"NewsWrap"
for the week ending August 5, 2006
(As broadcast on "This Way Out" program #958, distributed 8-7-06)
[Written by Greg Gordon, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Bill Kelley, and 
Rex Wockner]


Reported this week by Tanya Kane-Parry and Sheri Lunn


  The United Nations has criticized the United States for failing to protect 
gays and lesbians from discrimination and abuse.  In a report released this 
week, the U.N. Human Rights Committee says the U.S. "should ensure that federal 
and state law[s] address sexual orientation-related violence in its hate crime 
legislation, and outlaw discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in 
its federal and state employment legislation."
A U.S. delegation appeared last month in Geneva to defend the country's 
record on lesbigay and other human rights issues.  During that appearance, Justice 
Department spokesperson Wan Kim assured the U.N. committee that the U.S. 
maintains a "profound and lasting commitment to equality."  A statement by the U.S. 
delegation noted that some of the protections the U.N. report seeks, such as 
the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, have been proposed -- but that measure 
has been a low-to-no priority issue in the Republican-controlled Congress.  
"We are an open society, accustomed to robust public policy debate," the 
statement also claimed, adding that U.S. officials "will be happy to examine the 
committee's views closely and draw any appropriate conclusions from them."


  A number of vicious attacks in recent weeks underscore the need to combat 
anti-queer violence, not only in the U.S. but everywhere else.
The decomposing remains of lesbian couple Candice Williams and Phoebe Myrie 
were found June 29th in a sealed septic pit behind the home they shared in 
Jamaica.  An autopsy revealed that they died from multiple stab wounds.
A police inspector told the Jamaica Star that a lead suspect had been 
identified -- Williams' former partner Dwayne Lewis.
A relative told police that Lewis had encouraged Williams to experiment 
sexually with women.  But his attitude changed when she "slowly progressed from a 
bisexual to an outright lesbian, which led her to end the relationship" with 
Lewis, according to the relative's statement.
Human Rights Watch director Scott Long wrote Jamaican Minister of National 
Security Peter David Phillips this week asking why, nearly a month after the 
bodies were discovered, Lewis has not been arrested, or even questioned.  "As you 
know," Long wrote, "Human Rights Watch has documented an atmosphere of 
homophobic intolerance and violence in Jamaica, and a pattern of indifference or 
reluctance to investigate such violence on the part of the police... local 
advocates [have expressed] concerns... about the level of commitment to identifying 
and prosecuting the murderer," he wrote.


  "Agence France-Presse" reported this week that several teenagers have been 
arrested for a series of attacks on gay men in Tokyo. According to a police 
spokesperson, the teenagers — 3 in high school and one unemployed  — believed 
that gay men are wealthy and unlikely to report such crimes to authorities.
The boys allegedly injured a 34-year-old gay man in early July in 
Yumenoshima, a reclaimed waterfront area known as a gay hangout, robbing him of the 
equivalent of 180 U.S. dollars.  "The suspects also punched and kicked a 
56-year-old gay man on the same day near the site," the spokesperson said, adding that 
police were investigating similar crimes in the area.


  In Chilé, a band of young neo-Nazis attacked a 27-year-old gay man and 3 
friends in the affluent Santiago neighborhood of Las Condes on July 31st.  
According to a report in the "Santiago Times", the assault is the latest in a 
string of neo-Nazi acts that have plagued the nation's capital in recent months, 
but until now were confined to more working-class parts of the city.
The victim and his friends were walking down the street when they were 
approached by a group of skinheads in military garb who verbally taunted the man 
before physically assaulting him.  He was taken to a nearby hospital with 
multiple bruises and cuts on his face, and officials there reported the crime to 
authorities.  The victim was reluctant to do that because his family is unaware of 
his sexual orientation.
In recent months violence involving neo-Nazi youth gangs has escalated, 
concentrated in the southern Santiago borough of Puente Alto.  The nation's media 
has reported that as many as 40 neo-Nazi groups operate out of that poor 
neighborhood.
Antonio Leal, president of Chilé's Chamber of Deputies, wants neo-Nazis 
banned in his country, adding that he would ask the government to "put a hate-crime 
law at the top of its agenda."


