NewsWrap
for the week ending August 17, 2002
(As broadcast on This Way Out program #751, distributed 8-19-02)
[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 & Christopher Gaal

  Chris Carter, New Zealand's first openly gay Member of Parliament, will now 
be his nation's first openly gay Cabinet member.  After his election to the 
Cabinet by the Labour Party's Parliamentary caucus, Prime Minister Helen 
Clark named him her minister for conservation and local government.
Carter told reporters, "I'd like to be defined by my efficiency, not my 
sexuality.  I'm looking forward to representing the diversity of New Zealand."

  Carter was first elected to Parliament from the Wellington area in 1993 and 
mentioned his gay orientation in his maiden speech.  In 1996, he lost his 
seat by a very narrow margin after redistricting that left him running 
against two other sitting MPs.  But he came roaring back in 1999 from 
Auckland's Te Atatu riding and again won that seat by a huge majority in the 
latest vote.
Carter has campaigned for gay and lesbian civil rights for three decades, and 
he's a founder of his party's Rainbow Labour gay and lesbian group.  In the 
Parliament he has been a vocal advocate for legal recognition of same-gender 
couples, helping to enact a law that took effect this year to give dissolving 
couples access to the courts for division of property, and supporting a 
soon-to-be-introduced Civil Unions Bill.
Carter himself has been partnered for almost 30 years with Peter Kaiser, a 
primary school principal.  Before entering politics, Carter was a teacher and 
a chicken farmer.

  Carter's tenure in the Cabinet will be no walk in the park.  Although his 
Labour Party won more seats than any other in July's national elections, it 
lost about a quarter of the support that brought it to power in 1999, and 
must form a coalition Government.  Labour is seeking to partner with not only 
the liberal Green Party but also the United Future Party, which includes a 
number of Christian fundamentalists.  Even while that coalition was being 
negotiated, some were predicting it wouldn't last a year, and the "Dominion 
Post" newspaper called this a "toxic Parliament".  
Carter wants to believe party leader Peter Dunne, who insists that United 
Future is a centrist moderate party -- but one of its fundamentalist MPs, 
Paul Adams, has already shown otherwise.  In the past, Adams opposed civil 
rights protections for gays and lesbians, and urged quarantining people with 
HIV.  Last week he called for public identification of people with HIV, 
saying he "wouldn't want to go into a room with any disease that was 
contagious and not be made aware of the possibilities of that contact."  
Transsexual Labour MP Georgina Beyer suggested it might be hard for her to 
work with UF's fundamentalists, while openly gay Labour MP Tim Barnett fears 
that what he called Adams' "Neanderthal" views might be representative of a 
sizable group within that party.
Even a deputy leader of the right-wing Christian Heritage Party, Merepeka 
Raukawa-Tait, sharply criticized Adams, saying, "His sentiments are inhumane 
and unChristian, and he should be ashamed of himself.  Voters can now be 
aware that by supporting United Future they have in fact supported a 
dangerous group of Christian fundamentalists."

  Also in New Zealand this week, the nation's largest gay and lesbian parade 
and festival, Auckland's HERO, appears to have ended forever.  After years of 
financial struggles, the organizing group the HERO Trust has voted 
unanimously to close down.  The last HERO parade, held in March, was only 
about a quarter the size of its predecessors, which had attracted more than 
100,000 spectators.  HERO began as an AIDS charity fund-raiser and for years 
generated substantial contributions to local groups.

  And although 100,000 people were expected to visit Manchester, England in 
the coming week for a massive annual gay and lesbian Mardi Gras festival, the 
main street party has been cancelled.  After extensive negotiations with the 
event's organizers -- an association of business owners in the city's "gay 
village" -- the Greater Manchester Police refused to make an exception to 
local ordinances limiting use of alcohol in the streets.  The Manchester City 
Council supports the police position.  Particularly since larger drinking 
areas were permitted for a World Cup party and a recent music festival, pride 
organizers are accusing the city police of discrimination, which the force 
denies.  There have been no problems since the festival was first held in 
1993.  A smaller-scale party will go on in the neighborhood's gay bars, and 
the pride march will go on as planned.

  London's gay and lesbian Mardi Gras lost 400,000 pounds this year, but 
what's billed as Britain's biggest admission-free gay and lesbian festival -- 
Brighton Pride -- was a resounding success that attracted thousands of 
partiers.  The Brighton fest was staged for a total cost equal to about a 
quarter of London's losses.  The funds came from community support and are 
believed to be more than offset by increased income for local businesses.

