NewsWrap
for the week ending January 29, 2005
(As broadcast on This Way Out program #879, distributed 1-31-05)
[Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Rex Wockner, and 
Greg Gordon]


Reported this week by Dean Elzinga and Cindy Friedman


  The European Court of Human Rights this week unanimously ruled that Sweden 
violated the civil rights of a gay man with HIV with a court order forcing his 
isolation in a hospital.  When he was diagnosed in 1994, a local medical 
officer sought the order to stop him from infecting others.  That order was 
extended over nearly seven years resulting in his involuntary hospitalization for a 
total of about a year-and-a-half.  The European Court believed such an order 
should only be a last resort after more moderate actions were deemed inadequate 
to protect public health.
A spokesperson for the Hungary-based civil rights organization Habeas Corpus 
Working Group commented, "Due to the long window period of the HIV infection 
and the fact that it is not reversible after a few days, HIV cannot be handled 
on the basis of traditional methods like quarantine.  The Court made a stand 
against deprivation of liberty in case of arbitrary acts of authorities that 
mainly resonates uneducated public hysteria."


  The incorporation of European civil rights standards into British national 
law that went into force at the end of 2003 this week resulted in its first 
legal victory for a victim of homophobic abuse and discrimination in the 
workplace.  A London tribunal awarded 35,000 pounds to Robert Whitfield from his 
former employer, the waste management firm Cleanaway.  Whitfield told the court 
that he himself had never made any references to his sexuality at work as he 
considered it private.  But both senior and junior staff at Cleanaway so 
regularly taunted him as a "queen" or a "queer" or feminine that the court's opinion 
said, "The damage done here was more than a bruise.  Although the acts were not 
of the grossest kind -- for example there was no physical abuse -- the number 
of incidents, the repetition and the persistence constitute enough verbal 
blows to cause a substantial hemorrhage."  The company failed to take any action 
on Whitfield's behalf even though another gay employee had previously 
complained about similar treatment.
A spokesperson for Britain's gay and lesbian civil rights group Stonewall 
said, "The idea that this is just joking and banter isn't acceptable any more. 
... It's offensive and employers have no excuse for inaction.  There's plenty of 
guidance and help available about the new law and this case shows what will 
happen if it isn't followed."


  This was "No Name-Calling Week" in U.S. middle schools.  It's the second 
year for this initiative of GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education 
Network, with the official partnership of more than forty national organizations 
from the National Education Association to the Girl Scouts, and a proclamation 
from Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm.  While the week is intended to be a 
moratorium on all manner of insults, GLSEN believes anti-gay remarks are the 
most common verbal abuse in U.S. schools.
Professional homophobe Robert Knight, now with Concerned Women for America, 
told the Associated Press that, "I hope schools will realize it's less an 
exercise in tolerance than a platform for liberal groups to promote their 
pan-sexual agenda.  You can teach civility to kids and tell them every child is valued 
without conveying the message that failure to accept homosexuality as normal 
is a sign of bigotry."


  What may have been the first official act of U.S. President George W. 
Bush's new Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings this week was an attack on the 
Public Broadcasting System, PBS, for a children's show including two 
real-life lesbian families.  "Postcards from Buster" is a series aimed at preschoolers 
in which cartoon bunny Buster visits live-action people and places.  In the 
upcoming "Sugartime!" episode he goes to Vermont and learns about two things 
it's always been famous for -- maple syrup and dairy products.  Of course more 
recently Vermont became famous for pioneering legal civil unions for 
same-gender couples, and it just so happens that the two families Buster meets there are 
headed by lesbian couples.  The adults are basically background in the 
episode, and the nearest thing to an identification of their relationships that's 
made is one girl describing one parent as her "stepmom" she loves a lot.  But 
that was enough for Spellings to write that, "[M]any parents would not want 
their young children exposed to the life-styles portrayed in this episode" and to 
add that Congressional intent for the government funds supporting Buster's 
production "certainly was not to introduce this kind of subject matter to 
children."


  Actually the mandate for those Ready-to-Learn program funds specifies that, 
"Diversity will be incorporated into the fabric of the series to help 
children understand and respect differences and learn to live in a multicultural 
society.  The series will avoid stereotypical images of all kinds and show modern 
multi-ethnic/lingual/cultural families and children."  PBS' five-year contract 
for nearly $100 million in Department of Education funds is up for renewal 
later this year.  
Spellings' letter required PBS to delete any statement linking "Sugartime!" 
to the Department of Education and to refund the public funds used in its 
production.  She also asked PBS to give member stations advance notification of the 
episode's content.


