REMINDER: There will be no "NewsWrap" segment on next week's "This Way Out" program #770 (week of 12/30/02). Our traditionally tuneful "AudioFile Year In Review" will fill all of that program. ---------------------------------------------------------------- NewsWrap for the week ending December 21, 2002 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #769, distributed 12-23-02) [Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Chris Ambidge, Jason Lin, Rex Wockner, Lucia Chappelle & Greg Gordon] Anchored by Jon Beaupré & Cindy Friedman The Supreme Court of Canada ruled 7-to-2 this week that some parents' religious objections cannot bar children's books about gay and lesbian families from elementary school classrooms. It was 1997 when the Vancouver-area Surrey School Board first rejected teacher James Chamberlain's bid to use 3 such books in his first grade class -- "Asha's Mums," "One Dad, Two Dads, Brown Dad, Blue Dads," and "Belinda's Bouquet". The last is by lesbian writer Leslea Newman, whose better-known "Heather Has Two Mommies" has been contested numerous times in schools and libraries across the U.S. Chamberlain characterizes the books as "the most innocuous, the most innocent and the most age-appropriate" attempts to show that gay and lesbian families exist and merit the same respect as others. One group of Surrey parents who reviewed them described them as well-written, but another group objected to their favorable presentation of gay and lesbian parents. The school board rejected them as inappropriate for first graders and kindergartners, although it approved them for the school library. Chamberlain turned to the legal system and prevailed in a trial court, but in 2000 the British Columbia Court of Appeal upheld the classroom ban. Although this week's decision by Canada's highest court is widely viewed as a triumph for gay and lesbian inclusion, the court did not rule as to whether the ban violated the federal Charter of Rights and Freedoms -- only that Surrey had violated British Colombia's provincial laws requiring strict secularism in the school system. The Surrey School Board could still decide to reject the books based on grounds other than religion and even potentially return the issue to the Supreme Court. The funds the school district has spent pursuing the case this far have already cut into its educational services. The majority opinion written by Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin acknowledged that, "Religion is an integral aspect of people's lives and cannot be left at the boardroom door." But she went on to write that, "What secularism does rule out, however, is any attempt to use the religious views of one part of the community to exclude from consideration the values of other members of the community." She wrote that the board had "failed to consider the curriculum's goal that children at the K-1 level be able to discuss their family models, and that all children be made aware of the diversity of family models in our society." And as for Surrey's claim that 5- and 6-year-olds are too young for issues of sexual orientation, McLachlin wrote, "Tolerance is always age-appropriate." In Argentina, the Rio Negro provincial legislature this week approved creation of registered partnerships for same-gender couples, which will make it the first province in Latin America to legally recognize gay and lesbian couples. Registry will grant almost all legal status the province has authority to extend to unmarried couples, including hospital visitation and eligibility for provincial housing plans, plus full benefits for the province's partnered civil servants. Adoption and marriage rights are excluded. To qualify, both partners must be at least 18 years old and able to prove they've lived together for at least two years. Some details are still to be worked out in the legislature. Rio Negro partnerships have gone remarkably unopposed, with support from both the Government and opposition parties and the Roman Catholic Church standing aside. That's in distinct contrast to similar legislation approved last week by the Buenos Aires city council, which was hotly debated with strong opposition from the Catholic Church, and is expected to be challenged soon on constitutional grounds. There were resolutions this week in two U.S. legal cases affecting same-gender couples. A Pennsylvania Superior Court panel ordered a lesbian to pay support for the five children her former partner bore by artificial insemination during their relationship. The non-biological co-parent identified as "H.A.N." never legally adopted the children, but she had previously won extensive visitation with them. She resisted paying support for them, but the state court upheld a county trial court's decision that she must do so now and retroactively. And there's been a settlement in the notorious dog-mauling death of a San Francisco lesbian, whose partner was the first in the U.S. ever to win standing to file a wrongful death lawsuit. Both surviving partner Sharon Smith and victim Diane Whipple's mother Penny Whipple reached settlements with the neighbors who owned the dogs and with the owners of the apartment building. The amount of Smith's cash settlement has not been disclosed, but it will go to a charitable foundation in Whipple's memory. In New York, more than 30 years after the first introduction of