REMINDER: There won't be a "NewsWrap" on next week's "This Way Out" (week of 12/29/08) or the following week (1/5/09).  We'll be celebrating the holiday season with our traditional annual "Audiofile Year in Review" and "Pride On Screen" special programs on those respective weeks.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“NewsWrap"
for the week ending December 20, 2008
 (As broadcast on "This Way Out" program #1,1082, distributed 12-22-08)
[Written by Greg Gordon, with thanks to Rex Wockner with Bill Kelley]

Reported this week by Sheri Lunn and Rick Watts

  Hungary’s Constitutional Court ruled this week that the country’s registered partnerships law � due to take effect in Jannuary � is unconstitutional.  The legislation, passed by Parliamment last December, provided marriage-like rights to same-gender and unmarried heterosexual couples.  Several petitions submitted to the Court by Christian conservative groups opposed the law because they said it equated gay and lesbian partnerships with marriage.  The Court said it had no problem with the registry for same-gender couples, but that the law couldn’t include heterosexual couples, who already have the right to marry.  Creating a near-duplicate institution for those couples, the Court wrote, also contradicted the special protection of marriage in the Hungarian Constitution.
LGBT rights activists called on the Government to introduce a new registry law that applies only to gay and lesbian coup les.  Supporters worry that some MPs who voted for the original legislation because it offered an alternative to heterosexual couples may not support a new same-gender couples-only bill.

  Sweden’s highest court this week rejected a petition from a gay couple who sought recognition of their legal Canadian marriage in their home country.  Married couples in Sweden pay a lower income tax rate than single people, and the country currently offers only civil unions to gay and lesbian couples.  Lars Gardfeldt and Lars Arnell, each priests in the Church of Sweden, argued that having to pay the higher tax rate was discriminatory.  But the court ruled that the country’s laws don’t recognize the marriage of a same-gender couple, and that their Canadian marriage was legally a civil union in Sweden.
A Parliamentary committee studying the issue last year said that civil unions, created in 1995, are outdated, and recommended the passage of marriage equality legislation.  Six of Sweden’s seven political parties support such a measure, with only the small Christian Democratic Party opposing.  Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said last month that a bill making marriage gender-neutral is on track and should become law by next May.

  In California, each side filed briefs late this week for the Supreme Court’s pending hearing on the validity of Proposition 8.  Almost 53 percent of the state’s voters approved that measure, which overturned the high court9s May marriage equality ruling and constitutionally defined marriage as heterosexual only.  LGBT legal advocates are arguing that the proposition was not a simple amendment to the Constitution, which requires only a majority vote.   They say that by denying what the Court called the “fundamental right” to marry to a legitimate minority group � gays and lesbians � the measure was an an attempted revision of the Constitution, which requires a two-thirds vote.
In a move that surprised some, the brief submitted by California Attorney General Jerry Brown agreed with Prop 8 opponents.  He had originally promised to support the measure as part of his duties to defend state laws, but said that after studying the issue he concluded that its passage was unconstitutional.  “Proposition 8 must be invalidated,” he said in a prepared statement, “because the amendment process cannot be used to extinguish fundamental constitutional rights without compelling justification” � and, he noted, the Court’s original marrriage equality ruling found none.

  Proposition 8 supporters not only defend the ballot measure in their briefs as a simple amendment, but are also asking the Court to nullify the approximately 18,000 gay and lesbian marriages that were conducted between the time the Supreme Court ruling took effect, in mid-June, and the passage of Proposition 8, on November 4th.  They’ve never until now announced that as a goal.  Rick Jacobs of the20anti-Proposition 8 Courage Campaign said he was "appalled" that the move was “buried in a legal brief... If Proposition 8's sponsors plan to destroy lives,” he said, “they should at least have the courage to admit it publicly."
The high court is not expected to hear arguments in the case until at least March.
ProtectMarriage.com and the Proposition 8 Legal Defense Fund did announce this week that Kenneth Starr will serve as lead counsel and argue their case to the Court.  Starr’s infamous 70-million-dollar investigation of alleged financial improprieties by the Clintons in the late-1990s turned up evidence only of the President’s dalliance with Monica Lewinsky.  That led to Clinton's impeachment by the House of Representatives, but the Senate acquitted him.

