NewsWrap
for the 2 weeks ending December 6, 2003


(As broadcast on This Way Out program #819, distributed 12-8-03)
[Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Fenceberry, Rex 
Wockner, and Greg Gordon]


Anchored this week by Jon Beaupré and Cindy Friedman


  Sixty percent of Switzerland's House of Representatives this week voted in 
favor of a bill to create registered partnerships for same-gender couples.  
Partners would be recognized as next-of-kin with legal status equal to married 
spouses in areas including insurance, pensions, taxation, and inheritance.  The 
partnerships would not extend rights to adopt as a couple, to obtain 
fertility treatment, or for partners to share a surname.  The bill now moves to the 
Swiss Senate.  It's facing heated opposition from the religious right Federal 
Democratic Union, which has vowed to put the issue before voters if it's enacted.


  Britain's Parliament will also be considering legal recognition of 
same-gender couples for the first time, as the Government's proposal was formally 
announced last week in the ceremonial Queen's Speech.  The current version would 
create "civil partnerships" conferring status equivalent to marriage in areas 
including hospitalization, immunity from testifying against a partner in court, 
tenancy, pensions in both the public and private sectors, state benefits 
including compensation when a partner is the victim of a fatal accident or 
criminal injury, income-related benefits, immigration, and parental rights.  Partners 
would be legally obliged to financially support each other and each other's 
children.  Partners would inherit from each other as married spouses do, but 
extension of the marital inheritance tax exemption to civil partnerships is 
still under consideration.  If enacted, the measure would take effect in 2010 in 
England and Wales, although the Scottish Executive has indicated it will also 
adopt it.
Britain's Opposition Conservative Party has already announced that its 
Members of Parliament will be allowed to vote their consciences on the bill, and 
even more remarkably has made its only openly gay MP Alan Duncan its spokesperson 
on the issue.  But while the ruling Labour Party's huge majority all but 
guarantees the bill's passage in the Parliament, opposition is still expected in 
the House of Lords.


  Some Christian groups are lobbying hard against the bill, but it has strong 
public support.  The Government reported that the more than 3,000 responses 
it gathered during public consultation on the bill ran more than 80% in favor.
Even Lord George Carey, who was no friend to gays and lesbians during his 
tenure as Archbishop of Canterbury and head of the Anglican church, said that 
"there may well be a case for looking sympathetically at civil partnerships" -- 
as long as they were not called marriage and were not celebrated in churches.
Scotland's Anglican leader Professor Iain Torrance was more enthusiastic, 
denying that partnerships constitute an attack on the sanctity of marriage, 
calling them a matter of "justice," and declaring, "Here we see a mechanism which 
will enable people who lead very mobile lives to have greater faithfulness and 
greater structures in their lives -- who are we to condemn it?" 
Britain's Government has also published a new Domestic Violence, Crime and 
Victims Bill which provides for equal treatment of gay and lesbian couples.


  The Queen's Speech also heralded the Gender Recognition Bill, which for the 
first time would allow British transgenders to be legally recognized in their 
self-identified gender.  Introduced this week in the House of Lords, it would 
allow them to revise their birth certificates and to legally marry a partner 
of the opposite gender.  Clergy could decline to perform their marriages, 
however.  While sex reassignment surgery is not required, individuals will have to 
present a diagnosis of gender dysphoria and evidence that they have lived at 
least 2 years, and intend to continue to live, in their self-identified 
gender.  If enacted, the measure will apply in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, 
and the Scottish Executive has said it will also adopt it.


  Britain's new law prohibiting workplace discrimination and harassment based 
on actual or perceived sexual orientation went into effect this week.  The 
largest private sector labor union there, Amicus, celebrated the new protections 
with a release of 200 balloons whose varied colors represented diversity.  
The same day, 6 unions coordinated by the Trade Unions Council were arguing in 
the High Court against the new law's exemption for religious groups.  Although 
the Government is the target of the unions' lawsuit, the court has granted the 
religious right umbrella group Evangelical Alliance intervenor status to 
argue for what it calls "religious autonomy".


  Britain has been pushed into all these advances by the standards of the 
European Union, yet four-fifths of the 15 EU member states have failed a deadline 
on lesbigay job rights, according to the International Lesbian and Gay 
Association.  ILGA-Europe noted that the EU Employment Framework Directive adopted 3 
years ago prescribed implementation by December 2nd.  Yet the group said that 
on that date only Belgium, Denmark and Sweden had met the Directive's minimum 
standard for explicit workplace discrimination protections, although Ireland, 
the Netherlands and the U.K. had taken notable steps.  Some EU member states 
have yet to even introduce such legislation, while others have not yet enacted 
it or have adopted weaker laws.  ILGA called on the EU nations to stand by 
their initial commitment to the Directive and not to water down its provisions.


