NewsWrap for the week ending June 29, 2002 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #744, distributed 7-1-02) [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 week including the anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall uprising that marks the beginning of the contemporary movement for lesbian and gay rights, decriminalization of homosexual acts came to the fore in several countries. Austria's highest court struck down the anti-gay "Paragraph 209," whose repeal has long been a top target of gay and lesbian activists and a demand of the Council of Europe and the European Parliament. While Austria's heterosexual age of consent is only 14, the law has provided for prison terms of up to 5 years for consensual acts between a man over the age of 19 with a male between the ages of 14 and 18. A single relationship could be variously legal and illegal: legal if it began when the partners were 17 and 19, illegal when the older partner turned 20, and legal again when the younger partner turned 18. That absurdity led Austria's constitutional court to declare the law "unobjective" as well as a violation of equality laws. Yet the activist group Platform Against Paragraph 209 reports that each year there have been about 50 men charged and 20 men convicted under the law. The group has called on the Austrian government to overturn convictions and pay compensation for some 1,500 of those men. ILGA, the International Lesbian and Gay Association, is concerned that Paragraph 209 will remain intact through the end of February, and fears that the right-wing majority in the Austrian parliament will use the interim to enact a new anti-gay law. However, the Opposition Greens and Social Democrats were quick to call for equal treatment of gays and lesbians and for general amnesty in all pending Paragraph 209 prosecutions. There could also be a breakthrough in India, where the colonial-era sodomy law provides for 10 years' imprisonment and the possibility of a life sentence. Solicitor General Mukul Rohtagi told the Delhi High Court this week that the government is "examining the legal, social and ethical aspects of decriminalizing homosexual acts among consenting adults" and that it will file a statement in six weeks. He was speaking at a hearing of a legal challenge brought by the Naz Foundation, which saw several of its AIDS prevention outreach workers arrested in police sweeps of cruising areas. Police patrolling cruising areas are justified in appearing to be seeking gay sex, according to an appellate court in the Canadian province of Ontario. The Ontario Court of Appeal this week unanimously upheld a lower court ruling against Daniel Webb, who claimed entrapment in his 1993 arrest in a park in Kitchener. Webb said the shirtless officer had followed him in the park and coerced him into the groping that resulted in his arrest. Although the charges against Webb were dropped, the arrest and police revelation of it to the media resulted in the loss of his license as an Anglican minister and his estrangement from one of his sons. A police sting on the Internet led to a 3-year prison sentence for an Egyptian student -- but that conviction was overturned by an appeals court in Cairo this week. The 19-year-old man known as "AMS" was arrested in mid-May at a planned meeting on the street with a man he'd met on the Internet, who turned out to be either a police officer or an informer. Based on their exchange online, AMS had been convicted for both "debauchery" and for importuning. The reversal of AMS' conviction offers some small hope, as the Egyptian government begins a new trial in the coming week for 50 of the men who were arrested last year in Cairo at a gay-friendly riverboat nightclub. Previously, 21 of them had been convicted of "debauchery" and 29 acquitted in the state security court set up to deal with terrorists. But under international pressure, President Hosni Mubarak ruled that their cases should not have been heard in that court, although he let stand convictions for two other men presented as ringleaders. He left it up to prosecutors to decide whether to retry the men, and they've now announced they will do so in a civilian misdemeanor court in Cairo. Despite the change of venue, the same judge will preside. Human rights activists are outraged at this double jeopardy for men they believe should never have been arrested in the first place, particularly since many of the men reported serious abuse at the hands of their jailers in the course of their lengthy detention. But the civil rights of gays and lesbians in Germany got a boost this week, as the German parliament, the Bundestag, celebrated the Stonewall anniversary with a vote to create a national foundation to advance them. Annual federal grants of 3.75-million-euros will support the Magnus Hirschfeld Foundation through 2006. Hirschfeld, who died in 1935, was a pioneering researcher and advocate for equal treatment of gays and lesbians. While the Stonewall anniversary is being observed around the world with pride celebrations, one of the oldest and largest came to the brink of bankruptcy this week. Organizers of Australia's world-famous Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras announced that a debt of a quarter-million-Australian-dollars would end its 25-year history unless guarantors could be found. Another quarter-million in debt had already been defrayed by fund-raising. But it looks like community response may have saved the day -- seven volunteers came forward at a community meeting, although the bank holding Mardi Gras' overdraft has not yet agreed to accept guarantors. The head of the national tourism task force called on the Australian and New South Wales governments to help with public funds, citing the widespread economic benefits of Mardi Gras and dubbing it "an iconic part of Australian tourism" deserving of government support. Mardi Gras' financial problems are attributed to the September 11th terrorist attacks on the U.S. on two counts. First, Australian international tourism has dropped by some 30% since then, including 5,000 fewer visitors to Mardi Gras itself. Second, the parade faced sharply increased liability premiums because of the threat of terrorism. Also in the wake of the 9-11 attacks, Republican U.S. President George Bush this week signed into law a bill named for openly gay New York City Fire Department Chaplain Mychal Judge. Judge was one of a small number of public safety officers who died in the attacks who left no survivor legally qualified to receive a federal death benefit. Those benefits have been restricted to victims' children, parents and legally married spouses. For police and firefighters who die in the line of duty without such survivors, henceforth and retroactive to 9-11, the Mychal Judge law will allow a payment of a quarter-million dollars from the Public Safety Officers' Benefits Program to whomever the deceased named as beneficiary on their life insurance policies. It's believed to be the first and only U.S. federal death benefit accessible by a surviving gay or lesbian domestic partner, and some conservatives had opposed it on that basis. Bush's own Department of Justice had also opposed it as "likely to create unintended and unfortunate results." There were also two moves in the U.S. Senate this week to extend equal treatment to gay and lesbian federal workers. Minnesota Democrat Mark Dayton announced that he'll introduce a bill to give all civilian federal employees' domestic partners -- regardless of gender -- full spousal benefits including health and life insurance, workers compensation and pensions. He noted that health and life insurance benefits alone can comprise up to 40% of the value of an employee's compensation package. Much less sweeping but much more likely to advance is a resolution introduced by California Democrat Dianne Feinstein to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation in the Senate's own employment policies. A Swedish court's recent ruling that a sperm donor must pay child support to a lesbian mother was upheld by an appellate court last week. Wanting the three children to know where they came from, Igor Lehnberg had signed a statement acknowledging his paternity. The two courts have found that sets him apart from sperm donors who go through official channels which protect their anonymity and absolve them from legal responsibility. However, in Sweden lesbians cannot receive artificial insemination at government clinics, so the process of Lehnberg's fathering was private and extra-legal. Lesbian mother Anna Bjurling sought support for her sons -- who are 6, 8 and 10 years old -- after breaking up with her partner. The appeals court has found that Lehnberg must fork over monthly payments of more than 2,800 crowns, equivalent to about US$265. And finally... a Web site launched in Britain this week is the first in Europe -- and possibly in the world -- specifically designed to arrange sperm donations for lesbians planning artificial insemination. The launch of ManNotIncluded.com was widely reported, resulting in more than 40,000 visitors from five continents in its first 48 hours -- even though the site won't be fully operational until July 9th. In those first 48 hours there were 8,000 registrations for the service -- 3,000 from lesbian couples... and 5,000 from men wishing to be donors.