NewsWrap for the week ending May 11, 2002 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #737, distributed 5-13-02) [Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Chris Ambidge, Brian Nunes, Jason Lin, Rex Wockner, Calum Bennachie, Lucia Chappelle & Greg Gordon] Anchored by Cindy Friedman and Brian Nunes Europe was rocked this week by the murder of the Netherlands' openly gay maverick politician Pim Fortuyn. It was the Netherlands' first political assassination in 330 years and is widely viewed as a landmark in European history. The slaying came just 9 days before national elections that were expected to bring the new Lisjt Pim Fortuyn party into the Netherlands' ruling coalition with perhaps one-fifth of the seats in parliament -- and might even have made Fortuyn the first openly gay Prime Minister. The Cabinet considered postponing the vote, but decided it will go on as planned on May 15th -- with Fortuyn's name on the ballot. However, all active campaigning has been suspended as a gesture of respect. Fortuyn was shot six times as he was leaving a radio station in Hilversum. A riot ensued as hundreds of Fortuyn supporters damaged shops and cars near the Parliament building in The Hague before police prevailed in a violent confrontation. Animal rights activist Volkert van der Graaf was quickly arrested and charged with the murder. Although he has been silent since his arrest, van der Graaf may have been reacting to Fortuyn's desire to lift the Netherlands' ban on fur farming. He is believed to have acted alone. Fortuyn never held elected office, but was a former sociology professor, TV commentator and lecturer, magazine news columnist and author of several books. He rose to political prominence over the last year, first in the Livable Netherlands party -- which ejected him for criticizing Muslims -- and then in his own party, which won recently more than a third of the seats in the city council of Rotterdam, where he lived. He was a colorful figure, blunt-spoken, sporting a shaved head, pinstripe suits and loud ties. A political gadfly who stirred debate, he was uniquely a phenomenon of the Netherlands. Never shy about his sexual orientation, he spoke publicly of his backroom encounters and patronage of sex workers, but this was not an issue in the first nation to grant full equal marriage rights to same-gender couples, where sex work is legal. To his horror, commentators tended to link Fortuyn’s name with extreme right-wingers such as France's Jean-Marie Le Pen and Austria's Joerg Haider because he wanted to close the Netherlands to immigration. But he was not a racist, and he affirmed a national responsibility to those already welcomed within the borders. He was someone who dared "political incorrectness" to say publicly that at 16-million, the densely populated Netherlands are full up -- and that the nation has not well assimilated the huge numbers of immigrants it has taken in over the last two decades, as shown by ghettoization and rising crime despite an economic boom. He was most harshly critical of the Muslim immigrants because of their religious leaders' public denunciations of homosexuality and tradition of second-class status for women, values at odds with his nation's. He may be better described as a libertarian and populist who captured the support of a broad spectrum of citizens who feel the long-ruling major parties have lost touch with their own daily lives. Fortuyn was widely mourned. In Rotterdam, perhaps 100,000 people viewed his body as it lay in state at the Roman Catholic Laurentius and Elisabeth Cathedral, and tens of thousands lined the streets for his funeral cortege. He's temporarily interred in a family plot in a nearby town but will ultimately be permanently entombed in the Italian village of Provesano di San Giorgio della Richinvelda, where Fortuyn kept a vacation home. Other memorials included a silent march in Amsterdam, real and virtual condolence registers, and piles of flowers and messages left outside his home, near the assassination site, and in the national square in Amsterdam. Two other notable deaths were reported this week. In Germany, famed transgender Charlotte von Mahlsdorf died at age 74 of a heart attack. Born Lothar Berfelde, Von Mahlsdorf dared to cross-dress during the Nazi regime and under the Communist rule of East Berlin, as recounted in her autobiography "I Am My Own Woman". A high-profile media celebrity in Germany, she also created museums in Berlin and in Sweden. In the U.S., makeup artist to the stars Kevyn Aucoin died at age 40 of metabolic problems from a pituitary brain tumor. He served Hollywood's A-list at $6,000 per day and wrote three successful books about makeup. But he never forgot the anti-gay harassment that drove him out of school at age 15, and worked with New York City's Hetrick-Martin Institute on behalf of today's