  Incoming President Barack Obama this week nominated the first openly LGBT person to his new administration.  She’s now Los Angeles Deputy Mayor Nancy Sutley, but � if confirmed by the Senate as expectted � she’ll join the new president as head of the White Housse Council on Environmental Quality.  Sutley has a strong background on those issues, and before becoming L.A. Deputy Mayor served in various capacities at federal and state environmental agencies.

  Obama’s choice for Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, appears to be an LGBT ally.  He backed the creation of a high school for LGBT students in his native Chicago, a plan that was hastily withdrawn after c riticism from some other officials.  Some LGBT advocacy groups also opposed the school, saying that integration and safety, not segregation, was needed to protect sexual minority students on campus.

  There were also suggestions this week that Obama plans to name an openly gay man to be Secretary of the Navy.  Several members of Congress, and retired members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are reportedly recommending William White, the president of New York’s Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, to fill that post.  It’s a civilian job, so his appointment wouldn’t violate the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” ban on openly-lesbigay service members.
But Obama angered LGBT advocates and many progressive supporters this week by inviting a vocal opponent of LGBT equality to give the invocation at his inauguration.  We’ll have more about pastor Rick Warren later in the program.

  The outgoing Bush Administration took what is probably its final dump on LGBT Americans this week by refusing to sign an unprecedented statement presented to the General Assembly of the United Nations affirming the human rights of sexual minorities, and calling for their protection around the world.  "We urge states to take all the necessary measures, in particular legislative or administrative,” the draft document read, “to ensure that sexual orientation or gender identity may under no circumstances be the basis for criminal penalties, in particular ex ecutions, arrests or detention."  It was proposed by France and read on December 18th by Argentinean ambassador Jorge Arguello, and was the first-ever discussion of the rights of LGBT people in the United Nations General Assembly.
Alone among major Western nations, and in strange alliance with members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, who actively opposed the statement, U.S. officials variously cited the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, and the fear of infringing on U.S. state rights, as reasons for not joining 66 of the U.N.’s 192 member countries to support the statement � including every nation in the European Unionn, several Eastern European and Latin American countries, Israel, Nepal, Japan, and a few African countries.  Paula Ettelbrick of the U.S.-based International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission called the Bush administration’s position “appalling.”
To the surprise of some, South Africa � one of the world’s mmost legislatively lesbigay-progressive countries � also failed to siign the statement.  China, Russia and India also didn’t sign on.

  About 55 countries actively opposed the initiative.  Arab nations, lead by Syria, issued a joint statement charging that such “social normalization” could lead to “the legitimization of many deplorable acts, including pedophilia.”
Consensual adult same-gender sex remains a crime in more than 75 countries around the world.  In at least 720countries, convictions carry a possible death sentence.
But Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen called it a "very special day at the U.N.”  “For the first time in history,“ he told reporters, “a large group of member states speaks out in the General Assembly against discrimination based on sexual orientation... With today's statement, this is no longer a taboo within the U.N."

  And finally, LGBT people and their allies in 2 Asian locales celebrated Pride in the waning days of 2008.  Manila’s 14th annual parade was held on December 6th, followed by a Miss Queen Philippines Beauty Pageant and a street party.  For the first time, a handful of Christian fundamentalists picketed the parade in protest.  But also for the first time, smaller Pride events were held that weekend in a few other cities around the country.
What some called a truly revolutionary Pride march was held in Hong Kong on December 13th.  About a thousand people took part in the conservative former British colony’s first such official event.  Several expatriates, and visitors from mainland China and Taiwan, joined colorfully-dressed locals waving rainbow flags in the two-mile procession through the city center, passing hundreds of mostly-bemused onlookers.  Organizers had to overcome resistance by several government agencies and local businesses to pull it off.
A few small demonstrations obliquely calling for sexual minority rights have been held in Hong Kong over the past few y ears, but many of their relative-handful of participants often wore masks to conceal their identities.  One of the organizers of the closet-bursting December 13th march, Connie Chan, called it a complete success, telling reporters that it was "time for Hong Kong to have a regular pride parade just like other modern Asian cities."





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