NewsWrap
for the week ending January 4, 2003
(As broadcast on This Way Out program #771, distributed 1-6-03)
[Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Chris Ambidge, 
Jason Lin, Rex Wockner, Lucia Chappelle & Greg Gordon]


Anchored by Cindy Friedman & Christopher Gaal


  In what the "Bangkok Post" called "the first concrete step by the state to 
support the existence of homosexuals in society and to stem social prejudice 
and discrimination against them," Thailand's Department of Mental Health last 
week very publicly declared that homosexuality is not a "mental disease" but 
"simply a different sexual orientation."  A year ago the department had 
quietly issued an academic certification that it would comply with the World 
Health Organization's 1993 deletion of homosexuality from its listing of 
mental disorders.  But now at the behest of the national lesbian civil rights 
group Anjaree, the department has issued a letter to that effect and 
discussed it with reporters.  This created extensive favorable publicity for 
Anjaree's new public education campaign, including a supportive editorial in 
"The Nation".  Support from the Department of Mental Health is particularly 
important because gays and lesbians have found a dearth of supportive 
psychological counseling in Thailand, while some counselors there have 
claimed they could change homosexual orientation to heterosexual.


  But while the Department of Mental Health may be supportive, just a few 
days after its announcement Thailand's Deputy Minister of the Interior 
personally led a raid on a gay sauna in Bangkok.  More than 200 patrons were 
tested for drugs, with 20 foreign tourists among them testing positive.  
Operators of the Babylon Sauna Barracks were charged with running an 
unlicensed hotel. Another police raid on the Bangkok gay bar Pharoah led to 
about 100 lewd conduct arrests of patrons and staff in late November, just a 
few days after Bangkok's pride parade.


  Pride Scotland, that nation's largest pride event, went into voluntary 
liquidation in late December with a debt estimated at 60,000-pounds.  The 
group began in 1995, staging annual pride festivals alternately in Glasgow 
and Edinburgh whose attendance peaked at 20,000 in 1999.  But the 2002 event 
fell short financially despite significant support from the city of Glasgow, 
a failure blamed on bad weather and requiring a fee for some formerly free 
events.  There were internal organizational problems as well, and a 
spokesperson doubted it will be possible for anyone to stage a replacement 
event for 2003.  Pride Scotland's financial failure follows several others in 
2002, including the London and Sydney Mardi Gras.


  Even the local organizing group for the international 2002 Sydney Gay Games 
-- considered a great success in other respects -- was forced into voluntary 
administration in December with debts which may exceed assets by more than 
A$2-million.  That didn't stop Montréal from officially welcoming the Games 
for 2006, but it's making it hard for some of Sydney's huge annual dance 
parties to find sponsorship and suppliers.  


  And in Melbourne this week, organizers announced that the 15-year-old 
Midsumma gay and lesbian festival has cancelled its traditional street party 
in 2003 after Lloyds of London upped the cost of liability insurance by a 
whopping 1500 per cent.  There has never been an insurance claim against 
Midsumma, but Lloyds gave no explanation for the increase.  Other festival 
events, including the centerpiece Carnival, have been preserved despite hefty 
increases in the cost of coverage.


  Despite pride's loss of profitability, politicians keep coming out.
Spanish Green Party Member of the European Parliament Jose Maria Mendiluce 
identified himself as a gay man in an interview published this week in the 
gay magazine "Zero".  Mendiluce is currently running for Mayor of Madrid, but 
polling suggests that when the election's held in May, he's not likely to 
follow Paris' Bertrand Delanoë and Berlin's Klaus Wowereit to become the 
third openly gay mayor of a major European capital.  Mendiluce attributed his 
remaining closeted until age 51 to "cowardice," but declared that now, "The 
gay community can count on me to defend our rights together."


  And in Canada, Member of Parliament Scott Brison discussed his homosexual 
orientation with reporters for the first time in December, the nation's 
fourth MP to do so but the first in the Conservative Party.  Brison, who's 
been in a relationship for four years, claims he's "never really been in the 
closet," and was even labeled gay in a gay press report months earlier -- but 
this time he was talking to the "Halifax Daily News", Nova Scotia's largest 
publication, and it certainly came as a surprise to some of his rural 
constituents, including some who've known him personally for many years.  
Currently his party's spokesperson on finance, Brison was launching his bid 
to become the Tories' next parliamentary leader, hoping to block the 
possibility of what he called "whisper campaigns" against him and "any 
misperception ... that I had any fear of dealing with this issue openly and 
honestly."  While Canada's federal Tories have often been divided and wobbly 
on gay issues, Brison's own supportive voting record has scored top ratings 
from Canada's national gay and lesbian advocacy group EGALE.  
Brison admitted to Toronto's "Globe & Mail" that, "Life would be a lot easier 
to be born straight," but compared sexual orientation to eye color, saying, 
"I don't view it as a completely defining feature about who I am or what I 
represent."
He added, "I think in a country with the military in shambles, the 
health-care system in crisis, a government out of touch with the real needs 
of Canadians and a country searching for vision and searching for ideas to 
build a better country, the sexual orientation of a politician ... should be 
the last thing on people's minds."