  Latvia hopes to join the European Union, and in mid-November its Parliament 
approved a new law against workplace and school discrimination and harassment 
which includes sexual orientation among its protected categories.  The Law on 
Equal Opportunities becomes effective in 2005 and will be enforced by the 
Inspector of Equality Between Men and Women.


  The Parliament of Australia's Northern Territory last week voted 15-to-9 to 
approve an omnibus bill towards equality for gays and lesbians.  
The most contentious item in the 12-hour debate was lowering the age of 
consent for sex between males from 18 to 16, the age of consent for females.    
In the course of that discussion, one Member of the Legislative Assembly 
described his personal experience of being sexually assaulted by an adult male 
employer several times over a period of months when he was 13, including 
circulating a copy of the graphic report he made to police at the time.  That MLA, the 
Opposition Country Labor Party's Macdonnell John Elferink, proposed that the 
age of consent be equalized at 18.  
The Australian Labor Party Government countered that the bill included severe 
penalties for sexual offenses against 16- and 17-year-olds.  


  The move had strong support from the Dean of Darwin's Anglican cathedral, 
Mike Nixon, who denounced opponents' homophobic Bible-bashing and told 
reporters that, "I feel gay people are discriminated against by society and the church 
to a point of leading quite a few young people to a high rate of suicide...  
We need to take on board and accept these homosexual people are just as much 
loved by God as is anybody else." 
The Northern Territory was the last Australian region with a higher age of 
consent for homosexual acts, although Queensland maintains a higher age of 
consent for anal intercourse regardless of the parties' genders.
The NT Government's Gay and Lesbian Law Reform Bill has other very 
significant elements.  It removes some gay-specific exemptions from the territorial 
Anti-Discrimination Act.  It also extends some legal recognition to same-gender 
couples.


  But in Australia's national legislature, the Coalition Government and the 
Opposition Australian Labor Party this week joined to defeat a move by the 
smaller Australian Democratic Party to extend a military benefit to gay and 
lesbian servicemembers' same-gender domestic partners.  The ADP sought equal 
treatment for those couples in a bill involving housing loans for members of the 
Australian Defence Force.  The government's refusal to extend benefits to the 
partners of gay and lesbian servicemembers has already been denounced by a 
quasi-judicial United Nations body and by Australia's Human Rights and Equal 
Opportunity Commission.
Last week the ADP reintroduced their Sexuality and Gender Identity 
Discrimination Bill, a comprehensive civil rights package which would hold Australia's 
federal government to the same standard that most of its states and territories 
have adopted.


  A Brazilian court last week for the first time recognized a same-gender 
relationship as a common-law marriage qualifying a foreign partner for a 
permanent visa.  Brazilian Toni Reis and British-born David Ian Harrad first met in 
Britain in 1990.  For their first 6 years, Reis repeatedly left and returned to 
England on short-term visas, while Harrad has repeatedly left and returned to 
Brazil on tourist visas since 1995.  Facing deportation, Harrad petitioned the 
court for relief.  A federal judge in Curitiba ruled that, "Although they are 
of the same sex, the authors of the petition live in a state of matrimony, a 
fact which extends, to Mr. Harrad, the right of permanent residence."  The 
decision cited Brazil's Constitution, which explicitly prohibits discrimination 
based on what it calls "sexual preference."


  But finally... this week a Brazilian mayor made headlines with a decree 
prohibiting residence -- and even presence -- in his town to what he called 
"members of the class known as homosexuals" and "any element linked to this class". 
 They "can bring no benefits whatever to the town," according to Elcio Berti, 
mayor of the 9,000 residents of Bocaiuva do Sul in the state of Parana.  
Citing the city's struggle for social projects and need to attract industry, his 
statement not only argued for higher birthrates and preservation of a "family 
atmosphere," but emphasized a need for "people with 'strong fists' to operate 
production tools."  
Parana's gay organization Grupo Dignidad -- which includes Toni Reis -- 
quickly arranged a protest sit-in at city hall and appealed to the courts.  State 
prosecutors were just as quick to charge Berti with illegal discrimination and 
abuse of power.  Conviction could mean loss of his elected office and up to 4 
years imprisonment.
Berti has a history of issuing edicts that are struck down by the courts, 
including a local ban on birth control.
But even more remarkable is who he apparently does want to come to Bocaiuva 
do Sul: extraterrestrials.  He claims to be in regular contact with them and is 
working to build a landing pad for UFO's.