NewsWrap for the week ending October 12, 2002 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #759, distributed 10-14-02) [Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Chris Ambidge, Jason Lin, Rex Wockner, Lucia Chappelle & Greg Gordon] Anchored by Cindy Friedman & Jon Beaupré The Vatican is developing a blanket policy to exclude gay men from the priesthood, the official Catholic News Service revealed this week. A draft directive prepared jointly by the Vatican's Congregations for Catholic Education and for the Doctrine of the Faith is being circulated among a wide range of consultants. On the grounds that the catechism declares a homosexual orientation to be "objectively disordered," the draft would bar gay and bisexual men from seminaries and from ordination even if they were ready to accept the vow of celibacy. While there is no target date for completion and publication of the directive, the Catholic News Service said that the long-debated issue has -- in its words -- "received new and more u rgent attention in the wake of U.S. clerical sex abuse cases, many of which involved homosexual acts." The Vatican published this week the official statement of last month's meeting of Latin America's Roman Catholic leaders, which includes strong opposition to legal recognition of same-gender couples. Unanimously adopted by the presidents of the region's episcopal conferences and signed by two top cardinals and the head of CELAM, the Latin American bishops' council, the document known as the Santo Domingo Declaration urges all lawmakers "not to give their vote" to what it calls "iniquitous laws". It says, "We are profoundly afflicted by the presumption to give legal recognition -- with juridical standing that the peoples' tradition gave only to marriage, an eminently public good -- to so-called de facto unions, in their various versions and stages. Our disquiet is even greater when such presumption refers to persons of the same sex. It is inadmissible to want to have homosexual and lesbian unions accepted as legitimate unions and even as 'marriage,' with the alleged right to adopt children. To recognize this other type of union and equate it with the family is to discriminate and wage assault against it." Catholic bishops in Malta this week publicly voiced their strong opposition to legal recognition of gay and lesbian couples there. They were responding to the electoral campaign platform of the Alternattiva Demokratika party, which calls for extending all marital benefits to both same-gender and unmarried heterosexual couples who have lived together for at least three years. This would include all parental rights for children born to those couples, as well as social benefits including housing. Malta's Archbishop Joseph Mercieca and others denounced the party's proposals as a threat to marriage and to society. The Catholic Church has lobbied actively and effectively against legal domestic partnerships for gays and lesbians in the Czech Republic, but it's politics that now appears to have stalled the possibility for the next four years. When a partnership bill proposed by the Social Democratic Party, CSSD, was returned to the Government by a vote of the Chamber of Deputies a year ago, it effectively killed the issue until after June's parliamentary elections. The CSSD was the leader in those elections, but it was able to form a government with a slim one-vote parliamentary majority only in coalition with the strongly anti-partnership Christian Democrats, the KDU-CSL. Gay and lesbian activists believe their interests were abandoned by the CSSD as a bargaining chip in the coalition process, and that partnerships won't advance until the next round of national elections. The groups Gay Initiative and STUD Brno responded with about 150 billboards which for several weeks showed two men kissing and the caption, "It may help someone and hurts no one". Posters denouncing homosexuals appeared on lampposts in Hamilton City, Bermuda last week, only to be torn down by city workers the next day. Hamilton prohibits putting any materials on lampposts regardless of content. The city's secretary Roger Sherratt told "The Royal Gazette" newspaper that, "The posters were full of hatred. They talked about homosexual people being satanic and demons. They were very homophobic and I would say had been done by someone who was not well." The posters, hand-written with spelling errors on flimsy paper, appeared to be the work of a lone individual, but they announced that a march against homosexuals would be held this month. Hopes for constitutional civil rights protections for gays and lesbians in Peru dimmed this week, as the national parliament passed an article on equality before the law that names no specific protected categories. Article 2.2 says only, "Every form of discrimination having as its object or result the annulment or undermining of recognition, enjoyment or exercise of personal rights, is forbidden. State and society [will] promote positive conditions and