gay and lesbian youth. He's survived by his partner Jeremy Antunes. A memorial was dedicated this week to the man some have called Australia's first gay martyr. A bronze plaque was ceremonially unveiled at the University of Adelaide on the 30th anniversary of the death of Dr. George Duncan, who briefly taught law there. Just seven weeks after his arrival, while "cruising" in a park on the banks of the River Torrens, he's believed to have been assaulted by a group of homophobes who threw him into the river, where he drowned. He was 42. Although the murder remains officially unsolved today, the dramatic death sparked the state of South Australia to become the first in the nation to decriminalize homosexual acts between consenting adults. New Zealand's Parliament has given final approval to a measure providing for harsher sentencing for hate-motivated assaults, including attacks based on the perpetrator's perception of the victim's sexual orientation or gender identity. A section of the Sentencing Reform Act specifies bias motivation as an aggravating factor. The section, which prevailed over strong opposition from the religious right, may be New Zealand's first explicit legislative recognition of hate crimes. There were three significant advances this week in U.S. legislation. The City Council of Dallas, Texas voted 13-to-2 to adopt an ordinance prohibiting sexual orientation discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations. Mayor Laura Miller had made a campaign promise to work for its enactment. The New York state Assembly and Senate both unanimously passed the September 11th Victims and Families Relief Act. This includes language specifically intended to ensure that partners of gays and lesbians victimized in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center will receive federal aid funds, as well as state-level benefits. The Connecticut state Senate followed the state House in approving a bill to allow individuals to designate anyone they choose -- including same-gender partners, although they are not specifically referred to -- to visit them in hospitals and nursing homes and to make certain medical and postmortem decisions for them. A U.S.-led move to add language against recognition of same-gender couples to a United Nations statement on child welfare failed this week. A special session of the UN General Assembly gave consensus approval to the final version of "A World Fit for Children," which offers proposals for promoting children's health and education and their safety from abuse, violence and exploitation. It continues past UN commitments to adolescents' rights to sex education and reproductive and sexual health services. The U.S. delegation had sought to include a statement restricting the definition of marriage exclusively to one man and one woman. Instead, the final version says that, "The family is the basic unit of society and as such should be strengthened," but repeats a past call for recognition "that in different cultural, social and political systems, various forms of the family exist." And finally... it was no small victory when 17-year-old Toronto-area gay Marc Hall brought his boyfriend Jean-Paul Dumond to the prom this week at his high school -- Oshawa's Monsignor John Pereyma Catholic Secondary School. Told by his principal that he could not bring a male date to the prom, Hall appealed to the Durham Region Catholic School Board, only to be rejected with a statement written before he was even heard. The board believes that dancing and dating represent a degree of "courtship" that they cannot condone, given Roman Catholic doctrine against homosexual acts. Even a lesbian student suggested Hall should attend a secular high school if he wanted to take a boy to the prom. But the widely-reported case won the attention of leading Canadian politicians and human rights groups, and with their support Hall sued in an Ontario court for an emergency order to require his admission to the prom. Ontario Superior Court Justice Robert MacKinnon granted that order just hours before the prom began, declaring the school was clearly violating Hall’s constitutional rights, discriminating against him and interfering in his private life. There's very sharp disagreement between the school board, which sees the ruling as applying only narrowly to the prom, and Hall's legal team, which view the decision as a landmark providing broad protections for gay and lesbian students in religious schools; the legal struggle will continue, with both sides declaring they're willing to pursue the issue all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. But Hall and Dumond had plenty to celebrate as they rode up in a limousine, wearing tuxedos and holding hands, and entered the prom to the applause of the s tudents. A sign on one student’s car read, "God Bless Marc Hall, now let’s dance!"