  Police in New Mexico are handling the brutal beating of an 18-year-old gay 
man and his female friend under the U.S. state's new hate crimes law.
People at a house party in Edgewood harassed the man because he's gay, police 
said, but when he tried to leave with his friend the 2 were attacked.
New Mexico state police Lieutenant Rick Anglada told reporters that the young 
man was forced into a camper trailer at the residence, locked inside, and 
repeatedly beaten until the sun rose the next day.  Prosecutor Donna Dagnall said 
he suffered bleeding on the brain and a concussion as well as facial 
lacerations and bruising, but has since been released from a hospital.  Lieutenant 
Anglada said they've arrested 2 young men and are seeking a third in the case.  
He said the attackers told their victim that "they were going to scare him 
straight."


  Three suspected gang members face hate-crime charges in the beating of 
patrons of a Riverside, California gay bar, the city's "Press-Enterprise" 
newspaper reported this week.  They've each been charged with 3 counts of assault and 
committing a hate crime.
According to the report, the suspects walked up to The Menagerie bar in 
downtown Riverside in the early morning hours of August 1st and began making 
anti-gay comments about people standing outside.  After the people went back inside 
the bar the men shattered a window with bricks and a rock.  At that point, 
some bar customers went outside to confront them.  Then -- witness accounts vary 
-- either the patrons tried to detain the men until police arrived, or patrons 
yelled back at them and the men attacked.  3 Menagerie customers were injured 
in the mêlée.
Jeffery Owens, a 40-year-old gay man, died in June 2002 after being stabbed 
and beaten outside the same bar.


  Six gay men were beaten with baseball bats and one was stabbed as they left 
the San Diego LGBT Pride Festival during the evening hours of July 29th.
Police have arrested all 3 alleged young assailants, ranging in age from 18 
to 24.  They'll be charged with 2 counts each of attempted murder with a 
hate-crime enhancement and 2 counts of assault with a deadly weapon.  A fourth 
16-year-old suspect was also taken into custody for being an accessory to the 
assaults and allegedly aiding the 3 attackers.
Fred Sainz, openly gay press secretary to San Diego's Republican Mayor Jerry 
Sanders told reporters that one of the victims "had his skull bashed in and 
he's going to have to have reconstructive surgery."  The other 5 were treated at 
hospitals and released.
At a July 31st press conference, Mayor Sanders himself said, "the attackers 
taunted the victims with antigay insults as they were beating them... This is 
the very definition of a hate crime."
Sanders said police detectives worked on the case for 40 hours nonstop to 
find the alleged assailants.


  More than 200 people, including the Governor and Attorney General of Maine, 
rallied on July 22nd in the city of Portland to support a lesbian couple 
whose home was rendered uninhabitable from vicious acts of vandalism.
The suspects broke into the mobile home of Linda Boutaugh and Keri Fuchs on 
the night of July 1st, destroying furniture and appliances, breaking windows 
and spraying pesticides in several rooms.  Valuables, including a box that 
contained Fuch's father's ashes, were stolen.  Their car was severely damaged, and 
feces and urine were left in the car and the home.  Anti-gay slurs were 
scrawled on the walls.
The state attorney general's office has filed hate crime charges that also 
include burglary, theft, aggravated criminal mischief and 2 counts of 
motor-vehicle burglary against the suspects -- 2 boys, aged 12 and 14.


