NewsWrap
             for the week ending December 7th, 1996
       (As broadcast on THIS WAY OUT Program #454,
                          distributed 12-09-96)
[Compiled & written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Brian Nunes, Jason Lin,
Josy Catoggio, Bjoern Skolander, Ron Buckmire, Marcel Ryser, Rex Wockner,
Lucia Chappelle and Greg Gordon]

  South Africa's new constitution -- the first in the world to explicitly
provide protection from discrimination based on sexual orientation -- passed
its last real hurdle December 4th, winning approval from the high court.
In early September, the Constitutional Court had rejected an earlier version
on technical grounds.  It prescribed greater powers for the Council of
Provinces, which will replace the current 90-member Senate in the bicameral
legislature with a 60-member body.  Like the current interim constitution,
the final version also mandates a 400-member Assembly and a powerful
Presidency chosen by the party receiving the most votes.
The court's decision clears the way for President Nelson Mandela to
officially put the final signature on the new constitution.  He plans to do
that on December 10th -- International Human Rights Day -- in the township of
Sharpeville, the locale of both a notorious massacre of blacks by police
under apartheid in 1960 and the signing of the 1902 peace treaty that ended
the Boer War.  The transition from the interim constitution to the permanent
one will take place over a period of 3 years.
Some believe that the constitutional ban on discrimination against gays and
lesbians could potentially allow for legal same-gender marriages, but this
has not yet been tested.

  Switzerland is also preparing a new constitution, and the gay and lesbian
groups Pink Cross and Lesbian Organization of Switzerland are preparing to
fight for their rights.  The government's late November draft has omitted
sexual orientation as a category protected under the proposed
Anti-Discrimination Article, despite significant public support for the
measure.  The draft constitution will first be considered by Parliamentary
committees and will move to the full Parliament in the coming year.

  Gay and lesbian partnership registrations nearly equal to legal marriages
are expected to be enacted in The Netherlands in January 1998.  The main
distinction from legal marriage is that registrations will not carry adoption
rights.  Registration will give partners the same legal standing as
traditional marriage for purposes of inheritance, pensions, social security,
and -- in the event of a breakup -- alimony.  Although the proposal has
strong support among legislators, it's not quite good enough for the Dutch
Federation for the Integration of Homosexuality -- they intend to continue to
campaign for completely equal marriage rights including adoption.

  The London-based human rights watchdog Amnesty International recently
called attention to the situation of two dozen Filipino workers in Saudi
Arabia, who had been arrested and sentenced to 200 lashes each for
"homosexual behavior."  That behavior was apparently something other than
intercourse.  Amnesty has now confirmed that the whippings have been
delivered as planned, spread over a four-week period with 50 lashes delivered
in each of four sessions, to all except one of the men who had fallen ill.
 At least three of the men have already been deported, while those remaining
are being held in a deportation center.
Many questions still remain unanswered, however, including even the names of
the Filipino workers and the nature of their alleged crimes under Saudi law.
 Amnesty considers flogging to be prohibited under the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights, and anyone detained solely for private homosexual acts
between consenting adults to be a "prisoner of conscience."

  Caning is also being considered as a penalty for homosexual acts by Muslims
on the island of Penang in Malaysia.  Penang's Religious Affairs Committee
chair Mohd Shariff Omar views the proposal to amend religious laws for
harsher penalties as being a step forward, because it would provide for
uniform sentencing for all the island's Muslims, who include foreign laborers
from Indonesia, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, as well as native Malaysians.
Some of the other offenses for which caning is being proposed are also
sex-related offenses, including adultery, incest, procurement, and
prostitution.

  Open lesbian Sheila Kuehl will preside over the floor sessions of the
California State Assembly as its Speaker Pro Tempore, not only the first
lesbian but the first woman ever to hold the post.  She was appointed
December 2nd by fellow Democrat Cruz Bustamante following his election as
Speaker of the Assembly, as previously agreed by the Democratic caucus.
Kuehl had made a strong showing for the top job, but there was concern that
her sexual orientation might alienate enough conservative Democrats to allow
a Republican to win the Speakership.
When Republican members remarked on Kuehl's being appointed rather than
elected, Bustamante was quick to state clearly that Kuehl was the person best
qualified for the job, in terms of her abilities and understanding of the
rules.  It's been suggested, though, that the Democrats wanted to avoid
putting their members from conservative districts in the position of voting
for a lesbian.
Kuehl says she's able to work with people of all political persuasions:
Sheila Kuehl:  "From what I'm told from inside the Republican caucus, there
is quite a bit of respect ... because, you know, I am very even-handed and
try to be very fair in the way I operate, and as Pro Tem, that's the main job
you have: to preside over the House itself -- probably about 80 or 85 percent
of the time the Speaker does not do that.  So that means that all the
business that comes to the floor of the State Assembly has to be conducted
under the eye of the presiding officer -- making sure that all the
proceedings are fair ... you know, not only expeditiously, but truly that
everyone feels that they're being well treated."
Kuehl was the first open lesbian or gay to be elected to the California
Assembly.  She now begins her second term as one of two lesbians, following
the appointment earlier this year and reelection last month of Carole Migden,
another Democrat.
Kuehl was a founder of the Southern California Women's Law Center and a
former dean of the Loyola law school, and as a teenager played "Zelda Gilroy"
on the popular "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis" sitcom.

