NewsWrap for the week ending May 25, 2002 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #739, distributed 5-27-02) [Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Chris Ambidge, Brian Nunes, Jason Lin, Rex Wockner, Lucia Chappelle & Greg Gordon] Anchored by Cindy Friedman and Christopher Gaal Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak this week reopened the cases of 50 of 53 men arrested a year ago in a police raid on a gay-friendly riverboat nightclub in Cairo. That's good news for 21 who were convicted of "debauchery with men" in November and sentenced to three years' hard labor -- but not for the 29 who were acquitted, who are expected to be arrested again soon. All 50 had been tried by an Emergency State Security Court set up to deal with accused terrorists, whose rulings can be reconsidered only by the president in his capacity as military leader; all could now face retrial before an ordinary civil court, at prosecutors' discretion. A spokesperson for Mubarak said he did not view the debauchery charges as appropriate for a state security court. But the President also confirmed the five-year and three-year sentences of two other arrestees, who had been presented as ringleaders in a cult and were additionally convicted of "contempt for religion". The 53rd arrestee was a minor who was tried in a civil court and freed on appeal. Mubarak was apparently responding to widespread international protest of the Cairo raid, the reported torture of the arrestees during their detention, and a number of other arrests in an apparent crackdown on gay men over the last year. But activists are far from satisfied, and view with outrage the possibility of retrial for those already acquitted. Among those protesting Egypt's actions against suspected gay men were 40 U.S. Congressmembers, who this week received a response to a letter they wrote in March. Egypt's ambassador to the U.S. Nabil Fahmy declared that the debauchery statute is designed to punish promiscuity and prostitution and "that there is no distinction or discrimination based on a person's sexual orientation." Openly gay Democratic Congressmember Barney Frank rejected the claim, saying, "Egyptian authorities are applying this law virtually exclusively against adult gay men who are doing no harm to others, and this shows that a clear and active anti-gay policy exists in Egypt." The U.S. Congress’ Republican leadership this week prevented a floor vote on the so-called "Mychal Judge Bill", named for the openly gay New York Fire Department chaplain who died in the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center. The Democrat-controlled Senate had unanimously passed the bill, which would have extended survivor benefits to anyone named as a beneficiary in a will or insurance policy by Judge and nine other public safety officers who died in the attack without leaving a surviving spouse, child or parent. Those are the only legal beneficiaries in current federal law. In Judge's case the bill would have extended the benefits of about a quarter-million-dollars per victim to his sisters -- but the Bush administration and House Republican leadership are believed to have objected not only to increased costs for the future, but also to the bill's inclusion of unmarried domestic partners, regardless of gender. However, those concerns did not stop New York's Republican Governor George Pataki from signing into law this week the state's similar "September 11th Victims and Families Relief Act", which explicitly ensures gay and lesbian partners' eligibility for state-level benefits and expresses the state government's intention that they should receive federal benefits as well. And the Democrat-controlled California state Assembly in a party-line vote this week approved a bill to ensure that gays and lesbians who have registered their domestic partnerships with the state will inherit part of their partners' estates if there is no will. The bill moves next to the California state Senate. The American Psychoanalytic Association last week by an overwhelming majority adopted a position statement in support of gay and lesbian parents. It said in part that, "Evaluation of an individual or couple for ... parental qualities should be determined without prejudice regarding sexual orientation. Gay and lesbian individuals and couples are capable of meeting the best interest of the child and should be afforded the same rights and should accept the same responsibilities as heterosexual parents." The statement referred to decisions in areas including conception, child rearing, adoption, visitation and custody. The Indiana state Court of Appeals reached a somewhat similar conclusion last week, unanimously affirming that judges cannot deny custody or visitation rights to gay and lesbian parents solely because they live with a partner of the same gender. Their parental rights can be denied only if there is harm to the child. The ruling struck down a Marshall County policy, which had denied custody to parents residing with an unmarried partner, regardless of gender. Britain's move towards opening adoption to gay and lesbian couples survived another challenge this week, as an amendment to explicitly exclude them from the Adoption and Child Bill was defeated by a landslide in the House of Commons, where the Labour Party holds a huge majority. The amendment was introduced by two Conservative Party Members of Parliament. Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith had declared earlier that the party's opposition was not motivated by homophobia but by a desire that all adoptive parents should be married -- something gays and lesbians can't legally achieve in the UK. Ireland's Equality Authority has included adoption and fostering rights for gay and lesbian couples among the recommendations in a report on sexual orientation discrimination issued this week after two years of study. The government-appointed panel also advises on equality issues of eight other protected categories. Irish law does not recognize same-gender partnerships at all, while offering little recognition even to unmarried heterosexual couples, creating inequities in inheritance, pensions, property, taxation, and welfare as well as parenting. Although the parenting recommendations are expected to prove the most controversial, the Equality Authority's recommendations in support of gays, lesbians and bisexuals range widely from representation on community planning boards to anti-prejudice programming by broadcasters. The Equality Authority calls for changes in policies, laws and even the Irish Constitution to achieve equal status for gays, lesbians and bisexuals individually and as same-gender couples. Denmark was the world's first nation to create registered partnerships extending most of the legal rights and responsibilities of marriage to gay and lesbian couples, but artificial insemination was not among them. Gays and lesbians have been demanding the right to use artificial insemination legally, while hundreds have been doing so outside the law at private clinics. Minister of Health Lars Lokke Rasmussen has called for a commission to draft ethical guidelines for artificial insemination for them, along with single people and people with HIV. Legal recognition of same-gender couples was called for this week even in Croatia, where gays and lesbians are rarely heard from and will only be holding their first public pride event this year. Both the gay group Iskorak and the lesbian group Kontra called for immediate recognition of same-gender couples equal to that of common-law heterosexual couples, and for amending the law defining marriage to read "a union of two persons" instead of "a man and a woman". Britain's earliest known transsexual lived some 1700 years ago, archaeologists announced this week. It's taken them 20 years to reach this conclusion about a skeleton found as part of 40 years' ongoing excavations into Roman ruins near Catterick. Unlike any other male skeleton yet found in a late Roman cemetery in Britain, this one was buried wearing a jet necklace and bracelet, a shale armlet and a bronze anklet -- typically female jewelry with some mystical connotations for the period. Forensic tests on the 4th century skeleton have now revealed it belonged to a castrated male. The archaeologists believe this was a gallus, one of the worshippers of the Roman earth goddess Cybele who ritually castrated themselves and thereafter dressed as women, including feminine jewelry, hairstyles and colorful clothes. The Ford Motor Company this week announced that its new Chief Financial Officer is open gay Allan Gilmour. The long-time Ford exec and former Ford vice chair publicly identified himself as a gay man after his retirement in 1995, having feared it would hurt the company had he come out earlier. He went on to support gay and lesbian groups with fund-raising and contributions, and to lecture about his experiences, as well as running a small car dealership in his native Vermont. Ford chair and CEO Bill Ford said this week of Gilmour, "He's helped us through tough times before and helped us to record profitability before." This is definitely a tough time for Ford, which lost nearly 5.5 billion dollars last year. And finally... Rosie O'Donnell wound up her TV talk show this week after six years and ten Emmy awards with what openly gay actor Nathan Lane called "the biggest, gayest celebration since Liza's wedding." The huge party featured a big number with the cast of several Broadway hits and video clips that included O'Donnell's pregnant partner Kelli Carpenter. When O'Donnell publicly declared her lesbian orientation earlier this year as part of her advocacy for adoptions, one of the obvious questions was her notorious crush on film star Tom Cruise. As she put it in her network television interview with Diane Sawyer, "I never once said I wanted him naked in bed doing the nasty. I want him to mow my lawn and get me a lemonade." And so the last moments of O'Donnell's finale showed Cruise pushing a lawnmower and then approaching the camera, drink in hand, to say, "Rosie, I cut your lawn. Here's your lemonade."