measures so that in reality and effectively nobody [will] be discriminated [against]." Although the parliament is still discussing the proposed new Peruvian Constitution, the national group Movimiento Homosexual de Lima is already working with women's, Black and disability rights groups towards campaigning against its ratification by the public. But in the U.S., the City Council of Decatur, Illinois this week voted 6-to-1 to make "sexual orientation" a category protected from discrimination under its local civil rights ordinance. Nearly five dozen citizens testified on the issue. Decatur will be the 11th city in Illinois to prohibit anti-gay discrimination. The U.S. Supreme Court this week declined to consider the marital status of transsexuals, refusing to take up an appeal by J'Noel Gardiner. This lets stand the Kansas state Supreme Court's unanimous finding in March that J'Noel could not inherit half of her late husband's estate, because under state law she is a male and her marriage is invalid. That's despite J'Noel having obtained a revised birth certificate from her native Wisconsin after her sex reassignment surgery, as well as holding a Kansas marriage certificate. Since the late Marshall Gardiner did not leave a will, his son Joe becomes the sole heir to the $2.5-million-dollar estate. The U.S. Supreme Court also declined to take up the appeal of a small gay radio station in Cleveland, Ohio which was shut down by the Federal Communications Commission because owner Jerry Szoka had not obtained a license for it. A Montana Republican has withdrawn from a U.S. Senate race, citing a Democratic Party campaign ad that used 20-year-old video footage to visually imply he might be gay. The voiceover said candidate Mike Taylor had abused student loan programs with a Colorado hair design school he'd been involved with; in fact Taylor had reached a settlement with both state and federal programs in that case, without admission of wrongdoing. But the video showed a clip from former salon chain owner Taylor's erstwhile regular appearances on Denver television -- one in which Taylor, in 1980's disco regalia, was applying lotion to a man's face. Although the national Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee denied it, numerous observers including gay-supportive Democratic Montana state Senator Ken Toole agreed the ad's imagery appealed to stereotyping and voter homophobia. The national gay and lesbian Human Rights Campaign was among groups denouncing it. However, there is also widespread agreement that Taylor's campaign was in trouble even before the ad debuted last week, with funds running well behind expenses and polling running well behind four-term incumbent Democratic Senator Max Baucus. Taylor campaign polling did find that nearly 60% of those who had viewed the ad were less likely to vote for him afterwards. Convicted serial killer Aileen Wuornos was executed this week in Florida at the age of 46 after a decade on death row. She died apparently at peace after voluntarily ending the appeals process, but wasn't put to death until after three psychiatrists agreed that she was mentally competent. A sex worker since age 15, Wuornos found her clients along Florida's highways. She said she'd killed seven of them, but was convicted of only six murders since one body was never found. She robbed those men to better provide for the lesbian lover who later betrayed her to police. Already the subject of several books, an opera, and two films, it was announced this week that Charlize Theron will star in another Wuornos film now in development. Openly gay Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë, stabbed in an assassination attempt at a public party at City Hall this week, has been moved out of intensive care. He's expected to be hospitalized for another week and to need several more weeks' recovery before returning to work. The abdominal wound he suffered could have been fatal had he received surgery less promptly. Suspect Azedine Berkane reportedly told police he objects to politicians in general and to gays based on his Muslim faith, although his attorney blames the attack on Berkane's mental problems and denies that it was either political or homophobic. And finally... while there were many solemn memorials this week of the 1998 death of the world's best-known gay-bashing victim, University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard, there were also numerous observances of October 11th as National Coming Out Day on campuses across the U.S. and elsewhere. Some were scholarly discussions, some were religious services, and some were raucous celebrations. But Harvard University's activists -- now known as the Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender and Supporters' Alliance -- continued their tradition of creating notable posters for the occasion. One of this year's featured the familiar caption "Nobody knows I'm a lesbian"... under a r eproduction of the Mona Lisa. Now we can understand that famously enigmatic smile.