  The U.S. Supreme Court this week accepted the Clinton administration's
appeal of a lower court ruling that on free speech grounds struck down the
so-called "Communications Decency Act", an attempt to censor internet
communications.  "Reno versus the American Civil Liberties Union" is a
significant case for gays and lesbians, who have always been judged much more
strictly under "indecency" criteria ... and who in many cases have found a
haven on the internet for sharing information and creating community.  The
Act would change electronic communications from one of the freest media
available to the most heavily censored medium in the country.
As with many other censorship efforts in the U.S. and elsewhere, supporters
of the Act lean heavily on concerns for children in their arguments, with a
particular emphasis on fears of rapacious pedophiles.  The main thrust of the
Act is to punish distribution of sexual material to those under 18 years of
age.  Both child pornography and so-called "obscene" materials are already
covered by other statutes, however.
The Act serves to expand prosecutable offenses to include communication
accessible to minors "that, in context, depicts or describes in terms
patently offensive, as measured by contemporary community standards, sexual
or excretory activities or organs."
A leading broadcast law firm has reviewed actions of the Federal
Communications Commission and concluded that any discussion whatever of gay
and lesbian sexuality is liable to be interpreted as "patently offensive...by
community standards" -- and that AIDS prevention or other "redeeming social
value" is no protection.
Maximum penalties for violations under the Act would be a fine of $250,000 or
two years in jail.
The lower court had found the Act to be unconstitutionally vague, and
accepted the plaintiffs' contention that current technology could allow
parents to be responsible for selecting their children's online viewing,
instead of reducing the options available to other adults.
Oral arguments before the high court are expected to be scheduled for early
1997 and a ruling is anticipated in July.

  And finally ..."Symbols are so much more powerful where you don't expect
them," says openly gay programmer Jacques Servin.  So he practiced his own
brand of activism by inserting figures of male "studs" -- who must be kissed,
will kiss back, and tend to kiss each other -- into the higher levels of the
new SimCopter computer game from Maxis.  The company fired Servin for his
demonstration of "virtual disobedience".
Servin has no problem with Maxis, which he portrayed as quite good on gay and
lesbian issues, and which provides some of the few games that do not involve
destroying an enemy.  It was the more general computer game culture's
unrelieved heterosexism that bugged him, spurring him to counter the mass of
female characters his boss referred to as "bimbos" with an occasional
muscular male in swim trunks, instead of the dumpy little males met elsewhere
in the game.  Maxis doesn't seem to have much of a beef with Servin, either
-- they're just enforcing their policy against unauthorized content.  Even
the biggest SimCopter fans hadn't said anything about the cyber-studs in the
two weeks since the game was first released -- it took the creator of
SimCity, Will Wright, to pick up on them.
Although Servin says he had some problems with his random number generator,
the studs are meant to appear infrequently, except on Fridays the 13th and
his own and his ex-lover's birthdays.
Maxis is recoding the game and developing a stud-removing "patch" for the
50,000 copies of SimCopter released before the studs were noticed.  That
pretty well proves Servin's point, that any number of female "bimbos" are
considered just part of the scenery, while the occasional gay icon causes a
ruckus.  No "bimbo-removing patch" appears to be in the works.
                           ------------*---------------
Sources for this week's report included:  The Associated Press;  The
Independent/London;  The Los Angeles Times;  The New York Times;  Reuter News
Service;  The Sacramento (California) Bee;  The San Francisco Chronicle;  The
San Francisco Examiner;  United Press International;  The Washington Post;
 Wired News;  and cyberpress releases from Amnesty International;
 HAB/Switzerland;  the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD);
 and the Magnus Hirschfeld Centre for Human Rights/New Jersey.