  In other pride news this week, Singapore saw its second pride party, as 
more than 2,500 people turned out in Sentosa for "Nation," a gay and lesbian 
celebration of the country's independence.  Dr. Stuart Koe, chief operating 
organizer of co-sponsor Fridae.com, said that "by repeating the event, we are 
making a statement.  We are for real, and we are here to stay."  The 
government offered no resistance to the event, encouraging hope that its 
customary anti-gay stance is softening.

  That's certainly not the case in South Korea, where a court this week 
reportedly upheld the government's censorship of a gay Web site.  Exzone.com 
was the nation's first gay Web site until the government acted to block it 
and imposed a fine of $10,000.  Last year South Korea shut down or blocked 
more than 12,000 sites under its Internet Content Filtering Ordinance, but 
the Korean Information and Communications Ethics Committee specifically 
classified homosexuality an "obscenity and perversion" to make gay Web sites 
"harmful media" under the indecency criteria applied by the Ministry of 
Information and Communications.  Fifteen gay groups joined to sue the 
government for its actions against several gay Web sites.  This week's ruling 
is the first judicial decision on the government's anti-gay Internet 
censorship, and it upheld the government's action as legal and 
constitutional, although the full text of the court's finding has not yet 
been published.

  But the British Government continues to increase its recognition of gays 
and lesbians.  At its behest, the Office for National Statistics has begun 
for the first time to ask about sexual orientation in its regular surveys.  
Civil servants require the data in budget planning to extend pensions and 
other benefits to same-gender couples in accord with a European directive.  
The head of the national gay and lesbian group Stonewall, Angela Mason, said 
the count "demonstrates that the position of lesbians and gay men in society 
is being taken far more seriously," but added that "whether there are 5,000 
or 5-million, it's wrong to treat people unfairly."

  Meanwhile, Britain's Labour-dominated Parliament is revising its own rules 
to extend equal treatment to its unmarried Members, including gay and lesbian 
MPs.  The Speaker of the House has ordered a committee to devise a method to 
ensure that Members' domestic partners will enjoy spousal travel benefits, 
which include free first-class travel by train or plane between London and 
their constituencies.

  Same-gender couples also made a notable gain in New York City this week.  
After heated debate, the City Council voted by a 5-to-1 margin to recognize 
visitors' certifications of gay and lesbian partnerships, civil unions, and 
legal marriages from other jurisdictions.  Those couples will gain all the 
benefits of New York City's own partnership registry, which grants unmarried 
couples full equality with legal spouses in all matters under the city's 
control. 

  Australia's Senate will apparently have its first lesbian member with the 
swearing-in this coming week of South Australia's Penny Wong.  Although Wong 
has already been receiving considerable attention as the Senate's first woman 
of Asian descent, this week the "Adelaide Advertiser" newspaper said that, 
"In Labor circles, it is also well-known that Senator Wong is gay, a fact she 
would prefer to leave as a private matter."  The "Sydney Star Observer", 
Australia's largest-circulation gay and lesbian paper, did not obtain 
confirmation from Wong's office but cited local sources in saying "she has 
long been open about her sexuality."  Wong's staff told the "Star-Observer" 
that at such time as she could arrange an interview, she would not discuss 
her personal life.  Openly gay Senator Brian Greig said Wong should've been 
allowed to decide for herself whether to come out.

  And finally... in the U.S., a gay man and a lesbian both won a new level of 
recognition in their hometowns this week.
San Francisco's Recreation and Parks Department approved naming a city 
gymnasium in honor of rugby enthusiast Mark Bingham, who's believed to have 
been a leader among the passengers who stopped the fourth airplane hijacked 
by terrorists on September 11th from reaching its intended target.  A 
ceremony will be held soon to unveil a plaque honoring Bingham at the gym 
that's located in the city's heavily-gay Castro District.
Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Melissa Etheridge has long lived in Los 
Angeles, but this week she had quite a good reason to visit the scenes of her 
childhood: Leavenworth, Kansas officially unveiled signs proclaiming itself 
her hometown.  Mayor Larry Dedeke said that "Etheridge's talent presents a 
new spotlight on her hometown" -- while admitting that, "Leavenworth is 
mostly known for the prisons."