  Britain's Conservative Party -- traditionally far more homophobic than 
Canada's -- will finally extend formal recognition to its own gays and 
lesbians, granting affiliate group status to Torch, formerly known as the 
Tory Campaign for Homosexual Equality.  Torch has been campaigning for three 
decades.  In December the party's executive board voted unanimously to make 
the group a special affiliate, with the formality of approval by its 
constitutional committee expected shortly.


  In Armenia, though, the "outing" of politicians is apparently viewed as a 
real threat.  Mikael Danielyan, head of Armenia's Helsinki Committee for 
Human Rights, told Agence France Presse in December that his group will 
publish a list of closeted state officials unless homosexual acts are 
decriminalized "in the near future."  Currently homosexual acts are 
punishable by up to five years' imprisonment, and police so harass gays that 
they are too intimidated to create clubs or other venues.  Many are believed 
to have fled the country.  Armenia's Parliament is considering a revised 
Criminal Code that will bring it into line with the standards of the Council 
of Europe, which Armenia joined two years ago.


  In India, where homosexual acts can lead to long imprisonment, a gay couple 
very publicly registered a French PACS, pact of civil solidarity, for the 
first time.  Indian fashion designer Wendel Rodricks exchanged vows with his 
French partner of more than two decades identified only as Jerome at their 
villa in Goa, with a senior official from the French consulate presiding and 
numerous Indian entertainment celebrities in attendance.  The couple divide 
their time between Goa, where the union has no legal standing, and Paris, 
where the PACS carries most of the legal benefits of marriage.  Indian 
government officials declined to comment on the implications for their 
nation's sodomy law, which is currently facing a constitutional challenge led 
by the Naz Foundation.


  A Netherlands lesbian couple this week gave birth to what’s purportedly the 
world's second cloned human.  The possibility of this new kind of lesbian 
motherhood was recognized in the earliest reports of the world's first clone, 
Dolly the sheep, who herself was created from a breast cell and an egg from 
two different female sheep.  Not long after the Dolly breakthrough, the 
strange but gay-friendly Canada-based Raelian cult -- which believes 
extraterrestrials created the human race -- set up Clonaid, an enterprise to 
create human clones despite widespread international opposition.  Even in the 
Netherlands, human cloning is banned, and both the cloning and the birth took 
place elsewhere.  Last week Clonaid announced the world's first successful 
birth of a human clone, known as "Eve," although the baby has not been 
presented to the public.  Some scientists are skeptical, and DNA tests which 
had been planned to substantiate the claim have been cancelled.  That's 
because a U.S. attorney who believes cloning is child abuse asked a Florida 
court to appoint a legal guardian for the baby; although "Eve" was neither 
created nor born in the U.S., the announcement was made there and the unnamed 
DNA donor is reportedly a U.S. citizen.  It’s not yet clear if there will be 
DNA testing on the lesbians’ baby.  Clonaid says that "Eve" and the child of 
the lesbian couple are the first of five clones expected to be born in the 
next few weeks.  Clonaid is also beginning a second round of up to 20 
implantations expected to lead to births before the year is out, and says 
that one of them is for a same-gender couple in the Las Vegas area.  Clonaid 
charges up to US$200,000 for its services.


  And finally... in the Washington, DC area, the widely reported first birth 
of 2003 is the daughter of a lesbian couple, Helen Rubin and Joanna Bare.  
Rubin was artificially inseminated by an unidentified friend.  When doctors 
induced labor about 2 weeks before the baby was due, she hoped to give birth 
in 2002, but it took nearly 15 hours until the girl arrived at one minute 
past midnight.
Just a week before, the couple of 12 years had moved from a Virginia suburb 
to a Maryland one so that Bare can co-adopt the girl, which Virginia law 
prohibits.
When photographers asked for a shot of the baby and her mother, Bare said, 
"Sure -- which mother would you like?"  Pictures were taken with both.