NewsWrap for the week ending January 15, 2005 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #877, distributed 1-17-05) [Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Rex Wockner, and Greg Gordon] Reported this week by Rick Watts and Cindy Friedman Illinois is about to become the 15th U.S. state to make "sexual orientation" a category protected from discrimination under its civil rights law, and the category is defined so as to specifically include transgenders. This week a bill to amend Illinois' Human Rights Act was passed first by the smallest possible majority of the Senate and then by 56% of the House. Democratic Governor Rod Blagojevich actively lobbied for the bill's passage and said he looks forward to signing it. Illinois' Human Rights Act prohibits discrimination in housing, employment and lending. The House vote came on the final day of the "lame duck" outgoing legislature, or it would have had to be reintroduced once the new legislature was sworn in. About three-fourths of House Republicans opposed the bill while more than four-fifths of Democrats supported it. House opponents cited fears of legal same-gender marriage, cross-dressers using opposite sex bathrooms, and what one called "a much, much bigger agenda". The religious right group Family-PAC promised a legal challenge to the amendment. Roman Catholic Cardinal Francis George reportedly personally lobbied Catholic legislators to oppose the bill. More typical of what's happening in U.S. state legislatures was the approval this week by the Kansas Senate of a proposed constitutional amendment to deny both marriage and its benefits to same-gender couples. Republican Senate leadership held the vote in the first week of the new legislative session, hoping the measure will go on the ballot for elections in early April. That would require House approval in early February, but in the last session a similar Senate-passed measure failed to win the required two-thirds majority in the House. At least eight other states are expected to consider constitutional amendments to restrict marriage exclusively to "one man and one woman" this year. Florida's ban on adoptions by gays and lesbians will continue, after the U.S. Supreme Court this week declined to take up a challenge to it. The Florida law is unique among the United States. It was challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of four gay men, but a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals upheld it a year ago. That ruling will stand with the national high court's rejection this week, which as usual came without comment. Lesbigay activists reacted with dismay, particularly celebrity and adoptive parent Rosie O'Donnell, who identified herself as a lesbian on national TV in her continuing campaign to strike down the Florida ban. But Israel's Supreme Court this week issued a landmark decision opening second-parent adoptions to same-gender partners. Lesbians Tal and Avital Yaros-Hakak have been living together for fifteen years, and in that time have borne three children by artificial insemination using anonymous donors. They've been trying to co-adopt each other's children since 1997. At that time a family court denied them parental rights but did give both of them joint legal guardianship of the children, a pioneering move at the time that has since become commonplace. They appealed to a district court which also denied the adoptions. Now a 7-to-2 majority of the Supreme Court has returned their petitions for adoption to the family court, ordering that court to make its determination based on "the welfare of the child[ren]". However, the women had limited their request, referring to "special circumstances" and not asking to be recognized as "a couple". The Supreme Court similarly limited its finding, declaring in the majority opinion that, "We are not ruling that a single-sex couple are 'a man and wife together'. The decision to return the case to the family court is not a recognition of the status of the same-sex family unit." Nonetheless, conservative activists and politicians reacted strongly against the decision, primarily on religious grounds. But liberal politicians welcomed it, and the legal advocacy group New Family cheered it as a "revolutionary" step towards equal treatment of gays and lesbians. Pope John Paul II this week announced his agenda for the year in his so-called "state of the world address" to the Vatican's diplomatic corps, and opposition to legal recognition of same-gender couples topped the list. He said, "Today the family is often threatened by social and cultural pressures that tend to undermine its stability; but in some countries the family is also threatened by legislation which -- at times directly -- challenge its natural structure, which is and must necessarily be that of a union between a man and a woman founded on marriage. ... [Family] must never be undermined by laws based on a narrow and unnatural vision of man." The 77-million-member global Anglican Communion continues to wrestle with the 2003 consecration of openly partnered gay Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire. The global church's position is that its clergy should have sexual activity only with an