REMINDER: There will be no "NewsWrap" segment on "This Way Out" program #770 (week of 12/30/02). Our traditional tuneful "AudioFile Year In Review" will fill all of that program. ---------------------------------------------------------------- NewsWrap for the week ending December 7, 2002 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #767, distributed 12-09-02) [Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Chris Ambidge, Jason Lin, Rex Wockner, Jon Beaupré, Lucia Chappelle & Greg Gordon] Anchored by Christopher Gaal & Cindy Friedman The unicameral legislature of the Australian state of Queensland this week passed the state Government's sweeping law reform for equal treatment of lesbigays, transgenders and same-gender couples. Those individuals will have explicit protection from discrimination and vilification, while unmarried cohabitants of at least two years standing -- regardless of gender -- will have legal recognition equal to that of married couples under more than 50 state laws. The bill's success came only after 18 hours of emotional debate and a division between the Opposition parties, as the National Party stood against the bill while the Liberal Party supported the Australian Labor Party Government. The most divisive issue was prohibition of employment discrimination by religious groups for non-religious jobs, including teachers in church-run schools. With the support of the National Party, religious groups lobbied hard for an exemption, meeting with Premier Peter Beattie among other protracted negotiations with officials, and ultimately the Government did back down to some degree. While the religious groups can no longer deny employment at will based on sexual orientation or marital status, they will be able to ask job candidates about their religious beliefs and values, and to require that, as Attorney-General Rod Welford put it, "a person should not act in their work or in connection with their work in a way that demonstrates open defiance of the religious beliefs." The legislature of the Canadian province of Alberta this week also quietly passed its Conservative Party Government's omnibus bill to recognize cohabitants "in a dependent situation" rather than "spouses" in numerous state laws. It's a landmark move for a province that's a right-wing stronghold, even though it potentially offers the same status to roommates and cohabiting relatives as it does to gay and lesbian and heterosexual couples. Nonetheless it was overshadowed by another advance for Alberta's gay and lesbian couples, as a tribunal barred the practice of charging them for health coverage at individual rather than family rates. Canada's national health care plan is administered by each province, with Alberta requiring individual adult payments of C$34 and family payments of C$68 for coverage including children. Belgium is a step closer to becoming the world's second nation to open legal marriage to same-gender couples, with a Senate vote last week approving the Government's bill by a 3-to-1 margin. Belgium's Lower House has yet to vote on the measure. Only the Netherlands now offers full equal marriage rights to gays and lesbians. The Belgian bill would not allow same-gender couples to adopt children together and would not legally recognize non-biological co-parents. Mexico City's pioneering bill to extend legal recognition to gay and lesbian and unmarried heterosexual couples won unanimous approval last week from a committee and has moved on to review by the full city council, known as the Legislative Assembly. A lesbian inmate in Colombia has won a long-running legal battle for visitation with her partner, the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission reports. Marta Alvarez has struggled since 1998 to gain the same visitation rights enjoyed by non-gay inmates in Colombia, and in 1999 her case became the first issue of sexual orientation discrimination ever brought before the Interamerican Human Rights Commission. Alvarez has been punished for seeking the chance to see her partner, who is also an inmate now held at a prison in a different city. But in late November, a local judge finally granted her petition, citing the partner's rights to equality, privacy and free development of their personalities. Switzerland's Government last week announced its proposal for legal gay and lesbian registered partnerships carrying most of the benefits of marriage. While extending equality in areas including inheritance and social security -- and explicitly requiring that partners accord each other assistance and respect -- the bill would deny couple adoption rights. Advocates for gay and lesbian equality are hopeful the Government proposal will be expanded in the Parliament when it's taken up in the coming year. In announcing the Cabinet's move, Justice Minister Ruth Metzler said, "The picture of same-sex couples hugging and kissing on the street should become normal." But while the Swiss cantons of Zurich and Geneva have already extended their local legal recognition to same-gender couples, the Valais canton's parliament immediately voted by an 11% margin to declare its opposition to the national bill, citing support for "the family". Britain's Government will be introducing a bill to create registered partnerships for gays and lesbians, perhaps as soon as the next session of Parliament, Minister for Social Exclusion and Equalities Barbara Roche announced this week. The