  The PBS station producing "Buster", Boston's WGBH, had already given its 
own very serious consideration to the episode, including delaying its scheduled 
distribution to allow stations to preview it.  PBS management, despite having 
previewed and okayed "Sugartime!" the previous week, claims to have already 
decided against distributing the program hours before actually receiving 
Spellings' letter.  But WGBH is making "Sugartime!" available to the PBS stations, 
and at least a dozen have already decided to broadcast it.
One of the lesbian mothers in the show, Karen Pike, told the "Boston Globe", 
"It makes me sick.  I'm actually aghast at the hatred stemming from such an 
important person in our government. ... Her first official act was to denounce 
my family, and to denounce PBS for putting on a program that shows my family as 
loving, moral, and committed."


  Bush himself told the "New York Times" this week that "the ideal" is for 
children to "be raised by ... a married family with a man and a woman," while 
admitting that "I believe children can receive love from gay couples".  Some 
experts quickly contested his claim that "studies have shown" the heterosexual 
model to be ideal.  He was responding to a question about Florida's unique ban 
on adoptions by gays and lesbians.
But his administration is under special pressure to try to advance an 
amendment to the U.S. Constitution to prohibit marriage to same-gender couples.  The 
Arlington Group, a coalition of religious conservative leaders, specifically 
threatened last week to withhold their support from his top-priority plan to 
privatize Social Security unless he actively pushed for the amendment.
This week U.S. Senator from Colorado Wayne Allard, with two dozen fellow 
Republican co-sponsors, reintroduced the constitutional ban formerly known as the 
Federal Marriage Amendment, now under the title Marriage Protection Amendment. 
 Although November elections are believed to have won a few more Senate 
supporters for the move, it's still well short of the required two-thirds majority. 
 Some observers don't expect a Senate vote on the amendment until next year.


  Gay and lesbian families are recognized in a new conflict-of-interest 
policy of the United States' largest employer and the world's largest retailer, The 
Wal-Mart Stores Inc.  Ethics policy revisions filed with the Securities and 
Exchange Commission this week include redefining employees' "immediate family 
members" who are barred from benefiting from confidential information or from 
using connections with Wal-Mart suppliers to seek jobs with them.  In what a 
Wal-Mart spokesperson called an "update," those "immediate family members" now 
include "Domestic Partnership or Civil Union, if recognized by your state or 
other local law".  But although Wal-Mart added the category "sexual orientation" 
to its anti-discrimination policy in mid-2003, it does not currently offer 
spousal benefits to workers' same-gender partners, and has not indicated that it 
plans to do so.


  This week saw the passing of one of the most influential architects of the 
20th century, openly gay American Philip Johnson, at age 98.  He was the 
leading proponent of the so-called "International Style" of architecture and then 
moved into postmodernism.  He began to speak publicly about his homosexual 
orientation in the 1980's and '90's.  He's survived by his partner of more than 40 
years David Whitney.  His career of more than 50 years included winning the 
American Institute of Architects' prestigious Gold Medal and the first Pritzker 
Architecture Prize.


  Australia Day this year featured honors for two openly gay men.  Ian 
Purcell was made a Member of the Order of Australia for his years of activism in 
South Australia, including co-founding the group Lesbian and Gay Community 
Action, working on police policies and lobbying for AIDS funds for gay men.  TV 
actor Stephen Hunt was a finalist for Young Australian of the Year for his 
international efforts in AIDS fund-raising and education.


  And finally... remember Richard Hatch, the openly gay and usually naked man 
who won that first "Survivor" competition in 2000 that really launched U.S. 
reality TV?  He was arraigned in federal court this week as it seems he somehow 
neglected to include his one-million-dollar prize and other media income in 
his federal tax returns.  It's really no laughing matter as penalties for each 
of the two tax evasion charges he faces range up to five years in prison with 
six-figure fines, although he's expected to win some leniency in a plea 
agreement.  But comics are generally wondering how, after tens of millions of people 
watched him win the money, Hatch might have believed no one would notice.