opposite-sex marriage partner. This week the bishops of the U.S. branch, the 2.3-million-member Episcopal Church, responded to the recommendations of a commission appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury to try to heal the resulting split in the world church. After a 2-day closed meeting the U.S. leaders issued a statement saying, "We as the House of Bishops express our sincere regret for the pain, the hurt and the damage caused to our Anglican bonds of affection by certain actions of our church. We express this regret as a sign of our deep desire for and commitment to continuation of our partnership in the Anglican Communion." A spokesperson underscored that they were not apologizing for the consecration itself, which was agreed to by sizable majorities of both clergy and laity at a U.S. national synod. In addition the U.S. bishops were not ready to commit to the moratorium on any further elevations of openly partnered gays and lesbians that the commission had called for. Opponents of Robinson's consecration were not mollified by the U.S. bishops' statement. The 5-million-member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is another U.S. denomination that has long been wrestling with gay issues. This week saw the report of a task force the ELCA had set up to study the issue over the last 3 years. Unsurprisingly the group found what it called "deep, pervasive" disagreement, but was looking for ways to keep those on both sides in the church. It recommended that the ELCA should continue its current policies against blessing same-gender couples and ordaining sexually active gays and lesbians. However, the task force recommended that the church should not pursue disciplinary actions against ministers or congregations that chose to violate those policies. Task force chair Bishop Margaret Payne said, "I think this is about letting people be responsible to human conscience, rather than a capricious decision to let people do what they want to do." The ELCA will be holding its national meeting in August, where any legislative decisions would be made. The 8.3-million-member United Methodist Church last month defrocked openly partnered lesbian minister Beth Stroud of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for violating its similar policy against ordination of what it calls "self-avowed practicing homosexuals". Stroud has appealed that church court ruling to the church's regional appeals panel for the 12-state Northeastern Jurisdiction. A key element in her appeal is testimony from 6 of her witnesses that her Eastern Pennsylvania Conference trial court refused to hear. Germany was shocked this week by the murder in Munich of openly gay celebrity fashion designer Rudolph Moshammer, known as "Mosi". He had immense success over more than 35 years of designing men's clothing, his clients including Sweden's King Carl Gustaf XVI, tenor Jose Carreras, entertainers Siegfried & Roy, and film star-cum-California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. He was notably charitable, both as a major donor and as an active fundraiser. But he also drew the public eye with his personal eccentricities, which included always appearing in public in makeup and a bouffant wig accompanied by his Yorkshire terrier. Among those offering tributes was Premier of Bavaria Edmund Stoiber, who said, "He was an original and he had a big heart." Moshammer was 64. In the wake of last month's devastating tsunami in the Indian Ocean, it should come as no surprise that the annual Gay Festival in hard-hit Phuket, Thailand has been rescheduled. This week organizers announced that the internationally popular pride fest originally set for next month has been moved to April 7th through 10th. Although some local gay venues have said that others can best support Phuket by going ahead with plans to visit, pride organizers have agreed that area residents need to focus on the clean-up and emotional recovery. They also recognize that the U.S. and Canadian governments have advised against travel to the region and that some insurers are denying coverage to tourists headed there. And finally... the U.S. Department of Defense is so convinced of its dogma that "homosexuality is incompatible with military service" that it once considered its potential as a weapon. The magazine "New Scientist" reported that the Sunshine Project, a group monitoring chemical and biological weapons research, has now obtained a previously classified 1994 grant proposal from the U.S. Air Force Wright Laboratory that sought $7.5-million to research what it described as "harassing, annoying and 'bad-guy'-identifying chemicals". Its stated goal was to develop "chemicals that affect human behavior so that discipline and morale in enemy units is adversely affected," and it said that, "One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior." The proposal called that imagined weapon a "love bomb". The Pentagon confirmed the report of the proposal but said that none of its ideas had been pursued. Some of the other subjects for the proposed 6-year project included a way to simulate flatulence in enemy ranks and a "bad-guy-identifying" chemical that would cause "severe and lasting halitosis" -- bad breath.