NewsWrap for the week ending January 11, 2003 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #772, distributed 1-13-03) [Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Chris Ambidge, Jason Lin, Rex Wockner, Lucia Chappelle & Greg Gordon] Anchored by Cindy Friedman & Greg Gordon The European Court of Human Rights this week published its ruling that unequal legal ages of consent for homosexual and heterosexual acts constitute discrimination in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights. The European court was considering three cases challenging Austria's Article 209, which had already been struck down following a July decision of the Austrian Constitutional Court. But the current ruling affects all the more than 40 member nations of the Council of Europe, and as International Lesbian and Gay Association Council delegate Nico Beger put it, "These judgments mean there is no longer any excuse for those Council of Europe member states which still have discriminatory age of consent laws -- Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Ireland and Portugal." ILGA called on those nations to act immediately to equalize their ages of consent. The Council of Europe has been a powerful force for law reform among its member nations. Thanks to Council pressure, Armenia's National Assembly has now approved a new criminal code that no longer punishes private homosexual acts between consenting adults. Under the old code, those acts had carried penalties of up to 5 years' imprisonment, and four men are known to have been sentenced under that law in 1999. The Council of Europe had made sodomy repeal a condition of Armenia's entry more than a year ago. While elimination of the sodomy law is an important step towards equal treatment in Armenia, official sources reported 7 anti-gay homicides there in 2001. Arrests of gay men continue in Egypt despite widespread international protest. Police this week announced the arrest of a 30-year-old Cairo man who was seeking contacts on his Web site -- the latest in a series of Intern et stings and raids against gay men in Egypt over the last two years. They also revealed a similar arrest took place in late December. Meanwhile the retrial of 50 men arrested at a gay-friendly Nile riverboat club in May 2001 continues to be repeatedly delayed. This week's scheduled hearing was pushed back to January 25. Previously almost half of those men were sentenced on debauchery charges to 3 years at hard labor and the rest found not guilty by a national security court set up to deal with terrorists, but in May 2002 President Hosni Mubarak ordered retrials in a civilian court for all 50. In Canada, a British Columbia judge ruled this week that the province's law protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination does not protect a non-gay student from homophobic abuse on campus. Justice Allan Stewart overturned last year's landmark ruling by a provincial human rights tribunal, which had held the North Vancouver school board and high school administrators accountable for failing to protect Azmi Jubran from years of harassment and violence at the hands of other students. The tribunal's decision had spurred B.C. schools to act to prevent homophobic attacks. But although Jubran's tormentors routinely used anti-gay slurs against him, they testified that they did not really believe he was gay, and Justice Stewart said that "fatally flawed" the tribunal's finding. The lawyer who represented the school board in its appeal, while admitting Jubran's peers had treated him badly, told reporters that the provincial legislature had never intended the Human Rights Code "to prohibit every form of objectionable behavior." But while B.C.'s Gay and Lesbian Educators group bemoans Stewart's decision, two of their number are attempting a proactive legal move. Murray Warren and Peter Cook -- best known for their part in winning last month's Canadian Supreme Court ruling that said some parents' religious objections were not enough to keep portrayals of gay and lesbian parents out of elementary classes in Surrey -- announced this week that their human rights complaint against the provincial Ministry of Education will be heard by a tribunal next month. Their position is that an absence of positive representations of gays and lesbians in classrooms constitutes illegal discrimination. They're seeking the addition of "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" to the Ministry's 1990s list of so-called "cross-curricular interests," which was designed to promote equal treatment. Warren said the result would be that, "Teachers would get a clear message from the Ministry of Education that not only is it okay to deal with these issues in the classroom, but they must deal with them in their classrooms." When the men asked the Ministry for the change in 2000, the Ministry responded that it would be entirely eliminating the "cross-cultural issues" list -- also known as Appendix C -- as it updated the provincial curriculum. Two U.S. cities acted this week to protect the civil rights of sexual minorities. The Springfield, Illinois City Council voted 8-to-1 to add "sexual orientation" as a category protected from discrimination in areas including employment, housing, and