NewsWrap for the week ending April 20, 2002 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #734, distributed 4-22-02) [Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Chris Ambidge, Brian Nunes, Jason Lin, Rex Wockner, Lucia Chappelle & Greg Gordon] Anchored by Christopher Gaal and Cindy Friedman Lesbians and other women not in relationships with men retained their right to assisted reproduction treatment in Australia, as the nation's High Court this week unanimously dismissed a legal challenge by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference. The court criticized the Attorney-General for granting the bishops the chance to appeal a case to which the Church had not been a party. In that case, non-gay Leesa Meldrum won a Federal Court ruling in 2000 that struck down Victoria's state law limiting access to fertility treatment exclusively to women in relationships with men, finding the state law violated the national Sex Discrimination Act. The High Court's action this week preserved that decision. But politics still threaten equal access to fertility treatment. Prime Minister John Howard has indicated that his Coalition Government could move quickly to amend the Sex Discrimination Act to allow states to limit access. The Coalition had introduced a bill to that effect in the wake of the Federal Court decision, and it passed the House only to die in a Senate committee. A vote in the Senate could now be very close -- although the Opposition parties all support equal access to treatment, some individual Australian Labor Party Senators disagree, and the bill will pass if just two abstain. Another high court dismissal this week was much less welcome to the lesbigay community, as Texas' top criminal appeals court declined to take up a case of two men arrested in one's private home under the state's gay-only sodomy law. Sheriff's deputies were responding to a third party's false report of an intruder on the premises in 1998 when they discovered John Lawrence and Tyrone Gardner engaged in consensual sex. Both men had pleaded no contest and paid a fine, hoping they could strike down the so-called "homosexual conduct" law in the appellate courts. With the support of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, the men are now considering an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Kansas and Oklahoma are the only states besides Texas that retain sodomy statutes applying solely to homosexual acts, although a court ruling against Arkansas' law is still pending appeal. Ten other states have laws prohibiting oral and anal sex regardless of the gender of the parties involved. Civil lawsuits challenging the Texas law have failed. Last year, one mid-level state appeals court ruled in favor of the law. The state's top civil court, the Texas Supreme Court, declined to hear a 1998 case on the basis that the law's status should be determined by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals -- the court that refused to hear the challenge this week. An Egyptian appeals court last week completely overturned the convictions of the so-called "Damanhour Five" gay men, raising hopes for an indeterminate number of other Egyptian gay men in custody. The GayEgypt.com Web site believes the decision was ordered by President Hosni Mubarak in the wake of U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's visit, public criticism by French President Jacques Chirac of Egypt's recent crackdown on gays, and other international protests. However, fears remain that arrests of gays will continue in Egypt but under cover of media silence. At last report the Damanhour defendants had not been released. They've been in jail since January, where they say they were tortured into confessing, and were convicted in March of debauchery charges and sentenced to three years imprisonment followed by three years' probation. An Australian bisexual was released from custody last week with a suspended sentence after pleading guilty to assisting the suicide of his ex-lover who had HIV. Melbourne Supreme Court Justice John Coldrey said he did not think prison was necessary for Raymond Hood, who aided the April 2000 suicide of Daryl Colley. Drag artist Colley was reportedly obsessed with the film "It's My Party" and like its gay hero with AIDS held a party with some 70 guests to say goodbye before taking a fatal drug overdose. Colley announced that he had inoperable brain tumors that would leave him a vegetable, although no tumors were found on autopsy. Hood's attorney called his client's actions "both courageous and an act of love," but Justice Coldrey said that it was "misplaced courage and misguided love." In Britain, a male couple this week became the first to sign Manchester's new Partner Union Registry. The official registration is largely ceremonial, although the leader of Manchester's City Council expressed hopes that someday it will carry legal rights including recognition as next-of-kin. Manchester is only the second city in the UK to offer a domestic partners registry, following London, where couples first registered in September. Cleveland Heights is ready to become the first city in the U.S. state of Ohio to extend health benefits to the same-gender partners of its gay and lesbian municipal employees. Despite strong protest from religious right activists, the city council this week gave its final approval by a vote of 6-to-1 to a measure the mayor strongly supports. Opponents are circulating petitions for a repeal referendum, something which has never happened before in the city's 80-year history. If they fail to collect enough signatures to block the ordinance, Cleveland Heights workers could be signing up for the benefits by the end of May. A Nebraska bill to prohibit workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation died this week, but not quietly. It took nearly a decade to reach the floor of the state's unicameral Legislature but was disposed of there in only 15 minutes. Senator from Lincoln Mike Foley offered 20 amendments and threatened to filibuster until midnight to kill the bill, but instead the Legislature voted to adjourn and the Speaker will not reschedule discussion of the bill. Senator from Omaha Ernie Chambers, a long-time champion of equal treatment for gays and lesbians, vowed to bring the bill back but also went one step farther. Outraged that his colleagues had given such an important issue such short shrift, he punished them with a filibuster of his own the next day, speaking from 9 AM into the early evening with just one 15-minute break. With its session drawing to a close, the Legislature had expected to deal with some two dozen bills that day, but instead was brought to a standstill. In Illinois, a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Congress has publicly identified himself as a gay man. Hank Perritt's announcement was no big surprise, since he's been living with a male partner for 17 years. The first-time political candidate said, "One of the things that defines me is that I'm gay. But I'm also a law school dean, an engineer, I worked on the White House staff, and I spent time in Bosnia and Kosovo. I'm running as a total package, and I decided many years ago not to hide who I am, and that's part of it." Perritt's fund-raising lags far behind that of his opponent, gay-friendly Republican Representative Mark Kirk, who won his first term in 2000 with only 51% of the vote. Canada's first openly gay Member of Parliament, Svend Robinson, was stripped this week of his role as the New Democratic Party's spokesperson on foreign affairs because of his support of the Palestinians. NDP Leader Alexa McDonough said she'll take over those duties herself to promote what she called the party's "long-standing, balanced position which supports the right of Israel to exist within secure borders and the right of Palestinians to a homeland." Robinson had said, "Yes, I am taking sides. I am taking the side of peace over war. I am taking the side of the oppressed over the oppressor .. the side of justice over tyranny." He described the actions of both Palestinian suicide bombers and the Israeli military as terrorism. In the terrorist hijacking of Flight 93 on September 11, open gay Mark Bingham's hero role was confirmed this week. The United Airlines Newark-to-San Francisco flight crashed in rural Pennsylvania killing all on board but sparing any others as passengers and crew fought back against the terrorists who took control of the plane. It has been widely believed from the first that Bingham played a key leadership role in the actions that kept the plane from reaching the terrorists' intended target for destruction. This week for the first time in any plane crash, the U.S. government allowed surviving family members to listen to the cockpit recordings from Flight 93. Although they were not allowed to speak freely to reporters because of a pending trial, by their reports the tapes appeared to confirm that Bingham was a leader of the counterattack, and did nothing to contradict that impression. His mother Alice Hoglan, herself a United Airlines flight attendant, gave all 40 passengers and crew credit for an "heroic teamwork effort". And finally... GLAAD, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, distributed its annual Media Awards this week in the second of four ceremonies, including a fourth Outstanding Comedy Series trophy for NBC's "Will & Grace". Accepting the award, Canadian actor Eric McCormack, who stars as openly gay attorney "Will," said, "This is an incredible honor. When a straight person comes up to me and says, 'I love the show,' I say thank you. But when a gay man comes up to me and says, 'I love the show," I know that he's coming on to me. I say thank you and I... make out with him. But only for a minute, no longer, because I am straight."