NewsWrap for the week ending May 18, 2002 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #738, distributed 5-20-02) [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 In the wake of last week's assassination of Pim Fortuyn, the Netherlands' openly gay political hopeful, his Pim Fortuyn's List party, LPF, appeared to have won 17% of the seats in Parliament in unofficial results from this week's national elections. That's pretty much what polls had indicated before Fortuyn was shot to death, despite pundits' predictions of a "sympathy vote" for the new party. The LPF's emergence as the #2 party in its first national election was just one symptom of clear voter dissatisfaction with the present coalition Government -- and of what many view as a broader European swing to the right. Premier Wim Kok's Labor Party suffered its worst defeat in decades and its coalition partners the VVD and D66 also lost many votes to smaller parties. Emerging as #1 with 29% of the parliamentary seats was the conservative Christian Democratic Party, CDA, after eight years out of power. The CDA is expected to form a ruling coalition with VVD and LPF, which is now led by Mat Herben after some internal struggles CDA leader Jan Peter Balkenende had previously voiced distaste for the full equal marriage rights the Netherlands extended to gays and lesbians last year, but his spokesperson said he now views it "as an irreversible fact." Brazil's President Fernando Henrique Cardoso strongly endorsed legal recognition of same-gender couples for the first time this week. He even waved a rainbow flag for the media after announcing his Programa Nacional dos Direitos Humanos, a massive policy statement with more than 500 provisions towards protecting the human rights of gays and lesbians and transgenders, women, people with disabilities, the elderly, black and native peoples, and the poor. Although Cardoso had introduced a similar human rights reform plan six years ago, the new edition was the first to include gays and lesbians -- in fact, in the face of heavy opposition from the Roman Catholic Church, the Grupo Gay da Bahia believes its Brazil's first official document ever to address their issues. Cardoso will be leaving office in January after national elections in October, but he said, "The measures announced today are policies of a nation elaborated after consultation with sectors of society. They are not [just] acts of this administration and should be maintained by future governments." That's a real possibility, as current polls show Cardoso's likely successor will be the candidate of the Workers' Party, which has long strongly advocated for equal treatment of gays and lesbians and legal standing for their relationships. Britain's Government has taken two significant steps in recognizing same-gender couples. Prison Service Director General Martin Narey made public new guidelines under which the partners of gay prisoners in England and Wales will be recognized as family members for visitation purposes. That extends even to those partners who are also incarcerated, with arrangements for visitation even if they're housed at a different prison. He cited the importance of stable relationships in preventing recidivism. And following the Blair Government's clear signal of support last week, the House of Commons this week approved opening adoptions to unmarried couples, including gay and lesbian couples. The Labour Party, which holds a huge majority in the Commons, let its Members vote their consciences on the amendment to the Adoption and Children Bill, but passage still came by a more than 2-to-1 margin. It will be a very different story, though, as the measure moves on to the House of Lords, where the religious right and the Conservative Party have vowed to block it. The Conservative Party that rules the Canadian province of Alberta last week presented its own plan for legal recognition of same-gender couples. That's something that would've been inconceivable just a few years ago as the Klein Government has long fought tooth and nail against equal treatment for gays and lesbians. Alberta is the last of the Canadian provinces to unveil law reform for same-gender partners, and the proposal has been made as general as possible, including other cohabiting pairs sharing economic responsibilities, such as adult relatives who live together. The proposal includes provisions for alimony, inheritance, standing to sue for wrongful death of a partner, and sharing a surname. Leaving plenty of time for public comment, an actual bill for omnibus law reform won't be introduced until the next legislative session. The Philadelphia, Pennsylvania City Council this week voted 15-to-2 to add "gender identity" as a category protected from discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations. Mayor John Street, despite an anti-gay track record during his years on the City Council, has indicated that he will sign the amendment to the city's Fair Protections Ordinance. Sweden's parliament this week voted to add sexual orientation as the sixth category protected under the hate speech provisions of the national constitution. Violations can be punished by up to two years' imprisonment. The Government's bill won 70% of the vote, but as a constitutional amendment it will require a second parliamentary vote after September elections. Opponents fear the measure could interfere with the free speech rights of anti-gay religious groups. Asking for a homosexual encounter should be a little easier in the U.S. Midwest thanks to two advances this week. The Ohio state Supreme Court struck down that state's importuning law, which applies only to expressions of interest between people of the same gender and has most often been used in police undercover operations in cruising areas. The case before the court was an appeal by Eric Thompson. He had been sentenced to 6 months in jail for simply offering sex to a man in a park, even though he stopped when the man expressed disinterest. Also this week, the Detroit, Michigan City Council approved the terms of a proposed legal settlement, including revision of city ordinances against "solicitation and accosting" and "annoying persons". Those ordinances had been used by undercover police officers to arrest some 500 men in a four-month period in the city's Rouge Park, leading the American Civil Liberties Union to file a federal lawsuit against the city's police department on behalf of six men. City Councilmember Sheila Cockrel is more than ready to repeal the vaguely-worded "annoying persons" ordinance, saying that, "using the context of the ordinance as it is now, who hasn't been annoying?" A bill to specifically criminalize sex between women was introduced this week in the Russian Duma. Last month the People's Deputy Party introduced a bill to resurrect Russia's law against sex between men, which had been repealed nine years ago after the breakup of the Soviet Union. The nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, LDPR, cited gender parity in its call to make lesbians as well as gays subject to up to five years' imprisonment -- but its leader Andrei Mitrofanov also declared that since "it is women who are the most important participants in the demographic process from the state's viewpoint ... they should be held in very tough gloves." Neither bill is expected to pass. Men convicted under the anti-gay laws of the Nazi regime were finally pardoned this week by a vote of the lower house of the German parliament. The Nazis targeted Germany's burgeoning gay movement soon after taking power, and a man could be arrested just for looking at another male. Some 50,000 gays are believed to have been convicted under those laws, many of them dying in concentration camps, where they were treated even more harshly than others. Unlike others convicted under Nazi rule, German gays remained criminals even after liberation, with the sodomy law remaining on the books in West Germany until 1969 and in East Germany until unification. Openly gay Member of Parliament Volker Beck said, "Finally the ... homosexuals who were persecuted will receive justice." Gay and lesbian groups in Austria this month held a 12-day series of educational events honoring the memory of gay victims of the Holocaust. They called for compensation for them, something only 14 of the 50,000 have yet received. Also in Germany this week, Berlin's openly gay Mayor Klaus Wowereit ceremonially declared the late bisexual film icon Marlene Dietrich an honorary citizen of the city. Dietrich had once been vilified there as a traitor for her vocal opposition to the Nazis and her support of the U.S. war effort against them. Although she became a U.S. citizen in 1939 and spent most of her life there, she always considered Berlin her hometown and was buried there in 1992 as she had wished. Agence France Presse suggests that her kissing another woman in the film "Morocco" was "perhaps the first major lesbian gesture in commercial film." And finally... Rosie O'Donnell tops the list of Most Powerful Gay Women in Show Business released this week by POWER, the Professional Organization of Women in Entertainment. O'Donnell received her sixth Daytime Emmy award this week for the final year of her TV talk show, and also confirmed rumors that her partner Kelli Carpenter is pregnant. The leader on POWER's list last year, Ellen DeGeneres, came in second this year. She said, "Does this mean I'm runner-up? If so, I am prepared to step in and take care of any Most Powerful Lesbian in Show Business duties should photos surface of Rosie in compromising positions with a man."