  But finally, a long-simmering struggle over an LGBT Pride proclamation by 
young queer activists in the city of Los Altos, California has ended amicably.
The City Council approved a surprise motion last week to rescind a ban on 
proclamations regarding sexual orientation.
City officials established the ban in February after the Gay Straight 
Alliance of Los Altos High School asked the council -- for the third year in a row -- 
to approve a proclamation declaring a citywide Gay Pride Day.  Three of the 5 
council members, including Mayor Ron Packard, supported the ban.
The move brought unexpected and unwelcomed media attention to the Northern 
California Bay Area community of 28,000.  During a news conference before last 
week's council meeting, dozens of business owners and residents called on city 
lawmakers to rescind the rule.  "It is an embarrassment for many of us living 
and working in Los Altos," Peter Yessne told reporters, saying he spoke for 56 
other business owners in the city who'd signed a petition supporting the 
ban's repeal.
Mayor Packard then surprised critics by introducing a measure asking the 
council to consider lifting the ban.  In an e-mail to Gay Straight Alliance 
adviser Ruth Gibbs, and shared with the San Jose Mercury News, Packard wrote that he 
was especially impressed by a presentation that students from the Gay 
Straight Alliance made during a July 11th meeting.
The council passed a motion giving the mayor the sole power to issue whatever 
city proclamations he or she deems appropriate.
The Gay Straight Alliance of Los Altos High School plans to ask for a Pride 
Day proclamation again next year.
              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
       "Dogfight in Colorado Springs" FEATURE STORY:
  A new survey about the so-called "culture wars" in the U.S. suggests that, 
with the exception of the combatants on opposing sides of each issue, there 
may not be much of a "war" at all.
The results of the Pew Research Center's poll of 2,003 American adults, 
conducted by phone in mid-July and released this week, concluded that, "Despite... 
the high visibility of activist groups on both sides of the cultural divide, 
there has been no polarization of the public into liberal and conservative 
camps."


  On 5 high-profile social issues -- abortion rights, stem cell research, 
same gender marriage, adoption of children by gay and lesbian couples, and the 
so-called "morning-after" pill to end a possible pregnancy -- just 12 percent 
took the conservative position on all 5 issues, while only 22 percent 
consistently held the opposing view.  The survey's margin of error was 2.5 percent.
On specific lesbigay issues, 56 percent opposed giving same gender partners 
the right to marry, but 53 percent supported a legal status that would provide 
many of the same rights as married couples.  There's been a steady rise in 
U.S. public opinion in recent years favoring some form of legal recognition for 
lesbian and gay couples.


  There's also been an increase in the number of Americans who believe sexual 
orientation is innate -- 36 percent, up from 30 percent in 2003.  Nearly 
half, 49 percent, believe gays and lesbians cannot be "converted" to 
heterosexuality, compared with 42 percent who thought they could be in 2003.


  In June the Denver, Colorado-based Gill Foundation launched an online 
campaign -- at w-w-w-dot-born-different-dot-com, and a series of 30-second TV 
spots, featuring a cute animated puppy who communicates somewhat differently:
(Web audio excerpts including narration + Norman's "Moo!")


  Not everyone agrees with that point of view, of course -- especially Focus 
on the Family, the Colorado Springs-based rightwing Christian empire.  They 
insist that gays and lesbians need therapy to change their sexual orientation to 
become "normal."  In late July the group launched a competing media campaign 
at no-dash-moo-dash-lies-dot-com with a dog of its own:
(brief F on F narration with Sherman: Woof!)
Focus hasn’t revealed how much it's spending on its campaign, but Gill says 
it’s allocated $900,000 for Internet and TV ads.  They've also mounted pictures 
of their mooing puppy on Colorado Springs city busses, and on banners hanging 
on city light poles downtown.


  The Rocky Mountain high city of Colorado Springs, a 2-hour's drive from 
Denver, has a population of around 370,000.  It was described in an article last 
year in "Harper's Magazine" as "home to the greatest concentration of 
fundamentalist Christian activist groups in American history".  Some city officials 
have questioned the use of city light poles for the Norman campaign, and 
expressed concerns that such messages "politicize" city property and imply 
endorsement for the message.


  In November, Coloradans may be asked to vote on up to 3 different state 
initiatives addressing same gender marriage, civil unions, and domestic 
partnerships.  Focus on the Family charges that the Gill Foundation’s campaign is 
blatant electioneering.  Gill says their mooing puppy is just an effort to get 
people talking about issues of sexual orientation -- and they've apparently 
succeeded.  Local reporter Eric Whitney hit the streets to gather a random sample of 
opinion in downtown Colorado Springs about the banners and the dueling doggie 
campaigns.
(vox pop)
Last we heard Norman's banners were still flying.  With thanks to Eric 
Whitney at KRCC-FM in Colorado Springs, Colorado, I'm Sheri Lunn...
And I'm Tanya Kane-Parry...
For "This Way Out".
(sfx: "Moo!")