NewsWrap for the week ending February 8, 2003 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #776, distributed 2-10-03) [Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Chris Ambidge, Jason Lin, Rex Wockner, Lucia Chappelle & Greg Gordon] Anchored by Cindy Friedman and Dean Elzinga India's first transgender hijra to win elected office was deposed by a state appellate court this week on gender grounds. Kamla Jaan's election in 2000 as mayor of Katni came by a large margin, and many other hijra have followed her into politics with some success. Most of Jaan's Katni constituents have been happy with her job performance. But the office is specifically reserved for a female, and some who opposed her election won a trial court ruling last year that Jaan is a male and therefore disqualified. That ruling was suspended pending Jaan's appeal to the Madhya Pradesh High Court. That appeals court this week upheld the trial court's ruling and ordered Jaan to resign, declaring the office officially vacant. Jaan argued that she is a woman, and cited a 1994 national government statement endorsed by the Election Commission, which declares that hijra can run for any post, regardless of whether it has been reserved for a male or a female. The appellate decision threatens the status of several other hijra who've won offices reserved for women. Jaan is expected to appeal to the Indian Supreme Court. But elsewhere, gay and lesbian politicians continue to advance. In the Netherlands, the small left-wing D66 Party elected openly gay Member of Parliament Boris Dittrich its leader late last month. It's the second time there's been a gay party leader in the Netherlands parliament -- the Greens were led by Peter Lankhorst in the 1980s. Of course last year the late Pim Fortuyn headed the party that bore his own name, but he was assassinated before the elections that would have put him in the parliament. And openly gay MP from Nova Scotia Scott Brison last week officially declared his candidacy for leadership of Canada's Progressive Conservative Party. After his rousing speech to a cheering crowd, he told the CBC [tape:] "I'm not a gay politician, I'm a politician who is gay." Brison currently serves as the Tories' spokesperson on finance. Four others have already declared their candidacy, and there may be more before the party's leadership convention in June. Although Canada's Tories have long been divided on gay and lesbian issues, outgoing long-time Tory leader Joe Clark welcomed Brison's announcement, and told reporters he believes the party membership "are prepared to judge candidates on their merits" and that sexual orientation will not "be a determining factor one way or the other." Other Canadian gays and lesbians are also getting a chance to stand up and be counted -- in a national survey by the federal government. Although Statistics Canada first asked about same-gender couples in the 2001 census, after some preliminary testing it began last month to inquire about individual sexual orientation in its biennial Canadian Community Health Study. That national year-long telephone poll of 130,000 people includes the question, "Do you consider yourself to be heterosexual, homosexual -- that is, lesbian or gay -- or bisexual?" The move was sparked by civil rights laws, since government lacks the kind of statistical data on sexual orientation that it has for other protected categories such as gender, race and religion. John Fisher, head of Canada's national gay and lesbian group EGALE, believes the poll will undercount lesbigays as many will be unwilling to "out" themselves to the government. In the U.S., a New York state jury this week ordered the nation's highest-ever damages award for an individual in an anti-gay discrimination lawsuit -- more than 11 million dollars against multi-billionaire Leona Helmsley for firing the manager of her Park Lane Hotel, Charles Bell, after learning that he is gay. Bell had sought $40-million-dollars but was pleased with the victory, and said he'd use the funds to help the gay community. Helmsley's attorneys moved quickly seeking to have the judgment set aside, and it's expected that they'll either appeal or settle with Bell for a lesser amount. Helmsley had already settled another anti-gay discrimination claim with a former employee, and two others are pending against her. A major oil business merger last year eliminated a policy against sexual orientation discrimination, the U.S. national gay and lesbian advocacy group Human Rights Campaign announced this week. Conoco had the policy until its August merger with Phillips Petroleum, but the merged entity ConocoPhillips has no such formal written policy. A spokesperson told HRC the company has no plans to change its policy until such time as U.S. federal law is changed to prohibit anti-gay discrimination. HRC condemned the ConocoPhillips move as "shortsighted" and "a slap in the face to its lesbian and gay workers." More than 60% of