PLEASE NOTE: There will be no "NewsWrap" segment on "This Way Out" program #s 
766 (week of 12/2/02) and 770 (week of 12/30/02). 
One or more special features will air on each of those programs.
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NewsWrap
for the week ending November 16, 2002
(As broadcast on This Way Out program #764, distributed 11-18-02)
[Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Chris Ambidge, 
Jason Lin, Rex Wockner, Lucia Chappelle & Greg Gordon]


Anchored by Dean Elzinga & Cindy Friedman


  Britain's Government is moving to repeal three anti-gay criminal laws, as 
part of a sweeping update of sexual offenses announced this week in the 
Queen's Speech, the annual ceremonial outlining of the agenda for the new 
legislative session.  The "gross indecency" law that convicted author Oscar 
Wilde in the 19th century has continued to be enforced against gay men into 
the present, along with laws against "buggery" and solicitation by men.  Home 
Secretary David Blunkett will publish details in the coming week, but the law 
reform has been in development for some time, and his office confirms it will 
eliminate discrimination based on gender and sexual orientation from 
Britain's criminal code.  Sex acts in public places, including public 
toilets, will remain offenses.


  Major reform of the Local Government Act was also in the Queen's Speech.  
Although the Blair Government is not expected to seek repeal of the Act's 
notorious Section 28, which prohibits local governments from devoting 
resources to the "promotion of homosexuality," an amendment to that effect is 
sure to come from the ruling Labour Party's backbench.


  An earlier attempt to repeal Section 28 was quashed by Conservative Party 
opposition in the House of Lords, but the Tories are still reeling from their 
division over last week's approval of opening adoptions to unmarried couples 
including gay and lesbian couples.  This week Member of Parliament from 
Blackpool North Harold Elletson quit the Conservative Party to join the 
left-wing third party Liberal Democrats, saying Tory parliamentary Leader 
Iain Duncan Smith's hard line against same-gender couples adopting had been 
the last straw.  He called the Conservatives "a form of alternative comedy 
rather than an alternative government."


  South Australia's Attorney General Michael Atkinson this week announced his 
Government's plans to review the state's civil rights and anti-vilification 
laws, including identifying laws that discriminate against same-gender 
couples.  The review committee is expected to report its recommendations by 
mid-2003.
But resistance is growing to some aspects of proposed civil rights expansions 
in the Australian states of Queensland and Tasmania, particularly from 
Christian activists.


  In Queensland, the target is employment protections for gays and lesbians 
who work in non-religious roles for churches, including teachers in religious 
schools.  Queensland's Opposition National Party has now vowed to campaign 
against the Labor Government's omnibus reforms unless the religious groups 
are exempted, although the Queensland Nationals lack the numbers to block it. 
 Openly gay federal Senator from West Australia Brian Greig of the Australian 
Democratic Party declared that national civil rights laws already protect gay 
and lesbian teachers even in church schools, and called the Queensland 
protest "nonsense".


  Tasmania's Catholic and Anglican leaders Archbishop Adrian Doyle and Bishop 
John Harrower this week spoke out against that state's Labor Government's 
plan to open adoptions to same-gender couples who contract what would be 
Australia's first official registered partnerships for gays and lesbians.  
Attorney General Judy Jackson responded that the issue was human rights, not 
morality.


  Adoption rights are also generating opposition in Belgium.  Justice 
Minister Marc Verwilghen announced this week that the Government is ready to 
introduce in the Senate a bill to open adoptions to same-gender couples.  A 
Senate committee last month approved a bill to create registered partnerships 
that does not include adoption rights, but this week's announcement led the 
CD&V party to declare it will now oppose the partnership measure in the House 
of Representatives if the Government proceeds with the adoptions bill.


  In a potential parenting advance for lesbians, Jilin has become China's 
first province to open access to artificial insemination to unmarried women, 
as a new state family planning law came into effect last week.  That's 
despite their still being prohibited by law from bearing a child conceived 
through intercourse.  A spokesperson for Jilin's Family Planning Bureau told 
the "South China Morning Post" that "[China's] national law prohibiting birth 
outside marriage is intended to protect China's strong sense of ethics and 
morality.  But what we're trying to do with this legislation is protect the 
child-bearing rights of women who never intend to marry, by giving them 
scientific means."  Jilin's law allows artificial insemination to 
never-married and divorced women at least 20 years old who reside in the 
province, and while it does not prohibit them from marrying after bearing a 
child by AI, it does bar them from having another child with that husband.  
Jilin has one of China's lowest provincial birth rates.
During the year-plus Jilin officials spent crafting the new law, they also 
discussed the parental rights of unmarried men, but that proved so complex 
that they tabled it for future consideration.


