NewsWrap for the week ending April 12, 2003 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #785, distributed 4-14-03) [Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Fenceberry, Katharine Kimball, KUNM-FM/Albuquerque's Nick Layman & Paul Ingles,Rex Wockner and Greg Gordon] Anchored by Dean Elzinga and Cindy Friedman High school and college students across the U.S. and beyond this week observed the 7th annual National Day of Silence, to raise awareness of harassment and discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students. Observances on some 2,000 campuses were believed to involve a total of more than 200,000 students, making this year's the biggest yet. Participants vowed to remain silent for nine hours including the school day, making their point by distributing cards with statistics on campus homophobia that read, "My deliberate silence echoes that silence which is caused by harassment, prejudice and discrimination. I believe that ending the silence is the first step towards fighting these injustices. Think about the voices you are not hearing today. What are you going to do to end the silence?" Many campuses also held rallies, marches and educational events, with some making the day part of annual pride celebrations. Conservative protests by parents and students were also stepped up. One California school district told teachers that students observing the Day of Silence must respond if called on in class, and an Alabama principal prohibited students from passing out the cards based on a rule against distributing "political, religious or issue-driven" literature on campus. And sadly, a 16-year-old girl in Concord, Massachusetts was found beaten unconscious near her home the day after she participated in a Day of Silence assembly and was harassed with homophobic epithets for doing so. Day of Silence activities were widely covered by media. Proclamations of the Day were issued by politicians including California Governor Gray Davis, Connecticut Governor John Rowland and Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm. A panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously this week that public school administrators can be held liable if they fail to act effectively against homophobic harassment of students. Although the case in question involved a California school district, the appellate court's findings also apply in 8 other Western states. One male and five female students allege that they experienced severe harassment and some violence over a 7-year period in the 1990s at a junior high school and a high school in the Northern California town of Morgan Hill. When they notified school officials, they were brushed off, except in the case of a gang bashing for which only one assailant was punished. The school district argued that its anti-discrimination policy should shield it from lawsuits. But the three judges said that officials could be held liable for having failed to effectively enforce it, thereby violating the students' constitutional right to equal treatment under the law. This means the students' lawsuit against the school district can proceed in federal court. The El Paso, Texas City Council voted unanimously this week to add both "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" to the categories protected by the city's civil rights ordinance. The ordinance prohibits discrimination within the city limits in "any of the accommodations, advantages, facilities or services offered to the general public", whether by individuals, associations or corporations. In a still bigger U.S. advance against discrimination, New Mexico's Governor Bill Richardson this week signed into law both a civil rights bill and a hate crimes bill that include both "gender identity" and "sexual orientation". The civil rights bill prohibits discrimination in employment, housing, credit, public accommodations, and union membership. It makes New Mexico only the 14th of the 50 U.S. states to protect gays and lesbians from discrimination and only the 3rd to protect transgenders. The hate crimes bill makes New Mexico the 28th state to increase penalties for crimes motivated by homophobia and the 6th to do so for bias based on gender identity. Both new laws go into effect on July 1st. At the signing ceremony before a cheering, weeping crowd of activists who had lobbied long and hard for the new laws, Richardson announced he was also doing by executive order something he was unable to find support for in the legislature: New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson: "I am today signing an Executive Order... that will require state government to... provide domestic partners of state employees the benefits now reserved and available only for spousal partners (cheering)... By signing this order, domestic partners will now have access to affordable health care. This is, by the way, a promise that I made that you didn't ask me to keep." (laughter) In a first for Costa Rica, late last month a government agency granted a transwoman "provisional custody" of a child, the first step towards legal adoption. The transwoman known as Mairena has cared for the 9-year-old boy since he was a baby, and as PANI, the National Infancy Patronage, wrote, "provided him food, care, upbringing, education, assistance, recreation, health, clothing, lodging, love, and attended to his other needs that today are considered as rights, fulfilling the role of a good parent." The Costa Rican lesbian and gay group CIPAC/DDHH views the PANI ruling as an expansion of the definition of family that will advance legal recognition of same-gender couples. Britain's highest court, the Law Lords, this week rejected a transwoman's bid for legal recognition of her 22-year marriage to a man. Elizabeth Bellinger was married to her husband Michael by a registrar who didn't question her gender, but two lower courts had previously declared the marriage invalid. Like those courts, the Law Lords expressed great sympathy towards Bellinger, and one declared that the couple "deserves our respect and admiration." But they ruled that current British law neither recognizes sex change nor allows for any but heterosexual marriage, and said it is up to the Parliament rather than the courts to change that. Bellinger is expected to appeal to the European courts, which have already found that Britain's treatment of transsexuals violates the European convention -- something the Law Lords acknowledged. Britain's Government has been drafting new legislation on transsexuals for some time but it's not known when that will be introduced. The European Parliament this week adopted a non-binding resolution calling on European Union member states to broaden the terms of "family reunification". Included in the expansion are unmarried partners and registered partners, if the host nation already extends legal recognition to such couples. The resolution applies to individuals who are residents in but not citizens of an EU member nation, allowing them to bring family members to join them in the EU. The European Parliament this week also adopted a resolution calling on E gypt to end its persecution of gay men. The resolution specifically calls for an immediate end to all criminal prosecutions based on homosexuality, which in the last two years have already resulted in dozens of convictions and possibly hundreds of detentions. The resolution also reminds Egypt of a treaty obligation to protect human rights, and calls on Egypt to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation. Arguments were heard this week in Australia's highest court as two gay men seek asylum from persecution in their native Bangladesh. Both Australia's Refugee Review Tribunal and the Federal Court of Australia have previously denied their application, despite the men's claims of having been stoned, whipped, and ordered killed in a fatwah from their local Islamic council, once their sexual orientation had become known. A spokesperson for Australia's Immigration Ministry told reporters that, "Homosexuality is in the government's view not a valid reason for seeking asylum under the UN Convention on Refugees." With this case, the nation's High Court will take up that question for the first time. And finally... the prestigious Pulitzer Prizes were awarded this week, including a couple of surprises. Cuban-born Florida playwright Nilo Cruz -- who's openly gay, according to the venerable gay and lesbian magazine "The Advocate" -- became the first Latino ever to win the Pulitzer for Drama. His play "Anna & the Tropics" was only the second ever to win that honor without having been staged in New York City, although the prize makes it a certainty that it will be soon. And few expected that Cruz' work would beat out the other two drama finalists: Richard Greenberg's gay-themed baseball comedy "Take Me Out", a success in both New York and London, and legendary gay three-time Pulitzer winner Edward Albee's gay themed "The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?". Still more surprising was the Fiction selection "Middlesex", the first time a Pulitzer has gone to a work centered on an intersexed person. The author, Detroit-born Berlin resident Jeffrey Eugenides, is not intersexed himself, but much of the story is told in the first person, by a Greek-American with a rare gene that creates a female appearance at birth but male characteristics at puberty. The forebearers who carried the gene to the narrator's conception are also followed back 80 years and more, making a sprawling epic. Eugenides told "Deutsche Welle" that, "What I do is take something that might sound freaky at first and make it very normal. I think that if you read 'Middlesex' the idea of hermaphrodites will become much closer to your own experience. It's really symbolic of the changes we all go through at puberty and the sexual confusion that we all have at adolescence." Or as Eugenides fan novelist Jay McInerney told London's "Observer", "Middlesex" is "the great Greek-American hermaphrodite epic that we didn't realize we needed until we read it."