credit. Although the council of the state's capital city did not publicly debate the issue, they voted before a packed house after citizen testimony that was almost equally divided. A dozen other Illinois localities prohibit anti-gay discrimination, but repeated efforts for similar protections at the state level have failed. In heavily gay Key West, Florida, the City Commission voted unanimously to add "gender identity and expression" as a category protected from discrimination in employment, housing, credit, and public accommodations. With the mayor's signature, Key West becomes the first city in the state of Florida to prohibit discrimination against transgenders, although St. Petersburg and the counties of Monroe and Seminole may soon follow. Civil rights ordinances do not come easily. The Nashville, Tennessee City Council won't hold its final vote on discrimination protections for gays and lesbians until later this month, but the Southern Baptist Convention is already threatening to move its 2005 national conference out of the city if it's passed. As it happens, the Nashville Councilmember who introduced the bill, Chris Ferrell, is himself a Southern Baptist, the largest denomination in the United States. Peter Oiler, the Louisiana heterosexual fired by the Winn-Dixie grocery chain for his occasional off-duty cross-dressing, will not be appealing a federal court's ruling against his sex discrimination lawsuit. Fearing that further court defeats would set back transgender civil rights, Oiler and the American Civil Liberties Union let pass this week's deadline for filing an appeal. They still face a hearing next month as Winn-Dixie demands payment of its court costs in the case. The U.S. ban on military service by open gays and lesbians continues. In preparation for a possible war against Iraq, the U.S. Marine Corps has become the first service branch to issue a so-called "stop-loss" order blocking most administrative discharges for the next 12 months -- but gays and lesbians will continue to be processed out. Like the now-expired stop-loss orders issued by all the branches a year ago in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 2001 -- but unlike any issued in the preceding 50 years -- the new Marine Corps order specifically excludes discharges for homosexuality. The International Criminal Court that reviews war crimes will include gay Briton Adrian Fulford on its bench. Fulford's appointment makes him the U.K.'s first-ever openly gay judge. As an attorney, he's made gay and lesbian civil rights a specialty. But although long partnered and long determined to be "out" rather than share the fears of closeted colleagues in the legal profession, Fulford is believed to have spoken publicly about his orientation only in an interview with London's "Gay Times" a decade ago. Even though Fulford's work will be international, it's timely for Britain to have an openly gay jurist. Last month the U.K.'s first lawsuit was filed for anti-gay harassment in the workplace, a move made possible by the national Human Rights Act that brought UK law into line with the civil rights standards of the European Union. Teacher Martin Duffield is seeking 50,000-pounds from Coseley School trustees and from the Dudley Council for failing to protect him from homophobic harassment on the job. The world's oldest gay and lesbian bookstore -- New York City's Oscar Wilde Bookshop, established in 1967 by activist Craig Rodwell -- will be closing its doors forever this month. Like so many other independent bookstores, Oscar Wilde has been steadily losing money as chain stores have increasingly dominated the market. Even New York City will have just one gay bookstore left, Creative Visions. But despite its own financial problems, the 25th annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade will take place on March 1st -- and yes, it will bear that traditional name, organizers announced this week. The group New Mardi Gras, which took over after the previous organizing group went bankrupt in 2002, had decided last month to drop "gay and lesbian" from the title, ostensibly to be more inclusive of a wider range of sexual minority identities and heterosexual allies. Unsurprisingly, a majority of community responses to the name change were strongly negative, and at least one New Mardi Gras board co-chair was prepared to resign unless it was reconsidered. At a meeting this week with volunteers and community groups, the New Mardi Gras board determined to revert to the traditional title. And finally... lesbian drama may have given you some headaches, but British coach Barney Davidson is blaming it for driving him out of women's soccer forever, as the London tabloid "Daily Mail" tells it. He'd turned the Gretna team around to win the Northern Women's League title last season, but now says he just can't take it any more. He said, "I'm at the end of my tether. Some girls spend all the time squabbling rather than actually focusing on the game. Most of the team were fine, but some were an absolute nightmare. I don't have anything against lesbians." Davidson's view that relationship squabbles were affecting Gretna's performance in the field were confirmed by his daughter the team captain and by an openly lesbian team member.