Fortune 500 corporations, including many oil industry leaders, have such policies. But a similar loss occurred in 1999 when Exxon merged with Mobil to create ExxonMobil, which dropped Mobil's non-discrimination policy and domestic partner benefits. HRC is a co-filer of a fifth attempt this year at a shareholder resolution for ExxonMobil to add sexual orientation to its non-discrimination policy. But the world's oldest gay and lesbian bookstore has been saved at the last gasp. New York City's Oscar Wilde Bookshop, founded in 1967 by the late Craig Rodwell, was set to close last month after years of serious financial losses. But it was announced this week that Deacon Maccubbin of Washington, DC's Lambda Rising Bookstores has stepped in to buy the Wilde store and keep it open. He told the "New York Times" that, "We think this store is way too important to let it close. It is more than a store; it is a part of our history." It was a rocky week for gay and lesbian civil rights in U.S. legislatures. A New Mexico state Senate committee voted to give the full Senate "do-pass" recommendations on both a bill to prohibit job discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identification, and a hate crimes bill including anti-gay attacks. But in the Minnesota House, a bill was introduced to repeal the protections from discrimination that gays and lesbians have enjoyed there since 1993. In Colorado, a House committee killed a domestic partners bill that would have extended rights in the areas of parenting, insurance, inheritance, and finances. In Wyoming -- the state where gay Matthew Shepard was notoriously bashed to death in 1998 -- a state House committee killed the latest attempt to increase penalties for hate-motivated crimes there. At the municipal level, sponsors withdrew two bills to prohibit sexual orientation discrimination in Nashville, Tennessee. Although the measures had been strongly protested by the Southern Baptist Convention, City Councilmembers Chris Ferrell and Eileen Beehan said they would work together to rewrite their measures into a single bill less vulnerable to legal challenge which they'll submit next month. And in Cincinnati, Ohio -- the only city in the U.S. with a charter amendment prohibiting laws making sexual orientation a "protected class" -- the City Council voted 7-to-2 to add "sexual orientation" as a category protected by the city's hate crimes ordinance. The vote came 5 weeks after the widely-reported shooting death in the area of gay Gregory Beauchamp, believed to be a homophobic hate crime. There has yet to be a conviction under Cincinnati's so-called "ethnic intimidation" ordinance since its 1995 enactment. Cincinnati voters passed the anti-gay amendment in 1993, and although it went to the U.S. Supreme Court along with the successful challenge to Colorado's 1992 statewide Amendment 2, the high court sent it back down to a federal appeals court which repeated its own previous affirmation of the city measure almost verbatim. In Finland, a parliamentary committee has approved a bill to criminalize provision of fertility treatment to women not married to or living with a man. Finland's Government opposes the committee's amendments to its own bill on the subject, which would have allowed the treatments for single women and lesbian couples. Some MPs don't want to prohibit the treatments to single women and lesbians, but don't want the public health system to fund them. Finland's Women's Affairs Union denounced the committee's version of the bill as a violation of constitutional guarantees of equality. And finally... apparently there are non-gays who find it profitable to pretend they are. The Russian singing duo TATU -- an abbreviation for the Russian phrase "This Girl Loves That Girl" -- hit number one on British pop charts this week with their debut single "All the Things She Said" [a few seconds of the song plays here, then down & out under:] In their video version, the teenaged singers Julia Volkova and Lena Katina wear school uniforms, and cuddle and kiss each other. That's been controversial in the UK, where the BBC and ITV networks won't play it, and a pair of popular TV hosts and a child welfare group denounced it as pornography for pedophiles and a portrayal of underage sex. TATU's producer believes that criticism increased sales several-fold. But while TATU have played with the image of a lesbian couple, the "Moscow Times" said that, "Few doubt that their sexual ambiguity is a ploy to boost album sales." TATU admitted to World Entertainment News Network that the males they'd been seen with at a Moscow club are their boyfriends, and Volkova said of her relationship with Katina, "There has been something between us, but it's just an emotion. Everyone's so sure we're lesbianki but maybe we're bisexualki. Why not?" And when reporters asked the singers this week if they're lovers, Volkova said, "Maybe and maybe not -- you know we're not going to give a straight answer."