a gay and lesbian civil rights bill, this week the state Senate passed and Republican Governor George Pataki signed into law SONDA, the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act. The new law prohibits abuse, harassment and discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment, housing, education, public accommodations, and credit, beginning in January. Only 12 other U.S. states have laws protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination. Although the New York Assembly has passed SONDA every year since 1993, until now the Republican leadership in the Senate has blocked it from coming to a floor vote. In a special session of the Senate -- with a personal plea by the very man who's blocked it in the past, Majority Leader Joseph Bruno -- it passed by a 57% majority that included more than a third of the Republican Senators. But the version they approved does not prohibit discrimination based on "gender identity or expression". The state's first and only openly gay state Senator, New York City Democrat Tom Duane, sponsored a bill that included protection for transgenders but was otherwise identical, only to see the Senate defeat it by a more than 2-to-1 margin with all Republican Senators opposing. New York's well-organized transgenders and many of their allies opposed SONDA because of their exclusion and are already at work to introduce a bill to be known as GENDA. In Florida, though, the Collier County Commission this week unanimously rejected a proposed civil rights ordinance that would have included "sexual orientation" as a protected category. That vote broke a winning streak for Florida's gay and lesbian activists, who prevailed for at least five local measures against discrimination in 2002. Chicago, Illinois will have its first openly gay City Council member following Mayor Richard Daley's nomination this week of Tom Tunney to fill a vacancy for the 44th Ward. Restaurateur Tunney is expected to be confirmed when the council meets in mid-January, but he'll face five challengers in late February elections. Israel's great leap forward with recent appointments of its first openly gay member of the national parliament and first openly gay Jerusalem City Councilmember may also prove short-lived. Veteran activist Uzi Even was only sworn into the Knesset in November, but in primary elections last week he placed 13th on his Meretz Party list. Since Meretz isn't likely to take much more than ten seats when national elections are held in late January, Even is probably on his way out. The situation is even dimmer for Jerry Levinson, the head of the gay and lesbian center Jerusalem Open House, whose appointment to the Jerusalem City Council had been announced by the Jerusalem Now faction. Jerusalem Now's whole process of having 3 councilors resign to be replaced by members of previously unrepresented social groups devolved into infighting and schism that landed before an unsympathetic panel of the High Court of Justice late last month. The situation is still unresolved but Levinson may never get his Council seat. The suspect in the near-fatal stabbing of openly gay Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë has been found mentally unfit to stand trial, Agence France Presse reported this week. Two psychiatrists reported to the court that Azedine Berkane suffers from a chronic delirium and cannot be held accountable for his actions, although they believe him to be a threat to himself and others and recommended his placement in a high-security mental hospital. The court is reportedly seeking further expert opinion. Delanoë was stabbed in early October, but thanks to prompt medical attention he has made a good recovery and returned to work. Not so lucky was Pim Fortuyn, who hoped to become the Netherlands' first openly gay Prime Minister until an assassin's bullet cut him down less than two weeks before the May elections. An independent investigation of his murder concluded this week that government and law enforcement officials were negligent in failing to protect Fortuyn. The report does not claim that improved protection would have prevented Fortuyn's death, particularly since he personally hated security measures and may not have advised police of nearly half the threats he received. But after centuries free of political violence, the Netherlands had not felt a need to extend special protection to any politicians except the Prime Minister, to the point where investigators said that, "The system for the personal security of citizens in the Netherlands is in no way geared to protecting persons against a murderous attack by a person who has formed a definite intent to commit the act and has acquired the means to carry it out." With another round of elections coming up next month, investigators recommended much more protective action. And finally... that Fortuyn is far from forgotten was demonstrated again this month in the "European of the Year" awards of the Brussels' weekly publication "European Voice". Its readers, choosing among nominees selected by a panel of journalists and others from across Europe, voted him Politician of the Year, with the citation, "In recognition of his invigoration of the Dutch political scene before he was assassinated." Ironically for the Politician of the Year, although he founded a political party Fortuyn never held an elective office.