NewsWrap for the week ending October 26, 2002 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #761, distributed 10-28-02) [Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Chris Ambidge, Jason Lin, Rex Wockner, Lucia Chappelle & Greg Gordon] Anchored by Cindy Friedman & Dean Elzinga Harry Hay, often described as "The Father of Gay Liberation," died this week of cancer at the age of 90. Hay is widely credited as the first to fully conceive of gay men, particularly what he would have called sissies, as a minority group with the potential both to make a unique cultural contribution and to form a political bloc. In 1950, when California law prohibited gay men from gathering in groups, Hay founded the secretive Mattachine Society in Los Angeles with his then-lover fashion designer Rudi Gernreich and five others. While other early efforts at gay organizing in the U.S. had fizzled, the Mattachine grew to thousands of members in dozens of chapters across the country, which formed the basis of later, more visible gay activist groups. However, in the heat of McCarthyism, the Mattachine rejected Hay just a few years after he founded it, because of his long and high profile membership in the Communist Party. Hay was equally rejected by the Communists for being gay in the Stalin years. In the 1960's, Hay chaired both the Southern California Gay Liberation Front and the L.A. Committee to Fight the Exclusion of Homosexuals from the Armed Forces, and helped to organize Los Angeles' first Pride march. In 1979, Hay founded the Radical Faeries, a pagan-inspired group celebrating the spiritual side of what he called "gay consciousness" and "gay-centeredness," plus environmental awareness. The Radical Faeries continue today, including some who have recently served as caregivers for Hay and his partner of 39 years John Burnside. In the 1980's he was a founder of the Lavender Caucus of Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition. A firm believer in coalition politics, Hay's lifetime of progressive activism included the labor movement, the peace movement, and equality for women and Native Americans. It all began in 1935 when he attended the San Francisco General Strike and entered the Communist Party with his then-lover actor Will Geer, who much later became famous as TV's "Grandpa Walton". Activism was always the focus of Hay's life, although he worked at various times as a ghostwriter, actor, teacher and trading post manager. Born in England, Hay grew up and spent most of his life in Los Angeles. One of his last major public appearances was as Grand Marshal of the 1999 Pride parade in San Francisco, where he then spent his final years. His life is recorded in Eric Slade's documentary film "Hope Along the Wind" and Stuart Timmons' book "The Trouble with Harry Hay". Another loss for the gay and lesbian community this week was the death of two-term Democratic U.S. Senator from Minnesota Paul Wellstone in a plane crash, along with his wife and daughter and 5 others. Arguably the most liberal member of the Senate, Wellstone was an orginal co-sponsor of ENDA, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and remained one of the most vocal advocates for that as-yet unsuccessful bill for gay and lesbian job rights. He was the only U.S. Senator to address a 1993 gay and lesbian civil rights march on Washington, although he disappointed activists in 1996 when he voted for the successful anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act, DOMA. Wellstone's death could mean the loss of Democratic control of the U.S. Senate. At the moment it leaves the Senate with equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans, plus one independent. Minnesota's independent Governor Jesse Ventura may or may not appoint someone to fill Wellstone's seat through mid-January. Wellstone died less than two weeks before what had promised to be a close election while campaigning against popular Republican challenger St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman, and the Democrats have not yet chosen a replacement candidate. In Canada, open gay Glen Murray this week easily won a second term as Mayor of Winnipeg by a 13% margin against his nearest competitor. In 1998, Murray became Canada's first openly gay or lesbian mayor, and Winnipeg remains the largest city in North America ever to have one. Canada's first openly gay Member of Parliament, the New Democratic Party's Svend Robinson, has reintroduced a bill to add gays and lesbians to groups protected under the national hate crimes law. He's confident that this time it will win passage, citing support from four of the five parliamentary parties, despite continued opposition from the right-wing Alliance. But perhaps the biggest story in Canada this week was the release of the first national census figures to count gay and lesbian partnerships, an important addition to the currently hot debate on opening legal marriage to same-gender couples. The only other countries to have collected similar data so far are New Zealand and the U.S. Although Statistics Canada believes that responses to the 2001 census do not fully reflect those couples, 34,200 same-gender couples did identify themselves. That's only about one half of one per cent of all Canadian couples. John Fisher, executive director the national group EGALE, Equality for Gays and Lesbians Everywhere, emphasized that, "[T]he census shows same-sex couples reporting their relationships in every province and territory of Canada, from 12,500 couples in Ontario to 15 couples in Nunavut, and everywhere in between." However, unsurprisingly more than four-fifths of the couples live in the nation's major cities. Among the reported same-gender couples, 55% were men and 45% women, with 15% of the female households and 3% of the male households including minor children. Sweden's legally registered same-gender couples will be able to adopt children together or to co-adopt their partners' children beginning on February 1st. Although the parliament approved the adoptions in June, it's taken the Justice Ministry until this week to decide when the new law would go into effect. The Belgian Government's bill to open legal marriage to gay and lesbian couples advanced this week, with an 11-to-4 vote in the Senate Justice Commission. Although the measure has the support of the ruling coalition of Liberals, Socialists and Greens, it's opposed by the French-speaking Liberals and Christian Democrats and by the Vlaams Blok. Belgium created legal cohabitation contracts in 1999 for unmarried couples including same-gender couples, but the Netherlands is the only nation in the world where the law establishing traditional heterosexual marriages is open to gay and lesbian couples. A Colombian Senate committee has advanced a bill to create legal same-gender partnerships. In early October the Colombian Senate's First Commission voted 15-to-1 in favor of the bill written by Senator Piedad Cordoba and introduced by Senator Carlos Gaviria Diaz. Legal recognition of same-gender couples advanced this week in Britain with a High Court ruling. A lesbian had sued the Department of Health and her local health authority in Liverpool to be recognized as the "nearest relative" of her schizophrenic partner under the Mental Health Act. That status ensures a partner's involvement in a mental patient's treatment, including assessment, detention, hospitalization, and discharge. Although the parties actually reached an out-of-court settlement, the High Court justice affirmed both the settlement and the change to the previous policy of denying spousal status to gay and lesbian partners. Now those partners will have spousal status after six months of living together. The number of U.K. localities celebrating gay and lesbian couples continues to grow, even though they can't give them legal status. This week the Swansea City & County Council voted 49-to-4 to become the first in Wales to hold gay and lesbian commitment ceremonies in county register offices. In England, Derby's city registrars have taken it upon themselves to open their offices to similar ceremonies, without waiting for any action on the part of the Derby City Council. The British Government was ordered by the European Court of Human Rights this week to pay out more than 350,000-pounds in compensation to five military servicemembers discharged for homosexuality. The UK lifted its military ban in 2000 in the wake of judgements by the European courts. The discharges of the current plaintiffs, four gay men and one woman, took place before that, although their cases were filed afterwards. The European court found that the British Government had breached guarantees to privacy and legal recourse under the European Convention on Human Rights. The European Union had previously ordered incorporation of elements of the European Convention on Human Rights into British national law, and this week Britain's Equality Minister made public some details of that lengthy process. Employment protections from anti-gay discrimination will be instituted for the first time in Britain in the coming year, and the policy will recognize harassment on the job as a form of discrimination. However the protections for gays and lesbians, and those to come later for older people and religious minorities, will not extend to government services such as health and education, as they do for women, racial minorities and people with disabilities. And finally... a quote to remember Harry Hay: "We pulled ugly green frog skin of heterosexual conformity over us, and that's how we got through school with a full set of teeth. We know how to live through their eyes. We can always play their games, but are we denying ourselves by doing this? If you're going to carry the skin of conformity over you, you are going to suppress the beautiful prince or princess within you."