NewsWrap for the week ending December 18, 2004 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #873, distributed 12-20-04) [Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Rex Wockner, and Greg Gordon] Reported this week by Dean Elzinga and Cindy Friedman Spain's Parliament this week unanimously endorsed a resolution recognizing the persecution of gays and lesbians under dictator Generalissimo Francisco Franco. To extended applause, President of the Parliament Martin Marin read aloud the declaration extending the victims "moral rehabilitation for all the suffering they endured." Franco took power in 1939 after a civil war that featured many murders of gay men. He ruled until his death in 1975 and incarcerated without trial as many as 5,000 gays and lesbians at two so-called "sexual re-education camps". Some of those inmates were not released until 1979, when a general amnesty was declared. Lesbigay civil rights groups hope there will be financial compensation for those victims after a government commission completes its review of oppressions by the Franco regime. What may be Italy's first legal protections from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity were enacted last month by the Tuscany Regional Council. Those who violate the law can be fined up to 3,000 Euros. Tuscany will also allow same-gender partners to make medical decisions for each other. The most notorious employment discrimination in the U.S. is the ban on military service by open gays and lesbians, but it's facing new challenges this month. Two new federal lawsuits have been filed that challenge the ban, stimulated by last year's landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down state laws against private non-commercial homosexual acts between consenting adults. One was filed this month by a dozen former servicemembers who were discharged for their sexual orientation and are seeking reinstatement. They were organized by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, which is encouraged that the nation's current need for military personnel makes this a good time for the case to be heard. The other was filed in mid-October by the gay and lesbian political group Log Cabin Republicans on behalf of its members who are currently in military service. It claims the so-called "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy discriminates against gays and lesbians in violation of their constitutional rights to free speech, due process and equal protection under the law. A hopeful sign for all these plaintiffs is a ruling this month by the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals in a heterosexual case. That court struck down the sodomy conviction of soldier Kenneth Bullock, who had pleaded guilty to consensual oral sex with an adult female civilian. That's believed to be the first military court decision upholding a right to such acts in private. The military law Bullock was charged under, Article 125, has also been used against homosexual acts, as it prohibits "unnatural carnal copulation with another person of the same or opposite sex or with an animal." This law has often been cited in support of the military's current anti-gay policy. The Army appellate court specifically referred to the U.S. Supreme Court's "Lawrence" decision and its recognition of a "zone of privacy" for consenting adults to engage in private sex acts without government interference. Singapore is playing Scrooge this year, acting to prohibit a Christmas party organized by a subsidiary of a gay Web site, Agence France Presse reports. Fridae.com subsidiary Jungle Media had applied to run an all-night party with major international corporate sponsorship on December 25th to be called SnowBall'04. Similar parties had been held in 2002 and 2003. But last week the government responded with a statement that, "Police's assessment is that the event is likely to be organized as a gay party which is contrary to public intere st in general. Singapore is still, by and large, a conservative and traditional society. Hence, the police cannot approve any application for an event which goes against the moral values of a large majority of Singaporeans." This week the Home Affairs Ministry rejected Jungle Media's appeal of the police ruling, saying the party would be an "affront and unacceptable to the large majority of Singaporeans." The Ministry appeared to be concerned about intimate behavior in public, even though the party was planned to be held in a nightclub. Marawi City in the Philippines has gone even further, adopting an ordinance to force gay men and transgenders back into the closet. That's part of a package of 15 new ordinances that the city government describes as a "cleaning and cleansing" program for the only Islam-dominated city in the nation. Mayor Omar Solitario Ali told the "Philippine Star" that, "Gays or 'badings' must not go out in public in female dresses, colorful make-up, earrings or other ornaments to express their inclinations for femininity." Local Islamic police, the "muttawa," will punish violators by pouring paint on their heads. Ali said individuals were still free to cross-dress inside their own homes. On the flip side, though, a salon in the Argentine city of Cordoba published an ad last month seeking a hair stylist -- with the caveat that men who were *not* gay shouldn't apply. The owner told Universidad radio, "I have nothing against heterosexuals, but women feel more comfortable if the person taking care of them is gay. ... I've had a lot of complaints in the past -- most male hair stylists are trying to pick up the women." Also in Argentina in late November, about 10,000 people marched in Buenos Aires' 13th annual pride parade. The theme was "All of society for the right to diversity -- civil unions for the whole country." Argentina's first gay radio station also began broadcasting recently, available on the Web at ArgentinaGayRadio.com. South Africa now has a weekly two-hour broadcast on Radio 2000, called "The Tuesday Night Show" and described as "non-stereotype radio ... aimed primarily at the gay and lesbian community." Long-time North American radio and Massachusetts TV personality David Brudnoy died last week at the age of 64. He publicly identified himself as a gay man in 1994. He also publicly disclosed at that time that he had AIDS, but it was complications of an unrelated cancer that ended his life. He wrote for numerous publications and described his struggle with HIV in his memoir "Life Is Not a Rehearsal". The creator of the popular fictional gay detective Dave Brandstetter, novelist and poet Joseph Hansen, died late last month at the age of 81 of heart and lung problems. Of his hero of a dozen novels Hansen once said, "My joke was to take the true hard-boiled character in American fiction tradition and make him homosexual. He was going to be a nice man, a good man, and he was going to do his job well." Hansen himself was also openly gay but had a rewarding marriage of more than fifty years to his late wife Jane, a lesbian, and they're survived by their son, transman Daniel Hansen. The founder of the U.S. National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, Leroy Aarons, died late last month at the age of 70 from complications of cancer. In his own career as a reporter, editor and executive, he identified himself to co-workers as a gay man in 1978. But he only did so publicly in 1990 when speaking to the convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, as he expressed his pride in the group for having commissioned a survey of gays and lesbians working in news. The founding of NLGJA came a few months later, and Aarons was its first president. The group's success in improving working conditions can be seen by the repeat in 2000 of that 1990 survey, with the number who were "out" in the newsroom up by more than half and the number who considered their working environment a good one for them quadrupled. He's survived by his partner of 24 years Joshua Boneh. Scotland has said a final farewell to one of its early activists for lesbigay equality, Cecil Sinclair, who died in late October of heart and lung problems at the age of 73. A career civil servant, Sinclair joined the Scottish Minorities Group in 1971, when homosexual acts were still criminal offenses. SMG is now known as OutRight Scotland. In 1974 Sinclair helped organize the group's Edinburgh Befrienders telephone help line service, now known as the Lothian Gay and Lesbian Switchboard, and anonymously provided the money that made the purchase of its site possible. Sinclair also spoke about both groups on national radio and television. And finally... do butch women really have no interest in fashion, or is it just that fashion has ignored them? A San Francisco area lesbian couple is betting there's a market for clothes in masculine styles designed for female bodies, among butch women, "bois" and even transgender men. Designer Aisha Pew and her partner Breonna Cole presented their new line last week at a show that had to turn more than 100 people away for lack of seating. Pew told the enthusiastic audience at the show that, "The point of it is bigger than clothes. It's about feeling good on the outside and representing who you are on the inside." Cole added, "Having a damn good pair of pants on can go a long way if you're having a bad day." Pew first ventured into clothing after Cole's infant niece joined their household and inspired her to design a jumpsuit with snap-on front panels that could easily be changed. She markets those so-called "snapsies" through her company Chocolate Baby Designs. The Web site ChocolateBabyDesigns.com now displays Pew's moderately priced collection of 20 pants and 18 shirts. The couple's line of butch women's clothes is appropriately named Studded.