NewsWrap for the week ending May 4, 2002 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #736, distributed 5-6-02) [Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Chris Ambidge, Brian Nunes, Jason Lin, Rex Wockner, Lucia Chappelle & Greg Gordon] Anchored by Jon Beaupré and Cindy Friedman An attempt to revive a bid for consultative status at the United Nations for ILGA, the International Lesbian and Gay Association, was voted down this week. ILGA was the first and only lesbian and gay organization ever to have official standing with the UN, but after just one year lost it in 1994, due to claims that 3 of its roughly 300 member groups supported pedophilia. ILGA went on to oust those groups, add the entire UN Convention on the Rights of the Child to its organizational constitution, and adopt a resolution declaring that ILGA "categorically does not in any way seek to promote or seek the legalization of pedophilia," and applied for reinstatement. In January, the Non-Governmental Organizations Committee of the UN's Economic and Social Council rejected that application. As the full Council met this week to consider that committee's recommendations, several European nations sought to force the committee to reconsider ILGA's application -- but their proposal was defeated by a vote of 29-to-17 with 7 abstentions. ILGA will now have to wait until 2005 to try again. Support for ILGA this week was led by France, the Netherlands and Germany. Australia and the U.S. also voted for ILGA, while Spain was the only European nation that did not. The opposition reiterated concerns about pedophilia and harped on ILGA's refusal to submit its membership list, which ILGA believes could endanger its constituents. ILGA said the opposition was primarily led by Egypt, which for the last year has been notoriously arresting and torturing suspected gay men. Pakistan, Sudan and India also stood out among opponents. ILGA further noted that two thirds of the opposition votes came from nations that criminalize private consensual homosexual acts. ILGA Co-Secretary-General Kursad Kahramanoglu declared that, "A fundamental human right has been sacrificed at the altars of Islam and Catholicism." A statement by Pope John Paul II this week drew protest from the Italian civil rights group Arcigay. An apostolic letter seeking to increase participation in private confession said that, "It is clear that penitents living in a habitual state of serious sin and who do not intend to change their situation cannot validly receive absolution." While the Pope did not identify specific groups, the letter was widely understood to refer to sexually active gays and lesbians and to divorcees who remarry. Leading Vatican theologian Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger neither confirmed nor denied that inference, but he did clarify that absolution could not be given in some cases because, in his words, "the fundamental condition for absolution is that the person must separate from the sin, have the desire for change." This week's letter was in contrast to the Pope's indication in a sermon last week that absolution is a possibility even for priests who sexually abuse minors. Arcigay president Sergio Lo Giudice responded with a statement that, "Any isolated act, even violent or with a minor, can be absolved if it's accompanied by a declaration of penance. The choice of having loving, stable, responsible and conscious relations with a person of the same sex falls, instead, under the implacable hatchet of papal condemnation." Meanwhile, secular Italy is about to broadcast Europe's first commercial TV channel to specifically target gays and lesbians. Gay.tv, produced by a Milan company with venture capital from the Netherlands, will begin Italian-language satellite transmissions available free to viewers across the continent on May 6th. Initial capital should keep Gay.tv on the air for 3 years even though it's making its debut with no advertisers yet on board. If it finds a following, it may later become a paid subscription channel. Annual meetings of two major U.S. corporations last week overwhelmingly voted down shareholder proposals to explicitly add sexual orientation as a category protected under their equal employment policies. Management at both defense contractor Lockheed Martin and regional telecommunications provider Alltel recommended against the policy change while declaring they do not discriminate against gays and lesbians. Lockheed Martin shareholders rejected the proposal by Pennsylvania's Swarthmore College 92% to 5%. Alltel shareholders rejected the proposal led by Walden Asset Management 88% to 9%. But the Connecticut state House of Representatives this week gave nearly 2-to-1 approval to a bill allowing individuals to designate the person they wish to make some health-related decisions in the event of their death or disability. The bill never mentions same-gender couples and is very much weaker than the Vermont-style "civil unions" gay and lesbian activists had sought, although some opponents rejected it as a first step in that direction. If the Connecticut Senate also approves the measure, the governor has said he will sign it. A recent poll found that well over 80% of Connecticut residents support the bill's provisions. A U.S. study has failed to confirm that lesbians face a much higher risk of breast cancer than non-gay women. Almost a decade ago, epidemiologist Suzanne Haynes had noted that lesbians had a higher incidence of several known risk factors -- including smoking, drinking, weight, and not having borne children -- and projected from that that lesbians might face as much as two or three times the breast cancer risk of other women. But now Suzanne Dibble, a professor of nursing at the University of California Institute of Health and Aging, has reported a study of nearly 1,000 California lesbians over 40 that compares their health to their non-gay sisters and friends. The lesbians in the study were in fact less likely to have borne children and likely to be heavier, but they drank no more and actually smoked less. Their risk of breast cancer was less than 1% greater than that of their heterosexual counterparts. An Australian study published in the latest "British Journal of Psychiatry" found bisexuals more likely than either gays and lesbians or non-gays to suffer from anxiety, depression and negativity. The report was part of an ongoing investigation of nearly 5,000 Canberra residents comparing a group in their early 20's with a group in their early 40's, although less than 3% of participants identified themselves as homosexual or bisexual. The res earchers cited bad experiences both as children and as adults, financial problems, and weaker social support systems as contributing to bisexuals' special risks. They concluded that, "It is possible that having neither a clear heterosexual or homosexual orientation is an important stressor, in addition to the social pressures of having a different sexual orientation to the majority." That may not be Australian bisexuals' only reason for anxiety -- a sizable number of married men were among more than 100 arrested in a Melbourne train station toilet in a two-week police sting called "Operation Dalliance". Victoria state police defended this use of plainclothes police in the face of protests of entrapment. The Victorian Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby claimed that increasing uniform patrols would have been an effective response to the reports of underage sex workers cited by police. Having heard several complaints of entrapment, gay policing activist Peter Horsley said, "If you're trying to catch pedophiles, you don't use 35-year-old undercover police officers." A large majority of the men arrested in the sting are expected to go into diversion programs rather than to trial. And finally... in Taiwan this week, media revelation of a discriminatory policy led quickly to protest and a promise of reform. First came a Taiwanese news report that the Ministry of Defense had formalized a long-standing policy of barring gays from the national military police -- even though Taiwan does not ban them from any branch of its armed forces. Military police candidates are specifically selected for height and good looks; the 10,000-member force serves primarily as security guards for the President and government facilities. The Military Police Command issued a brief statement confirming the news report, justifying rejection of those with what it labels a "sexual orientation impairment" with security concerns and the "convenience of managing and meeting the needs" of the job. Yet even that brief statement said the force "respects human rights" and might drop the heterosexual requirement if necessary. Gay and lesbian activists lost no time in making clear reform was indeed necessary, delivering their statement of protest to the Ministry of Defense the next day. And in the face of the flurry of media attention, the Military Police Command immediately promised to revise its policy. A spokesperson said the anti-gay rule stemmed from the days when homosexuality was considered a mental illness, and called it "not quite appropriate to current standards." Defense Minister Tang Yiau-ming promised lawmakers the discriminatory rule would be dropped, but said that gays should only live in larger barracks than the usual six-bed military police units. That earned a jeer from legislator Chao Liang-yen, who said, "If one homosexual was in a six-man room, could he go and violate the other five? I doubt he could achieve such an objective."