NewsWrap
for the week ending March 15, 2003
(As broadcast on This Way Out program #781, distributed 3-17-03)
[Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill,
Rex Wockner and Greg Gordon]


Anchored by Christopher Gaal and Cindy Friedman


  The Australian Capital Territory's Legislative Assembly this week approved 
its Government's omnibus equality legislation.  The Gay, Lesbian and 
Transgender Amendment Bill amends 37 territorial laws to remove 
discriminatory language and provide more legal protections.  It extends to 
same-gender domestic partners most of the legal status granted to cohabiting 
unmarried heterosexual couples, but not the right to adopt children together. 
 Among several amendments with respect to transgenders, it notably offers 
them a choice if they are arrested as to whether a male or female police 
officer will perform a body search. 
The governing Labor Party's bill also won support from the Assembly's Greens 
and Australian Democrats, but Liberal Members opposed it.
The ACT's Chief Minister John Stanhope said, "Everyone is entitled to 
respect, dignity and the right to participate in society and to receive the 
protection of the law regardless of their sexual orientation or gender 
identity.  My Government's new legislation now formalizes these principles 
into law. ... After our extensive consultation with the community, I feel 
confident that these progressive laws reflect the Canberra community's 
values."
The ACT Government will be reporting to its legislature in May on responses 
to its discussion paper regarding anti-defamation protections for gays and 
lesbians, parental status of same-gender couples, and legal recognition of 
transgenders.


  Britain's House of Commons this week voted by a more than 4-to-1 margin to 
repeal the notorious anti-gay Section 28 of the Local Government Bill.  
That's the Thatcher-era prohibition against local governments using public 
funds to "promote homosexuality" or "the acceptability of homosexuality as a 
pretended family relationship."  
With Conservative Party Members of Parliament free to vote their consciences 
this time, more than a quarter of them joined the overwhelming Labour 
majority in supporting repeal.  They included some of the Tory leadership, 
although party leader Iain Duncan Smith opposed repeal.
Repeal of Section 28 has been a top target of gay and lesbian activists since 
its enactment in 1986.  But while the Labour Party-dominated Commons has 
previously supported repeal, the real battle lies ahead in the more 
conservative House of Lords, which has blocked repeal in the past.  The 
national gay and lesbian advocacy group Stonewall this week launched a 
massive repeal campaign called "Let's Nail Section 28" in anticipation of the 
Lords' debate next month. 
Scotland's parliament repealed its version of Section 28 in 2000 despite a 
million-pound opposition campaign by the religious right, but the law remains 
in effect in England and Wales. 


  But the man known as the architect of the U.K. "devolution" that gave 
Scotland and Wales their autonomous parliaments has ended his 34-year 
political career in the face of media allegations of gay cruising.
Similar allegations in 1998 had forced Ron Davies to resign as the U.K.'s 
Secretary for Wales and to leave the British Parliament, but he continued to 
represent Caerphilly in the Welsh Assembly.  Since that so-called "moment of 
madness" on London's Clapham Commons, Davies had identified himself as 
bisexual and received counseling for his addiction to risky sex.  He'd also 
divorced, remarried and fathered another child.
But last week the tabloid "Sun" said he'd engaged in sex with a male stranger 
in a public woodland.  Davies initially denied that at the time alleged he 
was or could have been at that place -- Tog Hill in Somerset, listed as a 
cruising area on a gay Web site -- but claimed later to realize it was a rest 
stop he'd made while driving.  He never admitted to the sex, only that he'd 
taken a walk in the woods because he liked to watch badgers there.  Soon 
after meeting with leaders of Wales' Labour Party, Davies announced that he 
will not run for re-election in May.


  Also dropping out of the Welsh elections this week was candidate for 
Llanelli John Jenkins, after his Welsh Conservative Party declared his 
homophobic Web postings "totally unacceptable."  Jenkins had asserted that 
homosexuality is a medical condition and that gays should be excluded from 
marriage and military service.


