NewsWrap for the week ending June 15, 2002 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #742, distributed 6-17-02) [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 The same-gender partners of gay and lesbian British civil servants will receive the same pension benefits as legally married workers' spouses beginning in October. The benefits are one of a number of revisions to Britain's Civil Service Pension Scheme. They come as the result of many years of lobbying by unions and a European Union directive against employment discrimination. Meanwhile, Britain's House of Lords this week debated opening adoptions to unmarried couples including gay and lesbian couples. The Government's Adoption and Children Bill easily passed in the Labour-dominated Parliament but the Opposition Conservative Party is hoping to block it in the Lords. Italy's parliament this week debated restricting artificial insemination exclusively to heterosexual couples, prohibiting its use for lesbians, women not in relationships with men, and surrogate mothers. The bill would also ban the use of donor sperm and eggs. In the U.S., Washtenaw County, Michigan's chief judge has barred his colleagues from allowing gays and lesbians and other unmarried partners to co-adopt their partners' children. To enforce the policy he announced last week, County Chief Judge Archie Brown this week reassigned to himself nine such applications that Judge Donald Shelton had said he would approve anyway. The American Civil Liberties Union has intervened against Brown's blanket policy, insisting that each case must be judged on its individual merits and questioning Brown's authority and impartiality. Although second-parent adoptions have been granted for at least seven years by courts in Washtenaw County, which includes Ann Arbor, it's believed that none of Michigan's 82 other counties has done so. Maryland's highest state court this week unanimously upheld Montgomery County's extension of spousal health benefits to the domestic partners of its unmarried employees. The legal challenge brought by the religious right's American Center for Law and Justice has created a precedent favorable to gays and lesbians in Maryland's first high court ruling on the issue. There will be a new trial for gay Texas inmate Calvin Burdine after nearly two decades on death row, Harris County prosecutors said this week. Burdine had to be either freed or retried in accordance with a federal appellate ruling, after the U.S. Supreme Court last week declined to take up the state's appeal of Burdine's notorious "sleeping lawyer" case. Burdine was convicted of killing his former partner in the course of a robbery. In that original trial, prosecutors used Burdine's sexual orientation in a most inflammatory manner without objection from his court-appointed counsel, who himself was heard to use anti-gay slurs. In the course of appeals, Texas did not contest that Burdine's lawyer had been asleep for portions of the trial proceedings, but maintained that it was up to the defendant to prove the verdict would have been different had the lawyer been awake. As U.S. Roman Catholic bishops met in Texas this week to develop a policy on priests who molest minors, gay and lesbian groups held a vigil protesting the way some have appeared to scapegoat gays in the course of the growing scandal. But despite some right-wing groups' demands that the bishops act to remove gay priests, that was simply not on the agenda and was not mentioned in the policy adopted at the meeting. Fifty demonstrators were arrested this week as they protested the Southern Baptist Convention's anti-gay policies. The group Soulforce, which seeks equal treatment for gays and lesbians by all religious denominations, claims the Southern Baptists are the only ones to refuse even to speak with them. A dozen protesters actually entered the Southern Baptists' annual meeting in St. Louis, disrupting it with shouts against "spiritual violence"; they were charged with felony trespassing and "ethnic intimidation," as the Missouri hate crimes law is known. The others arrested were charged with misdemeanor trespassing in the kind of orderly non-violent protest that's a Soulforce trademark. About 150 others also demonstrated outside the meeting. Outgoing Southern Baptist president James Merritt responded with a press conference denouncing the media's acceptance of homosexuality. A move to bring a long-awaited vote on a federal hate crimes bill was blocked in the U.S. Senate this week. The Local Law Enforcement Enhancement Act, known in earlier editions as the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, would add sexual orientation, gender and disability to federal hate crimes laws which currently apply only to bias against race, religion and ethnicity. Republicans led by Utah Senator Orrin Hatch were prepared to bury the bill under a mass of amendments, but a so-called cloture vote to stop that process fell four votes short. Democratic leader Tom Daschle plans to bring the bill back to the floor later this year. But the U.S. House of Representatives this week approved a bill named for openly gay New York City Fire Department Chaplain Mychal Judge. He was one of a small number of public safety officers who died in the September 11th terrorist attacks who left no survivors qualifying for benefits under current federal law, which recognizes only legally married spouses, children, and parents. The bill provides for a one-time payment of $250,000 to whomever those victims had named as beneficiary on their life insurance policies. Although the Senate gave it unanimous consent, Republican leadership in the House had previously blocked it from a floor vote, with some conservatives objecting to possibly benefiting a gay or lesbian partner. This week the House passed the bill with a voice vote, sending it on to President George W. Bush, who has yet to indicate a position on it. The Bush administration has again declined to issue a proclamation of Gay and Lesbian Pride Month. A spokesperson said, "The President believes every person should be treated with dignity and respect, but he does not believe in politicizing people's sexual orientation." However, Bush has in the last six months proclaimed African-American History Month, Irish American Heritage Month, Asian-Pacific Heritage Month, Women's History Month, and Older Americans Month. The pride proclamation request was submitted by GLOBE, an affinity group of lesbigay and trans federal employees. Bill Clinton was the first and only U.S. President ever to issue a pride proclamation, doing so in each of his last three years in office. His Democratic Party continued its long-standing tradition of a special pride greeting from its national committee Under Bush, federal departments have been all over the spectrum on pride, from no observance, to the Commerce Department withdrawing its traditional support for an event, to a proclamation of pride month from Environmental Protection Agency chief and former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman, to a scheduled speaking appearance by Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson at the Justice Department's pride event. Meanwhile, some 200,000 people attended Washington, DC's annual pride march this week. In contrast to President Bush, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder spoke out in advance of this month's pride events in Germany. The celebrations are known there as Christopher Street Day, for the New York City location of the 1969 uprising recognized as the birth of the contemporary gay and lesbian civil rights movement. In a published statement, Schroeder declared that, "Christopher Street Day makes our society more colorful, more open and more tolerant," saying it should be "a celebration for all of us." A scheduled meeting with openly gay Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit has won some surprisingly tolerant words from Namibian President Sam Nujoma. Over the last few years Nujoma has called for not only the arrest and imprisonment of gays but even the "elimination" of homosexuality in Namibia. But when questioned on the subject by Deutsche Presse Agentur, Nujoma said, "Well, certainly that is not our culture... You can keep your culture and I keep mine. I think human relationships must be promoted to respecting each other's culture and way of life. We get along." And finally... a couple of very distinguished gay men are turning up in surprising contexts. First it was Australian High Court Justice Michael Kirby -- whose entry is by far the most extensive in Australia's "Who's Who" -- appearing on the annual "25 Most Beautiful People" list issued last month by "Who Weekly" magazine. The magazine did clarify that among the list's usual pretty faces it likes to include a leavening of those with "inner beauty," and wanted to honor Kirby's grace under fire in the face of a conservative's recent smear campaign. But now it's Canada's first openly gay Member of Parliament Svend Robinson appearing online clad only in seashells -- and shedding those for money. But it's in a good cause. Robinson is a committed environmentalist and enthusiastic hiker, so it was natural that he'd join a campaign to protect Vancouver Island. The Georgia Strait Alliance is conducting the campaign called "Hunks for Habitat," and at www.hunksforhabitat.com you can view Svend, among others, and strip him of his seashells at the rate of a C$50 donation per shell. And for the outspoken, media-loving Robinson, it may be the first time he ever needed any help to come out of his shell.