NewsWrap for the week ending September 7, 2002 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #754, distributed 9-09-02) [Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Chris Ambidge, Brian Nunes, Jason Lin, Rex Wockner, Lucia Chappelle & Greg Gordon] Anchored by Dean Elzinga & Cindy Friedman Hungary's Constitutional Court this week struck down the nation's discriminatory age of consent law, effective immediately. Until now, Paragraph 199 provided for up to three years imprisonment for consensual homosexual acts if one party was below the age of 18, while the age of consent for heterosexual acts was only 14. The court called that discrimination "arbitrary" and "unjustifiable," and its ruling serves to establish the age of consent at 14 for both homosexual and heterosexual acts. The legal challenge of the law's constitutionality was initiated in 1993 by Hungary's Lambda Budapest Gay Society, Homeros Society and Hungarian Jewish Lesbian and Gay Group. According to the civil rights group Habeas Corpus, at least 16 men had been sentenced to prison under the law over the last nine years. The European Parliament had formally called for equalization of the age of consent in Hungary on three occasions. ILGA, the International Lesbian and Gay Association, applauded the ruling and hopes it will spur similar action by Bulgaria's Parliament, where the European community's last discriminatory age of consent law will be debated this month. But ILGA also noted that an earlier Hungarian Constitutional Court decision upheld a prohibition against those under the age of 18 joining groups campaigning for lesbigay rights. A move to equalize the age of consent in the Australian state of New South Wales won't be debated until after next year's state elections. Instead of being a part of a current debate on amendments to the state's Crimes Act, the bill was sent to the upper house's Social Issues Committee by Attorney-General Bob Debus. Debus says he personally supports equalizing the age of consent for homosexual acts -- now 18 years -- with that for heterosexual acts, 16. But he believes the bill would not be passed in its current form and hopes the committee will deal with what he called "genuine concerns about whether such a bill provides adequate safeguards for children." Protecting children was inevitably the rhetoric used by Baroness Janet Young in Britain's House of Lords as she led the Conservative Party in opposing equalization of the age of consent and every other move to equality for gays and lesbians over the last 3 decades. Young, a Cabinet member under Margaret Thatcher and the first woman ever to serve as Leader of the House of Lords, died this week at the age of 75. Mourned by the Tories' Parliamentary Leader Iain Duncan Smith as "a principled campaigner" of "courage, conviction and tenacity," veteran gay and lesbian civil rights activist Peter Tatchell reviled Young for having "poisoned society with prejudice and intolerance" and predicted that, "Future historians will rank her alongside the defenders of apartheid. She supported homophobic discrimination to the last." Young had been working to block the Labour Government's bill to open adoption to unmarried couples including same-gender couples, and had previously succeeded in blocking a Labour move to repeal Section 28, which prohibits local governments from devoting resources to "promotion of homosexuality" or the presentation of same-gender couples as "pretend marriages". But this week marked the first anniversary of London's Partnership Registry, the first of its kind in the UK. 314 London couples -- most of them gays and lesbians -- have signed up at the registry, even though it has no legal standing. Also in the first year, 3 lesbian and 2 gay male couples went on to "de-register". Several other cities in Britain have or will be setting up similar registries, and a Civil Partnerships Bill extending legal recognition to gay and lesbian couples will be reintroduced in the Parliament later this year. A panel of judges in Brazil has recognized a binational lesbian couple's French registered partnership, for purposes of immigration. The Brazilian woman met her French partner in France, and was granted residency there after they contracted a legal partnership. The French partnerships known as PACS, Pacts of Civil Solidarity, carry many of the rights and obligations of marriage, including immigration rights. Then the couple decided to move to Brazil, which does not have legal same-gender partnerships, a bill to create them having stalled in the parliament for years. But a panel of 17 Brazilian judges has concluded that the relationship should be recognized based on the principle of international reciprocity. In Canada this week, a second provincial superior court ruled it unconstitutional to deny legal marriage to gays and lesbians. Quebec Superior Court Justice Louise Lemelin