NewsWrap for the week ending June 19, 2004 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #847, distributed 6-21-04) [Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Fenceberry, Rex Wockner, and Greg Gordon] Anchored this week by Cindy Friedman and Rick Watts The nationwide opening of a lesbian-themed film sparked violent demonstrations at several sites in India this week. The Hindu religious right Shiv Sena party staged mass protests against the new movie "Girlfriend". In Bombay, more than 100 demonstrators smashed up a theater, burned effigies and ultimately forced the theater's closure. The protesters were fewer in number in the holy city of Varanasi, but they set a theater on fire and 5 of them apparently consumed poison and were reportedly in serious condition. Police believed that was a hoax, but also detained 20 protesters. Police guards were posted at theaters in those cities and in Bhopal, Lucknow and New Delhi, while some other theaters decided not to run the film. Similar protests had greeted India's first lesbian-themed film "Fire" a few years ago. Lesbian and gay groups are planning demonstrations of their own, but in support of free speech, not "Girlfriend". Lesbian activists who'd seen the film denounced it as a work of male hetero exploitation that stereotypes lesbianism as a psychopathological response to having been abused. Mainstream critics tended to give it a "C". Australia considered gay and lesbian relationships on three fronts this week. After an extended debate and the defeat of a number of Opposition amendments, the House approved the second reading of the Government's bill to restrict legal recognition of marriages and adoptions exclusively to heterosexual couples. The Government's proposal will now be taken up by a Senate inquiry. Meanwhile, the Government's major pension reform package now appears to be acceptable to opposition parties and is expected to move swiftly to enactment. It had stalled for 2 years in part because of its exclusion of gay and lesbian partners. But as the Government had promised at the same time it announced its move on marriage and adoption, the current version expands who can be designated to receive tax-free pension benefits so that they will be accessible to same-gender partners. But there will be no military pension for the surviving partner of a gay Australian servicemember, despite an order from the United Nations Human Rights Committee. The Australian Government responded to the quasi-judicial order this week -- seven months after the deadline the UN body had set. The Government denied the unanimous UN finding of discrimination based on sexual orientation in breach of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Instead it claimed that World War II veteran Larry Cains' death was not war-related and that his partner of 38 years Edward Young had "failed to provide sufficient evidence" that they were de facto partners. Young says that Cains' cause of death is one recognized in the military pension policy. But more significantly, the Government wrote that, "Cains did not at any stage indicate in correspondence with the Department of Veterans' Affairs that he was anything other than single." That sidesteps the fact that any such disclosure would have led to his dishonorable discharge, since gays were banned from the Australian Defence Forces until 1992. It also ignores the lack of any available mechanism for certifying their relationship. But even more importantly, the Government offered no response to the broader thrust of the UN order to change its policies and laws to achieve equality for same-gender partners with respect to veterans entitlements. Since the changes were ordered to avoid future violations of the International Covenant, it could be interpreted as a call for equal treatment much more generally. The mayor who performed France's first marriage of a gay couple has been punished with a month's suspension from that office, the Minister of the Interior ordered this week. Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin's suspension of Noël Mamère came with a statement that, "The punishment handed out to the Mayor of Bègles comes as a result of his decision not to respect the ban on celebrating a marriage ceremony between two persons of the same sex imposed by the chief prosecutor." Mamère is contesting the suspension, which he called "defamatory, out of proportion, scandalous and misplaced" -- but he says he will not marry any more same-gender couples while it is in force. He still serves as a Green Member of Parliament, and his party issued a call for "as many mayors as possible to perform homosexual weddings to force the government to respect the spirit of Europe, which upholds that what is valid in one country should also be in another." While several French mayors had previously indicated that they might marry gay and lesbian couples, openly gay Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë does not appear to be among them. Although he says he disapproves of the suspension of Mamère and has lobbied for equal marriage rights, he's said that he respects the law and is expected to reject the application a gay male couple has filed to be married in Paris. The French Government has insisted that same-gender