republican committee members were notably absent from the hearing. Britain's Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith this week held the first in what's planned to be a series of meetings with the group TORCHE, the Tory Campaign for Homosexual Equality. The Tory's traditional anti-gay positions have recently come up for increasingly vocal criticism from within the party. TORCHE chair Andy Jennings said a key point of agreement between the group and Smith was "that gay people in particular resented state interference in their lives -- a central tenet of Conservatism." TORCHE deputy chair James Davenport claimed that the Tories are now actually ahead of the ruling Labour Party on issues including partners' rights to hospital visitation and pensions. The law creating Finland's new registered partnerships for gays and lesbians conferring most of the legal benefits of marriage went into effect this week. Dozens of couples had already applied to register, and a few hundred are expected to do so each year. Finnish partnerships carry property and inheritance rights, but not adoption or co-adoption rights nor the right to use the same surname. In Israel, Ariel Sharon this week became the nation's first Prime Minister to meet with a delegation from the gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender community. Israeli President Moshe Katsav held a similar first-of-its-kind meeting in November. Both meetings were organized by the Political Council for Gay Rights in Israel. Delegates described the meeting as very friendly and quoted Sharon as saying, "I think everybody should live their lives as they choose to." He also denounced one rabbi's recent widely reported call for putting gays to death. In Nigeria, a sodomy conviction was punished this week by a sentence of 100 strokes of a cane and one year in prison. Judge Alkali Dahiru Muhammad Gusau of the higher Sharia court in Kanwuri was careful to cite the specific section of the Islamic legal code that justified his sentencing of Abdullahim Abubakar Barkeji. Nigeria is sharply divided between its Islamic northern states and its Christian southern states. Indian activists report there was a major police sweep on cruising areas in Hyderabad last week that resulted in 25 arrests. They say the detainees were forced to sit down in the street to be publicly humiliated while police verbally and physically abused them. Among those detained were five AIDS prevention outreach workers with the state-funded group Mithrudu, who were later released although required to return for interrogation. At last report the other detainees had neither been released nor brought before a magistrate. In South Africa, Western Cape Premier and former Cape Town Mayor Peter Marais drew the ire of activists with anti-gay remarks. Asked in an interview with the magazine "Insig" if he would try to prohibit gay rights, Marais responded that, "The Lord always leads me... Look what the Lord did to the City of Sodom. He destroyed it." Previously Marais had said of South Africa's pioneering constitutional guarantee of equal treatment for gays and lesbians that "Christians must choose between the Constitution and the Bible". Both the ruling African National Congress and Marais' New National Party, which recently established an agreement with each other, responded with affirmations of Marais' right to free speech but no support for his statements. South Africa's Lesbian and Gay Equality Project targeted Marais for flip-flopping on the issue, noting that he had once called a homophobic Durban mayor "green with envy at our [Cape Town] pink community" but that he now asserted that he "will never push the Cape as a pink tourism city." In Australia's pink tourism capital, Sydney's 24th annual Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade this week drew about a half-million spectators, although international attendance was down. The theme of the 8,000-member march was "Walk a Mile in Our Shoes". The lead float was a large model of the city's Saint Mary's Cathedral entitled "Saint Muscle Mary's" in a roast of the anti-gay positions of the Roman Catholic Church and its Australian leader Archbishop George Pell. A Pell look-alike distributed condoms instead of communion wafers. Prime Minister John Howard and Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock were also satirized as the parade took on issues including immigration and aboriginal reconciliation. Singer Lorna Luft rode a float for the AIDS charity Oz Showbiz Cares, surrounded by some 50 impersonators of her mother Judy Garland. There were 170 floats in all, one featuring a 10-foot tall figure of children's TV puppet Bob the Builder wearing a nipple ring. And finally... in Bob's home country, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts handed out its annual movie awards this week. An Academy Fellowship, BAFTA's highest honor, was presented to the gay team of producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory, along with their writer collaborator Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. "Lord of the Rings" was the big winner with five trophies, although its "Gandalf," open gay Sir Ian McKellen, lost out to Russell Crowe for Best Actor. Openly gay actor/author Stephen Fry hosted the evening for a global television audience of six million. When actor Kevin Spacey came onstage to present an award, he remarked on the strange soapy substance the torrential rains had drawn from the red carpet outside the hall. Fry suggested it was the residue of "years of greasy flattery."