followed a July ruling in Ontario as she found in favor of Montreal marriage activists Michael Hendricks and René LeBoeuf, a couple of 30 years' standing. In June Quebec's legislature approved a bill to create civil unions that extend all the provincial benefits of legal marriage to gay and lesbian couples, but some aspects of marriage are controlled by Canadian federal law, which is restricted to "a man and a woman". Justice Lemelin noted that those civil unions are not equivalent to marriage, as she decided that the heterosexual "definition of marriage imposes a discriminatory distinction in excluding couples of the same sex." The Law Commission of Canada has reached the same conclusion. Justice Lemelin recommended modifying marriage laws to define marriage as "between two persons," but said that, "the court prefers to leave the initiative to the legislators." The Canadian Government arranged for a parliamentary committee to consider and report on the issue following the Ontario ruling, which allowed two years for legislators to act. The federal Government has also filed an appeal to the Ontario ruling, but has not yet announced whether it will appeal the Quebec decision. Last year a British Columbia court found that marriage discrimination against gays and lesbians is justified. In the U.S., the City of Philadelphia is appealing a judgment last week that struck down the city's Life Partnership ordinance. In filing its appeal to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, the city is also asking for a stay of last week's Commonwealth Court ruling in order to allow city workers' registered partners to continue to receive spousal health benefits while the matter is adjudicated. The Commonwealth Court had agreed with a right-wing group's challenge to the hard-won ordinance, declaring that the city had usurped the state's power to define marriage. A U.S. federal court has upheld students' right to have a Gay/Straight Alliance group as an official club on their public high school campus. Then-junior Amy Obermeyer applied last year to create the GSA at Franklin Central High School in Indianapolis, Indiana as a safe forum for lesbigay students and their non-gay allies to discuss sexual orientation issues. The school denied it, suggesting changing the name to the "Diversity Club" and the content to include a broad range of minority issues -- ostensibly out of concern that GSA members would be targeted for harassment. To the Indiana Civil Liberties Union, that was "diluting [the] message" of the GSA, and the group helped the students to file suit. Last week U.S. District Judge Larry McKinney ordered the school to immediately reinstate the GSA for the current school year. He wrote that, "The Constitution does not permit government officials, even if well-intentioned government officials, to decide how individuals may best express themselves in a public forum." The Franklin Township Schools district will appeal the decision, since no application for a GSA was filed for this year, and most of the GSA's original supporters have graduated. New Jersey school districts will be required to create clear policies against bullying, harassment and intimidation under a law signed this week by Governor James McGreevey. The measure's seven specified protected categories include gender and sexual orientation -- yet it was passed unanimously by both houses of the state legislature in June. The districts will each create their own policies -- including a definition of harassment, rules for reporting and investigating complaints, and school responses when complaints are confirmed -- but there are state guidelines to ensure some consistency. GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, says that only 7 other states and Washington, DC explicitly protect students from harassment based on their sexual orientation and/or gender identity. And finally... this week the "New York Times" published its first wedding-style announcement for a same-gender couple. In more than 500 words with a photo in the Weddings/Celebrations section, the distinguished newspaper announced the religious commitment ceremony and pending Vermont civil union of financier Daniel Gross and public affairs consultant Steven Goldstein. As the item recounted, it was a newspaper that first brought them together in October 1992, when Goldstein responded to Gross' personal ad in the "Washington [DC] City Paper". That ad read, "Nice Jewish boy, 5 feet 8 inches, 22, funny, well-read, dilettantish, self-deprecating, Ivy League, the kind of boy Mom fantasized about." Gross' own Mom said the following month, "You seem like you're in love." When Gross said, "I am -- his name is Steven," she said, "Oy!" While it took a little time, the "Times" said that both sets of parents now support the relationship, and the paper described them as it usually does parents of traditional brides and grooms.