  Thai Senator Wallop Tangkananurak this week publicly "test[ed] the waters" 
for the rights of transsexuals with a call for them to be legally recognized 
in their post-surgical gender.  The Senator expressed confidence that the 
idea would find support in Thailand's Upper House, even though actual 
legislative change would have to originate in the House of Representatives.  
He expressed concern to protect male-to-female transsexuals not only from 
discrimination but from sexual assaults, since under current law their male 
attackers would be charged with molestation rather than rape.  
He also said they should be allowed to use the titles "Miss" or "Mrs."


  Language is also being cleaned up in South Korea, as the National Human 
Rights Commission has settled a petition by the Lesbian and Gay Human Rights 
Federation and others against respondents including the National Academy of 
the Korean Language, which publishes the standard Korean dictionary.  The 
Commission's own investigation confirmed the activists' claim that most 
Korean and Korean-English dictionaries published in Korea used disparaging 
terms such as "sexual perversion" in defining homosexuality.  The Commission 
announced this week that both sides were satisfied with an agreement by the 
Academy and nine other publishers to correct discriminatory and disparaging 
language.


  A Korean gay man is believed to be the first to win U.S. asylum from 
anti-gay persecution in his homeland.  The Lesbian and Gay Immigration Rights 
Task Force, which represented him pro bono, said its documentation shows 
that, "Korea continues to be one of Asia's most homophobic nations."


  Also in the U.S. this week, Honolulu's Kalaheo High School has become the 
first in Hawai'i to win official charter for a student Gay Straight Alliance 
club.  It took students more than a year and several attempts to create a set 
of guidelines that passed muster with school officials.  Its goal, like that 
of thousands of similar groups in 46 other states, is to provide a safe 
environment by combating homophobia, and its first project is development of 
a brochure on derogatory language.


  The Eugene, Oregon City Council unanimously approved creation of a 
partnership registry for same-gender couples and prohibited discrimination 
based on "domestic partner status".  The registry would be Oregon's third, 
following Portland and Ashland, but Eugene Mayor Jim Torrey may veto it.  His 
opposition to a package of human rights amendments that included the registry 
was spurred largely by a proposal to make "gender identity" a category 
protected from discrimination, and more specifically by the prospect of 
allowing transgenders to use the bathroom of their choice.  In the face of 
his veto threat to the whole package, the Council voted 6-to-2 this week to 
drop the transgender civil rights amendment.


  By contrast, Chicago, Illinois Mayor Richard Daley this week signed into 
law protections from discrimination based on "gender identity" under that 
city's human rights ordinances.
Daley may also soon be appointing Chicago's first openly gay city councilor, 
to replace an alderman who's resigning before February's city elections.


  But the appointment of Jerusalem's first openly gay City Councilmember has 
hit a serious snag.  The city's Jerusalem Now faction -- historically 
affiliated with the national Meretz Party which just appointed the first open 
gay to the national parliament -- had chosen gay activist Jerry Levinson to 
replace one of its resigning members on the council.  But Israel's Minister 
of the Interior Eli Yishai of the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party is stalling on 
his legal responsibility to formalize the appointments "as quickly as 
possible".  Jerusalem Now this week submitted an urgent petition to the High 
Court of Justice to force Yishai to act immediately.  The faction's attorney 
told the "Ha'aretz" newspaper that "[The minister's] role is limited by the 
law.  He has no discretion, he cannot disqualify them if they are not to his 
liking."


  Openly gay Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë this week made his first public 
appearance since narrowly surviving an October assassination attempt by a 
vocal homophobe.  The occasion was observances of Armistice Day, the 
anniversary of the end of World War I.  Delanoë was described as moving 
stiffly but looking well rested, and said he is feeling much better.


  And finally... it's not news that second-century Roman Emperor Hadrian had 
a love affair with a beautiful young Greek named Antinous, but it's only now 
been discovered that Hadrian built a temple in his memory.  Antinous drowned 
in the Nile in the year 130, and the grief-stricken Hadrian immediately 
declared him a god and founded the Egyptian city of Antinopolis on the spot.  
Statues memorialized Hadrian's lost love throughout the Roman Empire, but no 
temple was known to exist.  Excavations have now found one near the site of 
Hadrian's headquarters west of Rome, a large semi-circular structure with 
fountains, planters and niches for statues that's being called the region's 
most important recent archaeological discovery.