  Russia will ban gay men and transgenders from peacetime military service 
beginning July 1, the government newspaper "Rossiyskaya Gazeta" reported this 
week.  New medical guidelines include a statement that those "who have 
problems with their identity and sexual preferences" can be drafted only in 
wartime.   
In an interview with Interfax, Chair of the Russian Defense Ministry's 
Central Military Medical Commission Major General Valery Kulikov said of the 
ban, "This is not a medical matter.  The classification of diseases by the 
World Health Organization does not include such a disease.  The new rules are 
based on international norms.  So we are not calling this a diagnosis.  
However, people [of nontraditional sexual orientation] suffer some 
psychological changes, while people with personality disorders are not 
eligible for the draft in compliance with medical examination rules for 
servicemen."
The new guidelines also exclude people with HIV.
Draftees still comprise most of the more than one million Russians in 
uniform, although the Ministry of Defense hopes to have a professional force 
by 2007.


  In the U.S., the Conservative branch of Judaism has agreed to reconsider 
its bans on ordaining open gays and lesbians and blessing same-gender 
couples.  A formal request for the review was submitted by the president of 
the Rabbinical Assembly, and was sought by the branch's lay president and 
others.  In a process that could take years, a panel of 25 rabbis will debate 
whether current interpretation still upholds the Biblical ban on homosexual 
acts.  Conservative Judaism last formally considered the question in 1992, 
when the decision was to bar gays and lesbians from rabbinical schools but 
not to actively investigate students or applicants.  Those rulings were 
accompanied by a call to synagogues to welcome gays and lesbians and their 
families.


  Meanwhile, the Reform branch of Judaism -- which ordains gays and lesbians 
and holds ceremonies for same-gender couples -- has accepted a transgendered 
person into its seminary for what's believed to be the first time.  Transman 
Reuben Zellman was open about his status throughout the process of his 
admission to the Hebrew Union College, where the director of admissions 
described him as "an outstanding candidate" who was accepted "on his own 
merits."


  But in Tanzania, some 300 Muslims turned out in Dar es Salaam this week to 
protest a U.S. gay tour group's planned visit -- even though the visit itself 
had been cancelled.  Organized and led by the local Council of Muslim 
Clerics, the protesters carried placards on a long march through the city 
before stopping for a rally.  There cleric Sheikh Mussa Kileo denounced all 
homosexuals, describing Islamic law's prescription of the death penalty as a 
fair judgment not only for them, but for all those who had been part of 
planning the tour.  He called on Muslims to keep what he called an obnoxious 
habit from entering Tanzania.  A Christian leader, Archbishop of the Full 
Gospel Bible Fellowship Zakaria Kakobe, had also previously threatened a 
demonstration against the tour.  Another group had posted leaflets urging 
harassment of the tour group.
However, Tanzania's Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism Zakia Meghji, 
had announced that his government has no objection to gay tourism.
At least 100 U.S. gays had been scheduled to begin a month-long visit this 
week, but reportedly that's been rescheduled for January.


  And in predominantly Muslim Egypt, the retrial of 50 of the so-called 
"Cairo 52" -- men arrested in a police raid on a gay-friendly Nile riverboat 
club almost 2 years ago -- this week resulted in acquittals for 29 and 
convictions on debauchery charges for 21.  Those convicted were sentenced to 
3 years' imprisonment.  The outcome echoes the November findings of the 
Emergency State Security Court.  In the face of widespread international 
protest, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had ordered the retrial in a 
civilian court.  Although the new sentences are longer than those ordered by 
the security court, in the civilian justice system the convicted men have the 
opportunity to appeal to a higher court, and a number are expected to do so.  
Another difference is that all the defendants have been free on bail, 
compared to the lengthy incarceration they suffered previously, under what 
human rights watchdog Amnesty International has reported as inhumane 
conditions and torture.
Continuing international denunciations have not stopped Egypt's jihad against 
gay men, which has resulted in dozens and possibly hundreds of arrests over 
the last two years.  Another 13 gay men were arrested in a raid on a private 
apartment in Cairo last month.  Also late last month, an Egyptian appellate 
court upheld one man's conviction resulting from a police Internet sting, 
which has come to be a common practice.


  And finally... it's been said that everybody loves a man in uniform, and 
apparently in Thailand it's the revealingly tight brown uniform of the 
police.  They're celebrated on a growing number of Web sites, and beat cops 
often attract crowds.  Agence France Presse has reported that emergency calls 
to police are turning out to be phone sex about 400 times each month -- and a 
supervisor at the emergency call center says that about 60% of those calls 
are from gay men.