marriages are not legal, but for several years the nation has offered gay and lesbian couples the option of legal partnerships known as PACS, Pacts of Civil Solidarity, which carry many of the benefits and responsibilities of marriage. Legislation to create legal registered partnerships for gay and lesbian couples continues to advance elsewhere in Europe. This week Switzerland's Senate approved a partnership bill with an 87% majority. The House had already given its support with a 69% majority. The partnerships will carry most marital benefits, but exclude rights to adoption and fertility treatment. Also this week, a cross-party proposal to create registered partnerships in the Czech Republic passed its first reading in the Chamber of Deputies with 59% support. Many deputies were absent at the time and 13% of those present abstained, but proposals to reject the bill outright and to return it for further consideration were both rejected. Czech lawmakers have been wrestling with this issue for about 5 years, rejecting several similar proposals. But polling has found public support growing to become the majority opinion, despite powerful opposition from the Roman Catholic Church. The "National Catholic Reporter," an independent newspaper in the U.S., broke a story this week that when President George W. Bush visited the Pope this month, he asked the Vatican's Secretary of State to push U.S. bishops to be more active in his campaign against equal marriage rights for gays and lesbians. Certainly the Vatican has taken a stronger position than ever against all moves to recognize same-gender relationships, including demanding that Roman Catholic elected officials oppose any such legislation. But as U.S. Catholic bishops met this week, they could not agree on a proposed policy to deny communion to Catholic lawmakers who support the rights of gay and lesbian couples. Instead, with only a handful of dissenters, they left the decision about denying communion up to individual dioceses. Most notably, gay-supportive Catholic and Democratic Presidential hopeful Senator John Kerry has been warned away from several churches. This week Bush spoke by satellite to the national meeting of the United States' largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, and won his biggest ovation for declaring, "I support a constitutional amendment to protect marriage as the union of a man and a woman." The SBC's outgoing leader also called on the meeting to lobby for that so-called Federal Marriage Amendment, and delegates approved a formal resolution in support of it. Church-goers are the heart of Bush's Republican Party, but a move to expand churches' direct involvement in political activity was foiled this week as a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives deleted a rider from the American Jobs Creation Act. Two sections of that bill would have preserved the tax-exempt status of churches if they engaged in a limited amount of the partisan political activity that's currently denied to all tax-exempt organizations. The so-called "Safe Harbor for Churches" sections offered the peculiarly phrased notion that religious leaders could "unintentionally" endorse or oppose candidates up to 3 times each year without damaging their institutions' tax-exempt status. The Federal Marriage Amendment will reach the U.S. Senate floor in mid-July, that chamber's Republican leadership announced this week. They admitted the measure may not win the required two-thirds supermajority in the Senate, but shrugged off suggestions that the timing had something to do with the Democratic National Convention that will come two weeks later. No vote has yet been scheduled in the House of Representatives, where Republican Majority Leader Tom DeLay said, "We want to pass it, we just don't want to bring it up." The U.S. Senate did give two-thirds support this week to adding "real or perceived sexual orientation" as a victim category in the federal hate crimes law. "Gender" would also be a new victim category, which some believe would effectively cover transgenders. The move came in the form of an amendment to the $422-billion-dollar Defense Department Authorization bill. It's the fourth time the Senate has approved the hate crimes protection, but the House never has. There's some hope for success this time in the fact that 18 Republicans joined all the Senate Democrats present in voting for the move. Yet it's been suggested by some that Republican support for the hate crimes measure is meant to protect them from accusations of anti-gay bigotry when they vote for the Federal Marriage Amendment. And finally... while most transsexuals have experienced considerable isolation, there's a remarkable exception in Saudi Arabia, the "Okaz" newspaper reported. Saudi Arabia generally opposes sex reassignment surgery on both religious and medical grounds, but the operations have been performed there in cases where some physiological reason can be cited. In a single family, five siblings who had all been labeled female were found to have more male than female hormones. Three have already undergone sex reassignment surgery and the other two are scheduled for it soon. According to one physician, it's a national "first" to have five transsexuals in one family.