proposal is expected to give registered partners legal status equal to that of married couples in areas including property, tenancy and inheritance rights, inheritance taxes, crime victim compensation, and hospital visitation. A draft will be published for discussion in mid-2003. As the new head of the 70-million-member global Anglican communion was officially confirmed in his office this week, he declared in a BBC documentary that he believes that a strong case can be made that the church should recognize what he called "faithful" homosexual relationships and that they are not in conflict with the Bible. That contrasts sharply with the opinion of a large majority of the world's Anglican bishops, who voted overwhelmingly at their 1998 global conference that homosexual acts are incompatible with Biblical teachings. However, new Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams -- who at least once in the past knowingly crossed church policy to ordain a sexually active gay man -- told the "Church Times" that he will abide by the church's ban on ordaining non-celibate gays, apparently caving in to serious pressure from conservative Anglicans. Williams, who wont' fully assume his duties until February, has called for honest debate on the issues. Britain's Crown Prosecution Service last week issued its first-ever public policy statement on hate crimes against lesbigay and transgender people. Attorney General Lord Goldsmith declared that, "Homophobic crimes strike at people's right to feel safe and secure, and to abuse or attack someone because of their sexual orientation and gender identity is a hate crime which cannot be tolerated. The CPS today sends a clear message to those who commit such crimes that they will be dealt with firmly under criminal law." The CPS hopes in particular to encourage more victims to report hate incidents, as less than 1/5 do now, according to a National Advisory Group study. In the U.S., Pennsylvania Governor Mark Schweiker this week signed into law the addition of new categories including "sexual orientation" to the state's hate crimes law. Schweiker resisted considerable pressure to veto expansion of the so-called ethnic intimidation law. It was only this week that the Pennsylvania House of Representatives approved the bill by a margin of about 3-to-2, although the state Senate had approved it by a better than 2-to-1 margin almost a year-and-a-half before. The Orlando, Florida City Council this week gave its final approval to a bill to add "sexual orientation" as a category protected under city ordinances from discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations. The hotly-debated bill squeaked through by a one-vote margin. Although Mayor Glenda Hood was vocal in her opposition, her spokesperson said it is "highly unlikely" that she'll veto it. After years of lobbying, the city councils of Baltimore, Maryland and San Jose, California have both voted unanimously to protect transgenders from discrimination. The Baltimore bill will make "gender identity or expression" a category protected under city ordinances from discrimination in employment, housing, education, public accommodations, and credit. It was Mayor Martin O'Malley who asked the council to consider the bill, and his signature will make Baltimore the first city in Maryland to protect transgenders. San Jose will be adding transgender protections to its city employment policies against discrimination and harassment. The United States Supreme Court this week agreed to take up a constitutional challenge to Texas' law against homosexual acts. It will be the high court's first consideration of states' rights to criminalize those acts since it narrowly upheld a now-defunct Georgia law in 1986 in "Bowers versus Hardwick". Similar to "Bowers," the Texas plaintiffs John Lawrence and Tyron Garner were busted by sheriffs while engaging in consensual sex in one plaintiff's own bedroom, in their case when a neighbor falsely reported a "weapons disturbance" in that home. A dozen other states' laws applying solely to sex acts between people of the same gender will also be at stake. And finally... the Cracker Barrel restaurant chain -- ubiquitous in the Southern U.S. -- was once notorious for anti-gay employment discrimination. In 1991 it fired at least 11 gay and lesbian employees in the wake of a corporate memo that called for removing those "whose sexual preferences fail to demonstrate normal heterosexual values which have been the foundation of families in our society." That set off a long-running series of protest actions of many kinds, which led Cracker Barrel to disavow the memo. Some protestors eventually won a landmark ruling by the Securities and Exchange Commission that revived shareholder-initiated proposals for a new era of social justice activism in the corporate sphere. More recently new Cracker Barrel management had publicly declared an end to the practice of discrimination based on sexual orientation, but held out against adopting a formal written policy to that effect. Until this week, that is, when the board of directors of Cracker Barrel's parent corporation CBRL Group Inc. announced that it has unanimously agreed to add "sexual orientation" to the categories protected by its non-discrimination policy. The board acted in the belief that a solid majority of shareholders would pass a resolution calling for the policy change when it came to a vote for the tenth time.